Just then the footsteps stopped. A deathly silence followed, and for a few moments all Fermín could hear was the sound of his own heartbeat. Then, like an almost imperceptible sigh, came the minuscule tapping of something tiny and light walking over the lid of the box, just above his face. He recognized the faint odor, somewhere between sweet and sour. His traveling companion, the little mouse, was sniffing at the chinks in the boards, probably detecting the smell of his friend. Fermín was about to hiss lightly and chase it away when a deafening roar filled the hold.
The high-caliber bullet blew the rodent to bits instantly and bored a clean entry hole on the lid of the box about five centimeters from Fermín’s face. Blood dripped through the cracks and fell on his lips. Fermín then felt a tickling sensation on his right leg. As he lowered his eyes to look, he realized that the missile’s path had almost brushed his leg, burning a tear in his trousers before drilling a second exit hole in the wood. A line of hazy light cut through the darkness of his hideaway, following the bullet’s trajectory. He heard the footsteps approaching again and stopping next to the rifle box. Fumero knelt down beside it. Fermín caught the gleam of his eyes in the thin gap between the lid and the box.
“As usual, making friends among the plebs, eh? You should have heard the screams of your friend Amancio when he told us where we’d find you. A couple of wires on the balls, and you heroes sing like goldfinches.”
Facing that look and everything he knew about it, Fermín felt that if he hadn’t sweated out what little courage he had left, trapped in that coffin full of guns, he would have wet himself with panic.
“You smell worse than your friend the rat,” whispered Fumero. “I think you need a bath.”
He could hear the erratic footsteps and the turmoil of the men as they moved boxes and knocked down objects in the hold. While this was taking place, Fumero did not move from where he was. His eyes sounded the darkness inside the box like a serpent at the entrance to a nest, patiently. Before long, Fermín felt a powerful hammering on the box. At first he thought they were trying to break it up. But when he saw the tips of nails appearing under the lid, he understood that what they were doing was sealing down the rim. In a second the millimeter-wide opening that had previously been visible all around the lid vanished. He’d been buried in his own hiding place.
Fermín then realized that the box was moving, that it was being pushed and shoved across the floor, and that, following Fumero’s orders, a few members of the crew were coming down to the hold. He could imagine the rest. He felt about a dozen men lifting the box with levers and heard the canvas straps encircle the wood. He also heard the rattling of chains and felt the sudden upward pull of the crane.
6
Arráez and his crew watched the trunk swaying in the breeze six meters above deck. Fumero emerged from the hold and put his dark glasses on again, smiling with satisfaction as he looked up toward the bridge, raising a hand to his head in a mock military salute.
“With your permission, Captain, we will now proceed to exterminate the rat you carried on board in the only way that is fully effective.”
Fumero signaled to the man operating the crane to lower the container a few meters until it was level with his face. “Your dying wish, or a few words of contrition?”
The crew gazed at the box in utter silence. The only sound that seemed to emerge from inside was a whimper, like the cry of a terrified small animal.
“Come on, don’t cry, it’s not that bad,” said Fumero. “Besides, you won’t be alone. You’ll be meeting up with a whole lot of friends who can’t wait to see you . . .”
The trunk rose in the air again, and the crane began to rotate toward the gunwale. When it was hanging about ten meters above sea level, Fumero turned toward the bridge again. Arráez was observing him with glazed eyes, muttering under his breath.
“Son of a bitch,” Fumero managed to lip-read.
Then he gave a nod, and the container, carrying two hundred kilos of rifles and just over fifty kilos of Fermín Romero de Torres, plunged into the icy dark waters of Barcelona’s port.
7
The fall into the void barely gave Fermín time to hold on to the walls of the trunk. When it hit the water, the pile of rifles shifted upward and crashed against the top of the box. For a few seconds the container floated, rocking gently like a buoy. He struggled to remove the dozens of rifles under which he’d been buried. A strong smell of salt residue and diesel reached his nostrils. Then he heard the sound of water gushing in through the hole left by Fumero’s bullet. A second later he felt its rising coldness as it flooded the floor. Panic-stricken, he tried to crouch down to reach the bottom of the trunk. As he did so, the weight of the rifles moved to one side and the container listed. Fermín fell headlong on the guns. In complete darkness he groped through the pile of weapons beneath his hands and began to shove them aside, searching for the hole through which the water was entering. No sooner had he managed to place a dozen or so rifles behind his back than these would tumble over him again and push him toward the bottom of the box, which was still listing. Water covered his feet and ran through his fingers. It had reached his knees by the time he managed to find the hole and cover it as best he could by pressing with both hands. He then heard gunshots on the ship’s deck and the impact of bullets hitting the wood. Three new holes opened up behind him, and a greenish light filtered through, allowing Fermín to make out how fiercely the water was pouring in. In a few moments it was up to his waist. He screamed in terror and anger, trying to reach one of the holes with one hand, but a sudden jolt pushed him backward. The sound engulfing the trunk made him shudder, as if a beast were swallowing him. Water rose to his chest, and the cold took his breath away. It became dark again, and Fermín realized that the box was sinking irretrievably. His right hand yielded to the water’s pressure. In the dark, the freezing sea swept his tears away as he tried to catch one last mouthful of air.
The current sucked in the wooden carcass and dragged it relentlessly to the bottom. A small chamber of air, just about a hand span in height, had been trapped in the top part of the box. Making a huge effort, Fermín managed to lift himself and catch another gulp of oxygen. Moments later, the box hit the seabed and, after leaning to one side, became beached in the mud. Fermín banged and kicked the lid, but the wood was securely nailed on and wouldn’t budge. The last remaining centimeters of air seeped out through the cracks. Cold and utter darkness invited him to succumb, but with no air his lungs were burning and he felt as if his head was about to explode under the pressure. Faced with the certainty that he only had a few seconds left to live, he fell into a blind panic and, grabbing one of the rifles, started banging the lid with the butt. At the fourth blow the weapon fell apart in his hands. He groped around in the dark, and his fingers brushed against one of the bags protecting a rifle that floated about in a trapped air bubble. Fermín grabbed the bag with both hands and started banging again with what little strength he had left, praying for an impossible miracle.
The bullet produced a dull vibration as it exploded inside the bag. The shot, almost at point-blank, made a hole in the wood the size of a fist. A streak of light lit up the interior. Fermín’s hands now reacted before his brain. He aimed the weapon at the same point and pulled the trigger again and again. But water had already filled the bag, and none of the bullets exploded. He grabbed another rifle and fired through the bag. The first two shots didn’t work, but at the third shot Fermín felt his arms jerk back and saw the hole in the wood getting larger. He emptied the rifle of ammunition until his lean, battered body managed to push through the gap. The edges of the splintered wood bit into his skin, yet the promise of that ghostly light and the sheet of brightness he could glimpse on the surface would have helped him cross a field of knives.
The murky water of the port burned his eyes, but Fermín kept them open. An underwater forest of lights and shadows rocked to and fro in the greenish gloom. Below him lay a scene of debris, skeletons of sunken b
oats, and centuries of mud. He looked up toward the columns of hazy light falling from above. The merchant ship’s hull was silhouetted against the surface, forming a large shadow. He reckoned that that part of the port was at least fifteen meters deep, perhaps more. If he managed to reach the surface on the other side of the ship’s hull, maybe nobody would notice his presence and he’d be able to survive. Giving himself a push by pressing his feet against the remains of the box, he began to swim up. Only then, as he slowly rose to the surface, were his eyes able to catch a fleeting glimpse of the ghostly vision hiding in the depths. He realized that what he had taken to be seaweed and discarded nets were actually bodies swaying in the dark. Dozens of handcuffed corpses, their legs bound together and chained to stones or blocks of cement, formed an underwater cemetery. The flesh on their faces had been peeled away by the eels that slithered through their limbs, and their hair fluttered in the current. Fermín recognized the shapes of men, women, and children. At their feet lay suitcases and bundles half buried in mud. Some of the bodies were already so decomposed that all that was left of them were bones peeping through tattered bits of clothes. The corpses formed an endless gallery that disappeared into the darkness. Fermín closed his eyes and a second later emerged into life, discovering that the simple act of breathing was the most marvelous experience of his entire existence.
8
For a few moments Fermín remained stuck like a limpet to the ship’s hull as he recovered his breath. A marker buoy floated about twenty meters away. It resembled a small lighthouse: a cylinder crowned by a lantern, set on a circular base with a cabin. It was painted white with red stripes and swayed gently, like a metal island running adrift. If he managed to reach it, Fermín worked out, he could hide inside the buoy’s cabin and wait for the right moment to risk gaining dry land unseen. Nobody seemed to have noticed him, but he didn’t want to push his luck. He inhaled as much air as his battered lungs could take and dived underwater again, making his way toward the buoy with uneven strokes. As he did so he avoided looking down, preferring to think he’d suffered a hallucination and the ghoulish garden of corpses swaying in the current below him was nothing more than a pile of fishing nets trapped in rubble. He emerged a few meters from the buoy and swam hurriedly around it to hide. After checking the deck of the ship, he assured himself that for the moment he was safe and that everyone on board, including Fumero, presumed him dead. But as he scrambled onto the platform, he noticed a motionless figure observing him from the bridge. For a moment Fermín held his gaze. He couldn’t identify the man, but judging from his clothes, he assumed it was the ship’s captain. He rushed into the tiny cabin and collapsed in a heap, shivering with cold and imagining that in a few seconds he would hear them coming to get him. It would have been preferable to drown inside that box. Now Fumero would lock him in one of his cells and take his sweet time with him.
He’d been waiting for what seemed like an infinity, resigned to the fact that his adventure had finally come to an end, when he heard the ship’s engines start up, and the blare of the foghorn. Peeping fearfully through the cabin window, he saw the ship move away toward the docks. He lay down, exhausted, in the lukewarm embrace of the sun that seeped through the window. Perhaps, after all, Our Lady of the Unbelievers had taken pity on him.
9
Fermín remained on his tiny island until evening tinted the sky and the streetlamps in the harbor cast a sparkling net over the water. After scanning the docks, he decided that his best bet was to swim up to the swarm of boats clustered in front of the fish market and use a mooring rope or a trawling pulley attached to the prow of one of the anchored vessels to climb up to dry land.
Just then he noticed a shape outlined in the mist that swept across the inner harbor. A rowboat was approaching, with two men on board. One of them rowed, and the other sat in the stern, scouring the shadows with a lantern that tinged the fog with an amber light. Fermín swallowed hard. He could have jumped into the water and prayed that the mantle of twilight would conceal him so he could escape yet again, but he’d reached the end of his prayers and didn’t have a breath of resistance left in his body. He came out of his hiding spot with his hands up and faced the advancing boat.
“Lower your hands,” said the man carrying the lantern.
Fermín screwed up his eyes. It was the same person he’d seen watching him from the bridge a few hours earlier. Fermín looked him in the eye and nodded as he accepted his hand and jumped onto the boat. The man at the oars handed him a blanket, and the exhausted castaway wrapped himself up in it.
“I’m Captain Arráez,” the man with the lantern said, “and this is my first mate, Bermejo.”
Fermín tried to stammer something, but Arráez stopped him. “Don’t tell us your name. It’s none of our business.”
The captain reached out for a Thermos flask and poured Fermín a cupful of warm wine. He clutched the tin cup with both hands and drank until he’d drained the last drop. Three more times Arráez filled the cup, and Fermín felt the warmth return to his body.
“Are you feeling better?” asked the captain.
Fermín nodded.
“I’m not going to ask you what you were doing on my ship, or what’s between you and that skunk Fumero, but you’d better be careful.”
“I do try, believe me. But fate doesn’t seem inclined to collaborate.”
Arráez handed him a bag. Fermín had a quick look inside. It contained a handful of dry clothes, at least six sizes too large for him, and some money.
“Why are you doing this, Captain?” he asked. “I’m just a stowaway who’s got you into big trouble.”
“I’m doing this because I damn well want to,” replied Arráez, to which Bermejo mumbled his agreement.
“I don’t know how to thank you for—”
“Just don’t sneak onto my ship as a stowaway again. Go on, change your clothes.”
Arráez and Bermejo watched him take off those sodden rags and helped him put on his new outfit, an old sailor’s uniform. Before abandoning his threadbare jacket forever, Fermín searched the pockets and pulled out the letter he’d been guarding for weeks. The sea water had rubbed out the ink and the envelope was just a piece of wet paper that fell apart in his hands. Fermín closed his eyes and burst into tears.
Arráez and Bermejo looked at one another anxiously. The captain put his hand on Fermín’s shoulder. “Don’t be upset, man, the worst is over.”
Fermín shook his head. “It’s not that . . . it’s not that.”
He got dressed slowly and kept what was left of the letter in the pocket of his new short coat. When he noticed the dismay on the faces of his two benefactors, he dried his tears and smiled at them. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re all skin and bones,” remarked Bermejo.
“It’s this transient war interval,” said Fermín apologetically, trying to adopt a livelier, more optimistic tone. “But now that my luck is changing, I foresee a cornucopia of fine foods in my future and a life of contemplation during which I’ll fatten up with sausages while I reread the Bard’s best sonnets. A couple of days of vigorously ingesting black pudding and cinnamon biscuits, and I’ll look as round as a beach ball. Believe it or not, left to my own devices I put on weight faster than a Wagnerian soprano.”
“If you say so,” said Arráez. “Do you have somewhere to go?”
Fermín, now poised like an admiral minus the ship in his new outfit, his stomach throbbing with the warm wine, nodded enthusiastically.
“Is a woman waiting for you?” asked the seaman.
Fermín smiled sadly. “She’s waiting, but not for me.”
“I see. Was that letter for her?”
Fermín nodded again.
“And that’s why you’ve risked your life and returned to Barcelona? To deliver a letter?”
“She’s worth it.” Fermín shrugged. “And I promised a good friend that I’d do this.”
“He’s dead?”
Fermín lowered his
eyes.
“Some bits of news are best not given,” ventured Arráez.
“A promise is a promise.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Just over a year ago.”
The captain gazed at Fermín for a while. “A year is a long time these days,” he said. “People are quick to forget. It’s like a virus, but it helps one survive.”
“I hope I catch it, then,” said Fermín, “because it’s just what I need.”
10
It was getting dark when the rowboat left Fermín at the foot of the steps to the Atarazanas dock. He merged into the mist shrouding the port, one more figure among the stevedores and sailors making their way up to the streets of the Raval, known in those days as the Chinese quarter. As he mixed with them, he was able to make out bits of their half-whispered conversations: the Fascist air force had paid them a visit the day before, one of many that year, and they were expecting more air raids that night. One could sense the fear in those men’s voices and in their eyes, but having survived the day, Fermín told himself that whatever the night had in store for him couldn’t be any worse. As luck would have it, a candy peddler, who was already beating a retreat with a cartful of confectionary, crossed his path. Fermín stopped him and inspected his wares meticulously.
“I have caramel-coated almonds like the ones from before the war,” offered the merchant. “Would the gentleman like some?”
The Labyrinth of the Spirits Page 4
