The Second Son bt-3

by Jonathan Rabb

  Hoffner pulled off his boots and slid in next to Mila. He reached down and pulled the fastener up and felt her body press close against his. He lay back, and they stared up at a sky infinite with night.

  She said, “If the sun comes again, you’ll forget it can look like this. The ground will forget as well.”

  “The sun will come.”

  “It seems a shame, though, doesn’t it?”

  Maybe it was the wine, but the stars momentarily shuddered, and Mila turned on her side to him and pressed her lips to his cheek. Her hand moved across his chest, then her arm, her torso until she was slowly above him.

  She saw it in his eyes and said, “They’re already sleeping.”

  Her lips found his again, the warmth of them and the coolness of the air, and beyond a cradling of stars, and Hoffner let his hands glide across the smoothness of her back, her legs, the clothes unloosed and his own body freed, and he felt her chilled skin across his own like the pale breath of absolute need.

  He would love her. He knew this. He would find this life and he would love her.

  They arrived in Tarancon by mid-morning. Hoffner learned to play a game with a stick, something with the words dedo and pelota, although even the men and boys who played with him seemed to have any number of opinions as to what it was called. They sweated under the sun in the courtyard of a small clinic-little more than the front room of a house-while a woman and a girl lay dying inside of burns from a house fire. It had been a terrible thing, quick, and nothing to do with the fighting. In fact, Tarancon had seen almost none of the fighting. The Guardia had quickly pledged themselves to the Republic and had even stepped in to make sure the killing was kept to a minimum. Tragedy remained a thing of fires and falling trees and a boy drowned in early spring-as it had been for as long as anyone could remember. It was so much easier to understand than the news of the horrors sprouting up everywhere around them. The two inside were dying. Infection had set in. And the comfort of a woman doctor-so strange and yet perhaps a miracle (although no one would have called it such a thing)-gave them peace as they slipped quietly away through the morphine.

  It was hours before Mila emerged from the house, walking with a man a good deal older. He had come the night before from Cuenca. He was a doctor as well, but the woman and the girl had already been fighting the burns for five days-why had it taken so long to send a boy on the two-day ride for him? — and there was nothing he could do. He hadn’t slept and was grateful that Mila had been there to take the two to the end.

  Hoffner tossed the ball to one of the boys, then ran his handkerchief over his neck as he walked toward her.

  “They’re both gone,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Hoffner.

  “No, it’s better. It should have happened three days ago.” She introduced the doctor. He said he was tired of watching peasants die this way. He needed to sleep and get back to Cuenca. He left them to each other.

  She said. “He was a good doctor, but he would have tried to keep them alive.” They sat on a bench. Hoffner’s hat was lying on it.

  He said, “You need to eat something.” She said nothing, and he added, “Some of the men remembered Georg. ‘The man with the camera’ they called him. They said he was here for a few hours. The day before the house burned. They don’t remember anyone else.”

  She stared across the courtyard. She nodded distantly.

  He said, “I didn’t mention any names.”

  Again she nodded. Finally she said, “The name from the contact list, here in Tarancon.” Hoffner had shown her everything from Captain Doval and Major Sanz. She had memorized the names as well. “He was called Gutierrez,” she said. “What was the first name?”

  He knew she knew it, but he answered anyway. “Ramon,” said Hoffner. “Why?”

  It took her another moment to answer. “Because he was in the room with me the entire time. Because the woman was his wife, and the girl was his daughter.”

  Hoffner had trouble looking at the man, not because Gutierrez hadn’t bathed or shaved in five days, or that his face was bloated from the crying, or even that his left arm to the shoulder was an oozing scar of blisters and flaked skin beneath a thin wrapping of gauze. It was because he sat there, unaware that he damned Georg with every breath he took.

  Hoffner imagined the crates, the guns, the fire set to destroy them all. Had Georg really been capable of this? Had he been so callous, so cowardly, as to slink off in the night knowing that this was to come? Hoffner wore his son’s shame as if it were his own.

  Gutierrez continued to stare across at the sheeted bodies, his good elbow on his knee, his body leaning forward, hand pressed against his brow. Hoffner had no idea if the man was even aware they had stepped inside the room.

  Mila knelt down next to Gutierrez. She ran her hand across his back and spoke softly. Slowly, Gutierrez began to nod. He looked at her. His eyes moved to Hoffner, then the sheets. With her hand still on his back, Mila helped him past the curtain and down the hall. She led him to a chair by the door to the courtyard, and Gutierrez said, “I want the air. We’ll go outside.”

  “No,” she said. “Outside isn’t good until they dress your burns again. You should sit here.”

  Gutierrez seemed aware of his arm only now. He looked at it as if someone had just handed it to him, a thing to be studied: an arm had been burned, flesh, but whose was it and how? Gutierrez sat and asked for water.

  There was a table across from him with a pitcher and two glasses. Mila filled one and handed it to him. Gutierrez held it but did not drink.

  Hoffner was a few paces down the hall, breathing air heavy with the smell of rotting limes and soap. So this was the scent of burned flesh, he thought. He stepped over and filled the other glass. He drank.

  Hoffner said, “You should drink as well.”

  Gutierrez’s gaze was fixed on the wall, mindlessly searching for something. “Should I?”

  Hoffner was glad to hear the anger. It colored Gutierrez’s despair and gave it purpose. The man would find his way back.

  Hoffner said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Gutierrez barely moved.

  “There was a man with a camera,” Hoffner said. “A German. A few days ago.”

  Gutierrez showed nothing.

  Hoffner repeated, “There was a man with a camera-”

  “Why are you asking me this?”

  “You know why I ask.”

  Gutierrez continued to stare at the wall. Finally he said, “Yes.” He was unrepentant. “I know why.”

  “He came about the crates, about Hisma.”

  “Yes.”

  Hoffner waited and then said, “Did he set the fire?”

  The question came so effortlessly-questions like these always did-even if every moment beyond them lay in their grasp.

  Gutierrez’s stare hardened. “You mean did he murder my wife and daughter?”

  And there it was. Why not call it what it was. A low humming began to fill Hoffner’s ears, but he refused to look at Mila. “Yes.”

  Gutierrez said, “You ask only about the one with the camera. Why not the other?”

  “The other is not my concern.”

  “No? He also wanted the one with the camera.”

  There was a pounding now in Hoffner’s chest, the urge to grab Gutierrez by the arm, scream in his face-Was this Georg? Was this what my son has become? — but instead he asked again, “Did he set the fire?”

  Gutierrez waited, his cruelty unintended.

  “No,” he finally said. “That is my misfortune. Are you here to rid me of my burden?”

  Hoffner felt his breath again. He said, “Then the fire was an accident?”

  “There are no such things.”

  “And the guns?”

  “Guns,” Gutierrez said, with quiet disbelief. “What guns? We have no guns. There will be no guns.” Self-damning made such easy work of the truth. He refused to look at Hoffner. “You need something more from me, you
tell Sanz to come and get it himself. He does me a favor. Otherwise no more messengers, no more visitors, no more questions from this German, that German, talk of those crates”-his voice trailed off-“make room for those fucking crates.”

  Gutierrez shut his eyes, trying not to see it.

  “A can of oil”-it was little more than a whisper, the creases of his eyes wet from the memory-“a tiny can of oil and all that heat.” The tears ran and he forced his eyes open. He looked at Hoffner. “God has sent His message, and I damn Him for it.” Gutierrez looked upward. “Viva la Republica,” he said. “Viva la Libertad. Do you hear?” He looked again at Hoffner. “My cause is no longer yours. No longer Sanz’s. No longer His. Either shoot me or get out of my town.”

  Gutierrez stood. He moved past Hoffner to the curtain. He was about to step through when Hoffner said, “The other German. When was he here?”

  Again Gutierrez’s gaze hardened. He peered into the room. This time, though, he hadn’t the strength for it. He was suddenly aware of the tears, and he wiped them. “I don’t know,” he said. “Two days ago, three.”

  “He came to ask about the one with the camera?”

  “Yes.”

  “In this place?”

  Gutierrez nodded.

  There was no point; the man had nothing more to give.

  Hoffner nodded and turned to Mila, and Gutierrez said, “He was strange, that German.” Hoffner looked back and saw Gutierrez staring at him. “Not like the others,” said Gutierrez. “Not like the one with the camera. He had death in the eyes.”

  “There are Germans like that now.”

  “No.” Gutierrez shook his head. “Not SS. Not soldiers. Something else with this one.” It was as if he were seeing the man in front of him. He stared a moment longer and then pushed through the curtain, and Hoffner watched as the cloth puckered and grew still.

  That night they stayed in Tarancon.

  The days were slipping by, but Hoffner let them go. He might have convinced himself it was to keep them safe: they had been lucky last night; driving after dark seemed beyond even a Spaniard’s arrogance. Or he might have said it was for the time he could take with Mila, hours to sit or walk or stare up from a rusted bed and wait for the breeze to find its way into a room so small that the ledge of the window served as table for both pitcher and glass.

  But the truth was easier than that. Hoffner simply believed Georg was alive. He had no idea why he believed this, or why he knew Georg would still be alive when he found him, but time was no longer a concern. There was nothing he could point to in the last days to make this sudden certainty real, and yet here it was.

  Hoffner had felt it only once before, this kind of ease, in the same heat, the same silence, the same taste of soured milk in the air. It sat deep in his past and yet lay quietly by his side, and Hoffner chose not to ask why.

  He sat up and took a sip of the water, brown with silt. He stared out through the window and saw the hills under the moon.

  Mila said, “He’s out there.”

  He had thought her asleep. He nodded and lit a cigarette.

  She said, “You thought he’d set that fire.”

  Hoffner felt the heat of the room on his face. He let the smoke spear through his nose. He said nothing.

  She said, “And what if he had?”

  Hoffner took another pull as he stared out. “But he didn’t.”

  “No-he didn’t. So you don’t have to save him from himself.”

  He looked at her. “What does that mean?”

  “The way you do with the other boy. Sascha. That’s the one you think you need to save. Georg didn’t set the fire, so it wasn’t your fault.”

  He continued to stare at her. “That’s a stupid thing to say.”

  “Is it?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “You’re right, I don’t.” She reached out and took his cigarette. “So I’m left to bring out the trite and the obvious.” She took a pull. “I’m thirsty.”

  Hoffner handed her the glass and watched as she drank.

  He said, “I made him what he is.”

  “No one makes anyone else into anything.”

  “He was sixteen. A boy. I had a girl on the side.”

  “A boy with a cheating father. What a remarkable story.”

  “I threw it in his face.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Then you’d be wrong.”

  She held the glass up to him and he took it. He turned and set it on the ledge. And he stared out and knew that somewhere people were sleeping.

  “It was at a railway station,” he said. “This girl. Sascha was there. He saw us together. There were words. I didn’t see him for eight years after that. It’s been another nine since.”

  “Because he saw you with a girl?”

  “You don’t see it. It sounds … different now. Small. It wasn’t. It’s what I was. It’s what he knew I was.”

  “And what you were makes him what he is now? That must be so much easier to believe than anything else.” She reached across him and tapped her ash out the window. Her hair played against his chest, and she lay back.

  He said, “So you want me to be blameless?”

  “No. You’ll never have that. I loved my husband, even when he had a woman in Moscow. He stopped it, and we went on.”

  It took Hoffner a moment to answer. “It’s different.”

  “Why? Because you think a woman needs to forgive? Because your wife forgave you every time she knew you had another one?”

  “He was a boy.”

  “My husband wrote me at the end. He said he deserved to be dying. Freezing to death, and he needed to tell me it was because of what he had done to me. How much he regretted it. Can you think of anything more stupid than that?”

  Hoffner hadn’t the strength for this. “No. I suppose not.”

  She sat straight up and forced him to look at her. “Don’t do that. Don’t ask to be forgiven because you can’t forgive yourself. You’re here for Georg. You risk everything for Georg. But it doesn’t make you a better man that you do. You do it, and it’s enough.”

  Hoffner stared at her. “And it’s enough for you?”

  She looked at him. Hoffner thought to hold her but she lay down. He lay beside her and brought her back into his chest.

  “Yes,” she said. “It is.”

  And he slept.

  Viva Espana

  “He let him die.”

  The man behind the bar set the glasses down in front of Hoffner and began to pour. “His own son,” he said, a tinge of respect to mask the shock. “That’s who sits up in the Alcazar now.”

  It was eleven in the morning, and the hundred kilometers to Toledo had been dry. They required a drink, something with a bit more bite than wine. This was brandy from the south, Jerez, the last bottles Toledo would be seeing for quite some time. It felt good to have this kind of burning at the back of the throat. Hoffner told the man to refill his glass. He then joined Mila outside. She was on a bench, staring up through the tiled roofs along the narrow street. She took her glass and drank, and Hoffner peered up.

  There was no escaping the gaze of the massive fortress on the hill, stone and towers and windows in perfect line. The Alcazar had watched over Toledo for nearly five hundred years. Now it was Toledo that stared up and wondered how soon the stones would fall.

  The talk in the bar had been of the fascist rebels inside. There were a thousand of them: cadets, Guardia, their wives and children, and all those fat ones who had scampered up to the gate, pounded on the doors, and begged to be let in the moment it had all turned sour for them. The Republican forces had taken the city, and the fascists were now holed up with no hope of surviving. The Alcazar had become a little city unto itself, with thick walls and iron gates to keep the fascists safe inside, while outside the Republican militias plotted and tossed grenades and waited for the end.

  And how had this all come to pass? Because the man keeping
the fascists calm inside was a colonel by the name of Jose Moscardo. Moscardo hadn’t been part of the July 18 conspiracy; he hadn’t known of Franco and Mola and Queipo de Llano. But he did know which Spain was his. And so, seizing the moment, he dispatched the entire contents of the Toledo arms factory up the hill and into the fortress before the Republican militias could stop him. It was an unexpected coup.

  Save for one small point. While Moscardo might have shown remarkable savvy in ferreting away men and soldiers and guns and children, he was less astute at protecting his own. Somehow, in all the mayhem, he forgot his sixteen-year-old son Luis outside the fortress walls. Within hours, the boy was taken hostage by the militias, who promised to shoot him if his father refused to surrender. It was a brief conversation on the telephone, at which point Moscardo asked to speak to his son.

  “They have me, Father,” said Luis. “What shall I do?”

  Moscardo thought a moment. “If this is true, commend your soul to God, shout ‘?Viva Espana!’ and die like a hero.”

  “That,” said the boy, “I can do.”

  It was an act of uncommon bravery. Word of it had spread to the south and the far north, where Moscardo and the Alcazar were already things of legend for the rebel fascist soldiers: the new Abraham, they called him, although this time God had failed to reach out to save his Isaac. This time, faith had truly been tested.

  The fascist soldiers chanted their names, and the great fortress became the bastion of all that was good and true in Spain.

  Hoffner said, “The barman said we’d do best with a group headquartered near the cathedral.” He tossed back the last of his drink. “Republican army. Slightly more organized than the Communists.”

  “That’s no great surprise,” said Mila.

  “The man said ‘slightly.’ I don’t think this is going to be files in triplicate.”

  “Is he sending someone to take us?”

  “Why?”