BEHIND THE METAL door was a room in which a few shelves held tins of food. There was an opening in the wall at the far end, and beyond it Daniel thought he could make out a tunnel hollowed out in the stone, descending steeply. As soon as he stuck his head into the opening he was hit by an intense odour rising from underground, an animal stink of excrement, blood and fear. Covering his face with his hand, he listened through the shadows. A torch was hanging on the wall. He switched it on, sending the beam of light into the tunnel. Steps carved out of the rock disappeared into a well of darkness.
He went down slowly. The walls oozed damp, and the ground was slippery. He reckoned he must have descended some ten metres by the time he saw the end of the stairs. There the tunnel widened and spread into a recess the size of a room. The stench was so powerful that it clouded the senses. As he swept through the darkness with the torch, he saw the bars separating the two halves of the chamber hollowed in the rock. Daniel shone the beam around the cell without understanding. It was empty. Until he heard the murmur of laborious breathing and noticed a corner with shadows that unfolded into a skeletal silhouette, he didn’t realize he’d been mistaken. There was something trapped in there, creeping towards the light, something he had trouble identifying as a man.
Eyes that were burned by the dark, eyes that seemed not to see, veiled by a layer of white. Those eyes were searching him. The silhouette, a tangle of rags covering a bag of bones that was swathed with dried blood, filth and urine, grabbed one of the bars and tried to stand up. He only had one hand. Where the other one should have been, there was only a festering, burned stump. The creature remained close to the bars, as if he wanted to smell Daniel. Suddenly the creature smiled, and Daniel realized he’d seen the gun he was holding.
Daniel tested various keys in the bunch until he found one that fitted into the lock. He opened the cell. The creature inside looked at him expectantly. Daniel recognized in him a pale reflection of the man he’d learned to hate. Nothing remained of his regal face, of his arrogant demeanour and his haughty presence. Someone, or something, had ripped out everything that could be taken from a human being until all that remained was a longing for darkness and oblivion. Daniel raised the gun and aimed it at his face. Valls laughed joyfully.
“You killed my mother.”
Valls nodded repeatedly and hugged Daniel’s knees. He then groped for the gun with his only hand and pulled it up to his forehead. “Please, please,” he beseeched through his tears.
Daniel cocked the hammer. Valls closed his eyes and pressed his face hard against the barrel.
“Look at me, you son of a bitch.”
Valls opened his eyes.
“Tell me why.”
Valls smiled without understanding. He’d lost a few teeth, and his gums bled. Daniel turned his face away and felt nausea rising to his throat. He closed his eyes and evoked the face of his son Julián, asleep in his bedroom. Then he pulled the gun away, opened the cylinder, letting the bullets fall to the waterlogged floor, and shoved Valls aside.
Valls stared at him, first in confusion, then in a panic, and started picking up the bullets, one at a time, holding them out to Daniel with a trembling hand. Daniel threw the gun to the far end of the cell and grabbed Valls by the neck. A ray of hope lit up Valls’s eyes. Daniel held him tight and hauled him out of the cell and up the stairs. When he reached the kitchen area, he kicked open the door and went outside, without ever letting go of Valls, who staggered behind him. He didn’t look at him or speak to him. He just pulled him down the garden path until they reached the metal gate. There he looked for the key in the bunch the guard had given him and opened it.
Valls had begun to moan, terrified. Daniel shoved him out into the road. The man fell on the ground, and Daniel grabbed his arm again, pulling him back to his feet. Valls took a few steps and stopped. Daniel kicked him, forcing him to continue. He pushed him until they reached the small square where the first blue tram awaited. Dawn was breaking, the sky unfurling into a reddish cobweb that spread over Barcelona and set the distant sea ablaze. Valls went down on his knees and looked up at Daniel imploringly.
“You’re free,” said Daniel. “Go!”
Don Mauricio Valls, a shining light of his day, limped away down the avenue.
Daniel stayed there until his silhouette merged into the greyness of that early hour. He sought refuge in the waiting tram, which was empty. Sitting down on one of the benches at the back, he pressed his face against the window and closed his eyes. After a while he dozed off.
When the conductor woke him, a clear sun was already sweeping away the clouds, and Barcelona had a clean smell.
“Where are you going, boss?” asked the conductor.
“Home,” said Daniel. “I’m going home.”
After a while the tram began its descent. Daniel set his gaze on the horizon extending at the foot of the wide avenue, feeling that there was no resentment left in his soul, and that for the first time in many years he had woken up with the memory that would stay with him for the rest of his days: the face of his mother, a woman who would always be younger than he was now.
“Isabella,” he whispered. “I wish I’d been able to know you.”