“Edward, don’t say these things. I care about you more than anyone.”
He stiffened. “If that’s true, why did you ask her to marry you?”
“I was confused—”
He laughed. “I was the idiot. I should have seen the signs.” Suddenly his face grew harsh. “You never did say you loved me, did you?”
“Edward—”
“I never was disloyal to you, Brian, not once! I’d never have done that to you! Whereas you . . . But there, I’ve said it. It’s off my chest now.”
I laid my head on the table. “Oh, Edward,” I said. “If you told me right now you’d never forgive me, I’d say you have every right.”
He leaned back and shook his head. “I loved you, Brian,” he said quietly. “I really loved you. How could you have done that to me?”
“If only there was some way to make it up to you—some way to show you—”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Edward said. “This matters: I don’t want to die.”
And suddenly I realized I must get control of myself. So I sat up, held my head erect. “You’re not going to die,” I said. “I’ll go to the consulate. You’re a British subject; they can’t just hold you against your will. I promise you, Edward, something will work out.”
The door opened; Northrop and the soldier came back in.
Immediately I felt Edward’s body tense.
We pulled our hands apart.
“Fifteen minutes,” Northrop said.
We stood. Taking Edward firmly by the arm, the soldier motioned him back toward the door.
“I’ll do what I can,” I called again hopelessly.
I thought he smiled. I couldn’t be sure. Then they were through the door, the door was closing behind them.
The door clicked shut. Edward was gone.
I stumbled back toward the station. Dusk was settling; the streets were crowded with shoppers: men and women whose faces were marked by a kind of uniform savage austerity. Every cheek had a scar on it, every lip a boil, every hand seemed to have been maimed in some horrible industrial accident. Even the children looked old, darting as they did among the market stalls, which were colorless, drab, all cabbages and root vegetables—a desiccated parody of the boquería. Nowhere had the slightest concession been made to pleasure or comfort; there were no parks or fountains or playgrounds, just church after church. Still, one had the sense these people would hang on forever, as their town did, teetering but not falling, while frailer, pleasure-seeking souls gave up the ghost.
I took a room at the first pension I saw, pulled off my clothes, lay down and tried to sleep. But the bed was narrow, the mattress straw-filled, sagging in the middle. The room—tiny and spare, lit by a single ceiling bulb—had the severity of a monk’s cell. Through the tiny window I could hear dinner conversation, smell dinner smells: boiled meat, potatoes frying in rancid oil. A baby wailed, its parents argued. Then windows clattered open, another voice started up, this one high and thin and furious, screaming at the top of its lungs, an endless monologue that was more complaint than lament and the contents of which I could barely make out. Next the neighbors’ windows: “Cállate, puta!” “Señora, por favor!” But she went on and on.
I closed my eyes. I must have slept then, because when I bolted up and looked at the clock, three hours had passed. Amazingly the same thin, high voice was still shrilling, pouring out its enraged miseries to indifferent ears.
Dizzily I got up, got dressed again, stumbled out into the streets. What I felt was not dread but lust, which can be the doppelgänger of dread: panic and grief translating into an itch in the fingers, an erection that wouldn’t quit. Luckily the streets were full of soldiers, a steady stream that led to a café near the hotel in the center of town. Thank God, I thought, for soldiers.
I entered the café. It was dark, hectic. Flamenco music played on an old wind-up gramophone, cigarette smoke hung in the air like a fog. I ordered a beer. There were almost no women in the café, aside from a few beleaguered-looking whores. Russian soldiers, Polish soldiers, English and American soldiers, mingled with the Spanish.
I would have taken any of them at that terrible moment; any man who had approached me, grabbed me by the arm and led me away, I would have gone with.
I cast my eyes over the crowd; I cast and cast, like a fisherman, until they locked, for a millisecond, with another pair of eyes. The soldier in question had curly dark-blond hair, a bracingly clean face, black eyes. He was standing alone, smoking, at the opposite end of the bar.
I moved nearer. Next to him a whore sat on a barstool, regaling the bartender with stories about her days as a maid in Barcelona. “Every place I worked in I got fired,” she said. “And why? Only because I had affairs with the heads of the houses! Well, don’t look at me that way; is it my fault if they found me irresistible? Big houses, these were, up in Bonanova. Listen to me: if I’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s that the rich are always the sickest. One of these gentlemen wanted me to whip him, another liked me to bark like a dog, another asked me to rub marmalade into his head while he masturbated. The wives, of course, got jealous and showed me the door. Farther and farther downtown I went, to poorer and poorer houses, until the men just wanted an ordinary fuck, and I ended up in the Barrio Chino. Now, carino, couldn’t you give me just a little more whiskey? You know I’ll pay you tomorrow. All I want is half a glass—”
The bartender merrily refused her, and cursing him, she got up from her stool, thrusting out her breasts for good measure. “Maricón!” she shouted at me, laughing, and her laughter rang out, getting softer as she rounded the corners of the streets.
I sat down on the barstool she had vacated, next to where the soldier was standing. The cracked black leather was warm and slightly damp from her sweat. The soldier smiled at me.
“Do you want another beer?” I asked him in Spanish.
“Ah,” he said in perfect English, “so you’re English.”
“It’s that obvious?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“And do you accept offers of beer from Englishmen?”
“Well, it would depend. This is the first one I’ve received. In this case, yes, with gratitude.”
Relieved, I called for the beer. The soldier’s name was Joaquim, and as it turned out, he was part English himself, his mother’s father having been born in Warwickshire. But he had grown up in Gerona and had never visited England. Now he was a captain with the Republican forces.
“And what are you doing in this horrible place?” he asked me. “You’re not with the brigade, so you must be a journalist.”
“More or less.”
“And do you stay near here?”
“Down the street, at a pension.”
“And what brings you out tonight?”
I looked at him. He smiled.
“You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Well, to be perfectly honest, I was looking for sex.”
“How convenient,” he said. “So was I.”
I laughed. He laughed. “Too bad the whore’s gone,” I said.
“A pity,” he said.
“Unless of course—”
“Yes?”
“Well—we could go to my room.”
“What a good idea,” he said. He finished his beer in a single swallow. “Are you ready?”
I said that I was, and together we headed out into the street. The building where my pension was located had a huge ancient wooden door out of which a smaller, human-sized door had been jaggedly carved. Through this we passed. There was no light in the stair, and we had to grope our way.
On the fourth-floor landing Joaquim suddenly stopped me, reached his arms around my waist, pulled my face toward his and kissed me.
For a few minutes we groped each other there in the dark, my body pushed by his against the chilly stone wall. His mouth tasted of the honey and almond nougat Spaniards eat at Christmas.
As soon as we wer
e inside my room I started stripping off my clothes. Taking my cue, Joaquim followed suit. We watched each other intently as jackets, ties, shoes, belts, shirts, vests, trousers, socks, and finally drawers fell in a heap on the floor. Then we were naked. He had a line of hair running from between his nipples to his navel, an erection that looked cumbersome, almost painful to maintain, bobbing up and down.
I got on my knees and sucked him. He moaned, gripped my head in his hands. Then I stood again, lay on the bed, put my legs in the air. I did not have to tell him what I wanted; he knew. Taking my legs in his hands, he pushed his cock against me, eager for entry, but I was too dry, so I told him to hand me some lotion that was in my case. As if I were he, I slathered my fingers and inserted them inside myself until the channel was wet enough for them to slide in and out easily. Then I took his cock and made it slick with my hand and guided it inside. The pain, at first, was enormous; I closed my eyes, counted to ten, tried to obliterate it, and found I could do so by wanking ferociously. “Are you all the way in?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. “Good,” I said. Cautiously he started moving, but it was too much; I cried out. He loomed over me, stone hard, a frozen statue. Then, once again, he started moving. He slid out and eased in again and hit something, some region of fire. Suddenly there was sensation, a flaring pleasure that seemed to radiate out in waves, that seemed initially to exist alongside the pain I was feeling, and then, miraculously, seemed part of the pain, and then swallowed the pain up. My eyes bulged out, my mouth opened into an uncontrollable shout. I understood, suddenly, what had driven Edward so mad those times I’d done it to him; it was this, this quadrant of pleasure hidden deep up inside. And Joaquim thrust harder, and with each thrust the radiating pleasure revived, flailing my limbs and rolling my head and twitching the length of my cock until it seemed I might come from it, from this thrusting, I might not even have to touch myself or be touched by him, but I did not want to come, I wanted this to last, I wanted to say things, filthy things, utter words I’d never uttered, and I did, I said, “Fuck me,” I said, “Come inside me,” and with a loud shout Joaquim thrust one final time and the warm flood of his semen was pouring down my legs like tears.
He pulled out, rolled over, heaved breath like someone rescued from drowning. I felt a chilly film of perspiration forming on my back.
I had to crap. Bolting from the bed, I pulled on my drawers and ran into the little water closet at the end of the hall, where I got on the toilet just in time. Gas erupted from me in loud explosive grunts. I put my head in my hands and, letting it drop, watched the checkerboard on the linoleum floor dissolve, reform, dissolve. I was so dizzy I thought, for a moment, I could feel the rotation of the earth.
When I got back, Joaquim was lying on the bed, smoking. I lay down next to him. Under our combined weight the bed sagged nearly to the floor.
“Cigarette?” he offered.
“No, thanks,” I said. And closed my eyes. I was terribly, terribly sleepy.
With a screech of hinges, my mad neighbor threw open her windows again and launched into another tirade.
“What’s she saying?” I asked Joaquim. “I can’t understand.”
“It’s hard to make out; she has a very strange accent.” He frowned in concentration. “Mostly it’s about a baby. ‘The baby needs to be bathed, and I don’t have time! There are dishes to be done, so many dishes! The mother just wants a rest, but the baby keeps screaming!’ She repeats the same names: Manolo, Begona. Her children, I’d guess. Probably they’ve been gone for years.” He shook his head. “People think madness is romantic, but it’s not. Madness is boring, it’s like cleaning and cleaning a room and it’s never clean.”
He cocked his ears attentively.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s nothing. It’s just that now she’s shouting so loudly, and what she’s saying is, ‘Why do people say I shout in the middle of the night? I never shout in the middle of the night!’ In such a voice!”
We both laughed.
“You know,” Joaquim said, “you never explained to me what you were doing in Altaguera.”
“What I’m doing here?” I smiled. “Trying to save someone I love. Or should have loved. Someone who loved me.”
“Save him from what?”
“From being killed.”
Then I told Joaquim the story. He listened thoughtfully, without remark, until I was finished. “The lesson here,” I concluded, “is my own unworthiness, compared to Edward’s sterling loyalty. I mean, look at me! I’m shameless! No sooner do I find him than what do I do? Betray him again.”
“My friend, you’re too hard on yourself,” Joaquim said. “Yes, you made a mistake. But consider all you’ve done. You’ve come all this way for him. I would call that extraordinary. Brave, in fact.” He extinguished his cigarette. “As for making love, what choice do we have, in these times? If you don’t mind my saying so, you did it grievously, almost as if you were seeking an exorcism. And that, I think, is something he would understand.”
Joaquim left soon after that. I never saw him again. I can’t tell you if he died in battle, or survived and married, if he’s a famous poet now, or a laborer, or a judge. So why is it that he survives so vividly in my memory—this boy I knew only for a night?
How hesitantly human souls brush against each other! Like the ads one sometimes sees in the lonely hearts column in the newspaper: “4/12: We spoke in front of the library. You were wearing a scarf, I was carrying a newspaper. I would like to see you again, love you, marry you!”
Well, Joaquim, if someday, by some miracle, you read these pages, consider this my own lonely hearts letter. Know that I remember that night in Altaguera. It’s eighteen years later now. I’m middle-aged, blacklisted, broke. Edward is under, and I am across, the sea.
Still, if you read this, call me.
Chapter Fifteen
Altaguera, by morning light, looked even bleaker than it had in the afternoon. Grime caked the walls of the buildings; dust tornadoed from the unpaved streets every time a truck lumbered by. I was walking down a commercial block filled with butcher shops and charcuterías, the doorways of which were hung with strings of colorful beads. These bead strings stretched out when you pushed through them, then dropped back, raking your shoulders sensually, like long fingers. Inside, however, one found only the meagerest provisions, nothing remotely appetizing or appealing, though whether this was due to the war or to Altagueran asceticism I couldn’t tell.
Needing to eat something, I went into a bakery. I wanted a sweet roll or a bun, but the proprietress had only loaves of dry bread, one of which I bought and tore into as soon as I was out on the street. Witnessing this, a group of women frowned and shook their heads judgmentally. (I learned only later that the Altaguerans considered eating in the streets a faux pas of the highest order.) Meanwhile some children were torturing a kitten. When I approached them they ran off, leaving the rheumy-eyed creature to bite at its flea-infested hide. And now I saw there were cats everywhere; the streets were filled with cats: tabbies with distended, low-hanging teats, packs of kittens gnawing at foul-smelling scraps, fearsome toms who wore their shredded ears and gouged eyes like medals. A sky mysteriously empty of birds. Perhaps that was why. Perhaps the cats had eaten them all.
Having finished most of the loaf, I set out once again toward the brigade headquarters. Once again I asked to speak with Northrop. I don’t know what I had in mind—perhaps to beg, perhaps to make another attempt at convincing him to let Edward go. But Northrop wasn’t in. No one was in. No one would see me.
Well, when would Northrop be in? I asked.
Northrop had gone to Barcelona. He returned in three days.
Thanking the anonymous figure that dispensed this information, I left.
For three days after that I waited.
I managed to convince myself that things were looking up. I wired Channing, explaining I was short on cash and could he do anything to extort some from Aunt Constance; wrote a fawning l
etter to the beldam herself, a reassuring letter to Nanny and an honest letter to Nigel; caught up on my journal. I even explored the town of Altaguera a bit, determined, before I left, to root out some bit of beauty, some pearl, amid all its studied austerity. And I did find something: there was, near the center, a very small, very old church, the oldest in the region. It had been built during the reign of Charlemagne, had walls of swollen, uneven brick, and displayed on its façade images of Christ and His disciples, the faces of which the hard winds of Altaguera had long since eaten away. Nothing spectacular about the church; rather, its very humility charmed me. It was like a beautiful girl before she learns she is beautiful, before she learns the power beauty carries.
The church had a unique history. Adjoining it was a convent whose sisters had been cloistered for more than five hundred years. A large balcony above the nave connected the two buildings, and it was from here and here alone that five hundred years of nuns had borne witness to the outside world. You could often see them when you went in: lofty figures in heavy habits, clinging to the shadows as if they feared, above all else, being seen by those they watched over.
I went to the church frequently during those days, not so much to pray as to reflect, to contemplate. In its hushed chambers, I could hear my own voice better; the questions that plagued me—if not answerable—at least became articulate. What would happen if Edward was freed? I wanted to know. Would we take up where we had left off, he and I? Or would he return to Upney, and I to Richmond? Yes, my bungled efforts with Philippa had resulted only in my own humiliation, but the fears that prompted them still lingered. Home was now as uncertain a prospect as Spain; I had no idea where I’d live upon returning, if I’d spend my nights scouring public lavatories for sex, or reading in bed with Edward, or some new Edward. As for England, she might not be a haven very much longer: there was every chance that soon both of us would be compelled to go to war again—the big war this time, the war that threatened in Germany and for which this one would prove, in the end, merely to be the prologue.
While England Sleeps Page 18
