Javier Cercas - Outlaws

‘Following Tere’s instructions I drove out of Vilarroja and towards Font de la Polvora. On the way there I asked her again if she’d been with Zarco that weekend and this time she answered: she said no. Then I asked her if she knew who Zarco had been with that weekend and she said she had an idea. Then I remembered the last time I’d spoken to the prison superintendent, in his office, and I asked her if she knew that Zarco was using heroin again. Of course, she said. And why didn’t you tell me? I asked. Because it wouldn’t have done any good, she answered. Besides, when did you want me to tell you? We haven’t seen each other for weeks. Not through any fault of mine, I reproached her. She returned the reproach: Don’t start with me on what’s whose fault, Gafitas. I thought Tere was blaming me for Zarco’s bolting, but it seemed so unfair an accusation that I didn’t even try to defend myself. After a silence I insisted: Do you know where Zarco scores his heroin? No, said Tere and, I don’t know why, but I felt she was lying; then I wondered whether she was lying when she said she hadn’t spent the weekend with Zarco; then I wondered whether she didn’t spend the weekends with me so she could spend them with Zarco. Tere went on: Anyway, it’s easy to get it in prison. And outside prison as well. At least it is for him.

‘We’d arrived in Font de la Pòlvora. While we drove into the neighbourhood I asked again: Does María know? About the smack? she asked, and she answered herself: She pretends not to know, but she knows. What she can’t pretend not to know is that she barely sees Zarco on the weekends and when he does go to her place, he robs her. Stop here. I noticed that she’d said Zarco and not Antonio and I stopped on a dirt road without streetlights, between two identical tower blocks or between two blocks of flats that the night made almost identical. Tere got out and told me to wait for her. I watched her go in one of the blocks that looked like a massive shadow dotted with windows of light, I saw her come out a little while later and point to the other building, saw her go in, saw her come out almost immediately. They don’t know anything here, she said, as she got back in the car. Let’s try in Sant Gregori.

‘We tried a bungalow in a housing development in Sant Gregori and a house in the old quarter of Salt. Finally, in a farmhouse near Aiguaviva they assured Tere they’d seen Zarco that evening and directed her to a place in La Creueta, a district in the outskirts, south-east of Gerona. We crossed the city again and, somewhere around four or five in the morning, I stopped in an empty field, beside the roundabout of a bypass, opposite a block of flats that in the darkness of that desolate place looked like a spaceship stranded in the small hours. Tere got out of the car, went into the building, came out a while later, opened my door, and leaning on it announced: He’s upstairs. I asked: Did you speak to him? Yes, she answered. I told him that he has to be at the prison before dawn. I don’t think he even heard me. I asked: How is he? Tere shrugged and half-closed her eyes in a gesture that meant: You can imagine. Who’s he with? Two guys; I don’t know them. Have you told him I’m here? No. We looked at each other in silence for a second. Go on up, please, said Tere. He’ll listen to you.

‘I was surprised by Tere’s confidence (also by that “please”: she didn’t normally ask for favours or say please), but I understood that I at least had to try. So I got out of the car and, walking behind her, entered the block of flats and walked up a narrow and dark stairway, although its darkness dissolved bit by bit as we approached a door left ajar on the landing of the top floor, out of which sprang a strip of light. We opened the door the rest of the way, walked into the flat, down a short hallway and there was Zarco, sitting on a burst sofa, twisting up the end of a joint under the sickly light of a fluorescent tube. Beside him was a redheaded guy sleeping, in a tracksuit, and to his left, legs splayed in an armchair, a barefoot black man in his underwear was watching TV with the remote control lying on one of his thighs; behind him, a big picture window looked out into the night. The room was a shithole: the floor was strewn with ash and bits of food, empty beer cans, empty cigarette packets, unidentifiable substances; also on the floor, in front of the sofa, there was a table made from two upside-down beer cases: at a glimpse I saw, on top of it, a bottle of whisky with barely any whisky in it, three dirty glasses, a crumpled Fortuna packet, a couple of hypodermic syringes, the remains of a bit of cocaine in a piece of tinfoil and a lump of hash.

‘Zarco seemed exaggeratedly glad to see me: he said the word fuck several times as he finished rolling the joint with an expert twist of his fingers and then stood up and opened his arms wide in a welcoming gesture and asked Tere why she hadn’t told him I was with her. Tere didn’t answer the question; I didn’t answer the welcome: summoning all my patience I recognized the arrogant thug he could be turned into by the combination of alcohol and drugs, but especially by the combination of alcohol and drugs with the resurrection of his own myth, with the triumph of the persona over the person. Zarco approached me smiling, halfway between smug and somnambulant, threw an arm over my shoulders and turned towards his party pals like an actor addressing the stalls. Hey, guys! he said, demanding their attention; he got part of it: although the redhead went on sleeping, the black guy looked over, pointing at us with the remote control. Zarco acted as if they were both listening. Believe it or not, he announced, this is my lawyer. A son of a bitch with three sets of balls, badder than a toothache. He laughed loudly revealing two rows of rotted teeth and patted me on the back. The black guy didn’t laugh; he turned back to the TV indifferently setting the remote control back down on his thigh. Zarco looked like a vagrant: he stank of sweat, tobacco and alcohol, his eyes were extremely red, his hair was dirty and his clothes dirty and wrinkled; on his feet he only had a pair of socks with holes in them out of which poked enormous and dirty toenails. He urged me to light the joint, but I refused his offer and he lit it himself; then he gestured to the whole room like a drunken host. Well, he said to us recent arrivals. Are you going to have a seat? If you feel like a beer, there should be one left somewhere. Tere and I stood still, in silence, and Zarco sat down and almost at the same moment the redhead woke up and looked at us with fear on his face; Zarco calmed him down: he patted his knee and said something that made him half-smile. Then the redhead sat up and stretched and started to prepare a couple of lines of coke while Zarco watched him, smoking.

‘I turned to Tere and interrogated her wordlessly. I don’t know if Tere understood the question (she was standing, looking very serious, her left leg moving faster than ever), but I understood that she was asking me wordlessly to try. I tried. I have to talk to you, I said to Zarco, who seemed suddenly to remember I was there and took a last hit off the joint and offered it to me. Great, he said. Tell me. He looked at his companions. Don’t worry about these two, Zarco reassured me, pointing at the black guy and the redhead. They don’t understand shit. Zarco shook the joint in the air, insisting that I take it; I kept not taking it and finally it was Tere who took it, with an impatient gesture. Zarco stared at me. There’s not much to say, I said. Just that you have to go back. He smiled. Feigning terrible disappointment he clicked his tongue, moved his head to the left and right, asked: To the nick? I didn’t answer. Zarco added still smiling: I’m not going back. Why not? I asked. Because I don’t feel like it, he answered. I’m fine here. Aren’t you? Turning to Tere, he patted the sofa next to him a couple of times and said: Come on, Tere, sit down and tell this guy to take a toke and get over it all. For once we’re all partying together. . Tere didn’t say anything, but she didn’t sit down beside Zarco or pass me the joint either. You have to go back, I repeated. The superintendent called me and told me he’s expecting you: if you go back he’ll pretend nothing’s happened. Mentioning the superintendent didn’t help. Suddenly tense, Zarco replied: Well, you can tell him from me that he can keep waiting. He sat forward on the sofa, poured what was left of the whisky in a glass, knocked it back in one and, after a silence, began to complain, getting more and more upset: he grumbled about the conditions of prison life, he assured us that since he’d begun to get weekend-release passes things had continued to get worse for him inside and several guards and several inmates had decided to make his life impossible with the consent or at the urging of the superintendent, he finished up by announcing that the next day he’d call his friend Pere Prada and then he’d hold a press conference to denounce his situation in the prison.