Authors: Javier Cercas
‘I still hadn’t finished drinking my second beer when Zarco and the rest started to come downstairs. They all asked me the same thing and I answered them all the same way and they all insisted I choose a girl and go upstairs with her; none of them suspected what Vedette had guessed, or at least no one voiced the suspicion out loud, and finally their insistence and my fear the secret would come to light overcame my disgust and I went over to Vedette and told her to introduce me to her candidate. Her name was Trini and she turned out to be a little brunette with short hair and swaying hips who pulled my arm around her waist and, while Zarco and the rest of the guys gestured euphorically at the other end of the bar, led me upstairs to one of the bedrooms. There she stepped down out of her high heels, stripped me and helped me strip her. Then she took me into the bathroom and washed and washed me and pushed me down on the bed and started sucking me off. It was the second time in my life something like this had happened to me, although the truth is it seemed like two different things and not the same thing done by two different women. After a while Trini managed to get it up, but as soon as she tried to get me inside her it shrank again. She tried to reassure me, saying it was normal for the first time, and then she went back to work on me with her mouth. I was very flustered, afraid of a total fiasco, and I concentrated until I came up with the solution: imagining that we weren’t in one of La Vedette’s rooms but in the washrooms of the Vilaró arcade and that those were Tere’s fingers and lips down there and not Trini’s, I got an erection and came right away.
‘That was when the strange thing I mentioned before happened. I was starting to get dressed when a red light came on beside the door and Trini said: Shit. What’s going on?, I asked. Nothing, said Trini. But we can’t leave. She pointed to the light and added: Cops are downstairs. I felt my legs weaken and a wave of heat enveloped me. In the bar? I asked. Yes, Trini answered. Don’t worry, they won’t come up; but until they leave we can’t go down. So it would be better for you to take it easy. I tried to take it easy. I finished getting dressed while Trini told me that, each time a pair of cops on their round came into the bar, Vedette or her husband pressed a button behind the bar and a red light turned on in all the bedrooms; then, when the police left, they pressed the button again and the lights went out. Trini insisted that I shouldn’t worry and just had to have patience, because, although naturally the police knew just what was going on (knew that there were girls and their clients in the rooms upstairs, knew that Vedette and her husband alerted them when they walked in), they always went away without bothering anyone after talking to Vedette for a while.
‘She was right: that’s what happened. Trini and I sat on the bed for a while, dressed, side by side without even touching, telling each other lies, until after a while the red light went out and we went downstairs. That was my first visit to a brothel. And that was how we spent the money.’
‘Did the girls in the gang know about it?’
‘What? That we spent the money on hookers?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know. I never asked myself that question.’
‘Ask yourself now.’
‘I don’t know if they knew. I don’t think so. Obviously, we went to the brothels without telling them, and I don’t remember anyone ever saying anything about it in front of them. I suppose in theory they didn’t know, although it’s hard to believe that in practice they didn’t suspect. As I said that’s where most of the money went.’
‘Well, I guess it mustn’t have been too difficult to hide it from the girls; after all there were only two of them, and one was Zarco’s girl and the other was Gordo’s.’
‘That there were only two is true: there were lots of girls who came in and out or circled around the gang, but only Tere and Lina belonged to it. The other part, however, is not true, or not entirely, or I didn’t have the impression that it was, or I only did for a time: Lina was Gordo’s girlfriend, yes, but as for Tere being Zarco’s girl . . . Well, as I said before if I’d known the truth in time everything would have been different; or if I’d seen from the beginning that she and Zarco behaved like Gordo and Lina did, which was more or less like most couples behaved back then: in that case I wouldn’t have got my hopes up or gone to La Font or done everything possible to fit in with the gang. It’s probable. But the fact is that Zarco and Tere did not behave like a couple, and unlike Lina, who gave the impression of being in the gang as Gordo’s girlfriend, Tere gave the impression of being in the gang like any of the rest of us. So how was I not going to get my hopes up and think I might have a chance? How was I going to forget what had happened with Tere in the arcade washrooms? It’s true that after that Tere acted like nothing had happened, but the fact is that it had happened and I didn’t get any signal that it could never happen again (or if I did I hadn’t been able to decipher it). Because it’s also true that in the early days I thought Tere was Zarco’s girlfriend, but it soon struck me that, even if she were, she and Zarco did their own thing when they felt like it.’
‘When did you start to think that?’
‘Pretty soon, like I said. I remember, for example, one of the first nights I went with them to Rufus, a discotheque in Pont Major, on the way out of the city on the highway to La Bisbal. That’s where Gerona’s
charnegos
and
quinquis
used to hang out and, as I later discovered, where the gang ended up every night, or almost every night. It was the first discotheque I’d been to, though if you asked me to describe it now I wouldn’t be able to: I always arrived high, and the only thing I remember is a foyer where the bouncers and the ticket office were, a big dance floor with strobe lights and disco balls, a bar on the right and some sofas in the darkest section, where the couples hid.
‘There, as I was telling you, we ended up almost every night that summer. We’d get there about midnight or twelve-thirty and leave when they closed, about three or four in the morning. I spent those two or three hours drinking beer, smoking joints in the washrooms and watching Tere dance from a corner of the bar. At first I never danced: I would have liked to, but I was embarrassed; besides, in general the guys in the gang never danced, I don’t know whether for the same reasons I didn’t or because they considered themselves tough guys and thought tough guys don’t dance. I say in general because, when they played slow songs – things by Umberto Tozzi or José Luis Perales or people like that – Gordo would run down to the dance floor as fast as he could to dance with Lina and, when they played rumbas by Peret or Los Amaya, or songs by Las Grecas, sometimes Tío, Chino and Drácula would dance to them. The girls, however, danced much more, especially Tere, who never stopped from the moment she arrived until we left the place. I, as I said, concentrated on her for hours, watching her as I couldn’t anywhere else, without anyone bothering me or suspecting me (or that’s what I thought). I never got tired of watching her: not only because she was the most attractive girl in the disco or because more than dance she seemed to float over the floor; also because of something else I discovered with time: lots of people – Lina, for example – danced non-stop, but they danced the same way to almost all the songs, while Tere danced differently to every song, as if she adapted to the music the way a glove does to a hand or as if her movements came out of each song as naturally as heat comes off a fire.
‘Sorry: I’ve strayed off on a tangent. I was telling you about one of the first times I went to Rufus. The truth is I don’t remember very clearly what happened that night in the discotheque, but I do remember at two-thirty or three in the morning, when I’d been in there for a while, I felt a hot foam bubbling up in my stomach, went outside and threw up in the parking lot beside the river. After that I felt better and wanted to go back inside, but when I reached the door realized I was incapable of making my way through that mass of humanity enveloped in smoke, music and intermittent lights, and told myself the party was over.
‘I’d gone to Rufus with Zarco and Tere, but decided to go home on my own. I’d been walking for quite a while back towards the city when, very close to the Pedret bridge, a Seat 124 Sport braked beside me. At the wheel was a guy who looked like John Travolta in
Saturday Night Fever
, which was not strange because that summer the nights were full of guys trying to look like John Travolta in
Saturday Night Fever
; at his side was Tere, which was not strange either because that night I’d seen her dance with tons of guys, among them the John Travolta lookalike. Where did you get to, Gafitas?, asked Tere, rolling down the window. I couldn’t think up an excuse to improvise, so I had to resign myself to the truth. I wasn’t feeling well, I said, and leant on the roof of the 124 and down to the window. I puked, but I feel better now. It was true: the night air had begun to clear my wooziness. I gestured towards the nearly dark highway. I’m going home, I announced. Tere opened the car door as she said: We’ll give you a lift. Thanks, I answered. But I’d rather walk. Tere insisted: Get in. That’s when Travolta intervened: Let him do what he wants and let’s get out of here, he said. You shut up, dickhead, Tere cut him off, getting out of the car and pushing her seat forward so I could get in the back. She repeated: Get in.
‘I got in. Tere got back into the front seat and, before Travolta pulled out back onto the highway, she grabbed his earlobe, tugged it hard and said as if she were talking to me at first and then to him at the end: He’s a dickhead but he looks good enough to eat. And tonight I’m going to screw him. Aren’t I, tough guy? Travolta swatted her away, mumbled something and pulled out. Five minutes later, after crossing the bridge over the Onyar and driving all the way up the Paseo de La Devesa, we stopped at Caterina Albert. Tere got out of the car and let me out. Thanks, I said, once I was outside. No problem, said Tere. Are you all right? Yeah, I answered. Then why do you have that pissed-off look on your face?, she asked. I don’t know what look I’ve got on my face, I answered. I’m tired, but I’m not pissed off. You sure?, she asked. Tere put the palms of her hands on my cheeks. You’re not pissed off because I’m going to screw this dickhead tonight?, she insisted, pointing with her head inside the car. No, I said. She smiled and, without another word, kissed me softly on the lips, scrutinized me for a couple of seconds, then said: Next time me and you’ll have a shag, OK? I didn’t say anything and Tere got back in the 124 and the 124 turned around and drove away.
‘That’s how the night ended. And that’s why I was saying that from that moment on my way of looking at things changed: because that’s when I realized that whatever the relationship tying Tere and Zarco to each other, Tere did what she liked with whomever she liked.’
‘And Zarco did too?’
‘Yeah. And it didn’t seem to bother him that Tere did, either.’
‘And you?’
‘What about me?’
‘Did it bother you that Tere slept with other guys?’
‘Of course. I liked Tere a lot, I’d joined Zarco’s gang for her, I would have liked her to sleep with me; I don’t mean that she’d only sleep with me: I mean that she’d at least sleep with me. But what could I do? Things were the way they were, and I didn’t have any choice but to wait for my chance, assuming I’d get one. Besides, I didn’t have anything better to do.’
‘Did you idealize Tere?’
‘If falling in love with someone doesn’t consist of idealizing them, you tell me what it does consist of.’
‘And Zarco? Did you idealize him too?’
‘I don’t know; maybe. Now I detest those who did – actually, that’s one of the reasons I agreed to talk to you: to put a stop to the falsehoods and tell the truth about him – but maybe the first one to idealize him was me. It could be. In a certain way it would be logical. Look, at the beginning of that summer I was just a baby-faced, frightened kid who practically from one day to the next had seen his best friends turn into his worst enemies and realized his family wasn’t capable of protecting him and that all the things he’d learned up till then had been useless and mistaken, so, after the worry and fear of the first days, why wouldn’t I prefer to stay with Zarco and his gang? Why wouldn’t I not be pleased with someone who in those circumstances offered me respect, adventure, money, fun and pleasure? How could I help but idealize him a little? And by the way, do you know what I called Zarco’s gang?’
‘What?’
‘The outlaws of Liang Shan Po. Have you ever heard that name?’
‘No.’
‘No, of course not; you’re too young. But I bet you anything the majority of people my age remember it. It was made famous by the first Japanese television series to be shown in Europe.
The Water Margin
, and here in Spain it was called
La Frontera Azul
, the blue border. It was so spectacularly successful that two or three weeks after it started there was barely a teenager in the country who didn’t watch it. It must have gone on air in April or May of that year, because, when I met Zarco and Tere, I was already addicted to it.
‘It was a sort of Oriental version of Robin Hood. I remember the opening sequence really well: over a background tune I could still hum, the images revealed a rag-tag army of men on foot and horseback carrying weapons and standards, while the narrator’s voice-over recited a couple of identical phrases every week: “The ancient sages said: Do not despise the snake for having no horns, for who is to say it will not become a dragon? So may one just man become an army.” The storyline was simple. It was set in the Middle Ages, when China was governed by I don’t know which dynasty and the empire had fallen into the hands of Kao Chiu, the emperor’s favourite, a corrupt and cruel man who had converted a prosperous land into a desert with no future. Only one group of upstanding men, led by former imperial guard Lin Chung, rose up against the oppression; among them was one woman: Hu San-Niang, Lin Chung’s most faithful deputy. The members of the group were condemned by the oppressor’s laws to a life in exile on the banks of the Liang Shan Po, a river near the capital that was also the blue border or water margin of the title, a real border but especially a symbolic border: the border between good and evil, between justice and injustice. Anyway, all the episodes of the series followed a similar outline: because of the humiliations inflicted by Kao Chiu, one or several honourable citizens found themselves obliged to cross to the other side of the Liang Shan Po to join Lin Chung and Hu San-Niang and the other honourable outlaws. That was the story repeated without too many variations in each episode.’