‘Had she gone on seeing him?’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s odd. As far as I recall, Zarco doesn’t even mention her in his memoirs.’
‘Your recollection is right, but his not mentioning her is more revealing than if he had mentioned her, because it means he took her for granted. Of course that’s what I say now, because now I know things I didn’t know then. . In any case, yes: although sometimes sporadically, they had gone on seeing each other. What Tere told me that night was that, during Zarco’s first years in prison, she visited him every once in a while and he turned to her when he was out on parole, when he escaped or when he had no one else to turn to. Later, for a long spell, the two of them stopped seeing each other. The reason is that in the middle of 1987, after Zarco escaped from the Ocaña penitentiary by taking advantage of the cocktail party after the press screening of The Real Life of Zarco, Bermúdez’s final film based on his life, Tere got mad at him and, although in the end she was the one who found him refuge in a friend’s house during his days on the run, she refused to visit him after he’d been recaptured. But what separated them completely, still according to Tere’s version, was that, once he was back in prison, Zarco began his great change: he went on being a famous delinquent but he tried to no longer be the implacable juvenile delinquent to become the mature repentant delinquent, a change in which he had no need of Tere or in which Tere was simply superfluous, because she was a hindrance from the past that he wanted to overcome. Still, years later Zarco called her again. It was after holding up a Barcelona jewellery store in the city centre and thus violating his third-stage release, one level before getting out on probation that he’d been granted for the first time in his life and which allowed him to spend the days outside and return to the prison to sleep; the absurd stupidity of the robbery meant this privilege was revoked and Zarco was put back on trial again and had many years added to his sentence of many already accumulated years, not to mention the disappointment it provoked in public opinion in general, which had believed in his rehabilitation, and among the politicians, journalists, writers, film-makers, singers, athletes and the rest of the people who’d supported the cause of his release: they all wrote him off as an incorrigible quinqui, as a persona with no future from the blackest days of Spain. Again he was defeated and dismissed and with no support from anybody, and again he turned to Tere, who at first told him to go to hell and finally ended up giving in, agreeing to see him and help him and help María to help him, who by then had appeared on the scene. She’d been working with her on Zarco’s behalf lately, until they came to see me.
‘That’s more or less what Tere told me that night, while we had dinner, or perhaps what she told me that night added to what she told me on other nights. Whatever the case, when we finished dinner and Tere finished telling me about Zarco, or she tired of doing so, we were a bit drunk. At that moment there was a rather long silence, which I was about to fill in by praising Tere’s loyalty and patience with Zarco or asking after Lina — who Zarco had told me Tere saw once in a while — but, before I could do so, she stood up from the table, went over to the stereo, crouched down and started looking through my few CDs. You still don’t like music, Gafitas, she said then. My daughter says something similar, I answered. But it’s not true. It’s just that I don’t listen to it much. Why’s that? asked Tere. I was going to say I didn’t have time to listen to it but kept quiet. Looking at the CD covers, Tere added, half-amused half-disappointed: And I don’t even know any of them. I got up from the table, crouched down beside Tere, pulled out a Chet Baker CD and put on a song called “I Fall in Love Too Easily”. When the music started to play, Tere stood up and said: Sounds old, but nice. Then she started to dance on her own, with the wine glass in her hand and eyes closed, as if searching for the hidden rhythm of the song; when she seemed to have found it she set her glass down on top of the stereo, came over to me, put her arms around my neck and said: You can’t live without music, Gafitas. I put my arms around her waist and tried to follow her. I felt her thighs against my thighs, her chest on my chest and her eyes on my eyes. I’ve missed you, Gafitas, whispered Tere. Thinking it was incredible that I hadn’t missed her, I said: Bullshit! Tere laughed. We kept dancing in silence, looking in each other’s eyes, concentrating on Chet Baker’s trumpet. Seconds or minutes later she asked: Do you fancy a shag? I took a moment to answer. Do you? I asked. Tere’s first reply was to kiss me; the second seemed redundant — I do, yeah, she said — although she immediately added: But on one condition. What condition? I asked. Tere also took a moment to reply. No ties, she finally said. She soon noticed that I hadn’t entirely understood. No ties, she repeated. No mess. No commitments. No demands. Each to his own. I would have liked to ask Tere why she said that, but it seemed like a way of looking for useless complications and a distraction from the essential, so I didn’t. It was Tere who asked: Yes or no, Gafitas?
‘Those are the last words I remember from that night, the second in my life that I slept with Tere. The following months were unforgettable. Tere and I started to see each other at least once a week. We saw each other in the evening or at night, at my place. There were no fixed days for these encounters. Tere called me in the morning at my office, we arranged to see each other later, at seven or seven-thirty or eight, that day I’d finish work earlier than usual, buy something for dinner in some shop in the old quarter or in Santa Clara or Mercadal and wait for her at home until she arrived, which I never knew when might happen — she was often late and more than once took two or three hours to get there, and more than once I thought she wasn’t coming — although she always did eventually arrive. She’d arrive and, especially the first times, as soon as she was through the door we’d be screwing, sometimes right in the front hallway with most of our clothes still on, with the fury of people not making love but war. Later, once we calmed down, we’d have a glass of wine, listen to music, dance, have something to eat and then drink some more and listen to music and dance until we’d go to bed and have sex until late.
‘They were clandestine dates. At first I understood this confidentiality as part of the conditions Tere had imposed — part of the no ties and no commitments or demands and each to our own of the first night — so I accepted it without protest, although I sometimes wondered who might be bothered about she and I going out together. Me, answered Tere, when I finally asked her. And you’d be bothered too. It was a categorical reply, that did not allow a rejoinder, and I didn’t have one. Otherwise, as far as I recall that was one of the few times, in those early days, that Tere and I talked about our relationship; we never did, as if we both felt that happiness is for living, not for talking about, or that mentioning it might be enough to make it disappear. This is odd, when you think about it: after all there is no subject of greater interest to new lovers than their own love.
‘What did Tere and I talk about then? Once in a while we talked about Zarco, about Zarco’s situation in prison and about what I was doing to get him out of there, although after a certain point we only talked about that in the presence of María, who in theory was the main interested party. Sometimes we talked about María, about her relationship with Zarco, about how she’d come to be Zarco’s girlfriend. Tere liked to talk about her studies and ask me about things at my office, my partners, my sister — who I didn’t see more than once or twice a year, because she’d been working in Madrid for many years where she was married and had kids — about my ex-wife and most of all about my daughter, although, as soon as I suggested to Tere the idea of meeting her, she refused without a second thought. Are you crazy? she asked. What’s she going to think of her father hooked up with a quinqui? Quinqui, what quinqui? I answered. There are no quinquis left any more! Zarco’s the last one, and I’m about to turn him into a normal person. Tere laughed. Getting him out of jail would be enough! she said.