COLD. A COLD that bites the skin, cuts the flesh and slices through the bones. A damp cold that clamps one’s muscles and burns one’s insides. Cold. For that first moment of consciousness it’s the only thing he can think of.
It is almost pitch-dark. Only a thin sliver of light filters through from above, a breath of deathly light that clings to the shadows and hints at the limits of the space in which he is confined. His pupils dilate, and he’s able to make out an area the size of a small room. The walls are made of bare stone. Moisture oozes from them and glistens in the gloom, as if dark tears were sliding down them. The floor is made of rock and sodden with something that doesn’t look like water. There is a powerful stench in the air. He notices a row of thick, rusty bars, and beyond them some steps leading up in the dark.
He’s in a cell.
Valls tries to stand up, but his legs won’t support him. After barely a step his knees buckle and he falls to one side, hitting his face against the floor, cursing. He tries to recover his breath. He remains there for a few minutes, dejected, his face glued to the slimy film that covers the floor, giving off a metallic, slightly sweet smell. His mouth is dry, as if he’d swallowed earth, and his lips are chapped. He tries to touch them with his right hand, but realizes he can’t feel his hand, as if there were nothing there below the elbow.
He manages to prop himself up with his left arm. Raising his right hand in front of his face, he looks at it against the light, a yellowish gleam that tints the air. The hand is shaking. He can see it shake, but he can’t feel it. He tries to open and close his fist, but his muscles don’t respond. Only then does he notice that he is missing his index and middle fingers. In their place are two dark stains: shreds of skin and flesh dangle from them. Valls wants to scream, but his voice is broken and he only manages to produce an empty cry. He lets himself slump backwards and closes his eyes. He starts breathing through his mouth to avoid the strong smell that poisons the air. As he does so, he is reminded of something from his childhood: a faraway summer in the country house his parents had outside Segovia, and an old dog that went down to the cellar to die. Valls remembers the nauseating smell that took hold of the house, how it was similar to the smell that now burns his throat. But this is much worse; this hardly allows him to think. After a while, minutes or perhaps hours, he is overcome by exhaustion and falls into a troubled drowsiness, somewhere between sleeplessness and sleep.
He dreams he is travelling in a train where he is the only passenger. The locomotive is galloping furiously over clouds of black steam towards a maze of factories shaped like cathedrals, pointed towers and a mass of bridges and roofs conjured up into a tangle of incomprehensible angles beneath a bloodstained sky. Shortly before entering a tunnel that seems to have no end, Valls looks out of the window and sees that the entrance is guarded by two large statues of angels with open wings, sharp teeth visible between their lips. A battered sign hanging from the lintel reads:
BARCELONA
The train hurtles into the tunnel with a hellish roar. When it emerges at the other end, the silhouette of Montjuïc rises before him, with the castle outlined on the hilltop, enveloped in an aura of crimson light. Valls feels his guts tighten. A ticket inspector, bent over like an old, storm-battered tree, is approaching along the corridor and stops in front of Valls’s compartment. He wears a badge on his uniform that reads SALGADO.
“Your stop, Governor . . .”
The train climbs up the winding road he remembers so well and enters the prison premises. It stops in a dark corridor, and he alights. The train sets off again and disappears into darkness. Valls turns around and realizes that he’s become trapped in one of the prison cells. A dark figure is watching him from the other side of the bars. When Valls tries to explain to him that there’s been a mistake, that he’s on the wrong side, that he’s the prison governor, his voice won’t reach his lips.
The pain comes later, pulling him out of his dream like an electric current.
*
The smell of carrion, the darkness, and the cold are still there, but now he barely notices them. The only thing he can think of is the pain. A pain as he’s never known before. As he’s never been able to imagine. His right hand is burning. It feels as if he’s plunged it into a bonfire and can’t pull it out. He grabs his right arm with his left hand. Even in the shadows he can see that the two dark stains where his fingers should be are suppurating, oozing what looks like a thick and bloody liquid. He screams in silence.
The pain helps him remember.
The images of what has happened begin to form in his mind. He revisits the moment when Barcelona emerges in the distance, silhouetted against the early-evening sky. Through the windshield, he watches the town rise like the great backdrop for a funfair performance and remembers how much he hates that place. His loyal bodyguard, Vicente, drives silently, concentrating on the traffic. If he’s scared, he doesn’t show it. They drive along avenues and streets where he sees people wrapped up, hurrying through a curtain of snow that drifts in the air like glass mist. They head straight up a boulevard to the higher part of town, and soon they’re on a road that zigzags up toward the ridge of Vallvidrera. Valls recognizes that strange citadel of facades suspended from heaven. The city’s lower zones are left behind, a carpet of darkness below, melting into the sea. The funicular climbs the hillside like a serpent of golden light, outlining the grand modernist villas that shore up the mountain. There, sunk among the trees, he glimpses the outline of the old rambling house. Valls swallows hard. Vicente glances at him, and Valls gives him a nod. It will all be over very soon. Valls pulls back the hammer of the revolver in his hand. It is already dark when they reach the entrance to the villa. The gates are open. The car drives into the weed-infested garden, around the fountain – dry and covered in ivy. Vicente stops the car opposite the stairs that lead to the front door. He turns off the engine and pulls out his revolver. Vicente never uses a gun, only a revolver. A revolver, he says, never gets jammed.
“What time is it?” Valls asks in a tiny voice.
Vicente doesn’t have time to reply. It all happens very fast. The bodyguard has just pulled the key out of the ignition when Valls notices a figure on the other side of the car window. He hasn’t seen it approach. Without a word, Vicente pushes Valls aside and shoots. The window shatters a few centimetres from Valls’s head. He feels a shower of glass shards lashing at his face. The roar of the shot deafens him, a piercing whistle stabbing his ears. Before the cloud of gunpowder floating inside the car has time to settle, the door on the driver’s side suddenly opens. Vicente turns, revolver in hand, but with no time to fire another shot because something has slit his throat. He clutches his neck with both hands. Dark blood runs through his fingers. For a brief moment their eyes meet, Vicente’s haunted by disbelief. A second later the bodyguard slumps over the steering wheel and sets off the horn. Valls tries to hold him, but Vicente leans to one side, and half his body is left hanging out of the car. Valls holds the revolver in both hands and points towards the blackness beyond the driver’s open door. Then he senses someone’s breath behind him, and when he turns to shoot, all he notices is a sharp, ice-cold blow on his hand. He feels the metal on the bone, and nausea clouds his vision. The revolver falls on his lap, and he sees blood flowing along his arm. The figure looms, holding the bloodstained knife in one hand, the blade dripping. Then the figure tries to open the car door, but the door is stuck. Two hands grab Valls by the neck and tug at him angrily. Valls feels himself being pulled out of the car through the gap in the window and being dragged up the gravel path to the broken marble steps. He hears soft footsteps approaching. The moon lights up what in his delirium he takes for an angel and then for an apparition of death. Valls faces those eyes and realizes his mistake.
“What are you laughing at, you son of a bitch?” the voice asks.
Valls smiles. “You look so much like her,” he murmurs.
Valls closes his eyes and waits for the coup de grâce. It doesn’t come. He feels his angel spitting on his face. The angel’s footsteps move away. God, or the devil, takes pity on him, and at some point he loses consciousness.
He can’t remember whether all that happened hours, days, or weeks ago. Time has ceased to exist in this cell. All is cold now, and pain and darkness. He feels a sudden spasm of rage. Dragging himself to the bars, he bangs on the cold metal until his skin smarts. He is still holding on to them when a band of light opens above, revealing a staircase that leads down to the cell. Valls hears footsteps and looks up hopefully. He stretches his hand beyond the bars, imploringly. His gaoler gazes at him from the shadows, motionless. Something covers his face, reminding Valls of the frozen expression on a mannequin in one of Gran Vía’s shop windows.
“Martín? Is that you?” asks Valls.
He gets no reply. The gaoler just stares at him without saying a word. At last Valls nods, as if wishing to imply that he understands the rules of the game.
“Water, please,” he groans.
For a long time the gaoler remains impassive. Then, when Valls thinks he’s imagined it all and the man’s presence is only an image from the delirium caused by pain and by the infection that is eating him alive, the gaoler walks down a few steps.
Valls smiles submissively. “Water,” he begs.
The spurt of urine splashes his face, burning the cuts that cover it. Valls howls and jerks back. He drags himself backwards until he hits the wall, and there he cringes and curls up into a ball. The gaoler disappears up the stairs, and the light goes out again behind the echo of a heavy door closing.
This is when he realizes he’s not alone in the cell. Vicente, his loyal bodyguard, is sitting in the corner, leaning against the wall. He doesn’t move. Only the shape of his legs is visible. And the hands. The palms and fingers are swollen and have a purple hue.
“Vicente?”
Valls drags himself over there but stops when he notices how close the stench is. He takes shelter in the opposite corner and doubles himself up, hugging his knees and burying his face between his legs to get away from the smell. He tries to conjure up the image of his daughter, Mercedes. He imagines her playing in the garden, in her doll’s house, travelling in her private train. He imagines her as a child, with those eyes of hers fixed on his, those all-forgiving eyes that shed light where there had always been darkness.
After a while he surrenders to the cold, the pain and exhaustion, and feels he’s again losing consciousness. Perhaps it is death, he thinks, hopeful.