It was the first of November. Twenty-four days had gone by since the police interrogation and nothing had happened to Willi Mohr.
The days had grown shorter, the nights colder, and it had rained twice during the last weeks, but otherwise everything was as before.
His money had long since come to an end and he had made no effort to acquire any more, although he could well have written to Hugo Spohler, who still owed him quite a sum. The tienda still gave him credit, as did the Café Central. His bills slowly mounted, although he had reduced his purchases to an absolute minimum and lived exclusively on bread, salted sardines and figs. Now and again he bought a box of Ideales, and by smoking very seldom and saving the ends for his pipe, he could make a packet last several days. He regularly increased his bill at the bar in the square by having a small cup of coffee every evening.
With the exception of the civil guard who had pushed the envelope containing his passport through the cat-hole, no one had come to the house in Barrio Son Jofre. The brown puppy had died three days after he had killed the other two, and he had thrown it on to the rubbish-heap behind the house. The dog came with him on his daily walks through the town again, and although he occasionally got bones and mouldering bits of meat for her at the tienda, she had grown much thinner, as he had himself.
Only the cat remained unchanged. It saw to its keep itself and came and went with a self-sufficiency which made it appear to be the only legitimate tenant in the house.
Willi Mohr did not do any painting, and he had also begun to be careless about some things. He was no longer so particular about washing and shaving and he seldom bothered about making his bed properly. And yet he managed to fill his days with trivial matters, fetching water, lighting the fire or collecting fuel. Unconsciously he did everything at a slower tempo than before and he had no definite impression of being unoccupied or having plenty of time.
He was waiting for Santiago Alemany, but he was not impatient and neither was he feeling nervous about the meeting.
He was convinced that Santiago would come back some time and he had already decided how he would behave when he did.
He would shoot him immediately. Then the matter would be over and his part of the problem out of the way.
He had no further plans for the future and nothing which tied him to this place, so to postpone the execution would simply be pointless.
On the first of November, Willi Mohr got up at nine o’clock. He lit the fire, boiled some water and drank it with two spoons of sugar and half a roll left over from the previous day. Then he went out and relieved himself behind the camioneta, which was standing in the outhouse, filthy and dusty and unusable.
The tyres were flat and the engine would not start. When he had come back from his trip in May and driven up from the puerto to the town, he had forgotten to put any water in the radiator. The engine had got overheated without his noticing and the steam had blown the gasket. He had only just managed to get back and since then the truck had stood there, not because he could not afford to repair it, but because he considered he no longer had any need for it. Now the chickens lived in it and both the engine and the seats were white with their droppings.
Willi Mohr buttoned his fly and went into tackle his day’s work, the cleaning of his pistol, something he had thought about doing for a long time.
He locked the door and got out the gun from its place under the mattress. There was not much light in the room but what came through the cat-hole and the cracks round the door was quite sufficient.
He spread a piece of cloth out on the floor, sat down on the bottom stair and appraisingly weighed the pistol in his hand. It felt cold and reassuring.
First he pressed the restraining catch and took out the magazine. There were seven rounds in it. He ejected the cartridges and put them in a row in front of him. Another cartridge remained in the breech, so he drew back the action and caught it in his hand. He put it down beside the others, poked out the spring from the magazine and tested the tension in it before putting it down. Then he picked up the cartridges one by one and looked them over carefully.
Willi Mohr had a reserve magazine too. It lay tucked away in the bottom of the rucksack, but as he had no intention of using it, he let it lie there.
When he had looked at the cases without finding any scratches or other visible defects, he set about the pistol itself. He removed the barrel and held it up to the square of light from the door. The bore was oiled. Then he examined the breech face, tried out the striker against his thumb, pressing the spring together, which was hard and tense, and laid the things down on the cloth, together with the screws and pins and cartridges and the parts of the magazine.
The cat, which had been lying asleep among the bedclothes, woke when two of the metal parts clinked together. At once it was inquisitive, and after stretching itself a couple of times, it went over to the stairs and sat on a corner of the cloth, its head on one side, eyeing the dismantled weapon. Then it raised its right forepaw, dabbed cautiously at the spring, and then sat still again, staring with interest at the spiral wobbling back and forth. Suddenly the cat whipped out its paw again and hit the spring, which rolled across the floor with a metallic rattle. The cat crouched, took two long leaps, landing on it with its claws distended, stood on its back legs with the spring between its forepaws and then threw it backwards over its head.
Willi Mohr sat still, his hands hanging between his legs, and watched the animal playing with the spring. Suddenly the cat lost interest, yawned and went back to the mattress. The spring rolled away into a corner of the room and lay still. Willi got up and went and fetched it.
He got out the oil can and some soft rags from his rucksack and carefully cleaned all the parts before greasing them again. Then he dried the barrel and once again held it up to the light.
Willi Mohr looked for so long down the bore that all sense of proportion vanished. He saw a cold, polished steel tunnel, a reflecting corridor of terror, endlessly extended by the bore’s twisting spiral.
When he finally took the barrel away from his eye, he was almost surprised to find it was so short and light and ordinary, an unassuming little object which could be carried in a breast pocket if necessary.
He put the lid on the oil-can again and began to re-assemble the pistol. Finally he slid the magazine into the butt of the gun, releasing the action to slip the first cartridge into the chamber.
He got up, put on the safety catch and then put the weapon back under the edge of the mattress, on the right and quite far down.
The pistol was a nine millimetre 1936 Walther. Willi Mohr had exchanged it for two tins of meat in Flensburg in the summer of 1945 and since then he had succeeded in smuggling it over all borders. He had never fired it, but knew both its construction and how it worked very well.