‘Pay no attention to him,’ murmured Number 12 from the shadows. ‘He does that every night. He’s off his trolley. Lucky him.’
The following morning, when Fermín asked him about the man called Corelli and his midnight conversations, Martín looked at him in surprise and gave him a puzzled smile. On another occasion, when Fermín was so cold he couldn’t sleep, he walked over to the bars again and listened to Martín talking to one of his invisible friends. That night Fermín dared to interrupt him.
‘Martín? It’s me. Fermín, your neighbour across the landing. Are you all right?’
Martín walked over to the bars of his cell and Fermín could see his face was covered in tears.
‘Señor Martín? Who is Isabella? You were talking about her a moment ago.’
Martín stared at him.
‘Isabella is the only good thing remaining in this shitty world,’ he replied after a while, with unusual bitterness. ‘If it weren’t for her, we might as well set fire to the whole thing and let it burn until even the ashes have blown away.’
‘I’m sorry, Martín. I didn’t mean to bother you.’
Martín withdrew into the shadows. The following day he was found shivering in a pool of his own blood. Seeing that Bebo had fallen asleep in his chair, he’d managed to slit his wrists by scratching them against the stone. When they took him away on a stretcher he was so pale Fermín thought he would never see him again.
‘Don’t worry about your friend, Fermín,’ said Number 15. ‘If that was anyone else, he’d go straight into the canvas sack, but the governor won’t let Martín die. Nobody knows why.’
David Martín’s cell was empty for five weeks. When Bebo brought him back, carrying him like a child, dressed in white pyjamas, Martín’s arms were bandaged up to his elbows. He didn’t remember anyone and spent the first night talking to himself and laughing. Bebo placed his chair facing Martín’s bars and kept a close eye on him all night, handing him sugar lumps he’d stolen from the officers’ room and hidden in his pockets.
‘Señor Martín, please don’t speak like that. God will punish you,’ the jailer whispered to him between one sugar lump and the next.
In the real world, Number 12 had been Dr Román Sanahuja, head of General Medicine at Barcelona’s Hospital Clínico, an honourable man, cured of ideological delusions, whose conscience and refusal to denounce his friends had sent him to the castle. As a rule, no prisoner’s line of work was recognised within those walls. Unless such a line could reel in some benefit for the governor. In Dr Sanahuja’s case, his usefulness was soon established.
‘Unfortunately I don’t have adequate medical resources at my disposal,’ the governor had explained to him. ‘Quite frankly, the regime has other worries and doesn’t give a toss if you all rot in your cells from gangrene. After much battling I’ve got them to supply me with a badly equipped medicine cabinet and a washed-up quack who wouldn’t even be accepted as a janitor in a veterinary clinic, I’m sure. But that’s what there is. I know for a fact that before succumbing to the error of neutrality, you were a doctor of some renown. For reasons that are not of your concern, I have a vested interest in ensuring our mutual friend David Martín does not leave us prematurely. If you agree to collaborate and help keep him in reasonably good health, considering the circumstances, I can assure you I will make your stay in this place more agreeable and will personally see that your case is re-examined with a view to shortening your sentence.’
Dr Sanahuja nodded.
‘It has come to my notice that some of the prisoners regard Martín as being rather soft in the head, as you would say. Is that so?’ asked the governor.
‘I’m not a psychiatrist, but in my humble opinion, I believe Martín is clearly unbalanced.’
The governor weighed up that remark.
‘And, according to your expert medical opinion, how long would you say he could last?’ he asked. ‘Alive, I mean.’
‘I don’t know. Conditions in this prison are unhealthy and …’
The governor cut him off with a bored expression.
‘And sane? How long do you think Martín can remain in possession of his mental faculties?’
‘Not long, I think.’
‘I see.’
The governor offered him a cigarette
, which the doctor refused.
‘You like him, don’t you?’
‘I hardly know him,’ replied the doctor. ‘He seems a decent enough man.’
The governor smiled.
‘And an execrable writer. Possibly the worst this country has ever had.’