Javier Cercas - Outlaws

‘Please do.’

‘It’s a bit of a long story; we’ll have to leave Guille’s death and Chino, Tío and Drácula’s arrest for another time.’

‘Not to worry.’

‘All right. As I was saying, it was one of the last nights in July, not long after the scare over the Tiburón in La Bisbal and not long before Guille’s death and the arrest of the others. It was a Friday or Saturday night, in Montgó, a beach in L’Escala. We’d been in the district till dusk, and then Tere, Zarco, Gordo, Lina and I stole a Volkswagen and drove off towards the coast.

‘As far as I recall we didn’t have any plan and we weren’t going to any particular place, but when we got to Calella de Palafrugell we felt hungry and thirsty and decided to stop. It was a pitch-black night. We parked on a patch of ground at the edge of the village, took a second round of uppers, went down to the beach, looked unsuccessfully for a table on one of the patios and finally went into a bar, maybe Ca la Raquel. There we ordered beers and sandwiches at the bar and Zarco started talking about his family, something I’d never heard him do before. He talked about his Uncle Joaquín, one of his mother’s brothers with whom, as he later told in his memoir, he’d spent two years of his childhood travelling here and there in a DKW, helping him earn a living through robberies and shady deals; he also talked, with admiration, of his three older brothers, who were in their twenties back then and in prison. He might have talked about something else, though I don’t remember now. The thing is that at some point I went to the washroom and, when I came back, two girls had joined the group. One, the one who was beside Zarco, was called Elena and she was petite, dark-haired and pretty, like a doll; the second was called Piti and she was taller and had reddish hair and pale freckly skin. I grabbed my beer and started listening to Zarco, who was telling Elena that we lived in Palamós and were students, although, he added in the same unconcerned tone, we spent the summer doing jobs; the lie didn’t surprise me, because it was inoffensive, but the truth did, because it was indiscreet, and, since Zarco didn’t usually commit indiscretions, I thought he’d taken such a fancy to that doll that he was willing to do anything to seduce her. Jobs? asked Elena. We nick cars, break into houses, all sorts, Zarco explained. Elena looked at me, looked back at Zarco and laughed; I tried to laugh, but I couldn’t. That’s a lie, said Elena. And how do you know? asked Zarco without laughing. Simple, answered Elena. Because people who do jobs like that never say they do. Shit, said Zarco, pretending to be frustrated, and added, pretending to be guileless: Tell me something else: Do people who have dosh go around saying they do? Elena seemed to consider the question, amused. If they have a little, they do, but if they have a lot, then no, she said at last. Then we can’t say we do, said Zarco, looking at me with feigned annoyance. Why do you want to say you’ve got dosh? Elena asked, prolonging the flirtation. To impress us? Of course not, said Zarco. Just to buy you another round. Elena laughed again. We accept, she said. Zarco immediately ordered another round of beers and, while we were drinking them, Elena told us that she and her friend lived in Alicante, that they’d been travelling around Catalonia for two weeks, that they were staying in a cheap hotel in L’Escala and that they’d hitchhiked that afternoon from L’Escala to Calella. When she finished talking, the girl leaned over to Zarco and whispered something in his ear. Zarco nodded. Sure, he said. He paid and we left.

We wandered the streets a bit looking for a quiet place to roll some joints, until we got to a plaza in front of the village church. We sat there for quite a while smoking and talking around a bench and, when we started to think about moving on, Elena mentioned a discotheque where they’d gone dancing a couple of times; Piti said the disco was called Marocco and it was near L’Escala, and Zarco suggested we go check it out. Have you guys got a car? Piti asked. Of course, answered Zarco. Great, said Elena. We only have one car, Gordo pointed out. And there’s seven of us. That doesn’t matter, said Elena. We’ll all fit. Don’t pay any fucking attention to Gordo, Zarco interrupted. He’s always joking around: no respect for anyone. And he added: we actually came in two cars. Before anyone could deny it, Zarco asked Elena and Piti if they both knew the way to the Marocco; they said they did and then Zarco jumped off the back of the bench where he was sitting, landed on the flagstones and said: Cool. Gordo, I’ll take Elena, Tere and Gafitas in the Volkswagen; you bring Lina and Piti in your dad’s car. What car? asked Lina. But Zarco had already started walking out of the plaza and we all followed him and nobody paid any attention to Lina, not even Gordo, who just fixed his lacquered hair a little with a resigned look on his face, draped his arm over his girlfriend’s shoulder while telling her to shut up and cursing Zarco’s mother.

‘So that’s how we ended up that night in Montgó, which was the cove where the Marocco was hidden. From Calella it couldn’t have taken us more than half an hour to get there, and that was in spite of Elena getting us lost and, after crossing L’Escala, spending a while driving in circles around a housing development. But eventually we saw a sign advertising the place, went down a dirt road and managed to park in a clearing in a pine forest crammed full of cars and illuminated by the lights of the discotheque, shining in the distance, way down by the beach.

‘Marocco turned out to be a disco for foreign tourists and hippy stragglers, but the music playing inside was no different from what they played at Rufus, probably because that summer all the discos played more or less the same music or because it seemed more or less the same to me: rock and pop hits alternating with disco songs (and once in a while a rumba, quite frequently at Rufus). Before going inside the discotheque we’d smoked one last joint, and Zarco, Tere and I popped our third upper; as soon as we went in I lost sight of Zarco and Elena, not Tere, who went straight onto the dance floor. I stood at the bar and watched her while I drank a beer, at times with the smug sensation (which sometimes struck me at Rufus as well) that she was dancing for me or at least that she knew I was watching her, always with the feeling that the movements of her body adapted to the music like a glove to a hand. After a while Gordo, Lina and Piti arrived, said hi and ordered drinks. Gordo and Lina went to sit on a sofa or got lost on the dance floor, and Piti asked me where Elena was; I answered that I didn’t know though I thought she was with Zarco. Then Piti asked me if we’d been there long and I said yes and then she told me, as if I didn’t know or as if apologizing, that it had taken them longer than expected to get there; I interrupted her to say that we’d got lost too, but Piti answered that they hadn’t taken so long because they got lost but because Gordo had forgotten where he’d parked the car, and she and Lina had had to wait for him until he found it and came back to pick them up. I clicked my tongue and said, shaking my head back and forth: Not again. The same thing every time. He always forgets where he parks his car? she asked. No, I answered. Only when he drives his dad’s car. Really? she asked. Really, I answered; I added: He should go see a psychoanalyst. We looked at each other and then burst out laughing. Then we carried on talking, until Tere interrupted us. Piti asked her where Elena was. Tere said she didn’t know and then the two of them started talking. I didn’t hear what they were talking about, but a short time later Piti left the bar as fast as she could. What happened to her? I asked. Nothing, answered Tere. It looked like she was crying, I insisted. You’re seeing things, Gafitas, Tere teased. Then she asked: So, are you dancing or what?