* * *

When the door opened again at the top of the stairs, he was dreaming that he had already died and was in one of those canvas sacks used to remove the corpses from the cells in Montjuïc Castle. He woke from his drowsiness to discover that his tongue was swollen and aching. He put his fingers in his mouth. His gums were bleeding, and his teeth moved when he touched them, as if they were attached to soft mud.

“I’m thirsty!” he groaned. “Water, please . . .”

The steps coming down the stairs were heavier than usual. A light went on with a roar of white noise. Sound was much more reliable than light in the cell. The world had been reduced to pain, the slow decomposition of his body, and the echoes of footsteps and pipes murmuring between those walls. Valls followed the path of the approaching footsteps with his ears. He became aware of a figure that had stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

“Water, please,” he begged.

He crept up to the metal bars and strained his eyes. A beam of blinding light burned his retinas. A torch. Valls moved back and covered his eyes with the only hand he had left. Even like that, he could feel the light moving over his face and over his filthy body, covered in excrements, dried blood, and rags.

“Look at me,” said the voice at last.

Valls removed his hand from his eyes and opened them very slowly. His pupils took a while to adapt to the light. The face on the other side of the bars was different, but it seemed strangely familiar.

“I said look at me.”

Valls obeyed. Once dignity was lost, it was far easier than giving orders. The visitor went up to the bars and examined him carefully, passing the torch’s beam over his limbs and his emaciated body. Only then did Valls realize why the face looking at him from the other side of the bars seemed familiar.

“Hendaya?” he gasped. “Hendaya, is that you?”

Hendaya nodded. Valls felt that his prayers were being answered. For the first time in days or weeks, he could breathe. It must be another dream. Sometimes, anchored among shadows, he held conversations with saviors who came to his rescue. He strained his eyes again and laughed. It was Hendaya. In the flesh.

“Thank God, thank God,” he sobbed. “It’s me, Mauricio Valls. Valls, the minister . . . It’s me . . .”

He stretched out his arms toward the policeman, weeping with gratitude, ignoring the shame of being seen that way, half naked, mutilated, and covered in shit and urine. Hendaya took a step forward.

“How long have I been here?” asked Valls.

Hendaya didn’t reply.

“Is my daughter Mercedes all right?”

Hendaya offered no answer. Valls stood up with difficulty, holding on to the bars until his eyes were level with Hendaya’s. The policeman was looking at him with no expression. Was Valls perhaps dreaming again?