One night, as Bruno looked sadly at the small piece of dry bread that was his dinner, he heard a faint noise near his foot. He stood motionless. A pair of small, bright eyes were watching him from a crack in the stone wall. It was a large, gray rat with dirty fur and a bitten ear. Most of the men would have screamed or tried to kill her. The rats were pests, carriers of disease, the only other inhabitants of that cursed place.
But Bruno, in his infinite solitude, felt something different. He saw in the animal the same hunger and misery that he felt. “You’re hungry too, aren’t you, little one?” whispered Bruno in a hoarse voice. The rat did not run away. He moved his nose smelling the bread. Bruno looked at his food. It was so little, just enough to keep him alive another day. His survival instinct screamed at him to eat everything, but his heart, that kind heart that not even prison had been able to fully harden, took control.
He split the piece of bread in two! Here, he said softly, tossing the smaller half toward the crack. It is little, but it is shared…
Part 2 …
The rat shot out, took the bread and disappeared into the darkness. Bruno ate his part feeling a strange warmth in his chest. For the first time in weeks he had connected with another living being. He did not know that this act of mercy, so small and insignificant in the eyes of the world, had just set in motion the gears of his liberation.
God had heard his prayer and his messenger had no wings, but a tail. From that night on, a sacred routine was established in the darkness of the cell. Every time the guard brought the food, the rat would appear punctually as if it had an internal clock synchronized with Bruno’s hunger. He named her Spark because of the intelligent sparkle in her black eyes. It was no longer just sharing food, it was sharing company. Bruno spoke to her, told her about his life before prison, about Gastón’s injustice, about his fears.
“You’re the only creature that doesn’t judge me here, Spark,” she whispered as the little animal confidently ate crumbs from her hand. Perhaps you are nobler than all the men who walk up there. The rat, in its own way, seemed to hear him. Sometimes he would stay a while longer after lunch, wiping his mustaches, watching him with a curiosity that seemed almost human. However, Bruno’s health was deteriorating rapidly. The moisture from the stone had gotten into his lungs.
He began coughing up blood. Fever visited him at night, causing him delirium, where he saw Gastón laughing and the governor signing his death warrant. He felt like his life was fading like the torch in the hallway, slowly, without anyone caring. Upstairs in the mansion, Gaston’s life was very different, but no less tormented. He had been promoted. He was now in full control of the house, but peace had left him. Guilt is a ghost that does not need chains to imprison.
Gastón had become paranoid. He kept the stolen ring along with other jewels he had stolen over the years in a secret safe, behind a painting in his private room. Every night he would double lock the door, take out the ring and look at it, making sure it was still there. The glitter of gold and ruby that had once given him pleasure now caused him anxiety. If anyone finds him, I’m dead, he thought. I have to sell it, I have to get rid of it.
But the fear of being caught trying to sell such a famous jewel paralyzed him. One afternoon, Gaston felt the unhealthy need to see his victim. He went down to the prison, bribed the guard and stood in front of Bruno’s cell. “Look at you,” Gastón said, covering his nose with a scented handkerchief. “You look like a corpse.” Bruno, trembling with fever, looked up. “You can lock me up, Gaston, but you live in a prison smaller than mine. The prison of your fear.”
Gaston, furious at not seeing Bruno completely broken, knocked on the bars. “Save your words, thief. The governor has decided. In three days at dawn you will be hanged in the public square. Enjoy your last hours.” The news fell on Bruno like a slab of lead. Three days. 72 hours. That was all that was left of his existence. The fear of death, which had been latent, turned into a sharp, cold panic. When Gaston left, Bruno collapsed.
She cried until she had no tears left. He pounded his fists on the ground until they bled. “God cried out in the dark, it’s not fair. I’m going to die for someone else’s greed. Where are you? Why have you forsaken me?” That night Chispa did not come to eat. Bruno left the bread on the ground, but the animal appeared. Loneliness became absolute. Bruno thought that even the rat had abandoned him at the approach of death. He huddled in a corner, trembling, waiting for the end.
“Maybe it’s better that way,” he thought. Death will be a relief from this suffering. But Bruno knew that Spark had not abandoned him. The little rat was on a mission guided by an instinct that was not natural, but divine. The animal had found a way through the ancient pipes and crevices in the foundation, a labyrinth that connected the rottenness of the prison with the luxury of the mansion just above.
The next night, Bruno’s penultimate night, a noise woke him from his feverish sleep.
“Spark,” he whispered in a barely audible voice. The rat was there, but this time it wasn’t coming to look for food. There was something in her mouth, something that shone faintly in the gloom. Spark reached over to Bruno’s hand and dropped the object into his palm. Bruno brought him close to his eyes, squinting them to see in the darkness. His heart skipped a violent beat. It wasn’t a stone or a piece of garbage, it was a button. But not just any button, it was a solid gold button with the emblem of a fleur-de-lis engraved.
Bruno knew that button, he had polished it hundreds of times. It was a button on Gaston’s dress vest, a vest that Gaston jealously guarded in his private room. “Where did you get this?” asked Bruno stunned, looking at the animal. The rat squealed softly and ran towards the crack in the wall. Then she returned as if inviting him to follow her or showing him a path. Bruno’s mind, despite the fever, began to work at full speed. If the rat could go back and forth from Gaston’s room to the cell, it meant there was a direct physical connection and meant something else.
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