The Prisoner of Heaven: A Novel

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

  ‘I don’t know what you’re babbling about, Salgado. Sleep for a bit, or for a year, since nobody’s going to miss you anyhow.’

  ‘If you think you’re getting out of this place you’re as mad as he is.’

  Fermín felt a cold sweat on his back. Salgado bared his smashed teeth in a smile.

  ‘I knew it,’ he said.

  Swearing under his breath, Fermín curled up in his corner, as far away as he could get from Salgado. The peace only lasted a minute.

  ‘My silence has a price,’ Salgado announced.

  ‘I should have let you die when they brought you back,’ murmured Fermín.

  ‘As proof of my gratitude I’m prepared to give you a discount,’ said Salgado. ‘All I ask of you is to do me one last favour and I’ll keep your secret.’

  ‘How do I know it’s the last?’

  ‘Because you’re going to get caught, just like everyone else who’s tried to leg it out of here, and after they’ve riled you for a few days you’ll be garrotted in the yard, as an edifying sight for the rest of us. And then I won’t be able to ask you for anything else. What do you say? A small favour and my complete cooperation. I give you my word of honour.’

  ‘Your word of honour? Man, why didn’t you say so before? That changes everything.’

  ‘Come closer …’

  Fermín hesitated for a moment, but told himself he had nothing to lose.

  ‘I know that son-of-a-bitch Valls has put you up to it, to find out where I’ve hidden the money,’ he said. ‘Don’t bother to deny it.’

  Fermín shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I want you to tell him,’ Salgado instructed Fermín.

  ‘Whatever you say, Salgado. Where is the money?’

  ‘Tell the governor that he must go alone, in person. If anyone goes with him he won’t get a duro out of it. Tell him he must go to the old Vilardell factory in Pueblo Nuevo, behind the graveyard. At midnight. Not before, and not after.’

  ‘Sounds like an episode from The Phantom, Salgado, one of the bad ones …’

  ‘Listen carefully. Tell him he must go into the factory and find the old guards’ lodge, next to the textile mill. When he gets there he must knock on the door, and when they ask him who’s there, he must say: “Durruti lives”.’

  Fermín chuckled.

  ‘It’s the most idiotic thing I’ve heard since the governor’s last speech.’

  ‘You just tell him what I’ve told you.’

  ‘And how do you know I won’t go there myself? If I follow your cheap melodrama and passwords I could take the money.’

  Avarice shone in Salgado’s eyes.

  ‘Don’t tell me: because I’ll be dead,’ Fermín completed.

  Salgado’s reptilian smile spilled over his lips. Fermín studied those eyes, eaten away by his thirst for revenge. He realised then what Salgado was after.

  ‘It’s a trap, isn’t it?’

  Salgado didn’t reply.

  ‘What if Valls survives? Haven’t you stopped to think what they’ll do to you?’

  ‘Nothing they haven’t done to me already.’

  ‘I’d say you’ve got balls, if it wasn’t for the fact that you only have a bit of one left. And if this move of yours doesn’t pan out, you won’t even have that much,’ Fermín suggested.

  ‘That’s my problem,’ retorted Salgado. ‘So what’s it to be, Monte Cristo? Is it a deal?’

  Salgado offered him his one remaining hand. Fermín stared at it for a few moments before shaking it reluctantly.

  14

  Fermín had to wait for the traditional Sunday lecture after mass and the brief period in the yard to go over to Martín and confide in him what Salgado had asked him to do.

  ‘It won’t interfere with the plan,’ Martín assured him. ‘Do what he’s asking you to do. We can’t risk a tip-off at this point.’

  Fermín, who for days had been hovering between feelings of nausea and a racing heart, dried the cold sweat dripping down his forehead.

  ‘Martín, it’s not that I don’t trust you, but if this plan you’re preparing is so good, why don’t you use it to get out of here yourself?’

  Martín nodded, as if he’d been expecting that question for days.

  ‘Because I deserve to be here, and even if I didn’t, there’s nowhere left for me outside these walls. I have nowhere to go.’

  ‘You have Isabella …’

  ‘Isabella is married to a man who is ten times better than me. All I would achieve by getting out of here would be to make her miserable.’

  ‘But she’s doing everything possible to get you out …’

  Martín shook his head.

  ‘You must promise me one thing, Fermín. It’s all I’m going to ask you to do in exchange for helping you escape.’

  This is the month for requests, thought Fermín, nodding readily.

  ‘Whatever you say.’

  ‘If you manage to leave this place I want you, if you can, to take care of her. From a distance, without her knowing, without her even knowing you exist. I want you to take care of her and of her son, Daniel. Will you do that for me, Fermín?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Martín smiled sadly.

  ‘You’re a good man, Fermín.’

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve told me, and every time it sounds worse to me.’

  Martín pulled out one of his stinking cigarettes and lit it.

  ‘We don’t have much time. Brians, the lawyer Isabella hired to act on my case, was here yesterday. I made the mistake of telling him what Valls wants me to do.’

  ‘The business about rewriting that garbage of his …’

  ‘Exactly. I asked him not to say anything to Isabella, but I know him, and sooner or later he will, and Isabella, whom I know even better, will fly into a rage and come here to threaten Valls with broadcasting his secret from the rooftops.’

  ‘Can’t you stop her?’

  ‘Trying to stop Isabella is like trying to stop a cargo train: a fool’s errand.’

  ‘The more you talk about her the more I’d like to meet her. I like women with spirit …’

  ‘Fermín, let me remind you of your promise.’

  Fermín put his hand on his heart and nodded solemnly. Martín continued.

  ‘As I was saying, when this happens, Valls might do something stupid. He’s driven by vanity, envy and greed. When he feels he’s been cornered he’ll make a false move. I don’t know what, but I’m sure he’ll try to do something. It’s important that by then you’re already out of here.’

  ‘As you know, I’m not too keen on this place …’

  ‘You don’t understand. We’ve got to speed up the plan.’

  ‘When to?’

  Martín watched him at length through the curtain of smoke rising from his lips.

  ‘To tonight.’

  Fermín tried to swallow, but his mouth felt as if it were full of dust.

  ‘But I don’t even know what the plan is yet …’

  ‘Listen carefully.’

  15

  That afternoon, before returning to his cell, Fermín approached one of the two guards who had escorted him to Valls’s office.

  ‘Tell the governor I need to talk to him.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Tell him I have the results he was waiting for. He’ll know what I mean.’

  Before an hour had passed, the guard and his colleague were at the door of cell number 13 to fetch Fermín. Salgado watched the whole thing eagerly from the bunk as he massaged his stump. Fermín winked at him and set off, escorted by the guards.

  The governor received him with an effusive smile and a plateful of delicious pastries from Casa Escribá.

  ‘Fermín, dear friend, what a pleasure to see you here again, ready for an intelligent and productive conversation. Do sit down, please. And enjoy this fine selection of sweets brought to me by the wife of one of the prisoners.’

  Fermín, who for days hadn’t been a
ble to swallow so much as a birdseed, picked up a ring-shaped pastry so as not to disobey Valls, and held it in his hand as if he were holding an amulet. Valls poured himself a glass of brandy and dropped into his ample general’s armchair.

  ‘So? I understand you have good news for me,’ the governor said, inviting Fermín to talk.

  Fermín nodded.

  ‘In the belles-lettres department, I can assure Your Honour that Martín is more than persuaded and motivated to carry out the polishing and ironing task he was requested to do. Moreover, he remarked that the material you supplied him with, sir, is of such a high quality and so fine, that he thinks it will pose no difficulties. All he needs to do is dot a few i’s and cross a few t’s in your work of genius to produce a masterpiece worthy of the great Paracelsus.’

  Valls paused to absorb Fermín’s barrage of words, but nodded politely without removing his frozen smile.

  ‘There’s no need for you to sweeten it for me, Fermín. It’s enough for me to know that Martín will do what he has to do. We’re both aware that he doesn’t like the task he’s been assigned, but I’m glad he’s seeing reason at last and understands that making things possible benefits us all. And now, about the other two points …’

  ‘I was coming to that, sir. Concerning the burial ground of the lost volumes …’

  ‘The Cemetery of Forgotten Books,’ Valls corrected him. ‘Have you been able to extract its location from Martín?’

  Fermín nodded with utter conviction.

  ‘From what I’ve been able to gather, the aforementioned ossuary is hidden behind a labyrinth of tunnels and chambers, beneath the Borne market.’

  Valls weighed up that revelation, visibly surprised.

  ‘And the entrance?’

  ‘I wasn’t able to get that far, sir. I imagine that it must be through some trapdoor camouflaged behind the uninviting paraphernalia and stench of some of the wholesale vegetable stalls. Martín didn’t want to talk about it and I thought that if I pressed him too much he might dig his heels in.’

  Valls nodded slowly.

  ‘You did the right thing. Go on.’

  ‘And finally, in reference to Your Excellency’s last request, taking advantage of the death throes and moral agonies of that despicable Salgado, I was able to persuade him, in his delirium, to confess where he’d hidden the copious booty from his criminal activities in the service of Freemasonry and Marxism.’

  ‘So, you think he’s going to die?’

  ‘Any moment now. I think he’s already commended himself to Saint Leon Trotsky and is awaiting his last breath to rise into the politburo of posterity.’

  ‘I told those animals they wouldn’t extract anything out of him by force,’ Valls muttered under his breath.

  ‘Technically, I believe they extracted a gonad or a limb, but I agree with you, sir, that with vermin like Salgado the only possible method is applied psychology.’

  ‘So then? Where did he hide the money?’

  Fermín leaned forward and adopted a confidential tone.

  ‘It’s complicated to explain.’

  ‘Don’t beat about the bush or I’ll send you down to the basement to have your vocal cords refreshed.’

  Fermín then proceeded to sell Valls that outlandish plot he’d obtained from Salgado’s lips. The governor listened incredulously.

  ‘Fermín, let me warn you that if you’re lying you’ll be deeply sorry. What they’ve done to Salgado won’t even be a foretaste of what they’ll do to you.’

  ‘I can assure Your Lordship that I’m repeating, word for word, what Salgado told me. If you like I’ll swear on the irrefutable portrait of Franco that lies on your desk.’

  Valls looked him straight in the eye. Fermín held his gaze without blinking, just as Martín had taught him to do. Finally, having procured the information he was looking for, the governor removed his smile as well as the plate of pastries. Without any pretence at cordiality, he snapped his fingers and the two guards came in to lead Fermín back to his cell.

  This time Valls didn’t even bother to threaten Fermín. As they dragged him down the corridor, Fermín saw the governor’s secretary walking past them and stopping outside Valls’s office.

  ‘Governor, Sanahuja, the doctor in Martín’s cell …’

  ‘Yes. What?’

  ‘He says Martín has fainted and thinks it might be something serious. He asks for permission to go to the medicine cabinet and get a few things …’

  Valls stood up in a fury.

  ‘’So what are you waiting for? Go on. Take him there and let him have whatever he needs.’

  16

  Following the governor’s orders, a jailer was left posted in front of Martín’s cell while Dr Sanahuja treated him. The jailer was a young man of about twenty who was new to the shift. The night shift was supposed to be covered by Bebo, but instead that novice had inexplicably turned up, looking incapable even of sorting out his bunch of keys and more nervous than any of the prisoners. At about nine o’clock the doctor, noticeably tired, walked over to the bars of his cell and spoke to him.

  ‘I need more clean gauze and some antiseptic.’

  ‘I can’t abandon my post.’

  ‘And I can’t abandon a patient. Please. Gauze and antiseptic.’

  The jailer stirred nervously.

  ‘The governor doesn’t like it when his instructions are not followed word for word.’

  ‘He’ll like it even less if anything happens to Martín because you’ve ignored me.’

  The young jailer assessed the situation.

  ‘Listen, boss,’ argued the doctor. ‘We’re unlikely to walk through the walls or swallow the iron bars …’

  The jailer swore and rushed off to the medicine cabinet, while Sanahuja stood by the bars of his cell and waited. Salgado had been asleep for a couple of hours, breathing with difficulty. Fermín tiptoed up to the front of his cell and exchanged glances with the doctor. Sanahuja then threw him a parcel, the size of a pack of cards, wrapped in a shred of material and tied with a piece of string. Fermín caught it in the air and quickly retreated to the shadows at the far end of his cell. When the jailer returned with what Sanahuja had asked him for, he peered through the bars, inspecting Salgado’s silhouette on the bunk.

  ‘He’s on his last legs,’ said Fermín. ‘I don’t think he’ll last till tomorrow.’

  ‘You keep him alive until six. I don’t want him to screw things up for me. Let him die during someone else’s shift.’

  ‘I’ll do what is humanly possible, boss,’ replied Fermín.

  17

  That night, while Fermín unwrapped the parcel Dr Sanahuja had tossed him from the other side of the corridor, a black Studebaker was driving the governor down the road from Montjuïc towards the dark streets bordering the port. Jaime, the chauffeur, was taking great care to avoid potholes and any jolts that might inconvenience his passenger or interrupt the flow of his thoughts. The new governor was not like the previous one. The previous governor would strike up conversations with him in the car and once in a while he had sat in the front, next to him. Governor Valls never addressed Jaime except to give him an order and rarely caught his eye, unless he’d made a mistake, or driven over a stone, or taken a bend too fast. Then his eyes would smoulder in the rear-view mirror and his face would adopt a sour expression. Governor Valls did not let him turn on the radio because, he said, all the programmes were an insult to his intelligence. Nor did he let Jaime display photographs of his wife and daughter on the dashboard.

  Luckily, at that time of night there was no traffic and the route didn’t throw up any unwelcome surprises. In just a few minutes the car had passed the old Royal Shipyards, skirted the monument to Columbus and started up the Ramblas. Two minutes later they had reached the Café de la Ópera and stopped. The Liceo audience, on the other side of the street, had already gone in for the evening performance and the Ramblas were almost deserted. The chauffeur got out and, after making sure there was nobody
in the way, opened the door for Mauricio Valls. The governor stepped out, looking at the boulevard with indifference, then straightened his tie and brushed off his shoulder pads.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said to the driver.

  When the governor entered the café, it was almost empty. The clock behind the bar said five minutes to ten. The governor responded to the waiter’s greeting with a nod and sat down at a table at the far end. He calmly slipped off his gloves and pulled out his silver cigarette case, the one his father-in-law had given him on his first wedding anniversary. He lit a cigarette and gazed at the old café. The waiter came over with a tray and wiped the table with a damp cloth that smelled of bleach. The governor threw him a look of disdain which the waiter ignored.

  ‘What will the gentleman have?’

  ‘Two camomile teas.’

  ‘In the same cup?’

  ‘No. In separate cups.’

  ‘Is the gentleman expecting someone?’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Very good. Can I get you anything else?’

  ‘Honey.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The waiter left unhurriedly, while the governor made some contemptuous remark under his breath. A radio on the counter was murmuring a phone-in programme for lonely hearts, interspersed with publicity from Bella Aurora cosmetics, whose daily use guaranteed perpetual youth and sparkling beauty. Four tables away an elderly man seemed to have fallen asleep with a newspaper in his hands. The rest of the tables were empty. The two steaming cups arrived five minutes later. At a snail’s pace, the waiter placed them on the table, followed by a jar of honey.

  ‘Will that be all, sir?’

  Valls nodded. He didn’t move until the waiter had returned to the bar. Then he proceeded to pull a small bottle out of his pocket. He unscrewed the top, while casting a quick glance at the other customer who still seemed knocked out by his newspaper. The waiter stood behind the bar, with his back to the room, methodically drying glasses with a white cloth.

  Valls took the bottle and emptied its contents into the cup on the other side of the table. Then he added a generous dollop of honey and began to stir the camomile with the teaspoon until the honey had dissolved completely. On the radio someone was reading an anguished letter from a faithful listener from Betanzos whose husband, apparently annoyed because she’d burned his All Soul’s Day stew, had taken to going to the bar to listen to the football with his friends, was hardly ever home and hadn’t gone to mass since that day. She was recommended prayer, patience and to make use of her feminine wiles, but only within the strict limits of the Christian family. Valls checked the clock again. It was a quarter past ten.