The Horseman's Song

by Ben Pastor

  “His lover, you mean. Francisco ‘Paco’ Soler, a Madrid faggot he met while preparing a play. He’s a harmless cocksucker.”

  Bora felt a slight blush rise to his face at Cziffra’s uncouthness. He recalled the writing behind the photograph: A MI QUERIDO AMIGO PAQUITO. “Is it possible that Lorca went to visit him?”

  “It’s possible, even though things had cooled off between them lately.”

  So maybe Soler returned the snapshot to Lorca, who carried it in his pocket. “Perhaps Lorca was worried, or had had a premonition.”

  Cziffra laughed this time around, a strange reaction on his unfriendly face. “Lorca had nothing but premonitions. Eighty per cent of what he produced deals with death one way or another. The only good thing about premonitions is that sooner or later one will prove you right.”

  “Given the circumstances, may I try to meet with Soler after I visit Señora Cadena?”

  “You may. But what do you hope to learn, and how will you justify a visit? He won’t think for a moment that you’re Spanish.”

  Bora caught himself looking at the blue and red shards in the niche. “I’m an officer in the Foreign Legion, and as a member of the armed forces, I’m perfectly within my rights to inquire. After all, the family asked me about Lorca’s disappearance. If Soler is unaware of the murder, he’ll be anxious to have details. If he knows plenty, he’ll likely clam up or evade questioning. My goal is to find out whether Lorca in fact visited him on the night he died, and if so, whether Soler saw him leave alone or with others, on foot, horseback or in a car.”

  Cziffra casually ran the folded handkerchief over his neck, above his immaculate shirt collar. “Lorca came here alone, on foot. As for his leaving Teruel, despite his codename he was no horse devotee, so scratch the possibility of his spontaneously riding to the mountains. If he did in fact die sometime after midnight, a motor vehicle must have been involved. Not ours, because he never met his escort. And the public car is still in the garage here in Teruel.”

  Carelessly, Cziffra crumpled the handkerchief in his breast pocket. “By the way, the deceptive information about our deployment in Aragon reached the Reds through another courier, in another sector. As for Antonio Cadena, it seems he was detained on the afternoon of the twelfth in the town of Alfambra, north of here. He reportedly lies half-dead in a prison camp, despite the fact that his family was forced by the police to pay an exorbitant sum against promises of a quick release. Today’s newspapers list the Cadenas among the donors of money and personal jewels ‘to the Cause’.”

  “How much may I tell Señora Cadena, sir?”

  “As little as possible. Here’s Soler’s address, and the location of the public garage.”

  EL PALO DE LA VIRGEN

  “If Marypaz asks where I am, just tell her I’ve gone to the sierra.” Walton spoke to Bernat because he was the only one who would pass on the intelligence if needed. Brissot wasn’t to be trusted in this matter, Maetzu and Chernik had gone deep into the mountains to hunt for meat, and neither Rafael nor Valentin was in a sociable mood.

  Bernat said he would. “But you’re really going to see Remedios, aren’t you? You’ve never been in the daytime before.”

  “I’m going where I’m going. Unless Marypaz asks, keep your trap shut.”

  Halfway up the climb from the camp, Walton changed his mind. He intended to visit Remedios, but what was the hurry? There was something else in Castellar to clear up first.

  CASTELLAR

  In the village, shutters and doors were already closed to the mid-morning sun. A woman’s scolding voice came muffled from a second floor, along with the monotonous click of a handloom. Walton walked on, to a whitewashed house in the middle of a fig orchard at the south edge of Castellar.

  “Yes, yes. I know who you are,” the Widow Yarza said without opening the door more than was needed. Her pasty face and ring-laden right hand stood out against her black clothes. She huffed as if she were doing him a favour. “Well, all right. Come in.”

  At first she only listened, hands on her generous hips, cocking her head. There was something absurdly provocative in her stance, but Walton chose to indulge her vanity. “Why, you’re much younger than I thought! No wonder the men talk about you.”

  “Do they?” Self-consciously smoothing her hair, she sat down in front of him, under a framed picture of old King Alfonso and his queen. The hand-tinted postcard of a flamenco dancer was jammed between the frame and the glass, along with the photo of a much younger Yarza and her late husband: he seated, she standing at his side in a high-combed wedding mantilla.

  Walton nodded, mumbling another flattery so that he could spring the question he had come for. Her small eyes searched him as if she were making up her mind about him. Her eyebrows were hairless; she must have plucked them, because there was fine black down on her upper lip. Watching her mull over an answer, Walton had the impression that one could deflate plump cheeks by poking them, like dough filled with yeast. Yes, she said at last, dragging her words. Someone had come probing about a recent burial; she didn’t know who, but the query had come from the Alemán in the Fascist camp.

  “The German, eh?” Walton concealed his irritation. “How much do you know about him?”

  The bare eyebrows went up half an inch. “Not much. He’s been to Castellar twice, maybe three times. Has no woman in the village.”

  That is, Walton thought, he hasn’t come to you. Still, he asked, “Have you seen him?”

  The widow picked at invisible lint on her black skirt. She had braided her sleek hair so tightly that, sitting opposite her, Walton could have sworn she’d gone bald and painted black shoe polish onto her scalp. “Through my bedroom shutters, just yesterday. I knew it was him because he’s tall. Taller than you, even.”

  Walton resented the comparison. “Well, what else?”

  “Army shorts, good-looking boy.”

  “I mean, what was he doing? Was he alone, walking?”

  “Walking?” She threw up her hands. “He laid down a canvas bag, sprinted up and did two cartwheels right in front of my window.”

  The craziness of doing cartwheels in the streets of Castellar peeved him. There was something defiant or light-hearted or insane about it that made Walton resentful. It had to be the same man who had put a gun to his head to see him “up close” and barely escaped Maetzu’s angry fire.

  Leaving the village, he was still chewing over the news. No one in Castellar knew about the burial, so the German’s asking was useless. One dust-kicking step after the other, he reached the place where the climb to Mas del Aire began. Yes, but how much did the German know? Why was he meddling?

  Walton came to a halt, pressing his gathered fingers together to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The gravesite at Muralla del Rojo was easier to reach from where he stood than Remedios’ house.

  Still, it took him nearly an hour to get there. Across a flat pebble over the grave, a tailless lizard sunned itself, and scuttled out of sight when Walton chased it. During their last meeting in Castralvo, Lorca had half-jokingly stuck out the index and small finger of his right hand when mentioning death. He’d recited to Walton some incantation about a lizard, and here was the lizard again, sunning itself on his grave.

  Women are lucky, who can cry. Walton squatted to remove windblown burrs and chalky traces of bird droppings from the mound. In the noon hour, the pebbles glared white, hiding more lizards and the body. Damn, he thought, there’s something about graves that separates. That’s why men build them. They form an obstacle between us and the dead, giving a shape to grief, a name to it. Grief without a place to grieve is more heart-rending: graves draw pain to themselves, and make it bearable.

  In Valdecebro Lorca had showed him the anthem he was working on. “It’s almost ready, Felipe. What do you want me to call it?”

  Walton answered that he didn’t know.

  “Well, I’ll call it ‘Canción de Jínete’, then.” Lorca laughed his infectious laugh, a dark man’s b
right laughter.

  “Why ‘The Horseman’s Song’, Federico?”

  “Because death comes riding to the enemy.” Lorca was still smiling, but Walton felt an edge of fear in the words, and in himself.

  “And to us?”

  Lorca raised his hand in the superstitious two-fingered sign. “To us too, Felipe.” Other than farewell, they were the last words Walton heard from him.

  In front of him, the lizard felt confident enough to resume its place in the sun. After talking to the widow, the image of the German doing cartwheels had been replaced in Walton’s mind by another. He could imagine him by the brook searching, spying, trying to make sense of things. Even folding Lorca’s hands, which was just like something a man who does cartwheels in the street would do. That day, as with so many other days in his life, Walton had come second, too late.

  Turning his back to the grave, he started to head for Mas del Aire from the side he was familiar with, less steep and wind-beaten.

  TERUEL

  The public garage opened on to a sloping square at the highest point of Teruel’s hill. To the north of the square, limestone walls ran along both sides of a tower, facing the dry hollow that had once been the ancient Moorish town. As Bora walked in, a stench of oily rags weighed down the air. Four cars sat there. Two had their hoods lifted; the windshield was missing from the smallest one, an old Fiat. An engine rested on cement blocks. A grease-smeared door on the end wall led somewhere, but it was closed and no sounds came from within.

  Cziffra had told him the car for hire was an Ansaldo, surely the dark green Model 10 with its windows rolled down. He walked around it in search of holes, scratches, dirt packed in the tyres, and any telltale marks of violence to the interior. He had time to lean in and read the odometer before someone approached slowly from behind.

  “Anything I can help you with?”

  Bora backed out of the car. “Yes.”

  An albino in dirty overalls stood with a wrench in his hand. “If you’re looking to hire this car, it’s already reserved for a wedding party in the afternoon. It’ll be available again tomorrow morning.”

  Bora scribbled the numbers he’d read in a notebook. “I don’t need it. I want to know when it was used last.”

  The man’s cautious stare at the Legion uniform told Bora he’d meet no resistance. “We keep the records in the back,” he said, heading with a stoop to the smudgy door.

  Bora followed. Only when the albino used his stump to hold the door open for him did he notice that his left arm had been severed at the wrist. The rosy lump of freshly cicatrized flesh emerging from the sleeve surprised him like something private and obscene which a decent man should conceal or deny.

  The office was a closet-sized storage room for inner tubes and boxes of spare parts. As he leafed through a ledger under a bare light bulb, the albino’s head looked like a pale growth of winter wheat. “The car hasn’t been taken out in over a week, señor teniente.”

  “But when was it taken out last?”

  “On 9 July.”

  “And when was it returned?”

  “On the same day.”

  Three days before Lorca was killed. Bora curbed his disappointment. “Who hired it?” he asked.

  “The Reinas. They were going to a funeral in Daroca.” The albino put down the ledger on a bracketed worktable, resting his ugly stump on it. “Do you know the Reinas? The old man used to play the organ in the cathedral.”

  Bora pocketed the notebook. When he asked for the ledger, the albino handed it over. “Just leave it here when you’re finished. I’ll be in the garage if you need anything else.”

  Bora waited to be alone in the small room before leafing through the transactions of the past two months. In the weeks between mid-May and 12 July, nowhere did he read Lorca’s name. He did come across a signature five times that was marked by minute lower case and tall capital letters, remarkably similar to the handwriting behind the snapshot he had found on the body. The signature read F. García, a name common in Spain yet too much of a coincidence given the circumstances.

  Lorca might have used his middle name to do business. Surely, some people in Teruel knew who he was, and why he was lying low, but I expect people don’t ask questions these days.

  The distances travelled by the man who signed himself García varied, although twice they hovered around forty miles, a possible round trip to the sierra. Holding the lamp by the wire to direct its glare, Bora studied the wall map of Aragon above the worktable. Alternatively, an approximately forty-mile round trip from Teruel might lead to Perales del Alfambra, twenty-four miles away; Caminreal lay forty miles to the north-west; smaller lanes wormed due east and west to Albarracín, Bezas and Cedrillas. The road along the Turia River led to the south-west and to the sierra of San Martín. The last trip entered under the name of F. García, on Sunday 4 July, totalled less than twelve miles, enough for a round trip to nearby Valdecebro or Concud.

  After jotting down the dates, Bora turned to 9 July, the Reina entry. On that day, the car had been out from seven in the morning to seven in the evening for a total of just under 125 miles, the distance to and from Daroca. Whoever the Reinas were, they had had enough time for a leisurely drive to a funeral and back. The biggest surprise, however, scrawled above Reina’s signature, was the last recorded mileage of the car.

  In the garage, Bora’s question about it startled the albino. He’d been leaning under the hood of the old Fiat, and knocked his head as a result. “I was off sick for a week until yesterday,” he explained defensively. “And the car wasn’t taken out after the ninth. Let me double-check.” After comparing the Ansaldo’s odometer to the last number entered in the ledger, he seemed anxious to agree. “You’re right. There’s a difference of some forty-three miles.” Grumpily, he added, “It’s not like I run this place, teniente. If you want to, you can ask the owner when he returns from his honeymoon. He got married on Sunday, and should be back this Friday. Maybe it’s a mistake. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  Bora did not press the matter. He stepped to the entrance to look at the ledger in full daylight. All transactions – repairs, tune-ups, rentals – were entered together, chronologically. He saw no evidence of corrections, erasures or tampering with the last few pages. He slammed the register down on the hood of the Fiat and stormed out.

  MAS DEL AIRE

  “Oh, it’s you,” Remedios said.

  Walton stepped closer, hands in his pockets. “Why, who should it be?”

  Remedios didn’t answer. She sat on the rubble wall behind her house, sunning her legs with her cotton dress folded back over her knees to mid-thigh. Her head was tilted back so that the mass of red hair fell back over her shoulders, like an intricate net of fine metal strands. “What do you want?”

  She’d never asked what he wanted before. Moodily Walton fumbled in his pockets. There had never been a need for words between them. But today all she did was glance at him through half-lowered lids, taking in the sun on her white face. From where Walton stood, the smooth length of her inner thighs was visible under the rolled-back dress. Deep between them, the handful of red fleece nestled safe and now troubled him, because it was exposed and yet no direct offer to him came from it. He moved his eyes up from her legs, trying to smile. “Let’s go inside, Remedios.”

  “What for?” She sat with her eyes closed, the palms of her hands upturned on her knees. From a hole in the rubble wall, a dusty snake slithered out, leaving comma-like traces in the silt. It slid over her bare foot and around her ankle as it went seeking a rock.

  Walton understood none of this. What for? He wondered if it had to do with his going to the Widow Yarza, and tried to explain, clumsily. Remedios’ lids stayed low, but she came as close to laughing as he’d ever seen her. Walton was unexpectedly hurt by it. He searched himself for anger and found some, inadvisable at this time. “Damn it, will you look at me while I’m talking?”

  “I can see you.”

  “And fucking
close your legs. I can’t think straight if you sit that way.”

  “I was sitting this way before you came. The sun loves me, so I need to sit this way. Move over if you have to.”

  Walton did, nearly turning his back to her. He could have asked what was wrong, but she had not refused him outright, so he felt wounded and dull, too proud to beg. Whatever he added – plainly, sincerely – brought about no change in Remedios’ posture or expression. Her eyes remained closed; the white slack cradles of her hands did not move from her knees. She gave no outward sign to Walton that he’d be able to expect a spoken answer.

  TERUEL

  Bora recognized Luisa Cadena’s house from her description: across from a convent one block away from the city hall, on a long alley with narrow sidewalks. Ornate details and ironwork showed a bygone elegance; the arched doorway, guarded by stone masks, was still impressive. When Bora rang the bell, he heard the barking of small dogs before a leathery housekeeper came to open up. Luisa Cadena was behind her at once, and invited Bora in: “Sírvase usted entrar, Don Martín.” She preceded him across a paved court to a parlour, glancing back over her shoulder. “I hope to God you have some news.”

  Bora removed his army cap and followed her in silence, a distracted ear to the crying of a child upstairs.

  The parlour was as he’d expected, from the crowd of potted plants to the upright piano covered by an embroidered shawl, good china and some silver. On the piano, Bora noticed the framed enlargement of a snapshot – a smiling dark man in cotton suit and white shoes against the background of an American skyscraper. He remembered the verses in Garcia Lorca’s 1929 Poeta en Nueva York. In a wicker armchair by the window, with a rosary in her lap, sat an old woman to whom Luisa went to speak, leaning in close to her. All Bora understood was, “Noticias de Antonio y Federico, Mamá.”

  He stood awkwardly, seeking enough confidence to lie. “I came with more questions than answers, Señora Cadena. And the news I have is not good.”

  Luisa turned to him. The eyes in her pallor – the complexion Lorca called “olive and lily” in his poems – were like holes. “Siéntese.” She indicated a much used, overstuffed sofa. “Please. You must be warm after riding.” The polite artificiality of her conduct was something she needed to keep herself together, and Bora complied with her request. “Would you like something cold to drink?”