Javier Cercas - Outlaws

‘Zarco kept smoking. The wind whipped around the lighthouse and blew our hair about and we had to smoke carefully, so a gust wouldn’t blow the end off the joint; in front of us the sky and the sea were an identical, immense blue. And your folks? asked Zarco. What about my folks? I asked. What are your folks going to say if you don’t go back to school? asked Zarco. They can say what they like, I answered. Whatever they say it’s over. I’m not going back. Zarco took another toke, handed me the joint and asked me to tell him about my family; without taking my eyes off the sea and sky and the boat that seemed suspended between the two, I told him about my father, my mother, my sister. Then I asked him the same question (and not just because he’d asked me: I told you before that I’d barely heard him talk about his family). Zarco laughed. I looked at him: like me he had his head leaning back against the lighthouse wall and his hair tangled by the wind; a bit of saliva had dried in the corner of his mouth. What family? he asked. I never knew my father, my stepfather got killed years ago, my brothers are in jail, my mother’s too busy just trying to get by. You call that a family? I didn’t answer. I turned back towards the sea, finishing off the joint, and, when I stubbed it out on the ground, Zarco started rolling another.

‘When he finished rolling it he passed it to me and I lit it. What I don’t understand is what the fuck you’re going to do if you don’t go back to school, said Zarco, picking up the conversation again. The same as you guys. Zarco curled his lip in a way I didn’t know how to interpret, passed me the joint and turned back to look at the sea and the sky, still immense, less and less blue, both turning towards a reddish darkness. Fuck, he said. I took a drag on the joint and asked: What’s up? Nothing, said Zarco. What’s up? I repeated. Can’t I do the same as you guys? Sure, said Zarco. I don’t know if I was satisfied by his answer, but I turned back towards the sea and sky as well and had another toke; after a few seconds, Zarco changed his mind: Actually you can’t, he said. Why not? I asked. Because you’re not like us, he answered. We stared at each other: that was the argument I’d used with him, at the beginning of the summer, to refuse to rob the Vilaró arcade (and then again with Tere to refuse to break into a house in La Montgoda). For a moment I thought Zarco remembered and he was turning the tables on me; then I thought he didn’t remember. I smiled. Don’t tell me you’re going to give me a sermon? I asked. In reply, he just smiled back. We kept quiet. I smoked in silence. And I said: Why aren’t I like you guys? And he said: Because you’re not. And I said: I do the same things you guys do. And he said: Almost the same, yeah. But you’re not like us. And I insisted: Why not? And he explained: Because you go to school and we don’t. Because you have a family and we don’t. Because you’re scared and we’re not. And I asked: You guys aren’t scared? And he answered: Yeah, but we’re not scared the same way you are. You think about the fear, and we don’t. You have things to lose, and we don’t. That’s the difference. I made a sceptical face, but didn’t push it. I smoked. I passed him the joint. For a while we kept staring at the sea and the sky and listening to the howling wind. Zarco took two or three more tokes, put out the joint and then went on: Do you know what happened to Chino the day he went into the Modelo prison? He paused; then said: He was raped. Three sons of bitches gave it to him up the ass. He told his mother and his mother told Tere. Funny, eh? He paused again. Oh, by the way, he added, did I ever tell you the story of Quílez? It happened the first day I was in the nick.

‘I was waiting for him to tell me the story of Quílez when I heard him say: Look at her. I turned around: it was Tere, who’d just come around the corner of the lighthouse and was walking towards us. I conked out, she said when she came up beside us, crouching down. And Gordo? I asked. Out for the count, she answered. Zarco rolled and lit a joint and passed it to Tere, who smoked for a while before passing it to me. Then Tere stood up and walked over to the cliff and stayed there, facing the sea, her hair whipping around like crazy in the wind and her silhouette standing out against a cloudless, darkening sky and choppy, darkening sea. That was the moment Zarco started talking to me about Tere. First he asked if I liked Tere; I pretended he was asking what he wasn’t asking and quickly said of course. Then Zarco said that’s not what he meant and I, knowing what he meant, asked him what he meant and he answered that he meant would I like to shag her. Since I’d guessed the question, I didn’t have to improvise the answer. No, I lied. Then why did you shag her? asked Zarco. I froze. Just at that instant, as if she’d caught a snippet of our conversation (impossible, because she was too far away and the howling wind and the noise of the iron and glass rattling in the lighthouse cupola drowned out the words), Tere turned around and opened her arms wide in a gesture of admiration or incredulity for the sky and sea behind her. I passed the joint to Zarco, who held my gaze for a second with a neutral look in his eyes; the dried saliva had disappeared from the corner of his mouth. What did you think? he asked. That I didn’t know? I didn’t answer, and we both looked back at Tere: shielding her eyes with her hand from the sun’s last rays of the evening, at that moment Tere was looking towards an abandoned building a hundred metres or so to our right, on the same headland. Who told you? I asked. She did, he answered. It was only once, I lied again; I specified: The night we went to the Marocco. Are you sure? he asked. Yes, I answered, thinking about the washrooms at the Vilaró arcade. Yeah, said Zarco. And he passed me the joint. I took it, smoked and watched how Tere pointed to the empty building and shouted something and started walking, jumping from one rock to the next and holding her bag against her body, towards where she’d been pointing. So it was just once, said Zarco. Yeah, I said. What’s the matter? he asked without irony. Didn’t you like it? Of course I liked it, I answered, and immediately regretted the reply. So? he asked. I reflected. I took several drags on the joint. I said: I don’t know. Ask her. I passed the joint to Zarco and that was it.’

‘You didn’t talk any more?’

‘No. Zarco didn’t push it and I was desperate to change the subject.’

‘And you were thinking that Tere wasn’t Zarco’s girlfriend.’

‘I thought she was and wasn’t, I told you already. Anyway, I don’t know. . I think that at some point I had a sense that this friendly conversation might be a trap, that it might actually be a scheme of Zarco’s, a way of testing me or an attempt to make me talk; ultimately, that it might be his way of telling me that Tere was his and that I should keep my distance. I don’t know, it was just a feeling, but a very vivid feeling, and I did not feel comfortable. It’s even possible that later I began to think that Zarco had been looking for an opportunity like that for a while to bring up the subject of Tere and the night on Montgó beach, and I might have also thought that, deep down, what Zarco wanted was for me to leave the gang so I’d get away from Tere.’

‘Did he tell you to leave the gang?’

‘Yes. That same day, just before we left the lighthouse. I, to stop talking about Tere, had started talking about that afternoon’s thwarted heist, and then we were silent for a while smoking and listening to the wind rattling the iron and glass of the lighthouse cupola, watching Tere approach the abandoned building and wander around it and disappear behind it, and the sun beginning to sink into the sea and the boat to disappear off to the left of the horizon, and at some point Zarco asked what we were talking about and I said that afternoon’s thwarted heist and he said: No, before. I said I didn’t remember although I remembered perfectly well and then, to my relief, I heard him say: Oh yeah, the story of Quílez.