Free Outlaws by Javier Cercas

wouldn’t have fitted into the gang if I hadn’t. Supposing I eventually did fit in, that is.’
    ‘Didn’t you?’
    ‘I tried to. Sometimes I think I managed it, but other times I think not; depends on what you understand by fitting in, I suppose. It’s true that, as I’ve told you, after a certain point I went to La Font almost every day, hung out with them and did more or less whatever they were doing. But it’s also true that I never felt entirely like just one more member of the gang: I was and wasn’t, I did and didn’t, I was inside and out, like a witness or onlooker who participated in everything but most of all watched everyone participate. That’s how I think I felt deep down, and I think that’s how they felt about me; the proof is that, aside from Zarco and Tere (and only on exceptional occasions), I barely spoke to anyone on my own, and I wasn’t close to any of them. For all of them I was what I obviously was: a meteorite, a disorientated kid, a posh brat lost among them, the top dog’s protégé, their leader’s whim, someone who didn’t have much to do with them, although they accepted him and could fraternize with him once in a while.
    ‘But, to get back to the facts, yes, I took everything. At first I had a hard time keeping up with the rest of them, and I had a few bad days, but I soon got used to it.’
    ‘What other things did you have to do to fit in?’
    ‘Lots. But, please, don’t misinterpret: I didn’t take drugs to be accepted; I took them because I liked it. Let’s say I started off doing it out of some sort of obligation, or curiosity, and ended up doing it for pleasure, or habit.’
    ‘Like what happened with the robberies, no?’
    ‘In a certain sense. With other things.’
    ‘For example?’
    ‘For example with hookers.’
    ‘You went to hookers.’
    ‘Of course. In the district there was a brothel every couple of steps and we were sixteen, seventeen years old, walking around with a permanent overdose of testosterone, we had money; how could we not go to hookers? Actually, I think we spent most of our money on hookers. Although, to be perfectly honest, it was much harder for me to get used to the hookers than the drugs; I got much more hooked on drugs than hookers. I did like some hookers, but the truth is, especially at first, most of them gave me the creeps. I can tell you about my first visit to a brothel; I remember that night very clearly because something strange happened.’
    ‘I’m listening.’
    ‘It was at La Vedette, a brothel that was where most of the red-light district brothels were, on Pou Rodó, parallel to La Barca. It was the most expensive place in the neighbourhood, and also the best, though it was still a filthy, dark cave; imagine what the rest were like. It was run by a madam who was also called Vedette, a woman in her fifties with a reputation for ruling her business with unceremonious authority. That day the place was only half full, there wouldn’t have been more than ten or twelve men leaning on the bar or against the walls, drinking or breathing in the atmosphere saturated with smoke, cheap perfume and the smell of sweat, sex and alcohol. The girls swarmed around them, wearing very tight clothes and with faces caked in make-up, and a full-volume rumba shut down the conversations. It must have been right after the robbery in La Montgoda, or at least right after one of the first jobs I was involved in, among other reasons because after a job was when we could afford the luxury of going to La Vedette. The thing is that a few minutes after we got there all my friends had paired off and disappeared, and I suddenly found myself alone at the bar, after several girls had given up on me when they understood I didn’t have the slightest intention of bedding them. At that moment Vedette strolled calmly over from the other side of the room. Hello, handsome, she said. Don’t you like any of my girls? Vedette had bleached blonde hair, big breasts,