The Horseman's Song

by Ben Pastor

  After his flare-up, he felt a sullen contempt for everyone. Contempt was what the edge of the floating scum at melting season left on the shores of Eden Lake. Scum and waste the snow covers in fake prettiness until the spring. Back in ’29, Lorca had walked the foamy edge of the lake and called it beautiful.

  Downstairs Brissot was alone, wiping his hands on a frayed towel. “I heard something interesting from Valentin,” he said, with his conspiratorial owlish look.

  Walton felt like spitting. “Well, isn’t that grand.”

  “You know he has this widow in Castellar —”

  “Yes, yes, the Yarza woman. A busybody midwife. What of it?”

  Brissot led him outside, dumped the bloody water on the ground and stopped at the fountain to rinse the washbowl. “It seems someone from the Fascist camp has been asking about a burial on the sierra.”

  “Who?”

  “We don’t know yet.” As Brissot headed for the almond orchard in the back, Walton followed. “It changes everything, Felipe! Maetzu was right to do away with the mulero and his lies. Why would the Fascists be interested in the burial if they hadn’t killed Lorca?”

  Walton sat in a cloud of gnats, finding that closing his eyes helped him to think. “All we know is that someone killed him. We’ve been over it a hundred times.” When he looked, he realized how beautiful the sky was through the branches of the almond tree. “His shoes, his papers could have been taken by his killer or by someone unrelated. But I doubt a killer would have laid him on his back and folded his hands on his stomach.”

  “Is that what you meant by ‘fooling with the body’?”

  “Of course not. By that I meant that the fly of his pants was undone.”

  “Well, that!” Brissot waved away the gnats. “It could have happened while they were frisking him, although you know how intolerant the natives can be when it comes to sexual matters! Knowing of Lorca’s leanings, maybe the killer meant to disgrace his body. I reckon the person who closed his eyes and folded his hands was someone else entirely. He’d been dead over six hours when we found him. Plenty could have happened in that time.”

  “The place is hardly a frequented highway, Mosko.”

  “No, but the mulero happened to be there that night. He could have stolen the shoes, for that matter. It’s not a detail he’d have mentioned, even if Maetzu had given him more time.”

  Walton grumbled. “Back to the mulero, are we? Don’t forget that when we returned to the brook looking for clues, the German was already there, damn him.”

  “Then it was the German. I thought you said he sounded British.”

  “Whatever he is, what else would he be doing there?” Pressing his thumbs into his eyelids, Walton could see nothing but a blind yellow glare like the wall in his dreams.

  “He might have orders to dispose of any evidence left behind.”

  As he let his arms drop to his sides, bright green circles burst in front of Walton’s eyes. “He acted curious, not surprised. Maybe he was looking for the body. Or maybe he’d gotten there before we did and was the one who went through Lorca’s clothes. Or maybe he had no idea what the fuck we were doing down there, or that anyone had been killed.” Walton’s desire to argue fled from him like gnats chased by a piece of cloth. “Who’s to tell if Lorca was killed by the German or his men? For Chrissake, Mosko. As if people need a reason for killing these days. It’s only with murders that you’ve got to look for motives.”

  “This is a political assassination.”

  “You don’t fucking know that. Can’t you get it? None of us knows for sure why Lorca was killed, or why he wasn’t killed in Granada the first time around!”

  Brissot gave up for the time being. “I reported what the widow said: you take it from here. When I told Valentin to learn all that he can from her, he answered that he’ll do us no favours until we stop treating him like a thief.”

  “Well, screw him too. Today, instead of going to the sierra, with Rafael’s help I searched every pallet and sack – including yours, including mine – and turned up nothing.”

  RISCAL AMARGO

  In the evening, Serrano listened indifferently to Bora’s report on Mas del Aire. “It’s of no use to us,” he commented. “But sometimes intelligence is good by default.”

  Bora had been worried he’d have to supply details; now that he’d been asked for none, his only concern was that Serrano might notice his lips were raw. Would the colonel think the wind had caused it? Climbing might account for the reopening of the cuts on his limbs. “The plane,” he said to keep the other’s scrutiny away from his scruffy appearance, “is definitely surveying the inner sierra.”

  Serrano said nothing about Bora’s lips or the plane or anything else. He looked beyond the lieutenant in an unfocused way. “It is fair for you to know that this afternoon my nephews and I rode to the place where you buried Lorca. Naturally I explained nothing to them whatsoever; young men are seldom worthy of confidence.”

  Did he suspect I might have moved the body since our first visit together? After leaving Remedios’ house, Bora had euphorically wandered the deserted streets of Castellar, and anyone could have shot him dead ten times over. He sensed mistrust in Serrano’s words, but right now he couldn’t bring himself to give a damn about his opinion of young men in general, or of him as a representative of that group.

  Sunday 18 July. 23.00, written by candlelight at the post.

  I met Remedios today.

  Since my visit, I need to reconsider, reorder, throw away or put so many of my previous assumptions aside somewhere I won’t be able to find them in the near future. Everything is upside down, and intellectual patterns – even Kant’s reason, especially Kant’s reason – serve me nothing. To hell with universals, first principles and all that: the term “relative” meant nothing to me until now. Everything has become small, and small is immense.

  How have I spent weeks in this place without knowing the bruja? When I die I’ll think of her, I am sure. How many men have the privilege of knowing what their final thought will be? I may not be deserving of it, but the privilege is mine.

  There’s purity about her: her colour, her grace, the way she speaks. I thought about it, and that’s the word: purity. I asked her, “Are you a gypsy?” And she said no. She asked me nothing. She didn’t ask my name, even. I asked her, “Are you married?” And she said no. But she didn’t ask if I was. As if I could envision being married to anyone after what happened today, after realizing how it can be. From now on, everything will have to compare to that.

  As for me, my naivety was appalling. Not that I thought of myself as experienced, but still! Is it because I grew up Catholic, or half-English, or my stepfather’s son? All the while I marvelled at how wise she is, how unlike anything, anybody else. Neither coarse nor jaded, wiser than her years (how old is she? Twenty-six at most, but you could believe her ten years younger, except for her wisdom).

  Walking back I was reminded of Professor Hohmann quoting Aquinas to the class: there was splendour of order in what happened, nothing less. I can’t sleep, I can’t think, I can’t write anything that makes sense. I read and reread Lorca’s poem about the unfaithful bride. ‘… the rustle of her skirt sounded in my ear like silk torn by ten knives …’ It’s all true, just as he says. I’m certain Niceto and Herr C. are only reporting malicious rumours about him. No one can write as Lorca did about women and not love them. As for me, I couldn’t put today’s experience into words if I wanted to: it is ineffable.

  The colonel, who acted strangely all evening, wants me to go to Teruel tomorrow. Does he want me away from Riscal? In any case I’m glad of my orders, since the trip will give me a chance to see Herr C. and do some other things I promised I would do.

  Bora was about to cap his pen, but hesitated. In a very small hand, at the bottom of the page, he added,

  I don’t want to believe that the American goes to her, that’s all. She never mentioned him, and I was grateful for that.

&nb
sp; Early on Monday morning Colonel Serrano was waiting on the ledge when Bora climbed back from the brook. The sierra was a giant cathedral, all ramparts and spires against the tender sky. Mas del Aire hovered suspended between earth and heaven, in the place where the pediment of the cathedral would be.

  “Here are the papers I want you to deliver to Teruel, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And here is a letter I want you to carry by hand to my wife.” The sealed letter lay in his gloved hand. “Don’t go just yet,” Serrano added as Bora took it. His gaunt face, seamed and grey, promised no compassion to others or to himself.

  Bora, who was anxious to set off, expected everything but the words that came next.

  “There are some shadowy points in Lorca’s death, Bora, beginning with the actual hour of death. Couldn’t he have been killed much later than around midnight?”

  Bora placed Serrano’s documents and letter in the inner pocket of his tunic. “I’m not medically trained, but I believe I estimated the hour of death approximately enough.”

  “Well, all I have is your statement on it. You said he was killed by a gunshot to the head, and that he had no papers on him.”

  The gravity of the innuendo began to dawn on Bora. “Sir, I had no reason whatever to lie about García Lorca when I didn’t even know who he was. Why would I have reported to you that I’d found his body in the first place, and show you the snapshot he had with him?”

  “For one, because you didn’t ask me whether I’d followed and had already seen the body on my way to the sierra.”

  Bora was reminded of a fencer, stock-still and deliberate as he readies to deal the winning blow.

  “Accidents happen in civil wars, Lieutenant. There are times when we kill in haste, or by mistake.”

  What? Bora tensed up. He only managed to keep control of his posture and voice because Fuentes and Niceto were watching from afar. “I have not come to Spain to carry out indiscriminate killings. As a brother officer the colonel cannot possibly —”

  A wave of the gloved hand interrupted him. “We’re not in your national socialist army, Bora: I am your superior, not your brother officer. Hard though my words may seem to you, I must make sure. I do not trust young men. You must give me your word of honour as a Christian and a gentleman that you did not kill García Lorca.”

  Bora hated himself for blinking. He hated himself for feeling mortified. But he said, automatically, “You have my word of honour, Colonel Serrano.”

  TERUEL

  He’d recovered part of his composure by the time he entered the unobtrusive Abwehr office and greeted the short-haired secretary. Cziffra had apparently overheard him, because he stuck his well-groomed head out of his office door down the hall. “Come in, come in, Lieutenant. If there’s film in it, leave the camera on my secretary’s desk.”

  The first thing Bora noticed stepping into Cziffra’s space was that the ugly red vase was missing from its niche. Only shards remained; looking across the room in a straight line, he saw a large, ragged hole in the windowpane.

  “Just a .22 calibre, nothing to worry about,” Cziffra smirked. “It’s better than being deadly bored in Düsseldorf.”

  Bora laid on the desk the bloodstained document found on the man called Matthias Braun, and while the operative glanced at it scornfully, he reported on the ambush, on the disappearance of Lorca’s relative Antonio Cadena, and the unidentified airplane.

  “The plane isn’t ours,” Cziffra said briefly. “Oh, I believe it’s a German machine, as you say, but it isn’t manned by us. Unless the Italians are sending it around, we’ll have to live with the mystery unless it flies low enough to show its intentions.”

  Cziffra had a way of bringing up relevant subjects in a tone that put a safe, unemotional distance between himself and the matter at hand. Danger and politics sounded like small talk. “So, how are you getting along with the colonel?” he inquired now, carefully dabbing a starched handkerchief to his neck.

  Bora’s plans to keep his resentment to himself collapsed the moment he was asked. “He demanded my word of honour that I didn’t kill Lorca.”

  Cziffra’s jaw moved under his smooth skin like the well-oiled element of a vice. “He’s only angry at you because, unlike his son, you’re alive.”

  “He ought to impress his grief on his nephews, then. I’m nothing to him.”

  “He may see you as more promising than his nephews, and in need of the traditional hard whipping that goes with the perception of quality.”

  “With all due respect, that is an inference on your part. You do not know me well enough to say.”

  “Ah. Is that what you think?” With a scowl, Cziffra reached for a grey folder, which he waved like a teacher showing graded homework. “Just preliminary information, but there’s more coming.” He opened the folder and lifted out a typewritten sheet of onion paper. “Family: von Bora, or von Borna, of baronial Saxon stock, related to Martin Luther’s wife but faithful to Romanism, which prompted your ancestors to adopt the motto Fidem Servavi. Paul’s words, if I am not mistaken, for ‘I kept the faith.’ A family of landowning diplomats and career soldiers, but also, for the past two hundred years, publishers. The Bora Verlag dominates the scene at the Leipzig International Book Fair, specializing in books on philosophy, history and religion, having recently added a much-acclaimed line of foreign literature in translation. True?”

  Bora found the question too academic to answer. Still, since Cziffra was glaring at him, waiting for a reply, he said, “True.”

  “I thought so. Let’s see what else. Your mother Georgiana Alexandra, known as Nina, is Scots on her mother’s side – a cadet branch of the Black Douglases, it says here – and a first cousin to your late father, the famous musician and friend of Richard Wagner. A gossiped romance between relatives, your parents’, with a difference of thirty years between them. You were born 11 November 1913 in Edinburgh, and baptized Martin-Heinz Douglas Wilhelm Frederick in the Jesuit church there; a few months later your father died of throat cancer. In 1916 your mother married an Imperial Staff old-line Junker who’d wooed her unsuccessfully the first time around, namely Army Generaloberst Edwin von Sickingen, of the 1870 contingent. A Catholic convert, vegetarian, non-smoker and believer in homoeopathy, who two years ago left his post as commander of the Leipzig 14th Division of Gruppenkommando 3, Dresden, in a huff over some political disagreement we’d best not go into.” At this point in the reading Cziffra smiled. His teeth, small and even like children’s milk teeth, showed in the unkind crescent of his mouth. “At least you seem to have your ideological heart in the right place, even though you started by studying philosophy at the University of Leipzig. There you graduated summa cum laude, having already been awarded permission to lecture, the coveted venia legendi, in your first year. You then surprised everyone – including your stepfather, who had secretly hoped you would – by choosing a military career.” Cziffra didn’t look up from the page, but a vestige of the malicious smile was still on his face. “Cavalry school in Hanover, infantry school in Dresden, they gave you a special leave from the War Academy to let you serve here. So far your superiors have had nothing but good things to say about you … but then several of them are your stepfather’s former colleagues. You consistently demonstrated – and I quote – ‘strong will, lucidity of intellect, splendid resilience under stress, exceptional capacity for leadership, et cetera’.” The smile widened, no kinder than before. “Traditional Feldherr qualities, although you haven’t yet even held company command, and much can happen between the stages of diligent student and warlord. What else? You have a younger stepbrother; the family country house in Trakehnen is a shrine to your late father, whom both your parents mourn mawkishly. You spent several summers in Rome, a guest of Sickingen’s Italian first wife; their marriage was annulled during the Great War. Raised with the customary trilingualism of your social class – German, English, French – you have added Greek, Latin, Italian and Spanish since.” Here
Cziffra did look up, over his glasses. “I suggest you turn your attention to Slavic tongues next; they might come in handy before you know it.” The folder had more pages in it, but these remained unread. “Yes, you managed to do it all. Now you must only take care that you don’t burn out before you’re thirty. Or that you don’t go off the rails.”

  Despite the heat of the closed room, Bora’s perspiration felt clammy, and his clothes stuck to the cuts on his arms and legs. “I’d like to hear what you meant by ‘political disagreement’, as relates to the general.”

  “Naturally: the political disagreement about which you argued with your stepfather. The fact is that, unlike the old man, you believe in an intimate relationship between army and politics.” Careful to pinch his trousers at the knees, Cziffra sat on the corner of his desk. “Philosophy seems to have done you good, unless it’s plain ambition. Poor Lorca, the very thought that a German volunteer could have killed him by mistake! It would lend credence to the belief that the Abwehr buries its blunders.” Seeing Bora prick up his ears at these words, Cziffra changed the subject. “Is that the end of your report?”

  “Yes, until I learn more about Lorca’s last evening in Teruel.”

  “What if I told you that he had NKDV enemies in town?”

  “You teach me that we all have communist enemies, Herr Cziffra. And your vase is shattered beyond my ability to tell which side is which colour.”

  Cziffra looked moderately amused. “You’re not nearly as clever as you think, but it’s fun watching you try. What else?”

  “The hour of Lorca’s arrival at your office might be helpful.”

  “That, I can supply to you.” After dabbing again at his neck and face, Cziffra took a small notebook out of his pocket and leafed through it. “He arrived at my office at 9.25, stayed half an hour and said nothing about leaving that night. If he left his cousin’s house shortly after eight, he must have been somewhere else during the intervening hour and more.”

  “Señora Cadena mentioned a stage designer friend.”