Chapter Text
When he opens the door, the soldier appears before him, his rain-soaked hair falling over his face. He looks pale and slightly hunched over, but is alive and fine; the Professor sighs with relief. Before he can even question him, Marseille takes the initiative. “They didn't follow me, Professor. I lost them.
- All right...
- They stopped at Descrubimiento. The Serbs are leading them on another track. They took the car on Goya Street.”
A quick calculation, and the Professor nods and pulls up his glasses:
“It’s very good. You did a great job.”
Sergio steps back to let him into the room, inviting him with a wave of his arm. As Marseille passes him, the Professor's gaze goes back to his posture, still folded and a little tense.
“Did they hurt you ?”
Marseille simply nods. “I told the Serbs to clean up the car.
- Let me see that. Was that a shot?
- Just a splinter” he corrects. “A window broke, I was next to it.
- Open your jacket.”
While Marseille sits down and does so, the Professor goes to wash his hands and look for the medical kit, going over in his mind what he will have to do. Call the Serbs, call Palermo’s team, and his contact in the police as well. Nothing more than routine; the plan is following a correct course, and they haven't received an alert yet. He keeps his eye on the screens, while he sits next to the soldier, soaking a cotton ball with a layer of disinfectant.
Although he remains calm, Marseille looks uneasy. His leg twitches nervously, and he grimaces a little as the Professor approaches.
“Is everything all right ?”, asks Sergio.
“Everything is fine.”
Half a lie. The Professor knows what is wrong. In the monastery, Marseille has already displayed this distant, guilty and angry look, as rare as it is uncomfortable. It was when he thoughtlessly spoke to Nairobi while she was practicing gold smelting. She had almost burned herself badly, and he had profusely apologized. All afternoon, he didn't say a word, even as the woman kept laughing that it was nothing, and that he would help her better if he wasn't so grumpy. Obviously, he was not receptive to this light tone.
Marseille doesn't like to be the cause of unforeseen events. He can live with them as long as they don't come from him, but when he makes mistakes, Sergio has already noticed how much he can shut himself off. The Professor can understand this kind of reaction; dealing with problems is already hard enough on a daily basis; during an heist of this kind, they can play on an entire situation. Dealing with the responsibility of being their cause must be hard. Sergio knows about it.
“Marseille.
- Hm?
- We're doing fine. We're doing just fine. All right?
- Yeah... Sorry, I…”
He starts a gesture with his arm, which doesn't lead to anything. His sigh makes his moustache twitch weakly:
“ ... sorry.”
The Professor shrugs. He will convince him later. He turns his attention to the wound.
And holds his breath.
Marseille’s chest is blackened with dried blood, which stains up to his navel; the soldier, taking note of the wound, returns to the Professor his surprised look.
“Shit, he grimaces.
- That seems serious”, articulates the Professor. “How do you feel?
- I didn't feel much until now, I just had difficulty moving my arm.
- Doesn't it hurt?” worries the Professor, deciding to put the cotton in a cup to look for a trace of splinter remaining in the wound.
“Now, it does. I didn't pay attention, it must have been the adrenalin.
- Marseille...
- It's going to be alright, Professor. There are no organs affected, I would have felt it.”
Sergio sighs, resigned, and starts to remove the glass from the wound with the help of a pair of pliers. Marseille stands still. There is a clatter as the first shard falls on the table; the Professor raises his head as he hears his comrade laugh.
“What's so funny?
- Nothing, Professor. It's just that you seem to be dissecting me, and I'm thinking about what happened with the pig. The look on Denver's face was incredible.”
The leader of the heist nods stupidly, without finding what to say. A new splinter leaves Marseille's flesh, resulting in a stoic grimace and a hand clutching the edge of the desk.
“Well, at least you seem to be taking it well...
- It's not the first time I've been shot. I'll live.
- I was talking about the pig...
- Oh.”
The memory of the fight comes back to him, as well as the swiftness with which the placid and cold man had grabbed Denver by the collar. The young brute knew at once what kind of person he was dealing with; having felt his punch himself, the Professor figures well what strength hides the neutral and withdrawn appearance of the former soldier. And still, that day, Marseille was not angry with him...
Now, by comparison, he looks more frazzled. Dealing with the logistics of the robbery and its many unforeseen moves tires him more than his righteousness tries to admit. If it hasn't been a problem so far (Marseille was once a soldier, and has seen worse, after all), the Professor realises that the gunshot has taken its toll. Marseille inhales and exhales slowly, as if his breathing was not spontaneous; his wet forehead worries the Professor. They can’t allow his wealth to deteriorate.
“Pamuk... is that it?
Marseille tenses, and lets out a hiss as the shattered glass meets the wound again.
“Don't move," gasps the Professor
“Sorry," he grumbles. “Why are you talking about her?
- You told us about your dog during the dissection.
- Yes, I did," he admits.
- Don't force yourself to discuss it if it's a sensitive subject”, clarifies the Professor. “You mentioned her, in the car, before we came here. Did you give her that name?
- Yes. She had... something on her chest, an excess of hair, and it looked like cotton. Pamuk means cotton, in Serbian.”
The professor can't help but smile.
“What kind of dog was it?
He has to keep him talking. It’s one of the rules: talking to make sure that the patient's speech is coherent and that he is conscious. They can't afford the hospital, for obvious reasons; so Marseille has to keep his mind clear.
Nothing bad will happen to him. But Sergio prefers to be sure.
“A bobtail. Some... big dogs with eyes covered by their hair, and floppy ears. Usually, bobtails are pretty hairy, but she... I mean, it wasn't a good time to be hairy, so I had to shave her quickly, because she had some, some kind of... fleas, and dirt, that were matting her hair. I shaved myself too, to show her that it was normal. And it was on the... on the chest that it was growing back faster.”
The soldier is out of breath. He never speaks as much as when Pamuk is the discussion’s topic, and it's almost with a twinge of sadness that Sergio sees a melancholy glow come over him as Marseille suppresses the urge to wave his hands to emphasize his words. The last splinter falls, and he sets about cleaning his wound, nodding to encourage him to continue.
“You know, Professor, you can... you can think it's a little ridiculous, a dog shaved so close like that. I see a lot of people today laughing about how pets are fixed up, but... I don't know how to say... She wasn't ridiculous. I don’t think something like that is ridiculous. The kids - the same kind of kids that killed her -, they were laughing when we both came back to the village, her and me. But... when I could rest, and, and I opened my eyes and saw her in front of me, sticking her tongue out, it looked like she was smiling waiting for me to wake up... As if she was saying, "So, Jakov, old man, are you sleeping? You're going to forget my dog food!"... There was nothing ridiculous about it. It was just a good animal, it doesn't get more stupid than that, just a dog, who said nothing and stayed there, and…
He seems to be searching for words for a moment.
“And yet, she was the one who saved my life. It was... It’s not because I wanted to go home again that I stayed alive. It wasn’t for the memory of the comrades I lost near me. At the time, all of that, it didn't matter at all. I really had nothing but her, Professor... And she also had nothing but me... So when I was wondering what to do, I couldn't think of just putting a bullet in my head. I had to live one more day to keep Pamuk healthy, and I... I did it. I did it thanks to her…”
Every second of silence rests on his shoulders like a leaden cap. The Professor says nothing, doesn't even dare to make a parasitic gesture while he finishes bandaging Marseille's wound; he has the impression of walking on eggshells. Marseille himself keeps on sitting straight; his serious profile and impassive rigidity, familiar and yet so distant, suddenly gives Sergio the impression of existing too much, all the more when he feels something breaking in his partner's voice:
“Those who find it ridiculous, good for them. But my dog was not ridiculous.”
The Professor remains silent.
He stands there, awkward and cumbersome, unable to figure out what to do. Should he put a hand on his shoulder? How does the soldier feel after emptying himself of all these words? Perhaps he is not in a state of distress pronounced enough to warrant the Professor worrying so much about what to say.
Sergio stands there, feeling heavy, equal to himself and his difficulty in communicating with other human beings, as the seconds tick away and he slowly becomes aware that he will not be able to catch them up. Even as his hands move away, and his work is done, the robbery leader would like to put them on Marseille- shoulders. The courage doesn't come to him; they cross awkwardly, and as he stims with his heel, as his eyes wander to the ground, the words that come to him are an almost indistinct stammer:
“I'm sorry, Marseille. I’m sure it was... I’m sure Pamuk was a very good dog.”
He raises his head, straightens his glasses with a quick movement. The former soldier's fixed eye rests on his.
“I want to apologize to you," the Professor murmurs.
- Huh?... Why?
- Because when I thought Lisbon was dead, I spoke badly about Pamuk. I didn't realize how important she was to you. I...
- Professor, it's... no need to apologize. I wasn't delicate, and I can understand that at the time, it seemed...
- No. Let me finish, please. Maybe you weren't delicate, like you say, but you were the only person with me at that moment, and you did what you could. And I, in turn, made light of it. I know I was upset, but I regret it. We didn't have the same story, and... I don't want to give you the impression that I imagine things are less serious when the loss is not human. I'm... I'm... I'm a little too idealistic, everyone has always told me that. But even a person like me has flaws. I don't think, even after all this, that I fully understand this way of looking at animals; but now that you've told me what Pamuk meant to you... I can see much better why you reacted the way you did.”
Marseille does not take his eyes off Sergio’s. A grateful light shines in them as the Professor speaks.
“I want to thank you for entrusting me, Marseille. You are a good man. And I’m glad I’ve got you to count on.
- ... I... Thank you, Professor.”
He does not seem capable of another word. He is moved; usually, Sergio would have preferred to look away. This kind of affection and sensitive talk feels almost impudent. But this time, on the contrary, he takes the initiative to put a hand on Marseille’s; to smile at him with tenderness and tears in his eyes. For a few seconds, only the distant sound of traffic can be heard up to the stormwater tank. Then, he moves away:
“You... you should rest. You need to recover a little.”