The Best Thing That Can Happen to a Croissant

by Pablo Tusset

  Miralles Bros: 2. Hyena Club: 0.

  The truth is, we didn’t have much to celebrate. The First’s ribcage had been completely and totally punished, and my knee had all but abandoned me. I could feel the foot and I could feel the thigh, but in between the two, nothing more than a tingling feeling that could have been anything at all.

  Our first job was to tie and gag the hyenas. Fortunately, The First performed a very handy Chinese trick which consisted of pressing his thumb and forefinger against the neck. This kept them unconscious as we took off their clothes, tied them up and gagged them. We even recycled the rope they had used to tie my Magnificent Brother to that chair, unbraiding it so that it would go further. I thought I recognised one of the guys, the one I had smashed into the wall, in fact, and my hunch was confirmed when I saw that he wore a pair of black Sebago moccasins. What goes around … anyway. I took off his socks and put them in his mouth, taking care not to touch the soggy part with my fingers, and I finished off the procedure by sealing his mouth shut with his own underwear – the tightie-whitie variety – which I wrapped around his head, making sure to position the faint brown stripe in the back just beneath his nostrils.

  ‘May I ask what the fuck you are doing, you psychopath?’

  ‘He should be glad I didn’t use the other guy’s underwear on him.’

  As soon as we had them bound and gagged we took a quick inventory of our spoils. Two suits with Corte Inglés labels, two shirts, two ties, two belts and two pairs of shoes, one of them with laces. We also had two leather wallets with a total of ninety euros between the two, a set of Peugeot car keys, coins, a pack of Camels, a cheap but almost-full lighter, and then the most important items of all: two pistols with their corresponding barrels. Almost all the clothing of one of the guys seemed to fit The First to a t, shoes included. I tried to put on the Sebagos but, aside from the fact that they kind of grossed me out, I couldn’t get them on. The First then went to wash up at the sink outside the cell, and I busied myself improvising a sack with the extra pair of trousers, tying up the leg holes and using a belt to close the whole thing up. I put the majority of our booty in there.

  When I went out to find him, my Magnificent Brother was still in pretty sorry shape, but minus the blood stains and with the Corte Inglés suit, he already had a different air about him.

  ‘Listen, couldn’t we interrogate those two? I don’t know why, but I get the feeling we’re going to have a tough time finding our way out of this place,’ I said.

  ‘That’s exactly what we’re going to do. Have you got that toothbrush handy, the one you used to straighten my nose? I’m going to scare them a little.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you rather scare them with something else? We do have two guns that are in pretty good shape.’

  ‘I’ve grown fond of that little toothbrush.’

  We went back into the cell and closed the door behind us. The hyenas had dragged themselves toward one of the walls, away from the puddles on the floor. The First bent down next to the one who had kicked the hell out of his ribs and said to him in a friendly tone of voice:

  ‘So, you see, I made a little bet with my brother … I think that this toothbrush can go all the way up your nose to your brains. See? It’s very thin. He says it can’t. What do you think?’

  The goon didn’t say anything, because he was gagged up. But he didn’t look all that scared, either.

  ‘We’re going to do something here. I’m going to take that thing out of your mouth and then I’m going to ask you a few questions: if you say something interesting maybe I’ll call off the bet. What do you say to that?’

  The hyena remained implacable as The First untied the undershirt he had used as a gag. The guy sat there for a few seconds, spitting out damp wads of cotton.

  ‘All right. Here’s the first question. Now, you see, we aren’t from around here and we’re looking for the way out. Do you think you can point the way for us?’

  ‘Go to hell, motherfucker,’ the guy answered.

  The First remained totally calm and stuck the tip of the toothbrush in one of his nostrils. The guy furrowed his brow.

  ‘I still think it’ll go all the way in. After all, the brain is a very soft organ …’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll get further than halfway,’ I said, in an expert-like voice. ‘You’ll hit a bone right away.’

  The First pushed the toothbrush further up the nostril.

  ‘Half? But look, it’s already a quarter of the way in and I haven’t even begun to place any pressure on it. It’s true, there’s bone in there, but if I kind of screw it in as I push … Want me to try?’

  The question was for the hyena. I suppose that it was already so uncomfortable that he couldn’t really talk much. The First realised this and loosened his grip on the toothbrush.

  ‘You’re never going to get out of here. And you’re going to pay for what you’re doing to me,’ the guy said, as a little tear cascaded down his nose, though his voice was still as defiant as ever. The First, however, maintained his rich-boy manners.

  ‘I’m sorry, but that’s not what I asked you. The difficulty we face regarding our departure is the main topic of the questions that follow. And for the moment, we’re still on the first question, or didn’t you remember? Where is the way out? Where?’

  ‘Arrgh … what do you want, a map? It wouldn’t do you any good anyway.’

  For someone whose hands and feet were bound up and whose nose was being threatened with impalement by a child-sized toothbrush, the guy sure was holding up well. And The First was starting to lose points: you could tell, because he went on to the next question even though the first was still unanswered.

  ‘Are there guards?’

  ‘Of course there are guards.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘I don’t know … lots. And not just guards, either. Agents, too.’

  ‘Excuse me: might someone tell me what exactly an agent is?’ I asked, raising my forefinger.

  ‘I’m an agent, idiot,’ the guy answered.

  I bent down to look for one of the pieces of cutlery that had gone flying off the food tray.

  ‘What should I do?’ I asked The First, facetiously. ‘Should I serve him the shit in little spoonfuls or should we stick his head in the toilet bowl and let him eat it buffet-style?’

  The hyena answered once again.

  ‘Do what you want, moron, if I get out alive I’ll remember you. And if not, there are others who will.’

  They’re so incorrigible, this class of people.

  ‘Listen, motherfucker: don’t get too smart with me because I’d be more than glad to slam some sense into you. Know what I mean?’

  By now, The First had given up the toothbrush number and was motioning for us to get out of there already.

  ‘Leave him. It’s not worth it.’

  ‘Maybe. But I still want him to eat those socks he’s got in his mouth.’

  ‘We don’t have time. Come on,’ said The First, replacing the gag in the guy’s mouth. ‘The relief guard could come in at any time – these guys have been down here for a while now. Someone might notice they’re missing.’

  The truth was, the more time we lost the better off the hyena was, and that dude was tough enough to withstand a roughing-up session without spilling any information. And as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing terrifically appealing about shaking down a hulk whose hands and feet are all tied up … I don’t know, that shit is too much for me.

  We left the cell again and walked over to the sink.

  ‘All right. So what do we do? Should we go straight up and flash the guns at the guard, see what he does?’ I asked, in full action mode.

  ‘Remember how I said your plan had overlooked one specific detail?’

  Shit.

  ‘Let me guess … we’re in a submarine and we can’t escape until we hit the surface and call at the port of Macau. Warm?’

  ‘Cold.’

  ‘Want to give me a clue, or
you want to keep me guessing?’

  ‘They’ve got your girlfriend. She’s upstairs. They haven’t hurt her, but they do have her sedated so that she won’t scream.’

  ‘Right: they found me a girlfriend just so they could kidnap her … is she from a good family, at least?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot, damn it, they’ve got that girl you run around with, that Josephine.’

  ‘Bonaparte’s ex?’

  ‘Come on. They saw you running around with her in my car.’

  Holy Christ. Fina. I was so dumbfounded that it took me a full few seconds to react.

  ‘But she doesn’t have anything to do with this.’

  ‘Right. But they didn’t realise that until they got her in here. It was better than capturing you. She didn’t have any protection, and you did.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me when I first got to you?’

  ‘What for? To get you all nervous before it was necessary?’

  ‘Absolutely. I like to get nervous with plenty of time to spare, what’s wrong with that? This obsession of yours for withholding information really pisses me off, you know that? So what’s the next surprise going to be? You’ve got an explosive suppository up your arse?’

  ‘For once in your life, why can’t you act like a responsible adult? We have to figure out a way to get the three of us out of here.’

  Once again, we were screaming at each other in whispers.

  ‘Well, it’s your turn to think now. You’re the smart one.’

  He did.

  ‘Very well: I’m going to go up and get near the guard, pretend to be one of the goons. The tall one is about my height and has the same colour hair. Even his haircut is the same if I part it like he does, and I know a bunch of his tics, he repeats them over and over. I can cover my face and tell him that the prisoner punched me … like this, see? You wait, about halfway up the stairs, and back me up with the gun in case something goes wrong. I’ll carry mine, too, and make sure to keep it hidden and pointing at the guard the whole time. I’ve got the advantage that way, I can hit a man in the arm at twenty metres.’

  ‘The boss has everything under control, huh?’

  I still couldn’t stop thinking about Fina, but there wasn’t much time to sit around putting the pieces of that puzzle back together. In any event, the toothbrush once again proved extremely useful: I quickly put it to use on The First’s hair. With no mirror to speak of, I had to step in as his temporary hair stylist and wardrobe consultant, fixing the hyena’s tie so that it sat just so on the shirt. In exchange for my coiffure and toilette services, my brother tried to give me a brief lesson in pistol-handling techniques. Easy: all you had to do was undo the butterfly-shaped security catch and, if the situation called for it, pull the trigger, always making sure the cannon was facing forward.

  The First was good in his role, much as I hate to admit it. I suppose my own histrionic humour is a kind of genetic thing that comes from my mother (my father, in these situations, is more innocent than a packet of Skittles). And so while I staked out the scene crouched down on the steps, he darted upstairs, covering his face with the little white tablecloth and growling curses all the while. It was the first time I had ever heard expressions like “goddamn sonofabitch’ and ‘I’m gonna shove a pole up his ass” come out of The First’s mouth, mixed in with some coughs and grunts for good measure. I even heard him say “that motherfucking cocksucker fucked up my nose” before he disappeared up the stairs. After that I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying, but I soon heard the guard engaged in conversation with him, moving his chair and maybe walking over to the ostensibly beaten-up hyena. I guess he caught on to the ruse when he got closer to The First, because I thought I heard someone shout “hey, stop!”, which was then followed by sounds of a struggle, groans, and heels banging against the floor. I began to climb the stairs and stuck my head out a bit once I reached the landing.

  There was The First, toward the end of the corridor, gripping the guard’s inert figure from behind.

  ‘You done already? Shit, man, what do you do to them …’

  ‘Don’t waste time, come on. Hurry up, we have to tie him up and gag him.’

  ‘Tsss … don’t yell at me, you’re getting me stressed out. I’m dead sick of you and your attitude.’

  ‘Well if you don’t approve of my behaviour, I’ll let you handle the next guard that crosses our path, you goddamn greasebag.’

  ‘Oh, if it isn’t Mister Bruce Lee talking … and who, may I ask, was the one who saved you from the other one before? If it wasn’t for this little greasebag you would’ve been eaten alive.’

  ‘Right. Real nice kamikaze interception. It’s a miracle you didn’t lose all your teeth in the process.’

  ‘Well, even without teeth I’d still be a whole hell of a lot nicer than you, you fucking brat.’

  Despite the arguing we managed to tie up the guard before he came to. This time we used his own belt to tie up his hands, and we ripped off a piece of his shirt to tie his ankles together, another bit of shirt to stuff in his mouth, and we added another club and another pistol to our booty, plus something that I had been sorely missing for the past few hours: a pair of boots that fit me. Not that it’s terrifically comfortable to go around in someone else’s shoes, but it’s better than slipping and sliding all over the place in your socks.

  ‘All right, so where is Fina?’

  ‘I don’t know, in one of the rooms, I guess. You go look for her while I hide this guy and then I’ll go see what I find in the medicine chest.’

  That was something, that the place even had a medicine closet of some sort. It must have been in one of the first few rooms because that’s where The First went. I walked down the corridor, peering into the window of each door I passed. I went past the room where I had been, recognisable by the screen that was still laying on the floor from when it fell. Finally, when I reached the third room beyond that one I spied a Sleeping Beauty whose face I most definitely recognised. She was wearing a white robe that gave her a vaguely erotic air, kind of like those girls in the phone-sex ads in the newspaper, the ones dressed up in nurse’s uniforms.

  I went into the room, sat down on the bed next to her and shook her a little to wake her up.

  ‘Fina. It’s me, Pablo. Can you hear me?’

  She smiled, her eyes still closed.

  ‘Hiiii, how are you … what … what are you doing …’

  For the first time in my life I mustered up all my bourgeois weaknesses, put them aside, and punched a woman. Fina. Just like that. Bam-bam: two damn good left hooks. She looked disgruntled.

  ‘I’m going to pick you up now, try to work with me the best you can, all right?’ I slung her over my shoulder, Tarzan style, but Fina weighs enough for two Janes and a cheetah, which made carrying her down the hallway slightly difficult, especially given that my knee was incapable of fulfilling its duty as a joint. I made it to the table where the guard had been, and I deposited the Sleeping Beauty there, propping her body against the wall.

  In the middle of all this, The First emerged from the medicine closet. I was not amused by the way he looked at Fina. Not one bit.

  ‘I found alcohol, cotton, sedatives, painkillers, syringes, scissors, a scalpel … I even found sutures and sterilised needles.’

  It was beginning to look like my Magnificent Brother was familiar with Roger Wilco, too …

  ‘Listen. I don’t know about you, but I’m planning on getting out of this joint and getting good and drunk on the way to the hospital, so I don’t know what we need any of that stuff for.’

  ‘Getting out of here?’

  ‘Yes, getting out: leav-ing. Get it?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Uh-oh. What now, more telepathy? There has to be some way out, right? We’ve got three pistols, a club and a porcelain poodle. If that’s not enough to get us out of here …’

  ‘Get out of here to where? There’s a minor army that’s been combing the fortress eve
r since you slipped out, and as soon as the relief guard gets here, they’re going to realise that your girlfriend and I have escaped as well.’

  ‘“The Fortress?” Did you say “The Fortress”?’

  ‘Yes, the fortress. We have to hide somewhere safe so we can figure out how to get out. You can barely walk, I can’t fight, and your girlfriend is a dead weight if I ever saw one.’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend. She is a friend in stricto sensu, got that? And don’t just stand there gawking, for God’s sake. Don’t you know some ancient Chinese secret for waking people up?’

  He disappeared into the medicine closet once again and came out with a little white jar that stank of ammonia. He passed it under Fina’s nose.

  ‘Pablo …’

  ‘Don’t worry, you’re just under the effects of a sedative. It’ll wear off after a while, but you need to make a bit of an effort right now.’

  ‘What … what are you doing here?’

  ‘Shit, Fina, can’t you see? I’m here to rescue you.’

  ‘And to take chunks out of the walls with your knees,’ joked my Magnificent Brother, who suddenly appeared to be bubbling over with good humour and most obliged to dispense it round the group.

  Fina then realised that we were not alone and brought her hand up to her mouth, shocked by the meticulous handiwork on The First’s face.

  The shit-eater couldn’t think of anything else but to take Fina’s hand and kiss it.

  ‘A pleasure to make your acquaintance. My name is Sebastian. Sebastian Miralles. Brother of Pablo.’