He listened to the nurse speak with someone close to the road, using her hand as a visor to protect herself from the afternoon sun. She was talking to a man, and they both pointed toward him. The man approached him. He walked slowly, his feet dragging the weight of the years along with them. Many years. He had lived almost as many as Gabriel.
“It’s a lovely afternoon,” said the newcomer in greeting. And as if reaffirming his opinion he inhaled, filling up his chest, his gaze out on the sloping horizon. A gust of wind curled the grass downhill. On his right cheek Gabriel could make out a small star-shaped mark, like an old wound that had scarred up long ago.
Gabriel stood up with difficulty. Next to him, that man seemed young. Yet he calculated that he was at least sixty. He examined him carefully. He didn’t live in the valley. He was too well dressed and shaved. He wasn’t even wearing boots, but rather tight, shiny shoes.
“You come up here just for the view?” he asked incredulously.
The man smiled a smile that parted his cracked lips.
“Actually, I came to say hello to you, Gabriel … I guess you don’t remember me.”
Gabriel sharpened his scrutiny. He didn’t remember ever having seen that face before.
The man shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s okay; I sort of expected that you wouldn’t remember. I think we only saw each other once, long ago, almost forty years ago, to be precise, and in circumstances that were pretty … what’s the word?… extreme. Yes, that’s the right word.”
Gabriel didn’t like riddles or things that went unsaid.
“I’ve experienced several extreme situations in my life, so you’ll have to be more specific.”
The man seemed to not get the insinuation. He took off the hat that covered his balding pate, as if to let Gabriel get a better look at him and thus jog his memory. But since he didn’t respond, the man put his hat back on with an indulgent air.
“Actually, the important thing is that I remember you perfectly. To be honest, in these forty years not a single day has passed in which I didn’t think about you.”
Gabriel stiffened. He was starting to get anxious.
“And why is that?”
The man smiled enigmatically.
“You had a weapons forge in Mérida. On Guadiana Street. You made beautiful weapons. But I remember one in particular, a real work of art.” The man was silent for a few seconds, as if giving Gabriel time to remember. Then he took something out of his coat pocket. It was a small bronze object shaped like a dragon that had two settings. “This was one of the two pieces that adorned each part of the hilt.”
Gabriel took the piece the man offered him and examined it with a professional eye.
“It’s not an adornment, strictly speaking,” he said. “These protuberances here are used to hold the fingers in place so that the saber doesn’t slip.” He examined the object more carefully, and suddenly something caught his attention. His fingers immediately began to tremble. He looked up at the man, who was watching him with an expression somewhere between amused and shrewd. Gabriel tried to give it back to him. “Who are you?”
The man refused to take it.
“Keep it. It is the only piece missing from your masterpiece … What was the name of that saber? The Sadness of the Samurai. That was it. You made it for the younger son of the Mola family, Andrés.”
Gabriel began to have trouble breathing. He tried to make his way toward the road, but his feet barely budged.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“I think you do, Gabriel.” The man’s voice turned suddenly accusatory. “Do you still have it? You probably do. It’s not easy to get rid of the past, is it? That’s why you save all the memories of that time in Mérida; I’m sure you also saved a German officer’s old Luger … For the same reason you keep coming up here every day your nurse agrees to take you. I imagine it’s the guilt that forces you to do it.”
Gabriel turned in fury.
“Listen, I don’t know who the hell you are, or what you want from me. But whatever it is, you’re not going to get it, so leave me alone.” He threw the small piece of bronze to the ground and headed off limping, calling for the nurse to bring the car around.
The man knelt and picked up the piece of metal. He caressed it as if it were a precious stone as he watched Gabriel walk off. Perhaps Gabriel refused to recognize him; or maybe he really didn’t remember him. Doesn’t matter, he told himself. Sooner or later, memories transform into reality again, and he would force Gabriel to drink them one after the other until he drowned in them. And it would be María, his daughter, who would burst that bubble of fake oblivion.
“Of course I’ll get what I want from you, Gabriel,” he murmured, as he put the piece of metal into his pocket. “That she pay for your sins. Yes, it’s only fair. It’s always the innocents who pay for the sinners.”
8
Somewhere in Badajoz, December 1941
The quarry had been closed for years. An abandoned cart was still filled with stones, as if waiting for someone to come unload it. The wind was heard among the shrubs that grew unchecked on the rails of the dead tracks.
A weary young soldier sat on a lonely bench, chewing on a piece of fruit as he tried to make out, with his eyes squinted, the disfigured words on a dilapidated wooden wagon in front of him. When he got to the bitter part of the fruit, the soldier spit it out, sighing heavily. After so much movement it was sad to see such stillness, he thought, as he mentally reconstructed the hustle and bustle of the former quarry. Now, the different caliber holes in the gnawed wall of the mountain showed that the army used it as a firing range.
After a few minutes he checked the time again. He was growing impatient. It was still an hour before dawn. He didn’t understand his mission, watching over an old quarry where nobody ever came. He found it ridiculous. Like everything he’d been doing for the past year, since they had forced him to enlist for two years of military service instead of going to jail.
His only crime had been wearing the uniform of the Republican army, where he had also been forced to enlist in the levy of May 1938. When Franco’s national troops took him prisoner in Cervera he alleged that he was a conscript, but the military judge didn’t want to hear it. “You could have refused to take up a weapon against the troops of national salvation,” he said. The soldier couldn’t imagine how; he would have been shot by firing squad. Besides, he didn’t understand politics, but from what he knew the national troops were the others, the ones of the illegal government. Of course he didn’t say that in front of the military tribunal. His silence didn’t help him much either: military service or jail, laid down the judge.
And there he was, under a threadbare blanket that barely kept the cold off, watching the night pregnant with stars and the distant horizon where dawn was starting to break. He still checked his watch two or three times before entertaining the hope of seeing the man sent to relieve him. He rubbed the gold devotional scapular with the image of Saint Jude that he always wore around his neck. Once in a while he stroked his close-cropped head with the palm of one hand and scratched himself like a dog, sending tiny particles of dandruff out into the void.
All of a sudden he heard the sound of an engine approaching. He knew the sound of the barracks truck that came to pick him up at the end of his guard shift, and this wasn’t it. This was finer, a French vehicle. He knew it well because before being a soldier he had worked as a mechanic in his father’s garage. He put on his cap, adjusted his army jacket, and held his rifle at attention. After a few minutes he saw the headlights of a vehicle appear. He smiled with pride when he saw that he had been right: it was a dark Renault.
Two people got out of the car, a civilian and a woman. The civilian came over and showed him a credential of the Military Intelligence Service.
The soldier recognized that kind of person, because it was just the kind that had arrested him at the end of the war. With those types it was best not to get c
ocky. Still, he dared to ask the man what he was doing at dawn in a restricted area.
The undercover officer, because that was what he was, smiled.
“Go smoke a cigarette in the car and don’t ask so many questions.”
The soldier lifted his face toward the woman. She was handcuffed, and he immediately saw that she was in a bad state. He suspected the worst. He stood at attention before his superior and headed off. It didn’t have anything to do with him, he thought.
A very soft light began to reveal the shapes of things, bathing it all in a reddish tone. The officer pushed the woman forward along a narrow path that led up the mountain.
“Let’s take a walk, Isabel.”
* * *
As Isabel laboriously felt her way up, tripping over rocks on the way and grabbing the bushes to keep her balance, the fleeting sensation came to her mind that, in spite of everything, it was going to be a nice day. She remembered her son Andrés. She wondered what would become of him; she trusted that Fernando knew how to take care of him. She stopped for a second, touching her right side, and lifted her head to contemplate the lovely dawn that was leading her to hell.
“Keep walking,” the man ordered.
Isabel stroked her upper lip with her tongue, inhaled deeply, winning out over the sting of her broken rib, and filled her lungs with the damp air that came from the nearby pine forests. From the distance came the dull buzz of the wind through the treetops. She walked laboriously for several more yards.
“Here is fine,” said the man.
Isabel stopped at the edge of the ground, where only the void stood between her and death. At the end of the path, the dirt abruptly sank into a cut ravine from which peeked out a few pine treetops that had miraculously managed to grow among the crags. The roots came out of the wall as if they were claws the trees had used to climb up the rocks.
“Take off your clothes.”
Isabel removed her clothes. She folded them calmly into a pile that she left on the ground. Her body was filled with stab wounds and bruises that the rising sun obscured with its pale colors.
“On your knees!”
She obeyed, looking out at the horizon.
“I didn’t expect you to be my executioner,” she said in a thin voice.
The man knelt beside her. He was smoking a filterless cigarette, and he blew the smoke into her face. Isabel couldn’t see him well; a cloud of blood covered her right eye, and her left had been kicked out. But she listened to the man’s steady breathing and noted the smell of his leather jacket.
“No one can hear you. We are alone. I’m going to ask you one last time: I need to know where those conspiring to kill your husband are hiding. If you won’t tell me to save yourself, do it for your son Andrés.”
Isabel lifted her head weakly.
“Why did you do this to me? Why so much hate in return for such love?”
The man lowered his head. Things didn’t have to be this way, he thought. This wasn’t the end he had wanted for Isabel. It was hard for him to meet her gaze, and he was barely capable of holding back a moan when he had seen how the interrogator thugs had tortured her for days. Those Falangists were heartless sadists who confused duty with pleasure. Until the last moment he had trusted that the name Guillermo Mola would impose enough respect to keep them from doing what they had done to Isabel; but after the attempt on his life, Guillermo had washed his hands of the case, and she hadn’t helped the situation with her stubborn silence. Guillermo Mola had ordered her executed. And he couldn’t oppose an order. That war wasn’t over yet, they were still bringing up the rear guard, and he was just a soldier.
“Refusing to turn in the others is not going to get you anything good. Besides, it’s a stupid attitude; sooner or later we are going to get them.”
Isabel said nothing. She turned her head from side to side, searching for the horizon.
She liked the evenness of the sky’s embers, the growing day. On the other hand, the watch on the man’s wrist made her feel absurd, out of place, in a forgotten, deserted quarry where trains and human beings died without honor, without elegance, without dignity. She was unable to judge whether her life had been worthwhile, but she certainly wasn’t going to redeem it with her death.
“Let’s get this over with.”
The man sighed. He stubbed out his cigarette on the ground and stood up.
“If that’s what you want.”
He aimed. He fired two shots: the first point-blank to the head, the second, when her body collapsed to one side, in the face. The shots sounded sharp, harmless, they barely had any echo; a cat dozing in the shrubbery hardly shifted. A bloodstain spread over Isabel’s face, which was left with a puzzled expression, looking up into a cloudless sky, as if her incredulity was due to the magnificent day in which her fate had been sealed.
* * *
At almost the same time, Guillermo Mola jumped out of his bed with a start. As if he had felt the shots in his own flesh.
The dawn was breaking with a cool air that sent the bedroom’s lacy curtains waving like flags. It gradually unveiled the fields of Holm oaks and walnut trees that spread as far as the eye could see.
Seated at his desk, Guillermo Mola stroked the rim of a glass of orujo with his fingers, his gaze fixed on the window. He touched his side, recalling the details of the assassination attempt he had suffered leaving Mass. As hard as he tried, he could only barely remember the flash of the pistol, then the impact of the bullet crushing into him, and an unreal feeling of heat and an intense itch. He barely saw the shooter’s face; it was like an inkblot that he couldn’t bring into focus. He only saw a shadow that approached the steps of the church, shot into his side, and ran off, disappearing into the narrow streets.
At least, he thought ironically, Publio had done things well: on his desk he had a letter in the generalissimo’s own hand asking after his health. That meant that Guillermo Mola’s career had just gotten a big boost thanks to the plot devised by his head of security, although it had all seemed too real. And as proof he had three ribs broken from the impact of the bullet.
He breathed a hard sigh. A drop of liquor ran zigzagging down the outside of the cup, as if it wanted to bore through the glass but couldn’t find its way in. He took a long sip, his cracked lips touching the ice cube. That habit of drinking a nice orujo before eating anything was hard on his stomach, but it got his blood flowing. He left the glass on the same damp circle on the desk.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the unmade bed. His somber eyes examined the empty space in the bed. The void where Isabel should have been. He pulled aside the cold sheets. Not long ago those sheets were impregnated with the scent of his wife’s skin.
He stretched out in that empty space on the bed. He leaned back against the worn leather headboard, looked at the cracks in the plaster of the ceiling, and let his thoughts fly far from that room and that body that lay heavy on him like armor.
There was a knock on the bedroom door. From the doorway, the visibly uncomfortable servant girl cleared her throat to announce her presence.
“Excuse me, Don Guillermo. Mr. Publio has arrived.” Guillermo turned his head like a cat toward that trembling voice, but didn’t answer.
“What should I tell him?” insisted the servant girl, wringing her fingers.
Guillermo pulled on the neck of his white shirt with an impatience devoid of anxiety. His eyes were empty. He looked at the servant girl in the same way that a marble statue looks at a fictitious horizon.
“Tell him to come on up.”
A few minutes later a young man appeared who looked like a pianist. He wore a black frock coat that highlighted the paleness of his face; his fingers were long and thin; his dark curly hair fell insolently over his wide forehead. In spite of his melodic and slightly sad appearance, Publio was no musician, nor was he particularly fond of artists.
“Good morning, Guillermo.” Normally, in front of his boss, Publio exhibited a certain arrogance disguised by
a cynical smile. He could do so thanks to the friendship they shared. But given the gravity of the matter he had come to discuss, he preferred to display restraint and seriousness.
“Is it done?” Guillermo asked him.
Publio changed his tone of voice and looked significantly at his boss.
“It is done.”
Guillermo closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them his gaze was cold and terrible.
“How was it?”
Publio hesitated for a second.
“Quick. Although, in any case, it’s better if you don’t know the details.”
Guillermo turned toward Publio with his face contorted.
“I’ll decide that. We are talking about my wife.”
Publio felt a cold disgust seeing the face of his boss and friend. It wasn’t because of its decrepitude; it was its craziness. Craziness repulsed him. He saw it as a clear issue. A furious man has no boundaries, just like a man in love. And Guillermo was combining both sentiments.
“You should have thought of that before deciding to have her interrogated and executed.”
Guillermo looked at Publio coldly but took in his reply without answering back.
“The important thing is that it doesn’t get out that it was us” was all he said.
Publio smiled. He understood the implication of his boss’s use of the plural. He didn’t mind. From the beginning he had agreed that it was best to eliminate Isabel. Although his motives had nothing to do with Guillermo’s emotional outburst. No, his sights were set even higher than his superior’s.
“We still haven’t caught the rest of the group that organized the attempt on your life. It would be wise not to let out news of Isabel’s death. When we trap them, it will be useful to blame them for the murder, and depending on how the events play out, decide if we want her body to be found or left forgotten in some mass grave. It could even be a good trump card in the future.”
Victor del Arbol - The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel Page 10