by Ben Pastor
Afterwards, when Fuentes came back up, Bora was sitting with his elbows on the table, chin resting on his clasped hands and his eyes low. “Teniente —”
Bora looked up. “I’m not listening, so spare your breath. Have the men assemble outside when I come back. Afterwards, have Paradís and Aixala come and see me here alone, one at a time.”
And all the while he wondered who Remedios might be.
CAÑADA DE LOS ZAGALES
Fifteen minutes later, the scent of rain was already in the air. Birds vacated the sky. Insects made a continuous high-pitched noise in the shrubs and wilted grass. Behind the cane grove, a dancing hem of rain drew close, although the blanched stony bed of the brook still took in and reflected the full sun.
Walton had to shade his eyes to look at the pebbles edging the water. The wind had fallen since he’d reached the brook with Maetzu and Brissot; even the narrow shade created by the canes at the curve of the mule track was stifling. Walton couldn’t wait for the gap in the clouds to close over the sun. Leaving his map case on a rock, he crouched to wash his hands and face in the worming current.
There was no evidence to be found at the place of death. No visible tyre tracks, no hoof prints. No dried blood. On the bank, a few resilient bushes with bright green leaves stood watch but offered no clues. You’d think Brissot would be satisfied. Still crouching, Walton dried his hands on his shirt. He thought he recognized Maetzu’s careful step behind him. “Iñaki,” he said, “pass me the map case.”
The case was handed to him from behind.
“The pencil, too.”
The pencil followed. Immediately afterwards, he felt a hard steel-like prod on the back of his head.
“Please do not rise.”
Walton felt the muscles in his torso stiffen and his thighs grow hard in his squatting position. It was almost noon: the shadows were too short to betray who was standing behind him. The urge to reach for his holster crossed his mind even as the newcomer unlatched it to take his gun.
“Now stand.”
Without turning his head, Walton tried to glance left and right for Maetzu and Brissot. He knew they were not far away. Their voices could be heard beyond the tallest cane grove That’s how the murder had been committed the night before, a shot from the same angle; for all he knew from the same pistol. Despite the overwhelming heat before the storm, he broke into a cold sweat. When he stood up, the steel prod followed his motion, flush against his skull. It took Walton this long, perhaps ten seconds in all, to register that the voice had not spoken in Spanish but in English. On an impulse he turned, at the risk of the trigger being released.
A young man stood there, right arm outstretched, pointing a hefty automatic pistol at him.
Browning High Power was Walton’s alarmed evaluation. Brand new, a gun for an experienced shooter. Might have fourteen shots in it. It’d blow my head to a pulp. His own gun sat wedged in the stranger’s belt.
Bareheaded, the young man was tall and lean. In the blaze of the sun Walton could discern little, other than that he seemed to wear the shirt and riding breeches of a Tercio uniform. He was alone, which struck Walton as foolhardy when his comrades were within earshot. Still holding his pencil and map case, he tried to calculate how quickly his men would be here if he shouted for help.
“You could attempt to call your cohorts, but it wouldn’t make good military sense, because I would shoot you.”
The accent. Clipped and precise, not readily identifiable. Certainly not Spanish. Walton relaxed a little. He’d been frightened, but now annoyance replaced fear. If the man had meant to shoot him in cold blood, he’d have done it already. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
Bora hadn’t planned on meeting anyone, nor had he been sure that it was the American he was facing until he’d heard him answer. But he suspected what the three men might be looking for, and it was too late because he’d already been fortunate in his search. His only regret was that he’d have to leave quickly, before the others returned … their voices were growing nearer by the minute. “I wanted to see you up close,” he decided to say. Carefully backing up, with his gun still pointed at the American, he was soon far enough away for Walton to dive for cover and call out, but by then Bora had scrambled up the mountainside and was out of sight. The clouds closed in on the sun.
Thunder rolling overhead drowned out the report of Maetzu’s rifle. Sparse, heavy drops of rain had begun to fall and curdle the dust as Brissot ran out of the cane grove. “Are you all right?” he called. “Who was it, Felipe?”
Maetzu was still firing, and a couple of warning rifle shots rang down in response from the high ledge of the Riscal. Walton shouted at Brissot. “Fuck, I don’t know!” Walton shouted. “He spoke English. The way he said the word ‘military’… he pronounced it ‘militree’, like the British.”
“There’s a handful of Englishmen fighting with the Fascists.”
“He took my fucking gun.”
Ten yards away, Maetzu wasted bullets against the rocky wall. Brissot grinned at Walton. “Let’s take it as a lesson not to separate when we leave camp. Next time we’ll be ready. We have plenty of guns on hand, Felipe. Let’s head back before it comes pouring down on us like a flood.”
RISCAL AMARGO
By the time Bora was midway up the ravine, the dams of heaven had split open. Whips of hot stinging rain lashed the rocks and dirt, lifting vapours out of the dust, braiding into gushes around his feet. He looked for the stain from Jover’s blood and could see nothing but splashes. He was soaked when he regained the ledge, sliding in the mud. All the while, Fuentes had been firing with a carbine into the valley, waiting for him.
“It’s all right. Go inside!” Bora shouted. As for him, he needed the rage of the water, the drenching, so he slowed down, with his face upturned, to catch the rain in his mouth. Yellow streams already frothed among the rocks on the upper reaches of the sierra, angrily snaking down the sides of the army post. Like a solid ark, the building seemed to float on a river of mud. Bora walked slowly, head tilted back. No doubt the spring that had dried up overnight would have revived in its cleft, and the brook would be running full again.
“Ándale, Pardo!” Followed by the halting dog, Tomé led Bora’s horse to cover in the stable. Lightning blinded the sky and thunder followed immediately with a burst overhead as Bora reached the doorstep. The men gathered in the vaulted room of the ground floor. Unlike Fuentes and Bora, and Tomé, who came running after them, their shirts were dry and still bore haloes of sweat at their armpits.
“I put two buckets out to fill,” Tomé announced as he walked to the end wall, where a soot-mouthed fireplace was always lit. Bora saw him hang his shirt to dry from a nail in the mantel and turn his bony back to the room.
On his way upstairs, Bora showed the pistol to Fuentes. “It’s the American’s,” he said. “Send Paradís in a few minutes, and when I’m done with him, send Aixala.”
Rain poured into his room from the broken window. A puddle ran across the brick floor to the door. Bora straddled it to place his canvas bag in a dry corner. He pulled out of the bag the map he’d taken from the American’s case, and ran his eyes over it. It was patched with paper tape and disappointingly unmarked. Whatever else he’d found by the brook, he chose to leave inside the bag.
Soon Paradís appeared on the threshold, his dull blue eyes immediately fixing on the pool of water at his feet. He didn’t move from there until he was told to enter. It took a direct order for him to approach and stand across the desk from Bora.
“Did you go to Castellar the night before last?” Bora asked the question expecting to see a change come over Paradís.
The sailor’s round face remained impassive instead, and his eyes – bulging, clear as glass marbles – stared back. “Not me, teniente. I haven’t been to Castellar in over a week. I was here all night. You can ask Alfonso.”
“But you have been to Castellar in the past. There are reports.”
“Of course I have. I’m no
t a marica like Tomé.”
Bora felt an unexpected wave of blood rise to his face at the words. A marica like Tomé. The way Paradís said it … it wasn’t the usual bantering tone. Bora sat stock-still, but his mind went nervously to the image of Tomé slumped by the waterhole with a grain stalk in his mouth: one day after another, watching him bathe. A marica like Tomé. His slowness in understanding, his naivety were for a moment unbearable to him, and Bora was abjectly grateful to have his back to the window so that Paradís didn’t see him blush.
Paradís continued to look stupid. “We’ve all gone to Castellar. There’s whores there, and you won’t find a real man among us who hasn’t visited them at one time or another. Besides, I know the difference between whores and the other kind of women, teniente.”
Bora tried, not very successfully, to hide his anger. “Make sure you keep the difference in mind, because I have orders to deal very severely with anyone accused of rape.” That wasn’t strictly true, and no one had spoken of rape. Paradís just sat, with his moon-face and inexpressive eyes.
“I don’t know what the teniente is saying. Me, I haven’t been to Castellar in a week.”
CAÑADA DE LOS ZAGALES
It was Brissot’s idea to find shelter from the storm at the foot of the mountain. There, a mule drover waited under a rock overhang that barely protected him and left his animal in the open. He moved over when the new arrivals came. His face was averted, and only the quick throbbing of his jaw muscles revealed his anxiety.
“Salud,” Maetzu said.
The choice of greeting in itself was political. Warily the mulero turned. Walton felt the scrutiny. He knew that Maetzu’s red neckcloth gave him away, as Brissot’s coveralls probably did. As for himself, he judged that he simply looked foreign. At length, the mulero stretched out a slow, calloused hand to the Basque. “Salud.”
Nothing else was said for a time. Muddy rain streamed from the overhang as if from many spouts, striking the hard dirt below. It poured straight down; provided the men kept their backs against the stone wall, they were only exposed to the foggy spray that flew about.
After Brissot and Walton questioned him, the mulero accepted a cigarette, but didn’t answer at once. “Look,” he finally said, “I stop over at Albarracín most of the time, though I often go as far as Caminreal and Cosa, but I learned to mind my own business from my mule, who’s smart enough to wear blinkers. What I see and what I hear goes right through me, and it’s kept me healthy so far.” He puffed on the cigarette, seemingly judging the effect of his words out of the corner of his eye. Under Maetzu’s ominous staring silence he added, reluctantly, “Things happen at night, I don’t deny it. I guess I could tell you what I heard … of course I don’t know if it’s true.” His gaunt face had the colour of wet bricks, and a stubble of many hours. He sucked hard on Walton’s cigarette. “A friend of mine was passing through two nights ago. You recall how hot it was; the night air was as thick as honey. My friend headed home to Campillo, and found himself on the little bridge over the brook, on the other side of the cane grove. There’s a curve there.”
Walton played along. “What time was it? Did your ‘friend’ say?”
“No. But when I go that way I reach the bridge around midnight.”
“Well, what did he see?” Maetzu hounded him.
The mulero spat out some tobacco that had stuck to his lips. “He didn’t see much. It’d been so hot all day that the mule took it into its head to drink from the brook, so he let it, and walked ahead a little. Bueno, there was enough moonlight for him to make out a car sitting near the curve with its lights and engine off.” Picking shreds of tobacco from his lower lip, the mulero spat again. “He got curious and walked up a little, quietly, to see what it was all about. There wasn’t much more to see. He thought he saw three people in the car, but who knows what you see at night. Those three heads, well, he could make them out, that’s all.”
Brissot frowned. Maetzu growled, “What else, what else?” and Walton lifted his hand to signal him to be patient before he too added, “What else?”
The mulero took a deep drag and swallowed the smoke. “My friend didn’t get involved. What would a car be doing at night in the middle of nowhere? Nothing good, I say. He went back to fetch the mule and led it along the brook, so they wouldn’t hear its hoofs from the car if the windows were open.” Another drag, more smoke swallowed. “Then he thought he was far enough away to get back on the track, so he did. Pan! It sounded like a pistol shot from the car, kind of muffled. In a little while, pan! Another shot, closer in.” Walton stared questioningly at Brissot, who was facing the mulero. “By this time my friend knew he wasn’t about to get involved at all. He didn’t even move for a good spell, waiting for the car to go by. It never did. After he heard it go off in the other direction, the one it’d come from, he hurried away.”
“Without checking what had happened?”
The mulero had a quick, nervous grin. “What for? It wouldn’t take a professor to figure out what had happened. There are times to be curious and times to follow your nose.” He extended his forefinger and little finger from his closed right fist in a superstitious gesture. “A man ought to keep away from trouble whenever he can. That’s what my friend did.”
RISCAL AMARGO
Aixala’s eyes searched Bora’s room. An old scar on his left cheek showed, pale where the skin stretched. His shock of thick chestnut hair stood up in the humid air like a weed on his head. “It’s a lie,” he said. “Is that what the priest came here to say? It’s a filthy lie. I wish he’d told me to my face! It’s nothing like what happened, and I don’t know why you have to ask me about it, because it’s my business.”
“If it’s reported to me, I make it my business.” Sitting across from Aixala, Bora had to make an effort to remain self-possessed after what Paradís had said about Tomé.
“There’s nothing to say. First she agreed to kiss me, and as soon as I started kissing she got scared and ran off.”
“And then?”
“Blood of Christ, that’s all there is! I kissed her with my tongue, and she got scared.”
“I thought you already had a woman in Castellar.”
Aixala’s small eyes sank into their orbits when he squinted hard. “Who told you about that? Anyway, I couldn’t do with this girl what I do with the other. I just wanted to kiss this one. What’s wrong with that? She’s old enough.” Shoulders hunched, elbows close to his sides, he took a defensive stance. “Later that night I went back because I wanted to talk to her. I knocked on the door but the mother woke up and they both started screaming. Now the girl is telling lies because she doesn’t want her mother to know she kissed a man.”
Bora sat back. “And what did you do after the women screamed?”
“I left. I went towards San Martín. I was so furious, I didn’t care if I got a bullet in my head from the Reds. Anyway, I was back here in time for my watch.”
Leaning back, Bora sat moodily in the thin aura of steam that rose from his drying clothes. He was thinking how women had taught him to kiss when he was fifteen, and kissing had never held such sweet terror since. He said, “You’re confined to the post for the next two weeks.”
“Two weeks!”
“You heard me.”
Aixala turned around in a passion, splashing his way to the door.
CAÑADA DE LOS ZAGALES
Under the overhang, Walton whispered to Brissot. Brissot, who didn’t hear him over the rushing sound of the water, turned to him. Next to them, Maetzu hadn’t said a word for the last ten minutes. He rolled a cigarette and stuck it into his mouth, squeezing it unlit between his lips.
“Well, it’s easing off a little,” the mulero said. “I’d better get going.” He stepped away from the shelter to reach the mule that waited with ears low. “Salud.”
What followed was unforeseeable and absurd to Walton, even though it happened before him as if in slow motion. One moment he was talking to Brissot; the next, Maetz
u’s gun rose from the holster, found the mulero’s skull and fired point-blank into it.
The top of the man’s head seemed to explode. A crown of blood spurted from it and brightly mixed with the rain as he fell in a heap. Maetzu put the gun away.
Dumbly Walton looked down. The dead man lay with arms outstretched and that red fountain still gushing out of his skull. The mule had scampered off into the shrubs; Maetzu was now walking towards it to lead it back.
“What did he do that for?”
Brissot looked at Walton without answering. Maetzu returned, pulling the mule by its rope. Stepping in the pool of watery blood, he lifted the body and slung it across the double saddle of braided straw, then pushed the mule towards the track. Soon he was rinsing the blood off his hands under the rain. “It knows the road. It’ll reach Campillo on its own.”
“Jesus,” Walton groaned.
Maetzu shrugged. He tapped Brissot on the shoulder. “Give me some tobacco.” After the tobacco was handed to him, he reacted angrily. “What are you staring at, both of you? He’d have blabbed just as much to the first Fascist he met on the way, and added the three of us to his tale!”
RISCAL AMARGO
14 July. Afternoon, at the post.
I can’t deny, as Aristotle insists, that shame is a feeling rather than a virtue. There’s nothing virtuous about it, other than it means men fear dishonour. Thank God he says that it becomes youth, but only because young men ‘live by feeling and commit many errors’. Little consolation there.
Bora raised his eyes to the window. It thundered less and less frequently, but rain still pelted the roof tiles. Downstairs the men whiled the time away playing cards. Paradís bet and swore and Tomé swore back over the noise of other voices not so recognizable. Bora sat on his cot to change into dry clothes. He lay down eventually, because he’d slept little the night before and could do with some rest now. Agonizing over the men’s opinions of his trips to the brook with Tomé served no purpose, but he indulged in his thoughts gloomily until the rain distracted him from the voices below, from his lack of privacy and his general sense of being out of place.
