“ ’Twenty-two Torpedo,” said Mueller. “Not bad for fifteen years.”
“Bit stingy of Radek.”
“Why?” Mueller said, tossing the tarpaulin into the back and propping up the windscreen. “She runs better now than she did when I got her.” He slid behind the wheel while Hoffner disentangled himself from the valise; his shirt was a thin layer of perspiration. “We pass through a few towns; then it’s open road for about an hour. After that it’s walking again, just outside the city.”
He started the engine as Hoffner settled in.
“You might want to have your pistol on your lap,” Mueller said. “Up to you. I don’t mind if you sleep.” He put the car in gear and maneuvered them out through the trees.
Talk of the gun had been a joke. The coast road to Barcelona was empty, not that there was any safety in it. The thing snaked above the water like curled twine and clung to the shrubland and rock as if any sudden movement might spill it into the sea. The glare was no less daunting and made anything more than a few hundred meters ahead fade into the rust and sand-washed rise of the hills. There might have been a rifle-or two, or twelve-fixed on them from above; then again, there might have been nothing.
Mueller kept his good hand on the wheel, his other limp in his lap. Changing gears required a sudden explosion of energy, good foot and bad foot tangoing along the pedals, while the gap-filled hand struggled to find its grip on the gearshift. Hoffner was glad for the few stretches of straight road.
The first signs of life appeared around one of the curves. A line of ageless women walked in twos along the siding, each carrying a large straw basket, eyes locked on the plodding regularity of their feet: if there was a civil war some thirty kilometers up the road, they had yet to hear of it. Mueller took the car wide, and Hoffner stared back as two of the women glanced up. Their lips were parched and red and full with unknowable smiles. There was a heat to these women that seemed to mock the sun. One of them waved, and Hoffner brought an awkward hand up.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” Mueller said, his eyes fixed on the road.
Hoffner watched as the last of the faces slipped behind the curve. “What?”
“They were laughing at you. You know that, don’t you?”
Hoffner settled back in. “Were they?”
“The wave.” Mueller smiled. “That was precious, Nikolai.”
The car began to climb, and Hoffner realized how raw the scars would always be with Mueller: an unseen kindness taken for betrayal, a woman’s smile the prelude to humiliation. There was no escaping that kind of self-damning.
Hoffner peered into the haze of the sky. “It’s a different sun now.” Even the blue of the water seemed to pale under it.
“Is it?” Mueller snorted. “More of a punch here than on Droysenstrasse? Wait till you head inland.”
Mueller downshifted, and a village appeared in the distance around another turn. Hovering behind it was a wide surge of rock-Herr Wilson’s balding pate in limestone and brush-which rose some two hundred meters from the base of the hills and made the houses below look like tiny pieces of bone tumbling from a shattered skull.
“Not Berlin,” said Hoffner. “Here. Different from what it was. Different from the way a boy sees it.”
For the first time Mueller glanced over. He saw the sweat peeling down Hoffner’s cheek and neck. He turned back to the road. “Never pictured you as a boy.” Hoffner said nothing, and Mueller added, “Take a drink, Nikolai. You’re going red.”
The road began to dip, and Hoffner heard the waves over the churning of the engine. “We came in the summers,” he said. “A month at a time.” He found the canteen. “Calella. It’s about two hours north of here.”
“I know the place.”
“It was for my mother’s health, I think-or mine. I don’t remember anymore.” Hoffner took a swig. “The Kripo gave that kind of time back then. They didn’t pay, but they let my father go.”
Mueller took the canteen. “Long way to come for health.”
“Yah.” Hoffner was still staring out.
“He had a girl in Calella, your father? Waiting for him?” Mueller drank.
Hoffner nodded absently.
“You knew?”
Hoffner caught sight of a bird diving into the water. The wings and beak drew to a fine point and then were gone. An instant later the bird reappeared and flew off. “I suppose,” he said. “Not much need for discretion with an eight-year-old.” He took the canteen and drank deeply.
“And your mother?”
Hoffner screwed the cap on until it was tight. He remembered her standing in a doorway, her arm bloodied, the sun streaked across her face as she stared out through dry, unfeeling eyes. There was nothing else to it-no moment before or after to give it meaning-save perhaps a boy’s untried compassion. Even now Hoffner couldn’t tell if he was recalling or inventing it.
“I ate a lot of rice,” he said. “And fish. And I learned how to bend hooks for the fishing boats. You can’t imagine your fingers so raw.”
Hoffner was too late in realizing what he had said, and Mueller said, “No, I suppose I can’t.”
The sea disappeared behind a rise in the earth, and within a minute the road had narrowed to a single lane. The first hovels appeared on either side, with the smell of sour milk in the air. Hoffner recalled that, too, and wondered how he had ever managed to forget it.
“Jesus!”
Mueller jammed his foot on the brake as they took the next curve. A small barricade, made up of chairs, rugs, and whatever else had been scraped together, stretched across the road. A man with a rifle over his shoulder-his face pale from the heat-emerged from one of the crumbling houses, his hand raised in an unpolished authority. He pulled up to the car as a second figure stepped out from the doorway. Both were in shirtsleeves, with suspenders to draw the trousers high on the waist and red neckerchiefs tied loosely at the throat. The man kept his rifle on his back as he held out his hand.
“Vale,” he said, as if this were a formality.
Hoffner expected a spray of broken Spanish from Mueller, the offer of a thick wad of bills. Instead, Mueller reached into his pocket and, no less casually, pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. Hoffner sat amazed.
Mueller handed the paper to the man and said in a perfect Spanish, “You’ve moved it up the hill. That’s a bit rough. I might have driven right into it.”
The man continued to glance at the page. He handed it back and nodded over at Hoffner. “Another German socialista come to fight?”
“Something like that,” said Mueller. He reached under the seat and pulled out a bottle of brandy. He handed it to the man. “I’m guessing there’s still that ban on alcohol.”
The man said, “And it matters?” He turned and tossed the bottle to his friend, who caught it and pulled back part of the barricade-room enough for a car to drive through. The man then turned to Mueller. “The stamp on your pass comes due tomorrow. A cartload of brandy won’t help you then.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
The man stepped back. “They’ve moved the checkpoint on the other side as well.” He nodded for Mueller to drive on. “Don’t run into that one.”
Mueller put the car in gear, and Hoffner waited until they were out of earshot. “Old friend of yours?” he said.
Mueller remained silent as he continued to stare ahead. He took them down into the town square, where a pious if haggard-looking church stood at one end, immune to the filth and disarray of the skiffs and fishing nets lazing at the other. The sea and the docks opened up beyond them, but there seemed to be no sound coming from the waves. It was just the smell of salt and wet fur. Lines of drying sheets blew in the breeze, but the place was strangely empty. Mueller followed the street up to where the second barricade appeared, just beyond the last of the houses. Another bottle, and they were back on the coast road.
Hoffner said, “They’re not going to win this thing if all it takes is a few bottles of b
ooze.”
Mueller reached for the canteen. “That’s a courtesy, Nikolai.” He had the spout to his lips. “You and I don’t have that piece of paper, we’re lying on the side of the road back there, a single bullet hole through the back of the skull for each of us.” He drank.
“Good that you had it, then.”
“Yes.”
“And they’re selling these pieces of paper in Marseilles?”
Mueller held the canteen out to him. “You haven’t met these boys, Nikolai. These are the true believers. Nothing’s for sale with them.”
Hoffner took a drink. “So you just asked for one and they gave it to you?”
Mueller stared ahead, his smile at once coy and obvious. “Some of us didn’t have to ask.” The road straightened, and Mueller pressed down on the accelerator.
It was nearly an hour before they turned in from the coast, a dirt path that ran through thick grassland dotted with carob, olive, and fig trees. They were heading up toward Montjuic-Jew Mountain, according to Mueller-one of those ancient hills on which ancient cities plant themselves. Mueller had promised a fortress at the top that had seen ancient Romans or Muslims or whichever invading conqueror the Catalans had so bravely sent back into the sea, time and time again. Hoffner had always thought cities like this too comfortable in their pasts to make any present-day swagger seem more than a borrowed vanity: the fading libertine-wrinkled, bronzed, and smelling of a too-sweet cologne-drawing strength only from memory.
And yet it wasn’t all that long ago that the hill had known sheep and cows and goats and, somewhere off in the distance, those long stalks of yellow wheat that a woman could thresh and grind into whatever might keep a family alive: twelve hundred years of tradition rooted out by a city once again desperate to move beyond itself. The world had come to Barcelona in 1929, and sheep and cows and goats were not what the world was meant to see. Instead, it was a mechanical fountain that swayed under the lights; a grand palace to rival any of the most lavish in Europe; pavilions to tease with tastes of Galicia, Valencia, and Andalucia; and views of the city to make even the worst kind of frippery seem worthwhile.
The World’s Fair had transformed Montjuic, or at least that part of the hill which faced the city. It was now a glowing tribute to Barcelona’s past, present, and future. For Hoffner, though-coming up on it from the backside-it was little more than a rise of brush and thick trees, with a few tracks leading nowhere.
“Bit of a risk, leaving the car up here,” Mueller said, as he downshifted and willed the old sedan up the slope. They were well into the tree cover now, grateful for a respite from the sun. “We’ll do a little painting before we go. Find it a good spot.”
It was impossible to mount Montjuic head on. Instead, they lumbered up one of the slaloming paths until, about fifty meters from the top, they stopped. Mueller pulled up hard on the hand brake before stepping out to find a few rocks. He wedged a handful behind each of the wheels and then headed back to the boot.
Hoffner was lighting a cigarette as he gazed up the hill.
“Smells like sugared beets,” he said.
“Does it?” Mueller found a small jar of something and placed it on the fender. He went back to his rummaging.
Hoffner said, “At least the sun’s not making it through here.”
“At least.” Mueller reappeared with a small paintbrush and limped around to the side of the car.
“The path’s still good,” said Hoffner. “We could take it up a bit farther.”
“We could.” Mueller knelt down. “If you like cracked axles and blown tires. We’d also hit the cliff. At least that would make it easier coming down.”
Mueller unscrewed the top of the jar. Mixing the paint with the brush, he began to slather the doors in some sort of design. Hoffner tried to decipher it upside down, but the dripping made that impossible. He got out on the driver’s side and stepped around the car.
It was letters: CNT-FAI.
“Anarchist trade union,” Mueller said, admiring his work. “Leave it to the Spanish to unionize the one group bent on tearing the whole works down. ‘Don’t like anything that smacks of organization? Come, join our organization…’ ” He took some water from the canteen and washed off the brush. “Must have a hell of a time collecting dues.”
When he had everything back in the boot, Mueller closed it and started up the hill. Hoffner had no choice but to grab the rucksack and follow.
“So you just leave it there?” Hoffner said, doing what he could to adjust the ropes on his shoulders. “No one touches it?”
Mueller nodded without turning. Even with the limp he was putting distance between them.
Hoffner said, “A few letters on the side and everything’s fine?”
Again Muller nodded.
When Hoffner began to feel it in his legs, he said, “So why didn’t we paint it in the first place, avoid the hill altogether, and just drive into town?”
Mueller continued to walk. “Right foot giving you a little trouble, Nikolai? Tough going on the rocks and roots?”
“I was just asking.”
Mueller slowed, then stopped. He looked up as if he were thinking something through. Hoffner took the opportunity to stop as well. “Why didn’t we drive into town?” Mueller said. “What a good question.” He looked back at Hoffner. “You’d think a cripple would be smarter than that.”
Hoffner started walking again. “Fine. There’s a reason. Just walk.”
Mueller let Hoffner pass him before saying, “You don’t want to be driving a car into Barcelona these days, Nikolai. They’ll either take it and burn it or pull you out so they can beat you before they take it and burn it.”
“And they do this to people who have those mysterious pieces of paper?”
“A car requires a different piece of paper,” Mueller said, as he started up the hill again. “So we walk.”
A small falcon hovered high on the wind ahead of them, its head pressed down, before it banked and sped toward the ground.
They were beyond the trees now, almost to the top, where the grade of the hill grew steeper. Off to the right Montjuic was sheer cliff, two hundred meters of rock face to the sea. Hoffner wondered if the bird might somehow misjudge the sudden rise-fail to pull itself up in time-but that would have required a different kind of instinct, a daring built on fear. It was the bird’s effortlessness that saved it from anything human. The wings came within a half meter of the ground and swept up again, with something small and wriggling caught in its talons.
“They like the rocks and the fortress,” Mueller said, as he brought them to the summit. “Kestrels. Don’t know what it is in Spanish.”
“Cernicalo,” Hoffner said. He had no idea how he remembered it.
Mueller was only mildly impressed. “Smart little birds. Rats never see them coming.”
The fortress spread out along the summit like two cocked arms, with a long stone tower rising from one of the elbows. The surrounding walls were all angles and points, little diamonds poking out to make any kind of frontal assault an impossibility. Hoffner had expected to see more by way of recent damage-bullet holes, walls breached-but for the most part the fortress was perfectly intact. It was also a product of the eighteenth century, with an enormous cannon on a rotating wheel peering out from one of the turrets. Oddly enough, from the look of things, it was completely abandoned. Hoffner had expected at least one rifle-toting caballero to make an appearance, another silent nod at the crumpled paper. Even the bird was eating quietly.
“You’re an idiot, Toby.” Hoffner unloosed the rucksack. He let it fall and followed it to the grass. It was years since he had felt this kind of ache in his legs. “The only Romans who’ve seen this place have come on holiday to take photographs. The big gun might have been the giveaway.”
Mueller snapped his two pincer fingers together: he needed a cigarette. Hoffner tossed over the pack, then the matchbox. Remarkably, Mueller caught them both. “Ancient Romans didn’t have rotating ca
nnons?” said Mueller. He lit up and tossed back the pack. “Really? I’ll have to make a note.” He pocketed the matches. “It’s no tourists these days. Rumor has it they had some Nationalists locked up inside, but then who’d want to make the trek up here to feed them?”
“You’re assuming they were getting fed.”
Mueller took another quick pull on the cigarette and said, “We need to be down the mountain before it gets too hot.”
He stepped over and picked up the rucksack. He spun it onto his back and started to walk. “We need to go.” He then limped off across the grass-sloped trees to one side, fortress to the other-and Hoffner found a moment’s relief in the absurdity of it.
Hoffner forced himself to his feet. “Not sure how much more walking I’ve got in me, Toby.”
Mueller tossed the cigarette to the grass. “Then this is your lucky day.”
* * *
They were bicycles, black, at least ten years old, but with enough leather on the saddles to make them workable. Mueller had them chained to a tree on the far side where the rutted paths, such as they were, led down into the city.
Hoffner stood a few meters behind and above as Mueller pulled open the lock.
“You’re joking,” Hoffner said.
Mueller double-looped the chain under the seat and pulled up the taller of the two bicycles. He stood waiting for Hoffner to take it before pulling up the other. Both had the letters CNT-FAI painted across the handlebars. Hoffner also noticed how the right-hand pedals on both were fitted with a block of some sort to compensate for Mueller’s limp.
“I always keep a spare,” said Mueller. “Told you it was your lucky day.”
Mueller slotted the valise-cum-satchel into the rack and began to limp with the bicycle over to what passed for a path. He was surprisingly agile as he jumped onto the seat and let the slope take him. Hoffner watched as Mueller’s head bobbled with increasing speed-down, around a turn, and gone. Hoffner shouted after him, “You’re a son of a bitch, Toby!” then stepped up, climbed on, and found some speed of his own.
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