Smith & Wesson pistol

The Smith & Wesson pistol is both a practical means of survival and a turning point in Guillermo’s involvement with Clara Stauffer’s network. Presented as a gift from Meg and delivered by Manuel, it arrives gleaming and carefully oiled, but its erased serial number makes clear that it has been stripped of ordinary traceability. Guillermo, a surgeon accustomed to repairing the damage caused by weapons, must now learn to use one. The pistol changes from an alarming object in his hands into a tool he can handle with unexpected accuracy—and, eventually, a sign that a year and a half of apparent inactivity has concealed a deeper purpose.

A Gift with an Erased Number

Manuel tells Guillermo that Meg wrapped the present, and Guillermo discovers a polished Smith & Wesson, maintained so well that it looks new. On closer inspection, however, he sees the marks left by the punch that removed its registration number. The contrast between its immaculate surface and its deliberately erased identifying mark gives the gift a double character: it has been cared for as a functioning object, yet made harder to trace.

Guillermo’s first response is nervous disbelief. When Manuel asks whether he knows how to shoot, Guillermo shakes his head. The question captures the distance between the work he understands and the violence the pistol represents: he is a surgeon, someone who repairs what such weapons do, not someone trained to fire them. The present does not simply equip him; it asks him to cross that boundary.

Training and a Change of Role

Manuel tells Guillermo not to be frightened because the pistol is unloaded and has no ammunition. He intends to find somewhere to teach him to use it, and mentions that Don Eduardo has a small shooting range at his home in Cercedilla, where comrades practise on Sundays. Once Guillermo improves his aim, Manuel says, they will begin joining the others on excursions. The proposed training is therefore tied not only to personal safety but also to Guillermo’s gradual inclusion in the circle around Don Eduardo.

Manuel insists that the weapon may save Guillermo’s life and stresses the kind of people they are dealing with. To make the danger concrete, he touches the point at his own clavicle and traces a small circle across the boundary between throat and chest. The gesture gives bodily precision to a threat Guillermo would rather keep abstract. It does not make him welcome the pistol, but it makes Manuel’s reasoning difficult to dismiss.

By mid-February, Meg has rented a property in Toledo province so Guillermo can practise with the Smith & Wesson for an entire weekend. He learns more than how to fire: to his surprise, he discovers that he has good aim. After hitting three of five empty bottles from several metres away, he remarks on the unexpected result, contrasting it with his failure ever to win even a small stuffed toy at fairground shooting stalls. A familiar test of chance and clumsy amusement has become a real capacity for violence.

From Practice to the Stauffer Circle

Guillermo’s aim improves further during the spring, when Herr Messerschmidt makes Lugers available to his Sunday guests. The Smith & Wesson is thus the beginning of an education that continues with other pistols and within a social setting where shooting practice helps define participation. At the July 18 gathering, Don Eduardo treats Guillermo and his companions as members of his circle and encourages them to attend with company. Guillermo goes with Amparo; Manuel invites Ingrid, who declines because she thinks Clara may not like seeing her there. The shooting practice belongs to a larger network whose personal relationships and concealed risks are not yet fully clear to Guillermo.

The pistol’s significance sharpens when, after a year and a half of inactivity, Guillermo discovers what Fräulein Stauffer wants from him. He then suspects that no one has ever given him a more valuable present than this unregistered Smith & Wesson with its ample ammunition. That retrospective judgment transforms the earlier gift: what first seemed a frightening, perhaps excessive gesture had prepared him for a task whose danger he had not understood. The weapon’s erased number, the training in Toledo, and the ammunition all become parts of a practical preparation for work inside the Stauffer network.

The Weapon’s Moral and Narrative Meaning

For Guillermo, the pistol condenses a reversal in professional identity. He has described himself as someone who repairs the harm weapons cause; Manuel’s insistence makes him confront the possibility that survival may require learning to inflict harm himself. His competence with the gun emerges not through heroic bravado but through practice and surprise, making the shift more unsettling: the surgeon discovers that he can shoot well.

The pistol also makes clandestine danger materially present before its full purpose is revealed. Its erased serial number suggests concealment; its initially unloaded state lets Manuel present training as a future necessity rather than an immediate act of violence; and the later supply of ammunition turns that preparation into something consequential. The object’s meaning changes with Guillermo’s understanding. At first it is an unwelcome gift, then a skill he did not know he possessed, and finally evidence that the network’s apparent pause had been preparation all along.