by Shaun Herron
“Are you in some trouble, señora?”
“Señorita,” she corrected them cheerfully. “No, I am not in any trouble.”
“Then why are you parked here, at this time of the night?”
“Because my friends are over there, in the trees,” she said.
The Guards looked into the dark where two bank robbers stood watching, afraid that their breathing, and the sound of their tongues licking rain from their lips, would carry to the road.
“What are the señoritas doing in the trees?” A little embarrassment for the señorita would also be a little entertainment.
Pureza was not embarrassed. “The señors,” she said.
“The señors? And what are they doing in the trees?”
“Precisely what, I cannot be sure. I can only tell you what they said.”
“What did they say?” That should be good for a laugh at the barracks.
“They said it would be more comfortable in the trees than in their trousers.”
The Civil Guards looked steadily at one another across the top of the car. One of them said solemnly, “There is truth in that.”
“Yes.” She was pretty. She was smiling. She said, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to follow their lead. As soon as they get back, I’ll be in there myself.”
“A safe journey,” they said. Their guns disappeared under their cloaks and they walked slowly on. Pureza got out of the car and walked into the trees.
“Over here. To your right,” a voice too close whispered intensely.
“God! You scared the pants off me! How long have you been here?”
“We got here with your friends.”
“Is that the loot? There’s a lot of it.”
“Is it safe to go?”
“If we go quietly. By now they’ll be in a dip back there. You’re sodden.”
“Let’s hurry.”
About five kilometers along the road they met Reis and Abril in the other ca Reis reported, “You’re all clear to Arceniega. Then you’ll meet two lots between Arceniega and Amurrio. What’s ahead of us?”
“Two beyond Antuñano,” Mauro said. “It’s a good night. They don’t want to be bothered. When they take their hands out from under the capes, they get wet.”
“How big a haul?” Abril asked them.
“Big. Tomorrow.”
They went their ways, circumspectly, back to Bilbao. “God I’m glad that’s over,” Pureza said. Mauro read nothing in the relief in her voice.
“Haro,” she said, “you can’t go home in those clothes. Your mother’s going to ask the wrong questions.”
“Christ, Pureza, do you have to be the den mother? We’ve just robbed a bank and you have to bring my mother and her questions into it.”
“Was I mistaken, Haro? Doesn’t your mother care?” Mauro heard her resentment.
“How the hell will he live with your tongue, girl?”
“Horizontally,” she said, living up to Mauro’s expectations. “You’ll both come to my place, have baths and I’ll get your clothes dried and ironed before morning.” She was gay and brave and amusing, and very practical.
“Fuertes first,” Mauro corrected her. “Take off your panty hose and cut them up for us. We forgot two sets of stocking masks.”
“I didn’t,” Pureza said, “you’ll find them in my purse.” And Mauro thought, She’s great. And Pureza saw it in his face and was pleased.
So they tidied up the operation. They made Señorita Agesta and Fuertes scrub off all skin traces of adhesive. Mauro said, “Your wife is very upset, señor. She has all your other keys. She says you owe her something and will you please hurry home. But don’t move from here for half an hour. We have a man outside to make sure you don’t. The door will be left open. He’ll hear you phone. We haven’t hurt you. Don’t make us.”
It was an impeccable operation. Not finding the guns was a stupid blunder. Next time, they’d watch that. Otherwise—impeccable. Fears were out of mind. Mauro felt like a leader.
“Goodnight,” Mauro said gallantly to the prisoners.
In the morning, Pureza’s friends in the apartment found two young men wrapped in blankets, asleep on their living room floor. Their clothes were arranged neatly on the floor beside them. Pureza had gone to work, without sleep.
Mauro heard one of the girls say, “You know, when Pureza has five children, she’ll still be a virgin.” He didn’t open his eyes.
Haro slept on and did not return the family car until well after eleven that morning. His father waited at home for word of him, harried by anxiety. When Haro arrived, his father’s wasted anxiety turned to fury at the sight of his undamaged son.
“If I can’t trust you at your age, then by God you’ve had the car for the last time. Why the hell don’t you try to grow up and be responsible? When are you going to grow up?” Again and again and again. Not to a bank robber or a revolutionary, but to a large son who was still to his father a small boy.
Haro sat humbly and apologized again and again and again till his mother could no longer stand the repetitious storm and left the room.
“Father,” Haro said meekly and with cunning, “I was with a girl. She was … you know … very demanding. We didn’t sleep till the early hours of the morning. Then we overslept. I’m sorry.”
“For God’s sake, don’t let your mother find that out. She thinks you’re still twelve.” His father laid a hand of instant understanding on Haro’s bowed shoulder as he passed on the way to the car. He stopped at the door and came back a pace. “Were you able to cope with her?” The little smile was in the words, not on his lips.
“Oh, yes, sir. She thought so too.”
“Good.”
“Father?”
“Yes?”
“You didn’t make a police call did you? You know, an accident call?”
“I did. I’ll tell them what happened. They’ll laugh at me. But don’t let your mother know. She’s a woman.” And the child is father to the man, which makes for manly understanding. ¡Viva Yo!
It was a very successful, a well-planned, a precisely executed operation. And nicely covered, from the police and from anxious and unreasonable parents.
But at six on Tuesday morning the police came for Mauro.
6
To her harm, the ant grew wings.
SPANISH PROVERB
They came at six, ringing, hammering, rousing the whole household and the neighbors on the floor. The landlady stayed in bed, sitting up. The two students from the Universidad Comercial, who shared a room and a bed, sat up. Mauro sat up. The fuddled landlord went to the door.
They did not offer to identify themselves. “Ugalde,” one of them said. They followed the landlord to Mauro’s bedroom door and took root outside it.
“Police,” the landlord whispered. “What have you done?”
“Nothing.” His racing heart trembled in his voice.
“Then why are they here, getting my house a bad name?”
“I don’t know.”
Fear turned the landlord’s usually indifferent nature to malice. “In case you’re not coming back, leave enough money for a week’s rent and the cost of sending your stuff home. I don’t want you here.”
They took him to the Camino de La Salve, to the Vizcaya provincial headquarters of the Civil Guard.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked them, building buttresses for his courage.
They neither looked at him nor answered him.
The distinction between Dion Ugalde, Luis Arrabal’s chief lieutenant, and the country doctor of Burguete, who was his father, dissolved in his blood. He was afraid for himself and stricken at what he had done to his father and mother. He closed his eyes to hide what they revealed and saw his father in his little surgery, with its old bookcase of old medical books, the glass cabinet in which he kept his instruments, the narrow cot on which his mother changed the linen every day, the peculiar heavy old desk with the fence around three sides—and his father sitting
at it. Faithful, loving, patient and now betrayed by the son he loved so dearly and sacrificed for so willingly. He felt his father’s heartbreak, his mother’s anguish.
If there had been any way out of this, it was past. His father was right. It was lunacy. It couldn’t succeed. The end product could be only useless suffering. He felt his parents’ suffering.
They took him to a small room with only a chair, a table and a bench in it. A door in the opposite wall led somewhere. It was a desolating thought. Where is somewhere? It was seven o’clock.
“Empty your pockets,” they said.
That’s what they do when you’re not going home, he thought. God have pity on my poor parents. He emptied his pockets: papers, the Gastronomic Club key, some money, a student card, a note from Pureza that said, “Come early on Sunday.” His fingers were treacherous, fumbling. His hands sweated and pulled the linings out of his pockets. The police stood, waiting, as patiently unfeeling as concrete. They sealed his possessions in a large brown envelope and took it away.
“Stay,” they said as if to a retriever. It was a quarter past seven.
“Oh,” he said childishly, “they forgot my watch,” and stood up, to be pathetically cooperative. There was nobody to tell. What would they do if he opened a door? Think he was trying to run away, and bash him? He sat down again.
Nobody came. He heard footfalls, voices, laughter, but nobody came. He watched his watch obsessively. It was eight o’clock. Two hours since they hammered on the door. By nine he was limp. His imagination scurried over the landscape of possibilities. Would Basa have him in Burguete? Would he be in wrist irons? Would they send him down to Burgos and the rats? His limbs melted. Nine o’clock. He lay back against the wall. His father was in the room. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. His mother stood away. What have you done what have you done to us all? Forgive me forgive me forgive me. His watch told off the time second by second, endlessly. When the grip had left his fingers and his father and mother refused to be conjured, the door that led somewhere opened. It was eleven.
The young man who came in was a lieutenant in uniform. He was smiling. His eyes were very large and brown. He had a big nose and rich lips and very large teeth. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting?” he said pleasantly and held out his hand.
Mauro tried to say, No, but his mouth and throat were too dry. He made a sound and took the man’s hand. His own lay in it like warm, wet liver. The man dropped it, but he kept his smile in place. Mauro tried to stand up but his legs refused. Sitting upright was difficult.
“How long have you been here?”
“They picked me up at six this morning.”
“Six? You mean six?” He appeared to be shocked.
“Yes.”
“Have you eaten?”
“No.”
“Come in here.” He wheeled and led the way through the door that led somewhere. It led into another small room with a couple of chairs, a desk, a filing cabinet and a desk chair. The place had a soldierly austerity. “Sit down.” The man pushed a button, ordered a guard to bring sandwiches and coffee and said, “I am sorry. I am truly sorry. This is unforgivable. You were not ‘picked up.’ I said I wanted you brought here because I wanted to talk with you. I am Mieza—José Mieza, Lieutenant Mieza.”
Mauro’s thinned blood thickened a little. His head felt a little light from the relief that ran through it. Had they anything? “I am Ugalde,” he said and restrained an involuntary giggle. “Mauro Ugalde. Medical student.”
The lieutenant was leafing through a file on his desk when Mauro made this announcement. He raised his head a little, and his eyebrows, and said, “Yes, I know.”
He returned his attention to the file. Then he said, “Since six? Do you need to pee?”
“Yes.”
A Guard took him to a washroom and brought him back. “Better?” the lieutenant asked caringly.
“Much.” Mauro’s bladder was better, his legs were better, his head was stronger. The lieutenant wasn’t hostile. He was humane. That didn’t prove anything, but the Civil Guards weren’t known for their gentle manners or methods. What was next? He waited for several minutes and the lieutenant read and leafed.
“Pamplona,” the lieutenant said. “The Iruña Zarra. That’s been dealt with.”
“I’m sorry? I didn’t follow.”
“The Iruña Zarra.” The lieutenant spoke very distinctly, slowly. “The dining room that was bombed in Pamplona.”
“Oh. I see.”
“They got the people who did that.” Casually. Sharing information.
“I see.”
“Two engineering students have been arrested.”
“I see.”
“One thing I did want to ask you about this. You were questioned about it, I see here.”
“Yes, by Colonel Basa.”
“That’s my point. Why by Colonel Basa? Why not by a sergeant, or a junior officer like me?”
“Well, Colonel Basa is my father’s friend. He was in Burguete that day. I suppose he just did it because he was there. I suppose it was handy.”
“You have some nicely placed friends,” the lieutenant said, looking at the papers.
“Oh, he is not my friend. He and my father …”
“Yes, of course, I understand. But that being so, he would look on you in a kindly spirit.”
“He is very kind.” The sandwiches and coffee came. More reassurance came with them.
“Tuck in,” the lieutenant said as if the idea pleased him. “I’ll clear this up while you eat. There was a young man with you in Pamplona that night.” It was a statement.
“Yes, José Duarte. His home is in Pamplona, we shared lodgings here in Bilbao.”
“Yes, you moved. Tell me about that.”
“My father insisted. He drove over here and ordered me back to my old lodgings.”
“Your father insisted? Why?”
“Well, the people we lodged with are called Mendez. The son of the family was involved in the shipyard strike. He was arrested. My father thought I should not be there.”
“Good for him. You told him this Mendez was an agitator?”
“No.”
“Then how did he know, away up there in Burguete?”
“Colonel Basa told him.”
“Ah! Colonel Basa told him? He’s a very good friend. I met him several times. He’s a very fine man. I met him at something in Burgos last time. I’ll be in touch with him, of course, but when you see him again, give him my greetings, will you? A personal greeting means more than a mere word in a covering letter.” So, that’s the game, Mauro thought. He wants friends at court. “So your father came here and moved you?”
“Yes. We’re very close.”
“You didn’t think of moving yourself?”
“I did. But I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“The old Mendez—the grandparents—needed the rent money. They’re really very nice old people.”
“You have a kind heart. But, you know, policemen don’t always see the nicest side of people. They more often see the side that counts. For example, do you know the story of the Mendez grandfather? If you don’t, it might interest you.”
“I don’t.”
“Well, Grandfather Mendez was once a schoolmaster. That was when the Civil War started. He fought for the other side, and was condemned to death after the war for blood crimes. He had a very beautiful sister who was pursued by a then-prominent young Falangist in Bilbao …” The lieutenant told the story old Mendez had told Ugalde of his pardon and his sister’s marriage to get the pardon. “The old man had a sense of humor,” Mieza said. “When he married and had a son, he named the boy Vladimir—after Lenin.” He said, smiling, “An unrepentant and humorous Communist. You kept poor company.”
“I’m afraid so. Duarte asked me to join him and by the time I found out who they were, I had a lot of sympathy for the old people. It’s just that I wasn’t thinking about politics.”
&nbs
p; “Well, all’s well that ends well. You’re comfortably settled now?”
“I thought I was, but my landlord didn’t like the police coming for me this morning. I got my marching orders. He said the police coming gave his house a bad name.”
“Never mind that. I’ll talk to him. You can’t keep changing lodgings.” He stood up. “Well, I was obliged to see you to clarify the Mendez business in my own mind and before the arrests were made, I was supposed to see you about the Iruña Zarra affair. We’ve got that lot cleared up. Did you leave anything in the waiting room?”
“They took everything but my watch when I arrived.”
“They did what? Why, in God’s name?” He rang and the large brown envelope was brought. “Just check it while I’m here. I’m so sorry about all this. Sometimes we make such stupid mistakes.” He was quite distressed.
Mauro broke the seal and poured everything onto the lieutenant’s desk. “Everything’s there, thank you.”
“That’s an odd key. What on earth is it?” Mieza picked up the club key and examined it.
“That’s the key to our Gastronomic Club.”
“So you’re a cook?”
“A few of us get together.” He took the offered key and put it in his pocket.
