Blood Crime

by Sebastia Alzamora

  Suddenly, it looked at me and snorted. And then it came toward me.

  It pranced onto the steps of the portal with a solemn gait and lowered its majestic head as it stopped in front of me.

  Then it looked me in the eyes.

  A long, steady gaze.

  A gaze that wasn’t exactly that of an animal.

  I held it and for a long time we studied each other.

  The clamor of war was now muted, distant, as though the droning of airplane engines and the lamentations of its victims issued from another world.

  And they did.

  For monsters are not part of this world—we do not dwell in a fixed physical plane.

  And nevertheless there we stood, beneath the portal of the Church of Bethlehem, on the corner of Carrer del Carme, in plain sight of whoever cared to catch a glimpse of us. But no one did.

  We monsters are not part of this world, but we exist and intervene in it, making our way among men, fashioning ourselves through them. Inside them.

  The black horse’s languid eyes spoke to me of these things. It had recognized me, as I had recognized it.

  Poor beast, in the hands of a mocking angel, poor sad, wayward soul.

  That artificial body was as imposing as the tragedy it contained.

  What kind of mind had deemed it necessary to give life to a monster? What terrible destiny, what infinite sadness, what colossal nostalgia.

  The horse finally averted its gaze, took a few steps, and used its head to push open the door that led inside the church.

  On the street men continued to die as if on another planet.

  I followed the horse into the cool dampness of the temple.

  The light that penetrated the nave through the stained glass windows fractured the darkness that reigned inside.

  In a side chapel with its wrought-iron grille ajar, an iron mite box awaited donations near a great candle holder that now stood empty. Before the war, candles had burned there for the souls of the faithful departed.

  Flicker, flicker, a small flame quivered.

  Then I spotted three men and two women.

  They had entered the church fleeing the air raid and they now encircled the altar, frightened by our intrusion—mine and the animal’s. By the intrusion of the beasts.

  The black horse slowly paced the length of the church’s central nave, stopping to contemplate the side chapels as if a vestige of comprehension in some recess of its being allowed it to recognize the effigies of the saints.

  From time to time it pawed the ground or began to neigh, but then would stop.

  The sound of the horseshoes on the marble floor broke the dreary silence that enveloped everything.

  Outside, the explosions seemed to have stopped.

  The animal approached the altar.

  It paused for a few seconds in front of a clergyman’s tomb and lowered its head to the grave marker, as though wanting to read the Latin inscription.

  Then it turned its attention to the three men and the two women who stood trembling around the altar.

  For a moment time stood still.

  “Scram! Go away! Scram!”

  One of the men, driven not so much by courage as desperation, started shouting and flinging his arms about in an attempt to drive the horse away.

  As though heeding the message, the animal slowly turned around and began to move away. It had not taken three steps when it stopped again.

  It seemed stunned.

  The frenzied man intensified his screaming and approached the horse.

  This proved to be a fatal error.

  The man’s shouting was cut short by a kick that crushed his ribs and sent him flying. He landed on one of the pews of apricot wood arranged in rows in the main nave. His body lay draped over the backrest like a disheveled ragdoll.

  He was dead.

  The women began to weep; the two remaining men were silent.

  The horse gave them a look of boundless sadness.

  Then it turned around and slowly walked the length of the aisle in the opposite direction, toward the portal. The grainy light that filtered through the stained glass windows bounced off its back, lending the blackness of its coat a ruby-like sheen.

  There was such elegance in its gait, such aplomb in its movements.

  Before stepping outside it paused before me once more.

  I saw its mouth full of saliva, the death wish in its eyes.

  The thought came to me that I wanted to live forever.

  I will live forever.

  But I understood the tedium that assailed the beast, the exhaustion and disgust of living.

  It crossed the threshold of the church into streets sowed with dust and death.

  An explosion shook the ground and the stained glass windows.

  The bombardment was not over.

  I turned toward the altar.

  The two men and the two women were still there, weeping and defeated.

  I felt a burning thirst.

  Brother Pau Darder looked through the iron bars across the lone window in the stifling cell where he was being held and saw the rubble and trash piled up in the alleyway outside. He had no notion of where he was, or whether he was still in Barcelona or outside the city. He had no way of tracking time, and his grasp on it was starting to slip. He had become lost in the confines of a space that did not exceed ten square meters. He was a prisoner in his cell.

  The chamber’s only furnishings were a straw mattress and a chamber pot. When night fell and darkness overtook the room, Brother Darder’s only means of lighting the place was the nub of an altar candle which stood on the cement floor propped against one of the exposed brick walls, the combustion of the wick having left a black streak on the rough surface. Brother Darder found it terribly disconcerting that such a small space could hold such desolation.

  During the day, a bit of sunlight found its way into the cell through the glassless window that left him exposed to the elements. Fortunately, a mild autumn was expected and temperatures had thus far not been unmerciful, though, roused by the mistral winds of dawn, he awoke each morning trembling and curled up on the straw mattress. He endured moments of desperation when he would have given anything to see his mother appear in that hellhole, hold him against her fragrant, bountiful breast and, with that comforting smile, whisper to him the adage that had epitomized her approach to life:

  If God so deems it . . .

  But his mother was not to appear, and Brother Pau Darder was left with no consolation other than to tighten his grip around the gold and silver medallion of Saint Michael his parents had given him for his first communion, which he had worn around his neck since that day more than twenty years ago. He grasped the medallion—in the image, an undefeated Saint Michael the Archangel straddled a serpent speared by his sword—and recited the Lord’s Prayer, or the Creed, or the Salve Regina, again and again, until he was able to appease the disquiet that gnawed at him, whereupon he would rise from his pallet and stand in the middle of his cell. But was it all real or had he dreamed it? Every time he fell asleep he entered a nightmare in which he suffered a captivity identical to the one he endured in his waking life. When was he awake and when asleep? When most awake and most asleep? Couldn’t it all be a dream? Awake or asleep, could life itself be a dream?

  The worst was the hunger. On the first day, he had been left a pot of half-boiled garbanzos and another with water. Neither Sirga nor Burntface, who took turns as watchmen, had thought to tell him he would do well to make them last. By going thirsty, he still had a finger left of water, rarefied and with a tinny taste; the garbanzos, however, were all gone, and his stomach and bowels churned with increasingly painful spasms, as though infested with parasites. At times he chastised himself for having eaten the chickpeas too quickly, but he found comfort in the thought that he couldn’
t have done otherwise, for in the end he had had to vie for the remaining beans with a pack of small, shiny worms that frequented the pot with an excess of insolence.

  The rats, meanwhile, ruled the alleyway that the young Marist glimpsed through the window, scurrying amid the debris and large sacks. Big and fleshy, there were so many of them that they seemed to be constantly multiplying—by bipartition perhaps, thought Brother Darder, like a vast family of oversized amoebas.

  A scream coming from outside drew him to the window. For an instant he had hoped to find someone in the alleyway whom he could call on for help. But he understood at once that the sound was just the squealing of a rat bitten by one of its kind in a struggle over a putrid piece of rubbish. The wounded rat tried to fend off its aggressor only to receive another bite to the neck, which was left raw. This did not dissuade it from attempting a counterattack: hobbled and rabid, again and again the rat charged its adversary, who easily dodged the onslaught, waiting for the moment to deliver the final blow.

  Presently a multitude of rats appeared and came together in an almost perfect circle around the two combatants. Brother Darder calculated that there were at least thirty rats, fifty, sixty—perhaps a hundred. They had surrounded the wounded rat, which moved in circles, sniffing the air as though trying to quantify the danger.

  Finally there was another squeal, from the winner of the combat. It was the awaited signal: the rats pounced on their ill-fated comrade. The victim struggled to defend itself for a few seconds, it bit back at random, now gouging out an eye, now tearing off an ear. But its efforts were in vain. In less than a minute it lay on its back, disemboweled. The voracity of its companions was of a chilling efficacy, but the rat was not yet dead, and from the window Brother Darder could hear its dying groan. In the end, the animal was reduced to a formless, bloody mass that a large, mangy, mottled rat placed in its mouth, no doubt intending to save it for later.

  “You look unwell, superintendent.”

  “It’s that rubbish you’re smoking. It makes me nauseous.”

  Superintendent Muñoz strode to a chair, sat down, and stretched out his legs. The morgue was illuminated by an oil lamp that hung from a hook and gave off a milky light, like the skin of a cadaver. Doctor Pellicer took another drag on his cigarette.

  “Are you on the vampire’s trail yet, superintendent?” he inquired in a tone that could have been one of mocking or of sincere interest, it was impossible to tell.

  “It’s not the cigarette.”

  “Excuse me?”

  The superintendent took a deep breath. “It’s not the cigarette that’s making me dizzy. It’s that I’m not sleeping at night.”

  The doctor lowered his head in a gesture of understanding. Without putting his cigarette down, he grasped another chair and sat facing the police officer. A pair of feet protruded from a slab, close to his face.

  “Suffering from insomnia again? Are you fatigued?”

  A speck of badly-ground tobacco crackled. Superintendent Muñoz pressed his brow into his hands and closed his eyes. “It’s not insomnia, doctor. I force myself to stay awake.”

  Doctor Humbert Pellicer looked at him wide-eyed. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to fall asleep. When I do, the nightmare returns.”

  The doctor was silent, waiting for an explanation. As it was not forthcoming, he said: “What nightmare?”

  The police officer removed his hand from his forehead and waved it as if swatting away a fly. “Would you mind putting out that cigarette?”

  Doctor Pellicer let out a moan of resignation and tossed the half-smoked cigarette on the floor; he squashed it with his shoe, as though it were a poisonous insect. “I’m all ears, superintendent.”

  “I’m walking in the countryside at night,” began Superintendent Muñoz, holding his head in his hands again, his eyes fixed on his knees, his voice monotonous. “Not cultivated land, but wild, open fields. The stones and holes in my path make me trip. It’s very cold, a damp, biting cold that soaks through to your bones.

  “It’s the dead of night, starless, moonless, and I grope my way forward. Every now and then I trip and fall. I hold my hands in front of me to protect my face; they are begrimed with earth. I stand up again and continue walking.

  “I hear sounds around me, some I’m able to identify, others not. I think I detect a barn owl, or perhaps it is a long-eared owl, I’m not sure. There’s also a murmur, as of human voices, though it could also be the wind. And a gurgling sound, like a pot of boiling water. Other things, too, but none make me uneasy; on the contrary, it’s as if they are keeping me company. But the only sound I’m able to clearly distinguish does frighten me, and that is the howling of a hound. Sometimes it appears to be coming from afar, others from nearby, and it is always a long, afflicted howl, like a ghost’s lament. But it’s no specter, it is a flesh-and-bones dog, and that is precisely what frightens me. I shiver from cold and apprehension. I keep walking.

  “All of a sudden I come to a wall. It’s the façade of a house, or, more accurately, the exterior of a shack made of mud, stone, and reeds. I grope my way around it until I find an opening with a wooden door. The dog’s howling has ceased, the silence and darkness are complete. I push the door with my hands, but it won’t yield. I lose heart and sit on the ground with my back against the door. With all my being, I wish to enter the shack so I can rest and be safe from the hound, which is now quiet but I know is lurking nearby, spying me.

  “When I’m least expecting it, the door suddenly opens and I fall backward. I am blinded by the white light inside the shack. There’s a great commotion: shrieking and laughter, as though someone were having a party. I rise and, as my eyes adjust to the excess of light, I see the crowd gathered inside the shack. They are laughing in a riotous, uncouth manner, and they point their fingers at me. Some are even writhing on the floor from laughter. And they are all pointing at me. Then I realize that I’m naked and the crowd is laughing at me. I cover my private parts with my hands; I feel humiliated and exposed. Many of the faces are of strangers, but others I recognize; some are living people, others are dead. There’s the slaughtered child from Pension Capell, laughing through his mouth and his slit throat. There’s a bigwig from the Iberian Anarchist Federation who I know suspects me of treason. They call him the Cripple of Sant Elies; he’s laughing under his breath, his body shaking as if he were sobbing. You’re also there, doctor, and you are mocking me just like the others; you shout something to me but I can’t make it out above the ruckus. I can’t take such taunting any longer.

  “I leave the shack and slam the door behind me. The uproar instantly dies down and the unbearable brightness is also extinguished. I find myself alone again in the whispering night that envelops me with murmurs. Things are better now, because despite the moonless sky, a tenuous light has swept across the land, allowing me to see as though on a clear winter night. The shack has vanished, along with all the wickedness it contained, as though it had never existed. I am still naked from the waist down; my chest, though, is covered with a jacket that has appeared from out of nowhere. It’s thick like a military coat, but the material is soft, gentle to the touch. I bundle up to shield myself from the biting air, and despite my cold-stiffened legs, I feel much better than before I entered the cabin. I close my eyes and breathe in deeply.

  “I open them again when the sound of growling alerts me to the hound’s presence. It’s directly in front of me, its head as big as a bull’s, its fur white, as though coated in snow. It looks me in the eye and lets out an uninterrupted, menacing growl that indicates it is about to pounce on me, attack me, kill me. It bares its sharp, yellow teeth, a rabid foaming at the mouth.

  “I consider bolting, but I immediately realize that I have no chance of escaping. Instead, I make an effort to hold its gaze and slowly begin to take off my jacket. The hound observes me; its growling does not let up. The maneuver seems to
go on forever.

  “Finally, it jumps. No, it flies. I see it coming, immense, above me, as though I were floating in the middle of the ocean and a killer wave were about to engulf me. In one breath, I wrap my jacket around my left arm and offer it to the hound. It accepts it and sinks its teeth into the cloth, ripping it, its fangs cutting through to my skin. It clamps its jaws and bites with more and more strength, furious, amid gasps and slobber. I hold my arm as firmly as I can, but the dog appears to be on the verge of severing it. I raise my other arm, and with a clenched fist I slog it on its enormous head. I hear the crushing sound of the skull as it cracks and see the animal’s eyes bulge in their sockets.

  “It loosens its bite, releases me, and takes four steps on trembling legs. Then it falls, heavy and inert.

  “I unwrap my arm from inside the jacket and examine the blood from the bite. Superficial wounds, I think to myself. I approach the dog, which is lying with its back to me, and crouch down to ascertain it’s dead.

  “With a swift heave I turn the animal on its back. Then I see that it has my mother’s face.”

  Iuxta crucem tecum stare

  et me tibi sociari

  in planctu desidero

  Virgo virginum praeclara

  mihi iam non sis amara

  fac me tecum plangere

  Fac ut portem Christi mortem

  passionis fac consortem

  et plagas recolere

  Fac me plages vulnerari

  fac me cruce inebriari

  et cruore filii

  Flaminis ne urar succensus,

  per te, Virgo, sim defensus

  in die judicii

  Christi cum sit hinc exire

  da per matrem me venire

  ad palmam victoriae.

  Sister Concepció read and reread the words of Jacopone da Todi until the letters danced before her eyes and assumed the shape of insects that buzzed about the hymnal before setting off like a swarm of scattering moths, flying through the stale air of her cell, drawing imaginary spirals in their path. The transmutation led her to the presentiment, the impression, that she was not alone in her cell, but accompanied by a presence she could not define, one that manifested itself by a sound that was nearly imperceptible but was nevertheless there: in the great solitude of her stark cell she could sense it . . .