At times, the track seemed to peter out into nothing. Lisa would walk ahead and call out when she had located it once more. We finally reached the ridge of the mountain in the late afternoon. This was the border. We could clearly see the track that led down into Spain, to the border town of Portbou. As expected, there was no question of my going back to Port-Vendres. Lisa gave me her jacket to keep me warm and, with a wave of her hand, commenced the return to town to fetch the others. I watched her until she disappeared from sight and lit a Salomé to calm my nerves. The sun was already sinking in the west, the shadow of the mountains stretching out across the world. Once the sun was gone, the sky turned its various shades of blue, green, and pink. I spent a frigid night sheltering as best I could in a small copse of little pines, shivering with cold, straddling the border, wondering at the width of that invisible line between two countries. A border is nothing but a fiction—only one that holds the power of life and death over countless people. Still shivering, I wrote in the moonlight to pass the time. I was edging ever closer to finishing the story I had tasked myself with writing. When the moon set, it became too dark to write, so I sat there, contemplating the stars overhead to take my mind off the cold. As fatigue finally took over, they seemed to take the shape of an albatross, wings outstretched across the sky, curving from one horizon to the other.

Go here.

THIS IS WHERE the story ends: at this writing desk, on this wobbly chair, in this damp hotel room, with its smell of countless men, their cigarettes and ointments and sorrows. The naked lightbulb above is buzzing. On the wall in front of me is a framed black-and-white picture of Franco, a balding man with a neat mustache wearing an overcoat with a fur collar. His expression is of calm certainty. Above the iron bedstead hangs a wooden crucifix.

I woke on the mountaintop this morning in a pre-dawn light and waited for Lisa and the others to meet me. An hour or so later I spotted them in the foothills: Lisa, Henny, and Joseph. It was mid-morning by the time they arrived, bringing bread, cheese, sausages, and water. After eating, we finally crossed the border into Spain and began the slow descent to Portbou. For the first time in weeks, I felt a stirring of hope. It didn’t last very long. We made our way to the police station, where we were promptly arrested.