The Barcelona Brothers by Carlos Zanón, John Cullen

not. He was practically my fellow countryman, but his soul wasn’t right.”
    “At the moment, the state of his soul doesn’t make much difference.”
    “No, it doesn’t.”
    “What about Tiffany?”
    “Tiffany? I suppose it’s a matter of indifference to her, too.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Just to say something.”
    “Allawi, I hate to spoil your … mobilization, but it wasn’t the cops who broke Tanveer’s head open. I was there.”
    “No shit? Who did it, then?”
    “Well, look, I was in Salva and Mari’s bar—”
    “Mari? I thought it happened at dawn …”
    “Let me explain it to you, all right? It was very early in the morning. They had just opened. Mari had been there, cleaning up, but she’d already finished and gone back up to the apartment. I like your sweater.”
    “Alex, come on, leave me alone about the sweater.”
    Allawi pays close attention to Alex’s explanations, but seems to give them little credit. Maybe that’s because he doesn’t take Alex seriously. He’s known the two brothers for some time, and even though they’re good people, he thinks both of them are a bit cracked, one more than the other. Someone whom Allawi has seen go completely blank, someone who he knows is prone to obliviousness, someone for whom names and instants are empty holes, someone inclined to dizzy spells, spiraling down vertiginously into himself—signs, perhaps, from the past that he missed because of drugs, which according to the word in the barrio he used to take like aspirins—such a man, Allawi thinks, makes no very reliable witness. Or how about the times when his paranoid visions overwhelm him and he gets it irremovably in his head that he’s being followed or bugged or God knows what?
    “A Paki?”
    “Didn’t say much. One of the quiet ones with the dark looks, you know what I mean? So he comes into the bar, thisPaki, and goes into the bathroom. He was in a hurry to get there. He stays inside, I don’t know, something like five or ten minutes. Then the son of a bitch comes out fast with a hammer in his hand, zips over to Tanveer, and busts his head open. He hit him three times, one, two, three. Salva and I tried to stop him, but he was an animal. Not a very big guy, either. That hammer must have weighed a ton.”
    “What a way to go: hammered to death.”
    “Tanveer falls to the floor. The Paki looks at us, at Salva and me, warns us with signs that we haven’t seen shit, and runs out.”
    “That’s it?”
    “Yes. End of story.”
    “Well, now I’ll explain to you what I know. Hey, kid! You want something?”
    “No, thanks.”
    “All right, never mind.”
    “What do you mean, now you’ll explain to me what you know? I’m not repeating hearsay. I’m telling you what happened. I was there.”
    Professor Malick walks past. He smiles at Allawi, who responds with a comradely, affectionate “What’s up, Malick?” It’s not a question. Nor does it appear to be an invitation, but the African stops beside their table. The next coffee and cognac arrives, as though sprung from the folds of Master Keta’s cape. Alex tries to meet his gaze and smile back at him, but at that moment the cell phone on the table goes into action. It begins to ring; its display screen shows Epi’s name, flashing onand off; and it vibrates so hard that it rattles the little saucers and spoons and cups on the table. Alex raises the telephone to his ear and stands up to leave, but he stops at once; the connection, barely established, has been abruptly cut off. The problem’s not the range. The problem’s his idiot brother. He presses the callback button but stays inside the café because without knowing very clearly why, he doesn’t want to leave Allawi and the witch doctor alone together. It’s as though he’s afraid they might exchange confidences, as though Professor Malick and his swift, efficacious spirits were going to determine how many days of life Alex has left or reveal another of the