The Barcelona Brothers (28 page)

He won’t wait any longer. He opens the window. He steps back two paces to get a running start. He tightens the knot around his neck, leaps up on the windowsill, steadies himself, and jumps. A great crash at his back confounds the sound of the capsizing wardrobe with that of the apartment door, which Alex has just knocked down.

In the void, there are no clouds and barely any air to breathe. An instant ago, Epi wanted to die, and now he wants to land on his feet and do himself as little damage as possible. An instant lasts an eternity, but, incomprehensibly and simultaneously, an eternity lasts hardly any time at all. He’ll no longer be alive. He’ll see nothing more. He won’t know any more about anything or anybody. And his brain, terrified by the pain of the impact that’s about to occur, remembers nothing of his life. That was a lie, too. He has no especially emotional childhood memories. Tiffany’s image doesn’t pass before his eyes, not even when she loved him, if she ever did. Nothing like that. Instead, an absurd recollection comes to his mind. Something his memory has preserved whole and intact, right down to the smallest detail. While he falls, Epi remembers a little girl who accidentally got a ballpoint pen stuck into her palate. They
had to call an ambulance and take her to the outpatient clinic, where a doctor gave her three stitches. The name of the boy who caused the accident by pushing her down was Roger. The girl was Genoveva. Some of their classmates said they liked each other. Roger denied it. Genoveva remained silent. How absurd that
that
should be his last thought before dying.

Alex bursts into the room and falls facedown on the door. From the floor, he can see his brother jump out the window. He starts to get up and go to it, but the
mosso
presses his shoulders down and clambers over him. Pep has a better take on the scene and heads for the other end of the rope, which is in the bedroom. The elder Dalmau brother tries to get to his feet and follow the policeman. His thoughts hurtle at full speed from one bit of foolishness to another. If he grabs the rope, he’ll only burn his hands or help to hang his brother. What if he tries jumping too and catching Epi in his arms in midair and cushioning the impact with his own body? What if …?

He reaches the window, looks down, and sees the other
mosso
moving toward his brother’s body, which is hanging from the climbing rope and about to slam into the wall of the building. The policeman’s peaked cap has fallen off, and he’s stepping rapidly along the sidewalk with his arms outspread, as if someone has thrown him a bundle of clothes. Alex perceives that the two of them, his brother and the policeman, are going to do themselves harm, grave harm, and implicit in Alex’s thought is the feeling that his brother’s going to get out of this. For sure.

Pep enters the bedroom and spots the girl in a corner. Good news: she’s alive. The wardrobe has crashed onto the mattress and shattered like a clumsy wooden giant. The rope’s still attached to only one of the wardrobe’s feet. Pep throws himself on the wardrobe, and while his body staves in the back of the ruined piece of furniture, he manages to free the rope at the precise moment when Epi is waiting to feel either the impact with the concrete or the mortal jolt that will break his neck. One or the other.

The liberated rope runs like a breath between Alex’s legs. It goes through the window, following the same destiny as its master. The rope seems to fall lazily. Rubén’s arms and Epi’s legs snap almost in unison, with a dull pain. Then Epi and Rubén are lying on the ground, motionless, in agony, whimpering. People draw near to help them. Alex sees it all from a distance. As usual.

THE NIGHT SEEMED TO BURST INTO TANVEER’S AND
Epi’s ears. They were making the racket themselves, descending the steeply graded streets at a gallop, both of them all too aware that their refuge lay farther down, farther down, a little farther down, in their barrio near the sea, which was felt or smelled or imagined but never seen. A dog barked, but the sound was immediately lost in the distance. They were two perfect machines. Everything—arms, legs, head—was working on command, just as it should.
So few people living in these enormous houses
, Tanveer Hussein thought as he passed through one of his city’s wealthier neighborhoods on the last night before his death. After some time had passed, he looked back. No one was following them. They were going to get away, but not by much this time. They should go to the nearest police station and report the van as stolen. Then, if things didn’t get too agitated, in a few days they could go back and
find that whore on the job and bribe her with money to keep her pretty little mouth shut.

“Stop, stop, stop …”

He thought it was crazy to keep going at this speed. Besides, it made him laugh to see Epi running his ass off like that, with his hair looking electrocuted and his generally slovenly appearance, hanging on to that gym bag as it bounced here and there, out of control.

“Stop, son of a bitch! I’m gonna piss in my pants!”

Epi halted his headlong plunge a few strides farther on and retraced his steps. His heart was about to jump through his mouth, he was almost unable to speak, but even so, he felt he was in good shape. Much better than the
Moro
. He’s going to be able to do it. He’s going to be able to take him. For sure.

“Man, I was watching you run and practically pissing myself. What the fuck are you carrying in there?”

“In this?” Epi said, holding up the bag. “Papers for the van and tools for work.”

“Let’s go pee.”

They went up to the wall of a mansion, one of those former summer houses that had been converted into clinics for old folks with rich children. Without saying anything, they pulled down their zippers and began to urinate. The yellowish fluid crackled against the wall. As he’d done on many another occasion, Epi gave Tanveer’s equipment a sidelong inspection, checking out what he put in Tiffany’s mouth or between her legs. The sight always revolted him, infuriated him, and
covered him with absolute sadness, as if someone had dropped a blanket on him from the sky.

“That was some fucking whore, huh?”

“Yes, but …”

“But what?”

“But you go too far.”

“Why do I go too far, dipshit? Why?” Tanveer asked, taking Epi’s face in one hand, which still smelled of urine, and squeezing until Epi’s lips took on the shape of a kiss. “You think they don’t like it?”

“Let go of me, man!”

Epi shook off Tanveer as best he could. The
Moro
was already on to something else. He came up with a pack of cigarettes and began to smoke one, sitting on the curb not very far from the wall they’d pissed on. Epi remained standing. The cocaine made it hard for him to keep still.

“We should keep moving. If a patrol car spots us alone out here, they’re going to stop us.”

“What’s with that? You don’t have the right to smoke on the street in peace in your country?”

“It’s your country, too, Tanveer.”

“What country, nutball? You all don’t even know its name.
Sóc català. Visca el Barça
. Fucking right. I’m from the Country of Allah, and we’re going to screw all of you bastards to the wall.”

“If they stop us, I’ve got the papers for the van in here. We should go and fill out a stolen vehicle report.”

“You should. I haven’t been here. Besides, no way I’m getting close to a police station. You go. We’ll meet up tomorrow.”

“Let’s go together. You can wait outside, and then we’ll go by Carlos’s to see if he’s open.”

Tanveer smiled but said nothing. When he finished his cigarette, he bounded to his feet, went up to Epi, and put his arm around his shoulder. They began to walk south, toward the barrio. “If Tanveer didn’t love you so much,” he said, “you’d get yourself fucked up for sure.”

They crossed two squares without talking. Epi remembered that there was a police station near a hospital, and the hospital seemed to be the one they were approaching. Tanveer, who was subject to sudden spells of drowsiness nobody appeared to believe in at all, started to feel very sleepy. With all the shit he’d been mixed up in today, he hadn’t yet been able to take a little nap. He decided to wait inside a cash machine kiosk already occupied by a homeless person he knew from somewhere, for some reason. The beggar opened the door and greeted him.

In the police station, Epi filled out the form. He indicated that the vehicle had been stolen the previous afternoon, almost twelve hours earlier. The policeman didn’t ask him what he’d been doing since then and why he was reporting the theft at that hour.

As he left the police station, Epi had his doubts as to whether he’d find Tanveer in the kiosk. But there he was, and wide awake.

“I didn’t expect you to be here.”

“I didn’t sleep at all. This bastard can really snore. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“Where are we going?”

“To Carlos’s, no?”

Carlos had renovated an old two-story cafeteria and converted it into a trendily seedy nightclub where the music was mostly Brazilian and the hours of operation very ill defined. On Thursdays there was salsa music, on Tuesdays free daiquiris, and, on the upper floor at all hours, drug trafficking. When Epi and Tanveer arrived, they were welcomed with hugs and two drinks of unknown origin.

“What
is
this shit?” Tanveer asked Epi.

“Looks like a Cuba libre.”

“Since when do people buy me Cuba libres?”

“They’ve mistaken us for two other guys.”

“Don’t talk nonsense.”

“It was a joke.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“They must have had them already made.”

The black singer La La could belt out heartrending boleros with great precision, but he didn’t know Bambino or Los Chichos. Professor Malick was delivering his spiel to a couple of young South American yokels, and Clara, the Chilean woman, drunk and crazy, was going around looking for a few good whacks no one would give her. Her ex-husband was a policeman, and she always used that fact as a threat when she was getting ready to let herself go a little. Some posh-looking ladies in their fifties with recently premiered implants came in, accompanied by an older man wearing a ponytail and the look of one who’d arrived late everywhere he’d gone for the last twenty years.

“This bar is full of crazies. I don’t know what we’re doing here.”

Epi didn’t answer. He pressed the gym bag containing the hammer between his legs and counted the passing minutes as what they were, a countdown. He drank his Cuba libre in four gulps and asked for a Tanqueray and tonic. No, two. He knew Tanveer, and he was one of those types who always order what the other guy has ordered.

“Thanks, nutball.”

They were both sitting on stools far from the bar, looking at the fauna in the room as if they weren’t part of it.

“So what about you?” Tanveer asked him.

“What about me?”

“I don’t know … Do you have a girlfriend, or are you a fag? You’re never with anybody.”

“I’m doing without women.”

“Or women are doing without you.”

This was followed by silence. Carlos came by and explained something about an argument with someone they were apparently supposed to know.

“I know what’s up with you.”

“What’s up with me?”

“You still like Tiffany.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes it is.”

“No, that happened and now it’s over.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Satan. Things are never over.”

Epi raised his glass to his lips and took a long sip of his cocktail. If that was Tanqueray, he was the pope. His mother once saw the last pope in Rome. She had proof. She kept a photograph hanging on the wall in her apartment. Even though at first glance, it looked as though it was the pope who had come to the Vatican to visit Señora Dalmau. How strange life was. There they were, he and Tanveer, the two of them together, like old friends talking about old loves. Like in those computer games where if you undress all the characters you see that nobody’s who they say they are. Look at the people at the bar. Look at yourself. Carrying a one-pound hammer in a sports bag and buying your victim a gin and tonic.

“Why do you like to go with whores?”

“What do you mean, fucker?
I
don’t like to go with whores. It’s the whores who like me to go with whores. In the Country of Allah, there are no whores. Here the women are all whores.”

“Does Tiffany know about it?”

“Are you crazy, or what? But they like it if a man penetrates other pussies. Believe me.”

Another silence. La La began a rendition of “La vida loca.” Tanveer said, “I like this song. So, do you want to fuck Tiffany again? She’s willing.”

“What are you saying?”

“Would you like to or not? She told me you would.”

“I’m not paying attention to you.”

“But it’ll have to be a threesome. I do her from behind while she’s sucking you off and all that sort of thing.”

At that moment, Carlos climbed on the bar and asked the crowd to leave the premises. One of his sisters was arriving from Brazil this morning, and he had to be at the airport by seven-thirty. He barely had time to straighten up the place and change his clothes. Then he asked La La to sing the song about the night saying good-bye. It was a Rubén Blades song whose title no one, not even La La, knew for sure. Epi suggested going to Salva’s. He’d be opening in a little while. Outside the night belonged to those who slept, to children and the innocent.

Carlos Zanón is the author of four volumes of poetry and three novels, which have received wide critical acclaim in Spain.
The Barcelona Brothers
is his first novel to be published in English. A literary critic and screenwriter, he has also collaborated as a lyricist for rock bands. He lives in Barcelona.

John Cullen is the translator of many books from Spanish, French, German, and Italian, including Yasmina Khadra’s Middle East Trilogy (
The Swallows of Kabul
,
The Attack
, and
The Sirens of Baghdad
), Christa Wolf’s
Medea
, Manuel de Lope’s
The Wrong Blood
(Other Press) and Eduardo Sacheri’s
The Secret in Their Eyes
(Other Press). He lives in upstate New York.