Outlaws

by Javier Cercas

  ‘The end of Zarco’s problems and the end of your problems with Zarco.’

  ‘Sure: at least I would have carried out the job of getting him his freedom back. In any case, as well as a farce Zarco and María’s marriage turned out to be quite the media event. It was held at the Gerona courthouse. Tere was the maid of honour and I was the best man. During the ceremony we could barely exchange any words other than formalities and practicalities, and afterwards not even that: a crowd of photographers was waiting outside who bombarded Zarco with flashes as he walked down the building’s steps carrying María in his arms. There was no wedding reception or celebration of any kind and, before I knew it, Tere had left. Over the following days the image of the bride coming out of the courthouse in the bridegroom’s arms monopolized the front pages of the newspapers and magazines, and the television stations were lavish in their attention on the news, magazine and gossip programmes that followed the newlyweds on their honeymoon in a hotel on the Costa del Sol, paid for by an Andalusian builder who had often proclaimed his juvenile admiration for Zarco to the press and in his main office had a portrait of Zarco hanging next to one of Marlon Brando as the Godfather.

  ‘After the commotion of the wedding and honeymoon, everything went back to normal for Zarco. A few weeks later, towards the middle of October, Correctional Institutions issued him his third-stage parole. This entailed two important changes for Zarco: on the one hand he no longer had to sleep in a cell and moved to a building adjacent to the yard, where he and other inmates at the same stage of incarceration had their own individual apartments with a kitchen and bathroom; on the other hand, from that moment on Zarco lived his own life outside of prison, which he left every morning at eight and where he had to return each evening at nine. By then I had got him a contract to work at a carton factory in Vidreres, not far from the city, thanks to a businessman who years earlier I’d exculpated from a fraud conviction, so theoretically, Zarco spent most of his day in the carton factory, which he went to and from by bus for eight-hour work days: from nine in the morning until six in the evening, with an hour lunch break; from six until he had to go back inside at night, Zarco was free.

  ‘That was his life from then on. When he embarked on it we had to give up our conversations in the interview room, we stopped seeing each other and I tried to wash my hands of what he was doing or not doing. For a time I thought the story was over, or was coming to an end, and that I’d only find out what Zarco was up to again from the press and when the various stages of his parole expired and I had to intervene to settle the final routines. Or maybe through Tere. Because, although she and I were still not seeing each other and, to spare myself futile brush-offs, I’d even stopped phoning her, now Tere called me. She called me at the office, once or twice a week, to chat for a while. These conversations weren’t as cold and utilitarian as those that followed our peaceable split, when it was still me who called her at home, but they were very brief, fairly trivial, as far as I recall we never mentioned the night in La Creueta or the uncomfortable things Zarco said there, or even the limbo that Tere had left our relationship frozen in; but, perhaps for that reason, I always hung up the phone convinced that the wait was about to end happily. Why did Tere keep phoning me? Whatever her reasons, it was in those conversations that she sometimes mentioned Zarco, always in a superficial way and sort of in passing, always to make some comment or give me some bit of news that I never knew where she got, nor did I want to find out.

  ‘All this lasted a short time. I soon understood that the story was not over, nor was it on the verge of being over, and soon it was me who was giving Tere news of Zarco, and not vice versa. One evening, two or three months after he’d started his part-time free-man’s life, Zarco showed up unannounced at my office. It was seven or seven-thirty and he was coming from Vidreres; he looked good, he’d lost a bit of weight, was dressed like a person and not like a perpetual convict: corduroy trousers, red sweater and a leather jacket. His presence agitated the whole firm: it was the first time he’d been there and everybody dropped whatever they were working on to see him, say hello, congratulate and welcome him. He smiled and looked happy and joked non-stop with my partners and the secretaries and the rest of the staff until, after a few minutes, he suggested we go out for a drink. I agreed with pleasure. I took him to the Royal and, although the clientele recognized him and were watching us and whispering to each other, they left us alone to talk and drink at the bar for a while. He told me about his new life; we talked about his job, the people he worked with, and especially about his boss, whom he praised to the skies and about whom I told a couple of anecdotes. My impression was that he was at ease with the new state of things, much more at least than with the old one. Before nine I gave him a lift back to the prison.

  ‘Zarco’s appearance at my office turned into a habit over the following months. At least a couple of times a week he’d show up there at seven or seven-thirty and we’d go and finish off the work day with a drink. At first those visits cheered me up, I enjoyed Zarco’s company and conversation, I felt proud that people saw me with him at the bar at the Royal or walking along Jaume I or under the arcades of Sant Agustí: he was Zarco – hence the pride – but also – and hence even greater pride – he was a free and reformed man, and his reform and freedom were a triumph that was in part down to me. That was when, perhaps thanks to the optimism Zarco seemed to be radiating, the two of us began to share something resembling closeness; and that was when an event occurred that I’m going to tell you about on the condition that it not appear in the book.’

  ‘I repeat that you can read the manuscript before I submit it to the publisher and I’ll cut anything you don’t like.’

  ‘Yeah, I know: I just wanted to hear you say it again. Now listen to my story. It’s about Batista. Do you remember him?’

  ‘Sure: your high-school bully.’

  ‘Exactly. I’d lost track of most of my friends from Caterina Albert a long time ago, although once in a while I crossed paths with one of them in the street and I knew that they all still lived in the city or at the very least in the province, except for Canales, who was a forestry specialist and lived in a village in Ávila, and Matías, who’d been working in Brussels for many years, as a bureaucrat in the European Parliament. Batista was a case apart. His track had been easier to follow as he’d turned into a relatively popular guy, at least in Gerona, and his story was one of those stories of individual success that newspapers love and that seem to proliferate in times of limitless prosperity like that one. I think I already told you that Batista was from a rich family with deep roots in the city; I must have also told you that his father was for years my father’s boss, he’d been chairman of the county council: in fact, he was the last council chair of the Franco era. But, with the arrival of democracy, things began to go less well for the family, and a few years later Batista’s father died leaving his family ruined or what a family like that considered ruined. The thing is that Batista, who by then would have been in his twenties, took charge of a small pig farm that had belonged to one of his grandfathers, in Monells, transformed the small pig farm into a larger pig farm, the larger farm into a small sausage factory, the small factory into a large factory and finally ended up transforming himself into one of the main sausage manufacturers in Catalonia, as well as a model young entrepreneur for the Catalan nationalists in power, which transformed the ferocious Españolista of my adolescence into a ferocious Catalanista (and the Narciso of back then into Narcís). That’s what had become of Batista over those twenty or twenty-odd years. And one evening, while I was waiting for Zarco at the bar of the Royal – sometimes we met there – I saw a photo of him in a newspaper and, when Zarco arrived at my side, the first thing that occurred to me was to tell him, point blank: I bet you don’t know why I joined your gang, why I went to La Font each afternoon, do you?

  ‘Zarco laughed heartily and ordered a beer. What for?, he answered. To sniff Tere’s tail, what else? I laughed too. Apart f
rom that, I said. To give us a hand, he added. Because I tricked you. You tricked me?, I asked with curiosity. Sure, he answered happily. You thought we were going to do a job on the old man from Vilaró. And you thought if we didn’t it was to do you a favour and that I had to stop Guille and all that. They served his beer, he drank it down in one and burped. You were a dupe, Gafitas, he said. I ordered two more glasses of beer and replied: And you were a son of a bitch. You only just noticed?, Zarco laughed again. Anyway it was Tere’s idea. She said it would be better if you came with us of your own free will rather than against it. By the way, he added, have you seen her? Not lately, I said. How about you? Me neither, he said, and it sounded like the truth. And María?, I asked. Sure, he said, and it sounded like a lie.

  ‘Our beer arrived. Zarco took a sip and reminded me of the double question I’d asked him at the start: what I’d joined his gang for, why I’d gone to La Font every afternoon. So I picked up the newspaper and handed it to him, folded open to the page with Batista’s photo on it. To get away from this guy, I said, pointing at the photo. While Zarco looked at Batista’s face and took sips of his beer, I tried to summarize the story. Fuck, man, he interrupted me halfway through. This guy really is a son of a bitch. I went on with the story. Finally I told him that I sometimes thought that deep down I’d never forgiven Batista, that sometimes, at weak moments, when I saw Batista so smug in the newspapers or on television, the memory of what had happened humiliated me and I sometimes regretted never having taken revenge on him, and at moments like that I felt that, if I could have got rid of him by pressing a button, I would have done it without a doubt.

  ‘That evening we didn’t talk about anything else and I ended up pretty drunk, but I didn’t mention it again over the following days; for his part, Zarco seemed to forget Batista. Then, two weeks later, it happened. That day a very agitated Gubau came into my office, saying he’d heard on the radio that Batista had just been stabbed at the door of his house in Montjuïc, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of the city. Over the course of the morning more news of the incident came in – Batista had been admitted to the Trueta hospital, where he was fighting for his life, he’d been stabbed seven times, nobody had seen his attacker – and around noon we heard that my old classmate had died.

  ‘Hours later Zarco showed up at my office, ready to go for a couple of beers at the Royal. Remember the guy I told you about the other day?, I said as soon as I saw him. The bully of my school, I specified. Sure, he said. Somebody killed him this morning, I told him. Zarco looked at me and, seeing I wasn’t going to add anything, shrugged his shoulders and said: So what? What do you mean so what?, I said. They stabbed him seven times. Not exciting enough for you? I was going to go on but I didn’t, because I had the feeling that an almost imperceptible smile was prowling about Zarco’s lips. At that moment I remembered that he left the prison every morning just before the time Batista had been murdered, and, dismayed by a sudden suspicion, I went over to my office door, pulled it shut and turned to him. Hey, I asked, lowering my voice. You wouldn’t have had anything to do with this, would you? He didn’t seem surprised by the question, but his smile widened and he turned his head from left to right. You’re too much, Gafitas, he reproached me. Did you or did you not have anything to do with it?, I repeated. Zarco held my gaze, seemed to be thinking over his reply. And what if I did have something to do with it?, he asked defiantly. Are you going to start crying over this son of a bitch now? A son of a bitch is a son of a bitch, Gafitas. Didn’t you tell me you regretted not having got revenge on him? It was just an expression, I answered. It’s one thing to say something and quite another . . . I didn’t finish my sentence, I said: Batista was nobody, he hadn’t done anything. Ah, no?, he answered. He fucked you right up, and when you were just a kid who didn’t know how to defend himself. That’s not doing anything? They locked me up inside for much less. He, on the other hand, never got touched. Well then, now justice has been done. After a pause he continued: And if I took care of it, all the better. Who’s going to suspect me, who never even met him? And who’s going to suspect you? A clean job, man, he concluded, opening his arms. Just like pressing a button. True or false? I was stunned, trying to process what I’d heard. Zarco pointed at me with his index finger and, as if urging me to say something, added: I scratch your back and you scratch mine, eh, Gafitas? The phrase snapped me out of my paralysis, and in two strides I stood a handspan from him; in the quiet of my office I heard the soles of my shoes squeak against the wooden floor. Tell me the truth, Antonio, I said. Did you have anything to do with it or not? Zarco was again slow to answer; his blue eyes bored into mine. Until he suddenly blinked, smiled broadly and patted me on the cheek. Of course not, dickhead, he finally said.

  ‘That was the last time Zarco and I talked of Batista, or of his murder. A murder that, as happens with so many, was never solved: the police arrived very soon at the conclusion that it had been the work of a professional, perhaps a hitman from some Latin-American country, but they didn’t find any trace of the murderer; the police investigated Batista’s relatives, friends and business competitors in search of a motive with the same degree of success. Until the case was filed away in the archives.’

  ‘Now I understand why you don’t want this story told in the book. Readers might think Zarco killed Batista.’

  ‘Maybe he did kill him. Or had him killed. Sometimes I think he did it, and by killing him thought he was doing me a favour, that it was his way of repaying me for what I was doing for him. But other times I think he couldn’t have killed him: that he had no money to hire a hitman (although the truth is that someone like him might not need money for that) and that he couldn’t have committed the murder so cleanly and he wouldn’t have had enough time, that morning, to get from the prison to Montjuïc and surprise Batista on his way out of his house (although the truth is that perhaps he would have had enough time and that Zarco probably knew how to kill as professionally as any hitman). I don’t know. And, now that I think of it, maybe you should recount this story in your book, just as I’ve told you: after all what it’s about is readers getting to know the truth about Zarco. And this, including my doubts, also forms part of the truth.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid some readers might think you’re lying, or diluting or massaging the truth, and that it was you who induced Zarco to kill Batista, to get revenge without getting your hands dirty?’

  ‘Do you think I would have told you if I had? Besides, I didn’t want to get revenge on Batista, for me it was a forgotten story or almost forgotten, I’m not saying what I said to Zarco was entirely false, I’m only saying it was one of those things that get said sometimes when you have a few too many and nobody takes seriously, or a momentary and unimportant letting off steam, which I immediately regretted . . . Anyway, do what you think best, or what’s best for your book: if you think it advisable, tell it; if not, don’t. Later we’ll see.

  ‘But getting back to our story, because the evenings of cheerful friendship and beers with Zarco at the bar of the Royal soon came to an end. Practically from one day to the next the friendship and good cheer evaporated and Zarco’s head betrayed him again; or that’s the impression I had: that the persona had once again got the better of the person. Before, during my visits in the interview room at the prison, it was common for Zarco to complain about his lack of freedom, of the stupidity of the regulations or mistreatment from the guards; now, when he’d only been spending his days outside the prison for a few months, Zarco fell back into his unstoppable habit of complaining, and his fatal old blend of arrogance and seeing himself as a victim began to poison our conversations again: Zarco said that his work folding and unfolding cartons at the factory in Vidreres was slave labour, that his hours were slavery hours, that his salary was slaves’ wages and that he’d come out of prison to live the life of a slave as bad or worse than the one he’d been leading inside. Hearing this I began to think I’d been too optimistic in judging his state of mind, I went back to fear
ing his fear of liberty (a liberty that would soon be complete and no longer partial), I began to fight his despondency as best I could. It’s not true that you’re leading the same life you led in prison, I reasoned. You’re leading a much better life. And, of course it’s not a slave’s life: it’s the life most people lead. Look at the other inmates, look at the guys who work with you. And what do they matter to me, Gafitas?, answered Zarco. I don’t give a shit what people do: if they want to get fucked, let them fuck themselves; it’s up to them. What I give a shit about is not fucking myself up. You get that, right? And right now I’m just as fucked outside jail as in. Several times I told him I knew that the work he was doing wasn’t very satisfying, and I could get him another job. Oh yeah?, asked Zarco. Doing what? Whatever you want, I answered. Everybody wants to hire you. Don’t talk bullshit, Gafitas, he replied. What everybody wants is to be able to say they’ve hired Zarco and be able to show me off like a fairground monkey as propaganda for their business, just like my boss does. It’s not the same, is it? Besides, he concluded, I don’t know how to do anything at all, and by now I’m not going to learn, so all I can do is slave labour.