by Ben Pastor
The ravine yawned to their left as they travelled the rim. Below, the view of Castellar changed with every step the horses took on the shifting pebbles. Bora rode with assurance, enjoying the risk, waiting for the right moment to ask appropriately indirect questions. What about Luisa Cadena’s husband, for example?
Just then, the colonel said, “You could have told me that you belong to our class.” He stared ahead, as if the listener were not essential to the dialogue. “It makes a difference.”
“Why?”
“Porqué los hidalgos se entienden el uno al otro.”
Bora wasn’t sure that being a gentleman involved understanding others of his class. He found Serrano’s argument hollow in view of the difference in rank between them. He said, cautiously, “I can’t imagine why yesterday Señora Cadena had to come in person to ask you about her cousin. Wouldn’t that be a husband’s responsibility? I wouldn’t let my wife —”
Slapping the reins against his horse’s neck, Serrano interrupted sharply. “You’re not married. What do you care about what Cadena does with his wife, Lieutenant?”
“Nothing, I’m sure. I just thought —”
The colonel stared him down. “You only need to think about matters that concern you militarily.”
And that was how gentlemen understood each other in Serrano’s mind.
As the sun crested over the ridge, cicadas began their grating call. From their perches on bushes and blades of grass, they kept a rhythmic pitch, piercing, constant in volume. Once in a while, they held the note longer. Ahead, Bora could already see the sunny spur where they had buried Lorca. He deliberately approached it by a meandering route, in case anyone was looking on from Castellar. With Serrano still looking at him sternly, he remained silent, worried that the colonel suspected he’d spoken to Luisa Cadena. Or worse still, that he was planning to visit her in Teruel.
“There’s nothing more incestuous than a civil war,” Serrano said instead, ramrod straight in his saddle. “It is obscene in nature and none involved in it are free of the taint unless idealism overrides the filth.” He led the bay onwards with expert prods of his calves. “Do you understand what it means?”
Unexpectedly Bora resented the colonel’s stare and words. “I understand perfectly,” he said.
“So, are you idealistic?”
“I am.”
“But not for Spain.”
“For Spain and for more than Spain, hopefully.”
Despite the unsafe terrain, the colonel stopped the horse in mid-stride. “Most idealists are also unaware of their own inner workings. How long do you think you’ll remain idealistic or ignorant of yourself?”
“As long as God wills, Colonel.”
Loose stones rolled down the ravine when the army bay started moving again. Serrano’s demeanour changed almost imperceptibly, like hard metal bending a little. He nodded, his lean profile drawn against the brightening sky. “It is good to fear God.” A moment later, he added, “Since you’re bound to find out sooner or later, you might as well know that the murdered man was the poet García Lorca.”
Quickly wetting his lips, Bora chose silence. He was sure that the colonel would take his lack of reaction as proof of his insensitivity or ignorance and become self-righteous.
“I suppose you’ve never heard of him and that this tragedy means nothing to you,” Serrano continued accusingly.
“I’ve heard of him, Colonel, but my feelings are of no relevance in the matter.”
“And you call yourself an idealist?”
When they reached the lonely rock spur, Bora pointed out the sandy gulch where Lorca had been buried. Serrano dismounted and walked over to the tangle of desiccated branches Alfonso and Fuentes had piled on the grave.
Bora stayed saddled. From this vantage point, Castellar was fully visible below, and so was the rocky saddle joining El Baluarte to the sierra. Mas del Aire was the highest point of the massif, Fuentes had said, a climb mostly barren but spotted with yellow growth here and there. Despite Serrano’s obvious contempt for him, Bora felt remarkably well, and his curiosity led him to notice small details: the lack of trails leading to Mas del Aire, the fact that he’d never heard bells ringing from Castellar. Church bells were forbidden in Red-controlled areas, and Castellar had been fought over. But it was neutral ground now. Bora could see the bells in the arched window of the tower and wondered about their silence.
“The heart of Spain is buried here.” From the edge of the gully, Serrano spoke in a low, rancorous voice. “It was a wild heart and had to be cut out, but the body won’t live without it. What do you say to that, Don Martín?”
Bora spoke before thinking. “That I am glad I wasn’t the one who cut it out.”
Serrano nodded. Whether in agreement or mere acceptance, it was impossible to say. He promptly mounted his horse, turning away from the grave. “My son was killed in Madrid three days ago.”
EL PALO DE LA VIRGEN
Marypaz was complaining that she couldn’t find a gilded bracelet of hers. She was refusing to eat, and was still in bed past midday. She’d got all she could from looking at the pictures in Life, brought by Almagro for Walton, and now Brissot was engrossed in the magazine. Sandalled feet propped on the kitchen table, he sat oblivious to the dance of flies over the oily dishes, reading about the strike in Flint, Michigan.
From the doorway Walton said, “Will you hand it over when you’re done? I haven’t even had a chance to finish reading the damn thing.”
Brissot stretched the magazine across the table. “Take it. I don’t particularly care about the photos, especially the insider view of a Fascist plane bombing one of our trains.” He glanced at his watch and took his feet off the table. “I thought we were supposed to start our friendly questioning about the theft.”
“We are.” Walton crossed the kitchen on his way to the stairs. “I’m going up to check on Marypaz. Broach the subject with Valentin, he’ll be in any time.”
Moments later, Brissot’s dark expression told Walton that talking to Valentin would lead nowhere. The gypsy walked in and sat down, but that was as far as his collaboration would go. Like cocky youngsters anywhere, he listened with his head low, as if the subject were only marginally interesting to him and the effort of listening made his neck weary. When Brissot paused, he rolled his eyes, following the dancing flies.
“Rafael had better have more than a hunch if he’s going to accuse me of taking anything of his,” he said at last. “Without proof I don’t have to take any lip from him or you or anyone else.” He drawled his words defiantly, his bony young face motionless except for a nervous blink.
Walton was no diplomat. “Bragging about having served time sure succeeded in making Rafael suspicious. Neither Mosko nor I are accusing you of anything. We just want to hear your side of the story.”
Valentin bared his teeth in a grimace. One of his front teeth was broken, and its white triangular stump reinforced the impression of an animal sneer. “I’ve been to jail, same as the others who were sent to jail in this country. Lenin did time, too. I haven’t heard Rafael saying that Lenin was a thief, but I’m not even sure Rafael knows who Lenin was. Proof is what counts. Without proof I don’t give a damn about Rafael’s hunches or any committee supposed to find out who’s been stealing around here.”
“Well, has anything been stolen from you?”
Valentin looked at Walton, who’d asked the question. His eyelids began to twitch in earnest. “I haven’t got anything to steal.”
“Four of us have had things disappear.”
“Disappear is not the same as stolen.” Valentin tossed back a wave of black hair. The twitching of his lids was becoming spasmodic, but his defiance was undimmed. “All I can say is that you’d better grill everyone in this unit, because you can’t talk equality the way you do and single me out.” He stood up, tipping the chair. “Ask Maetzu, who takes off any time he feels like it, and no one knows where he goes. In the meantime, keep Rafael away from me.�
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Walton scowled. “Or else?”
“Just keep him away from me, that’s all.”
After Valentin had walked outdoors, Brissot took out his pipe and passed his forefinger around inside the empty bowl. “I don’t know, Felipe.”
“About what?” Walton was angry at Valentin and unwilling to listen to recriminations. “It’s you who said someone stole your lighter and Chernik’s pen and now Marypaz’s whatever it was. It’s you who wants to find out. Don’t you fucking go back on it now.”
Brissot stuck the pipe randomly into one of his many pockets, without looking. “We may have got carried away. Any of those objects could have been lost.”
“Where would Rafael have lost a rosary he constantly wore around his neck?”
“Chains break; watch straps and bracelets break. Even if there is a thief, we acted along bourgeois lines by confronting Valentin before everyone else just because we knew he’d served time.”
Walton couldn’t help sounding sour. “And what would be the appropriate Soviet model? Abolishing private property altogether so there’s no theft?”
“Actually, no. That’s something your Marxist Union chums advocated in Barcelona. I stick by the Third International. The appropriate model would be for Valentin to have a chance to confront us with the same accusation. It may come down to openly examining what each of us has in his duffel bag or trunk.”
Walton attempted to slam his hand down on a fly, and missed. “As if a thief would keep evidence in his backpack. If you want, I can stop this right now and tell Rafael to stuff his rosary. It’d be easier.”
“Easier but not fair. No. We must question everyone else, including Maetzu and Marypaz.”
Walton shut his eyes. What the fuck do I care about any of this? A short, trembling seizure stiffened his jaw, drove a spike of pain up his sore neck. He’d felt caught before and sprung the trap: coming to Spain had been part of the escape, and he hadn’t fucking come to Spain to get caught. Christ, I can no more make myself care about finding out who the thief is than finding out who killed Lorca, and Lorca was my friend.
I don’t want to, he thought. I don’t want to. He didn’t want to feel trapped by duty or Marypaz or Brissot or anything else. “I’ll tell you what, Mosko. Be a worthy comrade and apply all the politically appropriate pressure until someone confesses he stole from his friends. While you’re at it, try your hand at making Maetzu tell where he was on the night they killed Lorca. That is, if he doesn’t blow your head off first.”
“It’s your responsibility, not mine.”
Walton stood. “Is it? Is it mine?” He found anger a waste of energy just now. “Then I choose to take a full week before I bring up the matter of theft again with any of you. Put up or keep your mouth shut, and stick the Third International up your ass.”
RISCAL AMARGO
Bora realized by the amount of equipment deposited on the ground floor of the post that the Requetés might be staying for some time. The boys had been sitting by the door drinking from their canteens, and stood up simultaneously at their uncle’s approach. They exchanged glances and a terse salute with Bora, who passed in front of them to lead Serrano to his room upstairs.
The colonel glanced at the neatly folded clothes in the trunk Bora was hastily closing. He said, “I wish to show my nephews the ragged line of our front, Lieutenant. We will use the camp as our base for the next few days.”
Bora started gathering books and maps from the table. “My room and Fuentes’ room next door are at your disposal.”
“I expect it. I won’t be needing you again until later this evening, when I’ll want to be shown the enemy gun emplacement. Tell the men they are free to carry out their usual duties, and have Fuentes fetch my nephews.” Last on Bora’s table sat the book of Lorca’s poetry. It caught Serrano’s eye, but he touched it with his glove without opening it.
After telling Fuentes to fetch the two young men, Bora walked to the stable, and was giving Tomé a hard time when the sergeant joined him. A few feet away, Aixala and Paradís were scrubbing down the Requetés’ sweaty mounts, making faces and exchanging jokes in Catalan. It was Alfonso’s turn to cook, and the odour of fried onions reached the ledge. Niceto was invisible, but his voice could be heard singing a zarzuela tune behind the house, where he usually sat in the shade to clean his rifle.
“Teniente,” Fuentes said, “the colonel’s nephews are set up. Have you by any chance spoken to them?”
“No.”
“They asked about you while you were out with the colonel.”
“So?” Bora stepped out of Tomé’s earshot. “It’s not your place to gossip about officers.”
“That’s not it, sir.” Fuentes kept his policeman’s stolid resolve, staring and unmoved, but lowered his voice to a whisper. “They wanted to know if you left the post on the night the man was killed.”
Bora stared back. “And what did you tell them?”
“I said that as far as I knew you didn’t leave until daybreak, and that there wasn’t anything unusual in that. The way they asked, it’s like they’d been told to ask. They didn’t rightly know why they were asking, it seemed to me.”
Paradís’ laughter came from the place nearby, where he and Aixala were still taking care of the horses. Bora was annoyed by it. “Did they say anything about the dead man?”
“No. They didn’t even mention him directly. It’s because they said ‘Monday night’ that I understood they were talking about the twelfth.” Fuentes’ bearlike head lolled in stubborn denial. “Me and Alfonso haven’t said a word about the burial, not even to anyone here.”
It was clear Serrano had made the boys ask. Bora kept any comment to himself. He told Fuentes that the colonel and his nephews would be studying maps until lunch. “This afternoon I’m off to Castellar to talk to the priest. If anyone asks for more information, you’re to tell the truth.”
CASTELLAR VILLAGE, SIERRA DE SAN MARTÍN
Castellar numbered maybe thirty houses, set on its whalebonelike knoll. After entering the bowl-like depression around it, anyone arriving on foot faced a short laborious climb to the village. It wouldn’t take a good walker long, but there was no cover anywhere, not even enough shade to crouch in if one came under fire.
That’s how Lieutenant Jover got it. But that place midway down the ravine was destined to be his killing place since forever. Since before Jover was born, since the antiquity and tumult of creation, that flat rock was made for Jover to die on. None of these rocks are my place of death.
Bora reached the edge of town, where fig trees twisted like thick wire. Evidence of past battles stared out of disarrayed stone fences, pockmarked houses and tightly shuttered balconies. A faded, sagging roof, leaning inwards, formed a dragon’s back against the colourless sky. On the way, Bora had met no one except two malicious goats that had butted him to keep him away from a bush they were stripping bare. In the searing heat of the afternoon, the pebble-strewn track through town was empty, too.
In the scorching small square, the church was a shrivelled building three or four hundred years old, with an ugly baroque facade and a shabbily whitewashed bell tower. Bora shielded his eyes to look up at the tall shaft. Through the years, pigeons and martins had deposited conical piles of silvery droppings on the high windowsills. Shavings of flimsy excrement must fly off every time the bells rang; but did they ever ring?
From the doorway of the church, looking left, Bora could discern the rocky spur behind which Lorca lay. It stood high, lonely, like the edge of a forlorn world. He knew something about the difficulty of hauling a dead body up to it. Poor Lorca, sealed in the mute, withering matrix of dirt and stone.
The church door was locked. Bora walked around the building accompanied by the mournful cooing of pigeons from the eaves. He found a smaller door on the north side, but this, too, was shut and bolted. So he rounded the base of the bell tower, stepping momentarily into the shade of a house. The shade seemed red to his sun-filled eyes. He c
ontinued to the opposite side of the church, where a third, low door responded to his touch and opened. A tepid breath of dankness came from within, as it had when he’d looked into the well at Riscal. He had to duck to pass under the lintel.
When his eyes grew used to the twilight, he saw a long vaulted room, old cracks whitewashed over. He smelled the odour of must-filled corners and dusty cloth, of tapers and incense. Up and down the nave, chalk reliefs in lurid colours illustrated the Stations of the Cross. Jesus Falls the First Time, Jesus Speaks to the Women of Jerusalem, Jesus is Laid in the Sepulchre. It was unlikely, Bora thought from recent experience, that the apostles could so effortlessly have lowered the Master’s body into the grave. Four pews and a sparse arrangement of empty chairs took up the floor. The priest was nowhere in sight. Bora had taken his gun out but now holstered it again as he walked up the aisle.
Set off by glass vases containing neither water nor flowers, the main altar was covered by a starched cloth like cut paper and dwarfed by a life-size statue of the Madonna. Draped in black damask, the statue stood with one hand outstretched and the other on her exposed heart, pierced by seven thin daggers. Her face and hands were modelled out of polished, fine wax the heat of day had caused to bead and glow, the sheen on her skin’s surface emerging from the heavy cloth: hands, face, and a childlike small foot.
Bora drew closer. A wig of human hair, black and rich like horsehair, was piled up under a dusty, complicated headdress of silver filigree and gauze. Startlingly true to life, the Madonna’s upturned glass eyes stared from the sweet, pained feminine face at the grimy rafters of the ceiling. The daggers spilled carmine blood. To the right of the statue hung the framed print of another Madonna, flanked by angels carrying the instruments of the Passion. Above the altar, in gilded tin letters nailed to the wall, it read, VIVA LA PURÍSIMA VIRGEN MARIA, NUESTRA SEÑORA DE LOS REMEDIOS.
“What are you doing here?”
Bora wheeled back at the priest’s words. As he did, he knocked over one of the empty vases and had to snatch at it to keep it from crashing to the floor.
