Javier Cercas - Outlaws

‘So it was your idea to turn María into a media darling.’

‘Not at all. My idea was just that María should tell her story and Zarco’s to the journalists; nobody could have predicted what happened afterwards: I at least have nothing to do with that.’

‘Of course you do. You encouraged María by believing that you could use her and keep her under control; but that woman bolted and turned against you. Some people might say it serves you right: you can’t start something without knowing how it’s going to turn out.’

‘Nonsense. No one would ever start anything, if that were the case, because no one knows how anything’s ever going to turn out, no matter how it starts. Anyway, if you’re interested we can talk about this next time. I have to get going now.’

‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘You haven’t upset me.’

‘OK; I won’t keep you any longer. But before we finish for the day, let me ask you one last question.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘If I’ve understood you correctly, in that first moment everyone around you was optimistic about Zarco’s future. Is that right?’

‘Yes. . Well, no. One person was not.’

‘Who?’

‘Eduardo Requena, the superintendent of the prison. A strange guy. He knew Zarco well at that time, because he saw him every day, and he had a peculiar vision of his character. I didn’t see much of him, but we ended up forging some sort of friendship. I sometimes have the impression that he understood things that no one else understood, or that I took too long to understand. You should talk to him.’

‘I remember the first time Cañas and I met in my office, at my request, a few weeks after Gamallo was transferred to the prison. I’d only spoken to Gamallo a couple of times then and only in passing (I never talked much with him, I didn’t tend to talk with any of the inmates), but the group of specialists who worked under me at the prison had already examined him and made a diagnosis, so I had quite an accurate idea of his real condition.

‘That was the first thing I said to Cañas that afternoon, after shaking his hand and offering him a seat on the settee in my office. The second thing I told him was that I’d asked him to come because I wanted to share the information I had at my disposal, to simplify our work and act by mutual agreement. Cañas listened to me very attentively, his eyes looked intrigued behind the lenses of his glasses, leaning back against the sofa cushions, knees far apart and his fingers laced together in his lap; as usual he was impeccably dressed: white shirt, blue three-piece suit and shiny shoes. When I finished speaking, he raised his eyebrows and unlaced and relaced his fingers, inviting me to go on. I went on. I explained that Gamallo was a heroin addict and HIV-positive, which he must have already known as he didn’t seem surprised to hear it; I explained that he had an added problem, which was that he was not aware of how much harm heroin was doing him, as he believed he was in control when actually heroin controlled him, that he was unable to admit his drug addiction as a disease or was only able to pretend to admit it in order to take advantage of it, and without truly admitting it he could not combat it. I added that, in spite of all this, at the Quatre Camins prison they had managed to get him onto a methadone treatment programme. Then I said that Gamallo was perhaps the most institutionalized inmate I’d ever come across.’

‘Zarco! Institutionalized?’

‘Look. All prisons are different, but they’re all similar; Gamallo had spent more than half his life locked up in prison, he knew all or almost all of Spain’s prisons, knew better than anybody the tricks of prison life and knew how to manipulate them in his favour better than anybody, so he was the king of subterfuge behind bars, the champion schemer. That’s what it means to be institutionalized. Naturally, Gamallo considered that for him it was a strength, and he was right; what he didn’t know was that it was also his weakness. In any case, the specialists’ diagnosis was very clear; I summed it up for the lawyer: the report spoke of Gamallo’s manipulative character, his work-resistant temperament and his persecution complex (I remember that one of the psychologists wrote, more or less: I’m not saying that some prison guards haven’t persecuted him at times; but that’s the problem: the worst thing that can happen to someone who believes himself persecuted is to actually be persecuted); the report also alluded to his tendency to see himself as being victimized and the parallel tendency to always hold others responsible for his own misfortunes, and most of all it alluded to his inability to come to terms with the legend of his juvenile delinquency, to digest it and live with it.

‘This was the basic thrust of the report. The rest consisted of an unsurprising repertoire of news about Gamallo’s family, childhood and youth, a résumé of his criminal history and prison record and an inventory of his rehabilitation attempts. I handed Cañas the report and let him take a look through it; while he did so I explained: Look, Counsellor, I’ve been working with prison inmates for thirty-five years, I know the most complicated prisons in Spain and have been running this one for almost thirty. Forgive me for saying so but mine is quite an unusual case, mainly because the job of prison superintendent is so tough that few last for three decades and because it’s also a political appointment and that means I’ve survived the change of a dictatorship for a democracy, of one party for another and of the central government for that of the autonomous Catalan government. I’m not telling you all this to boast; I’m just trying to tell you I know what I’m talking about. I paused and then said: And what is it that I’ve learned from all this time spent among prison inmates? you’ll be wondering. The most important is something very simple: there are inmates who can live in liberty and those who cannot, there are inmates who can be rehabilitated and those who cannot; and that those who can be are a tiny minority. Well then, I can assure you of one thing, I concluded. Gamallo is not one of them.

‘I waited for Cañas’ reaction, but there was no reaction. I took it as a good sign: Cañas was an intelligent and experienced lawyer (although he was still young), so I thought that, if anything might surprise him about that encounter, it wouldn’t be what I was saying, but that I’d summoned him to say something as obvious as what I was saying. The thing is that for a second he remained silent, looking at me with the specialists’ report in his hands, as if he guessed that I hadn’t finished. I sighed and confirmed his intuition. But the authorities want him to be rehabilitated, I said. Then I went on. I said that Gamallo’s rehabilitation had become a political matter. I said that the Catalan government had decided that Gamallo gave them a chance to show up the government in Madrid, by doing well what they had done badly or hadn’t known how to do. I said that, as well as a political matter, rehabilitating Gamallo was a personal matter, or at least it was for the new Director-General of Correctional Institutions, Señor Pere Prada. . Señor Pere Prada. I had just met him, and at first he’d seemed like a good person; unfortunately, that’s not all he was: he was also a daily Mass Catholic, full of good intentions and a believer in the innate goodness of human nature. In short, a dangerous character. I told Cañas that Prada had taken an interest in Gamallo and that, after talking to him a couple of times in Quatre Camins, he’d decided to take charge, commit himself personally to his rehabilitation and commit the entire Justice Ministry, beginning with the minister himself. I said that because of that, among other reasons, Gamallo had been transferred to Gerona: because the director-general thought that in a small prison like Gerona Gamallo could receive more individualized and better attention. Finally I went on to describe to Cañas the regime that would be guiding Gamallo’s life from that moment on, a regime in which all his steps would be regulated and where, at Prada’s express suggestion, he would enjoy all comforts.’