No Further Questions

The only witness to a crime has never said a word. The court is about to find out why that might be a problem. For the court.

For twenty-three years, Ignasi Puig has stood on La Rambla in Barcelona, face painted white, serving invisible coffee to real tourists. Then, one March morning, from his pitch under a plane tree, he watches a city councilor accept a thick brown envelope from a hotel developer at table six.

The police photographs show only a parasol. Ignasi saw everything. And he will not speak.

Summoned to Courtroom 14, he takes the oath with a bow, states his name by tearing a sheet from a notepad that doesn't exist, and traps Barcelona's most expensive defense lawyer outside a glass box made of nothing at all. The video reaches forty million views. The law has no category for him. So the State does what the State does best: it opens a public tender for an interpreter of uncodified bodily expression.

Meanwhile, every day he spends in court counts as a day absent from his pitch. Thirty days, and his license is gone. The councilor who wrote that rule is the man on trial.

A gold-painted statue files a complaint demanding to be punished equally. A court clerk fills two notebooks watching him from beside a flower kiosk. A semiotician writes three hundred pages that only the defense reads. And the councilor, who has never once stopped talking, takes mime lessons to look relatable.

No Further Questions is a sharp, warm, very funny satire about justice, bureaucracy and the strange power of a man who only shows what he saw. Perfect for readers who love dry wit, absurd institutions and characters who are far wiser than the systems built to judge them.

The witness shows. The interpreter cannot say.