“Prepare yourselves, gentlemen,” one of the seconds announces gravely.
Without turning, Pépé Lobo glances at the group: two officer friends of his opponent, a surgeon and Ricardo Maraña. Ample witnesses to attest afterward that no one was murdered and that the duel was conducted outside the city walls in a spirit of honor and decency.
“Ready, Señor Virués?”
Although there is not a breath of wind, and the only sound is the murmur of the sea lapping against the rocks, Pépé Lobo does not hear the reply, but sees his opponent nod without ever taking his eyes off the corsair. Having drawn lots, Virués has his back to the sea, while Lobo stands on the part of the reef that leads to La Caleta and the star-shaped fortifications of the Castillo de Santa Catalina. In fifteen minutes the rising tide will likely come up to his bootlaces. But by then this matter will have been settled and one or other, if not both of them, will be sprawled on the wet rock, where the lantern light now shimmers on small pools left by the ebb tide.
“Ready, Señor Lobo?”
With some difficulty—his mouth is dry—the corsair utters the terse “yes” required. He has never fought a duel before, but he has shot many men or faced them with swords in the heat of battle, on decks slick with blood, the air thick with splinters and shrapnel from enemy cannonfire. In a job such as his, where survival is the only birthright one can risk to earn a crust, life and death are mere cards dealt by Fortune. His trump card tonight is the professional sangfroid of a man accustomed to danger—something, Lobo knows, that is equally true of his opponent. Grudges and quarrels aside, he knows that it is not fear of public opinion that brings Virués here tonight, but an old score, which he too has long postponed since the business in Gibraltar.
“Prepare to advance, gentlemen … On my signal.”
In the moment before he clears his mind and focuses on raising the pistol and advancing on his opponent, a last thought flickers through Pépé Lobo’s brain: today, he wants very much to live. Or, more exactly, to kill his adversary. To wipe him from the face of the earth forever. The corsair is not motivated by some idea of honor; at this point in his life and his profession, it matters little to him. He leaves honor, its posturing and the hellish burden of its grisly consequences to those who can afford such luxuries. He has come here to the reef at Santa Catalina with the intention of shooting Lorenzo Virués: putting a bullet in his chest and wiping the stupid, supercilious expression from his face. Virués is a man who sees the world in the simplistic terms of a bygone age; a man who, by birth or by chance, knows nothing of how hard it is to be forced to live in his shadow, nor how cold it is outside. Whatever happens—Lobo thinks one last time before focusing on his own life-or-death struggle—Lolita Palma will think it was because of her.
“Advance!”
All around him now is shadow and gloom; the darkness is like a black curtain beyond the circle of light, which grows brighter as Lobo slowly advances, careful to remain in profile. He stares fixedly at his adversary, also moving, closer now, more visible. One pace. Two. It is a matter of keeping a sure footing and a constant aim—this is what it comes down to now. It is not reason but instinct that gauges the distance, decides when to open fire, checks the finger tensed on the trigger, struggling against the urge to fire before the other man does. To fire and be done with it. The corsair advances carefully, teeth clenched, his every muscle tensed for the dull impact of half an ounce of lead. Three paces now. Or perhaps four. It seems like—perhaps it is—the longest walk in the world. The ground is uneven, making it difficult for the hand that grips the pistol—his arm extended and flexed slightly at the elbow—to keep a steady aim.
Five paces. Six.
The flash startles Pépé Lobo. So focused is he on edging closer and keeping the pistol steady, he does not even hear the shot. He simply notices the sudden flare from his opponent’s gun and has to struggle not to pull his trigger. A bullet passes less than an inch from his right ear with the ominous buzz of a lead blowfly.
Seven paces. Eight. Nine.
Pépé Lobo feels no satisfaction or relief, only a sense that he might now live a little longer than seemed likely five seconds ago. He has managed to hold fire, though this is not how duels usually play out. His pistol aimed, he continues to advance. In the glow of the lantern, now only a few paces away, he sees the contorted face of Lorenzo Virués. The officer stands stock-still, the smoking pistol still half-raised as though he is caught in the moment between realizing he has fired and the certain knowledge of disaster. The corsair knows what is expected of a man in such circumstances. He also knows that it is not what he plans to do. The course of action much favored by polite society would be to fire without advancing any further, or to deliberately shoot into the air now that the heat of the moment has cooled. After the first exchange—usually simultaneous—no gentleman would shoot his opponent in cold blood at point-blank range.
“For the love of God, señor!” cries one of the seconds.
It may be a reproach, thinks Lobo. A call to honor or a plea for mercy. Virués, for his part, does not say a word. His eyes are fixed, as though hypnotized, by the barrel of the pistol coming toward him. Not for a moment does he look away, not even when Pépé Lobo draws level with him, lowers his gun, pressing the nose against Virués’s right thigh, and fires, shattering his leg.
THE NIGHT IS almost pitch black; the faint glow of the waning moon outlines the whitewashed terraces and the watchtowers of the tall houses. A municipal street lamp burns in the distance near the convent, but the glow is too far off to reach the low, narrow portico where Rogelio Tizón is crouching. Further up the Cuesta de la Murga, the shrine of the Archangel Michael trampling Satan is barely visible in the gloom.
But in the distant glow of the street lamp, a pale figure is moving slowly. Tizón watches as the figure draws closer, passes beneath the archangel’s shrine and carries on up the hill. The comisario takes a moment to study the crossroads, then leans back against the wall again. As he expected, it is going to be a long night. One of many, he fears. But patience is the cardinal virtue of the hunter. And tonight he is hunting. Using live bait.
The pale figure turns and, retracing its steps, walks back toward the corner. In the hushed silence of the street, where no lights flicker in the shuttered windows, comes the sound of hesitant footsteps. Unless Cadalso has fallen asleep, thinks Tizón, he should see the bait as it moves along the section of the street he is watching from an apothecary’s window on the Plaza de la Carnicería. At the far end of the route, another agent has been posted on the Calle del Vestuario, next to the street lamp by the convent. Between the three of them, they have the whole block and its adjoining streets under surveillance, with the shrine as the main axis. The original plan was to cover a larger area, with additional officers posted in the surrounding streets, but at the last moment Tizón changed his mind, fearing that too many men might create suspicion.
The bait stops next to a doorway, framed against the distant lantern. From his hiding place, the comisario can clearly see the pale smudge of the white shawl intended to act both as a lure for the killer and a visual reference for him and his officers. It goes without saying that the girl has no idea of the danger she is in or the true nature of the role she has been called upon to play—a fact that surprises no one, given that Rogelio Tizón is involved. She is a young prostitute from La Merced; the same girl that some months ago Tizón saw naked, sprawled facedown on a filthy bed as he traced the tip of his cane along her back and peered into the abyss of his own dark desires. Her name is Simona. She is sixteen now and, in the light, she looks less fresh and innocent than she did then—the time she has spent plying her trade in Cádiz has left its mark—but at first glance, with her blond hair and pale skin, she is young, delicate. Tizón had little trouble convincing her: fifteen duros to her pimp—a man named Carreño—on the pretext of luring local married men to later blackmail them. Or something of the sort. Whether Carreño swallowed this cock-and-bull stor
y does not matter: he pocketed the money, and the future leniency of the comisario, asking no questions—and certainly not whether this had anything to do with the rumors he had heard about young girls being murdered around the city. That was none of his business, still less so if Rogelio Tizón was involved. Besides, as he said when he agreed to the deal, that is what whores are for, señor. To be whores and do the bidding of magnanimous police commissioners. As for Simona, she accepted the situation with the resignation of a woman meekly doing the bidding of her man—whoever that might be. After all, it made no difference to her whether the clients were married men or bachelors, soldiers of rank or otherwise, or whether she walked this street or that. She’d still have to scratch the same itch.
The pale smudge of the shawl has begun to move off down the street again. Rogelio Tizón watches as the girl walks to the corner of the Calle del Vestuario then stops, a still shadow framed in the lamplight. A little while ago, the comisario’s interest was piqued when a man strolled past her, but he turned out to be just another passerby and the girl, having been duly forewarned, paid him no heed. Her instructions were precise: do not approach anyone, simply be on the alert. So far, three men have passed; only one of them stopped, to hurl abuse at her, before going on his way.
Time is passing and Tizón is exhausted. He would like to sit on the steps in the shelter of the doorway, lean against the wall and take a nap. But he knows this is unthinkable. He clings to the hope that Cadalso and the other officer have likewise resisted the urge to close their eyes. Half asleep, images of the street randomly flicker through his mind: the shadows, the pale smudge of the white shawl pacing up and down, memories of the murdered girls. There are pictures of the city too, a vast chessboard, its squares all black in the darkness. Struggling to keep his eyes open, Tizón pushes his hat back off his forehead and unbuttons his coat, hoping the chill night air will shock him awake. Damn it all. Right now, he would give his soul to be able to smoke a cigar.
He shuts his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them again the girl is close by. As she paces up and down, she has casually contrived to position herself near him. She stops next to the doorway, facing the street, a shawl around her shoulders and her head bare, doing nothing that might reveal the policeman’s presence. She is wily and discreet, Tizón thinks; he stares at the curve of her shoulders, lit by the soft glow of the moon above the houses.
“I’ve had no luck tonight,” the girl whispers, her back to the comisario.
“You’re doing a good job,” he says in the same low voice.
“Thought that last gent was going to stop, but he didn’t. Just stared at me and walked past.”
“Did you get a look at his face?”
“Not really. The lantern was too far away … He looked strong, though, with a face like an ox.”
The description piques the comisario’s interest for a moment. One of the things he has recently been wondering is how a man’s features might relate to his character and his proclivities. Among the many false leads he has blindly followed up in this investigation is a theory he discovered in a book lent to him by Hipólito Barrull some months ago: De humana physiognomonia. The treatise was written two hundred years ago, but its hypothesis is of considerable interest to the policeman: to what extent is it possible to deduce the virtues and vices of an individual from his physical traits? It is a speculative art (to call it a science would be excessive, as the professor qualified when he lent him the book) according to which dangerous people, those predisposed to crime and delinquency, have a tendency to reveal such propensities in their face and body. At the time, Tizón devoured the book and then spent days wandering the streets of Cádiz, constantly on the alert, hawk-eyed and suspicious, attempting to find the face of the murderer from among the thousands he encountered every day—seeking out the pointed heads that foretell evil, the low brows suggestive of stupidity and slow-wittedness, the thin or conjoined eyebrows indicating a proclivity for vice, the horse-like teeth suggestive of wickedness, the misshapen ears of the lecherous goat, the flared nostrils of shamelessness and cruelty—as Tizón remembers, an ox-like face was linked to cowardice and sloth. The experiment ended one sunny morning when, stopping in front of the window of a fan shop to light a cigar, the comisario saw his own reflection and realized that, according to the theories of physiognomy, his aquiline nose was an unambiguous sign of nobility and magnanimity. That very afternoon he gave the book back to Barrull and wiped the matter from his mind.
“If you want, Comisario, I can entertain you a little.”
Simona says this in a whisper, her back to him, looking out into the street as though she is alone.
“A quick frig, won’t hardly take a minute.”
Tizón does not doubt the girl’s willingness, but it takes him less than three seconds to dismiss the idea. This is not the time or place.
“Maybe some other time,” he says.
“As you like.”
Indifferent, Simona sets off again toward the Calle de San Miguel, melting into the darkness until all that is visible is her white shawl. Rogelio Tizón moves away from the walls and shifts his position, stretching his numbed limbs. Then he looks up at the night sky, beyond the house with the shrine to the archangel. A singular fellow, that Frenchman, he thinks to himself, with his field guns and trajectories and his initial reluctance; in the end, unquenchable curiosity got the better of his misgivings. The policeman smiles, remembering the way the artillery captain requested recent data, exact details of the ideal points of impact and how best to communicate them across the bay. Let us hope he keeps his word tonight.
Again comes the urge to close his eyes, images from this night mingling in his befuddled state with remembered nightmares. The mutilated flesh, the exposed bones, the fixed, staring eyes covered with a film of dust. And a distant voice whose accent and sex it is impossible to determine, whispering words like here, or to me. The comisario nods off for a second, waking with a start, and looks up toward the Calle de San Miguel expecting to see the faint gleam of the white shawl. For a moment he thinks he sees a dark shape moving, a shadow gliding along the wall opposite. Sleep fashions its own ghosts, he thinks.
He cannot see the shawl. Perhaps Simona has stopped at the end of the street. First worried, then panicked, he scans the darkness. He cannot hear the girl’s footsteps. Stifling the urge to rush from his hiding place, Tizón carefully pokes his head out, trying to make sure he is not too visible. Nothing. Nothing but darkness on the corner of the street and the faint glow of the lantern in the distance. In any case, she should be heading back by now. Too much time has passed. Too much silence. The image of the chessboard again appears before him. The ruthless smile of Professor Barrull. You didn’t see that move coming, Comisario. He’s got away from you again. You’ve made a mistake and lost another piece.
The surge of panic hits him as he rushes from the doorway, running blindly toward the dark corner. Finally he sees the shawl, a white stain discarded on the ground. Tizón races past it, comes to the corner and anxiously looks around, trying to see through the shadows. Only the faint glow of the waning moon, now hidden behind the flat roofs, reveals the bluish outlines of the balcony railings, the dark frames of windows and doorways, magnifying the blackness of every corner, every hidden recess in the soundless street.
“Cadalso!” he yells frantically. “Cadalso!”
At the sound of his voice, one of the shadowy corners, a niche that extends like some frightening crack into the dark heart of the little square, seems to stir, as though a shadow has come to life. At the same moment, a door is flung open behind the comisario; the rectangle of light cuts the street like a knife blade, and he hears Cadalso’s footsteps pounding toward him. But by now Tizón is already running, plunging into the murky square. As he comes closer, he can just make out a crouching shape which suddenly splits into two figures: one sprawled on the ground, the other running quickly, hugging the walls of the houses. Without stopping at the first, the comisari
o attempts to catch up with the second figure as it crosses the street, heading for the corner of the Cuna Vieja; it is framed for an instant in the light, a black figure running quickly and soundlessly.
“Stop, police! Stop!”
Lights and candles appear in some of the windows along the street, but Tizón and the shadow he is chasing have already left them far behind, cutting rapidly through the square on the Calle de Recaño toward the Women’s Hospital. The comisario can feel his lungs burning from the strain, and he is further hampered by his cane—he lost his hat along the way—and the long redingote flapping around his legs. The shadow is moving with incredible speed, and he finds it increasingly difficult to keep pace.
“Halt! Halt! Murder!”
The distance between them now is insurmountable, and the hope that some neighbor or passerby might join the pursuit is fading—they are moving too quickly through the streets, it is a winter’s night and almost two o’clock in the morning. Tizón can feel his strength failing. If only he had brought his pistol, he thinks.
“Son of a bitch!” he howls impotently as he comes to a halt.
The Siege Page 53