The Map

by T. S. Learner

  ‘Jimmy? Jimmy van Peters?’ The battered face was now visible, aged almost beyond recognition, but August recalled the way Jimmy had always held his head, bent slightly to the side as if he were regarding the world at a certain ironic distance, the hang-dog bloodshot blue eyes that revealed none of the prowess he’d show on the battlefield or the cold precision with which he always handled a bayonet. And despite the new fragility to the heavily lined face, August knew those heavy black eyebrows and those eyes; of Irish and Russian heritage, the ex-wharfie and consummate soldier had a distinctive virility still evident in his large but shrunken frame.

  ‘Let me in, Gus, it’s fucking cold out here and we’re probably being watched,’ Jimmy croaked, then, as August watched in amazement, swept past him into the house. After checking the road for any unwanted observers, August followed.

  Cecily stared across at the musician: the old leather coat, the mud-encrusted boots and the battered trilby, boasting a ledge of melting snow, pushed down hard onto Jimmy’s cauliflower ears, the tattooed scorpion on the top of the hand. Jimmy gawked back, a glint of bald-faced sexual appreciation beetling up under his heavy eyebrows. While August stood by the door, paralysed by the shock of seeing two of his carefully compartmentalised worlds collide once again that morning.

  ‘Gus didn’t tell me he had company.’ Jimmy’s voice was a smoky blast from another era. He held out a gaunt hand large enough to span Cecily’s entire waist. She looked down at his grimy palm in open disdain then swung around to August.

  ‘Gus?’ she repeated, as if by sounding out the moniker Jimmy had exposed a whole other persona of August’s even more alien to the one she knew he kept hidden from her.

  ‘Jimmy van Peters, wonderful to meet you too,’ the musician replied, sarcastically. He placed his guitar case against the wall then threw his trilby on the couch to collapse onto August’s favourite armchair with his soaking wet coat still on, his gaze falling on the low coffee table upon which a couple of half-empty glasses sat from the night before.

  ‘Jesus, is that whisky?’ he asked August. Ignoring him, August swung around to Cecily.

  ‘Jimmy’s an old friend from Spain, we were comrades together.’ But she was now halfway across the room.

  ‘How nice for you.’ She started to turn the door handle. Indifferent to the drama unfurling before him, Jimmy lifted one of the glasses and sniffed it.

  ‘Hallelujah, it is too,’ he observed.

  ‘Don’t go.’ August reached out to touch Cecily but found he couldn’t quite bring himself to stop her. They both watched his hand hover then drop back to his side.

  ‘You see, I have to,’ she concluded, quietly, then left August staring at the door closing behind her.

  Over in the kitchenette above the sink the gas heater gave out another groan. For the second time that morning August found himself unable to move.

  ‘Great legs, pity about the personality,’ Jimmy cracked from the couch, whisky glass in hand. August burst back into the moment, his head splitting.

  ‘Jimmy, that’s my fiancée.’

  ‘Was your fiancée, right?’

  August wrapped the dressing gown tighter then sat opposite Jimmy. He reached for the packet of Lucky Strikes and broke open a box.

  ‘Right. You want one? Cecily just brought them back from Washington. She was on a trip with her father. I thought she was due back tomorrow. Have one, they’re like gold around here.’

  Jimmy shook his head. ‘Would love to, but the lungs have gone.’ He broke into a broad grin, revealing a row of badly neglected teeth. ‘Gus, I cannot tell you how great it is to see some things never change.’

  ‘You’re wrong. Everything has changed and how the hell are you on my doorstep, Jimmy? I haven’t seen you since —’

  ‘Paris, just before the occupation. I was prettier then.’

  ‘Prettier? You were gorgeous.’ August exhaled, trying to calm his pounding heart.

  Jimmy chuckled. ‘Yeah, well, the clock turns … Your fiancée? That really was something.’

  ‘One day, Jimmy, one day I’ll figure out the difference between love and need.’

  ‘Either way you’re screwed, good and proper.’ Jimmy held up the used glass. ‘Good whisky, little corked but it survived the night, which is more than you did, judging by the look of you.’ He pointed to the lipstick smudge along the rim of the glass. It was red, Cecily’s lipstick had been pink. ‘The other woman, right?’

  August didn’t bother answering, but that was enough for Jimmy who broke into another chuckle. He filled the glass up from the whisky bottle and toasted August.

  ‘To my comrade – cocksman supremo.’

  ‘I’m not proud of it. Say, are you still playing at that dive in the Latin Quarter?’

  ‘I was, until a month ago. Now the fingers tremble too much to get a note out.’

  ‘That’s a real shame, you were one of the best jazz guitarists around.’

  Outside there was the sound of a car passing, then the ring of a bicycle bell. Startled, the musician jumped, his face tightening as he went to the window.

  ‘Jimmy?’ August asked. He’d never seen him so jittery, not even under fire.

  ‘Ever since I got off the ferry in Dover I’ve had this feeling.’ Fear was pinching his voice. ‘I left Paris in the middle of the night, I was sure I lost them.’ He pulled off his scarf and threw it onto the chair, revealing the vivid purple bruise around his neck. He caught August staring at it. ‘An assassin in the catacombs, some crazy chick, left me with a souvenir.’ He reached into his pocket and showed August the pendant. ‘The kind of fuck-up voodoo you’re familiar with. No one knows I’m in England, no one, right? Except your ex-fiancée.’

  ‘Cecily’s trustworthy. Don’t worry, you’re safe here. No one’s interested in me unless it’s a jilted girlfriend or a debt collector. Nowadays I’m just an unemployed academic and a philanderer. Amen to that.’ August poured himself a whisky.

  ‘You sure there’s not a watcher out there?’

  ‘They stand out like dogs’ balls: black Wolseley car, raincoat and cheap hat. Oh, and they hate working Sundays.’

  Jimmy pulled the curtains shut. ‘No one’s safe, least of all you and me. Once a Commie, always a Commie, you think government forgets? They keep tags, buddy. The Department is watching me, that’s for sure. I’m going to have to move in the next day or so, else …’

  ‘Else what, Jimmy?’

  ‘Else they are going to kill me.’ Jimmy suddenly looked terrible, his skin was greyish and his hands trembled. He moved back to the couch. ‘Not that my death matters. I’m dying anyway, Gus, cirrhosis of the liver, I have about six months, five if I finish this glass. But I want those five months.’

  ‘Jesus, I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘I figured I had it coming, I mean how many times have I thumbed my nose at La Muerte. Life’s a debt, my friend – one day he’s gonna come around to collect. Good news is there’s going to be a hell of lot of soldados waiting on the other side. But I guess that’s why I’m here.’

  He carefully pulled the guitar out of the case, then held it across his knees and, to August’s amazement, began unscrewing the front. Once he’d lifted it off a small parcel taped to the inside of the instrument became visible. He pulled the parcel out of the guitar and placed it reverently into August’s hands.

  ‘I brought you something I want you to take back to Spain for me.’

  It was a book, a very old book. The cover was aged vellum, laced with fine lines, the title in Latin written in delicate flourishes, on one corner a brown-coloured stain that had soaked through, which August immediately recognised as blood, old blood, ancient even. But yet more compelling, the leaves of hand-made parchment pressed between the thick covers seemed to whisper to him as he ran his fingers down the hand-cut edges. They sang of uniqueness, of priceless antiquity.

  He paused, his fingers touching the vellum lightly as he struggled to contain a wave of excitement that almo
st gave him vertigo. He couldn’t quite believe his eyes.

  Embossed into the centre of the cover was a symbol. August glanced at it, then looked at it more closely. At first he’d assumed it was a version of the German swastika. It certainly was the same shape, and the post-war black market was flooded with valuable artefacts and antiques originally ‘appropriated’ then stamped by the Nazi regime. But on closer inspection he recognised the symbol from an entirely different era. It was in the shape of the swastika but the four arms seemingly rotating anti-clockwise were formed of petals. A little like the ancient Chinese Yin-Yang symbol, only instead of the universe being divided into two spiritual realms, this was divided into four spiritual realms – at least that’s what August remembered reading somewhere.

  Last time he’d seen the symbol had been in 1938 in the Pyrenees fleeing Franco’s troops. It had been painted defiantly on the side of an old Basque farmhouse: the Lauburu, the symbol of the Basque people, evoking the old pagan worship of both the moon and the mountain Goddess Mari, a magical symbol to protect and bless.

  But this depiction was different. In the centre of the symbol was the drawing of an eye. He looked up at Jimmy.

  ‘This is extraordinary.’

  ‘I know and you’re exactly the man to take it back to Spain, back to the ancient family it belongs to.’

  Jimmy held the glass up to the flame, his face rapt, the whisky glowing amber in the light. ‘As you know it was chaos during the retreat back in March ’38. Like most of us, my name was on a CIA list, and I knew if I wanted to stay fighting Der Führer, I might have to sacrifice a few political ideals to join the main game.’

  ‘You changed your identity?’

  ‘I smuggled myself into France and hung low until 1940. When Germany invaded France I hitched a boat back to the US and enlisted immediately. By the time Pearl Harbor happened, I’d already convinced them that with my trilingual abilities, experience in guerrilla warfare and knowledge of Western Europe, I might prove useful in Wild Bill Donovan’s outfit.’

  ‘You got a posting with the Office of Strategic Services?’ August had trouble keeping the disbelief out of his voice.

  ‘Like I say, I was good at reinvention and back then they were desperate for intelligent men who could fight and were bilingual, in my case trilingual. Before I knew it I was down in Area F training with the rest of the rookies. Crazy to think I was working for what was to become the CIA, but back then the bastards believed me and I had a great war, the best, August, right up until ’45. Then things went bad after liberation day. How’s that for irony?’ Jimmy pushed his nose into the glass full of whisky and inhaled deeply. ‘Christ, it might just be enough to smell the damn thing. Sweeter than a woman’s pussy.’

  ‘Pussy won’t kill you.’

  ‘Really? I seem to recall it nearly killed you a few times.’

  ‘Wish I could say those days are over,’ August deadpanned. Jimmy broke into laughter that ended in a bout of coughing.

  ‘Boy, have I missed you.’

  ‘Then why did you disappear, Jimmy? We thought you were dead.’

  ‘I had to disappear. They’d have killed me if they’d found me.’

  August looked up from his glass. The Jimmy he knew had never been given to paranoia.

  ‘Who are they?’ he asked, softly.

  The musician got up and went to the window, this time pulling the curtains across just enough to see out unnoticed. August watched, recognising the tension in the musician’s body, the muscle memory of anticipated violence, his whole frame taut with observation. After a tense moment Jimmy turned back to August.

  ‘You’ve got to take the book back. I can’t go back to Spain, not after all I lost there.’ His voice was urgent and low, the desperation uncharacteristic for him, and shocking to August.

  ‘I can’t, Jimmy. It’s not the danger, it’s the memories. It would be like going back into the labyrinth, only this time I wouldn’t expect to find my way out.’ It was the most honest thing August had said in months, and, to his secret dismay, he knew it. Jimmy studied his face.

  ‘Don’t try and kid yourself, Gus, that war still burns inside of you and the only way you’re going to save yourself is if you walk right back into those flames and let them consume everything – the dying men you held in your arms, the exploding skies, the screaming women – until it all turns to ashes and then you walk out the other side. I’m dying, I’ll never get that chance. I’m giving you a gift. It’s up to you whether you take it or not.’

  August turned away, unable to bear Jimmy’s scrutiny any longer. Can’t you see? I’m not Joe Iron any more, I’m a patchwork puppet made up of fragments of memory – a pretender trying to live a normal life. God help me. ‘Listen,’ August finally told him. ‘I’ve stopped fooling myself about changing the world, knowing I might have educated a few people is enough.’

  Jimmy stared at him. ‘Maybe you’re right.’ The musician swung around, wildly gesturing at the piles of books lined up against the wall. ‘Maybe I should just start believing in all this crap, because I’m telling you there’s cold comfort in being a dying atheist.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to believe in God. I just follow belief back to its beginnings, like making a map. A map of why people believe and what they chose to believe in. There’s a whole connection that runs up through the pagan rites of southern Europe straight into Dionysian rituals of first-century Greece. Mountain god, Pan, Satan, everything is connected to everything, nothing we do is without reason even if we don’t know it.’ By the time he was finished August was aware of how his own passion always carried him away, even when he was conscious of the indifference of his audience. Jimmy, picking up August’s chagrin, broke into a grin, his battered face puckering up around the smile.

  ‘Hell, you just reminded me of that time at Jarama when we were packing to move the front and you went missing. Found you later down some dried riverbed, clutching a weed like it was gold. Daddy-o, that was crazy.’

  ‘Angel’s Trumpet – a hallucinogen used in witches’ rites.’

  ‘And that time you skipped off in Córdoba, looking for a library that used to house those Jewish kabbalists, while the rest of us were at the whorehouse? You were like a kid in a candy store, reeling in all that history. The New World hungry for the Old. That’s exactly why you’re the right guy for this job.’ Jimmy moved over to the fireplace and picked up the framed photograph of the group of International Brigadiers. ‘I remember this.’

  ‘Remember? You took the photo.’

  ‘Ernest fucking Hemingway, what a phoney. Always kept his distance from the frontline.’

  ‘He was okay.’

  ‘Christ, you all look so green.’

  ‘We were young, you were the grand old man at thirty-eight.’ August took another swig of whisky. ‘And what do you know, I’m that age now.’

  ‘Happens to the best of us.’ Holding the photograph up, Jimmy pointed to the young unshaven man standing with his arm loosely thrown over August’s shoulder. ‘That’s Charlie, ain’t it?’

  August got up and took the photograph from him and placed it carefully back in the exact position that it was in before.

  ‘You know it is,’ he said, already battling that old wave of emotion.

  ‘So what really happened at Belchite? Charlie cracked, right?’

  ‘I don’t think about it, ever.’

  ‘But you took over command —’

  ‘I said I don’t think about it.’

  ‘And you’re lying.’ For a moment the two men stood close to blows, heads lowered, shoulders hunched up. A lorry passed outside and there was another thud of thawing snow. What the hell have I become, that I can hit a dying man? August caught his own clenched fists before they flew in an instinct of their own. In the same instant Jimmy’s shoulders rolled forward, popping the tension between them like a balloon. August ducked but Jimmy was merely reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘There are things I can’t
remember, it’s like my brain don’t allow me,’ August confessed, dropping his gaze.

  ‘If you go back to Spain, Charlie’s ghost will be waiting for you to make peace with him. Go back for him.’

  August pulled away. ‘Somebody had to take charge. I was carrying out orders Charlie couldn’t.’ The memory rose up like bile, the misery of that dawn, the prisoners – four captured fascist soldiers and their officer, pale and drawn in his tailored uniform, the youngest not even twenty. August asking for the hundredth time whether they would consider capitulating, only to have the leader spit at his feet. His own doubts gathering like fear at the pit of his stomach. Someone’s prayer hanging – filigree on the air. Charlie’s stricken face as the men waited for his order. Then the ricochet of August’s own shouted command high above all that he believed. Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not. The report of the firing squad, the thud of bodies hitting the dusty ground, the gun smoke drifting across the square.

  ‘Hey buddy, we’ve all stepped over the line.’ Jimmy’s gravelly voice pulled him back into the present. ‘That’s what marks us, sets us apart from ordinary men.’

  ‘I am ordinary.’

  ‘No, no, you’re not.’ Jimmy reached across and helped himself to one of August’s cigarettes then lit up. He threw himself back into the old leather chair then smoking, stared out into the room, memory washing across his face like light.

  ‘At the end of the war, in ’45, I found myself in an OSS squad headed up by an operative called Damien Tyson. There were six of us – all officers with extensive clandestine experience in and out of the field. All of us had experience with hand-to-hand combat, guerrilla tactics and liaising with local resistance. But no one except me had fought in Spain. Apart from Tyson, the other five had all seen service in the Pacific theatre – two of them had been on the ground in Papua New Guinea.

  ‘We’d been called together for a black op set up to arm and train the remnants of Basque freedom fighters hiding out in the hills of Pais Vasco. As you know Roosevelt was worried that fascism might rise again in Europe and Franco, being one of the only fascist dictatorships left standing, was suspect. Roosevelt hadn’t trusted him, Churchill was ambivalent and Stalin positively hated the guy. So Operation Lizard had been born under the dictate of President goddamn Roosevelt, God bless FDR. He died before we were issued our orders.’ Jimmy shifted restlessly in the armchair. ‘They came in September and we were in the mountains by October. And Gus, the unit of Basque fighters we had been sent to train up and rearm was headed up by none the less than La Leona herself.’