Street of Thieves (21 page)

PERHAPS
it was this long familiarity with corpses that facilitated things; those two months of death made the prospect of robbing Señor Cruz easier to imagine—he had returned as planned after three days, exhausted, he said, by the truck journey into the depths of Morocco. He seemed happy to see me again.

He told me about his trip, which had gone well, he had brought his five corpses to Beni Mellal, all by chance to the same place, it was both practical and horrible. As usual, the women had cried terribly, their wailing had bored into his ears, the men had dug the graves, and that was it. He had only enough time to stop in Casa for a night to pig out, he said these words with such sadness in his reedy voice,
pig out,
that it could just have easily have been referring to his last meal.

Cruz poured himself some whiskey.

He had me sit down across from him in an armchair, offered me a drink, which I refused.

He said nothing, the whole scene seemed to call for conversation, confidences, but he was silent; he drank his Cutty Sark, glancing at me from time to time, and I felt more and more nervous.

I tried to speak, to ask questions about his trip to Morocco, but when he replied his answers were monosyllabic.

He finished his drink and politely offered me another before helping himself again.

After an endless quarter of an hour of silence, which I spent looking in turn at my knees and at his impassive face, I left, asking him to excuse me, I had to feed the dogs; he motioned with his head, accompanied with a brief smile.

Once in the yard I breathed a sigh of relief, I was trembling like a frail thing. Through the window, I saw Cruz's fat face, haloed by the electric blue of the computer screen, resume his stupefied contemplation of the forms of death.

I felt in danger; fear overcame me, powerful, irrational; I went to kneel down with the mutts, their muzzles nosed into my armpits, the softness of their fur and their clear gaze comforted me a little.

CRUZ
always seemed to be hovering on the verge of speech.

I had never encountered madness before, if Cruz was mad—he didn't launch into unreasonable diatribes, didn't bang his head against the walls, didn't eat his excrement, wasn't overcome with delirium or visions; he lived in the screen, and in the screen, there were terrible images—old photos of Chinese tortures where men bled, attached to posts, their chests cut open, their limbs amputated by executioners with long knives; Afghan and Bosnian decapitations; stonings, stomachs ripped open, defenestrations, and countless war reports—strange, I thought, fiction is much better filmed, much more realistic than documentaries or the photos from the beginning of the century, and I wondered why, above all, Cruz always looked for the mention of “reality” in his pictures; he wanted the truth, but what difference could it make: he had his storage room full of corpses, he knew them intimately, he had frequented them for years, and I still wonder today what could have motivated this pathological virtual observation, he should have been cured of death yet he was gorging on miles of scenes of tortures and massacres. What was he looking for, an answer to his questions, to the questions the stiffs didn't answer, a questioning about the moment of death, the instant of passage, perhaps?—or perhaps he had simply been engulfed by the image, the bodies had made him leave reality and so he was burrowing into cyber-reality to find there, in vain, something of life.

As the days went by, he frightened me more and more, for no reason—he was the most inoffensive of creatures; he was gentle with me, gentle with his dogs, respectful of the dead. Every day I thought about asking him for my passport and up and leaving, too bad about the cash, farewell Mr. Cruz, the drowned and the bluish light of tortures on YouTube, come what may—but every night, in my cubbyhole, reassured by the company of the dogs, by the softness of their fur, by their panting calm, I would resume my dreams of theft, of the two or three thousand euros that Cruz's safe might deliver to me. I had sketched out a plan, one of those schemes that only work in books, until you try them: go into town to buy a similar key, it might be a common model, and substitute it on the key ring, which he often left in the entryway—of course the new key wouldn't open the safe, but when he realized it, with a little luck I'd be far away.

All the corpses I washed and put into their boxes justified my petty theft, I thought—but Mr. Cruz had an honest profession, he wasn't killing these poor people himself, he was charitable, he didn't bleed the families of the deceased, his prey was the State, the autonomous Community of Andalusia that paid his per diem for the carcasses of my compatriots, but all the riches I saw him accumulating, his gold rings, the chains around his neck, his black shirts, his car, his two huskies with their blue eyes in the sheltering shade of his creeping vines, all that seemed to me to be stolen from the Dead, seemed to belong to those nameless stiffs who had dreamed for a while of a better life, who had thought, like me, that they could make themselves a place in the world, and out of respect for this dream I thought I could appropriate some of his cash, as a little revenge for these poor martyrs who had known the pangs of drowning, experienced agony in the black solitude of the waves.

The more my determination increased, the more the possibility of putting my thoughts into action kept me awake at night; how could I get hold of the key to the safe, when should I run away, how—I had to go by foot to the bus stop, three hundred meters
away, and I had to await the pleasure of the very erratic Andalusian intercity transportation system. That's when I would be most vulnerable, just like in novels. Books and prisons were full of guys who made huge blunders and who were nabbed without any difficulty whatsoever, just like that, at a bus stop or a sidewalk café. That wouldn't be my way. The bus, the bus station, the 11
PM
coach, and the next day I'd be in Barcelona, lost in the crowd.

I couldn't make up my mind to act. Cruz was hypnotized by the Internet more and more; he stayed late, sometimes till ten at night, exploring videos—he had discovered a site called
faces of death
where hundreds of violent deaths could be found: a young Iranian demonstrator killed by the forces of order, Egyptian revolutionaries beaten to death by the police, Libyan soldiers burned alive in their Jeep, Syrian children massacred—current events filled the Internet with documents for Cruz.

One particularly dark day, the Strait vomited up an old, very damaged corpse that people walking on the beach had discovered—the judge visited, gave notice that this detritus on the sand could be chucked, the pathologist concluded death by drowning, and Cruz rushed there with his hearse to take charge of the remains before any of the competition: it was very sad and very gruesome, the guy had tattooed “Selma” in Arabic over his heart, that's all that could be used to identify him: he no longer had a face, at least nothing recognizable, and we quickly, very quickly closed him up in his zinc box so as not to see him anymore. Señor Cruz threw on his rubber gloves, then his mask; he had a little tear in the corner of his right eye, which he erased by rubbing his face against his bicep, arm outstretched. He sighed, turned toward me, without saying anything, he crossed the yard to walk to my hut, the dogs followed him wagging their tails, thinking he wanted to play or give them some food; he re-emerged from the garden shed holding a bottle, I wondered if he had hidden a liter of Scotch there without my ever noticing it, but the container looked smaller than his eternal Cutty Sark. He
made a sign to me to follow him into the office; he said in his tiny voice:

“We've earned a drink, haven't we, Lakhdar?”

He sat down as usual behind his screen, shook the mouse, entered his password; I remained standing.

“Sit down, sit down, we'll have a drink and talk a little.”

I searched for an excuse to escape, but couldn't find any; I was too exhausted from taking care of the corpse to think—I ended up worn out every time.

I sat on the sofa. I looked at the bottle he had placed on his desk; it was a half-liter glass flask, the label was facing him. Mr. Cruz needed a stiff one; his long face was pale, his eyes red-rimmed. He put on a video, out of force of habit—he stared at the screen for a second before stopping the procession of images of death that I couldn't see.

“So, Lakhdar, a little whiskey?”

Suddenly he was extraordinarily nervous, he went to the kitchen, returned with two glasses and some ice in a metal bucket.

I didn't want to annoy him, so I agreed. It might do me good, too.

He immediately seized a bottle of Cutty on the shelf, opened it, poured whiskey into two glasses, threw two ice cubes into each, and downed his in one gulp, even before I could pick mine up. He breathed out an ahhh of relief, poured himself another, handed me my glass before collapsing into his armchair, looking relaxed.

I emptied half the liquid in one gulp as well. I had never drunk whiskey. For me it was a legendary drink you had to taste in a bar in London, or Paris, with a girl at your side. Taste of crushed bedbugs, burning sensation in the esophagus. Hard to understand the interest of my authors in this beverage. Especially in a situation like this.

Cruz was watching me, as usual, on the verge of speech; he always seemed on the point of saying something that never came out, an eternal stammer. He began a phrase with my first name, said,
Lakhdar? I answered yes Mr. Cruz, and then nothing, he stared at me in silence.

I prayed to get out of this place as soon as possible. Too bad about the money, too bad about everything; I was going to get my passport back and leave. Go back to Morocco, find Tangier again, forget Algeciras, forget the dead, forget Judit and Barcelona.

I was just about to say to Cruz that I wanted to go home. It was the right moment, he looked a little placated by the alcohol; he hesitated again, articulated Lakhdar? without saying anything else. He seized the little flask, poured himself a large swig, and added a hefty dose of whiskey until the glass was three-quarters full. Then he stared at the mixture; he swirled around the ice that hadn't melted yet.

I got up, I couldn't sit still anymore. I said Mr. Cruz . . . He looked at me with such a look of pain, such suffering marked his fat face, all of a sudden, that I muttered that I had to go feed the dogs.

He passed his hands over his face, as if to wipe away some absent sweat.

“Lakhdar?”

“Yes, Mr. Cruz?”

“Come back soon, I'll wait for you.”

And he downed his cocktail all at once, with an air of relief.

He had one of his silences, as if he were hesitating about adding something, and then he whispered:

“You're in luck, you'll see.”

The phrase was cryptic; I imagined, as I played a little with the huskies before getting out their food bowl, that Cruz had realized I wanted to leave, that he wanted to wish me luck for the future.

When I went back to the office after feeding the dogs, he wasn't there; I heard a noise in the bathroom, of vomiting; he came out staggering.

“Are you okay, Mr. Cruz?”

He swallowed with difficulty, his mouth twisted, his face so tense that his eyes were rolling around like marbles.

“It's starting, Lakhdar.”

He's dead drunk, I said to myself.

He sat down on the sofa facing the desk; he seemed to be having trouble breathing; he crossed his arms over his stomach, looked as if he were in great pain.

“It won't last very long . . . Watch closely . . .”

His lips were drawn out, he was grating his teeth; his face reddened, his shoulders were overcome with tremors, he lifted his knees to his stomach to relieve the pain.

“Mr. Cruz? Are you sick?”

He looked as if he wanted to answer, but no sound managed to form in his throat; he lifted his chin toward me, his hands were nervously patting each other. A dew of sweat covered his forehead, a drop of blood trickled from his nose, his lips turned purple, his head began to shake from right to left, leaning forward, as if to chase away the suffering, as if he couldn't believe what was happening to him—but the movement transformed into a terrifying contraction of the tendons in his neck, to the side first, then backward; his Adam's apple rose and fell, vibrated along his taut throat, like a big insect.

He was suddenly seized by a huge spasm that threw him onto the floor, his arm flung out, his legs arced as if he wanted to jump, he began shouting, I went over to him:

“Mr. Cruz, can you hear me?”

He still couldn't manage to answer and I was overcome with terror—he couldn't swallow, his neck was stiff, his chest lifted up, his back arched, his eyes looked as if they were about to explode. His body was a steel cable tensed with suffering, he was trying to speak, trying to grab my arm, but his wide-open hands twisted outward, the fingers stiffly spread apart—it lasted about twenty seconds,
maybe a little more, and he went limp; he went limp, sighing, groaning, breathing very loudly, I shouted Mr. Cruz, what is the number for emergencies? The number for an ambulance? He didn't answer, I rushed to the telephone, feverishly tried dialing 1-5, as in Morocco, nothing happened; I looked quickly at his desk to see if there was a phone book, but no.

Cruz was suddenly overcome by a second convulsion, even more violent than the first, if that was possible; his eyelids drew almost completely back into the sockets, disappeared behind the eyeballs, it was horrible to see, his face was blue, his feet managed to fold the thick plastic of his soles like cardboard, he rose up, moved by the absolute tension of all the muscles, in a sharp cry that seemed to come from the depths of his thoracic cage—tears started to well up in my eyes, Señor Cruz, Señor Cruz, I didn't know what to do, I thought I should go find a neighbor, ran outside, ready to run the two hundred meters that separated us from the nearest house, or to stop a car passing by on the highway; once in the yard I remembered that bitch of a fence was always locked, instead of going all out and climbing it I chose to turn back and take the key from Cruz's pocket, to be able to open it for the ambulance.