by Shaun Herron
“You’re sure you’re all right?”
“Oh, yes.”
“We love you, Mauro.”
“Thank you both.”
It was a mistake to call. His father knew something was wrong. He had made a ruin of all their lives.
“Forgive me,” he said when the phone was in its cradle. He wanted Maria to open her womb and shelter him; but he didn’t know that.
And Ugalde said to Maria-Angeles, “Things aren’t right. Or he’s desperately lonely. He’s never done that before.”
“We get lonely without him, Dion.”
“Yes. Oh, yes. Yes, we do.” He went to his surgery to think, and to hide his foreboding from her.
They went separately by bus to San Sebastian and separately walked from the bus station to the fishing fleet harbor. A high wind blew and it was raining. They converged under the old archway, beyond the harbor car park. The wind increased. The Bay of Biscay beat past Santa Clare island lying in the mouth of La Concha bay, and tried to climb the sea wall. The rain turned to lashing hail. But they stood apart under the archway and did not speak.
The red and green and brown and white houses of the fishermen were stacked one on the other, against the side of Monte Urgull, where the statue of the Sacred Heart towered over all, like one of the heavenly host holding a watching brief on the mess below. The fishing fleet rode idle and secure in the harbor, still on strike. Mauro looked out through the hail and thought, “A week ago I cared about them. Now I don’t even care about Reis and Haro over there.”
Abril came down narrow, cobbled del Coro with a man none of them knew. He asked for a light from Reis and passed him the car key with his matches. The key had a tag attached to it, with the number of the car written on it.
Abril let his cigarette go out and again approached Reis as he walked out into the hail. Reis walked on into the storm and didn’t speak to him. Haro left the shelter of the archway, following Reis.
Where do they meet? Mauro wondered, watching Abril. They come and go, and know how to find one another and we never know. He received his key, with his matches, from the other man and did not leave his shelter till the hail stopped. When he moved, he did not walk to the carpark but went through the back of the arch.
“Where are you going?” he heard Abril say and looked back. Abril was facing the harbor, not looking at him.
“To eat.”
“Go to your car.”
“Go to hell. I’m starving.”
Bar Clery was no more than twenty steps away. He went through the archway and into the restaurant. He was angry. He thought he hated Abril. Go to the car! By God. Do this, you bourgeois puppet, do that, you stupid tool. Go to hell, you bloodthirsty bastard. It was good for him. He felt a little fortified, a little readier for what was to come; a little fear was displaced by a little angry courage.
Abril and the other man came into the restaurant, sat down at a corner table, ordered drinks but not food, and sat like warders till Mauro had eaten. There were so many silent lurkers among them, like tentacles reaching out from an unseen body. They made him shudder. When his bill came, he wrote on the back of it, signed what he wrote, put it in his pocket and left.
Abril and the man came after him. They caught up with him in the carpark.
“What’s the matter with you?” Abril asked him impatiently.
“Nothing now. I’ve eaten.”
“What were you writing in there?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Anything you do is my business now.”
“Abril,” Mauro said, “I just grew up. Why don’t you try it?”
Abril had no more time to waste. He issued an order in a leader-voice. “It’s time to go. Get your car and fall in behind Reis and Haro.”
“No. I have things to do first.”
“What things?”
“My things. Now will you fuck off, Abril? We went through it all twelve times and then we went through it another twenty. I’ve been over the ground every day, ten times a day. I’m doing something I don’t want to do and I’m beginning to hate the sound of your voice and the look on your face. I’ll be in place, dead on time. So fuck off.” Mauro walked away, feeling strong. Another small victory. Abril did not try to follow. That too was a sort of victory. Mauro walked to the Hotel de Londres y de Inglaterra and went in.
He didn’t know yet what he was going to do or whether he would do anything. There was a vacant coffee table by the windows looking out on La Concha bay and he sat down. The lobby was L-shaped and the glass-cage elevator was on the elbow of the L. It rattled up and down, loading and unloading the three or four passengers it could carry. He watched the elevator and the floodlit statue of the Sacred Heart in turn, waiting, and he gave no thought to why he was waiting.
The señora’s guests arrived. He supposed they were her guests. They had an air of cultural self-importance. He watched them without interest, not wondering who they were until what seemed to be the last of them had been pointed to the dining room. It was time to go.
She came out of the glass elevator as he passed it on his way to the street; the Señora Aña Anson, the painter Celaya and some fat local dignitary. As if this was what he had intended since he came, he blocked her way.
“Señor, if you please,” the fat dignitary said, pushing gently with possessive anxiety.
“Señora Anson,” Mauro said.
Her smile, he was sure, was genuine. It was for him. Her pictures were far from true; they told nothing of the impact of her real presence. “Señor?” she said as if it mattered that he was there; as if it delighted her that he was there.
And he could think of nothing to say.
“You,” she said, “spoke to me.”
“I am Mauro Ugalde,” he said.
“Yes?”
“I want to thank you …” but for what? For anything? I want to shout run, don’t go near your farm. “I want to thank you for bringing the Celaya exhibition. Thank you, señora … that is all …” He turned away, conscious of attention, and foolishness and a suddenly burning face and heard her say, “Señor … please. Señor,” she called but he was through the door, hurrying to the carpark. “That’s a pity. I was about to make you shake his hand,” she said. “Ugalde? Something Ugalde?”
“Mauro Ugalde, I think. He took me by surprise.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” She was staring at nothing, listening, as if to voices in her head. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course.”
“Señora,” the fat dignitary urged. There were guests waiting for his entrance.
“Yes, of course,” the señora said again, her mind on something else. “I hope I can remember what I was going to say.” But she stood where she was, staring at the glass door.
“Is something the matter, señora?” the fat dignitary asked unhappily, thinking of his spoiled entrance.
She did not hear him. “Why should I?” she said strongly. “Why should I? But I must, mustn’t I?”
“Señora?” The fat dignitary was puzzled. The painter was puzzled. The señora was talking to herself, on some private matter.
“Yes, of course,” she said and they went in to dinner.
They parked the three French cars out of sight among the trees in the parkland surrounding the Anson farmhouse and walked the hundred yards to the front door.
The little man who opened the door looked like a Pekinese dressed as a waiter. He stared at two destructive guns and saw with his peripheral vision the five faces that shone with eerie menace through the stocking masks. He did not speak at all. His mouth hung open, his large brown eyes stayed wide. He backed obediently into the hall.
“Ring the women in here,” Abril said when they pushed the man to the drawing room.
The three women came as summoned and had no more to say than the little manservant. It’s odd, Mauro thought, in the movies people always scream but in real life their minds die, their mouths fall open, and they stare, full of throat-paralyzing fea
r. He had seen women gag in an effort to scream. The four servants were herded to the little man’s room upstairs, taped and tied, and left to recover at leisure.
There was nothing to do now but wait for Señora Anson. They stuffed their stocking masks into pockets and made themselves comfortable in the drawing room.
It was a large white room with a very high ceiling and heavy black furniture. Three immense logs burned slowly in the great fireplace. Three long deep couches fenced it in. Abril and the man sat facing the fire. Reis and Haro slouched sullenly on their left. Mauro prowled the room.
“Is there any wine in that big sideboard?” Abril called to him.
“Scotch whiskey, French brandy, sherry, liqueurs, everything else you can think of—but no wine.”
Abril got up and examined it himself. “You know,” he said masterfully, like a general on active service, “the price of this one piece of furniture would keep a Basque worker’s family for three years.” He opened it. “Look at this booze. Only the best, and all we could drink in a week. Haro,” he said, “find some red wine.”
“Find it yourself.”
“Haro,” Mauro said, “I could use it. Let’s find it.”
They found it in a small cellar under the kitchen. “You want to run his errands, Mauro? That’s not the way you talked on Tuesday.”
“I want to pass something to you.”
“What?”
“I’ll put it in your pocket just before we get back. If he sees it he’ll kill both of us.”
“Then I don’t want it.”
“You don’t believe we’ll get away with this, Haro.”
“Putting the servants away was easy enough.”
“Putting the painter away and taking the señora will be just as easy. The bad bit begins when they try to collect Hierro and the money.”
“They’ll collect.”
“When? We’ll be up the road with the señora. They’ll be over the frontier waiting for Hierro and the money. We have to stay. We have to go back and try to look normal. The longer the delay of the payoff, the worse everything gets and all the time the police delay, they’ll be searching.”
“There’s a three-day limit on any delay.”
“The Assembly will extend it. Maybe they’ll extend it twice—they want Hierro and that money. And the more they extend it, the less likely they are to get anything. Then we kill her? You and me, Haro? Do we?”
“They’ll collect.”
“Or the Civil Guard will find us before they have to pay. Or they’ll not pay—they’ll stall while they search. And the three days will pass and the extensions, and then we kill her? You and me and Reis, Haro?”
“For Christ’s sake, Mauro. I’m sick enough already.”
“I couldn’t kill her, Haro. I’ve met her.”
“You’ve what?”
“I went down to the hotel and spoke to her in the lobby.”
“What in God’s name for? What did you say?”
“I don’t know. But I won’t kill her. I won’t let Abril or that other bastard kill her—and I couldn’t kill her any more than I could kill you.”
“Christ! You make me feel I’m already dead.”
“We’ve got to stop them, Haro. They’re lunatics to try this. We’ve got to stop them and argue with them afterwards. They’ll see reason when the whole thing’s over and out of the way.”
“We’ll be out of the way. They’ll kill us instead of her.”
“Here.” Mauro pushed the Bar Clery bill into Haro’s pocket. “Read that when you get into the car and not before. Just do what it says and you and Reis meet me when and where it says.”
“They’ll kill us, if we try anything.”
“No, they won’t, Haro. But we’re all done if they go through with this and it fails. We’re all ruined for life. We’ve got to try, Haro. For our own sakes.”
“I’m not trying anything.”
“All right. Hang with them, Haro, for sure as hell they’ll hang—if the Civil Guard even bothers to take them alive.”
“Christ! Are you trying to scare the shit out of me? Stop it, Mauro, for God’s sake, stop it!”
They walked back to the drawing room.
“I didn’t really expect to see you today, Mauro,” Abril said. “You must have done a lot of sound thinking.”
“When this is over, we’re going to do a lot of thinking, Abril. Better thinking than the sort that set up this stupid operation.” Mauro sat as close as the furniture allowed to the man with Abril. He felt perversely unpleasant. “Do you ever speak?” he asked insolently.
“When necessary.”
“Have you a name?”
“Not for you.”
“You don’t live in Spain. You slip over for operations. Where do you live?”
“Don’t ask any more questions.”
“Take orders but don’t ask questions?”
“Right.”
“From you?”
“Tonight, from Abril. Tomorrow, from me.”
“And if we don’t.”
“You will.” His assurance was cold and untroubled.
“Believe me,” Mauro said deliberately, “you can give orders to Abril. You’ll not give them to us.”
“I was told you were nervous.” The man was smiling. “Quiet down. Nervous people are a nuisance.”
“How many of you people only speak to threaten? You know what you remind me of? You know what you’re really like? The Civil Guard. Why don’t you join them?”
“Shut up.”
They drank the wine in hostile and uneasy silence. When it was finished Abril said, “Wash the glasses, Mauro. Rub them up well or they’ll read them like a book. Wash the bottles, too.”
In the long silence, Mauro had stopped thinking about consequences. The mere presence of Abril heated his anger. He let it grow. His mind was battened down. Everything in him was focused on purpose, like a man who has determined to beat down a brick wall with the crown of his head. He was as settled in his purpose now as he had been jubilant that the blood of Luis Arrabal and Dion Ugalde ran in his veins; as determined as he had been contrite when Lieutenant Mieza sent for him; as set on his simple goal as he had been abjectly repentant when he cried on the phone for his mother’s womb. A cold calmness settled on his spirit. There were no more questions in his mind. He didn’t ask himself how long the condition would last. It was one of the questions he never asked himself.
“Certainly,” he said agreeably and looked at Abril with the clinical curiosity with which he watched smears under a microscope. There was a certain pleasure in it. He took the glasses and bottles to the kitchen, washed and polished them and arranged them in a V-formation on a kitchen table. Then he laid the bottles in a row pointing into the base of the V. It made an arrow on the table.
When he came back to the drawing room the phone rang. “Leave it,” Abril said. It rang twelve times, and stopped, and rang again, eight times.
“They’re on their way,” Abril said.
They put out all the lights in the room except two mellow wall lights on either side of the fireplace. Mauro, Reis and Haro took up their positions behind the large couches. Abril and his man stood in the dark behind the open double doors of the room. All of them put on their stocking masks.
The wood in the fire hissed. Now and then it crackled, sparks showered out on the wide black granite slab in front. There was no other sound.
Crouching out of sight near the fire, Mauro could look through the gap between two couches and through the open doors of the room, out into the wide flagged hall. The front door was unlocked. He would see it open.
It was almost half an hour before it opened. He could hear Haro swallowing in a dry throat.
She walked slowly past the painter as he held the door open for her, looked around nervously and said, “Leave the car. Carlos will put it away.”
“You must be very tired, señora.”
“Yes.” She was not listening to the painter. She stoo
d in the hall, looked to her left and right, and walked slowly towards the drawing room doors. The painter came, a pace behind and to her left, like a courtier attending a queen.
Slowly she came through the doors and walked to the center of the room. She stopped, her hands clasped together.
“Are you all right, señora?” the painter asked her anxiously.
“Do not move from where you are,” Abril said.
The painter shuddered visibly in the dark and made a small sound. Señora Anson stood perfectly still. “Yes,” she said, “of course.”
“Back away from the señora, Celaya,” Abril said.
The painter backed away. Mauro, Reis and Haro stood up. Señora Anson did not move. She looked steadily at the three masked faces and was afraid, but her control puzzled Mauro as much as her nervous approach to the drawing room had puzzled him. Perhaps it was the absence of light? She seemed to come, expecting something. Or she had expected Carlos, the little Pekinese waiter, to appear with the sound of the car and he had not come and the room was dark? “Take what you want and leave,” she said.
“We came for you, señora,” Abril said. “Put Celaya with the others.”
“Have you hurt my servants?” she asked sharply.
“We’ll not hurt anyone, señora,” Mauro said.
Reis, Haro and the other man took the painter upstairs. Mauro took tape from his pocket. “Please accept this, señora,” he said, “it will not hurt and it will not be for long.” He came out to her and cut the tape. She did not move when he placed it over her mouth. He took her hands gently and pulled them behind her. She did not resist. “I am sorry, señora,” he said, “I’ll take them off at the first possible moment. I don’t want to bind your ankles. Are you prepared to walk with me to my car without causing any commotion?”
She nodded. Her unwavering look unnerved him. Anxiety appeared to have left her. Nervous, yes; she could not be otherwise, but she was thoughtful rather than afraid. She’s studying me, he thought. She’s trying to see through the stocking, for God’s sake. When he spoke, her eyes had a listening look.
“Please sit down and rest, señora, till the others come.”
She sat down with what Mauro thought of as regal grace on the couch in front of the fire, very upright; he wondered if her regal bearing came from practicing sitting down with her hands clasped behind her. It was a silly thought and he looked quickly for Abril as if the man might overhear his mind. Abril was wandering about in the hall, paying no attention.
