There is little left of this town that was once a holiday haven for the rich of Europe. But it is no different from most other villages that have been destroyed in this three-year war, the worst civil strife since the American Civil War.
This morning, vultures have replaced Nazi bombers in the skies above, circling the devastated town in search of a feast.
Looking in horror at this fratricidal holocaust, I am reminded of a time in Africa when I saw a gut-shot hyena, nature's most efficient scavenger, eating its own insides.
In this war, which has pitted brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor, church against state, Spain, too, is devouring itself while its German and Italian "friends" sit on the sidelines crying "Olé!"
They have provided the most modern and efficient machines of death to Franco. What a cynical gesture—turning Spain into their private testing ground and using Spanish blood for their grisly experiments. The weapons perfected here will be the weapons used in the next world war. . . .
He put down the pencil and pinched his eyes.
"Oh, the hell with it," he said, "just send it on, Pablo."
"Si Señor, " the operator said.
Rudman went back outside. A Loyalist soldier was sitting on a pile of bricks, digging beans out of a can with his bayonet which he used as a fork. He was thin as a palm leaf, his pale eyes buried deep in black sockets. He wore a rag of a white shirt and torn cord pants and had a bandolier around his shoulder. His toes were sticking through the end of his boots. His rifle, an old Mannlicher, was leaning on the bricks near his leg.
"Americano?" Rudman asked.
"Yeah. You too?" the soldier answered.
"Yep. Join you?"
"Sure, pull up a brick and sit down."
Rudman sat down and took a swig of water from his canteen.
"What's your name?"
"What's the dif? I'm just a soldier." His voice was hoarse from the dust that drifted up from the ruins.
"Are you a Communist?" Rudman asked.
"Hell, no. I just hate these Fascist bastards. You don't stop them here, they'll be in Coney Island next. Least that's what I thought when I came over here."
"You don't think so anymore?"
"Hell, I don't know what I think. Y'know, I never seen a dead body before I came over here? Some education."
"Sorry you came now?"
The soldier laughed. "Shit, is anybody ever glad they came? It's something you think you ought t'do. You can't complain when it doesn't go right, can you?"
"Where you from?"
"Boston. Boston, Mass. Land of liberty. You ain't in the Brigade, are you?"
"No, I'm a correspondent."
"No kiddin'? For who?"
"New York Times."
"Hey. You're a big shot, huh?"
"There aren't any big shots here."
"Well, that's a fact," he said. "That's a fact for damn sure."
"How long you been over here?"
"I was in on it almost from the beginning," the soldier said in his hoarse voice. "November 1935, I think it was. Long Goddamn time. I guess I seen it all. I was at Tortosa the day the bastards wiped out the Lincoln Brigade. Only a dozen of us got out. Six of us drowned trying to swim the Ebro rather than surrender. Christ, what a day that was. The tanks just chewed us to bits. That's when I knew it was all over. This ragtag army can't hold out much longer. Thing is, we don't know how to stop. I guess we'll just keep fightin' until we're all dead."
"Why don't you just quit? Walk away from it?"
"Where'm I gonna go?" the soldier answered, staring at Rudman with haunted eyes. "Can't go home. The U.S. says we broke the law coming over here to fight. Some kind of neutrality act or something." He stared out at the harbor. A British ship languished in the cluttered port. "Don't want to rot in some Spanish dungeon. May as well keep killing the bastards until they get me." He looked back at Rudman. "Where you from?"
"Ohio."
"That a fact. Never knew anybody before from Ohio. Been home recently?"
Rudman stared out at the British ship for a long time before he answered. "I haven't been to the States since 1933."
"Jesus! Why?"
"Work. Pretty sorry excuse, actually."
"How long you been in Spain?"
"Off and on since the beginning. Occasionally I go back up to Germany and do something."
"You're here for the finish, ain't that it?"
"I hope the hell not."
"But you know it's true. Italian tanks, German dive bombers . . . you look back on it, we never had a chance." He stopped and changed the subject.
"Don't you miss it? The States, I mean?"
"Sure."
"Don't you miss your friends?"
"I only have one friend in America," Rudman said. "Hell, I don't even know where he is. Been . . . almost four years since we talked."
"Don't ever write, huh?"
"Nah. He's not much for writing."
"So when are you going back?"
"When the wars are over."
"Wars?"
"You don't think it's going to stop here, do you? Hell, this is just the warmup. This is the prelims, soldier."
"You got a pretty dismal outlook."
"Yeah, I suppose so." Rudman laughed. "My job's dismal."
"Ain't that the truth . . ." The soldier stopped suddenly and looked up, his eyes narrowing, head cocked to one side.
"Hear something?" Rudman asked, shielding his eyes with his hand and scanning the sky.
"Thought I did. Sure has been quiet all . . ."
He stopped. Then Rudman heard it. The distinctive rumble of the bombers, their engines roaring in unison.
"Christ, what's left to bomb?" the soldier asked bitterly.
"Maybe they'll pass over. Maybe they're headed someplace else."
"Not a chance. Better get to the shelter, what's left of it."
They stood up and started to walk through the broken bricks and rubble of buildings, picking their way around boards with rusty nails sticking out of them, toward the shelter two blocks away. The roar of the planes became deafening. They looked up and saw half a dozen German Junkers peeling out of formation, engines screaming as they dove toward the ground.
"Jesus, it's the fuckin' Junkers! Let's go!" the soldier yelled and they started to run. The engines screeched as the dive bombers dove toward the earth, then howled almost painfully as they pulled out. Then came the most chilling sound of all, a sound both of them knew well, a piercing scream that got higher as the missiles got closer to the ground. The earth shook as the bombs began to hit, stitching a great trench through the city's debris. The screams got louder. They ran harder. Rudman could see the entrance to the shelter but they were pulling the door shut.
"Wait a minute!" he yelled. "Wait for . . ."
But his plea was lost by the screaming bombs. The screams got higher and higher and louder and louder. . . .
"La-d-e-e-e-s and gent-ul-men, your attention pu-lease. This is the main event of the evening. Fifteen rounds of boxing for the heavyweight cham-peen-ship of the world. In this corner, wearing black trunks and weighing two hundred twenty-one pounds, the U-lan of the Rhine, from Berlin, Germany, the challenger, M-a-a-x Schmeling!"
There was a chorus of boos and catcalls from all over Yankee Stadium as the brutish, glowering, unshaven fighter stood up. He sneered at the insults from the audience.
"He looks like a Nazi," Beerbohm said.
"He's got a head like a rock," Keegan answered. "But Joe's got the hammer to crack it."
He looked around. There were almost a hundred thousand people in the special stands built especially for this grudge fight between the pride of the Aryan race and the Negro from Detroit. It was the largest crowd ever to see a prizefight.
The mob had long since peeled off jackets and ties. Everyone was sweating in their shirtsleeves but nobody cared. This was a fight to sweat for.
"And in this corner, at two hundred twelve pounds, wearing white trun
ks, the Brown Bomber from Dee-troit, Michigan, heavyweight champeen of the world . . . Joe Louis!"
The crowd went berserk and Beerbohm and Keegan were with them. Everyone was on their feet as the lean American strode loosely to the center of the ring, one arm raised. They were still screaming as the tuxedoed referee called the fighters to the middle and gave them their instructions.
There was electricity in the air. Two years earlier at the Olympics in Germany, Hitler had insulted America's running pride, Jesse Owens, by refusing to attend Owens's gold medal ceremony because he was an "American Nee-gro." That same summer, Schmeling and Louis had met for the first time. In the twelfth round, Schmeling had connected with a crushing right and Louis had taken the count, the only time he'd ever been knocked out.
Now, two years later, it was get-even time and the crowd knew it. Grudge fight? Hell, thought Keegan, this is the grudge fight of all times. This is bigger than David and Goliath.
Louis looked great. Louis looked ready. Louis had death in his eyes.
"It won't go five rounds," Keegan said.
"I don't know, kid. Schmeling's no pork chop."
"You want to talk or bet?" Keegan said from their second-row seats, squinting up at the two fighters.
"Name your poison."
"I got twenty says Schmeling'll answer the bell at the sixth."
"Let's see it," Keegan said, peeling off a twenty. Beerbohm took out two tens. Keegan snatched them out of his hand, wrapped them in his twenty and tucked them in his shirt pocket.
"How come you hold the money?" Beerbohm asked with mock suspicion.
"Because I'm rich, Ned. I'm not going to abscond with a measly forty bucks. On the other hand you are, how can I put it . . . ?"
"Poor," Beerbohm said.
"Yeah," said Keegan with a nod. "Poor's good. That covers it." They both laughed. Keegan was feeling good tonight for a change. . . .
A year after Keegan returned, his Uncle Harry had died suddenly of a heart attack, willing him the Killarney Rose. Dispirited, Keegan spent almost a year focusing his energies on renovating the top floor of the building, turning it into his private luxury apartment. Jenny Gould remained paramount in his mind. It was an open wound that would not heal. It was with him when he awoke in the morning and it stayed with him until sleep temporarily eased the ache. Although he knew his anguish was partly caused by uncertainty—was she alive or dead?—he could not push it from the forefront of his mind. Nor did time ease the hurt. He gradually retreated into himself, avoiding old friends, ignoring phone calls. He went to Hong Kong on business, spent months at a time alone on his horse farm in Kentucky and spent the rest of the time in the back booth of the pub, which he used as a kind of ex-officio office.
Beerbohm came into the Killarney Rose every day, Tuesday through Saturday, at almost the same time—4:10. He sat on the same stool near the back of the bar and drank two boilermakers—Seagram's Seven and Schlitz on tap—always left at 5:40 to catch the 5:50 E train to Jamaica, where he lived alone in a two-bedroom duplex. There was no reason for him to rush home except that Beerbohm was, first of all, a man of habit—catching the 5:50 was part of his daily ritual; and second, he was a potential alcoholic. Two boilermakers was his limit. It put him right on the edge. After downing his two drinks a mere whiff of blended whiskey would have made him a slobbering, falling-down drunk.
Keegan had known Ned Beerbohm for twenty years, since Keegan was fifteen and had first worked the bar at the Killarney and Beerbohm was a young reporter. Beerbohm had gone the usual route—reporter, columnist, drunk. He had taken the cure and started over on the copy desk, working his way back up the ladder to news editor. But he still had the haunted eyes and spare frame of the alcoholic. Beerbohm was one of the few people Keegan did not share his tragic story with. Why bother—Beerbohm was a walking encyclopedia of current events. He had heard it all.
He was usually in a rumpled blue or gray suit, red tie hanging down from an open collar, twisted and destroyed, the late edition curled up and jammed in his suit coat pocket, gray homburg perched on the back of his head. Beerbohm was always the first once in, followed shortly by reporters and editors from the Mirror, News, Trib and Journal-American. The Killarney Rose through the years had maintained its position as one of the favorite watering holes of the city's news community.
The dialogue rarely varied:
"Phew," Beerbohm would say, dropping like a sack of rocks on the bar stool. "This has been one hell of a day," to which Keegan would reply, "You say that every day."
Then Tiny the bartender would bring Beerbohm his glass of draft and shot of Seagram's Seven and Ned would throw the paper to Keegan in the back booth and wait to be invited over.
"Depressing," Beerbohm would say. "Every story is apocalyptic."
"The world is apocalyptic, Ned," Keegan would answer without looking up.
Beerbohm would shake his head, hold the shot glass over the mug of beer and carefully drop it in, watching it sink straight to the bottom of the glass and settle there where the thick, oily liquor would seep up into the brew like an amber trail of smoke. He would tilt the glass toward the ceiling, suck in the whiskey and let the beer chase the bitter taste. Then he would pull his lips back, sigh and hold the empty glass up toward Tiny, the 250-pound ex-wrestler who tended the rear section of the Killarney bar.
Ritual. Five days a week. As certain as the sunrise.
It was that kind of relationship, spiced occasionally by a trip to the ball game or to a special event like the fight. . . .
The gladiators returned to their corners. Nobody sat down. The roar increased. The air crackled with tension.
Louis was hunched over, his eyes cool, staring across the ring at Schmeling, taking his size. The German avoided the stare, talked to his handler, glanced around at the gigantic saucer of people.
The bell.
They came toward each other, Schmeling with his shuffling gait, moving one foot, then bringing the other up beside it; Louis lighter on his feet, more fluid, his body as hard as a boulder. Louis's eyes were cobra's eyes, watching his victim, waiting for the proper moment. There was a bit of sparring, then suddenly Schmeling loosed his right, the same right that had put Louis away two years before.
It hit hard, a thud against the side of the Bomber's jaw. Louis shook his head and forgot it. It was as if Schmeling had blown him a kiss. He moved past the punch like it never happened and for an instant fear widened Schmeling's eyes. Then the onslaught began.
Louis lashed out with blurred rights and lefts. They sizzled through the hot air under the heavy lights and battered the German into the ropes. Then Louis unleashed a left hook. Schmeling never saw it. It drove him up in the air and against the ropes where he dangled like a drunk, one arm dangling over the top strand, dazed, confused, surprised.
Fear was etched into every muscle of his face. Louis was all over him, smashing lefts and rights into the stricken German. Finally the referee pushed him back. Schmeling was shaking on his feet. He took a one-count and plodded forth for more.
"He's going to take him out in the first," Keegan said. "Say goodbye twenty."
With each wracking thud of Louis's fists, Keegan felt a moment of delirious pleasure, as though he himself were landing the punch. Every splash of blood from Schmeling's battered face gave him another moment of joy. He stood in the screaming, sweating crowd, fists clenched, eyes afire, yelling: "Kill him! Kill him! Kill the Nazi bastard," with such unbridled fervor that even Beerbohm was surprised.
Schmeling looked pleadingly toward his corner, turned and caught a vicious right cross to the jaw. Above the din of the crowd, Keegan heard the bone-crunching sound as it connected. It literally hammered Schmeling to the canvas.
He was hurt. His eyes were roving crazily, trying to focus. He was back up on three, struggling up through air as heavy as oil, almost in slow motion. Arms half up, wide open, wounded and defenseless, he stared terrified as the next right smashed his already swollen jaw. He went down agai
n, his gloves brushing the canvas, legs bent, head lolling. And again he rose, staggering, his senses battered to oblivion, his knees rubber. The Bomber stepped in tight and whacked him again.
"Jesus!" Beerbohm cried.
"Go ahead," Keegan yelled. "Hit him again! Knock the bastard back to Germany where he belongs!"
Briefly, watching this Aryan apostle being demolished and humiliated, Keegan felt a moment of relief from four years of pain and anger, a moment when his hate seemed sated, a moment when he almost forgot Jenny Gould and Dachau. He had used his political connections. He'd sent hundreds of thousands to Germany in bribes. But he had learned nothing, accomplished nothing. He had failed at the only thing he'd ever truly needed to succeed at. So this, watching the fury of the Negro fighter, was an instant of retribution.
Louis struck again, a coiled spring of destruction that battered Schmeling's sagging jaw and demolished his hope. The Aryan apostle fell face-down on the gritty canvas.
Keegan could see the delight in Louis's eyes as he danced to a neutral corner. From the corner of his eye, Keegan saw the white towel float from Schmeling's corner and fall at the referee's feet. He snatched it up and threw it over his shoulder. It dangled from the ropes as he began his count:
"One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . ."
The crowd was manic. Schmeling's handlers were awestruck.
The referee looked down at the stricken Nazi and stopped counting. He spread his hands sharply apart, palms down.
"Yer out!"
The first round. Pandemonium.
And so on this June night in 1938, Joe Louis had finally gotten even.
As for Keegan, his heart soared as they dragged Schmeling's battered body back to his corner. It was a bittersweet moment, a small taste of revenge. But it was not enough.
Not enough to make up for four years. Four years without a letter or a word from Dachau. Was she alive or dead? Keegan did not know.
How could it be enough?
It could never be enough.
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