Outlaws

by Javier Cercas

  ‘Sorry. You’re right. Let’s talk about something else. You mentioned Guille’s death and Chino, Tío and Drácula’s arrest. What happened? How did Guille die? How did the other three get arrested? How did it affect the gang?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. Of course what happened in the arcade has to do with your book, at least in my case, everything to do with Tere has to do with Zarco and vice versa; so if you don’t understand my relationship with Tere you won’t understand my relationship with Zarco, which is what this is about. Did I tell you I joined Zarco’s gang for Tere?’

  ‘Yes, but you also said that she probably wasn’t the only reason.’

  ‘I’m not saying she was the only reason; I do say she was decisive. How would I have dared to get into that gang of quinquis and do what I did if it wasn’t the only way to get close to Tere? She was what I most needed of what Zarco’s gang had. Love made me brave. I’d fallen in love before, but not like I fell in love with Tere. At first it even passed through my head that Tere could be my girlfriend, the first girl I’d go out with; after my first few days in the gang I ruled that out, of course, and not because it was impossible in theory – after all, whether or not she was Zarco’s girl, Tere slept with whoever she wanted and even flirted with me once in a while or I had the impression that she was flirting with me – but because she seemed too much for me: too independent, too good-looking, too much of a tease, too grown-up, too dangerous; in reality, I don’t know what I aspired to with her: I probably just hoped that what happened in the washrooms of the Vilaró arcade would happen again, and that she’d sleep with me every once in a while.’

  ‘Yeah, you told me that too.’

  ‘The thing is Tere turned into an obsession. I’d been masturbating since I was thirteen or fourteen, but that summer I must have broken the world wanking record; and up till then I’d masturbated over photos from The Book of Woman, illustrations in comics, movie actresses, heroines of novels and girls in nude magazines or garage mechanics’ calendars, from then on Tere was the absolute protagonist of my imaginary harem. So much so that I often felt that Tere wasn’t one character but two: the real character I met every afternoon at La Font and the fictional character with whom I went to bed morning, noon and night in my fantasies. If I’m honest, I sometimes had my doubts about which one of the two had shared the washrooms of the Vilaró arcade with me.

  ‘Until one night in late July it seemed like the real person and the fictional character finally merged into one, and that meant that everything was going to change between us. It’s one of the nights of that summer that I remember best, maybe because over the years since I’ve gone over and over what happened. If you like I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a long story; we’ll have to leave Guille’s death and Chino, Tío and Drácula’s arrest for another time.’

  ‘Not to worry.’

  ‘All right. As I was saying, it was one of the last nights in July, not long after the scare over the Tiburón in La Bisbal and not long before Guille’s death and the arrest of the others. It was a Friday or Saturday night, in Montgó, a beach in L’Escala. We’d been in the district till dusk, and then Tere, Zarco, Gordo, Lina and I stole a Volkswagen and drove off towards the coast.

  ‘As far as I recall we didn’t have any plan and we weren’t going to any particular place, but when we got to Calella de Palafrugell we felt hungry and thirsty and decided to stop. It was a pitch-black night. We parked on a patch of ground at the edge of the village, took a second round of uppers, went down to the beach, looked unsuccessfully for a table on one of the patios and finally went into a bar, maybe Ca la Raquel. There we ordered beers and sandwiches at the bar and Zarco started talking about his family, something I’d never heard him do before. He talked about his Uncle Joaquín, one of his mother’s brothers with whom, as he later told in his memoir, he’d spent two years of his childhood travelling here and there in a DKW, helping him earn a living through robberies and shady deals; he also talked, with admiration, of his three older brothers, who were in their twenties back then and in prison. He might have talked about something else, though I don’t remember now. The thing is that at some point I went to the washroom and, when I came back, two girls had joined the group. One, the one who was beside Zarco, was called Elena and she was petite, dark-haired and pretty, like a doll; the second was called Piti and she was taller and had reddish hair and pale freckly skin. I grabbed my beer and started listening to Zarco, who was telling Elena that we lived in Palamós and were students, although, he added in the same unconcerned tone, we spent the summer doing jobs; the lie didn’t surprise me, because it was inoffensive, but the truth did, because it was indiscreet, and, since Zarco didn’t usually commit indiscretions, I thought he’d taken such a fancy to that doll that he was willing to do anything to seduce her. Jobs?, asked Elena. We nick cars, break into houses, all sorts, Zarco explained. Elena looked at me, looked back at Zarco and laughed; I tried to laugh, but I couldn’t. That’s a lie, said Elena. And how do you know?, asked Zarco without laughing. Simple, answered Elena. Because people who do jobs like that never say they do. Shit, said Zarco, pretending to be frustrated, and added, pretending to be guileless: Tell me something else: Do people who have dosh go around saying they do? Elena seemed to consider the question, amused. If they have a little, they do, but if they have a lot, then no, she said at last. Then we can’t say we do, said Zarco, looking at me with feigned annoyance. Why do you want to say you’ve got dosh?, Elena asked, prolonging the flirtation. To impress us? Of course not, said Zarco. Just to buy you another round. Elena laughed again. We accept, she said. Zarco immediately ordered another round of beers and, while we were drinking them, Elena told us that she and her friend lived in Alicante, that they’d been travelling around Catalonia for two weeks, that they were staying in a cheap hotel in L’Escala and that they’d hitchhiked that afternoon from L’Escala to Calella. When she finished talking, the girl leaned over to Zarco and whispered something in his ear. Zarco nodded. Sure, he said. He paid and we left.

  We wandered the streets a bit looking for a quiet place to roll some joints, until we got to a plaza in front of the village church. We sat there for quite a while smoking and talking around a bench and, when we started to think about moving on, Elena mentioned a discotheque where they’d gone dancing a couple of times; Piti said the disco was called Marocco and it was near L’Escala, and Zarco suggested we go check it out. Have you guys got a car?, Piti asked. Of course, answered Zarco. Great, said Elena. We only have one car, Gordo pointed out. And there’s seven of us. That doesn’t matter, said Elena. We’ll all fit. Don’t pay any fucking attention to Gordo, Zarco interrupted. He’s always joking around: no respect for anyone. And he added: we actually came in two cars. Before anyone could deny it, Zarco asked Elena and Piti if they both knew the way to the Marocco; they said they did and then Zarco jumped off the back of the bench where he was sitting, landed on the flagstones and said: Cool. Gordo, I’ll take Elena, Tere and Gafitas in the Volkswagen; you bring Lina and Piti in your dad’s car. What car?, asked Lina. But Zarco had already started walking out of the plaza and we all followed him and nobody paid any attention to Lina, not even Gordo, who just fixed his lacquered hair a little with a resigned look on his face, draped his arm over his girlfriend’s shoulder while telling her to shut up and cursing Zarco’s mother.

  ‘So that’s how we ended up that night in Montgó, which was the cove where the Marocco was hidden. From Calella it couldn’t have taken us more than half an hour to get there, and that was in spite of Elena getting us lost and, after crossing L’Escala, spending a while driving in circles around a housing development. But eventually we saw a sign advertising the place, went down a dirt road and managed to park in a clearing in a pine forest crammed full of cars and illuminated by the lights of the discotheque, shining in the distance, way down by the beach.

  ‘Marocco turned out to be a disco for foreign
tourists and hippy stragglers, but the music playing inside was no different from what they played at Rufus, probably because that summer all the discos played more or less the same music or because it seemed more or less the same to me: rock and pop hits alternating with disco songs (and once in a while a rumba, quite frequently at Rufus). Before going inside the discotheque we’d smoked one last joint, and Zarco, Tere and I popped our third upper; as soon as we went in I lost sight of Zarco and Elena, not Tere, who went straight onto the dance floor. I stood at the bar and watched her while I drank a beer, at times with the smug sensation (which sometimes struck me at Rufus as well) that she was dancing for me or at least that she knew I was watching her, always with the feeling that the movements of her body adapted to the music like a glove to a hand. After a while Gordo, Lina and Piti arrived, said hi and ordered drinks. Gordo and Lina went to sit on a sofa or got lost on the dance floor, and Piti asked me where Elena was; I answered that I didn’t know though I thought she was with Zarco. Then Piti asked me if we’d been there long and I said yes and then she told me, as if I didn’t know or as if apologizing, that it had taken them longer than expected to get there; I interrupted her to say that we’d got lost too, but Piti answered that they hadn’t taken so long because they got lost but because Gordo had forgotten where he’d parked the car, and she and Lina had had to wait for him until he found it and came back to pick them up. I clicked my tongue and said, shaking my head back and forth: Not again. The same thing every time. He always forgets where he parks his car?, she asked. No, I answered. Only when he drives his dad’s car. Really?, she asked. Really, I answered; I added: He should go see a psychoanalyst. We looked at each other and then burst out laughing. Then we carried on talking, until Tere interrupted us. Piti asked her where Elena was. Tere said she didn’t know and then the two of them started talking. I didn’t hear what they were talking about, but a short time later Piti left the bar as fast as she could. What happened to her?, I asked. Nothing, answered Tere. It looked like she was crying, I insisted. You’re seeing things, Gafitas, Tere teased. Then she asked: So, are you dancing or what?

  ‘I was gobsmacked: Tere had never asked me to dance, and I’d never even considered the possibility that I might dance with her, in part (I think I already told you) out of embarrassment, and in part because I didn’t know how to dance. But that night I discovered that to dance, or at least to dance to the music they played at the discos, you didn’t have to know how to dance, you just needed to want to move around a bit. It was Tere who revealed this to me. But it was when we finished dancing that what I wanted to tell you about happened. When the music stopped and they turned on the lights in the discotheque, Tere and I realized that our friends had disappeared. We spent a while looking for them, first inside the place and then on the way out, on a patio full of night owls prowling around a closed refreshment stand, not yet ready to consider the night over. We didn’t find any of them, and I told Tere that they’d probably all left and we’d better go too. Tere didn’t answer. We walked to the parking lot, swept at this hour by the lights of departing cars. We didn’t know what car Gordo had nicked in Calella, but our Volkswagen was still parked between two pine trees. At least Zarco hasn’t gone, said Tere when she saw it. How do you know?, I replied, thinking she was probably right. He might have stolen another car. I had absolutely no desire to see Zarco, I wanted to go on spending the night alone with Tere, so I concluded: It’s almost five; come on, let’s go. Tere stood still and took a while to answer. What’s your hurry, Gafitas?, she finally said. Then she took me by the arm and pulled me around and forced me to walk back to the Marocco as she said, Come on. Let’s see if we can find them.

  ‘We walked past the patio of the discotheque, almost empty now, towards the darkness and started walking along the beach. In the sky a bright full moon was shining and, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness and as we approached the water, it revealed a cove bordered by two hills and strewn with lumps on the sand like shadowy shells. They’re here, on the beach, whispered Tere when we got to the water’s edge, sitting down on the sand; she added: We’ll smoke a reefer. How do you know?, I asked. What a question, she said. Because I’m going to roll one. How do you know they’re here?, I clarified. Tere licked the paper of a cigarette, peeled it, emptied the tobacco into the rolling paper she had spread out in her hand and answered: Because I do. She finished rolling the joint, lit it, took five or six tokes and passed it to me.

  ‘I sat down next to her and smoked listening to the sound of the waves breaking against the shore and watching the moonlight bouncing off the surface of the sea and diffusing a silver brilliance over the whole cove. Tere didn’t say anything and neither did I, as if we were both exhausted or lost in thought or hypnotized by the spectacle of the beach at night. After a while Tere stubbed out the joint and buried it in the sand; she stood up and said: I’m going for a swim. Before I could say anything she stripped off and walked into the sea that looked like an enormous and silent black sheet. She swam away from the shore and, at some point, stopped and started calling me with muffled little shouts that echoed around the whole cove. I took off my clothes and ran into the water.

  ‘It was almost warm. I swam out to sea a bit, away from Tere and, when I stopped, I turned around and realized I was in the middle of an immense darkness and that the few little dots of light on the beach were very far away and Tere had disappeared. I swam back towards shore, with strong strokes, but when I stood up I still couldn’t see Tere. With the water up to my waist I looked for her without finding her, and during a moment of panic I imagined she’d left and taken my clothes with her, but then I saw her silhouette emerging from the water to my left, twenty or thirty metres away. I walked out of the water too, feeling that the swim had dissipated the inebriation of the alcohol and hash and calmed the tachycardia of the uppers, and, when I got to Tere, she had already covered up with her T-shirt and was barefoot and sitting on her jeans. Standing up, I put my underwear and jeans on as fast as I could, and still hadn’t finished buttoning my shirt when Tere asked: Hey, Gafitas, me and you haven’t had a shag yet, have we? I got my buttons all mixed up. No, I managed to say. I don’t think so. Tere stood up, took my hands away from my shirt and started unbuttoning the ones I’d got mixed up; I thought she was unbuttoning them to button them up properly, but while she was still unbuttoning them she kissed me, and while she was kissing me I guessed that she was naked from the waist down. Again she asked: Well it’s about time we did, don’t you think?

  ‘You can imagine the rest. And, as I told you before, as a result of what happened that night I believed everything was going to change between Tere and me and from then on Tere would stop being an imaginary character in my imaginary harem to become only a real character, or that the real character and the imaginary one would meld together into a single one; and I also thought that, although from then on she might not become my girlfriend, at least we’d sleep together every once in a while. It wasn’t like that. Maybe the fact that this episode happened very close to the time of Guille’s death and Chino, Tío and Drácula’s arrest might have contributed to it not turning out like that, but the truth is it wasn’t like that. And everything got complicated. But that, if you don’t mind, I’ll tell you next time. Now I’m running late: I have to get going.’

  ‘Of course. But I wouldn’t like to stop without you telling me what happened to your friends that night.’

  ‘Ah, nothing important. The next day I found out at La Font. Gordo and Lina left the Marocco early, they took Piti back to the hotel in L’Escala and went home. Zarco slept with Elena in some hotel in L’Escala, and in the morning went back to Gerona too, just like Tere and I did. We never heard any more from Piti and Elena.’

  ‘So it wasn’t true that night that Zarco and Elena were on the beach, as Tere had said.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you think Tere knew or suspected and lied to you because she wanted to seduce you?’

  ‘It’s possible.’
>
  ‘I’ll put the question another way: did you never think that Tere had slept with you that night out of spite, to get even with Zarco, because he’d left with Elena?’

  ‘Yeah. But I didn’t think that then. I thought it later. And only briefly.’

  ‘And later? I mean: and now?’

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘Now what do you think about that?’

  ‘That it’s not true.’

  Chapter 6

  ‘Tell me about Gafitas.’

  ‘What do you want me to tell you? A policeman’s life is full of strange stories, but the story of Gafitas is among the strangest that’s happened to me since I started this job. At first perhaps you might not think so: after all it’s not that rare to see a case of a middle-class kid or upper middle-class or even an upper-class kid get involved with a gang of quinquis and suchlike. At least it wasn’t so rare back then; in fact, a while later I knew of a similar case, although that was in the tough years when kids were going astray on drugs, while in Gafitas’s day drugs were only just starting to arrive and it’s harder to find an explanation for what happened. I at least don’t have one, and this is something I’ve never talked to Cañas about since; I’ve talked to Cañas about other things, but never this: for us it’s as if it never happened. How do you like that? But anyway, if he’s telling you the story of his relationship with Zarco, I imagine you’ll already have an explanation of why he ended up in his gang.’

  ‘Cañas says it was by chance.’

  ‘That’s not an explanation: everything happens by chance.’

  ‘What I mean is that Cañas says he met Zarco by chance; the reasons he joined his gang are something else. According to him, the main reason is that he fell in love with Zarco’s girl.’

  ‘You mean Tere?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Zarco had a lot of girls; and Tere a lot of guys.’