The Fifth Column

by James Garcia Woods

  He looked down at Cindy. She did not seem to have moved even a fraction of an inch since the last time he’d seen her.

  “Has there been any change?” he asked in a whisper.

  “No, but she looks very peaceful,” Concha Prieto said, avoiding his eyes.

  That was how they spoke of the dead, Paco told himself.

  “It’s hopeless, isn’t it?” he asked.

  And the moment the words were out of his mouth, he remembered that the doctor had told him comatose patients were sometimes aware of what was going on around them.

  “I ... I didn’t mean ...” he stammered. “Where there’s life, there’s always hope, isn’t there?”

  “Yes, whatever happens, we must never give up hope,” Asunción Munoz said somberly.

  Paco looked down at Cindy’s pale face again.

  Could she hear him? Had any of his words penetrated a mind which no longer had the power to order her limbs to move – or even her eyes to open?

  “Would you give us a few moments alone, please?” he asked the two women.

  Asunción and Concha nodded, and moved away from the bed. Paco knelt down and took Cindy’s hand in his.

  Why did it feel so lifeless and cold? he wondered anguishedly.

  Was it because she’d already given up the struggle?

  “Don’t die, Cindy,” he pleaded. “I know what I said earlier about it being hopeless, but that wasn’t really me talking at all. Those were nothing but the words of a weak fool who had forgotten what a fighter you are. You can pull through if you really want to.”

  He studied her eyelids for even the slightest flicker which might show that she’d heard him, but there was none.

  “I’m not asking for anything for myself,” he continued. “If you want to leave me for someone else once you’re back to normal – if you want a new life in which I have no part to play – that’s fine. Just don’t die.”

  There was still no reaction, and despite what the doctor said, he could not bring himself to believe that any of his words had got through to her. Wherever Cindy was – whatever thoughts and suspicions lay somewhere in her poor injured brain – there was simply no way she could be reached.

  He felt like a man condemned to be shot at dawn, and who watches the sun slowly rising and begs it not to, even though he knows he is only wasting some of what little breath he has got left to him.

  His legs felt as heavy as lead as he had to force himself to his feet. Asunción Munoz was standing by the door, waiting to let him out onto the street, but there was no sign of her niece.

  “Has Señorita Prieto gone home?” he asked, more to have something to say than because he was interested in the answer.

  Asunción Munoz shook her head.

  “Concha’s not feeling very well, so she’s just stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. But she’ll be back – don’t worry about that. We’ll look after your novia as if she were one of our own.”

  “And if there’s any change, you’ll tell me about it right away – even if it’s the middle of the night and you have to wake me up?”

  “Of course I will,” Asunción Munoz assured him – but from the expression on her face she appeared to think it unlikely that his night’s sleep would need to be interrupted.

  A man who has just seen the woman he loves on the verge of death should not go back to his empty bed without a drink inside him. Paco thought as he entered the bar to which Greg Cummings had taken him to the night before.

  As on the previous evening, there were a number of brigadistas sitting at the tables, but it was the young Spaniard at the bar who immediately caught Paco’s attention. Standing so close to a group of older men, Luis Prieto at first gave the impression of a child pretending to be an adult. But there was nothing childlike about the work-hardened muscles which bulged from under his overalls, nor did the troubled expression on his face suggest he still viewed the world through a child’s optimistic eyes.

  Paco walked over to the counter.

  “You’ve nearly finished your wine,” he said, glancing down at the young peasant’s glass. “Can I buy you another one?”

  “I don’t accept drinks from policemen who go around poking their noses in where they’re not wanted,” Luis Prieto said aggressively.

  Then, suddenly, the fire left his eyes, and was replaced by a look of pity which Paco was growing all too familiar with.

  “I’m ... I’m sorry,” the young man stuttered. “I forgot for a moment that you ... that your novia ... How ... how is she?”

  “It’s too early to say for sure how it will turn out, but it was good of you to ask,” Paco said kindly.

  “I ... I didn’t mean ... I don’t believe in kicking a man when he’s down,” Luis Prieto continued, still confused and embarrassed. “I ... Yes, thank you, I’ll have another glass of wine.”

  Paco ordered a wine for Luis, and a brandy for himself.

  “Do you know any of the other brigadistas – apart from Samuel Johnson?” the ex-policeman said, once the drinks had been served.

  “What makes you ask that?” Luis Prieto replied, suspicion rapidly replacing embarrassment.

  “No real reason,” Paco said, telling a policeman’s lie. “I was just wondering whether you disliked yanquis in general, or whether it was Sam Johnson in particular that you couldn’t stomach.”

  “I used to like Sam,” Luis Prieto muttered. “I admired him. But that was before ...”

  “Before what?”

  “Just before.”

  “So did you meet any of the other brigadistas?” Paco asked, returning to his original question.

  “Yes, Sam brought some of them to our house. He thought it was important that the villagers and the brigadistas should get to know one another.”

  “Why?”

  “He said that was the only way we would really learn that wherever we were from, whatever the color of our skin, and no matter how rich or poor we were, we were all united in the fight for justice and humanity.”

  That sounded very like the Sam Johnson he was building up a picture of, Paco thought.

  “Which brigadistas did he bring to your house?” he asked.

  Luis Prieto looked around the bar.

  “For a start, they came quite often,” he said, pointing towards a table where Bill Turner, Sean O'Brien and Nat Johnson, the three men who had been Samuel Johnson’s closest friends, were sitting.

  “Anybody else?”

  “There was a small, stocky man. I think he’s Jewish.”

  “Mannie Lowenstein?”

  “Yes, that’s his name.”

  “Any others?”

  “A very big man, with tattoos on his arms. He was called Donald-something-or-other. And a man with pale red hair called Greg Cummings. He speaks very good Spanish. When he came to the house, he would translate what the others had said for us.”

  “But he didn’t always come with the rest?”

  “No. He was only there two or three times.”

  “And the other times? Did you still try to talk, even though you didn’t have a translator?”

  “Yes. Sam said it would be difficult, since they spoke little Spanish and we spoke no English, but that we must make the effort. So we spoke with our hands, and with the help of the dictionary, and we did somehow manage to understand each other a little.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Many things,” Luis Prieto said, evasively.

  “Such as?”

  “The war. Farming. Our families.”

  “Did you ever talk to any of them about the way the Negroes are treated in the United States?”

  The young peasant fixed his eyes on the far corner of the room.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Yet you seem to know something about it.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The last time we met, you told me that Negroes who stepped out of line were lynched, and that you thought it was a good idea.”
r />   “I was upset. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Not only that, but I got the impression that whoever told you about it thought that it was a good idea, as well.”

  “You’re wrong!” Luis Prieto protested.

  “Am I?” Paco asked. “Or could it be that I’m right – and you’re ashamed to admit it?”

  Luis Prieto made no answer, but continued to stare at the corner.

  “Look at me,” Paco said.

  “Why should I?”

  “Because that is what men do. We are not dogs who look away. When we talk to one another, it is done face to face.”

  Luis Prieto reluctantly turned towards him.

  Paco waited until their eyes were locked, then said, “Did any of the brigadistas ever mention an organization called the Ku Klux Klan to you?”

  Luis Prieto blinked, then picked up his glass and knocked back the remains of his wine.

  “I have to go home now,” he said.

  “You have heard that name before, haven’t you?” Paco persisted.

  “My father will be waiting for me. He needs help to get up to his bed,” Luis Prieto said.

  And before Paco could press him any further, the young man had turned and fled the bar.

  A man in his position was entitled to one brandy, but two would have been giving in to weakness, and when he had finished the glass he had bought to keep Luis Prieto company, Paco paid his bill and left the bar.

  The streets were even quieter than they had been earlier, for though peasants liked to drink, they were also early risers.

  Paco made his way up the steep street towards the Plaza Mayor. He did not hurry, because there was nothing to hurry for. All that awaited him in his lonely room was a bed which had seemed barely big enough for Cindy and himself, but would be a vast empty ocean without her.

  He thought of the Prieto family – the father, the son and the daughter – and the different ways in which they had chosen to react to Samuel Johnson’s murder.

  He wondered if Greg Cummings’ theory could be more than a theory – if a hateful yanqui racist organization really had managed to infiltrate the International Brigade with the sole purpose of destroying it. If it had – and if it succeeded – then it would also be helping to destroy the Spain that he long ago accepted he would probably eventually give his own life for.

  More thoughts flashed through his mind in quick succession as he climbed the cobbled street.

  Had Ted Donaldson really been as drunk as he claimed to have been on the night of the murder?

  What possible reason could Mannie Lowenstein have had for staying in the empty barracks instead of celebrating the fiestas with all his comrades?

  And was Commissar James Clay telling the truth when he said that he had no motive for killing Samuel Johnson?

  Paco had almost drawn level with Dolores McBride’s house, and he could see that a light was still burning on the upper floor, in what was probably her bedroom. The investigation had become more and more complicated as the day had progressed, and he felt a sudden strong temptation to knock on her front door and tell her that he wished to discuss it with her, as he would once have discussed it with Cindy.

  But he knew that whatever he tried to persuade himself now, the complexities of the investigation would not be the real reason for his call.

  If he did knock on her door, and she answered dressed only in her trench coat – as he was sure she would – then all thoughts of the murder would melt away immediately and he would seek nothing more than a brief escape from his misery which, even beforehand, he could only think of as cowardly.

  He had carried on walking as he had wrestled with himself, and now that his feet had taken him beyond Dolores McBride’s front door, he felt his desires slowly begin to ebb away. He stopped to light a Celtas, confident that danger was past.

  Mankind was rarely given the choice of whether to continue existing or not, he thought. One man might decide to take another’s life, a second might choose to end his own, but for most of humanity, death came when it – and it alone – was ready. He wished that were not so. He wished that he could be given the power over life and death for just one moment, so that if someone really had to die, he could decree that it would not be Cindy but himself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The watery morning sun hung uncertainly in the sky, as if it had only climbed so far through a tremendous effort, and now was wondering whether it could summon up the strength to go any farther.

  Looking at it shining weakly through the cafeteria window, Paco knew just how the sun felt. A man should not have to begin an important round of interrogations after a night like the one he’d been through.

  It had been a night in which he had prayed for sleep to come and numb his conscious mind, only to discover, when he did finally drift off, that his unconscious had been occupied by a malevolent demon bent on destroying what was left of his sanity.

  Cindy had died a hundred times in his dreams. Each time her death had been more terrible than the last – and each time the demon had pointed the finger of guilt more surely in his direction. He had awoken with a blinding headache and a belief that even the simplest of tasks was beyond him. Yet he had eventually forced himself to climb out of bed because, like the sun, he was caught up in an inevitable process which he had no choice but to see through to the end.

  He glanced around the cafeteria table at the three people who were waiting for him to speak. Dolores McBride sat at his elbow, her dark eyes alive with energy and sensuality. Next to her was Felipe, already enthusiastically attacking the plate of churros which lay in front of him. And directly opposite Paco was Mannie Lowenstein, sipping, almost birdlike, from his cup of coffee.

  “Shall we begin?” Paco asked.

  Even without waiting to be asked a question, Lowenstein started to talk, and as he spoke a slow smile began to play on his lips.

  “He says that he’s been interrogated by the police more times than he cares to remember,” Dolores translated. “They’ve used rubber hoses and sleep deprivation, but they’ve never been so brutal as to offer him a cup of coffee before.”

  Paco forced a smile to his face. Suspects often made jokes, he reminded himself. They did it to convince their interrogators – and perhaps themselves – that they were not intimidated by their predicament. Or else they did it in an attempt to create a bond of friendship with the man on the other side of the table – on the other side of the fence!

  But Paco did not think Mannie Lowenstein had made his joke for either of those reasons. The brigadista did not seem to be intimidated, nor eager that the others should like him. There appeared to be only one reason he had made his comment – and that was that he found his situation genuinely amusing.

  “Ask Señor Lowenstein to tell us about himself,” Paco said.

  Dolores translated his words, then listened to his reply.

  “He says that’s a pretty tall order," she said when he'd finished. “He doesn’t see himself as a particularly complicated man, but, even so, there is a great deal he could say. He suggests it would save us all a lot of time if you were to be more specific – if you were to spell out exactly what it is you want to know.”

  I want to know what makes people like him tick, Paco thought. I want to know what made him leave his home and family to come to a foreign country at war with itself – a country where, chances are, he’ll be killed.

  “Ask him why he joined the Communist Party in the first place,” he said, using the question as a key to open doors to other areas, but aware that he was probably also opening the floodgates to a stream of ideological jargon and slogans.

  “My parents both died in the big influenza epidemic of 1912, and I was brought up in the Brooklyn Jewish Orphans’ Asylum,” Mannie Lowenstein said. “There are two basic lessons you quickly learn in an orphanage – at least there were in that particular institution. Would you like to know what they are?”

  Lowenstein’s outburst in the council chamber had
been .misleading. The brigadista was not the volatile and nervous man that he had appeared then. Quite the contrary, Paco decided – he was one of the coolest and most self-contained men he had ever met.

  “What were the lessons you learned in the orphanage?” Paco asked, since this appeared to be what was expected of him.

  “The first was impressed on us by the people who ran the orphanage – and it was to avoid self-pity,” Lowenstein told him. “Sure, we’d lost our parents. But at least we ate well. At least we had decent clothes on our backs. And that made us luckier than a hell of a lot of other people.”

  “And the second lesson?”

  “That one we weren’t taught. It was just something we kind of picked up from the other kids. It was both the simplest and possibly the most fundamental lesson I’ll ever learn. And it was this. We either all hang together or pretty damn soon we’ll be hanging separately.”

  “So you became a member of the Communist Party as soon as you left the orphanage, did you?”

  Lowenstein smiled. “No, it was a much longer spiritual journey than that. The orphanage got me a job in a clothing company. I was just a go-fer at first, but I took some classes in night school and soon became the chief clerk. From the start, I was involved in charity work – and there was plenty of that to do once the Depression had started to bite – but I voted on a straight Democratic ticket, because I believed that the Democrats were for the working man. It was the evictions which taught me how wrong I’d been, and got me involved with the Communist Party.”

  “The evictions?” Paco repeated. “What were they?”

  There were thousands – perhaps hundreds of thousands – of families living in rented apartments in New York City in the late twenties. The accommodation was often mean and cramped, but at least it sheltered them from the elements – and as long as they had that basic protection, there was room for hoping for something better in the future. The Wall Street Crash destroyed that hope. Men lost their jobs, and without their jobs they could no longer pay the rent. The landlords called the sheriff’s department, and the sheriff had no alternative but to throw the defaulters out onto the street.