Outlaws

by Javier Cercas

  ‘The next day the General presented us with a long-barrelled 9mm Star pistol, two homemade sawn-off shotguns, a couple of magazines and a couple of boxes of ammunition. That same afternoon we spent several hours shooting at empty tin cans in a forest in Aiguaviva, and two days later we held up a grocer’s shop in Sant Feliu de Guíxols at gunpoint. The takings were scant, but the job was safe and comfortable, because the shopkeeper was so startled that he offered no resistance and didn’t even report the robbery to the police. I don’t know if our first armed robbery made us think that they’d all be very easy; if it did, the illusion didn’t last long at all.

  ‘Two days later we tried to rob a gas station on the way to Barcelona, near Sils. The plan was simple. It consisted of Zarco and Tere going into the station and pointing their guns at the guy behind the counter while Gordo and I waited outside, with the engine running, ready to drive out at full speed as soon as they came out with the money; the car, incidentally, was a Seat 124, which was the car we started to use systematically for our hold-ups because it was fast and powerful and easy to handle, and didn’t attract attention.

  ‘The plan was simple, but it went wrong. As soon as we stopped at the gas station, Zarco and Tere got out and started filling up the tank; meanwhile, Gordo and I stayed in the car, watching as two men waited to pay at the cash register inside the glass-walled station shop, and, when the second man finished paying and left, Gordo gave a signal to Zarco who gave a signal to Tere and they both pulled stockings over their heads at the same time, got out the guns – Zarco the Star and Tere a sawn-off shotgun – and walked into the glass-walled shop aiming them at the proprietor. I saw it all from inside the car, holding my breath beside Gordo, clutching the other shotgun and keeping one eye on the entrance to the gas station and the other on the glass-walled shop: through the huge windows I saw how the owner of the station raised his arms, how then, slowly, he lowered them and how, when he’d lowered them already, he made a strange quick movement. Then there was the thunder of a gunshot followed by a muffled swearword from Gordo, I looked at Gordo and then I looked back at the shop, but now I couldn’t see anything or I only saw shattered glass. A couple of seconds later Zarco and Tere rushed into the car and Gordo pulled away and skidded out through the entrance to take the highway in the direction of Blanes, while in the back seat Zarco explained, swearing his head off, that the money wasn’t where they’d expected it to be or where it should have been and that the owner of the gas station had tried to grab the pistol and in the struggle, while Tere shouted threats at the man, the gun had gone off and the shot shattered the window. Now we were speeding as fast as possible down the main highway, Zarco and Tere seemed calm in the back seat (or maybe it’s just that I was so nervous in the front seat) and, as we got further away from the gas station, Gordo began to ease off a bit on the accelerator, until after a little while, when we were almost going normal speed and the four of us were beginning to feel that the fright had passed, he said, looking in the rear-view mirror: We’re being followed.

  ‘It was true. We all turned around and the first thing we saw was one of the secret police’s Seat 1430s about a hundred and fifty metres behind us, and at that moment the driver and the officer beside him realized we’d recognized them and put the flashing light on the roof of the car and turned on the siren. What do we do?, asked Gordo. Speed up, said Zarco. Although on that stretch the highway was narrow and curved, Gordo floored it and in the blink of an eye we’d overtaken a pick-up truck and a couple of cars, but the police car easily replicated Gordo’s manoeuvre and was back on our tail. It was then that the real chase began. Gordo drove the 124 as fast as its engine would go, the cars in front of us and oncoming traffic started to get out of our way, the police car got close enough to bang into our bumper and twice pulled up next to us and sideswiped us trying to push us into the ditch. Before they could try for a third time, Gordo took the next exit, which turned out to be a dirt track full of potholes that we started jolting along into a little pine forest with the police not very far behind, and at some moment the first shot was fired, and then the second and the third, and before I knew it we were in the middle of a full-scale shootout, with bullets coming through the back windscreen and whistling between us and going out through the front windscreen while Zarco and Tere leaned out the side windows and began to shoot back at our pursuers and Gordo tried to dodge the shots by zigzagging through the pines and driving off the track and back onto it and I cringed in the passenger seat, petrified with fear, incapable of using my sawn-off shotgun, silently imploring that we might get out of that trap, something that actually happened right at the moment it appeared they were going to catch us, when the track ended all of a sudden and we went down an embankment with great difficulty and landed on a sort of semi-paved forest floor while the secret police’s 1430 tried to get there faster than us from behind and halfway down the embankment flipped over spectacularly to the euphoric delight of Zarco and Tere, and also Gordo, who was watching the tumbles our pursuers were taking in the rear-view mirror and took advantage to accelerate through a network of empty streets and get us out of that ghost town or half-built housing development we’d ended up in.

  ‘The frustrated robbery of the gas station in Sils had at least two consequences. The first was that, although nobody made any comments on my behaviour that afternoon (or I didn’t hear any), I felt ashamed of my cowardice and swore that it wouldn’t happen again; at least not in front of Tere. The second was that Zarco decided to change objectives, and the consequence of that consequence was that from then on we stopped robbing shops and gas stations and started robbing banks, because, according to Zarco – and it was all he said to justify his decision – robbing a bank was less dangerous than robbing a gas station or a shop, aside from being more lucrative. The comment didn’t strike me as nonsense, and much later I understood that back then, before the epidemic of bank robberies that later swept the country had started, maybe it wasn’t, or not entirely, but the truth is it still astonishes me that it never even occurred to me to somehow try to put the brakes on that hell-bent scheme. It’s also significant that no one asked any questions or had any qualms about this change in strategy; significant because it reveals again our absolute trust in Zarco: one day he simply tells us we’re going to rob a bank and a few days later, after planning the job and watching a branch of the Banca Catalana beside the port in Palamós for several mornings in a row, we robbed it.

  ‘We met mid-morning on the chosen day, had something to drink in La Font and on the way out of the district we stole a Seat 124 station wagon. On the way to Palamós Zarco went over the plan one last time and divided up the roles: he and Tere would go into the branch – Tere with one sawn-off shotgun and him with the other – I would wait for them on the street with the Star, guarding the entrance, and Gordo would wait for us at the wheel of the car, ready to take off. We listened to the instructions and assignments without complaint, but I spent the trip digesting a decision I’d been chewing over since Zarco had suggested the bank hold-up. So, just after we arrived in Palamós and parked in a little square, with the Banca Catalana branch on our left and the sea on our right, I broke the silence in the car as we watched people coming in and out of the bank. What I said was: I’ll go in. To my surprise, the phrase didn’t sound like an announcement or an offer but almost like an order, and maybe that’s why no one said anything, as if no one entirely believed what they’d just heard. I looked away from the entrance to the bank and looked for Zarco’s eyes in the rear-view mirror; finding them I explained, emboldened by my own words: You and I’ll go in. Tere stays outside. Zarco held my gaze. Don’t talk rubbish, Gafitas, said Tere. It’s not rubbish, said Gordo. Girls are easier to recognize than guys. And I have to drive. Gafitas should go in. Zarco and I were still looking at each other in the rear-view mirror while Tere and Gordo got involved in the beginning of an argument, until Zarco asked me: Are you sure? Tere and Gordo shut up. Yeah, I answered, and I said again, more for m
yself than for him: You and I’ll go in. I turned around and looked at him directly, as if trying to make it clear that I had no doubts, and Zarco nodded his assent so slightly that it almost looked like a nod of capitulation. OK, he said to everyone. Gafitas and I’ll go in. Then he added: You stay outside, Tere. Give the shotgun and nylons to Gafitas.

  ‘Tere gave me the stocking and the shotgun, I gave her the Star, we both looked at each other for a second and during that second I saw a mixture of pride and astonishment in Tere’s eyes and felt invulnerable. Then Zarco went over the plan again and, when there were only a few minutes left before two o’clock, which was closing time for banks, Gordo switched on the engine of the 124, drove around the little square and parked on the pavement on the other side, right in front of the entrance to the branch. Zarco, Tere and I all got out of the car at once. While Tere stationed herself by the door holding the pistol at her waist, under her T-shirt and handbag, Zarco and I pulled the nylons over our heads, walked into the bank and pointed the guns at the two customers and three employees – three men and two women – who were there at that moment. What happened next was easier than we’d expected. As soon as they heard us shout at them to lie down on the floor, the customers and employees obeyed, frightened to death. After that only Zarco spoke, with an unexpectedly slow and deliberate voice or at least unexpectedly slow and deliberate for me, who was still pointing at the three men and two women with the sawn-off shotgun, sweating and forcing myself not to tremble while he tried to calm everybody down saying in his strange unhurried voice that nobody wanted to hurt them and that nothing was going to happen to them if they did what he told them to. Then Zarco asked who the manager was, and when he identified himself ordered him to hand over the money they kept in the branch; the manager – an almost completely bald man in his sixties with a double chin – obeyed immediately, filled a plastic bag with several bundles of notes and handed it to Zarco without looking at him, as if fearing he’d recognize his face disfigured though it was by the nylon. Zarco didn’t even open the bag and, as we backed away towards the door, he simply thanked everyone for their co-operation and advised them not to move for ten minutes after we left.

  ‘Outside we took the stockings off our heads and got in the car. Gordo drove normally down the main street of Palamós, without jumping a single red light, and once we were out of town took a detour towards a tennis club, but a short time later Gordo stopped in a lot where there were several parked cars, we got out of the 124, took a Renault 12 and drove back out to the highway. As we drove away from Palamós, sure now that we weren’t being followed, Zarco counted the money; most of it was hundred- and five-hundred-peseta notes: the total was less than forty thousand. Zarco announced the sum, and the silence that followed betrayed his disappointment; Tere and Gordo also seemed disappointed. As for me, I cared much less about the miserable amount of the booty than about having made up for my cowardice during the car chase that followed the hold-up of the gas station in Sils, so I tried to cheer them up with my enthusiasm.

  ‘It was no use. Zarco and the others experienced the success of our first bank robbery as a failure (and that false failure blurred my bravery, although I was so proud of myself, and especially of the pride I saw in Tere’s eyes just before the hold-up, that it almost didn’t matter to me). Maybe this explains why we blew that money even faster than usual, as if we looked down on it even more than usual. Whatever the case, speed calls for more speed, and from that moment on our accelerated impatient life accelerated even more and we became more impatient than ever. While we were surviving on a base of routine jobs (mostly purse-snatchings, sometimes the odd house), the mirage of the perfect heist obsessed us, as if we all planned to give up that outlaw frenzy after we did it, which was not true. We planned several bank jobs, called at least two of them off at the last minute and in the end only two came off: one at a branch of the Banco Atlántico in Anglès, which yielded loot almost as paltry as the job in Palamós, and another at the Bordils branch of the Banco Popular.

  ‘I remember the heist in Bordils very well and one of the hold-ups we called off. The heist in Bordils I remember because it was the last one and because for a long time barely a day went by when I didn’t think of it; I remember the frustrated hold-up because, immediately after we called it off, Zarco and I had our longest conversation of the summer. Maybe I should say our only conversation. Or at least the only conversation we had on our own and the only time back then that he and I talked about Tere. In any case, it’s the only one I remember in detail.’

  ‘The other day you told me that your relationship with Tere didn’t change after sleeping with her on the beach at Montgó.’

  ‘And it’s true. I thought it would change (or I should say: I would have liked it to change), but it didn’t change. Of course we didn’t sleep together again. Nor did we talk more than before or become more involved with each other than before or closer. In fact, I’d almost say that, instead of improving, our relationship deteriorated: Tere even stopped flirting with me, like she used to do sporadically; and if I got up my courage to get down off the barstool and out onto the dance floor at Rufus and started dancing beside her as I’d done at the Marocco, the night of Montgó beach, her response was always cold, and I soon gave up and swore never to try again. I didn’t know what to attribute her disinterest to, and I never dared ask her or remind her of what had happened on Montgó beach (just as I’d never dared to remind her of what happened in the arcade washrooms). Of course, Guille’s death and Chino, Tío and Drácula’s arrest might have had some bearing; the appearance of the weapons might also have had some bearing and the fact that with them everything became rougher, more serious and more violent, as if that change had isolated us more and made us become more introverted and more aware of ourselves, or more grown-up. In any case, just as I never had the impression that Tere regretted what happened between us in the arcade washrooms, now I did have the impression that she regretted having slept with me on Montgó beach.’

  ‘And in spite of that it never occurred to you to think that Tere had slept with you to get even with Zarco, because that night he went off with another girl.’

  ‘No: I already told you the last time we talked. It didn’t occur to me then. But by then I no longer thought that Tere was Zarco’s girlfriend. Or I didn’t exactly think she was. I thought she was his girlfriend but not his girlfriend, or that she was his girlfriend but in an elastic and occasional way, or that she had been his girlfriend and wasn’t any more but might be again or he thought she might be again. I don’t know. I told you before that I’d never seen them behaving like a couple, never seen them kissing, for example, although I had seen Zarco, especially very late at night, at Rufus, trying to kiss or caress Tere and her pushing him away sometimes with irritation and sometimes with an amused or even affectionate gesture. Anyway. The truth is I didn’t really understand too well what the relationship was between them, and I wasn’t interested in understanding it either.’

  ‘Do you know if Zarco found out that summer about what happened in the arcade washrooms between you and Tere?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He didn’t find out or you don’t know if he found out?’

  ‘I don’t know if he found out.’

  ‘Do you know if he found out that you and Tere slept together on Montgó beach?’

  ‘Yeah. He did find out about that. I know because he told me himself, in the conversation I was just telling you about, a couple of weeks after the night on Montgó beach. That afternoon, like I said, we’d called off a heist. It was in Figueras or in some town on the outskirts of Figueras. We called it off at the last minute, when we were just about to go into the bank and a Civil Guard car drove past and we had to buzz off. The escape lasted for quite a while, because for quite a while we feared we’d been identified and that they were following us. Actually I think we only calmed down when our car was travelling under the mid-afternoon sun on a mountain road that snaked between hillsides divided by
low stone walls and covered by pines, olive trees, prickly pears and shrubs. After a while we came to a town of white houses crowded together in front of the sea that turned out to be Cadaqués. We wandered the streets drinking beer in the bars along the boardwalk, and when we came out of one of them I saw a brand-new Citroën Mehari and hot-wired it with Zarco and Gordo’s permission and then, with Zarco beside me and Gordo and Tere in the back seat, drove out of Cadaqués with no intention other than to enjoy the ride.

  ‘I drove along the edge of the sea northwards and passed a couple of pebble beaches and a fishing village. The road got emptier and narrower and the surface more irregular and full of potholes. The wind coming in off the sea threatened to blow the top off the Mehari, and at some point (by then it had been a while since we’d seen any other cars) the road ran out, and became almost a dirt track or a half-paved track. Where are we going?, Zarco asked. I don’t know, I said. Zarco was sunk down in the passenger seat, with his bare feet resting on the dashboard; I thought he was going to tell me to turn around but he didn’t say anything. In the back seat, Tere and Gordo hadn’t even heard Zarco’s question, and didn’t look impatient but rather exhausted or bewitched by the silence and desolation of that suddenly lunar landscape: a plateau of slate, grey crags and dry bushes in which only here and there, between bare gullies and rocks, did we get a glimpse of the sea. I carried on avoiding rough patches until at the end of the track I caught sight of a headland crowned by a lighthouse and beyond it an expanse of water almost as big and as blue as the sky.