Read The Prisoner of Heaven: A Novel Online
Authors: Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Only then did it occur to him that perhaps Martín had not worked everything out, that he’d missed a key detail. After all, nobody knew for certain what they did with the prisoners’ dead bodies. Martín may not have stopped to consider that perhaps they got rid of them by throwing them into a furnace. He imagined Salgado, waking up from his heavy chloroform-induced sleep, laughing and saying that Fermín Romero de Torres, or whatever the hell he was called, before burning in Hell, had burned in Life.
The journey continued for a few minutes. Then, as the vehicle began to slow down, Fermín noticed it for the first time. Never in his life had he smelled anything so revolting. His heart shrank and as an indescribable stench brought on waves of nausea, he wished he’d never listened to that madman, Martín, and had remained in his cell.
When the governor arrived at Montjuïc Castle, he stepped out of the car and rushed into his office. His secretary was ensconced behind his small desk near the door, typing the day’s correspondence with two fingers.
‘Leave that and get that son-of-a-bitch Salgado brought here at once,’ he ordered.
The secretary looked at him, disconcerted, wondering whether he should open his mouth.
‘Don’t just sit there like a halfwit. Get moving.’
The secretary stood up, looking flustered, avoiding the governor’s furious eyes.
‘Salgado has died, Governor. Just tonight …’
Valls closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
‘Governor … sir …’
Without bothering to explain, Valls ran off and didn’t stop until he reached cell number 13. When he saw him, the young jailer snapped out of his drowsiness and gave him a military salute.
‘Your Excellency, what …’
‘Open up. Quick.’
The jailer opened the cell and Valls charged in. He walked over to the bunk and, grabbing the shoulder of the body lying on it, pulled hard. Salgado was left face up. Valls leaned over him and smelled his breath. He then turned towards the jailer, who was looking at him terror-stricken.
‘Where’s the body?’
‘The men from the undertaker’s took it …’
Valls slapped him so hard he knocked him over. Two guards had turned up in the corridor, waiting for instructions from the governor.
‘I want him alive,’ he told them.
The two guards nodded and left at a brisk pace. Valls stayed there, leaning against the bars of the cell shared by Martín and Dr Sanahuja. The jailer, who had got to his feet and hardly dared breathe, thought he saw the governor laughing.
‘Your idea, Martín, I suppose?’ Valls asked at last.
The governor bowed lightly and, as he walked away down the corridor, slowly clapped his hands.
Fermín could feel the lorry slowing down and negotiating the last obstacles along the dirt track. After a couple of minutes of potholes and groans from the lorry, the engine stopped. The stench wafting in through the canvas was indescribable. The two gravediggers walked round to the rear of the lorry and Fermín heard the click of the metal bar that locked the back panel. Suddenly, a strong pull on the sack flung him into the void.
He hit the ground on his side, a dull pain spreading through his shoulder. Before he could react, the two gravediggers lifted the sack from the stony ground and, holding one end each, carried it uphill until they stopped a few metres further on. They dropped the sack again and then Fermín heard one of them kneel down and start to untie the knot. He could hear the other man’s footsteps as he moved away and picked up a metal object. Fermín tried to take in some air but that miasma burned his throat. He shut his eyes and felt the cold breeze on his face. The gravedigger grabbed the sack by the closed end and tugged hard. Fermín’s body rolled over stones and puddles.
‘Come on, let’s count to three,’ said one of them.
Four hands gripped him by his ankles and wrists. Fermín struggled to hold his breath.
‘Hey, listen, isn’t he sweating?’
‘How the fuck can a stiff be sweating, you jerk? It must be the puddles. Come on, one two and …’
Three
. Fermín felt himself swing in the air. A moment later he was flying and had abandoned himself to his fate. He opened his eyes in mid-flight and all he managed to see before the impact was that he was plunging into a ditch dug into the mountainside. In the moonlight he could only glimpse something pale covering the ground. Fermín was convinced that what he was seeing were stones and, calmly, in the half-second he took to fall, decided he didn’t mind dying.
But the landing was gentle. Fermín’s body had fallen on something soft and damp. Five metres further up, one of the gravediggers was holding a spade which he emptied into the air. A whitish powder spread like a shiny mist that caressed his skin and, a second later, began to devour it like acid. The two gravediggers walked away and Fermín stood up to discover he was in an open grave packed with rotting bodies and covered in quicklime. He tried to shake off the fiery dust and scrambled over the bodies until he reached the wall of earth. He climbed up the wall, digging his hands into the earth and ignoring the pain. When he reached the top, he managed to drag himself to a puddle of dirty water and wash off the lime. He stood up and saw the lights of the lorry disappearing into the night. Turning around for a moment to look behind him, Fermín stared at the open grave spreading at his feet like an ocean of tangled corpses. He felt sick and he fell on his knees, vomiting bile and blood over his hands. Panic and the stench of death almost stopped his breathing. Then he heard a rumbling sound in the distance. He looked up and saw the headlights of two cars approaching. He ran to the side of the hill and reached a small esplanade from where he had a view of the sea at the foot of the mountain and the lighthouse of the port at the end of the breakwater.
High above him, Montjuïc Castle rose among black clouds that swept across the sky and masked the moon. The sound of cars was getting closer. Without thinking twice, Fermín threw himself down the slope, falling and rolling through tree trunks, stones and brambles that hit him and tore his skin off in shreds. He no longer felt pain, or fear, or tiredness when he reached the road, from where he set off running towards the warehouses in the port. He ran without stopping or breathing, losing all sense of time, unaware of the injuries that covered his body.
Dawn was spilling over the horizon when he reached the boundless labyrinth of shacks blanketing the beach of the Somorrostro. An early mist crept up from the sea, snaking between the rooftops. Fermín wandered through the alleyways and tunnels of the city of the poor until he collapsed between two piles of rubble. He was found by two ragged children, dragging wooden boxes, who stopped to stare at the skeletal figure that seemed to be bleeding from every pore.
Fermín smiled at them and made the victory sign with two fingers. The children looked at one another. One of them said something Fermín couldn’t hear. He then abandoned himself to exhaustion and with his eyes half open was aware of being lifted from the ground by four people and then being laid down on a camp bed near a fire. He felt the warmth on his skin and slowly recovered the feeling in his feet, hands and arms. The pain came later, like a slow but unstoppable tide. Around him, hushed voices of women murmured blurred words. They removed the few rags that still clung to him. Cloths soaked in warm water and camphor caressed his naked, broken body with infinite gentleness.
He opened his eyes a fraction when he felt the hand of an old woman on his forehead, her weary, wise gaze fixed on him.
‘Where have you come from?’ asked that woman whom Fermín, in his delirium, mistook for his mother.
‘From among the dead, Mother,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve come back from among the dead.’
Barcelona, 1940
The incident at the old Vilardell factory never made the papers. It didn’t suit anyone to let the story come out. What took place there would only be remembered by those present. That very night, when Mauricio Valls returned to the castle to discover that prisoner number 13 had escaped, he informed Inspector Fumero of the political police division about a tip-off from one of the prisoners. Before sunrise, Fumero and his men were already posted in their positions.
The inspector left two of his men guarding the perimeter and concentrated the rest at the main entrance, from which, as Valls had already explained, one could see the guards’ lodge. The body of Jaime Montoya, the prison governor’s heroic chauffeur who had volunteered to enter the premises alone and investigate a prisoner’s claim regarding the existence of subversive elements, was still lying there among the rubble. Shortly before daybreak, Fumero ordered his men to enter the old factory. They surrounded the lodge and when its occupants, two men and a young woman, became aware of their presence, only a minor incident occurred: the woman, who carried a firearm, shot one of the policemen in the arm. It was just a scratch. Apart from that slip, Fumero and his men had overpowered the rebels within thirty seconds.
The inspector then ordered his men to round them all up into the lodge and drag the body of the dead driver inside too. Fumero didn’t ask for names or documents. He had the rebels disrobed and bound hand and foot with wire to some rusty metal chairs lying in a corner. Once the rebels had been tied down, Fumero told his men to leave him alone with them and post themselves by the door of the lodge and by the factory gates to await his instructions. On his own with the prisoners, he closed the door and sat down facing them.
‘I haven’t slept all night and I’m tired. I want to go home. You tell me where the money and the jewels you’re hiding for Salgado are and nothing will happen here, all right?’
The prisoners stared at him with a mixture of bewilderment and terror.
‘We don’t know anything about jewels or about anyone called Salgado,’ said the older man.
Fumero nodded somewhat wearily. His eyes moved unhurriedly over the three prisoners, as if he were able to read their thoughts and was bored by them. After a few moments’ uncertainty, he chose the woman and drew his chair closer until he was barely half a metre away from her. The woman was trembling.
‘Leave her alone, you son-of-a-bitch,’ spat the other, younger man. ‘If you touch her I swear I’ll kill you.’
Fumero smiled wistfully.
‘Your girlfriend is very pretty.’
Navas, the officer posted by the door of the lodge, could feel the cold sweat soaking his clothes. He ignored the shrieks coming from inside. When his colleagues threw him a furtive glance from the factory gates, he shook his head.
Nobody exchanged a single word. Fumero had been in the lodge for about half an hour when finally the door opened behind Navas. He stepped aside and avoided looking directly at the damp marks on the inspector’s black clothes. Fumero walked slowly towards the gates while Navas, after a brief look inside the lodge, closed the door, trying not to vomit. At a signal from Fumero, two of the men came over carrying cans of petrol and doused the walls of the lodge and the surrounding area. They didn’t stay behind to watch it go up in flames.
Fumero was waiting for them sitting in the passenger seat when they returned to the car. They drove off in silence as a column of smoke and flames rose above the ruins of the old factory, leaving a trail of ashes spreading in the wind. Fumero lowered the car window and stretched out his hand into the cold, humid air. He had blood on his fingers. Navas drove with his eyes fixed ahead, but all he could see was the pleading look of that young woman, still alive, before he closed the door. Aware that Fumero was watching him, he gripped the wheel tight to hide his trembling.
From the pavement, a group of ragged children watched the car drive by. One of them, making the shape of a gun with his fingers, pretended to be firing at them. Fumero smiled and replied with the same gesture. Seconds later, the car disappeared into the narrow streets surrounding the jungle of chimneys and warehouses, as if it had never been there.
Fermín spent seven days in the hut, delirious. No damp cloth managed to calm his fever; no ointment was able to ease the pain which, they said, was consuming him. The old women of the place, who took it in turns to look after him and give him tonics in the hope of keeping him alive, said that the stranger had a demon inside him, the demon of remorse, and that his soul wanted to flee to the end of the tunnel and rest in a dark void.
On the seventh day, the man whom everyone addressed as Armando and whose authority in the shanty town was second only to God’s went over to the hut and sat down next to the sick man. He examined his wounds, lifted his eyelids with his fingers and read the secrets written in his dilated pupils. The old women who nursed him had gathered in a circle behind Armando, waiting in respectful silence. After a while Armando nodded to himself and left the hut. A couple of young men who were waiting by the door followed him as far as the line of surf where the waves broke on the water’s edge, and listened carefully to his instructions. Armando watched them leave and stayed on, sitting on the wreck of a trawler that had been washed up by the storm and lay there, halfway between the beach and purgatory.
He lit a small cigar, enjoying it in the dawn breeze. While he smoked and considered what he should do, Armando pulled out a page from
La Vanguardia
he’d been keeping in his pocket for days. There, buried among advertisements for girdles and publicity for the latest shows in the Paralelo district, was a brief news story about the escape of a prisoner from Montjuïc Castle. The item had the stale taste of an official communiqué. The only licence the journalist had allowed himself was a closing remark declaring that never before had anyone succeeded in escaping from that unassailable fortress.
Armando looked up and gazed at the mountain of Montjuïc, rising to the south. The castle, with its crenellated towers outlined in the mist, presided over Barcelona. Armando smiled bitterly. He set fire to the article with the embers from his cigar and watched it turn to ashes in the breeze. As always, newspapers avoided the truth as if their life depended on it, and perhaps with good reason. Everything about that story smelled of half-truths and unspoken details. Among them the claim that nobody had ever been able to escape from Montjuïc Prison. Although in this case, he thought, the news item was probably right, because he, the man they called Armando, only existed in the invisible world of the poor and the untouchables. There are times and places where not to be anyone is more honourable than to be someone.