The Horseman's Song

by Ben Pastor

  Walton had to force himself to speak. “And did you find it?”

  “Blood’s easy to find.”

  When he walked back to the house, Brissot was standing on the doorstep smoking. The bowl of his pipe gave out a faint glow every time he took a drag. “I was positive the Fascists had killed Lorca, but hearing Maetzu tonight …” he told Walton.

  “Right.” Studiously Walton rolled himself a cigarette. “I asked him about the night of the twelfth. He killed somebody.”

  “What does ‘somebody’ mean? Where? Tonight he implied that men like Lorca deserve a bullet.”

  “I overheard your conversation. But for all that he’s sore at anyone who’s politically lukewarm, what real reason would he possibly have —”

  “A real reason, Felipe? When did Maetzu ever need a reason? Wasn’t he doing time for a senseless double murder when the anarchists sprung him in Bilbao? That crime had nothing to do with politics.”

  “But Maetzu acts on impulse, not in cold blood.”

  “Like when he killed the mule drover?”

  In the dark, Walton could imagine that he was somewhere away from here, or nowhere at all. “I’ll tell you what Maetzu is likely to do. He’ll probably sneak over to the Fascist post and slit the German’s throat one of these days: that’s more in keeping with him.”

  “You talk as if you were opposed to it.”

  Walton reached for Brissot’s pipe and lit his cigarette with its embers, carefully. “Why should I be opposed to slitting a German’s throat? In Flanders I did it myself.”

  HUERTA DE SANTA OLALLA

  By half past ten, dinner was over. Bora was not often asked about himself, and he felt flattered by Señora Serrano’s attention.

  “I’m actually Scots-born,” he said. “Father was working as a conductor in Bayreuth, so Nina lived for a time with her parents at the German consulate in Edinburgh. Nina is my mother, yes. I always called her that. She went into early labour after seeing a worker’s hand crushed during a factory visit with her father, and barely made it back to extraterritorial Germany: I was born in the lobby of the consulate.” Bora smiled. “She says she was afraid to look at me when they first showed me to her. She thought the incident was an omen and maybe I’d be born missing a hand.”

  “You shouldn’t smile. We never know what God has in store for us, Don Martín.”

  The image of the albino’s maimed arm flashed uncomfortably through Bora’s mind. “Of course not. I didn’t mean to imply that we do.”

  “You’re a soldier. You should believe in precognition.”

  Besame con tu lengua, aquí. Hadn’t he heard the words in his sleep long before Remedios spoke them to him? Bora looked down at the table. “I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t been a soldier long enough. I am … intellectually disinclined to believe in it. Which again doesn’t preclude a religious interpretation of the term. In that case, I think I would have to believe in it by faith, I think.”

  Señora Serrano removed the napkin from her lap and laid it on the elegant table. “I sensed that my son would die long before it happened. Just as I knew my daughter would be widowed.”

  “It may be down to intensity of love rather than precognition.”

  “Love? You’re young and unmarried. How much do you know about love?”

  Bora glanced across the old silver and crystal, not directly at Serrano’s wife. “There are forms of love other than marital or family love.”

  “Are you speaking of the love of God?”

  “That, too.” He groped for the right words, but only because he was anxious that some of this conversation might get back to Colonel Serrano. “I had in mind … a more physical form of love.”

  “So you did.” Señora Serrano sounded more indulgent than he had expected. “Do you have a fiancée in Germany?”

  “Not yet.” Bora couldn’t tell why he was flushed. He felt gratified that she was curious about his opinion, but embarrassment, like drunkenness, made him speak more freely than he would otherwise. He thought of Dikta and blushed deeply, as if sex with a girl of his class were automatically binding, even though she had a lover in Hamburg. The army shirt was still damp under his arms from being washed, or else he was sweating. “I would like to find someone, naturally. Someone appropriate. Someone I love, who is also appropriate.”

  “You should rely on your mother for advice in these matters, Don Martín. She knows best what kind of wife you need. Young men, God love them, make mistakes at times, especially when they’re off on their own, in their country or abroad.”

  “I have the greatest respect for Spanish ladies,” Bora said clumsily, too quickly. Of course he respected Spanish ladies. But there were the giggling girls in Bilbao, the bed that had fallen apart under them when he and Inés had made love. Splendid in their contrast were the darkness and glowing blade of light behind Remedios’ door, the unspeakable pleasure of bruising his knees on Remedios’ floor, between Remedios’ thighs. He stared at his plate so that Señora Serrano wouldn’t see through him, since she seemed capable of doing so.

  “Don Martín, do you recall Luisa Cadena, the young woman who was here during your last visit? Like me, she had a premonition. Now we shall see how accurate she was in her fears.”

  How accurate? Bora didn’t know how much Serrano had shared with his wife about Lorca’s death, or if Luisa Cadena had spoken to anyone about meeting him. He kept silent, even when Señora Serrano added, “My husband told me he discussed Don Federico’s disappearance with you.”

  Had the colonel sent him to the huerta so that questions could be asked of him? He readied himself to mention something about not being at liberty to speak, but Señora Serrano didn’t give him time.

  “That Monday night was a dreadful night, not just for the Lorcas. I had dream after dream about Alejandro being shot. It was precognition, and Colonel Serrano wasn’t even home to comfort me.”

  Colonel Serrano was away from home the night Lorca was killed. Bora went from unease to keen attention in the time it took him to blink. He said, casually, “Nina always regretted the lonely nights when my stepfather was on military duty.”

  “Well, it isn’t like my husband to absent himself at night without apprising me of it beforehand. So you understand that I was worried for him, too.”

  He didn’t tell her that he’d be away, either. Bora jumped from the chair and snapped to attention when Señora Serrano left her place at the table to dismiss him.

  “You will have Alejandro’s room, Don Martín. I attend church very early in the morning. Should you depart while I’m gone, make sure to pick up the reply to my husband’s letter on your way out. It will be on the table in the library.” She preceded Bora out of the dining room, and coolly gave him her hand to kiss. “I do feel for the Lorcas,” she said, “even though Don Federico wasn’t a very good Christian. And his ‘Ode to the Most Holy Sacrament’ … he should have been ashamed of writing it.”

  Tuesday, 20 July. Morning, Huerta de Santa Olalla.

  A very vivid dream. The family place in Trakehnen. There is a war on in East Prussia. The house staff lines up along the garden path as when we first arrive for the summer, the women curtsying as I pass by. The housekeeper looks like Señora Serrano, but younger. There’s piano music coming from the open windows of the third floor, and I know it is my father playing. I tell myself that he’s long dead, so his music sounds very beautiful for a man who has been out of practice these many years. Accompanying me across the grounds there is a shadowy figure which I take to be a woman. In the stables, the horses are being groomed by the Guardia Civil.

  “They’ll give the horses Spanish names if you let them,” my companion tells me. I look over, and realize that it isn’t a woman at all, but Federico García Lorca. He’s wearing the white shirt he had on when I found his body and carries a bundle of sheet music under his arm. I remember burying him, and shudder at the thought that he was obviously still alive; I’m about to say something about it, but he smi
les and shakes his head. “Only the dead can bury the dead,” he says. Then he remarks that my father is playing a Spanish piece of his composition, even though the music is actually Schubert’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade” (“My peace is gone / my heart is heavy …”). I point out the error, but Lorca smiles again and insists that such is the case.

  We’re still facing the stables. Lorca singles out Turnus – the horse I rode for the Olympics – and tells me he won’t like Russia. I reply that I have no plans to ever go to Russia. “But you are already fighting the Russians,” he informs me, indicating my braided epaulettes. I see on them the rank of major, and although I should feel overjoyed, I am in fact overcome by a great sense of sadness and loss. Lorca says that Russia will be my “white wall of grief”, just as Spain was his own. I don’t know what language we have been speaking until now, but he now says distinctly in Spanish that los jínetes se entienden el uno al otro. “If horsemen understand one another,” I answer, “then tell me who killed you.” “You already know,” he says. I mean to protest that I don’t, that I really have no idea, but the Guardia Civil is letting the horses out of the stable, and in the confusion I lose sight of Lorca. I wake up in frustration.

  At sunrise, the Turia River resembled mirror shards behind the branches of the quaking young poplars. Bora followed the bank to Teruel, reaching the Guardia Civil stables from the low ground of the railway station.

  Pardo looked much better than the night before, good-natured and bright-eyed. Bora rode to the square, tied him near the Confitería y Pastelería Muñoz and continued on foot towards the Valera y Pastor Factory front.

  Someone followed him there. Bora sensed it at first, and then heard it. He listened. Without turning around, he sensed movement, in the same way he had perceived a lack of movement and recognized death the day he had found Lorca.

  The street was long and balconied, with a row of prisonlike barred windows and doorways. There where Bora was, the space turned into a brink. He stood there unsure of where the edge might be, how close, how deep. A razor’s edge separated perception from reality, fear and confidence, and that hair’s breadth contained a world of possibilities: women moving about in dark kitchens, armed men stalking, innocent passers-by; death close by or remote, life ahead of or behind him.

  At once his body felt breakable. What Señora Serrano had said about premonition, what wearing Alejandro’s things meant … they were sudden clues to this uncomfortable fragility. Having reached the corner of Cziffra’s street, Bora reached for his gun. Turning so fast that his ability to aim would be hampered if he needed to shoot, he caught a quick blur: nothing but a trick of sun and shadows on the silent fugue of house fronts.

  His gut told him he had been right. Even after he walked the length of the street to make sure, he was still convinced of it. Someone had watched him leave the square, and knew his route. Someone knew he’d been to Soler’s flat. Bora went to untie Pardo, and took a different route to Cziffra’s place.

  Cziffra was not in. Elbows on her desk, a red pencil in her mouth, his secretary said she didn’t believe he’d be back soon.

  “Later today, then?” Bora asked.

  “Not today. Are there any messages for him?”

  Bora answered no.

  His next stop was at the Seminary of Santa Clara, towering with its twin steeples over a compound of churches and convents just over a mile in length. Bora spent close to thirty minutes speaking to a priest in the courtyard, where an ugly statue of the Sacred Heart formed the centrepiece and the flower beds needed watering.

  Sunlight lanced the streets by the time Pardo ambled up the climb to the public garage. Sudsy water trickled down the cobblestones, and when Bora came close enough he could see the source of the flow. The Ansaldo sat in front of the garage, where the albino was washing it with water and a soapy rag.

  Bora dismounted, glanced inside the car, and without a word walked into the garage.

  The man called him back. “Can I help you with anything?”

  “I’ll help myself.”

  The old Fiat the albino had been working on late at night and the car with the missing windshield were gone. In the small office, the ledger lay on the worktable. Two new entries concerned the repairs just done, and the latest, dated this morning, recorded the return of the Ansaldo at half past nine the night before. The distance travelled was eleven miles.

  Bora leafed through the ledger until he reached the middle, where the central seam ran through the binding and the right page belonged to the same sheet as the left one, with the stitching between them.

  Two by two, he began pairing the pages, right and left, checking the entries for continuity. The second half of the ledger recorded transactions well into July 1937. The first half listed entries of the previous months, going back to the summer of 1936. Bora found no discrepancy until he tried to match the page of 12 July with the corresponding page in the first half of the ledger, where the entries of October 1936 were recorded.

  The bottom of the left page dated 7 October itemized repairs made on a truck, but the right page didn’t match the entry. In a different ink and different hand, the next record was of a rental on 10 October, and a paint job on the same day.

  Why had it taken so long for him to understand? An entire sheet had been removed from the ledger, so that no traces of torn paper would remain along the seam. While the latest entries seemed consistent, in fact a page earlier in July was missing. Gone with it was a specific mileage, and a specific signature.

  Bora left the garage with the ledger under his arm. “Hola!” the albino shouted. “You can’t take the book away from here!” He let go of the rag and tried to grab the horse’s reins.

  Bora vaulted into the saddle and touched Pardo’s flanks with the spurs, startling him into a nervy canter that jostled the albino out of his way.

  EL PALO DE LA VIRGEN

  It was seven o’clock by Brissot’s wristwatch when Chernik, Bernat and the couriers got back from their night in Castellar.

  Walton saw them enter the house, but made no effort to come away from the fountain, where he was doing his washing. Nearby, Brissot squeezed a blue shirt over the muddy ground that surrounded the cement trough. Bernat joined them shortly afterwards. As he started to soak his peeling face and neck, he asked, “Who gets to do the cooking tonight, Mosko?”

  “You do.”

  “Again?”

  “Again.”

  Dripping wet, Bernat left.

  Walton fished his soapy shorts from the fountain without rinsing them. “If Marypaz was worth her salt, she’d be doing the fucking chores around here.”

  Brissot draped the wet shirt over his arm. “I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic, but I’d rather hear what Almagro told you last night.”

  “Before he went gallivanting to the Widow Yarza, you mean?”

  “Whatever. What did he have to say?”

  “Rumours. There’s gossip in Teruel about Lorca’s disappearance. At least one Fascist source expresses the worry that he might have been kidnapped by ‘roaming Reds’, and there’s even talk of a ransom. If the information leaks out of the province it’ll be known that his ‘death’ in Granada was a sham on our part, and everyone will wonder why.”

  Brissot stomped his sandalled right foot in the mud, at the risk of soiling his shirt again. “Ha! And surely the cenetistas will claim they saved him the first time around! Just as I thought, Felipe: we waited too long. We must spread the news that Lorca was killed by Fascists, straight away. It’s far too late to have a real effect, but it’s something. At least we’ll be able to show people his remains when the time comes.”

  Walton cocked his head at the faint drone of a single-engined airplane. It was very high up, and the sky was already too bright to see it. “I was starting to miss the little bastard,” he grinned.

  At quarter to eight the couriers were ready to head south via the Sierra Camarena. Walton had been drinking coffee with Almagro by the open fire, watching Marroquí
cosy up to Marypaz as he’d done last time. Marypaz laughed and swung her arms childishly.

  Almagro noticed where Walton was looking. “We’re not due back for some time now, Felipe. It’s off to La Puebla de Valverde and then to Barracas. If I hear of anyone headed this way, I’ll pass on what’s being said about Lorca.”

  Walton had time to drain his tin cup without a word before Marroquí clambered over like a young goat, smiling. “What are you old men waiting for?” He grabbed his backpack from the fireside. “I’m ready to go.”

  Walton squinted. “Do you like her?”

  Marroquí’s shoulders rounded instantly, a clumsy boxer’s reaction to a blow. “Me?”

  “You.”

  “Well, it’s not like …” Marroquí tried uselessly to make himself small or apologetic, or both. “I’m sorry, Felipe.”

  “Don’t say you’re sorry. I’m just asking you if you like her.”

  “I can’t say that I don’t. There’s nothing wrong with liking a girl, is there? No harm done.”

  It struck Walton how easy it was to challenge a younger man. “Marypaz is her own woman,” he said. “To me, what she does is her own business. I don’t own her, and she doesn’t own me.”

  Almagro was obviously uncomfortable with the exchange. “Ehi, if it isn’t eight o’clock already!” he exclaimed, sounding surprised. “Time to go, Marroquí.”

  The three of them started up the broken path that led away from the camp. Walton felt like he’d won something, but he wasn’t sure what. It both pleased and annoyed him that Marroquí kept to his side, smiling humbly.

  “You’re a real comrade, Felipe.”

  Walton stopped where the trail became steeper and the thorny bushes struggled to survive on both sides of it. A grey tailless lizard sought the safety of a flat rock as the couriers put down their sacks to shake hands with him.

  “Salud, Felipe. We’ll see you next month.”

  RISCAL AMARGO

  Fuentes held Pardo by the reins as Bora dismounted. If he noticed the faded bloodstain on the lieutenant’s sleeve, he showed no reaction.