The Map

by T. S. Learner

  Down below was a clear view of the villa nestling against the hillside and the small flat grounds that stretched to the right of it, covered by an old olive grove of about ten trees and a tiny vineyard. Both the trees and the vineyard looked old and neglected; a testimony to past prosperity. Behind the villa snaked the small path the two had used to trek up the hill. It curled around a cluster of forest, sweeping left past the large rocky outcrop that, August now knew, hid the sacred cave at its base – barely visible from where they were sitting – and back around in an S shape. In the near distance on the other side of the slope he could see a small grassy incline on which several ancient burial rocks jutted out, making a circle – a prehistoric site. He’d seen cromlechs like it in Scotland.

  ‘Have you had lots of wo … wo … women?’ Gabirel broke the silence with an awkward intensity. August couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘A few. I guess some might think I was compulsive.’

  ‘Compulsive?’

  ‘You know – can’t help myself.’

  Gabirel frowned then worried the rock with his stick, blushing furiously. ‘I thought so. You look like a man who has had a lot of women.’

  ‘I guess that’s a compliment.’ Was it? August’s emotional history loomed up complex and jaded next to the innocent optimism of the boy sitting beside him. Love, and don’t question the first woman you fall in love with, don’t throw it away thinking there will be others – there will be, but none so bright in possibility. The boy’s hesitation brought to mind his own inability to commit – he could not disillusion him.

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘More trouble than it’s worth, but wonderful at the same time. You’ll find out for yourself.’

  ‘How? There is no one here.’

  ‘That’s not true. I saw a number of young girls back at the village.’

  Gabirel shrugged, his underdeveloped shoulders folding under the full weight of hopelessness. ‘You don’t understand. We are alone in this village. Besides, even if I was accepted by the others, boys and girls aren’t even allowed to dance together, not even at the fiesta.’

  It was the saddest thing August had heard since he’d arrived.

  ‘One day, Gabirel, I promise you – I’ll take you to the Cotton Club and you’ll have some ginger-haired bombshell hanging off your arm.’

  ‘That’s not my future.’ The youth said it with such seriousness that August was again filled with unease. Wanting to change the subject, he reached for his binoculars hanging around his neck and peered back down towards the villa.

  He saw several twisted olive branches and washing hanging on a clothes line, then as he swung the glasses to his right saw Señora Aznar beating the dust out of the eiderdown he’d last seen lying on top of his bed. Using a stick, she hit the quilt with an erratic rage, as if exorcising some inner anger. It was a disturbing and somehow very private sight. Feeling as if he were committing a transgression by watching, he shifted the binoculars across to the path Gabirel had shown him; there was the cross of the tiny chapel, barely visible through the trees but now, as he examined the clearing, he noticed the path of natural markers that led to the mouth of the cave. A line of boulders and the large oak tree just before it – a natural demarcation and no doubt the path the ancient Basque pilgrims must have used to find their temple as they wound their way through the forest. It pleased him that he could see it, not many would be able, but his eye was now accustomed to looking for such signs. It made him feel closer to Shimon, to the experience the Spaniard would have had looking at the same landscape.

  He studied the forest beyond the chapel, away from the villa and the outskirts of the village. There seemed to be nothing but an eternity of treetops – the dark blue-green jagged edges of the pine trees broken occasionally by the softer swaying majesty of oak. Then he noticed a distinctive change in the tree line, a tiny break in the forest and the mottled angularity of something lower to the ground, something cultivated.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Gabirel’s tone was suspicious.

  ‘Just the villa and the village.’

  ‘If the Guardia Civil found you with these binoculars, he would arrest you for a spy.’

  ‘But he’s not going to find them, is he, Gabirel?’

  In lieu of an answer Gabirel picked at a crevasse in the boulder with a twig, sending moss and earth flying. ‘You’re not to bring danger to my house – promise?’ he asked, his face still turned away. ‘Because if you do, I might have to kill you.’ The boy wasn’t joking. Surprised, August glanced over at him; the sense that the youth was preternaturally intelligent or intuitive prickled his skin.

  ‘I promise, I’m a friend, Gabirel, truly. Besides, I’m only here on a research trip.’

  ‘I think you have come to say things that we cannot say, to open boxes we are too terrified to look into.’ He spoke without stuttering, his voice hypnotic, chant-like, almost that of another man. ‘By the time you leave we will be changed beyond recognition.’ It was a flat declaration of fact, and the youth sounded so convinced August thought perhaps he had misheard. He was about to reply when Gabirel leaped to his feet, grabbing the bucket.

  ‘Come! I’ll race you to the bottom!’

  August pulled the stiff wooden shutters apart and pushed open the windows. A cacophony of frogs croaking, the distant sound of a dog barking and a moth all flew in at once. Leaning out, he let the cool night flow over him – the jagged treetops now filigree against the black, the stars high while Venus burned yellow below the moon. Mystery pounded against his throat like excitement, like fear. He took a deep breath of the mountain air then stepped back into the room. Time to begin.

  He dragged a small table in from the corridor outside to function as a makeshift desk, placing it under the open window. He stood the one lamp on top of it – the moth now flying wildly around the light, a beating of powdered wings. August reached into his bag and lifted out the chronicle. Placing the tome reverently onto the desk, he thought of Gabirel’s words about pagan magic lingering in the forests. As he stared down at the ancient book, the marks of the broken seal still visible in the cracked leather skin, August could believe it. He could imagine the same unquestioning belief in such sorcery was trapped between those ancient pages like the whisper of a seashell. All he had to do was find it and release it – the question was how to follow the charts of the alchemist’s journey. He moved the lamp across, so that it flooded the pages of the chronicle in an isolated pool of light, and turned to the section about Irumendi, the description of the village written opposite the hand-drawn map.

  The alchemist’s sketch of the valley at the foot of the three mountains corresponded with the same geography August had seen himself, only naturally the village appeared to be a little larger than it had been three hundred years before. There were several more farmhouses and barns on the outskirts and the town hall seemed to have been a new addition. Other than that the village was remarkably unchanged, uncannily so. Shimon Ruiz de Luna’s seventeenth-century map had a simple cross to indicate the church tower and several squares for buildings – most of his drawing focused on the three mountains surrounding the valley with the river and village at its lowest point. Gazing at his own sketch, then at the chronicle, August tried to calculate where Señora Aznar’s farmhouse was in relation to the mountain it nestled against. Using a piece of string, he measured the distance between the villa and the mountain and then from the centre of the village, and used a compass to work out the exact position. He knew the house was over five hundred years old – it would have to have existed in some form back then. He marked his own sketch then studied the chronicle with his magnifying glass. To his amazement he found a small circle marked in the forest near the village – which, according to his own calculations, was exactly where the farmhouse would have been located. The next challenge was to be able to find the secret location Shimon Ruiz de Luna had mentioned. He looked back down at the actual words Shimon had used to describe the location Elaz
ar ibn Yehuda had talked of: ‘The first of Elazar ibn Yehuda’s sacred locations lays here between the silver birch and oak near the Goddess’s cave.’

  August pondered the word ‘location’. The Latin the alchemist had used had several other meanings – mystery, puzzle, maze.

  Maze.

  The break in the tree line August had noticed through the binoculars came back to him. Was it possible? An ancient secret maze in the middle of a wild forest. Why construct such an elaborate and incongruous folly in so obscure a location? And if so, why a maze? Was it just coincidence that Gabirel had stopped him from looking down at the hillside at that particular moment? Did the boy know something? He certainly wanted to prevent August from surveying any further.

  August glanced over at his Rolleiflex camera sitting on the chest of drawers. He had to find a vantage point that would allow him to look down on the forest, somewhere he could use the long distance lens on the camera. His heart now beat with sudden exhilaration. He felt close to something, very close.

  He heard Señora Aznar telling Gabirel to put out his light and go to sleep, then the soft pattering of her feet as she walked up the stairs, the footfall stopping outside his door. August held his breath; he could feel the burning presence of her through the doors, her beauty like heat. He fought the sense of wanting her, wanting her to knock, come in, to feel her long black hair tumbling across his face, his naked chest, pulling her down to the bed, to crush the sweetness of her against him.

  Cursing his own absurdity, he glanced back at the door, at her shadow still visible through the crack under the door. He knew she was standing on the other side only inches away. What did she want? Was it possible she felt the same attraction? Before he could arrive at any conclusion, she’d moved on down the corridor, without a word.

  That night he dreamed of Charlie, that he came to August in the bedroom, still in his ragged officer’s uniform, hammer and sickle insignia hand-stitched onto the jacket, the red beret he always wore pulled low on his head, the shifting fear that had come into his eyes with the war and had stayed until it fractured his gaze into that of a madman – it was all there as he tapped August on the shoulder and woke him from a dream into a dream.

  ‘I need you to kill me so I can sleep,’ Charlie had begged, the sound of his voice so real it made August want to weep or wake. The ghost didn’t seem to understand he was dead already, and August was about to tell him but found that Charlie was at the window opening the shutters, his shape dissolving in the early morning light. It was then that August realised he hadn’t been dreaming at all.

  Malcolm was woken by the bedside telephone ringing loudly, slicing into his sleep like an attack. He sat up, knocking the alarm clock to the floor, then, after fumbling in the dark, found the receiver. Beside him Marjorie groaned and turned over, wrapping a pillow over her head. He switched on the bedside lamp, and saw the face of the alarm clock staring up at him from the floor. Five a.m. His first thought was that his father must have died.

  ‘Hully here.’ He tried to sound calm.

  ‘Interpol, Monsieur Hully. Sorry to disturb you, but we’ve had a report in from one of our agents, in relation to the man you are looking for, Monsieur August Winthrop.’

  Malcolm sat up. ‘You have?’

  ‘Indeed, I rang immediately. I thought you’d like to hear sooner rather than later as the report came in south of the border.’

  ‘Spain?’

  ‘San Sebastián. We keep a few local eyes out there. Always useful in terms of Franco’s political promiscuity, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Quite, so?’

  ‘A man fitting Winthrop’s description was seen going into a bar off the main market square two days ago, apparently passing himself off as Basque.’

  ‘His language skills are good enough. San Sebastián, you say?’ His mind whirled. So he had gone to Spain, but not Madrid – Malcolm’s contact, August’s old American girlfriend, had told him she’d heard there were to be some kind of negotiations between a US Army general and Franco’s top military men; all she knew was that they were to be in Madrid, but she could give him no date. So what was in San Sebastián? Why had August gone north?

  ‘That’s the dilemma, sir. He hasn’t been sighted since, and our source seems to think he might have made some arrangement with the locals there to be taken somewhere else.’

  Malcolm pictured the geography. He knew from his experience coordinating Operation Comet there were dozens of secluded hamlets and villages in the region, any of which would be easy to hide out in, knowledge August would also have.

  ‘In other words we lost him.’

  ‘I am afraid so. Do you want us to inform the Spanish? This could be the quicker way of entrapment.’

  Malcolm thought for a moment. To let the local police know meant a man search, certain arrest, then possible execution and Malcolm knew it would be impossible to extradite August once Franco’s men had arrested him, which would ruin MI5’s chances of establishing whether he was KGB and if he was gleaning any inside information August might have leaked to the Soviets. No, better he keeps handling this himself.

  ‘No, not yet. Keep it hush-hush until I decide when it’s time to bring in the Americans.’

  He put down the telephone and lay with the receiver on his lap staring out into the bedroom as the dull morning light began to creep across the floral carpet and unlit gas fire. He tried placing himself in August’s skin, to fathom why the American had run. Had he killed the professor? It seemed highly unlikely, even given the bizarre circumstances of the murder, but he must know something. If the CIA was right and Winthrop was KGB, Malcolm and the department were duty bound to stop any sabotage he might be planning to protect the US defence pact with Franco. After all he had originally recruited Winthrop to the Special Operations Executive. August was seen as his man, therefore the American would also be seen as his mistake. No, if Malcolm was to survive, it had to be him bringing Winthrop in. Exhaustion pressed against his throbbing eyes, his back ached and he felt old, too old for such machinations. Outside, the birds had begun their morning chorus – it was going to be a long day.

  10

  The next morning Señora Aznar made August a steaming bowl of black coffee, served up with a hunk of crusty bread covered with honey. Gabirel was already out in the fields and she seemed impatient to start her own working day.

  ‘So I’m curious, how did you hear about this village?’ She sat down opposite him and the distinctive scent of her sweat, of her hair, laced with a faint hint of vanilla, washed across, distracting him for a moment. August paused, bread in hand. He didn’t want to lie but telling her too much could put her in danger.

  ‘A friend, an American who was here in 1945, told me about it.’ He measured his words carefully, and to his surprise she looked up, startled.

  ‘There was no American living here in 1945,’ she retorted.

  The sound of pealing church bells interrupted her. She turned in the direction of the village.

  ‘That’s strange, it’s not Sunday, is it?’ August remarked.

  She stood and went to the window to look down at the village below.

  ‘They ring the bells when there is a fiesta, trouble or someone has died, but there is no fiesta until July. We can read the bells like a book. Those bells tell of a death – of a man.’ Her face was now rigid with tension. August ate some of the bread and washed it down with a gulp of hot coffee, then wiped his mouth.

  ‘I was going to go down to the village this morning. I can find out who it is if you like.’

  ‘That would be kind. Gabirel and I, we try to avoid going there too often, there are memories …’ For a moment he thought he saw fear in her eyes and, more disturbingly, panic. ‘You can borrow my husband’s old bicycle. It’s next to the mule’s shed.’

  With camera and binoculars hidden in his rucksack and the large black beret pulled firmly down past his ears, August cycled to the village. He planned to go back up to the top of the church
steeple to look for the anomaly he saw in the tree line; to pinpoint its exact location. He needed a high lookout and the bell tower was perfect.

  Bouncing over the pebbled lanes, he wove his way through the outskirts of the village towards the centre and its small cluster of local shops. The morning mist that had shrouded the mountains was beginning to lift but the sky was still streaked with grey and a light drizzle coated August’s face as he cycled against the wind. The rich smell of recently ploughed damp earth and horse manure tainted the breeze, and the light rain (as well as the coffee) had sprung his nerves back to life. The squealing of the rusty pedals and his own laboured breath seemed to bounce off the walls of the buildings. August had the same illusion as when he first arrived, that Irumendi might be a ghost town, inhabited only by projections of his imagination – even worse, distorted chimeras of people he’d once known, all those years ago, fighting in these very hills. He couldn’t stop thinking about Charlie and his visit the night before. Was the Spain he’d known hiding in his head like a landscape frozen in time, waiting to be ignited into scenarios of what might have been, to be played out in those dream boulevards by jerking puppets of the dead? The desolation of the empty streets did not help. Where was everybody? During the Civil War there were only two reasons why such a village would be deserted: invasion or massacre. How many times had he driven into a place such as this and found the town peppered by bullets, its houses smouldering black craters, its men strung by their necks like strange fruit, a fascist flag hanging from the clock tower, the pounding terror of a possible sniper blunted by his own profound exhaustion: it all came flooding back as he cycled, all those towns, all those battles, all those streets he marched down, his camarada by his side.