by Ben Pastor
Bora started shooting again. “It’s more like climb back! Hold the line!”
“What line?” Fuentes drove another clip into his rifle and fired. “We’ve got the sun in our face! If we don’t pull back, they’ll figure out which rock we’re on and let us have it!”
Shots were already coming from below. Bora saw men aiming this way, ineffectually; still, it was crossfire. For a minute or so crazed non-stop firing was all there was, a cat’s cradle of bullets hitting and ricocheting from all sides, and then Bora realized the sniper had stopped shooting only because Fuentes had stopped aiming at the sniper’s nest.
“Did you get him, Fuentes?”
Random shots were still coming from below. Fuentes wheezed, and his face was a mask of grimy sweat. “No, he’s out of ammunition. Ándale, teniente, let’s go! Up, up, up!”
Bora managed to empty his clip on the shooters below before Fuentes goaded him up the rocks roughly, with the brutality of a policeman.
Maetzu regained the low ground shouting like a madman. Walton and the others saw him come bounding from El Baluarte with his rifle held aloft. “Get me more rounds! I’ll finish them off if you get me more rounds!”
“Who was it?”
“They’ll get away, they’ll get away! Somebody get me more rounds!”
Brissot held on to his rifle when Maetzu tried to grab it from him. “Whoever it was, they just made it over the hump. They’re gone. What do you say, Felipe?”
Walton holstered his gun. He searched the mountain crest from under the shield of his cupped hand. “I say they’re gone.”
Alongside Maetzu, Chernik’s small frame vibrated with anger. “Seems to me they’re asking for it!”
“That may be.” Walton confronted Maetzu’s seizure-like fury and the men’s dark faces. “If they meant business, they could have taken us out from where they sat. The worst mistake we can make now is to attract attention to the sierra while there’s real military action being planned.”
Chernik kicked the dust in a rage. “Are we going to let them get away with it?”
“They didn’t get away with anything, and we’re sitting this one out. Everyone, settle down. Even you, Iñaki. We’re waiting this one out until the time comes.”
Maetzu cried out like an animal. He swung his rifle over his head by the barrel and flung it into the air, where it rotated two or three times before crashing to the ground near Brissot.
CASTELLAR
It was at Brissot’s insistence that Walton waited until the afternoon to leave the camp. A haze heralding the rain had covered the sun by the time he and Marypaz reached Castellar, and the heat was all the more oppressive for it.
Yellow butterflies laced forlorn cabbage patches and dusty chicory sprigs along the road, where Marypaz wandered, dragging her feet. Walton tried to reach for her braid, and she swung it away from his hand.
“Are you going to tell me why you want to see the Widow Yarza, Marypaz?”
“Don’t start that again. I said I was going to see her, and that’s all I’m saying. Why don’t you go and smell Remedios’ doorstep instead?”
Walton ran the inside of his thumb along the sweaty underside of his rifle strap. “I have business in Castellar too,” he said, and lagged behind until Marypaz was well ahead of him, reaching the end of the street and going down the steps to the widow’s house.
Like a jolt, as if it weren’t obvious, the idea raced through him that Marypaz might be pregnant. In minor shocks, he felt trapped at the thought of what lay ahead, which doors might be forced open then. Would Marypaz …? Damn it, would she?
Soleá Yarza was the resourceful kind. There was more to her and her golden rings than an easy lay or a dutiful midwife. Anxiously Walton reached the end of the street and crossed the fig orchard, where he found a discreet place to sit behind a low wall. It was shady, and far away enough for Marypaz not to see him when she came back out.
He had to wait for an hour, during which he counted the stone chips in the wall and lost track of the constant procession of ants to and from a dead grub. A weaker tribe of ants was kept away from it, tiny insects that resorted to scrambling here and there on the ground in meaningless clusters, like football players planning a move. The minute ants also trailed up the grey bark of the fig tree. In the thick of the matte leaves, some figs were ripe and others still very small, knobbly, hard and bright green.
In Pittsburgh he’d waited for his wife to come out of countless doctors’ offices’, and for abstruse strings of Greek or Latin words that meant she would never get pregnant. How he’d listen with a straight face, all the while cherishing the selfish reassurance of his masculinity. It’s her, not me. Nothing to do with me if she can’t: I can. If I want to. Walton remembered secretly blaming his wife, disguising his lack of desire for children as concern for her. You’re young until you have no children: then you’re the older generation. There are no stages in between.
From the canopy of the tree, a drop of gummy juice rained onto his hand from one of the ripe figs, and Walton understood what it was that the tiny ants were scrambling for in the dust.
Spain must look like that from a distant planet: big ants, small ants, dead grubs. He dangled his finger near the ground to attract the ants to the drop of juice, thinking that his political anger had become little more than an insect’s automatic reflex. His motivations – the Great War, poverty, an intelligent man’s disgust for injustice – were about as irrelevant as the reasons the grub had died by the fig tree.
And yet men like Maetzu could go crazy playing the game. Walton could still see him grabbing the red-black POUM flag from the door and scaling El Baluarte to plant it in the spot where the Fascists had been caught in the crossfire, as if he were purifying the place or claiming it back.
Finally, Marypaz left the house. Walton saw her start back down the road, braid swinging. He considered going after her, but there was no way to keep an eye on Marypaz, and the Fascists had no quarrel with the likes of her. Still, he let a few minutes go by before going to the widow’s house.
“Well!” She opened the door wide to let him into her kitchen. “If that’s what you’re afraid of, she isn’t pregnant. Come in, Felipe.”
Relief set in so quickly that Walton found her familiarity irritating. Weighed down by walnut-sized gold baubles, her earlobes hung at the sides of her head, the holes in the flesh stretched into gashes. She must be waiting for a man, because she certainly didn’t dress up for other women.
Turned three-quarters towards him, her head slightly back, chin up, she struck a pose resembling that of the flamenco dancer on the postcard. Shiny black curls were pasted on her cheeks, and Walton remembered that when he first came to Spain he’d kissed a woman and discovered they were held in place with sugar water. She said, “She’s built to make children, that girl. I’d think you’d want one or two.” She suddenly burst out laughing, as if she had read his thoughts. “Why, you didn’t realize that was what’s been making her crazy the last few weeks? She came to see me two weeks ago, but I couldn’t say for sure then. How stupid men are.”
“There’s nothing stupid about it.” Walton didn’t move from the threshold. “These aren’t the times to start a family.”
She shook her hand in a tinkle of bracelets, meaning “maybe”, and sat down at the kitchen table. Her dress was cut low at the front, and moles showed on the solid flesh of her breast, right where the cleavage reminded him of a pig’s ass. “So, was it Marypaz you came to ask about?”
“No.” The half-light in the shuttered kitchen reminded him of his bedroom in Pittsburgh before dawn, and his wife waking him up for work, shaking him with jellyfish-cold hands. Perhaps it makes no difference if a man has sons or not: life itself makes you weary. Again, he felt older than his years. He said, “If you see any of the Fascists —”
“Why in the world would I want to see any of them?”
Walton felt himself growing annoyed again. “Soleá,” he continued, “you’re a good-
looking woman. Where I come from, good-looking women are sought after. In case you see any of them, tell them that if they stick to their side of the mountain we’ll stick to ours, and nobody gets hurt.”
Perhaps in response to the flattery, the widow’s expression changed. “What is it? Have you got something bigger planned?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But then Walton recalled that Almagro and Marroquí spent the night in Castellar. Here, most likely. “There’s nothing planned,” he insisted, adjusting the rifle strap on his shoulder. “I’m just carrying this.”
“Well, it’s men’s business.” For a pleasant change, the widow seemed in a hurry to get rid of him. “I have a friend coming,” she said. “But before you go, here’s a confidence of my own. One of your boys – I don’t know which one – stole a ring of mine, and I’m telling you nicely: you get it back for me, or else none of yours gets any more from me.”
Walton was taken off guard by this, but Soleá Yarza’s conciliatory expression belied real mistrust, and her threat would carry weight with the men. He said, lamely, “How do you know it’s one of mine?”
“I know.”
A northerly gale was raging by the time Walton returned to camp, and the evening sky looked like curdled milk. The fires were burning themselves out in the valley under a pall of static smoke. The smell of torched grass in the dark seemed close enough to taste the ash, and when the wind dropped, the fires glowed like a remote line of battle.
When he joined Marypaz upstairs, she said nothing and he said nothing. Getting ready for bed, he discovered a small ant in the rolled cuff of his shirtsleeve, and crushed it with his thumb.
In the morning, the weather was stuffy and overcast, and the red-black flag was gone from El Baluarte.
RISCAL AMARGO
Thursday, 22 July. At the post. Hopefully about to rain.
Here’s a real question. Why in God’s name did I study philosophy instead of engineering or architecture or some other useful skill? Colonel Serrano is right. Schooling has only made me presumptuous, and will not serve me well in the army, which is what I will do for the duration, as far as I can tell. It makes me agonize about every little thing, nearly as much as religion.
For example, chastity is out of the question, but continence is another matter; a matter to be striven after. Continence, desire, moral stance, political choice, love of justice, war: all of them I embraced with great trepidation, knowing how antithetical they can be. I wish I could go to sleep for ten or fifteen years: not think and not feel for that amount of time, and then wake up wiser.
In fact, I can think of nothing else but Remedios. I haven’t had a night’s sleep to speak of ever since I met her. Met her? What’s wrong with me? Why would I put it that way? It’s high time that I consider the meaning of this kind of intimacy. First in Italy, then in Germany, now in Spain … Whether or not I initiated it, I was shamelessly willing in all cases. I wonder how silly I really got with the girls in Bilbao, though I expect I was also pretty good, or so they said.
Last April I was relieved that Dikta was not a virgin because I’d have felt much guiltier otherwise – not obliged to marry her, because she isn’t interested in getting married – despite having a fiancé, or at least someone she’s lived off and on with for the past year. Still, I plan to propose to her when I go back (Nina would hit the roof if she knew).
But Remedios is the one, she is the one. No one in my life will be able to equal the level of intimacy I reached with her. I’m not in love with her, of course, but aspects of her are buried so deep inside me that I will never be truly free of them. I carry Remedios inside me, and she knows I do.
Bora looked up when Fuentes double-knocked and asked for permission to enter. Slipping a sheet of blotting paper into his diary, Bora closed it and set it aside. “Come in, Fuentes. What is it?”
“I was wondering if I could speak in confidence, sir.”
“Seguro.” Bora capped his pen. “Close the door and sit down.”
Fuentes shut the door and took his place in the chair facing Bora. He had his policeman face on, small-eyed, tight-lipped, and threw a positively critical look at the red-black flag furled in a corner of the room. Bora wondered what he possibly could have to say that was of a private nature.
Outstretched thumbs touching, he spread his hands on the desk. “I don’t know how to start, teniente, but it comes down to this: I honestly can’t remember a day in my life when I’ve been what you’d call scared, even though I’ve had my hairy moments and close calls.”
“That’s good,” Bora said.
Fuentes appeared unmoved by the endorsement. “More times than I can count I’ve been plain angry, because younger men in the Guardia Civil didn’t know what they were doing.”
“I see.” Bora felt a vague intimation of warmth in his neck, which meant blood was working its way up to his face. “What does that have to do with me?”
“I also have sons of my own.”
“Look, Fuentes —”
“Please let me finish. I can’t blame you for us being caught out in the open; I know reconnaissance is part of the job. But, Cristo Rey, I think you’ve got much too much energy for a time of stalemate. The brook, the photos, and now this.” Fuentes motioned with his head towards the flag. “You don’t want to hear about Lieutenant Jover, but it isn’t like you won’t have other chances to get yourself killed. I think … Well, frankly, I think you ought to calm down.”
“You think what?”
“Calm down. I think you ought to go to Castellar.”
“What kind of stupid nonsense! Why should I go to Castellar?”
Fuentes didn’t take his eyes off Bora. “We’re all grown men here. We can take care of ourselves for a few hours. Before Lieutenant Jover came, we managed for six months without officers.”
“And what does that mean?”
“It means that you can go to Castellar, or anywhere else you please on the sierra.”
“I have no duties to discharge on the sierra.”
Fuentes’ stare had taken on the patient quality of a card player’s. “In the Guardia Civil we always make a point of familiarizing ourselves with the surroundings. There’s much to be learned away from one’s post. Look at the colonel’s example. He took his nephews all over the sierra.”
Bora tapped his pen on the table. He felt he was visibly blushing, which infuriated him. “I have strong reservations about leaving the post without an officer in charge.”
“Then you ought to consider who you leave the post with, even if it’s just to go down to the brook.” Fuentes thrust out his jaw. “I’d hoped not to have to say this much, but you’re asking for it. This is a band of mostly ignorant men, with no sense of respect for their officers. I’m only looking out for your good name.”
Bora put his pen down with a forcibly calm motion. “That will be all, Fuentes.”
“I’m sorry I had to say it.”
“That will be all.”
Clumsily Fuentes stood up from the chair and let himself out of the room.
Bora remained where he was, sitting with the diary in front of him and Aristotle’s small dog-eared volume open to Book Three. He’d rather be angry, but what he felt was a rancorous, floating sense of disconnection. The only weight anchoring him came from the rectitude of his youthful mind. And the anchorage was insufficient for the task at hand.
The Greek text on the left page curled into a crowded, graceful blur of ancient inanity, while Fuentes had spoken as though he either knew nothing, or knew too much. Damn Greeks and damn Spaniards, they can’t leave damn well alone.
The page read, “Yet Virtue is born out of will, for Man does all out of will: thus Vice is also voluntary.”
Is that how it is? Bora swept the book off the table. It isn’t. Damn Fuentes, it isn’t. He felt something inside, imminent like the approaching rain: an infinity of possibilities, all equally conceivable. His rectitude could be unanchored by simply saying, So be
it.
MAS DEL AIRE
Bora went around the building to find her.
Remedios was squatting by the door of the chapel, head low. She was separating handfuls of weeds – limp, fuzzy leaves – into small equal piles. Her hands and her forehead in the frame of red hair had the shimmering paleness of the inside of a shell.
“Buenas tardes,” he said.
She didn’t look up at once. “Hola, Alemán.”
Bora went to crouch with his back to the chapel wall, watching her. The smoke-scented north wind had dried the perspiration on his brow. He felt damp in his clothes, but the wetness was pleasant. Fish must feel so strong and alive when they slip between rocks, whipping among water plants. He rested his head against the wall, closing his eyes. Remedios was entirely silent, and no rustle came from the parting of the leaves. He listened to his heartbeat slow down as he caught his breath, a steady rhythm inside the slippery self that swam in his clothes. The sun trailed a warm tongue on his bare knees, on his bare arms. Behind his head the wall felt strong and secure, like a thing he could lean on forever.
Remedios began to hum. The low rising and falling of her voice a few steps away, the wind and sun, the awareness of the immensity of the summer sky gaping above him: all made Bora want to stay here forever. It was a perfect, perfectly balanced moment of certainty. Having come here to see Remedios of his own volition, rather than because of anything Fuentes had said, he was grateful to be crouching next to her, hearing her hummed song.
When he opened his eyes again, she had finished dividing the bundles of weeds. As before, no word was spoken of lovemaking, yet Bora was absolutely sure that it would happen. It was so easy with her. Aristotle himself would smile if he saw her. Confidently, he watched her lay the leaves on the ground. They were the same hardy sprigs growing in the rubble of the wall, and once laid out he knew what they were.
Remedios smiled. “Sierven para refrenar la sangradura.”
Nettles. Bora remembered nettles from his childhood: not that they stemmed bleeding, but the welts and blisters resulting from taking a wrong step among them. She picked up a bundle and extended it to him.