the last book I ever read (The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War, excerpt six)

from The Carpenter's Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War by Manuel Rivas:

“One day an official from the military health inspectorate appeared in the infirmary. He ordered a patient to be examined in his presence. Doctor Soláns was nervous, as if he felt he was being scrutinized. Doctor Da Barca meanwhile stood back, deliberately asking him for advice and handing him the initiative. Suddenly, as he bent to sit down, the official made a strange gesture and a pistol fell out of his shoulder holster. We were there to keep an eye on a prisoner considered dangerous, Genghis Khan. He had been a boxer and a wrestler, and was a bit mad and would suddenly flip. He had been jailed for unintentionally killing a man during a display of freestyle wrestling. He had meant to give him a fright, that was all. From the start of the fight between Genghis Khan and a wrestler called the Lalín Bull, this little man, who was sitting in the front row, had been shouting it was fixed. ‘It’s a fix! It’s a fix!’ Genghis Khan had blood pouring from his nostrils, he could do that, but still this repulsive little man was not satisfied, as if the spectacle of the wound confirmed his suspicions that the fight was fixed. So then Genghis Khan went berserk. He lifted the Lalín Bull, all twenty stone of him, up in the air and threw him as hard as he could on top of the man shouting that it was a fix, who never felt cheated again.