by Ben Pastor
Cziffra eyed him amusedly, and handed him another open letter. “This came for you too.”
Dear Horseman,
How’s Italy? The last time I was there, I bought a very charming mantilla to use on cool summer evenings.
Father was just appointed consul to the Italian government, but Mother and I are going to America for two months. I always wanted to see New York and all that, and Mother is dying to shop on Fifth Avenue, even though we realize it is plebeian and their clothes are hideous.
I was in Hamburg over the weekend, and had a long conversation with someone. He didn’t seem very happy, and finally I had to admit I’d met this dashing cavalryman from Leipzig and fallen for his tan. His intellect too, I think, though we girls are ambivalent about that in a fiancé. He put on a silly scene, and I’m afraid I won’t be interested in seeing him any more. Which leaves a vacancy that may interest a man presently touring Italy.
A kiss like the kiss you know.
Dikta
PS. I met your mother. Nice. I can see where you get your good looks.
On the evidence of patriotic strains drifting over from the south side, the celebration was still in full swing as Bora left Cziffra’s office. The streets all emptied into San Juan’s square, and sunlight ran through them like quicksilver. Ahead, the slope of Calle Nueva, ending in the paseo and Guardia Civil barracks, ran like a waterfall to the bright river valley below.
The thrill of reading correspondence from home wore off quickly in the lonely streets.
Bora cautiously led Pardo by the reins. When he walked past a narrow alley and recognized Don Millares standing by the entrance of his pharmacy, gleaming like a white whale in his immaculate shirt, something like an intimation of danger forced him to look back, as if he’d stumbled into the sights of an unseen weapon and needed to seek cover. All Millares did was withdraw into the shade of the doorway, like a sea creature swimming away from the light.
Was he on edge after Remedios’ prophecy? Seeing Captain Roig’s superb, groomed figure at the end of Calle Nueva heartened him. Roig must be Cziffra’s agent, of course. Uniforms understand uniforms. Why else would he have taken time away from the celebrations to keep an eye on him? Roig looked up the street, towards Millares, and then crossed the street in a few strides. He was standing at the top of the Moorish stairs that led to the train station when Bora reached the door of the fortress-like Cuartel de la Guardia Civil.
8
If death is death,
What will be of the poets
And all that sleeps
Unremembered?
FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA, “AUTUMN SONG”
CASTELLAR
The Widow Yarza didn’t want to open the door. Even after Walton showed her the ring through the slats of the shutter she simply said, “I see it. Yes, it’s mine. Toss it in.”
“Let me in, Soleá.”
“No. Give the ring back. That’s all I want. I’m letting no one in.”
Walton pocketed the gold band. “Let me in for five minutes and I’ll give it to you.” From within, he heard a clatter of pots and plates. On the steps leading to her door, traces of blood were still visible, in line with the faraway perch where Maetzu had stood to fire the deadly shot. “Soleá, let me in. If you don’t, I’ll give the ring to Remedios.” The clatter indoors increased, but that was all.
How many times had he left Remedios’ house so drained and unsettled that anyone could have mowed him down on her doorstep? There might be a blessing to that kind of death, the unexpected kind, so rare for a soldier. He’d have never been afraid had he not expected death in Soissons, or at Guadalajara. Death had not come back then, but only because he’d run from it. “Should I give the ring to Remedios, Soleá?”
Lorca had been given time to fear death, and so, apparently, had Soler. Christ. Better, much better being broken like the stalk of a plant when your mind is elsewhere, your eyes are elsewhere, and your body doesn’t know anything.
“If there were three men in the car, there may have been two murderers,” Bora had told him by the chapel, throwing rocks into the fog in a curious show of energy or displaced anger. “Do you really have no description of the car?”
“I never saw it,” Walton recalled answering. “Anyway, even if a car had come from Teruel, it doesn’t mean that it returned there.”
Bora’s arm had stopped in mid-throw. “It must have done. It must have done, or else I’ll never find out what happened.”
The key turning twice in the lock alerted Walton to the fact that the widow had made up her mind. She peeked out. “Put it here.” Her hand showed through the crack.
“Not until you let me in.”
Sulkily she opened the door enough for him to squeeze through.
In the kitchen, he noticed that in place of her wedding picture she’d put a holy print with an angel leading two children across a rickety bridge. There was a candle lit on the shelf below it. “Well,” she grumbled. “Now give it back.”
Walton returned the ring. Once she had slipped it onto her middle finger, where she wore a similar one already, she said, “I want to know which one of your men took it, so I don’t let him come here any more.” Even as she spoke, her chin began to tremble, and her nerve left her like air out of collapsing dough. “It doesn’t matter, I don’t want to know.” Holding her shiny temples, she sat down at the table. “I haven’t slept a wink since it happened. The moment I close my eyes I hear the shot and see the blood seeping under the door. For two days I couldn’t eat; I threw up everything I put in my mouth, everything. My cousin has to come and stay with me as soon as it gets dark, but she’s scared too.”
“When the Fascists came to retrieve their man, did they say anything?”
“What was there to say? The German stepped right into the blood and then went to wipe his boots with fig leaves. He got the priest to bury the man.”
“He said nothing about getting back at us?”
Wearily Soleá Yarza smoothed her apron. “No. But he did stop by on the way back from the cemetery.”
The idea of the German making advances to the widow after burying one of his men was ludicrous. “To do what, Soleá?”
Toying with her salvaged ring, she acted like someone who hasn’t decided whether to feel flattered or offended. “He asked if the man had paid what he owed me.”
TERUEL
It took the Guardia Civil the better part of one hour to secure a vehicle, and the round trip to and from Alfambra lasted two. By three o’clock Bora was back in Teruel.
The squares and sleepy streets had returned to normal. Only the soldiers still loitering in twos and threes along the paseo gave a clue to the morning’s celebrations.
At her desk, Cziffra’s secretary wore a pink blouse. Bora wondered what she was typing and how credible this tile factory front really was. Leaning on her typewriter, the secretary glanced up when he stopped in front of her, and said, “Herr Cziffra is with someone. Please come back in an hour.”
Bora did not press the matter. He’d left Pardo in the Guardia Civil stables while he was in Alfambra, so he walked to the seminary in the north-west of town. Standing beyond the post office and the church of Santiago, the religious school, with its walled perimeter, would make a solid redoubt. The impression was strong enough for him to make a mental note of it, in case Teruel became a battleground. Soon after four, he found himself once more in the yellow room with its faded rug and framed posters, reporting to Cziffra.
“Antonio Cadena never made it to Alfambra.” As he said it, Bora saw the minute change of expression on Cziffra’s face, enough to show that he was in fact surprised. “He was not even expected at city hall there.”
“Ha.” Cziffra pulled the anarchist flag out of his drawer and gave it back, watching Bora tie it up again into a compact square. “So, what does it mean?”
“Only that Cadena didn’t go to Alfambra. It’d be helpful if we knew the exact location and the circumstances of his arrest.”
Bora kept at it, a bit anxiously. “If the local authorities gave you incorrect information concerning Cadena’s arrest and he didn’t in fact go to Alfambra, he might still have been in Teruel that evening.”
Cziffra sat on the corner of his desk, dangling his foot. “Are you suggesting he planned to accompany Lorca out of Teruel? Would Lorca mistrust the Abwehr after all we did for him in Granada, and trust his socialist cousin?”
“After speaking to Luisa Cadena, to Soler and Walton, I believe he’d try to get away by any means possible. He’d told Walton the Cadenas feared for him and for themselves. That’s why I wanted to see Luisa.”
“And you believe what this American tells you, because he was ‘Lorca’s friend’! He may yet fire a bullet into your skull, the way your man died in Castellar.”
“Well, what difference does it make? I’m not serving any purpose on the sierra other than this investigation, sir. If I get killed, I get killed.”
Cziffra’s eyes narrowed, but if he meant to scold him, or to smile, he did neither.
Restless in front of him, Bora was tempted to share what he’d learned at the seminary, but it seemed to have little relevance, so he said instead, “By the way, when I met your agent at the barber shop, he communicated nothing to me.”
“That’s possible.”
“This morning I saw him again on Calle Nueva.”
“That’s also possible.”
“It impressed me that he left the parade early, being in his dress uniform.”
“Dress uniform?” Cziffra was on the verge of wiping his neck with the handkerchief, but changed his mind. “What dress uniform? Whom are you talking about?”
“Why, Captain Mendez Roig.”
Cziffra wedged his handkerchief back in the pocket of his linen suit. “My agent’s name is Millares, not Roig.”
“Don Millares?”
“The fat one, yes. The pharmacist. How could you possibly not have realized? I told him to keep an eye on you whenever you were in town.”
For all the oppressive warmth in the room, Bora felt his hands go cold. Millares who had spoken disparagingly of Soler, who had hinted at Soler’s hideout. Who had sat as a judge of La Barraca and disagreed with Lorca on the music prizes. Millares, who was “a real patriot”, as Tomé put it, and who gossiped in the barbershop that Cadena had not returned home. Thankfully, Cziffra’s secretary put her boyish head through the crack in the door at that point to say that the call was in.
Cziffra was gone for several minutes. “Well,” he quipped upon his return, “this is an interesting turn of events. Early on the morning of the thirteenth, Antonio Cadena tried to run a roadblock near Muel, nineteen miles south of Zaragoza. Such were the circumstances of his arrest. And if you’re wondering about his car, he was shot through the windshield of the Fiat 509 he was driving. That doesn’t help you at all, does it?”
Bora did his best not to look disappointed. “I thought the Cadenas didn’t own a car.”
“The 509 is an inexpensive model. He might have borrowed it from a friend.” Cziffra leaned against his desk, arms folded. “Anyway, it pokes a hole in your theory that he drove Lorca out of town in the Ansaldo.”
Bora felt he should stand his ground this time. “That was never my theory, Herr Cziffra. After speaking to Walton, I postulate that someone in a position to alter the ledger rented the Ansaldo and drove it for a distance consistent with a round trip to the sierra. Also, that a car with three men in it – one of whom was possibly Lorca – was at the foot of the sierra on the night of the murder. I can say nothing more. And as for Cadena getting himself shot over a hundred miles away, I have no idea. May I be allowed to see Lorca’s dossier now?”
“There’s nothing in there you need to know for the time being.” Cziffra walked around the desk to fish the garage ledger out of his desk and pass it to Bora. “You can take this back.”
The Mudejar towers of Teruel took in the sun like the masts of a sinking ship, yet their intricate brickwork also made them resemble fantastic sleeves, as if the town was stretching brocade-covered arms to the sky. A fence of dark clouds, risen sometime during the day, set a boundary to the west. The moment the sun dipped behind them, the red crowning the towers would vanish; the streets, already dressed in shadow, would settle in coolness. Occasional churchgoers, mostly women with rosaries twined around their wrists, met Bora along the way. Caps boldly askew, red tassels drooping, the last of the soldiers swarmed towards their barracks. They stiffly saluted the Legion’s uniform and hurried on.
By a convoluted route that took him by the Renaissance arches of the aqueduct at the edge of town, Bora went to the public garage. No one, as far as he could tell, followed him there. A car with a high cab was parked in front of the building when he arrived. The garage itself was empty. The albino was mopping the floor, spreading an iridescent mixture of oil and suds. If he was tempted to ask Bora for the ledger, he didn’t show it. His rosy face barely turned towards the German, and his posture, hunched over the mop, was reticent and defensive.
From the entrance Bora asked, “Is the proprietor back from his honeymoon?”
The mop made a circular motion, melting a violet swirl in the yellow, oily water. “He sent word that he’s going to stay with his in-laws a while. Try his aunt next door.”
The house door in question was ajar, but Bora still knocked before stepping inside. A pleasant old woman peered at him from the top of a steep flight of stairs. “Qué quiere usted?”
Bora explained the purpose of his visit..
“… The Ansaldo? Who rented it on the twelfth?” She repeated his words. “Come up.”
Bora made up some spur-of-the-moment story about army bookkeeping. In the low-beamed kitchen, she scanned a calendar on the smudged wall over the stove.
“Ah, well, that was the Monday before the wedding. I let my nephew do the accounting, you know. I only give out the key or take it back as it’s needed.” She detached the calendar from its nail and brought it close to her eyes. “Two people came looking for the car that day, and we had to turn one down. That doesn’t happen often. Anyhow, yes. My nephew always jots the name down on the calendar. The former mayor rented it, God have mercy on him.”
“Cadena?”
“Yes.” The old woman showed him the calendar. “He came first, and spoke for the car. Here’s his name, here. Poor man. Had her filled up, paid beforehand … Now God’s taken him, and with a young family to look after!” In the dim kitchen, Cadena’s name was a scribble on the page. Bora stared at the calendar without touching it.
“Did he return the car?”
“The car came back, didn’t it? He borrowed it in the afternoon for an overnight trip. Alfambra, I think he said. We were expecting him to return it in the morning, but when I got up at four, the key was already in the basket. See, there’s no army account to settle for the twelfth.”
Bora reached for the calendar. “The month is nearly over, and tomorrow is Sunday. May I have the July page?”
“Prefiero que no.” The old woman hesitated. “Someone already stole our ledger. As it is, my nephew will be furious when he comes back. If I give you the page, we won’t have any record at all of the July rentals.”
Bora rummaged inside his canvas bag. “I need it.” He took out a drawing pad and tore a strip of paper from it. “It’s only a few names. I’ll copy them out here for you with the dates.”
Saturday 31 July, Teruel. 10 p.m.
I’m so close to finding out the truth, I can’t stand it. By the time I finished today’s errands (Alfambra, the seminary, the garage, a failed attempt against Herr C.’s advice to see Luisa Cadena, securing an army guide to the place where Soler died) it was too dark to ride back to the sierra. Tomorrow at seven it’s
off to Castralvo with an army escort. Presently I’m writing in the Hotel Aragon on the paseo. Not a prime location, with the bus station to the right and a cinema in the back, but it befits this bizarre form of warfare to commute to town and meet with the enemy in a cemetery. There’s no question that there will be an offensive of some kind soon enough, and then, Gott sei Dank, farewell to these strange comforts. High time, too.
So, Antonio Cadena did borrow the Ansaldo, but he never returned it. Where did he go? The round trip to Alfambra is 33 miles, while the odometer showed 43 miles. Besides, at the time the car was returned (before 4 a.m.) Cadena was about to run into a roadblock in Muel.
But why would Cadena say he would go to Alfambra and then go somewhere else? More importantly, how would he have ended up driving a different car and trying to evade armed soldiers? Most importantly of all, who drove the Ansaldo to the sierra and returned it to the garage?
Millares’ name keeps cropping up. His vicious gossip in the confitería (I’d never have found Soler or thought about the seminary without those hints) betrays huge contempt for the likes of Soler … and Lorca. It’s no coincidence that Soler was eliminated right after we met. Given the political leeway Millares enjoys (and perhaps his work with Herr C.), he could have easily tampered with the ledger and secured a key to Soler’s flat. Of course, the next question is why he would kill Lorca. Politics? Morality? A grim doubt crosses my mind that Herr C. may be playing cat and mouse with me and be somehow behind all this.