Outlaws

by Javier Cercas

  ‘In the days that followed the gossip magazines and radio and television chat shows repeated María’s accusations, and that Monday morning I read in everybody’s eyes, in the office and at court, that yes, that was just the beginning. That afternoon my secretary put through an unexpected call. It was the producer of the programme María had appeared on two days before. He introduced himself, said his name – López de Sol, I remember he was called – and, without any further explanation, he offered me the possibility of defending myself the following Saturday against María’s accusations: it would simply entail allowing myself to be interviewed at the same time and on the same set by the same group of journalists that had interviewed her. I thanked him for the offer and turned it down. The producer told me not to be hasty, to think it over, that he’d phone back that evening. I answered that I’d already thought about it and he could save himself the trouble of calling back. Here the producer changed his tone, with an inflection at once friendly and paternalistic he mentioned a sum of money, not particularly high, and then explained María’s appearance on his programme the previous Saturday had been a hit, that they planned to continue with the story next Saturday and that, if I didn’t agree to be interviewed, they would most likely interview María again. Then I flew off the handle: shouting, furious, I told him he should do what he thought best, but that, if María continued talking about me on television the way she had the time before, I’d be bringing two lawsuits to court, one for slander and another for defamation of character, one against María and the other against the programme. My threat did not upset the producer; I heard him click his tongue, heard him sigh; before hanging up on him I heard him say: You haven’t understood anything, Counsellor.

  ‘That Saturday night María was on the show again. I decided not to watch it, and I didn’t see it, but on Sunday I learned that her second appearance had been even more brutal than the first, so for several days I considered the possibility of carrying out the threat I’d made over the phone and filing suits against María and the programme. Cortés and Gubau talked me out of it; their arguments were irrefutable: I knew it wasn’t easy to win such a lawsuit, but my partners made me see that, even supposing we did win and María was sentenced to withdrawing her insults and accusations and the programme obliged to broadcast a retraction, the person most harmed would still be me, because the trial would destroy my reputation, and the main beneficiaries would be them, because the trial would only increase María’s fame and the programme’s audience. So I chose to keep quiet, to try to stay out of it, to go on as if nothing were going on. Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe I should have filed a suit. Who knows. The thing is that over the following weeks the sensation of failure and shame multiplied and began to devour me like a cancer.’

  ‘Didn’t you try to talk to Tere? Didn’t you try to get in contact with her?’

  ‘I tried, but I couldn’t. I phoned her, but she didn’t answer. I went to her house, but she wasn’t in. Someone told me she wasn’t living in Vilarroja any more. I don’t think finding her would have done any good, anyway. Of course, it didn’t even occur to me to try to find out which prison Zarco had been sent to, although I thought of him far too often. And do you know what I remembered most of all? The night in La Creueta, of the binge he went on of telling me I was making a fool of myself and calling me dickhead and wanker. Because that was the honest truth, that’s how I felt then: like a dickhead and a wanker who’d made the most ridiculous fool of himself.

  ‘During the following months I again tried to force myself to forget about Tere. Also to forget about Zarco. María, however, was much harder to even try to forget, because as a result of her two appearances on the Saturday-night TV programme she blasted off for stardom and began to show up in magazines, on the radio and television much more often than she had up till then, taking Zarco’s place to a certain extent. Not that Zarco was suddenly obliterated from people’s memories, but that, thanks to María, he seemed at times to turn into a different character, hazy and secondary, into the minor bad guy of a tragedy or a melodrama no longer his own: up till then María had just been Zarco’s wife, while he was the real protagonist of the story; from then on María became the protagonist and Zarco became merely the beast who had made her a victim par excellence. As far as everything else went, that was a bad time for me. I’d just turned forty, but I felt washed up, and that feeling sunk me into a foul pit of self-pity: I saw myself wallowing about in absolute failure, in absolute drought and desiccation, in absolute futility; my old feeling of living a borrowed anodyne life returned, stronger than ever, my impression of having taken a wrong turn and of being trapped in a misunderstanding. I lost interest in my work, lost my capacity for joy, I wore out physically in no time. Some mornings I woke up crying; some nights I cried myself to sleep; some days I stayed in bed, unable to get up and go to my office. Just then I made what I thought was a great discovery; I thought I discovered a truth that I’d always had in view and hadn’t wanted to see, a truth that changed everything except the sensation of having been a dickhead and a wanker and made the most ridiculous fool of myself, which became even sharper.

  ‘The discovery happened in a trivial way, one morning when I was talking to a bunch of colleagues in the courthouse corridor and someone mentioned Higinio Redondo, my father’s friend, I don’t know if you remember . . .’

  ‘The friend who lent you his house in Colera after the bank robbery in Bordils.’

  ‘That’s right: my mentor, the lawyer I began my career with. At a certain moment someone brought up his name while we were talking. I don’t know who it was or what they said, perhaps they were remembering one of Redondo’s anecdotes or jokes, something like that, which wasn’t unusual either, as I told you before Redondo was a real character, people at the courthouse still remember him. The thing is that Redondo’s name acted as a trigger: I suddenly stopped listening and mentally left the small group and the courthouse; suddenly, like I say, I believed I saw the truth, as if it had always been right in front of my nose, barely hidden by a semi-transparent veil, and the unexpected mention of Redondo had revealed it. I don’t remember what happened afterwards, or how the conversation ended. The only thing I remember is that for several days I walked around stunned by the humiliating certainty that my story was actually a mediocre copy of Redondo’s story, a version of a story as old and ridiculous as the world: I already told you that Redondo had fallen in love like a schoolboy with the wife of a penniless client who used him to get her husband out of prison and that, as soon as she got what she wanted, she left him.’

  ‘And you believed your story with Tere was similar?’

  ‘It’s not that I believed it: it’s that it struck me as obvious. And not that it was similar: it was even worse. More ridiculous. More humiliating. I suddenly felt that everything fell into place: Tere was Zarco’s girlfriend when I met her, in the Vilaró arcade, she still was while Zarco’s myth grew up in the prisons and she probably still was now, when he himself had destroyed or degraded his own myth and now knew for sure that he would never live in freedom again. That didn’t mean Tere hadn’t loved me, or that she hadn’t been in love with me when we used to see each other at my place to make love and listen to old CDs, or even that she hadn’t been during the summer of ’78, like Zarco and she herself claimed. Why wouldn’t she have been? Who can say that in her own way Redondo’s lover wasn’t in love with him? Women are like that: they turn their interests into feelings; they always have and they always will, at least as long as they’re weaker than us. So no, that didn’t mean that Tere hadn’t loved me: it just meant that she’d loved me in an occasional and conditional way, while she loved Zarco in a permanent and unconditional way. It meant that probably everything or almost everything Tere had done with me she’d done for Zarco: in the washrooms of the Vilaró arcade she’d seduced me because Zarco needed to recruit me, and that same summer, as you suspected, she’d seduced me again on Montgó beach to get even with Zarco, who was sleeping with anot
her girl that night; and at my place on La Barca she’d seduced me again, twenty years later, because she wanted to make sure I’d work conscientiously to get Zarco out of prison and, when Zarco started to get out on release, brushed me off so I wouldn’t bother them, but she used her wiles to keep hold of me, although at a distance, so I wouldn’t abandon them before Zarco was freed and she could run away with him . . . It all fell into place. And worst of all I felt that I’d always known the truth and at the same time had never wanted to know it, that it was such an obvious truth that neither Tere nor Zarco had bothered much about hiding it from me, and that, precisely for that reason, I’d been able to ignore it or pretend I didn’t know. I understood Tere’s attitude that night in La Creueta, trying to get Zarco to shut up when, drunk and drugged up, he let off steam and almost let out the brutal truth and called me a dickhead and a wanker and said that the two of them were using me and that I didn’t understand anything. I understood the irony of two professional sharks like Redondo and I falling for such an old and well-known trick. I understood Redondo’s horror when he discovered the snare he’d fallen into and immediately started planning to imitate him by leaving the practice in the hands of Cortés and Gubau and abandoning the city for a good long while. And I understood that the great misunderstanding of my life was that there hadn’t been any misunderstanding.’

  ‘So you did as Redondo had done? You dropped everything and left?’

  ‘No, I didn’t leave. I stayed, not because I wanted to but because I didn’t even have the energy to leave. What happened was I went to a doctor who diagnosed depression, and for more than a year I underwent psychiatric treatment and a massive diet of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. As time passed, I began to recover gradually: I continued in treatment and, although I didn’t give up the psychotropics, I reduced the doses and managed to return to work and more or less resume my old life. It’s true that during that period I felt like some sort of survivor, but it’s also true that I began to think with increasing frequency that the worst was over and that, since I’d already made all or almost all the mistakes a person can make, what I did from there on in I could almost only get right. It was naive: I’d simply forgotten that, no matter how bad things got, they could always get much worse.’

  ‘Does that mean you heard from Zarco?’

  ‘Bingo. One day in May or June of 2004, almost three years after seeing him for the last time at the gates of the Gerona prison, I received a letter from him. It was the first sign of life I’d had from him since the press reported his final arrest. The letter came from the Quatre Camins prison and was written by hand, with careful rounded handwriting and in the formal tone of a request; I read it twice: the first time I thought Zarco was using that handwriting and that tone to impose a professional distance between us (or perhaps to tell me without saying so that he was annoyed with me for all the time I’d wanted nothing to do with him); the second time I guessed that he used them because they were the only ones he knew. Zarco began with an overly formal salutation, and then immediately asked me to be his lawyer again; then he gave the reasons for his request: he stated that days earlier, in the prison yard, a skinhead had given him a beating that had left him almost unconscious and that, while they were transporting him to the emergency room of Terrassa General Hospital, two members of the Catalan police force had stopped the vehicle, made him get out and brutalized him. Now he was back at the prison, isolated from the rest of the inmates in a hospital unit, and he wanted me to denounce the two beatings; as well as taking charge of this case, he also wanted me to defend him against a charge of insubordination, and most of all he wanted me to start proceedings to get him readmitted to Gerona Prison and do whatever necessary to get them to accept him. At the end of his letter, Zarco managed to wrench a pitiful note out of his orthopaedic handwriting and inform me that he was ill, begging me to help him through this rough patch and asking me to get in touch with Tere so she could bring me up to date and fill me in on the details.

  ‘I don’t know if I finished rereading Zarco’s letter more furious than incredulous or more incredulous than furious. It was like a message from an alien. I thought it was incredible and infuriating that, after having cost me two years of work and having betrayed my trust and that of all those who had supported the campaign for his liberty, he didn’t offer the slightest excuse or show the slightest sign of remorse. I thought it was incredible and infuriating that he showed no sign of feeling guilty, or even of remembering his own outrages, and instead was still trying to present himself as a victim. Most of all I thought it was incredible and infuriating that, after having deceived me and making Tere deceive me, having treated me like a dickhead and a wanker and having forced me to make a fool of myself, he would still come to me using the same old bait and believing I would bite for a third time (although I couldn’t help but notice that the letter didn’t contain Tere’s address or phone number, so I could get in touch with her). All this meant that I didn’t feel the slightest pity for him or the slightest cordial impulse towards him or his situation; just the reverse: I knew that ninety-five per cent of my feelings of absolute futility and drought and desiccation and failure that had dragged me into depression should be attributed to Tere’s deceit and her having left me, but at that moment I realized that the remaining five per cent should be attributed to my absurd attempt to take responsibility for the actions of someone who didn’t take responsibility for his own actions and to save someone who deep down didn’t want to save himself; and I also realized that the best thing I could do would be to stay away from him. From him and from Tere. The result of this reflection was that I didn’t even answer Zarco’s letter. And the result of this result was that I suddenly felt buoyant and independent, as if someone had just taken a lead collar I didn’t know I was wearing off my neck.

  ‘That happened on a Monday. The following days were euphoric. I started showing up for work with the same joy as in the early years, I flirted with a young attorney at the courthouse and a couple of times went to the Royal for a few beers with Cortés and Gubau after work. This state of light-heartedness vanished suddenly on the Thursday morning, when Tere showed up unannounced at the office. She’d barely changed in those three years: she was dressed in her eternal teenage style – jeans, white shirt and handbag strap slung across her chest – and her hair was still damp and uncombed; she seemed very happy to see me. I, however, could not and did not want to hide my annoyance; without even saying hello I asked: What are you here for? Instead of replying, Tere gave me a fleeting kiss on the cheek and, before I could invite her in (or not), stole into my office. She sat down on the sofa. I followed her, closed the door and stood across from her. Zarco’s written to you, hasn’t he?, she said straight off the bat. I answered her question with another question: Did he tell you that? No, she answered. He gave me the letter and I left it in your mailbox. At that moment I understood why Zarco’s letter didn’t have Tere’s address or phone number: it had been written for her to hand to me in person. And why didn’t you come up and give it to me?, I asked. I didn’t want to overwhelm you, she answered. I thought you should have a few days to think it over. I nodded and said: No need. There’s nothing to think about. I’m pleased to hear it, she said. Don’t be pleased, I said. I don’t plan on falling into the trap again. What trap?, she asked. You know what trap, I answered; then I added a half truth: Being his lawyer. It’s not a trap, she said. And I don’t understand why you don’t want to help him. The question isn’t why I don’t want to help him, I argued. The question is why should I help him. Because if you and I don’t nobody will, she answered. He’s completely alone. Well, he’s earned it, I replied. When we tried to help him it did no good at all; or rather: all it did was fuck us all up and make us waste our time and money. As far as I know, the only one who got fucked over was him, replied Tere. Oh, yeah?, I said. I was about to reproach her for leaving me, I was about to tell her about my depression; I spoke of María. What’s wrong?, I asked. Don�
�t you watch TV, don’t you see any magazines, don’t you go outside? Have you not heard about the mountains of shit María has piled on top of us? That’s water under the bridge, replied Tere. It wasn’t true, but almost; although over the last year María hadn’t disappeared from the media, her star was fading: she still showed up on the odd chat show and sometimes appeared in the gossip magazines, but she was no longer a relevant figure in the media circus, her story and her celebrity were wearing out and, in spite of her efforts, she seemed incapable of reviving them. Tere continued: Besides, it was all lies. Not all of it, I corrected her. Almost all, she conceded. And nobody pays her any attention any more. They didn’t before either. Don’t you realize it’s all a comedy and everybody knows it’s a comedy?

  ‘She fell silent. I did the same. I was upset and didn’t want to argue with Tere: I just wanted to get the matter out of the way swiftly, without giving her time to use any wiles to make me vulnerable again and make me accept her suggestion. I sat in one of the armchairs, beside her, still on the sofa, watching me expectantly and almost still, except for her left leg moving with its unstoppable piston rhythm. Look, Tere, I began. I’m going to tell you the truth. I’m fed up with this story. I’m fed up with Zarco and with you. With both of you. You tricked me when I was a kid and you’re deceiving me now. You think I don’t know? You think I’m an idiot? Zarco was right: I have made a ridiculous fool of myself and been a dickhead and a wanker and let myself be used. And I’ve suffered a lot. I loved you, you know? And I suffered like an animal when you left me. I don’t want to suffer any more. It’s over. Understand? It’s over. I don’t want to have anything more to do with you. Not with you and not with him. Don’t ask me to defend him again because I’m not going to. No way. I don’t want to know anything more about Zarco. And, if you had any sense, you’d do the same. He’s made you make a fool of yourself too. He uses you too whenever he feels like it. But have you really not figured out what a fucking son of a bitch he is, as well as a pathological media whore? Tere had been stroking the mole beside her nose, her head had slumped between her shoulders and her eyes fixed on the parquet and her gaze turned inwards. Meanwhile I went on cursing her, more and more upset, her and Zarco; I swore at them until I realized Tere was saying or murmuring something. Then I shut up. Tere repeated: He’s my brother. An absolute silence filled the room. I’d heard perfectly, but I asked: What did you say? Tere looked up at me: her green eyes were empty, inexpressive; three very fine lines had just appeared on her forehead. That he’s my brother, she repeated. His father was my father. We don’t have the same mother, but his father is my father. She looked at me, touched the mole beside her nose and shrugged in a gesture that seemed like an apology, but she didn’t say anything else.