“You bastard!” shouted Escorza, breathless.
Ordaz, Fernández, and Portela made as if to help him, but before they could get close the animal turned on its legs and delivered a brutal, precise kick to Manuel Escorza’s head, crushing his skull. His face was reduced to a bloody pulp.
Gil Portela was the first to react: “Kill him! Shoot, for God’s sake!”
As the soldiers scrambled to load their rifles, Gil Portela lifted his weapon and shot Brother Darder; he groaned as the bullet hit him in stomach. With that, Hadaly seemed to suddenly go mad, rearing and neighing with formidable force. A well-delivered kick to Antoni Ordaz’s chest killed him on the spot. Aureli Fernández, who had been standing beside him, started running without looking where he was going and a few steps later tripped on the bodies of the dead Marists.
The militia reloaded their weapons and discharged them on horse and horseman. Gil Portela emptied his gun on Brother Darder, who felt the bullets that pierced his flesh as a blessing that brought him closer to rest.
If God so deems it . . .
The men continued to shoot, wounding Brother Darder in the chest, side, back, and legs. Stigmata—he still had time to think. Finally, a bullet drove through his ear and put an end to his pain. But not that of Hadaly, who also had five or six bullets in his body, and yet continued to put up a ferocious fight—more ferocious with each new wound he received. With Brother Darder’s body still mounted on his back, the horse neighed profusely and foamed at the mouth, as he delivered kicks right and left. One kick left two soldiers dead on the ground, another badly wounded two others. Some reloaded their rifles and continued to shoot at the horse; others began to flee in all directions.
Gil Portela had used up all his ammunition and decided it was time to get out of there. He would make his way to the street and take one of the cars, and he would not stop until he was across the border. To hell with everything, he said to himself. He turned to the mother abbess, who appeared mesmerized by the whole spectacle, shoved her, and made as if to run off.
“Not so fast, Gil,” he heard someone say.
He had time to catch a glimpse of Superintendent Muñoz’s face before he heard a shot and everything went black.
The militiamen who had survived Hadaly’s attack ran toward the main door out of the convent. The horse was breathing laboriously as it lay in the middle of the courtyard beside Brother Darder’s body. It was dying—if creatures such as Hadaly ever died. Did monsters die?
Only the mother abbess and Aureli Fernández were left standing. Fernández was plowing through the bodies of the Marists as though he had gone mad. The superintendent approached him and aimed his weapon at him.
“Don’t,” said the mother abbess. “Please. You’re not like them. You are not a criminal.”
Yes I am, he thought, but he lowered his gun and took a deep breath. He still felt like weeping, and he was unspeakably exhausted, but he knew he had to hold up. He looked at the Mother Abbess.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded. She glanced at her brother, sprawled on the ground, his head smashed. The sight made her feel better.
“And Sister Concepció?” the mother abbess asked anxiously.
“Unharmed, I believe,” the officer responded. The mother abbess breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ll go and fetch her and Bishop Perugorría. You can let the sisters out of the chapel now. It’s time to get out of here.”
The superintendent descended the steps once more. He untied the bishop and then approached the novice.
“Come,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.”
She smiled and let the officer pick her up; he felt a sharp pain in his back as he climbed the stairs with the girl in his arms. At the top, he lowered her to the ground and together they walked toward the cloister. The twenty-seven Capuchin nuns were there, weeping and gesturing wildly at the sight of the carnage. The mother abbess ran toward Sister Concepció and embraced her with a tenderness that seemed almost indecent amid such horror. Perhaps the novice had found a mother in the end, the superintendent thought, and the idea comforted him.
“You seem to have succeeded,” said a familiar voice behind him.
He was not surprised by the arrival of Doctor Pellicer, accompanied by Judge Carbonissa.
“I’m not at all sure about that,” responded the police officer. “But thank you anyway.”
“No need for that. Poor Brother Darder came to me looking like a dead man. We only helped him to fulfill his last wishes.”
The superintendent approached Hadaly. The horse made a deathly rattle, and Muñoz saw a light going out in the animal’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“No matter,” said the judge. “It’s the cycle of nature. Life, death, followed once more by life. It has always been this way.”
“Even for vampires?” joked the superintendent.
At that moment, Bishop Perugorría walked by. He seemed engrossed in thought and appeared not to see the superintendent; he was holding a notebook and a fountain pen in one hand. The nuns observed him anxiously as he contemplated the cadaver-strewn courtyard as though it were a sunset over the sea.
The superintendent, the doctor and the judge followed him with their eyes. The bishop approached the arcade, opened his notebook and scribbled something with his fountain pen.
He wrote:
About the Author
Sebastià Alzamora i Martín was born in Mallorca in 1972 and graduated from the Universitat de les Illes Balears with a degree in Catalan philology. He first rose to prominence as a poet with a collection called Rafel, which he published in 1994. Since that time, he has written three other volumes of poetry and five novels. He has been awarded numerous prizes for both his fiction and his poetry, including the prestigious Sant Jordi Prize for Blood Crime. He is the editorial director of the Catalan magazine Cultura as well as a regular columnist for various newspapers, including Avui and Ara. He lives in Barcelona.
About the Translators
Martha Tennent & Maruxa Relaño are a mother-daughter team of English-language translators, working primarily from Catalan and Spanish. Martha Tennent has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for her translation of The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda. Maruxa Relaño was a translation editor for The Wall Street Journal and has written about immigration, local politics, and the Latino community for several US publications, including the New York Daily News, New York Magazine, and Newsday. They currently live in Barcelona.
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