The Eldorado Network

by Derek Robinson

'Is that how you see this war? A kind of ritual bloodletting?' Dru asked. 'An act, a dramatic performance?'

  Mola sipped his wine while he thought about his answer.

  'In Spain everything is a dramatic performance,' he said. 'It's always the same drama: life against death. Every Spaniard is half in love with death. Here we have a civil war because so many Spaniards wish to kill Spain, and only a great deal of death will satisfy them. It must be death met with courage and resolution and all the other dramatic virtues, of course, otherwise the performance will not be considered adequate. Our friends from Germany and Italy,' he smiled at those present, 'are not full participants in our drama. They are, if they will forgive the expression, stagehands rather than actors.'

  The German captain did not look as if he could forgive the expression.

  'And how do you think today's battle will go?' Dru asked.

  'I hope the enemy will counter-attack,' Mola said. 'One cannot have a drama without dialogue.'

  It took another three hours before he had his wish. The International Brigade counter-attacked at half-past four, a long, thin line of men strung out as they appeared over the skyline and ran downhill, their weapons sputtering like stale firecrackers. Dru watched through binoculars and saw the skilled marksmanship of the Moorish soldiers pick off their stumbling attackers, at first by twos and threes and then, as the range shortened, by dozens. The counter-attack faltered, halted, and turned back uphill. Dru watched several men get knocked on their faces as if smashed between their retreating shoulders by an invisible battering-ram. He gave the glasses to Luis and turned away in disgust. 'What the hell was that meant to accomplish?' he asked.

  'Dialogue,' said Luis brightly.

  'Lousy dialogue. Jesus Christ, any dummy can get himself killed.' He clenched his teeth and swallowed to suppress a feeling of nausea. 'Get the goddam car, Luis. I'll go say my farewells to the Big Man.'

  As they drove out of the camp, slowly so as not to startle the horses, Luis asked: 'How does the general feel?'

  'He says tomorrow is another day.'

  They bounced past the batteries of the Condor Legion, and Luis waved at the blond men sunbathing, naked, by their guns.

  'I don't understand Mola,' Dru said. 'He keeps attacking straight up the face of those hills. That's a thousand feet from the river to the top.'

  Luis waved at the sentries and put on speed.

  'I just had a look at Mola's map,' Dru said. 'Half a mile to the right, those hills come to an end and another river runs into the Jarama.' He fished out a piece of paper and read his notes. 'The Jajuna. Nice wide, flat valley with a good road beside the river. So Mola could send his cavalry around there, outflank the Republican position, and capture the whole damn lot inside an hour.'

  Luis sniffed. 'One does not kill the bull by sticking the sword in its rump.'

  'What the hell's that supposed to mean?'

  'It means battles are for fighting.'

  'Then you're all crazy.'

  Luis was not listening. 'You do not understand Spain,' he said, and put his foot down hard.

  When they got to Madrid the city was under fire. Luis swerved expertly around reeking craters, and hooted his way through the rescuers and onlookers who milled about the dusty ruins of newly shelled buildings. From time to time they heard another curt crump, as random as a thunderclap. After one unusually loud explosion had rattled the car windows, Luis grinned and said, 'Boom! Boom! Good story for you.' Dru slumped in his seat and braced his feet against the dashboard.

  They found Barker and Townsend at their hotel. With them was Charles Templeton, the ex-cricketer-painter from the 2nd English Battalion. He was buoyant and breezy and slightly drunk.

  'Get anything new?' Townsend asked at once.

  Dru made a sour face. 'It's like a bad prize-fight on a wet Tuesday in Alberta. Nobody has the punch to win or the brains to lose. What the hell's he doing here?'

  'I deserted.' Templeton looked briefly woebegone. 'You are harbouring an outlaw. I can't tell you how delicious it feels.'

  Dru looked at Barker. 'Is there a story in this?'

  'Unfortunately, there is,' Barker said. He went around with the brandy bottle, and gave Templeton a good four fingers. 'Can you bear to relate the awful facts once more, old chap?'

  'I'll tell you what,' Templeton said, 'I'll relate the awful facts, if you'll order up some grub. Quails' eggs and avocados and Beef Wellington and knickerbocker glories and lots of brown-bread-and-butter. You see . . .'He rinsed his teeth in brandy and swallowed pleasurably. 'I've eaten nothing but filth and sludge for weeks.'

  'I'll try,' Barker said. He picked up the telephone.

  'And get lots of wine. Tell them to send up a few firkins of decent claret and a couple of carboys of fine hock. You've no idea how abrasive Spanish homebrew can be. Even after it's been cut with ditchwater. One's palate remains scourged, simply scourged.'

  'So what happened to you?" Dru asked.

  'Nothing,' Templeton said. 'But poor old Davis got shot stone dead, and that kind of thing is very infectious these days.'

  He told the story quickly and brightly. Templeton and Davis had shared a dug-out. In the early hours of the morning after the correspondents' visit, two men had awoken Davis and taken him away to Brigade Headquarters.

  When Davis did not come back, Templeton had volunteered to fetch ammunition from Brigade Headquarters. He sniffed around the farmhouse and found what looked like a fresh grave. He got a shovel and opened it. Davis was three feet down. He had been badly beaten up and shot, or perhaps shot and beaten up, although the latter was less likely.

  'Any ideas?' Dru asked.

  'Oh, it was Andre Marty,' Templeton told him. 'I met a despatch-rider who told me he saw Marty taking Davis into a barn, before breakfast. Any luck?1 he asked Barker.

  'I've got you some ham sandwiches and a half-bottle of Beaujolais.'

  'Wonderful.' Templeton shut his eyes and swallowed loudly, in anticipation. 'Absolutely spiffing. You're a gent.'

  'Well, we were at school together.'

  'So then I pinched a motorbike and beetled off to Madrid.' He held out his glass for more brandy.

  'Poor old Davis,' muttered Townsend.

  'Well, he knew what was coming, the silly man,' Temple-ton said briskly. 'He didn't have to stay.'

  'It sounds as if Marty really is mad,' Barker remarked.

  'Of course he is,1 Dru said. 'He goes around shooting people. He's shot about two hundred already.'

  'I'll tell you what, old boy,' Barker said, 'why don't you have a bath? You smell a bit fruity, you see.'

  'What a noble thought!' Templeton began taking off his clothes' and throwing them out of the window.

  Luis had been following the discussion closely. Now he sat staring into his brandy and looking morose. He glanced up and caught Dru's eye. 'This is not war,' he muttered with sad conviction.

  'You may be right,' Dru said, 'but it'll do until something worse comes along.'

  Chapter 7

  Jarama fell. Madrid was isolated. Franco's armies moved on, and with them went the war correspondents.

  Luis Cabrillo was still their driver but now he was also something more, a cross between a researcher, a translator, a courier and a spy. Because the correspondents found it easier and safer to report the struggle from the Nationalist side, they paid Luis to cross the war zone and bring back Republican accounts of the fighting. This was difficult work, wearying and dangerous: he drove long distances, around or between the battlefronts, guessing at unguarded areas, bluffing and lying when he guessed wrong, perfecting a display of craven horror when stopped by sentries: The war . . .? you mean the war is here already) . . . God in heaven . . . And with trembling hands Luis would turn the car, and accelerate away in such a panic that the rear wheels fish-tailed dramatically, and the guards laughed so much that they forgot to note his registration number. Or so he hoped.

  Eventually, inevitably, somebody remembered him. Or suspected him. Sooner o
r later somebody, Republican or Nationalist or both, was bound to notice the young man in the big car who always took the wrong turning and turned pale when he ran into the war. Meanwhile, Luis was bringing back rich information, the kind which nobody could invent and which only a Spaniard could discover. He knew what made a good story for each of his employers: Dru needed anti-Republican scandal, Townsend needed straightforward blood-and-guts, Barker needed' pro-Republican politics. It was always the same story, but Luis learned how to serve it up three ways. Everyone was pleased and Luis got well rewarded. The extra money compensated for his loneliness, and not just on the trips through the Lines. Suddenly Luis was an orphan.

  He learned about his parents' death several days after it happened, too late for him to do anything about attending their funeral. They had been travelling in a train, in Valencia, when it was bombed and went tumbling down an embankment at speed. The news reached Luis by a slow and roundabout route, through colleagues of his father. He never discovered which side's aircraft had done the bombing.

  At first he was calm. What a surprise, he thought. How very very curious. He thanked the man who had brought the news. 'A terrible shock,' the man said. 'We all knew your father. He was ..." It was difficult, in the circumstances, to say just what Senor Cabrillo was. Or had been. Luis smiled gently, and nodded. They shook hands and parted.

  Later, when the day was dying and the dusk had the texture of old velvet, he wept. It was as if his calmness had been a paper screen of no strength, only a certain position; almost anything could make a hole in it. Luis was in his room, brushing his hair, when someone across the street picked out the first notes of a Chopin waltz on a piano. He stopped brushing. It was a piece which his mother had always played stiffly and resolutely. The unknown hand stopped, and after a moment Luis heard the soft thud of the keyboard cover. He stood with his lungs full of useless air, his fingers squeezing the hairbrush, and tears crept from his eyes like agents of betrayal. He wept not so much for what he had lost as for what he had never had. Throughout his childhood, through all the changing schools and homes and towns, and later when he went from job to job, his mother and father had always been there, too busy to bother with him perhaps, but always potentially available. One day, when everything got straightened out, Luis had planned to approach his parents again, as an equal, of course, so that they could be true friends. Now they would always be strangers. Luis wept with a passion which took him by surprise. What had he lost? Nothing. Then why this grief? He was furious at his own weakness. All his life he had asked nothing of the world, and yet here he was, still painfully vulnerable. It was unfair. Okay, so life was unfair; everybody knew that. To hell with life! He remembered the slogan of Franco's Moroccan troops: Viva el muerte! Long live death! Luis leaned against a twilit corner of his room, hugging himself for want of anyone else to hug, and cried not like a child but like a man.

  Next day Mola opened a new offensive in the north, and Luis drove the correspondents up to Burgos. The Republicans, it seemed, were fighting a rearguard action as they fell back through the Basque country. That was supposed to be the broad theme, anyway; as usual, hard news was scarce. When they reached Burgos, Luis volunteered to go ahead and find out what exactly was happening.

  When he got back, three days later, he had seen so many corpses that death was as familiar as daylight.

  He found the correspondents in the hotel bar. They were delighted to see him because there was a powerful rumour that a small harmless Basque town had been knocked to bits by bombers, and for some reason there was a most satisfactory international uproar.

  'It's nowhere special,' Townsend said. 'Just some half-assed little dump.'

  'The story is true,' Luis announced. 'I myself was there only yesterday. Much destruction, many dead.'

  'Who done it?' Barker asked.

  'Oh, the bombers of the Legion Condor, without doubt. There are many witnesses.'

  'Right! That's what we heard.'

  Townsend clinked the ice in his glass. 'Any idea why the krauts picked this particular place?'

  'For the arms factory, presumably.'

  'Arms factory!' Dru rubbed his hands. 'It's a goddam munitions dump! What did I tell you? Did they hit it?'

  'No. Every day for four days the Legion Condor bombed the town but every day it missed the arms factory.'

  'Pity,' muttered Dru.

  'On the third day they machine-gunned two nuns,' Luis offered. 'And on the fourth day several horses -- '

  'Wait a minute, wait a minute,' Townsend interrupted. 'The way I heard it, they only bombed this place but the once.' He spread a map on the bar, 'We ought to get up there now and check it out. See, it's not all that far and -- '

  'Pardon,' Luis announced firmly. 'That is the wrong town.'

  'Guernica,' Townsend said.

  'No! Durango.' Luis tapped another town, fifteen miles to the south of Guernica. 'Durango has been bombed. Not Guernica. Durango.' He smiled reassuringly.

  'When?" asked Barker.

  Luis shrugged. 'A week ago, two weeks.'

  'Sorry, Luis. Guernica just got it,' Dru told him. 'The dust hasn't settled, and already Berlin denies that the Condor Legion had anything to do with it, so it must be good and juicy.'

  'Oh.' Luis felt defeated. 'So you are not interested in Durango?'

  'It's not Guernica,' Townsend pointed out.

  'It's just as big,' Luis said, 'and Durango got bombed four times. Two hundred civilians killed.'

  'Forget it, Luis,' Dru told him amiably. 'Right now it's Guernica or nothing. Durango's dead.'

  'Well,' Luis said, 'I can't argue with that.'

  Chapter 8

  From a nearby hillside, Guernica did not look as if it had been bombed. It looked as if someone had just decided to build a ten-lane highway across Spain, and Guernica was where they had begun. A broad strip of demolition trampled through the town, its edges as ragged as torn newspaper. The savaging of Guernica looked (from a distance) less like a military assault than a bureaucratic blunder.

  The correspondents got back in the car and Luis drove them down the hill.

  A close sight of the havoc was not much more harrowing than the distant view. But what took the correspondents by surprise was the smell. The harsh fumes of explosives and incendiaries mingled with the sad aromas of a hundred fires -- charred mattresses, scorched paintwork, burnt clothing, ruined food -- to form a miserable, inescapable stench which made the sunshine seem stupid.

  'God damn it,' Townsend said, sniffing. 'Someone forgot to empty the ashtrays.'

  Nobody laughed. Even Luis wished that Townsend had not spoken.

  They split up and went off to make separate inspections of the town. The Nationalist forces had occupied it but Luis knew better than to waste time asking questions of Mola's men. Instead he found the priest.

  This was a short and stocky man, aged about fifty, whose face was rigid with a determination not to reveal the shock which still flickered behind his eyes. He was in the crypt underneath his gutted church; it was being used as an emergency mortuary. His parishioners lay all around him in ragged rows.

  Yes, he told Luis, he had seen the bombing. He had seen the aeroplanes.

  What sort of planes!

  German, of course. The markings on the wings had been unmistakable. One flew so low that he had taken a photograph of it.

  Were people expecting the raid?

  The priest shrugged. The town was full of soldiers. They had fallen back from Durango. Everyone knew what had happened there ...

  But was there anything worth destroying in Guernica?

  Obviously there was the arms factory, the Astra-Unceta arms factory. Think of all the pistols and rifles and machine-guns made there!

  And did the bombers damage this factory?

  No. Anyone can go and see. The buildings are intact.

  How many soldiers were killed?

  Not many. The soldiers knew about bombing. But the refugees . . .

  There wer
e many refugees in Guernica"}

  Thousands.

  Where are they now?

  Look around you.

  Luis talked to more townspeople as he picked his way between the craters and the collapsed buildings: a barman, a nurse, a garage mechanic. By the time he got back to the car he had a clear picture of what had happened to Guernica.

  The correspondents were sitting under a tree, drinking wine mixed with lemonade.

  'Don't tell me,' Dru said to Luis. 'The Stukas did it. Right? The krauts flattened Guernica with their Stukas as a cold-blooded experiment in divebombing, period. Am I right?'

  'How did you know that?' Luis made himself comfortable on the ground.

  'Bilbao Radio's been yelling and screaming all morning, and Franco's people monitor the bulletins. I just got a full briefing from them, and I'll tell you something else: Guernica never saw a Stuka in its life!' Dru pulled out a magazine and displayed its cover: a picture of a Stuka, gull-winged and wheel-spatted, tipping sideways into a dive. 'I must've shown this to fifty people today. Not one of them recognised it. Not one.'

  'Proves nothing.' Townsend yawned and stretched. 'You're getting the shit bombed out of you, you don't hang around and rubberneck.'

  'Could it perhaps have been a different type of German bomber?' Luis suggested.

  'No,' Dru said firmly, 'but it could have been a different kind of Republican bomber. The two-legged kind.'

  'My God, Jean-Pierre,' Barker said, 'when you're smug you're intolerable.'

  'The Republican army dynamited Guernica and set it on fire when they retreated through it,' Dru declared. 'Then they turned round and blamed everything on the mythical Stukas. Simple as that.' Dru's hands depressed an imaginary plunger. 'Ba-room! Guernica's a great big propaganda news swindle, and I'm gonna blow the racket sky-high.'

  'I expect it was done by the miners of Asturia,' Luis said.

  'You see?' I turned to Barker and Townsend in triumph. 'Luis knows all about it. How d'you spell that name, Luis? As-what?'

  Luis told him. 'It is a big mining area. Very tough. The miners are expert with dynamite. The Republican army is full of them. They fight with dynamite.'