Spiders

Spiders are the creatures Fumero most admires, valued not merely for their ability to trap prey but for the patient, disciplined method by which they do so. Their web becomes an image of his own strategy: a trap laid in advance, with its victims allowed to ensnare themselves.

Fumero’s Model of Predation

When Fumero encounters the feverish, physically diminished Aldaya in the Novedades cafe, he listens with fascination and revulsion as Aldaya complains about the mosquitoes of the South American jungles. Fumero, by contrast, reveres insects for their discipline, fortitude, and organization. He considers them free of laziness, irreverence, and racial degeneration, and treats their conduct as a lesson for human society.

Spiders are his preferred example. He admires their rare ability to weave a trap and wait for prey with what he regards as almost immortal patience. In his view, capture comes sooner or later, whether through the victim’s stupidity or negligence. The description reveals a predatory worldview in which patience and calculated entrapment count as virtues, while a victim’s vulnerability becomes an opportunity.

The Web as Strategy

The spider image recurs when Miquel recognizes the design behind Fumero’s manipulation of Aldaya. Miquel compares Fumero’s strategy to that of a praying mantis and his patience to that of immortals; seeing the danger clearly, he sends Julian a warning note. Fumero has told Aldaya that Julian will marry in three days and urged him to travel to Paris to prevent the wedding by challenging Julian to a duel.

Fumero presents himself as unable to intervene because he is a police officer, while arranging the confrontation through Aldaya. He supplies the weapon, already knowing that it is faulty and will explode in Aldaya’s hands. The plot thus gives the spider’s web a concrete form: Fumero draws another man toward a target, disguises his own role, and makes the trap lethal to the person he has maneuvered into it.

From Image to Outcome

Fumero imagines that Aldaya will hand him the others “on a platter,” and that sooner or later they will all be caught in his web. The image connects his admiration of patient predators to his broader pursuit of people through manipulation rather than open confrontation. Its force lies in the reversal built into the duel: Aldaya believes he is going to kill Julian, but the weapon Fumero provides makes Aldaya himself the likely victim.

Spiders therefore function as more than an expression of Fumero’s taste in insects. They supply the governing metaphor for his method—concealment, waiting, and the exploitation of another’s weakness—and cast his schemes as a web whose apparent targets may not be the ones who ultimately perish.