Javier Cercas - Outlaws

‘The frustrated robbery of the gas station in Sils had at least two consequences. The first was that, although nobody made any comments on my behaviour that afternoon (or I didn’t hear any), I felt ashamed of my cowardice and swore that it wouldn’t happen again; at least not in front of Tere. The second was that Zarco decided to change objectives, and the consequence of that consequence was that from then on we stopped robbing shops and gas stations and started robbing banks, because, according to Zarco — and it was all he said to justify his decision — robbing a bank was less dangerous than robbing a gas station or a shop, aside from being more lucrative. The comment didn’t strike me as nonsense, and much later I understood that back then, before the epidemic of bank robberies that later swept the country had started, maybe it wasn’t, or not entirely, but the truth is it still astonishes me that it never even occurred to me to somehow try to put the brakes on that hell-bent scheme. It’s also significant that no one asked any questions or had any qualms about this change in strategy; significant because it reveals again our absolute trust in Zarco: one day he simply tells us we’re going to rob a bank and a few days later, after planning the job and watching a branch of the Banca Catalana beside the port in Palamós for several mornings in a row, we robbed it.

‘We met mid-morning on the chosen day, had something to drink in La Font and on the way out of the district we stole a Seat 124 station wagon. On the way to Palamós Zarco went over the plan one last time and divided up the roles: he and Tere would go into the branch — Tere with one sawn-off shotgun and him with the other — I would wait for them on the street with the Star, guarding the entrance, and Gordo would wait for us at the wheel of the car, ready to take off. We listened to the instructions and assignments without complaint, but I spent the trip digesting a decision I’d been chewing over since Zarco had suggested the bank hold-up. So, just after we arrived in Palamós and parked in a little square, with the Banca Catalana branch on our left and the sea on our right, I broke the silence in the car as we watched people coming in and out of the bank. What I said was: I’ll go in. To my surprise, the phrase didn’t sound like an announcement or an offer but almost like an order, and maybe that’s why no one said anything, as if no one entirely believed what they’d just heard. I looked away from the entrance to the bank and looked for Zarco’s eyes in the rear-view mirror; finding them I explained, emboldened by my own words: You and I’ll go in. Tere stays outside. Zarco held my gaze. Don’t talk rubbish, Gafitas, said Tere. It’s not rubbish, said Gordo. Girls are easier to recognize than guys. And I have to drive. Gafitas should go in. Zarco and I were still looking at each other in the rear-view mirror while Tere and Gordo got involved in the beginning of an argument, until Zarco asked me: Are you sure? Tere and Gordo shut up. Yeah, I answered, and I said again, more for myself than for him: You and I’ll go in. I turned around and looked at him directly, as if trying to make it clear that I had no doubts, and Zarco nodded his assent so slightly that it almost looked like a nod of capitulation. OK, he said to everyone. Gafitas and I’ll go in. Then he added: You stay outside, Tere. Give the shotgun and nylons to Gafitas.

‘Tere gave me the stocking and the shotgun, I gave her the Star, we both looked at each other for a second and during that second I saw a mixture of pride and astonishment in Tere’s eyes and felt invulnerable. Then Zarco went over the plan again and, when there were only a few minutes left before two o’clock, which was closing time for banks, Gordo switched on the engine of the 124, drove around the little square and parked on the pavement on the other side, right in front of the entrance to the branch. Zarco, Tere and I all got out of the car at once. While Tere stationed herself by the door holding the pistol at her waist, under her T-shirt and handbag, Zarco and I pulled the nylons over our heads, walked into the bank and pointed the guns at the two customers and three employees — three men and two women — who were there at that moment. What happened next was easier than we’d expected. As soon as they heard us shout at them to lie down on the floor, the customers and employees obeyed, frightened to death. After that only Zarco spoke, with an unexpectedly slow and deliberate voice or at least unexpectedly slow and deliberate for me, who was still pointing at the three men and two women with the sawn-off shotgun, sweating and forcing myself not to tremble while he tried to calm everybody down saying in his strange unhurried voice that nobody wanted to hurt them and that nothing was going to happen to them if they did what he told them to. Then Zarco asked who the manager was, and when he identified himself ordered him to hand over the money they kept in the branch; the manager — an almost completely bald man in his sixties with a double chin — obeyed immediately, filled a plastic bag with several bundles of notes and handed it to Zarco without looking at him, as if fearing he’d recognize his face disfigured though it was by the nylon. Zarco didn’t even open the bag and, as we backed away towards the door, he simply thanked everyone for their co-operation and advised them not to move for ten minutes after we left.

‘Outside we took the stockings off our heads and got in the car. Gordo drove normally down the main street of Palamós, without jumping a single red light, and once we were out of town took a detour towards a tennis club, but a short time later Gordo stopped in a lot where there were several parked cars, we got out of the 124, took a Renault 12 and drove back out to the highway. As we drove away from Palamós, sure now that we weren’t being followed, Zarco counted the money; most of it was hundred- and five-hundred-peseta notes: the total was less than forty thousand. Zarco announced the sum, and the silence that followed betrayed his disappointment; Tere and Gordo also seemed disappointed. As for me, I cared much less about the miserable amount of the booty than about having made up for my cowardice during the car chase that followed the hold-up of the gas station in Sils, so I tried to cheer them up with my enthusiasm.

‘It was no use. Zarco and the others experienced the success of our first bank robbery as a failure (and that false failure blurred my bravery, although I was so proud of myself, and especially of the pride I saw in Tere’s eyes just before the hold-up, that it almost didn’t matter to me). Maybe this explains why we blew that money even faster than usual, as if we looked down on it even more than usual. Whatever the case, speed calls for more speed, and from that moment on our accelerated impatient life accelerated even more and we became more impatient than ever. While we were surviving on a base of routine jobs (mostly purse-snatchings, sometimes the odd house), the mirage of the perfect heist obsessed us, as if we all planned to give up that outlaw frenzy after we did it, which was not true. We planned several bank jobs, called at least two of them off at the last minute and in the end only two came off: one at a branch of the Banco Atlántico in Anglès, which yielded loot almost as paltry as the job in Palamós, and another at the Bordils branch of the Banco Popular.

‘I remember the heist in Bordils very well and one of the hold-ups we called off. The heist in Bordils I remember because it was the last one and because for a long time barely a day went by when I didn’t think of it; I remember the frustrated hold-up because, immediately after we called it off, Zarco and I had our longest conversation of the summer. Maybe I should say our only conversation. Or at least the only conversation we had on our own and the only time back then that he and I talked about Tere. In any case, it’s the only one I remember in detail.’