the nature of swords, that is the nature of weapons that are not loosed or thrown, those that kill at close quarters and when face to face with the person killed, without the murderer or the avenger or the avenged detaching or separating themselves from the sword while they wreak havoc and plunge the weapon in and cut and slice, all with the same blade which they never discard, but hold onto and grip even harder while they pierce, mutilate, skewer and even dismember. I did none of those things, it was hardly the appropriate weapon for that, indeed, it wasn't a weapon at all, but a tool.
'Keep your hands on the table, I said,' and again I cocked the pistol, but this time I didn't place my index finger on the trigger.
He looked at me with stupefaction and renewed alarm, or perhaps a different kind of alarm, his eyes, having grown momentarily closer together, were once more wide apart. I know what was going through his head at that moment, he must have been thinking: 'Oh, no. This madman's going to break my other hand too, the hand I paint with.'
'No,' he said. 'Why? No, don't do it.'
And so I had no option but to press the barrel of the gun to his forehead, so that he would take me seriously, to his broad forehead, where his hair was beginning to recede, although I knew now that I wouldn't shoot him. He, however, couldn't know that, he had no idea, and that was my great advantage, that he could not interpret me, no one can in such circumstances, not even the best of interpreters. Not even Wheeler or Perez Nuix or Tupra would have been able to, as the report on me said: 'Sometimes he seems to me to be a complete enigma. And sometimes I think he's an enigma to himself. Then I go back to the idea that he doesn't know himself very well. And that he doesn't pay much attention to himself because he's given up understanding himself. He considers himself a lost cause upon whom it would be pointless squandering thought. He knows he doesn't understand himself and that he never will. And so he doesn't waste his time trying to do so. I don't think he's dangerous. But he is to be feared.' Custardoy didn't know at that point that I wasn't dangerous, but he knew I was to be feared.
'Put your hands on the table.' I said this calmly, it seemed to me unnecessary to raise my voice or to swear. 'Or would you prefer me to put a bullet in your head so that then there'll be nothing at all? It wouldn't be hard, it would only take a moment.' Yes, how strange that someone should obey our every order and be at our mercy and do whatever we want.
He squeezed his eyes tight shut when he felt the cold metal of the pistol on his skin, this skin of ours that resists nothing, which offers no protection and is so easily wounded that even a fingernail can scratch it, and a knife can cut it and a spear rip it open, and a sword can tear it even as it slices through the air, and a bullet destroy it. (Blood was seeping from the wound to his cheek, but it wasn't running down his cheek, it was just coagulating along the wound itself.) I saw the look on his face, the look of someone who thinks or knows he is dead; but since he was still alive, the image was one of infinite fear and struggle, mental struggle, of desire perhaps; his face turned deathly pale, just as if someone had given it a quick lick of grey or off-white or off-color paint, or had thrown flour over him or perhaps talcum powder, it was rather like when swift clouds cast a shadow over the fields and a shudder runs through the flocks below, or like the hand that spreads the plague or closes the eyes of the deceased, because one is always instantly aware of any real danger of death and one believes in it and awaits the moment. Like De la Garza, he preferred to wait with eyes tight shut, they were trembling or pulsating-perhaps his pupils were racing about madly beneath the lids. And he put his hands on the table, you bet he did, the injured and the sound hand, the former he had difficulty placing flat. And again I acted quickly, I neither lingered nor delayed, I was sick of his company and wanted to get out of there fast; I was sick of his face too, despite its benign appearance, I used the poker to strike the same hand a second and a third time and just as hard, I think I broke the lower part of his fingers or some of them, between hand and knuckle, that's what it sounded like. He let out another two howls and clutched his left hand with his still intact right hand, he couldn't help but console the one with the other, his left was a terrible mess, but I tried not to look, I didn't want to see it or to contemplate my work as I had contemplated the broken hands of Perez Nuix's father in that video as he tried in vain to protect himself as he lay sprawled on a billiards table, I didn't want to know exactly what damage I had done to him, if I didn't look, it would be easier for me to believe-later on, in years to come and, shortly too, when I went back to my hotel-that it had merely been one of those dreams one has abroad (I had a return ticket and abroad for me, at least in part, was Spain, and I was leaving). Despite the awful pain, Custardoy must have thought this nothing, a piece of good luck, when he had feared for his good hand and feared receiving a bullet in the brain at point-blank range. However, he still had sufficient courage to complain. Despite his panic, he remained unshaken, not at all like that dickhead De la Garza.
'What the fuck do you want,' he said, 'to cripple me?'
And then I told him what it was I wanted:
'I haven't touched your right hand, but I could give it the same treatment as your left hand or worse. And I can come looking for you whenever I want. I could hurt your right hand so badly that you'd never pick up a paintbrush again in your life.' And once more I couldn't help remembering Reresby again, when he gave me his instructions for De la Garza and I translated them to my compatriot where he lay on the floor. Tupra had issued a fluent list of orders as if he had thought it all out before, I must give the same impression of determination and wisdom and prescience, telling him what my pre-prepared plans for him were, telling him exactly what was going to happen and what he was going to do.
Custardoy had half-opened his eyes to gauge the damage done and I had not placed the barrel of the gun against his head again since dealing the second and third blow to his hand. His gaze was dull, stunned, almost oblique, but there was also a hint of vengefulness. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that any desire for revenge was muted and purely hypothetical, as if he understood that he would have to give it up however much he wanted it, or could see it only as a distant hope or postponed reward or deferred justice, rather as, during many centuries, people of steadfast faith would imagine and nurture the idea of the Final Judgment as something that would be given to them during their long death and which they could never have in life. I had removed the gun from his head when I struck him with the poker, and now it occurred to me that I didn't even need it, the threat of destroying his right hand had cowed him completely, overwhelmed him, especially as he didn't know if that was going to happen right there and then, and because he already had before him the vision of his left hand, and could feel it-the pain must have been terrible. In the state he was in, his ponytail looked even more ridiculous, as did his tie, his sparse mustache, his aspiration to elegance; at that moment he was an angry man, but fearful, too, almost imploring, his rage curbed indefinitely. However, I still didn't put the pistol away. And he did plead with me, although his tone of voice masked the fact. His words sounded more like a reproach than a plea, but they said what they said:
'For Christ's sake, don't do that. I earn my living with my right hand. Stop playing fucking games with me. What the fuck do you want?' Swearwords are good at masking feelings, of course, which is why almost everyone uses them in Spain-the most puerile, blustering country I know-in order to appear big and brave. But Custardoy had asked a favor of me ('Don't do that') and I did not, on that occasion, feel involved or enmeshed or entangled; on the contrary, I would happily have used a razor or a knife to cut the disagreeable bond joining us, him, Luisa and me, although she had created that bond of her own accord. All I had to say to the guy was: 'I want this in exchange.'
'I'm going to leave now and you're going to stay here quite still for thirty minutes from the time I leave, without moving and without phoning anyone, however much your hand hurts; you'll have to put up with it. Then call a doctor, go to a hospital, do what you like. It will take time for that hand to heal, if it ever does completely heal. Always remember that it could have been worse, and that we can always do the same to the other hand, or cut it off with a sword, I have a very clever friend in London who loves swords. While it's healing, leave Madrid, I know you've got enough money to be able to spend some time at a hotel, in a place that you like, somewhere with museums, and have a real rest. And if none of these ideas appeal, then do something else. I don't want Luisa to see you in this state; she must never ever associate what has happened to you with my stay in Madrid. You phone her and tell her that you've had to go away unexpectedly. Some important, urgent commission, copying or restoring some painting, or several, in Berlin, Bordeaux, Vienna or St. Petersburg, I don't care. Or better still, Boston, Baltimore, or Malibu, with an ocean between you, after all, there are famous museums aplenty over there with no shortage of cash to pay you for your work; anyway, I'll leave you to invent something. Call her from a cell phone or some number that can't be traced, just so that she can't find out where you really are. You can go and convalesce in Pamplona for all I care, but you must tell her that you're far away and very busy and that you'll phone her when you can, just in case, because if she thinks you're somewhere near, she might try and leave the kids with someone for a few days and come and join you.'
