The Bird in Last Year's Nest

by Shaun Herron

  The other three pairs of guards had not reappeared around the prison. “Where are they?” Carlos asked anxiously.

  “Probably lying in the snow. We’ll know soon. Have you got the stepladder Paco?”

  “Yes, doctor.”

  “Did you test it? Does it work?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Who’s going over the fence with me?”

  “I am,” Carlos said.

  “Give them a little more time, then we’ll open the Summerhouse, Carlos, and your man can come out.” It was a small verbal gesture. He didn’t care about their man.

  There was no response. Carlos didn’t care about his verbal gestures. Ugalde felt their separation. He looked around for the first time. Carlos stood white-caped and white-hooded behind the deadfall paddock. Beyond him, Paco and Urbina sat with their backs to trees, and beyond them two men whose faces he could not see. All of them were in white cotton capes with white hoods. All of them were nursing automatic rifles across their chests.

  “We agreed, Carlos. Only two guns—yours and Paco’s.” But in face of the accomplished fact, it sounded lame.

  “Who would go in there without a gun?”

  “I would.”

  Carlos laughed. “You’re a good man, Dr. Ugalde.” It was dismissive.

  The gunfire was brief. It came, Ugalde thought, from the road above the monastery. Three short bursts of automatic fire that bounced and echoed in the narrow valleys along and around the Pass of Roncesvalles, the Valley of Thorns.

  “What was that?”

  “The patrol coming down the Pass to the barracks. You forgot about them, doctor. We didn’t.”

  “My God.” Ugalde pulled Maria to her feet, but he was not in command or control. Carlos whistled and the five Assembly men on the hill became a crowd. They were lower, on the fringes of the trees, white-caped and hooded, with automatic rifles slung, carrying rolls of wire, plungers, sacks that could only mean bundles of dynamite. They set to work with large wire-cutters on the outside fence.

  “Your word isn’t worth much, Carlos. What are you going to do?”

  “Wipe that place off the face of the earth.”

  “And my son and his friends? Was your word good on them?”

  “My word is. I can’t guarantee everybody in this crowd.”

  “And the boat to Bayonne and secure transport to the coast?”

  “All arranged. Only Paco knows the details. Nobody else can interfere. You’re safe.”

  “Are we?” Ugalde said bitterly.

  Maria said quietly, “Make it true, Carlos. I will kill you myself if anything goes wrong.”

  “With what, señora? And when?”

  Carlos walked down the hill. “Paco,” he called, “bring the ladder. We’ll go in now.”

  Ugalde was nothing. Carlos was in charge. The thing was no longer simple. There were dead Civil Guards somewhere on the Pass, no doubt gunned down from ambush in the middle of their idle talk.

  The massive explosions came from the direction of the barracks on the avenue of trees. “Don’t worry, doctor,” Carlos called up the hill. “They had orders to get everybody out before they blew up the barracks.”

  Ugalde ran down the hill and grabbed Carlos. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he yelled.

  “We’ll go over the fence now, doctor. If you don’t, and Mauro can’t come out, they’ll hang all the politicals in there, and you’ll do thirty years for your share. We’ll see to it. Who else could have doctored the food?”

  “Do you think the priests in the monastery will stay away from the phone when they hear this?”

  “Yes. They’re all in the Collegiate church at this minute, praying, I hope, but not from choice. Paco!”

  “I’m here,” Paco said.

  “Now, doctor,” Carlos said and shook himself free.

  Ugalde took off his sheepskin-lined coat and drew the knife from its sheath. “It’s a silent friend, Carlos,” he said.

  “Indeed,” Carlos said, smiling.

  Ugalde was wearing a white hospital coat pulled up and tied about his waist. He gave his top coat to Maria and said, “Wait for us in the trees where the fence is cut. I’ll send him to you, then run for Paco’s garage. The back door’s open.” He kissed her. “Keep in the trees.”

  They passed through the cut fence and stopped a few feet from the electrified barrier. Paco had one leg of the stepladder already assembled. Half a dozen men placed one end of it firmly on the ground and leaned it toward the fence. It reached almost six feet above the outward-canted top of the electric fence. Ugalde felt the leg of the ladder. He lifted it off the ground. It was light. Very light. Too light? “Fit the other leg into the crown and hand it to me when I’m up, Paco.”

  He started to climb. The ladder swayed toward the fence and stabilized. “Hold it hard, for Christ’s sake,” he admonished them and went carefully to the top. Paco handed him the second leg with the crown locked on. He raised it high in the air and passed it over the fence. Disabling thoughts shook his mind. If there was one man capable of action in the building, he was a perfect target perched high over the top of the electric fence; if one man lost his grip below, or had a seizure, or lost his nerve. He lowered the second leg to the ground inside the compound. “Now,” he said, “inch by inch, lean me closer to the fence. I have to get the crown locked into this leg. Easy, for God’s sake.”

  The outside leg leaned slowly forward, swaying a little, not quite stable. Ugalde had to lean forward, increasing the pressure on his holders. He had to lift the second leg awkwardly to lower the crown onto the first one. The second leg wove as the pressure on his wrists increased. But the crown came down on the leg. “Lower it. Very slowly,” he said.

  Both legs were on the ground, straddling the fence. “Hold it hard,” he called, “don’t let it tumble sideways.”

  Slowly, he went over, one leg on either side of the lethal fence, turning then to face outwards and descend.

  The stepladder was too long and too light. He could feel it bending as he went gingerly down. Then it buckled and he leaned back and dropped. The holders let go and scattered and Ugalde rolled away and rose and ran. The ladder fell sideways and sparks and flame hissed and crackled and died away.

  He was alone in the compound in the full glare of the floodlights, with no chance of help until he opened the place. He had no gun and twenty-five sick but armed men were in and about the building. There was only one way to go. The men around the fence had disappeared. They were all back in the trees, ready to come through the gates if he opened them, or to abandon him inside if he couldn’t. For a moment he thought he heard the voice of Luis Arrabal, “This is the place, Dion.”

  He put on a hospital mask and walked across the compound to the main door. The stench came out from the heated interior like a solid substance. The cries and moanings and pathetic whimperings of men in terrible pain came with it. They were lying about all over the place, in corridors, in the doorways of rooms and offices, some barely conscious, none capable of any action. He stepped among them and their mess and walked to the control room. The buttons and switches were, he remembered, all labelled. He had not told them this. The deception, he thought, had done him little good. He was the tool now. The smell was overwhelming. He felt sick.

  The buttons were there on a small panel; cells, numbered. He punched them all. Anything else they wanted they could do themselves. Gates. Plus and minus the labels said. He pressed them both and hurried to the cell block, stepping over men, two of whom had tried and only half succeeded in getting their trousers off.

  All the doors stood open. He shouted their names. “Come out. Get dressed. Get out.” Two men were on the wall. Both had been sick. He recognized Hierro. The other he did not know. They were hanging helplessly by the wrists, the strength gone from their legs. He found Mauro, embraced him hastily, yelling, “Get dressed, get out,” and yelled it again and again from door to door. There was no time for emotion. He could do noth
ing for the men on the wall. Let Carlos look after his own.

  The Assembly men were storming into and around the building. They trampled sick men whose faltering pleas for help went unanswered. Urbina charged down the cell block, his gun at the ready. He found Abril and Hierro and came screaming to Carlos. “They’re in chains! They’re chained to the wall! We can’t get them out!” he screamed hysterically and a guard on the floor who looked, stare-eyed, like a corpse, yelled, “Urbina.”

  The vet turned quickly. “Which one?” he yelled and got no answer. Three guards lay close together on the floor. He sprayed them all. They stared up at him, no longer able to call his name. Or bear witness. Urbina walked away, up the long, wide, grey corridor.

  Ugalde spun Carlos around. “What will you do about that?” he shouted.

  “I didn’t see it,” Carlos said.

  “There was to be no killing. He didn’t need to kill them.” He was shouting again.

  “They saw him.”

  “There was to be no killing. It was agreed.”

  Carlos walked away shouting, “Get them out before you blow it up.”

  Urbina was running from cell to cell. Ugalde picked up a guard’s gun and walked after him. “Urbina,” he said, “don’t try to harm them.”

  “Not yet,” the vet said as Mauro stepped from his cell, “not yet, doctor.” He followed Carlos.

  “Get your friends. Your mother’s waiting in the trees on the hill. Get out!”

  “What’s …?”

  “Get out!”

  Guards lay on the ground in rows like dead men, the snow tracked by the passage of their dragged bodies. White-caped men were hauling them like sacks. Before any help could reach them they would be snow-covered. So would the tracks of the escaping Assembly men. Pairs of them were crouching around the prison, running out wire from spools, running for cover.

  But Hierro and Abril were chained to the wall and the search was on for crowbars or sledge hammers and cold-chisels to dig the rings from the walls. When they were found in the supply store, the two men were carried out, the wrist locks still chained to the wall rings and how did men escape at speed over the mountains with so delicate a burden?

  It was their problem. They were out. Mauro was in his mother’s arms. Haro and Reis and Pureza stood uneasily in the trees, understanding nothing, confused and frightened by the suddenness, speed and clamorous violence of events. The prison was going up in sections. Smoke and flame and debris mingled in the black sky with the snow that drove now in a gathering wind and the dynamite roared and the debris crashed.

  A car drove through the open gates. Three men dragged the bound medical officer from it and left him at the end of a row of bodies.

  “You can come with us,” Ugalde said to his son’s friends. “We have a route.”

  They stared about them in confusion. All personality was wiped out in noise and movement and the urgency to act. They were all, even Mauro and Maria-Angeles, bodies to be moved out of the reach of danger.

  “Make up your minds.”

  And of a sudden the place was empty, a smoking, burning ruin, with men laid out like white corpses in the snow, moaning, crying out; and sections of masonry crashing. The white-caped men and their gear had gone without notice. Only the blowing snow made any other sound. The only light came from the snow.

  “Are you coming with us?”

  “Which way?” Reis said, looking about him as if he expected to see signposts that would relieve him of decision.

  “To the coast. We have safe transport. Make up your minds.”

  “There’ll be troops out. They’ll close a ring round us … they’ll kill us.”

  “Come or stay,” Ugalde said. “We’re going now.”

  “We should take to the mountains,” Haro said but it was clear that they had no opinions, only fears.

  “Ugalde. Get your family away from them,” Urbina called from the edge of the trees, and lifted his gun to waist level.

  Ugalde fired without remembering he still had the guard’s gun in his hands. Chips flew from the tree behind Urbina and he was slammed against it as if he had been shoved. The gun fell from his hands. He bent at the knees, folded and went down on his face. Perched on his face and his knees, he fell over slowly.

  “Run,” Reis shouted in panic and Haro followed him up the hill calling, “Where?”

  They seemed at once to forget about Urbina in the strangeness of Reis’ flight and Haro’s bewildered pursuit. They watched them flounder out of sight, like drunken ghosts.

  “It’s their choice,” Ugalde said. He threw the gun away. “We’re going to Paco’s. Move, girl, follow Mauro.”

  They went across the open fields. Less visible than shadows. The snow was blowing, drifting now. There would be no tracks to follow on the mountain. Urbina would not come home. They would find him under the snow and his wife would have the consolation of knowing that he had not gone with one of the many women she accused him of servicing in his unexplained absences from home. Carlos would go home to bed, his traces buried. Men who knew the mysterious passages of the mountains would climb high and carry Abril and Hierro to France, laboring like pack mules through the impassable places. “… in their inaccessible mountain lairs,” somebody once wrote of Arrabal and his band and when Luis at last read it he said to his men, “Don’t be fooled by it. If we have access to these inaccessible lairs, they are not inaccessible.” But the snow would shelter them tonight.

  It was at the narrow guardless bridge that they heard the chatter of gunfire off the mountainside. Once, twice, a gun sputtered.

  They stopped. Mauro turned toward the sound, but only its rolling echo remained.

  “They made their choice,” Ugalde said. “Keep moving.”

  “They couldn’t think,” Mauro said. “It was too sudden.”

  “Keep moving,” Ugalde said heartlessly. But he thought: I helped them—to an earlier death. “Get over the bridge,” he said. Life was a long series of bridges; some of them reached halfway across the abyss. Some of those were built by friends trying to help.

  The village was still, and wide awake. There were lights in the windows but the curious stayed inside, listening, waiting for movement outside, ready to speak when the time came to answer questions, of what they had heard, but not of what they had not seen. Such explosions would have wakened the dead, señor. But I was afraid, we were afraid. We did not go out, we did not look out. They seemed to come from the jail and the barracks, but in the snow, sound is difficult … we know now, certainly, but then … and the men who do these things, they do not want witnesses …

  They came at Paco’s truck garage from behind. It was full of light. The small back door was wide open, the big front doors pushed into their recesses along the front wall. Around the edge of the back door, Ugalde could see through to the houses across the street. Paco and another man were at work in the engine of a huge transport. Ugalde pushed his family out of sight along the back wall, made a snowball and watched it shatter at Paco’s feet. The two men went on working for a moment then left the engine and ran the front doors closed.

  “Yes,” Paco called and they went in.

  “Up,” Paco said, “no talk.”

  In a dark corner under the high, peaked roof of the building, a small platform had been made of planks laid across steel beams. Out from the edge of the platform, there was a block and tackle from which a rope came down to a hook on the back wall. The rope was double. It had on one end, on a sling, a small footstep not more than two feet long and six inches wide. “When we get you up, thread the rope off the block and keep it on the platform. When your transport’s ready, rethread it and we’ll bring you down.”

  “When?”

  “Sometime today. It’s half past four now. Maybe this afternoon. If they let any traffic move. No more talk.”

  “What transport, Paco?”

  “This.” He nodded to the big transport. “It came in yesterday, over the Pass. Held up with engine troub
le.” He laughed. “He’s your driver. Miguel.”

  Miguel smiled but said nothing.

  “There’re blankets, a small heater and food and wine up there. It’s the best we can do. One of you has to stay awake all the time. Don’t roll off. Stay at the back. You’ll be cold. You first, Mauro. You’ll have to help your mother onto the platform.” He held up a restraining hand as Mauro unhooked the sling from the wall. “You’d better all use the washroom. There’s nothing up there.”

  They went up, one by one, far into the roof, Mauro, Maria, Pureza.

  “Thank you, Paco. And you, Miguel,” Ugalde said.

  “Where are the other two, doctor?” Paco said as Ugalde took his grip on the sling.

  “They chose the mountains.”

  “We heard the guns. Was it Urbina?”

  “Not Urbina, Paco.”

  “Up.”

  They lay side by side, their feet toward the heater, blankets over and under them: Ugalde, Maria, Pureza and Mauro. They had nothing to say. “You’ve had some sleep tonight, Mauro. You stay awake,” Ugalde said.

  “Yes.”

  But Ugalde lay awake. It’s strange, he thought, we have done this thing, and killed a man and are homeless and hiding, and we have nothing to say. Necessity is a hungry man’s meat bone. Nothing else matters.

  “Pureza,” Maria whispered. “You are the girl called Pureza? The one who was coming with Mauro for Christmas?”

  “Yes, señora.” She was lost and afraid and dependent and Mauro was her only anchor.

  “I suppose I’ll have to call you Pureza, but I’ll think of you as one of us now—I’ll think of you as Christina.” It was the first time she had spoken since before Ugalde went over the fence. She was rebuilding the family. “Mauro?”

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “Thank your father.”

  Far below, Paco and Miguel opened the big doors again. When the Civil Guard or the Army came to Burguete, they would find common men facing the emergencies of common life with a proper sense of urgency and the openness of innocence. The wind whistled in the roof. It was very cold under the roof.