The Bird in Last Year's Nest

by Shaun Herron

  “No talk,” Ugalde said. “Try to sleep.”

  “Well,” Maria whispered, “we’ll still be together at Christmas.” Men’s work was done. Building futures is women’s work.

  “Maria! Sleep.”

  “I’ll try, my love.”

  Basa flew into Burguete in an army helicopter with medical officers and orderlies and two members of his staff.

  When the Prior and the Fathers were released from the Collegiate church of the monastery, the Prior tried to phone the Civil Guard headquarters in Pamplona. The wires were cut.

  He ran from the monastery down the avenue of trees, past the smoking wreckage of the barracks, and laboring in the heavy snow, he fell over the snow-covered Civil Guards laid out in the road. He was a small, thin man making desperate noises like a frightened dog, running on to the house of the vet. The vet’s frightened wife would not open the door. Sweating and suffering the agonies of short-windedness, the Prior struggled on to the house of the doctor. His legs trembled and threatened to fold like rubber. There was no answer to his hammering. He tried the door and it opened. He went crying through the house, stumbling over furniture till his legs felt as if they had been beaten. His searching hands ran over walls, switching on lights; and there was no one there. He used the doctor’s phone and told his story to the Civil Guard, setting wheels in motion, and told it again when at his own insistence they put him through to the colonel’s house.

  “Get the men to your infirmary, Father, and get Dion Ugalde to them at once.”

  “I’m in his house. He’s not here.”

  “Where does Maria-Angeles say he is?”

  “She’s not here. The house is empty. It was open.”

  “Get the men to your infirmary. We’re coming. Get the man at the garage to lay on transport for them. Any kind of transport. We’re coming.”

  The Prior didn’t think about the front door. He ran through it and stumbled down the street to the garage. His clothes were wet with the sweat that ran from him in hot streams. He was boiling; his clothes were chillingly cold. He flew into the garage like a wounded bird, and Ugalde watched and listened from his eyrie under the roof.

  Paco and Miguel drove trucks that already had chains on their rear wheels and the Fathers loaded them with sick and freezing men, some of them unconscious.

  When Basa came, he requisitioned Paco and his truck. He saw his men first, in the monastery infirmary. “Three guards dead in the ruins. We have part of them. We don’t know yet whether they were shot, but they were blown up. Several of the others are touch-and-go,” one of the doctors told him. “At least two of them will die. We’ve got to get them all into a proper hospital. This place is for priests with bad colds.”

  “What made them sick in the first place?”

  “Smell them, colonel. It has to be a heavy dose of phenolphthalein or something like it. They’ve almost shit themselves to death. And when there’s nothing to shit—God, the spasms.”

  “Call for more choppers and move them.”

  He inspected the ruins in a silence that matched his desolate face. There were guns on the ground behind the ruins. He picked them up and examined them. They had not been fired. He dropped them where they had been dropped by the guards. The young lieutenant, one of the two officers he brought with him, followed him in silence. Grimly, Basa told Paco to drive them to Ugalde’s house. Mountain troops came in by transport behind the snow ploughs and took to the slopes. They rolled through the village, up the avenue of trees, and crossed the river, urgent and angry and vengeful. Basa watched them pass and went into Ugalde’s house.

  The front door was open. Lights were on all over the house. A pot of coffee and two half-empty coffee cups were on the kitchen table. The Ugaldes’ bed had not been slept in. Their suitcases were in a clothes cupboard. Only Ugalde’s familiar sheep-lined top coat and Maria-Angeles’ heavy winter coat were missing from their hooks in the wide front hall. Yes, and their heavy boots were not behind the stove where they kept them in the winter. He had watched Dion bring them out from there and put them on, many, many times. Mournfully, he went through the house again and came back to the kitchen. He sat down at the table.

  “Lieutenant,” he said, “I have drunk a lot of coffee at this table.” His head was in his hands.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Basa glanced at him. “Don’t be a stupid echo, boy,” he said. “I spoke to a human being. I don’t want a robot to reply.”

  “What could I have said in reply, colonel?”

  “That’s better. Go out and tell that truck driver to go up to the infirmary and bring back either a doctor or a medical orderly who knows his drugs. You’d better go with him. They’re too busy. They’ll just tell him to clear off. Bring somebody.”

  The lieutenant went on his errand. Basa prowled the house again. He stood for a long time in Ugalde’s surgery staring through the glass of the doctor’s cabinet at the little bottles and packages arranged in their ranks. He supposed the ranks had some meaning. He came back to the kitchen when he heard the lieutenant return. He had a doctor with him.

  “I can give you two minutes, colonel,” the doctor said.

  “Go into Ugalde’s surgery and find me some phenolphthalein—or any trace of it.”

  “You could read the labels—I have sick men on my hands.”

  “Then do it and don’t waste your time.” Basa was irrationally angry.

  But the doctor found none, nor any trace of it.

  “How would you put that stuff into the guards?”

  “In their meat, I’d say. That would be the easiest way.”

  “How would you do it?”

  “Just rub it in—dissolve it on the meat. It’s crystallized.”

  “But where? When?”

  “In the kitchen, for God’s sake. Before you cooked it. May I please go now, colonel?”

  “The truck will take you back,” Basa said. “And thank you.”

  The lieutenant stood patiently by the table. The colonel is tired. He has not been himself. The stories going the rounds about him in the corps … dereliction of duty … caught in bed with some industrial nabob’s wife … turned in a soft report on the Burguete doctor’s son because he’d been nobbling the doctor’s wife and owed her something for it … all supposed to be confidential but it was easier to get garbled versions of the secret stuff than it was to find out what time it was. Colonel Basa doesn’t look like a womanizer. He looks more like a worn-out professor. He had a great reputation in the corps. Why didn’t he fuck-up typists and nurses or keep a tart in the town instead of picking the wife of a nabob with political clout or the wife of a doctor with a crazy son? The colonel is very, very tired.

  “Can you make coffee, lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ll find the makings in that cupboard there, and in the one underneath it, you’ll find brandy. Fetch the brandy first, with glasses.”

  “One glass, sir.”

  “Two glasses, lieutenant.” Basa poured two glasses.

  “I’m on duty, sir. I’m sorry.”

  Basa drank quickly, refilled his glass and drank again. The lieutenant poured two cups of coffee. Basa took the lieutenant’s glass and drained it.

  “Are you married, lieutenant? No, of course you’re not. You’ve applied for permission to marry next year? That’s right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You expect a promotion?”

  “I hope for one, sir.”

  Basa poured brandy into his coffee and drained the cup. “I have never been so tired in my life, lieutenant.”

  “You should try to get some sleep, colonel.”

  “Why? I go to bed but I don’t go to sleep. Pour me some more coffee and keep pouring it.” He poured more brandy into the coffee. “Has your girl a pleasant disposition?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “Sit down, for God’s sake, boy. You’re standing there like Jesus Christ on judgment day. Do you think she’ll still
have a pleasant disposition after twenty years of you putting your hand over your heart and saying ‘All for the Nation?’ Do you think so?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “I think not, sir. Not after five years. I speak from experience. Long and sad experience, my boy. Long and sad …”

  He doesn’t sleep, he’s tired to the point of collapse, he knows they’ll break him for his failures and indiscretions, and he’s getting drunk in the middle of a major crisis that adds to his troubles. The lieutenant watched the collapsed face and the washed-out eyes and felt a little pity. But there was weakness there from the beginning, or none of this would have happened. Doubt? There was a flaw, a doubt … what he said about All for the Nation was close to subversion. It must always have been there.

  “A woman doesn’t put the nation first. She puts you first. And when she finds you have another mistress who takes precedence over her, she sours.”

  There was nothing to say to that; nothing safe, or discreet. The colonel poured and drank.

  A runner came tentatively into the house, calling, “Colonel. Colonel Basa.” The lieutenant brought him to the kitchen. He might need a witness.

  The runner reported, watching Basa with a puzzled expression. “They have found a dead civilian outside the compound, colonel. The Fathers say it is Urbina, the vet. There was a gun in the snow beside the body.”

  “Discharged?” Basa said.

  “Yes, sir. They found the bodies of two young men farther up the slope. There were no guns near them.”

  “Shot?”

  “All three, sir. The vet in the chest, the other two in the stomach.”

  “Tell them to look for four more bodies. A young man, a young woman and a middle-aged couple. They’ll be there, somewhere.” He buried his face in his hands again; then his head sank to the table and he rolled his forehead on the wood.

  The lieutenant dismissed the runner. “You think they’re dead, sir?”

  “Oh, yes. They were taken from this house.” He pushed himself upright. “I was always very happy in this house. At this table.”

  Yes. The talk is that you had a corrupt liking for aging flesh. Quick bashes over the edge of the table while the doctor was out?

  “This house was a kind of home. For many years I had no home. Did they know that too, lieutenant? Did they know? Only a house with a woman in it.”

  He’s thoroughly drunk. He’s not capable. He’s reached the maudlin self-pity stage. The runner saw him in this state. I’ll get his name.

  “Collapse,” Basa said, very loudly. He raised both fists and smashed them on the table. “Collapse!” he yelled. “Collapse!”

  “Sir?”

  “Lives,” Basa yelled. “They collapse. Goddamn you.” He took the bottle and poured brandy into his coffee cup; spilling. “One of our own cooks was in on this, lieutenant. One of our own cooks poisoned the men. Christ Jesus, I was destroyed from above and below.”

  But both cooks are in the infirmary. Did they also inflict this suffering on themselves? He kept the thought to himself. It was useful.

  “They’re dead. All of them, lieutenant. Reis, Haro, that girl and the Ugaldes. All of them. It was on the tapes.”

  “Sir?”

  “I was ordered not to see Ugalde. I suppose everybody knows that, lieutenant?”

  “No, sir,” the lieutenant lied.

  “But I did. He was my friend. And he said a strange thing. He asked me if his son was a police spy. Wasn’t that a strange thing to ask?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why did he ask that?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir.”

  “Because the Fifth Assembly came after him. They told him that. That’s what I think, lieutenant. They killed them, all of them. They’re dead on the slopes somewhere.” He said, sadly, “Under the snow.” The lieutenant was afraid he was close to maudlin tears.

  The colonel drained the cup and stood up, swaying. The lieutenant reached to steady him and Basa pushed him roughly away. “I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t care one shit.”

  “What, sir?”

  “What they do to me now. Goddamn them. They took my life, all of it. Then they spat on it. The corps, lieutenant. Goddamn them. Come.” Basa weaved his way out of the house and struggled into the cabin of Paco’s truck. The lieutenant crowded in beside him. “Pamplona,” Basa said.

  “Sir, it would be better to go to bed in the doctor’s house.”

  “Shit.”

  The village was crowded now, with Civil Guards and troops making their house-to-house search.

  Paco said, outside his garage, “Señor, I have a transport to get on the road. It would take only a minute.”

  “Take the minute,” Basa said generously. “I don’t give a shit. I’m going home.”

  He scrambled out of the cabin after Paco and fell to his knees in the churned-up slush. Then he followed Paco inside. There were Civil Guards everywhere. One of them was being lowered from the platform under the roof.

  “Nothing,” he said as he reached the floor.

  The transport was open and empty. Large opened cardboard cartons were stacked over the garage floor. Civil Guards were loading them onto a fork lift. They began reloading the transport.

  “What are you doing?” Basa asked a sergeant.

  “We searched the transport, colonel. There’s nothing but French television sets in it. We opened them all.”

  “Hurry up.”

  They stared, bewildered, at their drunk commander and questioningly at the stolidly dutiful lieutenant, and reloaded the transport. Miguel stood patiently to one side, waiting.

  “Do you know, lieutenant, the house of the Señora Aloys in Pamplona?” Basa asked him.

  “Yes, colonel.”

  “That is fine. Very fine. This man will take me there.” He pointed to Miguel. “And you, lieutenant, will direct him. I am going home.”

  “But to leave, sir …”

  “Shit,” the colonel said. “I am going home. I have nowhere else to go, lieutenant.”

  Beyond Pamplona, on the road to Vitoria, Miguel stopped his transport and thumped the passenger seat. It was pushed up from underneath. “You had a Civil Guard escort as far as the house of a Señora Aloys in Pamplona,” he said into the dark vacancy below. “Colonel Basa brought us through the screen, drunk as a mule driver. Are you all right in there? We’re going non-stop to Guetaria. That’s where you get the boat.”

  Ugalde and Maria, Pureza and Mauro sat upright and back to back on the bars that stretched the narrow width of the thin false section of the transport. Their shoulders were pressed against its sides. It was airless and they were weary, sore, backaching and with raging headaches.

  “Poor Julio,” Ugalde said. “What have we done to him?”

  “We have made him suffer with us,” Maria said.

  BOOK FOUR

  The pines are high in the air four pigeons fly.

  Four pigeons fly and tumble, towing their wounded shadows.

  On the ground under the pines four pigeons lie.

  AFTER GARCIA LORCA

  13

  Until death, it is all life.

  SPANISH PROVERB

  “We have made him suffer with us.”

  They sat back to back on the narrow boards that served as seats in the thin false compartment. There was no light. Fugitives do not expect comfort or light. In noise and darkness and miserable discomfort, talk is not only burdensome, it is futile. There was no talk.

  “We have made him suffer with us.”

  It was not only what she said that brought Ugalde to the verge of tears. It was, also, that she sounded venomous. In the dark, even in painful discomfort, one can think. He could not think venomously about Basa. Maria had no ground for venow. The man had done his duty. He had even been generous in doing it, risking discipline by disobeying orders. Even in this situation which, in itself, because of their friendship must create suspicion around him and hurt him, he had remained a friend.
And the destruction of his jail and the release of his prisoners could only destroy Basa. He had paid a terrible price for friendship.

  “You had a Civil Guard escort as far as the house of a Señora Aloys in Pamplona. Colonel Basa brought us through the screen, drunk as a mule driver.”

  That was why Basa was drunk at the scene of his crime against him. He knows I did it. We loved one another and I betrayed my friend. I destroyed my friend.

  “Why are you venomous about him, Maria? It was our son who committed the crimes.”

  But the roaring of the road and the bumping of the transport wiped out his voice and he did not try again.

  He thought instead about Mauro. They had exchanged a word or two in the haste and confusion at the prison, and scarcely a word since. “Thank your father, Mauro,” Maria said to him up under the garage roof. Did he say anything? I didn’t hear. Young Reis was dead, and Haro. Well, they promised only Mauro in return for Hierro. True, he had blackmailed them into promising Reis and Haro and the girl, but if he was ruthless for his son’s sake, they were ruthless for their notions of justice. They would have killed the girl Pureza if she had run with Reis and Haro—most likely her life was saved by having nobody but Mauro. She was coming for Christmas, wasn’t she?

  His mind wandered unhappily on the prospect that had made them happy—Mauro on his way to the practice of medicine, with a girl to marry.

  It was my son who committed the crimes.

  And I have compounded his crimes by even greater crimes. I opened the door to the murder of Guards, the killing of Reis and Haro, the sickness, maybe the deaths of Guards, and I shot Urbina to death. He was going to kill Reis and Haro and the girl—but I wanted to kill him. He was the one who seduced Mauro into this whole lunatic nightmare. And Basa was heavy in his spirit. A month ago we were … now we are huddled in a transport, without substance or place, running for our lives.

  The weight of his guilt disabled him.

  He tried to think of the route they were taking. He had taken it when he went to see Mauro and when he went to find him. They had driven here on long days in summer to see the crops in the fields. It was the road through the Valle de la Burunda. He was traveling it for the last time and could not see the high rock faces of the Dos Hermanas, or the wheatfields or cornfields or sugar beet ranges under snow. On the right of the broad rich valley, the Sierra de Aralar, on the left the Sierra de Andla and the Sierra de Urbasa; he loved them and passing between them for the last time, could not see them. He remembered that along this road there was a huge signboard that said Papa ven en Tren, Come by Train, Papa, and wryly he wished they could.