Salt the Snow

by Carrie Callaghan

  Inside, two old men sat hunched over a small table with two streaked glasses of sherry between them. The other writer asked something rapidly, and the men pointed toward the rear exit. Milly followed him, but he turned and held up a hand.

  “It is only the outhouse,” he said in his richly accented English.

  She nodded and waited, watching the old men sip their sherry in silence. Outside, another engine rumbled then came to a stop as a second car arrived. An old newspaper was folded on an empty table in the café, and she was tempted to pick it up, but decided she didn’t want to know.

  Her colleague came back.

  “The boy Peter is dead. All the children were shot when an enemy plane passed over.” He shook his head, not shocked by the enemy cruelty, but obviously disappointed by it.

  “You’re sure?” Her stomach lurched. It couldn’t be true, that the wide-smiling boy with a mess of black hair had died, vanished.

  He shrugged. “The mechanic, back there. He told me. He was sure.” He shook his head again. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  Milly followed him to the car, and on the way, the road drew her eyes to its dark variations. She didn’t know where Peter and the children were killed, but still every different shade of the gray macadam, its pressed stone contours, suggested spilled blood, drunk by the paving. She dug her fingernails into her palms. The fascists who could presume to determine that such a sweet boy should die enraged her. The world that could ignore it made her want to scream.

  As they drove west, toward the darkening sky, Milly could have sworn she heard the boom and rattle of heavy artillery behind them. She had heard such explosions earlier in the month, in Madrid, when the rebel military was trying to take the city directly. But inside the car, no one agreed.

  “I only hear the road,” said the man who had gone into the gas station.

  “We should go back,” Milly said. “There might be a story there, if there’s a bombing.”

  No one replied, and the car continued eastward.

  IN A WEEK, the radio reported heavy fighting to the east of Madrid, along the Jarama river. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of dead, people in the Foreign Press Bureau whispered, but the radio made no mention of the casualties. Milly’s AP colleagues had no better details either, but when one of them said he was hiring a car to go to the field hospital outside of Murcia, Milly claimed a seat. Having two jobs had some perks, at least. As they drove, she rotated the tortoiseshell bracelet around her wrist, letting the polished surface soothe her fingertips.

  They arrived midday, and the bitter scent of blood was overpowering. A truck was unloading men and bodies as Milly walked into the main hospital building, formerly some farm structure, and blood dripped from the bed of the truck onto the frozen ground. She covered her mouth and ran inside.

  The wood-and-brick structure did little to keep out the cold, and inside the stretchers and beds lay in neat rows. Silent men watched her as she passed by, and two women in white trundled from bed to bed, rearranging blankets and offering sips of water ladled from a bucket.

  Milly extended a hand at a passing man, a doctor, judging from his white coat and stethoscope.

  “Are these the Internationals?” She hoped he spoke English.

  “Milly? Milly Bennett?” He was balding with fringes of brown hair above his ears, and had a handsome, sharp nose.

  She blinked and was reaching for her glasses to wipe them clean when the memory clicked.

  “Hermann! Dr. Muller. From Moscow,” she added, then giggled at her clumsiness. Of course he knew he had come from Moscow.

  He smiled widely, then pulled her into a hug.

  “So comforting to see a familiar face here,” he said, holding her at arm’s length before releasing her. She remembered running into him at a few parties, but though she thought he was handsome, they hadn’t exchanged more than a few words.

  “What are you doing here? I thought you were a geneticist,” she said, risking a glance around at the men in red-stained bandages and dark casts.

  “I am still,” he said with a wink. “But I am still a doctor too, so I’m here briefly, to help the cause. I’m interested in learning from Dr. Barsky.” Hermann pointed across the ward floor to another man in white. “He is doing amazing work with blood.”

  “Yet he’s so clean. I’m sorry, what a dumb thing to say.” She blushed. “Hermann, I’m looking for Bob Merriman. Is he here? You might have met him in Moscow too, tall—”

  He placed a hand on her arm and interrupted her.

  “Bob’s here. Hurt badly. I think he’ll make it, but …”

  She sucked in a breath. “His wife, she’ll … Show me.”

  He led her through the quiet ward, his confident hands brushing the still blankets of quiet men as they passed. The hospital had two wood-burning stoves at either end of the ward, but still their breath showed in gentle clouds whenever they exhaled deeply. The injured men pulled their covers up to their noses, when they could. A few faces were slack, eyes closed, and Milly wondered. But no, the efficient staff here wouldn’t leave dead men in their beds.

  Bob was awake when they approached, and his eyes lit up when he saw Milly. But quickly his face clenched in pain. His upper arm and shoulder were encased in a cast, and his tall form looked pinned to the bed like a butterfly in a specimen box.

  “We were out of plaster,” Hermann said, shaking his head. “We had to use concrete.”

  “Trying to get me to get my strength back faster,” Bob said in a strained voice. His handsome face was pale, even behind his black circular glasses, and he closed his eyes for a moment. Milly’s knees felt weak, and she leaned on the metal frame at the end of his bed.

  “Marion needs to be here with you,” Milly said. She didn’t want to ask what, other than his shoulder, might be injured, or if he needed more surgery. The rest of his body lay unmoving under a gray blanket.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “She does.”

  “I need a driver,” Milly said to Hermann. Her certainty gave her a jolt of energy, and her legs steadied. “His wife has to travel a long way, and I need to get her the telegram now.”

  Hermann twisted his mouth and looked around the ward. Two nurses in dark blue uniforms, one carrying a stack of blankets, walked from bed to bed unfolding extra blankets over some. Dr. Barsky had disappeared, and there was no other staff in sight.

  “Our ambulance drivers are either out at the front or sleeping,” he said. “They don’t get much of a break. What about the fellow who brought you here?”

  Milly shook her head. “He doesn’t work for me. And Jim, the other reporter, won’t want to leave yet. He’s sniffing for a story.” She paused and glanced down at Bob, who had closed his eyes and sunk back into his pillow. His fingers, sticking out of the monstrous cast, were dark and swollen.

  “Look at him,” she said. “Suffering.” If she pressed Hermann enough, maybe he would let her drive the ambulance. She could figure it out.

  Hermann nodded. “I’ll drive you.”

  “You will?” She looked at his green eyes, and then quickly away to the soldier next to Bob’s bed. He was a darker-skinned man, sleeping with a bandage wrapped around his head. Milly shivered in the cold.

  “Absolutely. Let’s go before the next batch of wounded shows up.”

  Milly nodded, then bent down to brush Bob’s hair from his forehead. He opened his eyes. “We’ll get Marion here,” she said. “As soon as possible.”

  “Thank you.” His voice was soft, like a brushed coat.

  Milly smiled. At least she could help her friends.

  Two hours later, she was in a telegraph office in Murcia. “Come now,” she cabled to Marion, and provided her own address in Valencia. Bob wouldn’t want any written record that he was injured, since fighting in this war was illegal now for Americans. Marion would understand, anyway. Milly wondered if her friend didn’t already have a hunch, hadn’t already packed her bag due to some intuitive misgiving. The coup
le seemed so aware of each other.

  “No matter what happens, they’re lucky to have each other,” Milly said to Hermann as they walked out of the office into the sunny cold.

  Hermann put a hand on her lower back and guided her into the passenger seat of their borrowed car. She paused, letting the sensation of his touch linger, then slid into the seat.

  “Connections take many forms,” Hermann said, leaning over her, with one elbow propped on the open car door. She looked up at him. “Humans make such delightful, varied pairings, don’t you think?”

  “Is that what geneticists study?” Milly leaned back in her seat and turned out her leg. “You sit around reading Havelock Ellis all day and consider all the … different pairings?”

  “I don’t know that fellow,” Hermann said, straightening. “But I’m eager to learn.” He smiled, then snapped her door shut.

  30

  MARCH 1937

  MILLY’S ARMS TREMBLED as she carried her small suitcase up the stairs from the entryway of the Hotel Florida’s modern lobby, in central Madrid. She hadn’t packed much, only a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and a small cured ham purchased on impulse right before she got in the car in Valencia. Now she stood in the tall-ceilinged lobby and wondered why she hadn’t at least packed a nightgown.

  After the quick trip to Murcia, she and Hermann had flirted the whole drive home, then flirted over dinner, and flirted as he bid her farewell that night. Three days later, a Foreign Press Bureau photographer returned from a trip to the hospital with a note for Milly.

  “I’m on leave, starting Saturday, for a whole week. Want to join?”

  Milly hadn’t bothered to respond. Her heart racing with anticipation, and her body tingling with excitement, she called her two bosses, found a ride, and packed a suitcase.

  A man in a fine wool suit walked past her in the lobby and nodded. She smiled automatically, then wondered if she knew him. Hell, it didn’t matter. She wasn’t here for work. For the first time in a year, Milly only planned to please herself. No notes, no deadlines, no public expectations.

  She walked up to the desk.

  “Could you please inform Dr. Muller his guest has arrived.”

  The clerk nodded and placed a phone call.

  “He says you can go up,” the clerk said once he replaced the handset. “Room 526.”

  Milly looked at the stairs, then the elevator, where there was no operator. She strolled inside and pushed the button herself. Once the door closed, she rushed to pull off her tights and then her underwear, both of which she stuffed into her suitcase, next to the ham, right before the elevator doors peeled open. When the door revealed the hallway, a waiting old woman stared as Milly tilted her head and slipped her feet back into her pumps.

  “Perdóname,” Milly said, suppressing a giggle, and stepped out.

  She walked down the hall, and at room 526, she paused. She took a deep breath. Then she gave her hips a shimmy, and thrilled at the feeling of her bare thighs rubbing against each other. She was too old to feel ashamed of herself, no matter what happened, she decided.

  She knocked.

  THEY DIDN’T COME out of the room for three days.

  At sunset on the third day, the floor shuddered and a crash sounded in the distance. Then another explosion, but closer. Hermann was on top of her, thrusting fiercely at what was the culmination of thirty minutes of play, and he didn’t seem to hear. Milly reached up and pulled his head down close to her ears.

  “I think they’re shelling the neighborhood,” she whispered.

  He slowed, but continued rocking into her, back and forth. His eyes met hers, and he smiled.

  “Let them,” he said, then curled down to suck at one of her nipples. She rose up toward him and arched back into the lovemaking.

  When they finished, Hermann collapsed onto the bed and laughed.

  “You see how you captivate me?” he said. “I’m glad the fascists have bad aim.”

  “They’re aiming for you, are they?” she said, her head propped up on an elbow.

  “I am key to the Republican war effort,” he said, and shot out a hand to tickle her soft belly. “Though maybe it’s you they’re after. Condemning their futile offensives in your scathing articles.”

  Milly snorted, then got out of bed. She pulled on her trousers, thought about not wearing a bra, then put one on and yanked a sweater over.

  “Your hair’s a mess,” Hermann said, sounding like he was pouting.

  “I’m just going to get a bottle of wine,” she said. “Surely you can spare me for thirty minutes?” She raised a provocative eyebrow, then waved her hands at his nether regions. “It looks like you’re ready for a break anyhow.”

  He leapt to his feet on the mattress.

  “A true man never rests!” Then he collapsed back down. “But a doctor knows how to take his breaks. A good tempranillo, if you can find it, my dear.”

  Milly gave a little salute, then walked out of the room.

  The air in the hallway was fresh compared to the musk of their room, and she breathed deeply. She hadn’t been thinking of wine when she pulled her clothes on, but only that she needed to come up for air. She couldn’t let herself fall in love with this man. This was a wartime fling, and they both needed the companionship, but nothing more. She walked down the hallway and thought of waiting for the elevator, but decided on the stairs. A few people walking up passed her. One man frowned quizzically, but another man winked. They had gone into the basement shelter when the shelling started, most likely.

  Outside in the street there was no damage visible, but smoke smeared the darkening sky in the distance. Milly reached into her pocket to see how much money she had, and she pulled out a scrap of paper. Her notes for how to find her ride home, a car she was sharing with two other reporters in Valencia. Leaving two days from now. Too soon.

  No, she should leave now. She was forty, too old to romp in a hotel room for a week, and too old to be falling in love with a man she hardly knew.

  A woman with a worker’s cap stuffed over her long black hair walked past holding a fistful of almond tree branches, brimming with small pale flowers. The branches would go into some vase or arrangement where, after a few days, the flowers would wilt, shrivel, and die. Yet now they glowed with a springtime beauty Milly was parched for.

  She pulled a few peseta bills from her pocket, counted them, and turned toward the little wine and dry goods shop down the street. A tempranillo would fit the bill, and when she and Hermann finished drinking, she could throw the empty bottle at the attacking fascists. Let them clean up the mess.

  31

  APRIL 1937

  IN HER ROOM, Milly dropped a bromide tablet into her water glass and stirred. Her stomach clenched. She hoped she wouldn’t vomit again. She needed to get out today, and Valencia’s warm, salt-tinged breezes would help. It had been three days since she was able to drag herself into the office, either the AP office or the Foreign Press Bureau, and write a story. Her hotel bill was coming due now; the Hotel Reina Victoria wasn’t cheap, and she needed the money.

  The sweet liquid did little to quell her nausea, but she choked it down anyway. She had already thrown up the chicory coffee she had tried to make for herself, right down the toilet.

  Her monthlies should have come two weeks ago.

  It was unbelievable, but she seemed to be pregnant.

  Her stomach groaned, and she shuffled over to collapse into the bed. She was sterile, rendered barren by that necessary but ravaging abortion back in San Francisco, and there was no way that she could be pregnant. But now, six weeks after her time in Madrid, she couldn’t find any other explanation. In spite of the stomach pain, a bright glow of contentment suffused her. A baby. Her baby. She clasped her hands over her abdomen and curled into a ball on the rumpled bed, where Zhenya’s bracelet dug into her skin with a reassuring pinch. He would have wanted her to have this baby too.

  An hour later, she mustered the energy to get out of bed. Mario
n was staying with her, sleeping on a cot they had crammed in between Milly’s small bed and the high window that looked into the square shaft above the courtyard, but Marion left each morning at dawn to care for Bob. He was shacked up with three AP men who had agreed to let him stay, since the couple couldn’t afford their own room. Marion was so caught in the pain of her husband’s recovery she hadn’t looked past Milly’s flimsy excuse of food poisoning.

  Milly had written three letters to Hermann, two gushing with simple affection, ignorant of her condition, and a third referring to their little “medicine ball,” the closest she could get to writing the word “baby.” It wasn’t a baby yet, she knew that. But she had the possibility of a baby, a sweet spark growing inside her, and she wanted it desperately.

  He had not replied to any letter, but he had left Spain and returned to Moscow, so she knew the post would take time. There were at least two censors to cross and hundreds, maybe thousands of miles. When she lay in bed at night staring at the high ceiling, she imagined Hermann getting the letter and throwing all his books and suits into a traveling case so he could grab the first train to Paris. But in the morning, she knew reality was more complex. Hermann had to obtain permission from the Soviet authorities to leave his laboratory and, given the arguments he had been having with the political leaders over Lamarck’s foolish theories, she wasn’t sure he would receive any such permission.

  A sparrow landed on her windowsill, pecked, and flew off. Milly propped herself up in bed. No wave of nausea came, so she sat up. Slowly, she dressed and made her way out of the hotel. It was a short walk to the Ministry of Propaganda.

  Her boss at the Foreign Press Bureau, Constancia de la Mora, welcomed her with a frown.

  “Fix this,” Constancia said brusquely. She was usually a charming young woman, a former aristocrat turned dedicated democrat, but sometimes the press of work harried her. Most of the writing Milly had been doing for them recently was cleaning up the translated articles the government wanted to print in the local English-language publication. Similar to what she had done for Moscow Daily News, but at least here there was a war. Now, with so many foreigners flooding the Republic, eager to help no matter their lack of Spanish, the government needed a way to communicate with them. She knew how to serve in that role, and this time her writing would be put to better use.