Eldorado Network

by Derek Robinson

  “Well,” Christian looked at his watch. “Let’s say I wouldn’t want you to get out of practice … Time for your photography lesson, I believe.”

  So Luis went off to learn how to make microdots, from Victor, a cheerful young man who had spent two years with Kodak in Rochester, New York, and who said he wanted to go to Hollywood after the war.

  “Perhaps you’ll be able to go there with the Third Reich,” Luis suggested as he set up the camera.

  “How could I? We have no embassy in Los Angeles.”

  “But surely Hitler intends to conquer the United States.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Colonel Christian.”

  Victor whistled. “Did he tell you when?”

  “Oh, you can relax, there’s no hurry. According to the colonel, the Fuehrer plans first to overrun Russia, India and China. Have I got this thing in focus?”

  Victor squinted into the viewfinder and touched a dial. “Are you sure you ought to be telling me all this?” he asked.

  “What possible harm can the truth do to anybody?” Luis said.

  For the next few minutes they got on with the business of reducing a page of aircraft performance specifications to the size of a dot. Then Victor said: “I wonder how Hollywood will like being part of the Third Reich?” He laughed at the sound of his own words.

  “Hollywood will do what it’s bloody well told,” Luis assured him, “and I happen to know that one of the first things it will do is make a new version of ‘Birth of a Nation.’ Much bigger and much better, of course.”

  “Of course. And … um … and who do you think will play the part of the Fuehrer?” Victor nearly smiled, but his own daring had made him too nervous.

  “Clark Gable,” Luis said at once. “He was good in Gone With The Wind, and he has a mustache. That is an important advantage.”

  “Yes … You don’t think John Wayne could do a better job? More authority, more drive?”

  Luis shrugged. “The decision’s been taken, the part has been cast. But in any case I can tell you that the Fuehrer does not approve of John Wayne, politically. He considers him too rightwing. What’s more to the point, this re-make of ‘Birth of a Nation’ will be a musical comedy, and Clark Gable has the sort of glamour and charm which Berlin wants the rest of the world to associate with the rise of the Third Reich.”

  “Really a musical comedy?” Victor said, slitting the seal on a fresh box of negatives.

  “Hitler has a gift for this kind of decision,” Luis said. “He knows what is good for people, he knows it long before they know it themselves. You must admit, there’s a touch of genius in the idea.”

  “I suppose so. If it works.”

  “Of course it’ll work. A good song can sell anything. Look what ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ did for President Roosevelt.”

  “Yes. I see what you mean.”

  “It’ll be the biggest box-office success of all time,” Luis said confidently. “We’re going to get the man who wrote ‘Yes We Have No Bananas’ to do the songs for us. It can’t fail.”

  After his microdot tuition Luis went to see the embassy doctor. He disliked all medical places—clinics, hospitals, doctors’ offices. He felt they threatened him. He had always been healthy, never sick even as a child, and he suspected all doctors because it was their job to seek out illness. You were all right provided you stayed away from doctors. Their interests were the opposite of yours. You wanted to stay healthy, whereas if everybody stayed healthy the doctors would starve. Fundamental conflict of interest there.

  “I’m going to give you two immunizations,” the doctor said. “Anti-tetanus and anti-typhoid. Just a routine precaution against infection when you’re in England.” He was preparing the needles.

  “I thought fog was the big menace,” Luis said. “I thought England was full of fog and the fog was full of homicidal maniacs.” He took his shirt off. “I suppose they can’t see the fog for the blackout now,” he said. “It must make life difficult for the homicidal maniacs, always strangling each other by mistake. It’s true what people say about war: the civilians are the ones who suffer most.”

  “I’ll tell you what England is full of,” the doctor said. “Dogs. And the dogs evacuate their little bowels all over the streets, all over the paths, all over the parks and squares and public places. Keep still.” Luis shut his eyes and clenched his teeth. “Suppose, my friend,” the doctor continued as he worked, “that you are walking down Piccadilly, trying to overhear the conversation of two British generals, when your foot slips on a heap of dog muck. You fall, split your skull, and infect yourself from a second heap. Without my protection, where would you be? In the shit, as the Americans say.” He pressed a couple of sticky plasters onto Luis’s arm. “You can open your eyes,” he said. “The amputation’s finished. Will you take the head now or shall I send it later?” He yawned; the ambassador’s wife had had raging neuralgia at four in the morning.

  Luis felt his arm cautiously. “You’re probably thinking that all Spaniards are supposed to be brave,” he said. “Well, I’m not brave. What good does being brave do anyone? The pain hurts just as much, doesn’t it?”

  “Don’t know,” the doctor said. “Personally I’ve always been tremendously brave about pain, but then it’s never been my pain … Except once, when a patient sat up and bit me.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “I never discovered. He died soon afterward. Ungrateful brutes, patients … Look, there’s another thing I ought to warn you about: air raids. You’re more likely to die from English cooking—they make a truly lethal pudding called Spotted Dick which lowers your center of gravity to somewhere between your knees—but if the Luftwaffe does start dropping bombs anywhere near you, fall on your face as fast as you can. The best thing is to be somewhere else, of course, out in the country or deep down in an underground railway station, but suppose you’re caught in a shop or a restaurant … Find something to hide behind. Flying glass can chop you up like dogsmeat. Blast can kill you without leaving a mark. Don’t worry about making a fool of yourself. Let the plucky British ignore the bombing and have their limbs blown off. You run away and hide. Don’t try and prove anything foolish.”

  He was being completely serious and unemotional. Luis nodded. He squeezed his biceps and remembered Guernica, the crypt under the bombed church where the bodies were laid in rows, their feet and hands twisted impossibly, as if they had been trying to run in two directions when they died. And that other place had been even worse, that little town where the German bombers kept coming back and missing the arms factory. What had it been called? Luis hunched his shoulders and worried because he couldn’t remember the name of the place. He could remember the craters and the blown-up buildings and the smoky air and the flies, and the man with a blood-black bandage on his head and no shoes on his feet and a permanent mad gleam in his eye who had told him that there was no need to take shelter, friend, because the bombers always missed their target, you understand, never once hit their target, so that being the case you were as likely to get killed in one place as in another, you understand me? Yes I understand you, Luis had said, worrying about treading on the man’s bare toes because he kept coming too close in his eagerness to explain. But the man would not let him go, insisted on asking him where he thought the next lot of bombs would fall. On the cinema, I expect, Luis had said, that being one of the few buildings still standing. Wrong! the man had shouted in triumph, Wrong! You are a fool! How can you possibly know? Nobody knows! Not even the bombers themselves know! And he had hurried off to the cinema to enjoy the pleasure of proving Luis wrong. Perhaps it was the only pleasure left to him. For he was right: the bombers did miss the cinema that day. They blew it to bits the next day, however. Luis sometimes wondered whether the man was still there then, still gambling on Luis’s foolishness; whether the high explosive smashed him against a wall like a fly smeared on a windowpane. Funny how they could never hit that damned arms factory. Oh well. Al
l forgotten now. He couldn’t even remember the name of the place …

  “You’d better put your shirt on,” the doctor said. “You’re all goose-bumps.”

  “Am I? So I am … Wonderful stuff, skin.” Luis buttoned his cuffs. “Close-fitting, washable, elastic …”

  “And the holes are all made in exactly the right places,” the doctor said. “Clever design.”

  “Too bad it’s not bombproof.”

  “A shame, yes. Rips and tears do tend to let the blood out and the weather in.”

  Halfway down the corridor, Luis remembered and stopped. “Durango,” he said aloud.

  “Gesundheit,” said a passing secretary; but he was not aware of her. He repeated the name: “Durango.” She walked on, smiling, while he stood and smelled the ghosts of smoky air and reeking craters, and saw the shoeless, bloody-bandaged man vanish in the direction of his lucky cinema. Du-bloody-rango. The poor man’s Guernica. Julie Conroy had been right. War was dogshit.

  Time to go home.

  Chapter 20

  After the affair at Dos Amigos Luis and Julie had made no arrangement to meet again. She was not to be seen in the embassy waiting room, and he avoided her hotel. This seemed to him a very sensible solution. As an employee of the Abwehr he could not afford to go around with an American girl, especially with a bright and alert girl who asked good questions and weighed the answers, and certainly not with a bright and alert anti-Fascist girl who shot from the hip and didn’t care who happened to be watching. Julie Conroy was refreshing and exciting and dangerous. At this point in his life, Luis decided, he was obviously moving into a period of great risk. Love affairs were nice but survival came first.

  So he worked hard at the embassy, ate alone in quiet restaurants and went early to bed. Between dinner and bed, he walked and looked at people. It was still a pleasure for him simply to be out-of-doors; each time he stepped into the freedom and activity of three-dimensional Madrid he felt again the sense of eagerness which a theater audience feels as the curtain goes up and the scene surprises them. After two years in an apartment filling up with books he felt as if he knew everything and had experienced nothing. Madrid, even under the humorless Franco dictatorship, was a vivid, throbbing experience. There was everywhere a keen awareness of the rewards of living. Spain had punished itself savagely during the Civil War, and now that the rest of Europe seemed determined to have a thoroughly miserable time, the Spaniards recognized when they were well off and they made the most of it. Madrid was all lights and smart uniforms and traffic; no rationing, no sandbags and no air-raid sirens; plenty of food and foreign visitors; and no end of dramatic war news which, gracias a Dios, had not the remotest chance of inconveniencing anyone in Madrid.

  Whenever Luis strolled through the purple evening he found himself thinking about his brief but vivid relationship with Julie Conroy. Eventually he decided that all this analysis was a healthy corrective. Undeniably she had infatuated him. Why? What was it about her that had thrilled him? It was important to know. Her looks? He pictured her face—alert gray eyes, wide and upturned mouth, simple nose, neatly flared nostrils, strongly curving jawline, all framed in that astonishingly dark yet burning hair. The image was too real; it haunted his mind. He decided it was not the face but the expression that he found so disturbing. Julie Conroy had had her own way of looking at him, interested yet amused too, and something else … Provocative, as if she knew very well what he was not saying. He remembered it and he felt its impact again: it was her anti-bullshit expression; it meant Say what you like but don’t think you’re fooling me.

  One evening he was ambling along the Calle de Alcalá, getting some melancholy, second-hand enjoyment out of the evening crowds, and looking at every beautiful woman in the hope of finding a hint of Julie Conroy’s magic. Nobody came close. The more he looked, the less real these people seemed to be. Luis found that he was no longer strolling, he was walking stiffly, woodenly, fists held close to his sides. This is very interesting, he thought. There is a certain type of woman to whom I am unusually susceptible. Clearly this calls for extra precautions. Quite suddenly he had a strong impression that Julie was nearby, was coming toward him, and he was overcome by an irrational desire to meet her naked: she would be clothed but he must be naked, they would meet and embrace while the crowd passed by and paid no attention. It was not a sexual need, it was … What the hell was it? His face grew tense and he wearied his mind with explanation. Was it trust? Or surrender? Why must he be naked? This was dangerous, she could kill him, literally kill him. You are an idiot, he told himself, and felt a great anger: no sooner does the fool get well-paid work with the Germans than he falls in love with an American, an American, of all the women to choose!

  It made no sense, it was totally senseless: a week ago she had not existed so how could she now matter so much? Shut up shut up shut up, he shouted silently at himself, nobody asked me whether I wanted to be in love and if I say I don’t, then I don’t! So go to hell, all of you!

  A man was selling newspapers. Rather, he was holding a bundle of newspapers for sale and reading one until somebody wanted to buy it. He glanced sideways at Luis and saw a tired young man staring gloomily at the traffic. He went back to his paper.

  “Everybody is at war,” he remarked. “Everybody is fighting everybody.”

  Luis looked at him and saw a face that had no purpose in life except to hold a dribbling cigarette. “Really,” he said.

  “It’s all here,” the man said comfortably.

  “No. That’s just a game,” Luis told him. The man didn’t look up, shifted his feet, said nothing. “That’s not reality,” Luis said, “it’s unacceptable.”

  “Oh yes?” The man turned a page. “Unacceptable, is it? So what are you going to do about it?”

  “I’ve got my own private war,” Luis said, “I’m against everybody. That’s the only victory worth winning.”

  “I’ll believe that when I read it on the front page.” Now the man was uncomfortable. Luis was one of those normal-looking lunatics you meet in every big city. Bad for business. Luis sensed the discomfort and turned away. A taxi was stopping, someone got out. For no reason he could name, Luis took the taxi and rode home to his apartment. When they arrived he sat for a moment and looked up at the dark, silent building. “Oh, this is no damned good to me,” he said miserably.

  “Me neither,” the driver said. “Can’t afford the rent.”

  “Hotel Bristol,” Luis said.

  “You’re sure, now.”

  “I’m sure. I think.”

  *

  She was in the hotel bar, talking to an American couple, tourists maybe, middle-fifties. Luis stood by the door and watched, monitoring his feelings. Already the chest-tightening had begun; already his eyes seemed more wide-open, his senses more acute. What in God’s name caused this? She moved, turning slightly and making a lazy gesture, and the action had such a naturally athletic grace that he instinctively held himself more upright, either in imitation or in envy. She was the leopard amongst the gazelle, all right. Then she turned again and saw him and immediately came over.

  His hands were trembling so much that he put them in his pockets. “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello.”

  He could not look directly at her; his head ducked and dodged and took little glances. “If it is not too late …” he began.

  “I thought you’d been run over by a tank.”

  “A tank?”

  “Yes. I thought probably the Germans hunted you down with a panzer brigade because of that thing at Dos Amigos.”

  “Oh … No. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine. You look lousy.”

  Luis got all his strength together and smiled. “You don’t look lousy,” he said. “You look fine.”

  She took his face in her hands and lightly fingered back his eyelids. “Been sleeping badly?” she asked.

  The shock of her unexpected touch made him start, and he saw that she noticed this. “Oh
… not well, not badly,” he said. “Many dreams, you know.”

  “Let’s go over there.” She nodded to an empty table, remote from the American couple. They went and sat down and he told the waiter to bring them two brandies.

  “Luis, my friend, you’re not going to like this,” she said, “but please remember you started it, back there in the embassy with your old-fashioned Castilian courtesy—you remember?—so now I’m afraid you’re stuck with the appalling consequences.”

  “What consequences?” Luis was worried; this was beginning to sound official, governmental.

  “I want to make something clear, first.” She rested her arms on the table and edged her forefingers together until they touched. “When I came to Spain I wanted everything to be simple. I like things to be simple. I’m not a complicated person but the last couple of years have been very complicated for me, what with the war and … everything. So. It’s best for people if they can have maximum freedom, isn’t it? Don’t you agree?”

  By now Luis was bewildered. What the hell was he being asked to agree to? He gave an unenthusiastic half-smile, half-shrug. The brandies came. He took a good swig.

  “Okay.” She smoothed her forehead but almost at once it furrowed again. “Okay: simplicity, freedom, no entanglements. I’m here in Madrid trying to straighten out my problems. Untie all the knots and chuck out all the junk and start being my own boss again. That’s what I’d really like: total independence.”

  “Certainly. Your people fought a war about independence.”

  “Right. It’s worth having, it’s very satisfying, very … enjoyable. Agreed?”

  Luis stared, threw his hands in the air, breathed deeply. “What has happened?” he demanded, “Is Spain at war? Have you been arrested? Do you need a lawyer? What the hell is going on?”

  “I just want to get the fundamentals straight, Luis, that’s all! I just want you to understand, before we both start having a thoroughly miserable time, that it was no part of my plan when I came to Madrid to fall in love with a man like you. No part.”