Read Online The Prisoner of Heaven: A Novel by Carlos Ruiz Zafón - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Carlos Ruiz Zafón
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Thirteen,’ Martín explained. ‘We don’t know anything about him because the poor fellow was mute. A bullet blew off his larynx at the battle of the Ebro.’
‘A shame he was the only one,’ remarked Number 15.
‘What did he die of?’ asked Fermín.
‘In this place one just dies from being here,’ answered Number 12. ‘It doesn’t take much more.’
3
Routine helped. Once a day, for an hour, the inmates from the first two cell blocks were taken to the yard within the moat to get a bit of sun, rain, or whatever the weather brought with it. The menu consisted of a half-full bowl of some cold, greasy, greyish gruel of indeterminate provenance and rancid taste which, after a few days, and with hunger cramps in one’s stomach, eventually became odourless and thus easier to get down. It was doled out halfway through the afternoon and in time prisoners came to look forward to its arrival.
Once a month prisoners handed in their dirty clothes and were given another set which had supposedly been plunged into boiling water for a minute, although the bugs didn’t seem to have noticed it. On Sundays inmates were advised to attend mass. Nobody dared miss it, because the priest took a roll call and if there was any name missing he’d write it down. Two absences meant a week of fasting. Three, a month’s holiday in one of the solitary confinement cells in the tower.
The cell blocks, courtyard and any other areas through which the prisoners moved were heavily guarded. A body of sentries armed with rifles and guns patrolled the prison and, when the inmates were out of their cells, it was impossible for them to look in any direction and not see at least a dozen of those guards, alert, their weapons at the ready. They were joined by the less threatening jailers, none of whom looked like soldiers; the general feeling among the prisoners was that they were a bunch of unfortunate souls who had been unable to find a better job in those hard times.
Every block of cells had a jailer assigned to it. Armed with a bundle of keys, he worked twelve-hour shifts sitting on a chair at the end of the corridor. Most of the jailers avoided fraternising with the prisoners and didn’t give them a word or a look beyond what was strictly necessary. The only one who seemed to be an exception was a poor devil nicknamed Bebo, who had lost an eye in an air raid when he worked as a nightwatchman in a factory in Pueblo Seco.
It was rumoured that Bebo had a twin brother jailed in Valencia and perhaps this was why he showed some kindness towards the prisoners. When nobody was watching, he would occasionally slip them some drinking water, a bit of dry bread or whatever he could scrounge from the hoard the guards amassed out of packages sent by the prisoners’ families. Bebo liked to drag his chair near David Martín’s cell and listen to the stories the writer sometimes told the other inmates. In that particular hell, Bebo was the closest thing to an angel.
Normally, after Sunday mass, the governor addressed a few edifying words to the prisoners. All they knew about him was that his name was Mauricio Valls and that before the war he’d been an aspiring writer who worked as secretary and errand-boy for a well-known local author, a long-standing rival of the ill-fated Don Pedro Vidal. In his spare time Valls penned bad translations of Greek and Latin classics and, with the help of a couple of kindred souls, edited a cultural pamphlet with high pretensions and low circulation. They also organised literary gatherings in which a whole battalion of like-minded luminaries deplored the state of things, forecasting that if one day they were able to call the shots, the world would rise to Olympian heights.
His life seemed destined for the bitter, grey existence of mediocrities whom God, in his infinite cruelty, has endowed with delusions of grandeur and a boundless ambition far exceeding their talents. The war, however, had recast his destiny as it had
‘A shame he was the only one,’ remarked Number 15.
‘What did he die of?’ asked Fermín.
‘In this place one just dies from being here,’ answered Number 12. ‘It doesn’t take much more.’
3
Routine helped. Once a day, for an hour, the inmates from the first two cell blocks were taken to the yard within the moat to get a bit of sun, rain, or whatever the weather brought with it. The menu consisted of a half-full bowl of some cold, greasy, greyish gruel of indeterminate provenance and rancid taste which, after a few days, and with hunger cramps in one’s stomach, eventually became odourless and thus easier to get down. It was doled out halfway through the afternoon and in time prisoners came to look forward to its arrival.
Once a month prisoners handed in their dirty clothes and were given another set which had supposedly been plunged into boiling water for a minute, although the bugs didn’t seem to have noticed it. On Sundays inmates were advised to attend mass. Nobody dared miss it, because the priest took a roll call and if there was any name missing he’d write it down. Two absences meant a week of fasting. Three, a month’s holiday in one of the solitary confinement cells in the tower.
The cell blocks, courtyard and any other areas through which the prisoners moved were heavily guarded. A body of sentries armed with rifles and guns patrolled the prison and, when the inmates were out of their cells, it was impossible for them to look in any direction and not see at least a dozen of those guards, alert, their weapons at the ready. They were joined by the less threatening jailers, none of whom looked like soldiers; the general feeling among the prisoners was that they were a bunch of unfortunate souls who had been unable to find a better job in those hard times.
Every block of cells had a jailer assigned to it. Armed with a bundle of keys, he worked twelve-hour shifts sitting on a chair at the end of the corridor. Most of the jailers avoided fraternising with the prisoners and didn’t give them a word or a look beyond what was strictly necessary. The only one who seemed to be an exception was a poor devil nicknamed Bebo, who had lost an eye in an air raid when he worked as a nightwatchman in a factory in Pueblo Seco.
It was rumoured that Bebo had a twin brother jailed in Valencia and perhaps this was why he showed some kindness towards the prisoners. When nobody was watching, he would occasionally slip them some drinking water, a bit of dry bread or whatever he could scrounge from the hoard the guards amassed out of packages sent by the prisoners’ families. Bebo liked to drag his chair near David Martín’s cell and listen to the stories the writer sometimes told the other inmates. In that particular hell, Bebo was the closest thing to an angel.
Normally, after Sunday mass, the governor addressed a few edifying words to the prisoners. All they knew about him was that his name was Mauricio Valls and that before the war he’d been an aspiring writer who worked as secretary and errand-boy for a well-known local author, a long-standing rival of the ill-fated Don Pedro Vidal. In his spare time Valls penned bad translations of Greek and Latin classics and, with the help of a couple of kindred souls, edited a cultural pamphlet with high pretensions and low circulation. They also organised literary gatherings in which a whole battalion of like-minded luminaries deplored the state of things, forecasting that if one day they were able to call the shots, the world would rise to Olympian heights.
His life seemed destined for the bitter, grey existence of mediocrities whom God, in his infinite cruelty, has endowed with delusions of grandeur and a boundless ambition far exceeding their talents. The war, however, had recast his destiny as it had
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