by Ben Pastor
Bora found the question pointless. “A vase. A red vase.”
“Are you sure? Try again.”
“It’s a vase, about eight inches tall, made of red ceramic.”
Cziffra reached into the niche and turned the vase around. The back of it was painted blue. “Report only on the things you know, Lieutenant, not on the things you do not know. You majored in philosophy, did you not? Well, your purview in Spain is observational judgement. Leave the analysis and synthesis to us.” Replacing the vase in its original position, Cziffra seemed satisfied with his cleverness. “Now be off to Serrano. On your way back from his house, stop by Teruel again. If there are any further instructions for you, you’ll receive them within fifteen minutes of arriving at this address.” A card materialized from Cziffra’s pocket only long enough for Bora to read the words scribbled on it. “Take the drawings and papers along with you. Serrano can have them. The shoes and the spent shell will stay here.”
Bora replaced the music score in his canvas bag. “Did Lorca have a code name?”
“He did. We called him ‘Reiter’. Jínete in Spanish.”
“‘Horseman’. Why?”
Cziffra ignored the question. He reached into the second drawer of his desk. “You might need a camera,” he said. “Here’s a Leica. There’s already film in it. Now report to Colonel Serrano’s residence. He doesn’t know yet – and do not tell him – that his son was executed by the Reds in Madrid two days ago.”
HUERTA DE SANTA OLALLA, NEAR CONCUD
Concud lay less than five miles north-west of Teruel, in a dry undulating wilderness of reddish land. Midway between the two towns the Huerta de Santa Olalla formed a green island along the sun-baked lane. The olive groves across the road looked bleached in comparison. Bora found a shady spot to tie Pardo away from the sun, and before ringing the bell of the forbidding garden gate, he carefully dusted off his uniform and boots.
The first impression he had upon being introduced was that Señora Consuelo Costa y Serrano, Condesa de Almondral, had been beautiful once. The life-size Zuloaga portrait above the sofa showed her in traditional garb, black lace on black, unsmiling, with a view of her native Toledo in the background.
She said, “My husband will come down shortly, teniente. He has instructed me to receive you in the meantime. Please sit.” She studied his manners closely, without indulgence. “He tells me you are Catholic. And you are my son Alejandro’s age. I also have a daughter. She recently lost her husband of twenty weeks.”
The thick walls and the greenery outside kept the house cool, the first cool interior Bora had sat in since coming to Spain. Señora Serrano’s tall figure recalled an expensive wax candle wrapped in black crepe. He looked again at her portrait, wondering where beauty goes.
“At a Red Cross benefit three years ago in Barcelona I met Marina Ashworth-Douglas, married to a von Bora, once the German consul in Edinburgh. Are you related to her?”
“She’s my grandmother.”
“My husband was right in judging you of casta pura. Your hands give you away.”
His hands. Bora slowly closed his right fist to hide the blisters on his palm from digging Lorca’s grave. “Today we recognize German birthright as our only aristocracy.”
“Nonsense. Virtue may be acquired, but noble blood is inherited. My children have it, as yours will.” His children? Bora paid sudden attention. He never thought of having children of his own, of being anything but the next generation. It gave him a strange feeling to be reminded that he carried the ready-made potential of fatherhood within him. “Of course,” Señora Serrano pointed out, “as Catholics we must be merciful to the lower classes, as Our Lord taught us.”
Colonel Serrano’s booted step accompanied his perfectly attired, austere image to the threshold. Bora stood at attention while the colonel paused to kiss his wife’s hand. Next, Serrano invited his visitor to follow him into the study, beyond a glasspanelled door. “I was listening to a broadcast from Madrid. There is encouraging news. It appears the leftist factions are in disagreement as to what to do with their hostages, and all threatened reprisals are on hold.”
Impassively, Bora carried the weight of Cziffra’s unspeakable tidings as best he could. “I found and reburied the body, Colonel.”
Stark against the white wall above an unlit fireplace, Moroccan textiles and hooked blades created exotic patterns, stains of colour. The pale greenness filtering through louvred shutters gave Serrano the look of a drowned saint. He took the sketches and music score Bora handed him and laid them on a massive carved table.
The faded score (Bora had found it in a manila folder held together by a rubber band) was penned on lightweight sheets. One of them fell to the floor while the colonel perused them. Bora bent to retrieve it, and as he did he heard the sound of paper being shredded. Standing by his desk, Serrano had torn the sketch of Lorca’s face in half, and was now tearing it crosswise. Bora hesitated, not wanting to hand over the music. Serrano noticed and solicited the sheets with a wave of his fingers.
Just then, they heard women’s voices in the parlour where Bora had first been received. Serrano took no notice until his wife opened the glass door, accompanied by a distraught younger woman. “Perdóneme, Jacinto. You need to hear this at once.”
Bora motioned to leave, but Serrano indicated that he should stay. “Señora Cadena, what happened?” the colonel asked. As she was holding back, he gestured towards Bora. “One of my young officers, Don Martín. He is a safe listener.” Coolly he gathered the paper fragments, walked to the fireplace and tossed them behind the screen. “How can I be of assistance?”
Don Martín? Bora understood why Serrano was playing on his first name to conceal his identity as a foreign volunteer. He kept alert and still.
“Speak up, my dear,” Señora Serrano encouraged the young woman. “Tell the colonel what you told me, how your cousin left Teruel two days ago and you haven’t heard from him since.”
Bora’s mouth went dry. He recognized Lorca’s gypsy looks in the girl, the same large eyes and delicate hands. With an unobtrusive gesture, he returned the music score to his canvas bag.
The young woman began to cry. “I called on friends, acquaintances; I went to the Guardia Civil. No one knows. No one has seen him. I’ve just come from the bishop’s palace: His Eminence suggested I ask for your help. Don Jacinto, for God’s sake do what you can to find out where Federico is! Mother would have come to beg you, but she’s in a terrible state.”
“Are you sure he left Teruel?”
“He told us he’d spend the night at a friend’s house, but it seems he wasn’t even expected there.”
Bora heard Serrano observe that there was no reason for premature worry. She could rest assured he would do everything within the bounds of his authority, and beyond. “I suggest that you return home,” he was saying now. “Sit quietly there and wait until you hear news from your cousin. He is sure to call soon. Be confident and let me look into this at my own pace.”
Señora Serrano embraced the young woman, gently leading her out of the study. “Let us leave the men alone to talk, my dear,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you the colonel would take charge? You must trust in God, as I do, and all will be well.”
Afterwards, they sat in silence, the only audible sound a piece of torn paper rustling in the fireplace. Facing Bora, Serrano said, “These are the lessons you are given neither at the university nor at the army school. See that you benefit from what you just saw and heard.”
Bora didn’t care that Serrano would judge him to be lacking in confidence. Just now, he couldn’t look the colonel in the face. He understood every pragmatic reason for profiting from what he had just heard and learning from it, but the untruth disgusted him. This unease at lying and hearing people lied to obviously demonstrated his lack of adjustment to active service.
EL PALO DE LA VIRGEN
The airplane was back. Little more than a dot, it came in from the east. Walton couldn’t judge wheth
er it had taken off from friendly or enemy territory. Even through the field glasses, it was an indeterminate single-winged silhouette – not a German dive-bomber, at any rate. From the doorstep, he watched it bank widely, disappear behind the sierra and return at an even higher altitude.
“Felipe, I’ve got to talk to you.”
Hearing Rafael’s voice, Walton was tempted to shout him down. Of all of them, he was the one he couldn’t abide, a snivelling youngster who didn’t know shit about life and shouldn’t be here in the first place. “We already discussed it,” he said, cutting him short, and lifted the field glasses to his face again.
“It’s not the religious value of the thing, Felipe: it’s the sentimental principle.”
Aimlessly studying the mountainside, Walton refused to engage. “I understand it’s the principle. What I don’t understand is carrying around a superstitious trinket. I thought you left all that church crap behind.”
“I did! It’s just that my mother gave it to me.”
Given that Rafael was bent on complaining, Walton decided to listen. “What of it?” He stepped indoors and from a wooden crate in the corner which smelled of oiled guns packed in straw, he lifted out one revolver, then another, weighing each in turn.
“It’s made of silver, Felipe.”
Walton put back the first revolver. “What do you expect me to do, ask the comrades here about your silver rosary? You probably lost it.”
“How?” Rafael whined. “How could I have lost it if I wore it around my neck?”
Walton was satisfied with his choice of guns. He checked the cylinder for dirt, and one by one he slipped cartridges into its chambers. “And how could anyone steal it from around your neck?”
“I take it off at night. Look, all I want is for you to mention it to the others.” Rafael lowered his eyes, rubbing the toe of his boot back and forth on the ground like a fidgety schoolboy. “Of course, I have my suspicions, but it’s better if you do the asking.”
“Sure, OK.” Walton drove the revolver into his holster and walked out. The airplane was nowhere in sight. Brissot, however, was just returning from his rounds on the heights. “Hey, Mosko!” he called.
“Why, it’s true,” Brissot agreed a moment later. “For once he isn’t just bellyaching. Things have been disappearing; witness your watch. My lighter’s gone, though it was cheap metal and worth nothing.”
Irritably Walton raked back a limp strand of hair from his forehead. “Now what do we do, search each other’s bedding for keepsakes or go ask the whores in Castellar if any of us in this egalitarian army paid them in kind?”
Brissot acted suspiciously calm, preceding Walton to the privacy of the almond grove. “Excluding the two of us, Felipe, we can’t discount Rafael, because he might be claiming a loss to remove suspicion from himself.”
“That’s just swell! We do nothing but sit on our asses, with the Fascists next door, and now we have to purge ourselves of thieves. What kind of a commissar are you anyway, keeping dirty little secrets to yourself?”
For a month Brissot had treasured his one pack of ready-made cigarettes, and now he handed Walton the last one. “If I felt that you really wanted to hear the truth, I could report more than idle gossip about stolen rosaries.”
“Out with it.” Walton brought the cigarette to his mouth and lit it. “What do you know?”
Brissot signalled to wait. He walked to the orchard wall and looked over it right and left, then came back with his physician’s stoop. “On the night Lorca was killed, Maetzu left camp after his watch. I was next, and thought at first he was just looking for a place to piss. In fact, he headed for the valley. You told me not to harass the men with useless discipline, so after making sure that everyone else was in place I went back to my watch.”
Walton licked his lips. A drop of sweat hung from his nose like a tear, but he didn’t bother to wipe it off. “What are you telling me?”
“That Maetzu was gone for at least three hours. I’m not sure what I’m telling you. It troubles me, that’s all. Ever since Maetzu killed the mulero it’s been on my mind.”
The drop of sweat fell from Walton’s nose. “So you wanted to trouble me, too.”
3
I say your name,
In this dark night,
And your name sounds to me
Farther than ever.
Farther away than all the stars
And sadder than the tame rain.
FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA,
“IF MY HANDS COULD PLUCK”
HUERTA DE SANTA OLALLA, NEAR CONCUD
The olive grove around the huerta cast a tenuous grey shade across the grass. When Bora looked back at the house from outside the gate, the dark lustrous green of the laurel trees peering over the high wall renewed his impression of an enclosed, exclusive Eden compared to the dry light of the road. Stretched over mild undulations and billowy hills, the landscape ahead reminded him of the windswept Moroccan bled: scented argan oil, the darkness of a doorway, carpets of morning shadows under the feet of marching men. He wondered if Africa and Spain would come back to him at the end of his life, splinters of images and smells, whether he’d regret or feel nostalgia for them. This or that shape, a shifting leaf that let the sun through, the old Arab in a forgotten marketplace saying, “Mezian, mezian,” to extol the value of his trinkets. Women from the Moroccan south, wrists stained blue with the dye of their robes, sitting wide-kneed. Bora turned to Pardo and waved the flies away from him before mounting.
“May I speak to you, Don Martín?”
Bora stopped, his left foot in the stirrup and his hand on the saddle. Luisa Cadena had been waiting around the corner of the garden wall and was approaching him. Of course, she’d be able to tell he wasn’t Spanish once she heard him speak. It was unavoidable, and he braced himself for it.
“Don Martín, I told the cab driver to wait because I needed to ask a question I couldn’t ask in front of Colonel Serrano.” She stood before him as women often did in this country, arms folded across her chest in a sexually protective stance. “My husband was arrested in Alfambra the same night my cousin Federico disappeared. Has Colonel Serrano told you anything about him? I beg you to tell me if you know. I can’t stand being frightened for both of them!”
She was about to cry again but kept herself under control, perhaps fearful that he’d grow annoyed. Bora glanced through the garden gate at the patio where Serrano’s ornate door was closed against the heat of the day. “The colonel has told me nothing,” he replied. “Pero lo siento.”
It was an acceptable formula of sympathy. She didn’t seem to notice his accent, nor that he was relieved at not having to lie to her. “Here is our phone number. If you have news, call any time, day or night. Any time. The colonel is a busy man. Tell me you’ll call us if he can’t. Please.”
Without saying yes or no, Bora took the folded piece of paper she handed him. “What time did your cousin leave the house?” he asked, leading Pardo by the bridle towards the olive grove. She followed him there with a furtive, disquieted glance at the cab parked a few feet away. The driver seemed to be dozing, cap lowered over his eyes. “At about eight in the evening, Don Martín. My husband was still out, we hadn’t even started supper. The children were already in bed, so it must have been just after eight.”
Bora looked away from the cab, at the bleak, wavy horizon, and then at Luisa Cadena’s face. Her pallor made the melancholy depth of her eyes appear sunken in her skull, and despite her youth there were sorrowful lines at the sides of her mouth. He said, “Did your cousin tell you when he expected to be back?”
“We didn’t ask. Sometimes he spent the night out, as bachelors do.” The way she said it, a little defensively, made him wonder if she wanted him to believe that Lorca had women. “We expected him to show up sometime in the morning, or for lunch. Federico often read his work in private homes, and this month he’d started revising El Jínete Milagroso with the intention of making it into a trilogy. His next play
is to be called La Casida de la Muerte Olvidada.” Her voice grew dim, unsteady. “The day he left he asked me to sew him a puppet of ‘The Forgotten Death’ to use in the prologue. I thought … I thought he’d surely be at a friend’s house. In the morning we heard that Antonio had been arrested, and now I don’t know what’s happened to either of them.”
Bora let her weep, because she needed to. But he was embarrassed by her reaction and stepped away. This was his big opportunity, one which not even the Abwehr could have planned so well. To avoid showing his eagerness, he waited at the edge of the olive grove for her to stop crying. All around, in the merciless heat of midday, the haze created trembling double images of the slanting horizon – fictitious pools of water and phantom hills in the air. False perspectives, Bora thought, matched everything else in this matter.
“I wonder if I could come and see you about your cousin sometime,” he cautiously asked.
“Will you have news of my husband?”
“I don’t know.”
“But will you try to find out about my husband? His name is Antonio Cadena, he was mayor of Teruel twice. Will you ask about him?”
“If I can.”
“We live on Calle Temprado, across from the nuns.” Luisa Cadena pressed a handkerchief to her eyes: stoically, like Bora’s mother had in April after he’d told her that he was leaving again. “You must forgive me for weeping. I shouldn’t be weeping but trust in God, because God will take care of both Federico and Antonio. When will you come?”
“I can’t say. I’m not even sure that I’ll have any information. I’ll try.”
EL PALO DE LA VIRGEN
By the orchard wall, Valentin stood up and waved. “Felipe!” he shouted. “There’s people coming up!”
Walton had been expecting couriers from Barcelona and quickly reached the ledge, from where he could see three men trudging up the sweltering ascent. The two men in front wore black berets like Brissot. Boinas negras, Walton thought. From afar, you might mistake them for Italian Fascists. Rifles hung from their shoulders. The third man, who was dressed in a collarless shirt and a wide-brimmed hat, he couldn’t identify.