Fermín Romero de Torres's torture injuries

Fermín Romero de Torres’s torture injuries are a visible record of violence that he cannot initially explain. Discovered when Daniel Sempere and his father take him in, the injuries change the way they understand the homeless stranger and help establish the circumstances behind his vulnerability, his episodes of collapse, and the care he needs. Later, the book’s reflections on war and silence give those injuries a wider significance: they are evidence of suffering that private memory and public forgetfulness struggle to preserve.

Discovery and Care

When Daniel Sempere’s father brings Fermín to the family home, he offers him a bath, food, and clean clothes. The encounter reveals that Fermín has been living in severe deprivation: the clothes he removes are unusable, and the scars on his wrists, ankles, torso, and back alarm Daniel and his father. They exchange horrified looks but do not press him for an explanation. Instead, Daniel finds clothes belonging to his father, while his father stays with Fermín and speaks to him as he washes.

The bath and change of clothes mark an immediate contrast between exposure and care. Fermín allows himself to be washed and shaved, frightened and shivering; afterward, clean and dressed in borrowed clothes, he seems markedly younger. Daniel’s father offers practical help without first demanding a complete account of the past. That response makes room for trust: by the time Daniel returns, Fermín and his father have already begun to form a friendship.

Collapse and Medical Recognition

Fermín’s vulnerability becomes unmistakable when Daniel and his father find him in a state of extreme distress at the pension. The room is wrecked, and Fermín is naked, crying, and shaking. Dr Baró examines him and prepares an injection; Daniel, the doctor, his father, and the pension’s boxer son hold Fermín still until the medicine takes effect. The doctor warns that Fermín is very weak and that almost anything could kill him.

Once Fermín is asleep, Dr Baró examines the scars. Asked whether they came from cuts, he identifies them as burns and explains that they were caused by a soldering iron. His diagnosis makes explicit what the marks had suggested but neither Daniel nor his father had named: Fermín has been tortured. The injuries are not incidental details of his appearance; they are physical evidence of violence, disclosed through medical attention when Fermín himself cannot give an account.

Fermín sleeps for two days. On waking, he remembers nothing of the episode and thinks only that he has awakened in a dark cell. Ashamed of frightening the people around him, he kneels to ask the landlady, Doña Encarna, for forgiveness, promises to paint the pension, and offers to have ten masses said for her. Daniel’s father pays for the damage and persuades her to give Fermín another chance. She agrees and asks him to take the tablets Dr Baró prescribed. The episode thus produces both an immediate medical response and renewed practical support from the people sheltering him.

Trauma, Silence, and Memory

The injuries belong to a larger pattern in which war and political violence leave survivors with experiences that are difficult to explain and easy for others to suppress. Daniel’s father tells him that, before her death, Daniel’s mother made him promise never to speak to Daniel about the war or let him remember what happened. The promise binds family care to silence: an attempt to spare the next generation also keeps the past inaccessible.

The book later describes war as a force that nourishes forgetfulness. Survivors remain silent, while others try to persuade them that what they witnessed and learned was an illusion. Against that background, Dr Baró’s plain identification of torture matters: the scars interrupt a silence by giving violence a bodily record, even when Fermín has no recollection of the collapse. Their presence does not restore the missing account, but it prevents his suffering from being dismissed as mere strangeness or weakness.

Witness and Inheritance

Fermín’s injuries also connect his private experience to the novel’s transmission of memory across generations. The war’s silence is not confined to one family: it becomes a collective condition, and the narrative warns that events return under new names when the people who could tell what happened are gone. Fermín’s scars stand against that erasure as evidence carried on the body, while his memory loss shows the limits of what such evidence can explain on its own.

Nuria Monfort’s account asks Daniel to remember her and to care for Julián Carax, placing the act of remembering in the hands of someone who belongs to a younger generation. Her appeal gives personal testimony a purpose beyond the recovery of facts: to remember is to keep the dead and the silenced from disappearing entirely. Read in this context, Fermín’s injuries are more than signs of past violence. They make the cost of silence visible, while the care Daniel and his father offer him turns witnessing into a responsibility toward the survivor.

Collapse and Medical Recognition

Fermín’s vulnerability becomes unmistakable when Daniel Sempere and his father find him in extreme distress at the pension. The room is wrecked, and Fermín is naked, crying, and shaking. Dr Baró examines him and prepares an injection; Daniel, the doctor, his father, and the landlady’s son hold Fermín still until the medicine takes effect. The landlady warns that Fermín is very weak and that almost anything could kill him.

Once Fermín is asleep, Dr Baró examines the scars. Asked whether they came from cuts, he identifies them as burns caused by a soldering iron. His diagnosis makes explicit what the marks had suggested but Daniel and his father had not named: Fermín has been tortured. The injuries are not incidental details of his appearance; they are physical evidence of violence, disclosed through medical attention when Fermín himself cannot give an account.

Fermín sleeps for two days. On waking, he remembers nothing of the episode and thinks only that he has awakened in a dark cell. Ashamed of frightening those around him, he kneels to ask the landlady, Doña Encarna, for forgiveness, promises to paint the pension, and offers to have ten masses said for her. Daniel’s father pays for the damage and persuades her to give Fermín another chance. She agrees and asks him to take the tablets Dr Baró prescribed. The episode brings medical care, but also renewed practical support from the people sheltering him.

Trauma, Silence, and Memory

Fermín Romero de Torres’s injuries belong to a larger pattern in which war and political violence leave survivors with experiences that are difficult to explain and easy for others to suppress. Daniel Sempere’s father tells him that, before her death, Daniel’s mother made him promise never to speak to Daniel about the war or let him remember what happened. The promise binds family care to silence: an attempt to spare the next generation also keeps the past inaccessible.

The book later describes war as a force that nourishes forgetfulness. Survivors remain silent, while others try to persuade them that what they witnessed and learned was an illusion. Against that background, Dr Baró’s identification of Fermín’s scars as torture marks matters: the scars interrupt silence by giving violence a bodily record, even when Fermín cannot remember his collapse. They do not restore the missing account, but they prevent his suffering from being dismissed as mere strangeness or weakness.

Witness and Inheritance

Fermín Romero de Torres’s injuries connect his private experience to the novel’s wider account of memory passing between generations. The war’s silence extends beyond one household: survivors are urged to doubt what they witnessed, and the narrative warns that violence can return under new names after the people able to testify have died. Fermín’s scars resist that erasure as physical evidence, while his inability to remember the collapse shows that a body may preserve what a person cannot explain.

Nuria Monfort’s account places the burden of remembrance on Daniel Sempere, asking him to remember her and care for Julián Carax. Her appeal makes testimony an inheritance entrusted to someone younger, not simply a recovered record of the past. In that context, Fermín’s injuries make the cost of silence visible; the care Daniel and his father give him turns seeing evidence of suffering into a responsibility toward the survivor.