“Martín? Is that you?” asks Valls.

He gets no reply. The jailer just stares at him without saying a word. Al last Valls nods, as if wishing to imply that he understands the rules of the game.

“Water, please,” he groans.

For a long time the jailer remains impassive. Then, when Valls thinks he’s imagined it all and the man’s presence is only an image from the delirium caused by pain and by the infection that is eating him alive, the jailer walks down a few steps.

Valls smiles submissively. “Water,” he begs.

The spurt of urine splashes his face, burning the cuts that cover it. Valls howls and jerks back. He drags himself backward until he hits the wall, and there he cringes and curls up into a ball. The jailer disappears up the stairs, and the light goes out again behind the echo of a heavy door closing.

This is when he realizes he’s not alone in the cell. Vicente, his loyal bodyguard, is sitting in the corner, leaning against the wall. He doesn’t move. Only the shape of his legs is visible. And the hands. The palms and fingers are swollen and have a purple hue.

“Vicente?”

Valls drags himself over there but stops when he notices how close the stench is. He takes shelter in the opposite corner and doubles himself up, hugging his knees and burying his face between his legs to get away from the smell. He tries to conjure up the image of his daughter, Mercedes. He imagines her playing in the garden, in her dollhouse, traveling in her private train. He imagines her as a child, with those eyes of hers fixed on his, those all-forgiving eyes that shed light where there had always been darkness.

After a while he surrenders to the cold, the pain and exhaustion, and feels he’s again losing consciousness. Perhaps it is death, he thinks, hopeful.

2

Fermín Romero de Torres woke with a start, his heart throbbing like a machine gun. He felt as if the world was sitting on his chest. The hands of the alarm clock confirmed his worst suspicions. It wasn’t even midnight. He’d only half slept for an hour before his insomnia had charged at him again like a runaway tram. Next to him, Bernarda snored like a little calf, blissfully asleep in the arms of Morpheus.

Fermín, I think you’re going to be a father.

Pregnancy had made her more enticing than ever, her blossoming beauty and her entire self a feast of curves into which he would gladly have dug his teeth at that very moment. He was considering finishing off the job with his characteristic “midnight express service,” but he didn’t dare wake her and break that heavenly peace radiating from her face. He knew that if he did, there would be two alternative outcomes: either the H-bomb of hormones that oozed from her pores would explode, and Bernarda would transform into a wild tigress who would slice him up, or else the spark of lust would turn out to be a damp squib, rendering his saintly wife a prey to fears, including the thought that any attempt at docking anywhere near her nether regions might put the baby at risk. Fermín didn’t blame her. Bernarda had lost the first child they’d conceived just before their marriage. Such was the sadness that had come over her that Fermín feared he was going to lose her forever. In time, just as the doctor had promised them, Bernarda was once again in the family way, and had returned to life. But now she lived with the constant panic that she might lose the baby, and sometimes she even seemed to be afraid to breathe.