I repeated my question, doubled my bribe, and got the same answer and a gesture toward Montjuic. That’s when I understood he didn’t mean heaven when he said Delgado “went up,” and I gazed over at the rolling green that, indeed, went up behind the buildings.
The Montjuic has a military fort at the top where tourists have their pictures taken; its paths are crowded with trees and bushes. Those paths have always been the refuge of drug addicts and immigrants who are poorer than dirt. Every now and again, the cops raid and disperse them, but they come back like mushrooms after a rainfall.
I left civilization behind and climbed up to test my luck. I’d never been there before, and a part of me warned that I was headed toward anger’s nesting ground.
I was breathing hard and my knees were buckling when I ran into a tent made of plastic bags, garments rescued from the trash, and clumsily crossed branches.
I don’t know how many people were housed under that roof, but the smell of old dirt and bodies in need of washing was overwhelming.
They barely spoke Spanish and, after their initial surprise, offered me, for very little money, the favors of a girl who was, at most, twelve years old. When I said no they pulled down the pants of an eight-year-old boy, but as soon as they saw my disgust they simply asked me for cigarettes.
As lost as I was, I continued up. How would I ever find Delgado if I couldn’t even figure out how many of these settlements there might be? Trees and all sorts of surprises in the landscape hid them from me, and I ran into them without warning. I soon realized that if I didn’t stop, somebody would probably knife me.
And I wouldn’t have made it at all if it hadn’t been for the calm man.
I named him that because, from the moment he appeared in the midst of the weeds, he gave me the impression that he was beyond good and evil.
“Can I help you?” he asked. “This place can be very inhospitable to unexpected guests.”
I looked him over, which he allowed. He didn’t smile but his eyes permitted my inspection and sought trust. So I went along; I decided to trust him.
“I’m looking for a man in a lot of trouble. If I find him in time, it might do him some good.”
The calm man had thin lips, like a monk, and a slightly foreign accent, which I couldn’t quite place.
“Do you know his name?”
“They call him Delgado, or El Delgado.”
The man nodded. “I know who he is. I know pretty much everybody here... and I make sure that nobody’s problems take us all down. But you still haven’t told me anything that would make me help you.”
“There’s a little girl, an Algerian, who ran away from home and may have been seen with him. The family is Algerian, Muslim, you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I know what you mean... Our buddy has gotten into a lot of trouble.”
“And you are...?”
“Let’s say I’m from somewhere in the Balkans, one of those places that changes names from time to time. Follow me,” he said as he started up the path. He moved quickly, with the economy of a tiger, or a soldier.
I tried asking him a few questions but both his silence and the panting of my lungs made me shut up right away.
Delgado’s refuge was a green tent, a military leftover.
The calm man approached as if it wasn’t necessary for him to knock, and we entered lowering our heads.
The girl — the little Moor — was preparing tea on a burner and looked scared to death when she saw us enter.
Delgado didn’t make a move; he was sitting on a camouflage sleeping bag. It was clear he trusted the calm man, and that he could only fit in the tent if he was sitting or lying down.
Then the calm man squatted and began to talk in a language that was unintelligible to me, in the sleep-inducing cadence of an animal trainer.
He talked for a long time, and I could see Delgado’s face registering shame. As his tiny eyes filled with tears, he made an attempt to explain himself by wearily gesturing toward the girl. He uttered only two or three phrases but they were enough for the calm man to lower his head as if he needed a minute to think things through.
Then the calm man spoke again, but this time it was with a different tone. It was an order. The kind of order that can’t be disobeyed. “Get your things and go. Your family is waiting for you,” he said to the girl.
“They don’t want me,” she responded, on the verge of tears.
She made a move toward Delgado for protection, but the big guy pushed her away and whispered something that must have been definitive, because she simply lowered her head and left, without taking anything, and without looking back.
“We’re finished here,” said the calm man. “I’ll go back with you, so you don’t get lost.”
When we were almost at the end of the path, I twisted my foot and he let me rest for a moment. I decided to take advantage of the stop to ask him a question: “Can you tell me what the fuck that little girl was doing with Delgado?”
“She’s pregnant, and she’s afraid of her family.”
“Right. Delgado likes skinny little Asian girls.”
“You’re wrong. Delgado, as you call him, is medically incapable of having sex.”
“What are you saying?”
“The truth,” he said. And as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he unveiled the story of the big scary guy who, out of the blue, liked to say, “Ah, the slender charm of Chinese women.”
He’d been a soldier — though now I’m not sure if he was Serb, Croatian, or something else — when the people in that part of the world all turned on each other. He was a combatant in one of the many battles in that senseless war, in which the enemy had been a good neighbor until the day before.
In one skirmish, they’d massacred some Muslim families and, as was the custom at the time, they’d raped a young woman — practically a girl, really — until she died. To fight and drink were the only rules in that killing game.
And soon those who fought and drank died in an ambush of which the only survivor was El Delgado. And then a woman — perhaps the dead girl’s sister or mother, a woman thin as a reed, with slanted eyes — took her revenge on Delgado.
Two days later they left him for dead. They had used needles and wooden splinters to make a porcupine of his body. Pincers and boots did away with his teeth. And with a pair of pliers, or a nutcracker, the woman tore off his genitals. Never again would the guy known as Delgado be a whole man.
“You see... he survived so he could carry his cross in this world,” said the calm man. “You can go the rest of the way by yourself.” Then he turned his back on me and disappeared into the thicket.
I only really believed half of what he told me. He didn’t quite convince me and I wasn’t going to let him screw up my little business deal. That’s why I made both calls, to Cavalcanti and to the Algerians. With my information, it wouldn’t be hard for them to find the tent.
A few minutes later I got scared, and I began running down the hillside, out to the streets, to that other city, with a couple of tears in my clothes and some scratches on my hands.
It was like arriving in a foreign country. I had a moment of disorientation when I saw three blondes — English or German — showing off their young flesh with short skirts. And I confirmed my border crossing when I saw a group of Chinese or Japanese stopped at a corner with their bird steps and avid tourist eyes.
The Russians arrived first. It was in all the papers. A photo of the Russian gymnast was found in the battered giant’s pockets, making it easy for the police to close the case. The guy was crazy, so they attributed the rape and murder of the Chinese girl to him; he carried this blame to his grave.