The Horseman's Song

by Ben Pastor

  Having failed to meet Luisa Cadena, my best bet is to secure one more meeting with the American. Incidentally, I must absolutely overcome the compulsion to confess to older men, as I did at San Martín. The only consolation is that Walton – whether to brag or because he felt he ought to share – spoke at length of his friendship with Lorca, and how both of them visited a rural place near the Canadian border called Eden. How fitting! He came close to pronouncing Remedios by name. I’ll never do the same in front of him. The fact that she never mentioned Walton tells me that she doesn’t care about him. It’s important to me that she doesn’t, although I’m not sure why.

  EL PALO DE LA VIRGEN

  Valentin’s broken tooth showed in his smiling mouth, and he flipped back his wild hair with a satisfied, defiant toss of the head. “Who’s laughing now?” He ran his eyes over the disbelieving faces of the men around the table. “Who’s a fool now?”

  Rafael had nothing to say. He furtively kissed the cross of his rosary and placed it around his neck. Chernik’s attention was still on Walton, whose explanation everyone had just heard. In the middle of the table, Marypaz’s red kerchief caught the last light of day coming from the door.

  Brissot joined the group while Walton, rolling his sore neck at the head of the table, tried not to feel inexorably trapped.

  “Goes to prove we can’t even trust one another,” Maetzu charged.

  Walton felt the stab of the words, but still carried on massaging his neck. Maetzu had been agitated ever since hearing about a coming battle, and impossible to live with since the flag had been stolen. His going off to shoot the Fascist in Castellar had stemmed from that grim restlessness. Sucking his drawn cheeks in and accentuating his pointed, bristly chin, Maetzu spat on the floor. He glowered at Walton, which the American at first took for an accusation of complicity with Marypaz. But Maetzu cared little for material objects.

  “Are you talking to me or about me?” Walton said. “I found the stuff and gave it back.”

  Maetzu, who’d been leaning against the wall at the foot of the stairs, left his post with a shove of the elbows. Still keeping his eyes on Walton, he slowly passed by the table where the rest of the men sat, and walked out. Chernik left after him, and one by one the others sought the open air too.

  Munching on his unlit pipe, Brissot stayed behind. “I bet Maetzu found out you met the German,” he commented.

  Walton eased the sting of his swollen lid by closing his eyes. “What’s that to him or any of you? I’m the head of this outfit. Until that changes, I deal with the enemy as I see proper, whenever it suits me.”

  “Does that mean you met more than once?”

  “On Tuesday and Wednesday.”

  Brissot sat up. “What for? Don’t you know how it makes you look?”

  “I think he’s actually going to find out who killed Lorca.” Walton pushed himself back in the chair and rocked defiantly on its back legs. “He agreed to inform me of the results. We have a truce going between us.”

  “A truce with a Fascist. An agreement with a Fascist! The same man you were supposed to kill? This time it won’t be just Maetzu, Felipe. If the rest find out about it, it’s not going to sit well with any of them.”

  “As if I give a damn what they think.” Walton kept his eyes closed. If he didn’t look, the odours in the room – sweat, onions, sweet figs – were the sole obstacles to believing that he was elsewhere. Hell, elsewhere was always where he wanted to find himself, so he belonged nowhere. At about this time of year, he thought, the bogs near Eden Lake turned thick in the summer heat. Roots and wattles and buried rotting leaves drank up the water, until the swollen roots turned from spongy turf to felt.

  Fancy thinking of that.

  Many times he’d wondered what it was like to be one of the animals that stumbled in, or one of the leaves or pine cones that fell into the bogs from above. How you would sink, not fast but just as surely beyond salvation, all struggle made useless, bubbling under into the weave and fabric of organisms that do not breathe, turning from living matter into peat. Life turned into roots, stopped forever. Philip Walton, he thought, you’re sinking now. You’ve been sinking all along, and it’s a matter of figuring out how deep you’ve gone. Up to your waist, maybe. Your feet are already part of the earth.

  Bora, stupid eager sonofabitch, had said at one point that sometimes the flesh-and-blood person gets in the way of the real thing, and that he, too, knew Lorca. By that time, the sun had turned the fog before them into a yellow wall of vapour.

  It had been easy for Walton to counter the argument. “Well, you didn’t. You read his works, period. He’d despise anyone of your political colour.”

  “Would he? You liked his poetry because you liked the man. I’m closer to Lorca than you are, because he carried the grief of Spain. I’m here because of the same grief. Having read his poetry, I can see Spain’s grief clearly, and understand why our cause needs to succeed.”

  Now, with Brissot reeking of sweat and smoke two feet away, and hundreds of miles of Spain around him, Walton recognized that he was more than halfway down the bog, and there was no springing this trap. Having walked into it consciously, he had to acknowledge that the bog now held him captive. The younger animal – twitching with impatience, smelling of spring – sat by the bog watching him go down, doing nothing to harm or help.

  Brissot said, “Maetzu is keeping an eye on you, Felipe. Next time you meet the German, he’ll kill him.”

  Walton opened his eyes wide. Was it possible that the bog was treacherous enough to take the young animal, too?

  TERUEL

  It was the wind that woke Bora, even though he’d been tossing and turning with strange dreams and had just emerged from a disturbing one, whose details were dissolving in his mind like burning negatives.

  Through the shutters a capricious westerly came, after buffeting the high riverbank of the Turia, along which the paseo ran. It was pitch-dark, so dark that even the spaces between the slats were not distinguishable. Bora sat up in bed, fully alert. The room stank of mice. A strange odour, one he knew only because he’d noticed it as a child in the sickrooms of a consumptive schoolmate, and someone had told him that tuberculosis had this smell.

  In the privacy of his room, he could afford the luxury of sleeping naked, and the pleasant sensation of his waking body under the sheets put him in touch with his youth, his strength, his optimism. For a moment he appreciated himself without guilt, a young idealist embarked on a crusade, poised between intellect and physicality. A horseman, like the hard men in Lorca’s poetry and the snub-nosed nameless Roman soldier.

  He left the bed to open the shutters against the wind. He secured them to their external latches, looking out into the night. The elaborate stairway and the few buildings by the train station – no trains, no lights visible from here – were below. To the right, the small citadel of the Guardia Civil sat darker than night. Beyond were the river and the valley and the rim of mountains. It had clouded over, and you couldn’t tell where horizon and sky met. The wind was scented, powerful. Bora leaned over the sill. Where in Germany would he be able to stand naked at the window?

  “I want to know who killed Lorca as much as you do. That’s the only reason I’m even talking to a Fascist,” Walton had told him.

  Bragging more than a little, he’d replied, “I will succeed in finding out, and share the information with you, only because you’re wrong in thinking I don’t care as much as you. I care more.”

  Now he was close. Now he was close, so close he could feel a small thrill. Although there was no stopping him now, he felt uneasy that he didn’t know the specifics, and that something could still go wrong yet. Some vital piece of information on the periphery of his consciousness nagged at him and gave him nightmares. Walton had brought it up near the chapel of San Martín when their exchange had turned testy and complicit. But what was it? In the morning I will present the evidence I have to Herr Cziffra, and demand that Millares be there to defend
himself. A big piece is still missing, but circumstantial evidence … Walton had said something that fit, but whether out of forgetfulness or bias against the American, tonight Bora’s conscious mind suppressed it.

  A few drops of rain came with the wind. The storm was circling Teruel, slapping the bald hills to the east. It might reach as far as the sierra, ribboning the night, dissolving clay, washing the granite face of Mas del Aire.

  Bora planned to climb up there as soon as his business in Teruel was done. Yet the last time at Remedios’, after making love, he’d had the utter certainty that he would never see her again. It wasn’t just her words, her whispered, ominous words. The premonition was so strong that all had gone cold around him, lonely, and she was like a small powerful flame in a frozen land. He’d said, “If I walked all day, Remedios, I would never reach the edge of your bed.”

  “Don’t go away, then.”

  But the time for going away had come. He’d drawn a sketch of her face. “For me to keep you,” he told her, and kissed the palms of her hands. In the end she too had said, “It’s the last time, Alemán.” And then he remembered that he had stood by the door sobbing, not because he was afraid of death but because he’d fallen in love and it hurt too much, and even now he couldn’t think of it without feeling heartbroken. He had been in love with Remedios while he had thrown rocks at the fog, and as far back as the blows he’d landed on Walton, as far back as the moment he’d stuck a thorn in her door and heard the priest speak her name.

  The damp westerly gusted, cool enough to raise goose-bumps on his skin. Bora pulled back without closing the window. I’ll think of Remedios when I die.

  As he returned to the bed, the stale odour once again settled around him. Bora lay on his back, racking his brain to try and remember what Walton had said. He was at the edge of sleep again when swirls of recollection floated up at last, curling about like the oily pattern in the sudsy water at the garage.

  “Major, did Lorca mention anything about those he was afraid of in Teruel?”

  “About someone in particular, not just all Fascists?”

  Bora recalled choosing to ignore the sarcasm. “Yes.”

  “He was scared of the Guardia Civil. Also the NKVD, they say, but I’d be surprised if the Stalinists had much influence in Teruel at this stage of the war. I’ll have to think about this one.”

  “It’s someone who can move around with impunity,” Bora said. “A man of authority. Probably the same one who killed Soler, and Cadena comes into the equation somewhere, since he also disappeared. This Antonio Cadena, what kind of a man was he?”

  “I only spoke to him by phone once, when Lorca and I met someplace. Cadena sounded like any other Spaniard. Scared shitless, if that makes a difference. That was the same day Lorca told me he’d been followed out of Teruel.”

  “By whom? Did he say?”

  “Only that he wore a uniform. But you all wear uniforms: policemen, army and foreign legion,” Walton sneered. “It could have been you, for all I know.”

  Bora sat up in bed with a start.

  31 July, continued in Teruel. 11.45 p.m.

  Nearly all I’ve come up with so far has been wrong. Dead wrong. Herr C. was correct about my wanting to fit the colours of the vase to a preconceived idea. Damn! Why didn’t I think of it before? I’ve even had the ledger with me for several days!

  Off to the garage first thing tomorrow, to collect the evidence that makes a fool out of me for my previous foolish assumptions (I might just as well admit Colonel Serrano is right about me too) and makes an unsuspecting sleuth out of Philip Walton.

  Everything fits now, including the information I received today at the seminary and blissfully dismissed. I can’t see the details clearly, but this is it. The crazy dream about the house in Trakehnen, with Lorca telling me I already knew the murderer’s name … all true!

  Speaking of dreams, I half-remember the one that woke me up tonight: an army convoy in a place looking like Italy (it was too wet to be Spain). A treed canal or river to the right of the road. Opening a briefcase or other small luggage. An explosion. Windshield shattering, blood everywhere.

  Nonsense. I’m confusing Cadena’s fate with my concerns. Tomorrow is the day!

  The morning was overcast, and the westerly still blustered through the higher districts of Teruel. Bora had been waiting by the garage close to fifteen minutes when the albino shuffled along, dressed in street clothes and munching on a piece of bread. Seeing the ledger in Bora’s hand, the motion of his jaws halted long enough for him to resemble a colourless woodchuck caught feeding.

  “When I first came to see you, there was a car without a windshield being repaired,” Bora said without preamble.

  Having swallowed the piece in his mouth, the albino pocketed the bread. “Yes. So?”

  “Was it a Fiat 509?”

  The stump waved in the folded, pinned coat sleeve. “That’s what it was. Teniente, today’s Sunday. I came to fetch something from the shop, but we’re not open. If you’ve got business, either take it to the old woman, or else come back tomorrow.”

  It had totally escaped Bora’s memory that it was Sunday, and that, barring this chance encounter, he might have waited here God knows how long for the garage to open.

  “The ledger shows no entry for the Fiat 509 anywhere,” Bora said. “I want to know who brought it in for repairs.”

  The albino fumbled with the bread in his pocket, an anxious irresolute gesture. “Look, I don’t want any trouble.

  The car came in, we found a windshield for it, we fixed it. That’s all I know.”

  “Was there blood inside it?”

  “Bueno, wouldn’t you expect it to have some blood in it? The windshield got smashed somehow. There was none left by the time we got the car.” The albino stepped forward, as if to ask for the ledger or grab it, but Bora slipped it into his canvas bag.

  “To whom does the car belong, do you know?”

  “No. An army private brought it.”

  Really. Bora kept the pressure on. “It surely doesn’t belong to an army private! Who paid for the repairs?”

  The albino glanced away uneasily. “I don’t remember.”

  “Did the private pay for it?”

  “Yes. No. We … got an army voucher for it.”

  “And who signed that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Teruel’s a small town, and you sure as hell know it, and you can take your choice and tell me now or I’ll have you taken in and you can tell me then!”

  “Well, what’s any of this to me?” The albino walked around Bora to unlock the garage’s folding door. “Ask for yourself, teniente. He’s an army officer of the Comandancia Militar, Captain Mendez Roig.”

  Within minutes, Bora went from the garage to Cziffra’s shopfront, finding it disappointingly locked. Wherever Cziffra lived his mysterious life, it was not there, because all the knocking in the world produced no response from within. Bora checked his watch, and saw it was nearly the hour appointed for him to meet the army escort to Castralvo.

  He’d negotiated it the night before with a good-natured army lieutenant who had volunteered his services: “I was in that patrol. Funny, too, that we ended up going towards Castralvo at all, because originally we were scheduled to reconnoitre Villaspesa. Man, we went into the middle of nowhere. I’ll take you there if you want to see where we found the poor fellow, colleague. What a mess he was! You’ve got to look hard for the spot now that the stench is gone. I’ll meet you at seven on the viaduct.”

  No matter how urgently Bora needed to see Cziffra, he couldn’t miss this opportunity. There was just enough time for him to retrieve Pardo from the Guardia Civil headquarters and ride up the Rambla de San Julián to the viaduct.

  Like collapsing sand, a void gaped inside him when he reached the top of the street. Etched against the clouds of a sky that wanted to rain, Captain Mendez Roig stood on horseback in the middle of the spanning arch of cement and asphalt.

&n
bsp; Pardo responded to the involuntary squeeze of Bora’s knees by picking up speed and cantering towards the white army mount.

  Bora was seldom lost for words, but this was one of those times. Roig’s pockmarked, bloodless face had a Flemish quality of coolness and dispassionate judgement. Narrower than Cziffra’s face, it was like a fox’s or ferret’s, intelligent and impenetrable at the same time. Cruelty sat no more on it than goodness, because either of them implied a moral compass.

  He replied to Bora’s salute with a faultless greeting. “My subordinate informed me of your request last night,” he added. “I think I can be of service more than anyone else, since I was the one who led the patrol that day.”

  “Le estoy á usted muy reconocido,” Bora responded courteously, using the accepted formula of appreciation. The wind picking up under the viaduct sent moist buffets against the riders. No one, no one in Teruel or anywhere else in the world knew that he was going off alone with Roig on this first day of August 1937. He remembered Remedios’ outstretched fingers, counting his lifespan. Seven. It had been much more than seven hours since then, and it wasn’t even close to seven days. A faultless spirit inside him spurred him to go along.

  SIERRA DE SAN MARTÍN

  Walton knew the wispy clouds, like spittle across the sky. In Eden you could count the hours between those harmless shreds and the gathering of storm clouds. Twelve, fifteen hours at most, then rain would follow. It was already hazy near Teruel, perhaps raining. He left camp for Remedios’ house out of habit, not because he needed her. Wanting and needing, he was finding out lately, were not the same thing at all.

  Bora had asked for a third meeting. “I will have something to report, God willing,” he’d said. The last part had been a strange expression for a soldier; Walton had found it humorous.

  Going to Remedios now was part of reassuring himself, of re-staking his claim on her.

  Walton was disposed to believe what Bora had said – that the Fascists had moved Lorca’s body to Teruel – because it suited him and because his anger waned so easily, or kept turning into an unreasonable desire to laugh and strike out that ended in nothing. He was even inclined to believe, although not with admiration, that Bora had no other reason for seeking the murderer than his appreciation for Lorca’s poetry.