Carlos Gamerro - The Islands

‘How easily he gets offended.’

‘He always was highly susceptible. Once, when he was a boy …’

César emptied the magazine into a mirror to one side. One less reflection in the countless ones around us, like one less number in an infinite series.

‘That’s it. I want to get this over with, I want to move on, I want to start my life. Humanity will have to wait a bit longer. It’s already waited this long … Window, move.’

‘I’ve told you, I’m not jumping.’

‘You have no alternative.’

‘Maybe not. But I’m not jumping and that’s that. Eh?’ he said, his chin jutting defiantly at him. ‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘I can’t stand it any more. This is so like you! You’re only doing this to spite me! If it isn’t your idea, it’s no good! You won’t let me have any ideas of my own!’

‘You never could do anything right.’

‘You have to jump!’

‘What for? To make you happy? That would be hypocritical. The fact is, sonny boy, that your plan’s a pathetic piece of shit.’

‘Just this once, Daddy, Daddy. Don’t ruin it for me again.’

‘You always were a spineless wimp.’

‘Cleo!’ bleated César, his jaw so tense I thought it might break.

‘See? You have to grab him from behind. Look what happens face to face.’

‘He won’t jump.’

‘He’s right in a way. I think we’ve grown a little overfond of the geometry of the plan. Why would he indulge us when we’re going to kill him anyway?’

‘What then?’

‘If we shoot him, the bullets will show up in the autopsy. You’ll have to push him.’

‘Why me?’

‘You know I hate physical contact.’

At César’s first step Tamerlán ran for the tunnel of broken glass, which he’d never get through in bare feet, his hands still tied behind his back, bobbing along heavily like a rhea, then fell flat on his face as if bolassed.

‘Where were you going?’ His son strode confidently forward until he caught up with him. Turning quickly like a cornered cat, propped on his elbows and back, Tamerlán began to launch kicks at César’s shins and landed two that made him sit down. For several metres, more sure-footed now, Tamerlán ran at his son, who only escaped his kicks by scuttling away on all fours.

‘You’re throwing me out! You and whose army? Look, look at me trembling!’ he shouted, with the desk between them. César was on the verge of tears.

‘Help, please! Help!’

The voice came from the tunnel of broken mirrors. It was Freddy. Almost carrying his mate’s prostrate figure, manœuvring it through the narrow gap of bristling shards, he approached from the shadows. He was carrying an Itaka in one hand and had the other round the waist of his wounded partner who, like his shirt front, was so red with blood that his nose looked white in comparison.

‘Help us, doctor,’ he pleaded.

‘What happened?’ asked Canal without approaching.

‘They were waiting for us. Threw everything they had at us. Machine guns, FALs, I dunno what. We had to cut and run. They got Tornero in the guts. He’ll die if he doesn’t see a doctor.’ He set him down and Tornero collapsed without opening his eyes. His feet moved slightly, then stopped. Very soon a double pool of blood had formed on the mirror of the floor.

‘What about the others?’

‘There was nobody in two of the houses and they were waiting for us in the third. Someone had warned them, I tell you. Him,’ Freddy pointed at me. ‘It was you, wasn’t it, you little shit?’ he said to me, starting to raise his shotgun.

‘Not yet,’ Canal stopped him. ‘We have bigger fish to fry.’

‘Yes, he’s bleeding to death.’

‘Bigger. Actually you’ve arrived just in time.’ He pointed at Tamerlán. ‘He won’t jump. He needs some help.’

Freddy smiled.

‘Pleasure.’

Tamerlán and Freddy began to size each other up from opposite sides of the desk. Freddy ran to one side, Tamerlán to the other. Freddy went round to Tamerlán’s side, Tamerlán to Freddy’s.

‘Et tu, Brute?’ Tamerlán shouted at him in mockery.

‘Fuck Brute!’ answered his ex-bodyguard. ‘I’ve had it in for you for a long time.’

He took a flying leap and, rolling across the glass, fell on his ex-boss and pinned him beneath his bulk. Tamerlán swore at him and Freddy grabbed his arms and wrung them like a wet floorcloth. Tamerlán began to squeal like a hog.

‘Shall I throw him out now?’ Freddy panted.

‘Better take the tape off first. It won’t look good in the autopsy,’ said Canal.

Tearing it off like women’s clothes, Freddy freed him of his bonds. Quick as a pit viper, Tamerlán’s first free hand plunged between the henchman’s legs and, turning with the full weight of his body, twisted his balls into a bow-tie. Using the fallen pachyderm’s bellowing body as a ladder, Tamerlán clambered up onto the desk and started jumping up and down, chattering and baring his teeth like a defiant monkey. Freddy’s eyes peeped over the edge, and Tamerlán tipped the contents of the Zen garden into them, missed him with the ingot of acrylic and hit him in the forehead, edge on, with the ombú pot. Freddy toppled backwards, the withered bonsai rooted under his nose like a second moustache.

Tamerlán seized his chance and ran to the other end of the room, where he again sought out the high ground, this time the model of the future Buenos Aires. He trampled the convention centres, the shopping malls, the diplomat’s residences like some movie dinosaur. This time Freddy got it right. Grabbing one end of the wheeled table on which the model was mounted and pushing it as if in a trolley race in a supermarket, with the shrieking Tamerlán on top, he headed for the place of execution, gathering speed until it crashed into the window frame, where, taking half the city with him in his arms, Tamerlán went flying towards the thick glass which, though it shattered and fell, halted his momentum sufficiently for him to grab the outside of the frame. The model, table and all, flipped over his head and, without touching him, began its long descent through the void.

‘I’m alive! I’m alive!’ yelled Tamerlán, trying to reach the edge with one of his legs and climb back in but only managing to slash it on the broken glass. Freddy squatted down beside him and tried to push him out by his head, but Tamerlán sank his teeth into his hand and latched on to him like a bulldog. Freddy had lost his gun in the battle of the desk and, howling like a wild animal in a trap, began to grope around him in desperation, until the fingers of his free hand closed on the acrylic prism. He landed it once, twice, three times on his ex-boss’s skull until Tamerlán began to gape, then set about hammering his fingers against the frame until the ingot broke in two. Like a genie coming out of the rubbed lamp, a nauseous gas hissed into the room.

I watched him fall. He seemed to be floating on his back, getting smaller and smaller, the expression on his face becoming more and more difficult to read, and he seemed to find the current of air against his body pleasant, like when you strip off in front of the fan in summer. He didn’t shout or flail. I think around the twentieth floor he actually put his hands behind his head as if the air were water, believing that, if he just lay there suspended, he’d soon be rescued by a passing salt-white yacht plying the blue waters of a mirror-like ocean, and friendly arms would reach out to haul him over the gunwale, wrap him in a blanket and give him a glass of cognac, and friendly ears would listen eagerly to his incredible tale of survival against all the odds. Till a metre before he landed, he must have thought that, in some hitherto unheard-of way reserved by God throughout the history of creation especially for him, he would still be saved. He hit the grass softly, barely bouncing, a boy throwing himself on the mattress to test sprawling postures. Against the distant green lawn his white body looked like a sleeping lamb viewed from the hills.