The Barcelona Brothers (18 page)

He’s had enough of Bambino for tonight, so he tries the radio. Tanveer’s finished with the first part of his circus; for the next few minutes he’ll be calm. The monster needs a little time to recover. There’s a possibility that the girl he’s with may get away relatively unscathed. But not without a good scare, and with her taximeter at zero. Epi finds a classical station, but the music’s a bit too prissy for his current mood; farther along the dial, a female voice elicits responses from lonely listeners with sappy poetry and sentences you have to turn over in your head a thousand times before you can think you’ve understood them. He keeps scanning the dial and comes upon a song in English. The well-informed Epi translates the song: “Tonight’s the Night.”
A warning, Epi, almost a premonition
.

This isn’t the first time he’s fantasized about getting rid of Tanveer. Mentally, that sports bag and the hammer inside it have lain at his feet on many other nights. But this time’s the last. He wants to feel the relief that comes when there’s no longer a decision to be made because you’ve just carried it out, when you’re standing in front of a single door. He lowers his window a little to let out the smoke from his cigarette and immediately raises it again because the next act of the farce has begun. Tanveer insists on entering her rear, but the whore
doesn’t want to do that, or he can’t; in any case, he gets mad, and surely he’s going to start slapping her around. Epi puts the van in gear, planning to drive to a more discreet spot. When he hears the motor humming in front of him, when he feels in control of the situation, he calms down. The smoke from his cigarette gets in his eyes. He curses, wipes his nose with his shirtsleeve, and heads uptown. He knows this song, too. Good station. The disc jockey hardly talks at all. The whole program must be recorded. Professor Malick once told him that everything on the radio’s been recorded for at least the last twenty years. Apparently, at the end of the 1980s, there were some superhuman recording sessions in which the following years of music were put on tape; from time to time, breaks for news are interspersed to keep up the pretense.

The song’s a swindle. At first, the singer—who the hell is it? It sounds like—no, it’s not him—says he’s crying because he’s lost his girl. Then he wishes the guy who took her away from him good luck. He advises him to be there for her, to concentrate on every detail, even the minor ones, and not to let the girl get sad or want for anything. He seems to be suggesting that his rival give her what he himself didn’t or couldn’t, with the result that she left him. Then comes an exhortation: if he, the rival, can’t love her, then he’s urged to send her home, where the singer’s waiting for her. Epi doesn’t know why. So he can give her a piece of his mind? So he can torment himself, so his blood can boil the way Epi’s does when he thinks of Tanveer screwing Tiffany wherever and however he feels like? Or maybe so she’ll come back to him and everything will be
as it was in the beginning, better than it was in the beginning, because now they both know they can’t be apart? The night sends coded messages over the airwaves and either can’t or won’t decipher them to Epi’s liking. Therefore he changes stations again and again until finally he gives up and returns to Bambino’s CD, turned really loud.

However, he can’t get that other song out of his head. At least the protagonist of the song knows where he went wrong, unlike Epi himself, who lost Tiffany and still doesn’t know why. No one has taken the trouble to explain it to him. He never neglected her, he always tried to make sure she was happy and content when they were together. He loved her deeply, right from the first moment he saw her. And she was fine with that, you could tell, until Tanveer Hussein appeared. If it weren’t for the
Moro
, they’d surely still be together. They could be living under the same roof. He’d have found a better job than making deliveries. Something, anything. They would’ve left the barrio. Maybe he would’ve enlisted in the army so he could get big and strong and she could see him in his uniform or his khaki undershirts and melt like butter. But it was never a good idea to leave Tiffany alone for very long. The Peruvian girl was his if he inundated her, if he filled every minute of her time, twenty-four hours a day. When she was alone, she tended to get muddled, confused, and she always wound up running in the direction opposite to his.

Epi lies when he tells himself that had his rival deserved Tiffany, he, Epi, would have accepted losing her. He’s lying to himself, but he knows it. No, he would never have accepted
that. When Tiffany comes to understand who Hussein is, she won’t love him, she’ll rip out however much or little of him she carries inside. Epi stops at a traffic light. The whore screams, and he turns up the volume. Louder, Bambino, louder. The songs have soured his mood, bringing him closer to the final decision. Why not do it now? He doubts very much that the blonde the
Moro
’s banging will want to testify against the man who rescued her. Epi turns around to see what’s going on behind him and calculate his chances of success. His idea has been to kill him after their night on the town, during the twenty- or thirty-minute nap Hussein usually takes on the carpeted floor of the van, but why not move everything up?

Tanveer’s on all fours, on top of the woman. His arms are braced like columns, his hands pressing on her shoulder blades. Epi figures she’s put her backside in the best possible position for suffering the least amount of pain. After some thrashing, Tanveer seems to be pinning her with one hand and squeezing his prick with the other to wring out the last spasm of the night. Epi could take the hammer out of the sports bag at his feet now. He could come to a stop, pull up the handbrake, and turn around toward the interior of the van. And once he’s back there, he can break open Tanveer Hussein’s skull. He won’t give him so much as a chance to reply or even the pleasure of knowing why he’s being killed. It sounds easy.

He’s going to do it. But when he sticks his fingers inside the bag and wraps them around the handle, something in his rearview mirror attracts his attention. A Guàrdia Urbana squad car with its cobalt blue lights flashing is bearing down
on them. Epi immediately yanks his hand out of the sports bag and warns his passengers: “Hey, you two, be quiet back there now. Nice and quiet.”

The car passes alongside them. One of the officers gives Epi a challenging look, but the car continues on its way. There must be some bad accident up ahead; otherwise, they would probably have hassled him. Would certainly have hassled him. Epi breathes a sigh of relief, but he knows his moment has passed: Tanveer’s beside him, asking questions. “What’s going on?”

“An Urbana car with its lights flashing. See them? There they go.”

They both hear the noise the prostitute makes when she jumps out of the van and starts running. Two in one night. It’s practically comical. The Moroccan must have forgotten to lock the rear door—or maybe that was just his way of giving the bravest ones a chance. Tanveer, who’s not wearing pants, orders Epi to get out and follow the whore. Epi mentally rebels, but he obeys. He runs after her and chases her down immediately. The woman’s desperate and half-naked. She looks at him with horror. Epi doesn’t know if her panicked face inclines him to compassion or to the most unbridled fury. “Please, please,” the woman implores him, crouching down and covering her head with her hands, as if expecting another rain of blows.
Please what
, Epi asks himself.
What the hell can be done in a situation like this?
She turns away, doesn’t want to go back to the van with him. Nonetheless, Epi grabs her by the collar of her blouse and hauls her along the roadway. The avenue is deserted, but he has to be careful, because there
will always be somebody curious enough to wonder if such a violent scene deserves a call to the cops. There’s no time to lose. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. Really. You get in the van, and I’ll drive you back to where you were. Or home, if you want.” But the young woman—rightly—doesn’t trust him. No, no, and no.

A fit of rage is a wicked goblin that takes possession of you. And it disappears as suddenly as it seizes. It gives no explanations and leaves behind no handbook of apologies for later use. It—whatever it may be—simply happens. Violence has no ears. It gives no warning that it’s imminent. It neither runs nor jumps; it only explodes. Letting yourself go, releasing all the brakes, proves to be stimulating. Not stopping to consider whether it’s proper to plant your fist in a woman’s face, to kick her where she’s not covering herself, to pull her by the hair until she gives in and starts walking. Like gasoline or glue, blood has a deep, intense smell, it completely fills all the openings in your head, it reminds you that somewhere there exists an order you alone dictate. How can you help liking that?

Epi shoves the young woman, a mulatto, into the van. A blond mulatto, what a rarity. Tanveer’s sitting calmly in the passenger seat, looking merry. He must have seen Epi in the rearview mirror, and although he tells him nothing, he must feel almost proud of him. He doesn’t speak to the woman, either. He looks as though he’s forgiven her for running away, or as though his patience is at an end. Epi sits in the driver’s seat.

However, when he puts the vehicle in gear, the rear door of the van opens wide again. Epi gets out to close and lock it. At
this point, the whore makes another attempt to escape. Tanveer grabs her with his one free hand, because he’s busy knocking the ash off a hashish cigarette with the other. In fact, he holds her back almost negligently. The woman goes over the top of Epi’s seat and kicks herself free of Hussein’s grasp; in her desperation, she strikes the ignition key and breaks it in two. She jumps out of the van and starts running down the street.

This time, Epi’s not going to pursue her. Let her beat it. She’s won her freedom by acting like a wild horse. Tanveer doesn’t even move. He’s through with the woman; he won’t do the same job twice. Epi looks at both sides of the street to make sure nobody’s seen anything. He gets in the van and immediately realizes he’s not going to be able to start it. He looks furiously at Tanveer, but the
Moro
’s sunk in a lethargy due to too much alcohol and too many pills, too many ejaculations and too many lines, too many blows struck left and right in the course of this long night.

“Why didn’t you stop her?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“She fucked us good, Tanveer. She broke the ignition key. We can’t start the engine, man. If she gives us up, they’ll come and find us parked here and we’ll be fucked.”

“She won’t do anything.”

“Get out of the van.”

“What?”

“Get out.”

Tanveer seems to wake up. He didn’t like Epi’s tone. Epi just smacked a slut around, sure, but that’s all the credit for
heroism Tanveer’s going to allow him tonight. If he has to slug Epi himself a few times, there’s no doubt he’ll do it.

“Get out and push,” Epi insists. “The road starts going downhill in about a hundred meters. I’ll see if I can get this thing to start.”

The
Moro
obeys. It’s the first time Epi’s ever ordered him to do something and he’s done it. The beast manages to climb up into the back of the van when it begins to pick up speed. Epi can’t make the van start, but dead engine and all, they glide down the slopes that descend to the city, go through miraculously green traffic lights, circle roundabouts like bright deserts of gray asphalt. At Epi’s side, Tanveer laughs like a man possessed. In the end, Epi laughs, too. He no longer remembers striking that woman in the street, that bundle of hair and teeth and fingernails. He no longer remembers the songs on the radio station that was his accomplice for a while. He no longer remembers who he is or where he’s going. He looks at his companion, and their raucous laughter resounds against the night. As the streets he turns down become increasingly more level, Epi decides to park the van as best he can and come back for it tomorrow. He no longer remembers that tomorrow he’ll most likely have better things to think about.

IT’S JUST A MATTER OF TIME. MAYBE ONLY MINUTES
. The police may already have realized that “Granada” can refer to something besides a city. A street, for instance, on the border between this barrio and the one with the Casas Baratas, the cheap government housing. It’s even possible they were on to that from the beginning and limited themselves to dropping the hook and paying out the line. In the midst of the disaster with the cell phone, at least a text message from Epi, however laconic—“See you Granada”—got through, and it’s offered his older brother some hope.

Nevertheless, what he’d most like to do would be to go home. Stretch out on the bed, close his eyes, and let sleep knock him out long enough for everything to take place without him. According to its nature and destiny. But he knows that won’t happen. He knows there’s no way of getting around the fact that there’s something he and he alone can do. He can
go and pull Epi out of that safe house and tell him the Tanveer matter is being taken care of. And maybe he can get Epi to start explaining what the fuck’s the story with that carpeted van of his, what went on in there when he and Hussein pulled one of their all-nighters. Epi can pin as much of the rap as possible on the
Moro
, save his own ass, and then disappear. Let him never return to the barrio. Let him go to Australia and send postcards with kangaroos and Santa Claus every Christmas.

In the meantime, Alex, as always, will stay here. Stuck in place, dug in like a centaur’s hooves. He never could nor ever will fly very far away. There was always something, some better or worse excuse. His abandoned mother, his sick mother, and now his dead mother. But today he’s exhorting himself to get out of the barrio, out of the city, at some point in the not-too-distant future. He’ll have to do it alone, because there’s no rescue operation under way for him. He’s known that for a while. He’ll go to Ibiza or to Nepal with a load of drugs, and there he’ll buy girls, learn to levitate, find peace.

Deep down inside, he envies his brother. He envies the passion he feels, the passion that drove him crazy. All the prodigality of tragedy, of disaster. In the beginning, he figured his brother’s crush would last a week. The time it would take to realize that some things are possible and others not. But what happened was that Epi persevered and got the girl.