I raised the poker again and this time, applying less pressure— yes, now I could calculate how hard the blow should be—I slashed his cheek, gave him uno sfregio or a cut much longer and much deeper than the one Flavia Manoia suffered, although it barely touched bone. He raised his good hand to his jaw, his cheek, it was the right one, and stared at me with a look of panic, of fear, which was not so much visceral as atavistic, the fear of someone who does not know whether more blows will follow nor how many because that is the nature of swords, that is the nature of weapons that are not loosed or thrown, those that kill at close quarters and when face to face with the person killed, without the murderer or the avenger or the avenged detaching or separating themselves from the sword while they wreak havoc and plunge the weapon in and cut and slice, all with the same blade which they never discard, but hold onto and grip even harder while they pierce, mutilate, skewer and even dismember. I did none of those things, it was hardly the appropriate weapon for that, indeed, it wasn't a weapon at all, but a tool.
'Keep your hands on the table, I said,' and again I cocked the pistol, but this time I didn't place my index finger on the trigger.
He looked at me with stupefaction and renewed alarm, or perhaps a different kind of alarm, his eyes, having grown momentarily closer together, were once more wide apart. I know what was going through his head at that moment, he must have been thinking: 'Oh, no. This madman's going to break my other hand too, the hand I paint with.'
'No,' he said. 'Why? No, don't do it.'
And so I had no option but to press the barrel of the gun to his forehead, so that he would take me seriously, to his broad forehead, where his hair was beginning to recede, although I knew now that I wouldn't shoot him. He, however, couldn't know that, he had no idea, and that was my great advantage, that he could not interpret me, no one can in such circumstances, not even the best of interpreters. Not even Wheeler or Pérez Nuix or Tupra would have been able to, as the report on me said: 'Sometimes he seems to me to be a complete enigma. And sometimes I think he's an enigma to himself. Then I go back to the idea that he doesn't know himself very well. And that he doesn't pay much attention to himself because he's given up understanding himself. He considers himself a lost cause upon whom it would be pointless squandering thought. He knows he doesn't understand himself and that he never will. And so he doesn't waste his time trying to do so. I don't think he's dangerous. But he is to be feared.' Custardoy didn't know at that point that I wasn't dangerous, but he knew I was to be feared.
'Put your hands on the table.' I said this calmly, it seemed to me unnecessary to raise my voice or to swear. 'Or would you prefer me to put a bullet in your head so that then there'll be nothing at all? It wouldn't be hard, it would only take a moment.' Yes, how strange that someone should obey our every order and be at our mercy and do whatever we want.
He squeezed his eyes tight shut when he felt the cold metal of the pistol on his skin, this skin of ours that resists nothing, which offers no protection and is so easily wounded that even a fingernail can scratch it, and a knife can cut it and a spear rip it open, and a sword can tear it even as it slices through the air, and a bullet destroy it. (Blood was seeping from the wound to his cheek, but it wasn't running down his cheek, it was just coagulating along the wound itself.) I saw the look on his face, the look of someone who thinks or knows he is dead; but since he was still alive, the image was one of infinite fear and struggle, mental struggle, of desire perhaps; his face turned deathly pale, just as if someone had given it a quick lick of grey or off-white or off-color paint, or had thrown flour over him or perhaps talcum powder, it was rather like when swift clouds cast a shadow over the fields and a shudder runs through the flocks below, or like the hand that spreads the plague or closes the eyes of the deceased, because one is always instantly aware of any real danger of death and one believes in it and awaits the moment. Like De la Garza, he preferred to wait with eyes tight shut, they were trembling or pulsating—perhaps his pupils were racing about madly beneath the lids. And he put his hands on the table, you bet he did, the injured and the sound hand, the former he had difficulty placing flat. And again I acted quickly, I neither lingered nor delayed, I was sick of his company and wanted to get out of there fast; I was sick of his face too, despite its benign appearance, I used the poker to strike the same hand a second and a third time and just as hard, I think I broke the lower part of his fingers or some of them, between hand and knuckle, that's what it sounded like. He let out another two howls and clutched his left hand with his still intact right hand, he couldn't help but console the one with the other, his left was a terrible mess, but I tried not to look, I didn't want to see it or to contemplate my work as I had contemplated the broken hands of Pérez Nuix's father in that video as he tried in vain to protect himself as he lay sprawled on a billiards table, I didn't want to know exactly what damage I had done to him, if I didn't look, it would be easier for me to believe—later on, in years to come and, shortly too, when I went back to my hotel—that it had merely been one of those dreams one has abroad (I had a return ticket and abroad for me, at least in part, was Spain, and I was leaving). Despite the awful pain, Custardoy must have thought this nothing, a piece of good luck, when he had feared for his good hand and feared receiving a bullet in the brain at point-blank range. However, he still had sufficient courage to complain. Despite his panic, he remained unshaken, not at all like that dickhead De la Garza.
'What the fuck do you want,' he said, 'to cripple me?'
And then I told him what it was I wanted:
'I haven't touched your right hand, but I could give it the same treatment as your left hand or worse. And I can come looking for you whenever I want. I could hurt your right hand so badly that you'd never pick up a paintbrush again in your life.' And once more I couldn't help remembering Reresby again, when he gave me his instructions for De la Garza and I translated them to my compatriot where he lay on the floor. Tupra had issued a fluent list of orders as if he had thought it all out before, I must give the same impression of determination and wisdom and prescience, telling him what my pre-prepared plans for him were, telling him exactly what was going to happen and what he was going to do.
Custardoy had half-opened his eyes to gauge the damage done and I had not placed the barrel of the gun against his head again since dealing the second and third blow to his hand. His gaze was dull, stunned, almost oblique, but there was also a hint of vengefulness. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that any desire for revenge was muted and purely hypothetical, as if he understood that he would have to give it up however much he wanted it, or could see it only as a distant hope or postponed reward or deferred justice, rather as, during many centuries, people of steadfast faith would imagine and nurture the idea of the Final Judgment as something that would be given to them during their long death and which they could never have in life. I had removed the gun from his head when I struck him with the poker, and now it occurred to me that I didn't even need it, the threat of destroying his right hand had cowed him completely, overwhelmed him, especially as he didn't know if that was going to happen right there and then, and because he already had before him the vision of his left hand, and could feel it—the pain must have been terrible. In the state he was in, his ponytail looked even more ridiculous, as did his tie, his sparse mustache, his aspiration to elegance; at that moment he was an angry man, but fearful, too, almost imploring, his rage curbed indefinitely. However, I still didn't put the pistol away. And he did plead with me, although his tone of voice masked the fact. His words sounded more like a reproach than a plea, but they said what they said:
'For Christ's sake, don't do that. I earn my living with my right hand. Stop playing fucking games with me. What the fuck do you want?' Swearwords are good at masking feelings, of course, which is why almost everyone uses them in Spain—the most puerile, blustering country I know—in order to appear big and brave. But Custardoy had asked a favor of me ('Don't do that') and I did not, on that occ
asion, feel involved or enmeshed or entangled; on the contrary, I would happily have used a razor or a knife to cut the disagreeable bond joining us, him, Luisa and me, although she had created that bond of her own accord. All I had to say to the guy was: 'I want this in exchange.'
'I'm going to leave now and you're going to stay here quite still for thirty minutes from the time I leave, without moving and without phoning anyone, however much your hand hurts; you'll have to put up with it. Then call a doctor, go to a hospital, do what you like. It will take time for that hand to heal, if it ever does completely heal. Always remember that it could have been worse, and that we can always do the same to the other hand, or cut it off with a sword, I have a very clever friend in London who loves swords. While it's healing, leave Madrid, I know you've got enough money to be able to spend some time at a hotel, in a place that you like, somewhere with museums, and have a real rest. And if none of these ideas appeal, then do something else. I don't want Luisa to see you in this state; she must never ever associate what has happened to you with my stay in Madrid. You phone her and tell her that you've had to go away unexpectedly. Some important, urgent commission, copying or restoring some painting, or several, in Berlin, Bordeaux, Vienna or St. Petersburg, I don't care. Or better still, Boston, Baltimore, or Malibu, with an ocean between you, after all, there are famous museums aplenty over there with no shortage of cash to pay you for your work; anyway, I'll leave you to invent something. Call her from a cell phone or some number that can't be traced, just so that she can't find out where you really are. You can go and convalesce in Pamplona for all I care, but you must tell her that you're far away and very busy and that you'll phone her when you can, just in case, because if she thinks you're somewhere near, she might try and leave the kids with someone for a few days and come and join you.'
'She won't just let me go off like that without saying goodbye, especially if I'm going to be away for a while,' said Custardoy, interrupting me. I didn't mind because this meant he was accepting my plan and was prepared to obey it, and that I wouldn't have to damage his other hand or even consider doing so, because I would then have no other hold over him and would have to shoot him and that now seemed to me impossible. I had lost all my heat, what little I'd had. I had taken on Tupra's coldness only momentarily and half-heartedly. Perhaps not even Tupra was so very cold: after all, he hadn't, in the end, cut off De la Garza's head.
'Don't you understand? She won't be able to say goodbye to you, however much she wants to, because when you phone her, you'll already have left, you'll call her from somewhere else, do you see?'
'She'll think that very odd.'
'Try to make it seem perfectly normal. Emergencies do happen, as do unforeseen events. Besides, you don't see each other every day, do you? Or phone each other on a daily basis?' I wasn't expecting an answer, and I preferred him not to give one. 'While you're away, only call her now and then, and make those calls less and less frequent, until, in two weeks or so, you'll have stopped phoning altogether. After two weeks, you give no sign of life at all, none, and if she does manage to locate you, be evasive with her, impatient. And when your hand has healed and you come back (if that wretched hand of yours ever does heal after what I've done to it), you won't call her then either. Sooner or later, she'll hear from someone that you're back, and if she's still interested, she'll be the one to seek you out or phone you or demand an explanation. And you can tell her then, bluntly and arrogantly, it should come easily enough to you, you've probably done it hundreds of time. As far as you're concerned, you'll say, she's history, you never even give her a thought. Tell her that on the beaches of Malibu you've met the new Bo Derek or a lady security guard or Getty's daughter or whoever. Or an heiress from Boston whom you're about to marry. You make it clear to her that it's all over, that she should leave you alone, that you don't want to see her. And you won't see her. As of today, you've said your farewells, do you understand? And if you utter one word to her about what has happened here, about this visit, if you lead her to suspect or, however remotely, imagine what went on, now or later, even if it's in ten years' time, you can say farewell to your right hand as well.' The words of the 'Streets of Laredo' came into my mind: 'But please not one word of all this shall you mention, when others should ask for my story to hear.'
Custardoy opened his coarse eyes a little wider, he looked suddenly older, as if the weariness that follows immediately on relief had put ten years on him. He was cautiously stroking his crippled hand, he must have been impatient for this to be over, to be rid of me once and for all, so that he could go to a doctor or a hospital, where they could do something to take away the pain.
'I'm not the marrying kind, I'm not like you,' he said with a tiny, barely perceptible remnant of scorn, which I nonetheless noticed. It didn't matter, it afforded him some small compensation. He didn't know that I was like him, even though I had gotten married, contrary to my father's expectations. 'Anything else?'
'Like I said, you stay here for half an hour without moving and without phoning anyone. You never lay a hand on her again. You never see her again. I'll know if you don't do as I say, and London is only two hours away. It would be easy enough for me to fly over and cut off your hand.'
I flung the poker into the fireplace, it had a little blood on it, but I'd leave him to clean it off. I removed the third unused bullet, put the pistol in my raincoat pocket and headed for the door without taking my eyes off him, until he disappeared from my field of vision. There he was sitting on his sofa, with his clothes all rumpled, his hand shattered and a mark on his face. He held my gaze, despite his sudden tiredness, his abrupt senescence. No one has ever looked at me with such hatred. Nevertheless, I wasn't afraid that he would try anything, that he would grab the poker and hit me on the back of the head. The terror and humiliation he had experienced might have made him risk doing something like that. His hatred, however, was impotent, frustrated and without consequences, it was tinged with fear and shock; or it was like the hatred of a child condemned to remain too long in the incongruous body of a boy, obliged to endure a fruitless wait that consumes him, but which he will no longer remember when he does finally grow up. He was looking at me in the knowledge that I was no longer within his grasp and would not be for a long time, possibly never: like a furious adolescent looking out at a world slipping by before his eyes and which he's not yet allowed to enter; or like a prisoner who knows that no one is waiting or refraining from doing anything just because he's not there, and that his own time is disappearing along with the world rushing by him, and that he can do nothing about it; it's a common experience among the dying too, only far more tragic.
When I left the living room, he disappeared from my view. His eyes, dark with hatred, had followed me right until then, and he may have kept his gaze fixed for a few seconds more on the door through which my gloved figure had departed. It would take him a while to get used to the idea of what he had to do. And then he would find it hard to believe that what had happened to him had really happened, but he had a useful reminder, or two; now he would feel on his hand and cheek what Luisa had felt with her black eye and its thousand colors and perhaps before that, according to her sister, the cut, also on her face. He would have many days ahead of him to observe the evolution of his scar, and to hope that the small bones in his hand were knitting together under the cast or whatever it is they use now, although an operation might also prove necessary. He would look at his good hand and think perhaps: 'I've been lucky. At least this hand is still intact.' And he would remember the metal barrel against his forehead and then he would think: 'I've been lucky. He could have shot me, I thought he was going to. But we would always prefer it to be the person beside us who dies, every man for himself. I was saved and here I am.'
I hurried down the stairs ('"Do I dare?" and "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair ...'), anxious to leave the building and get away from there, to take a taxi and return Miquelin's old pistol to him as soon as possible, havin
g first replaced the three bullets I had removed from the magazine, and to say to him: A thousand thanks, Maestro, I'll never forget this. Don't worry, here it is, there's not a bullet missing. It hasn't even got my fingerprints on it. It's as if you had never lent it to me, as if it had never left your apartment.'
None of the taxis passing by were free, the sky was still cloudy, full of thunderless lightning about to strike but never doing so, and so I set off, walking briskly, following the same straight route back, along Calle Mayor to my hotel, still with my gloves on, I wanted to get away from that place. I felt the lightness one feels on getting what one wants and a little of the conceit I had experienced when I discovered that Rafita was afraid of me, that, quite unwittingly, I filled him with fear. Seeing yourself as dangerous had its good side. It made you feel more confident, more optimistic, stronger. It made you feel important and—how can I put it—in charge. And, this time, that small rush of vanity did not immediately repel me. However, I also had a sudden feeling of heaviness, a feeling that can be triggered by various combinations: alarm and haste, the sense of tedium experienced at the prospect of having to carry out some cold-blooded act of reprisal, or the invincible meekness one feels in a threatening situation. I did feel something of that tedium, as well as haste, but my act of reprisal was over and done with. Only when I reached Plaza de la Villa and saw again the statue of the Marques de Santa Cruz ('I was the scourge of the Turk at Lepanto, the Frenchman at Terceira, the Englishman o'er all the seas . . .' 'And in short, they were afraid') did I begin to think repeatedly, over and over: 'You can't go around beating people up, you can't go around killing them. Why can't you? You can't go around beating people up . . . Why can't one, according to you, go around beating people up and killing them? Why not? According to you.' And I remembered, too, what Tupra had said when we were at his house, after our session watching his store of videos: 'You've seen how much of it goes on, everywhere, and sometimes with an utter lack of concern. So explain to me why one can't.' And I gave myself the answer that I managed to give him just before we were interrupted by Beryl or whoever that woman was, the person at his side, his weak point just as Luisa was mine: 'Because then it would be impossible for anyone to live.' I had received no response to those words of mine, but by the time I reached Puerta del Sol, my thoughts had changed, and this was all they were repeating: 'What a lot of one-eyed, one-handed people there are in these old streets, but at least he's out of the picture. What a lot of cripples and what a lot of dead people there are in these old streets, but at least he's out of the picture. Yes, at least he's out of the picture and he'd better not try and climb back in.'
Poison, Shadow, and Farewell Page 42
