VALLS WAKES UP in the dark. Vicente’s body is gone. Martín must have removed it while he slept. Only that son of a bitch could have thought of locking him up with a corpse. A slimy stain on the floor marks the space where the body had lain. Instead there is a pile of clothes, old but dry, and a small bucket full of water. The water smells dirty, with a whiff of metal, but as soon as Valls moistens his lips and manages to take a gulp, it seems to him the most delicious thing he has ever tasted. He drinks until he quenches a thirst he thought could never be quenched, until his stomach and his throat hurt. Then he removes his filthy bloodstained rags and slips on some of the clothes he finds on the pile. They smell of dust and disinfectant. His right hand has gone numb, and in the place of pain he feels only a dull throbbing. At first he doesn’t dare look at the hand, and when he does, he notices that the black stain has spread and now reaches his wrist, as if he had dipped it in a bucket full of tar. He can smell the infection, feel his body rotting away alive.
“It’s the gangrene,” says a voice in the dark.
His heart misses a beat, and he turns to discover his gaoler sitting at the bottom of the stairs, watching him.
“How long have you been there?” Valls asks.
“You’re going to lose that hand. Or your life. It’s up to you.”
“Help me, please. I’ll give you whatever you want.”
The gaoler stares at him impassively.
“How long have I been here?”
“Not long.”
“Do you work for Martín? Where is he? Why doesn’t he come to see me?”
The gaoler stands up. The meagre light that filters down from the top of the stairs touches his face. Valls can now see the mask clearly, a piece of flesh-coloured porcelain covering half the man’s face. The eye behind it doesn’t blink.
The gaoler approaches the metal bars so Valls can look at him closely. “You don’t remember, do you?”
Valls shakes his head slowly.
“You’ll remember. There’s time enough.”
He turns and is about to start up the stairs again when Valls stretches out his left hand through the bars beseechingly. The gaoler stops.
“Please,” Valls implores. “I need a doctor.”
The gaoler pulls a packet wrapped in brown paper out of his coat pocket and throws it into the cell.
“You decide whether you want to live or whether you want to rot away slowly, the way you’ve allowed so many innocents to do.”
Before he leaves, he lights a candle and leaves it in a small niche dug into the wall.
“Please, don’t go . . .”
Valls hears the footsteps fade and the door close. Then he kneels down to pick up the parcel. He opens it with his left hand. At first he can’t make out what he is seeing. Only when he takes the object and looks at it in the light of the candle does he realize.
A carpenter’s saw.