In the Night of Time

31

FROM TIME TO TIME he dreams a phone is ringing and he wakes too slowly, misses the call by a few seconds. The rings continue, each one more shrill than the last, and because he doesn’t answer it, he won’t know who’s calling to ask for help, or to warn him of danger, or if it’s Judith Biely, and, receiving no answer, she’ll assume he’s no longer in Madrid and they won’t meet again, all because of a few moments’ delay. In the dream he wakes: one ring, then another, and his body unresponsive to his will, wood or tiles or a rug under his bare feet, his bewilderment at not remembering where the phone is, then a rush to reach it, his hand stretching out and touching the receiver at the instant the vibration of the final ring dies down. Though her image now escapes his dreams, Judith Biely hovers over them like an oppressive absence, an unconquered void, a knife’s edge present in the open wound, a footprint in damp sand. But if he had wakened more quickly and run unhesitatingly to the phone, she would have been there. If his fatigue hadn’t been so profound, he’d have reached the phone in time to hear the voice of one of his children: a voice distant, altered by interference but recognizable, a little strange after not hearing it for so long.

In reality the phone call in his dream and the one when he is awake coincided only once. He opened his eyes knowing it had rung many times, and he was lying in the large, unmade bed. His body was heavy, slow, as in the dream. Light filtered through the closed shutters, but the house was so dark it was impossible to estimate the time. The hall seemed to lengthen as he walked down it. He brought the receiver to his ear and asked who was calling. At first he didn’t recognize Bergamín’s voice, weak and harsh at the same time, nasal.

“Abel, what took you so long? Come to the Alliance as fast as you can. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Do you know where Professor Rossman is?”

“Come right away. I’m leaving town very soon.”

He understands now that there had been fear in Bergamín’s voice, hidden behind the urgency, just as it was there later in his small eyes, tearing because of the cold that wet the tip of his nose, irritated by so much wiping with the wrinkled handkerchief he returned to his pocket as if hiding something indecent. Or perhaps not fear exactly but an uneasiness he wouldn’t acknowledge, a disquiet because of a danger too varied or subtle to contemplate: the enemy might be advancing toward Madrid more quickly than anyone had foreseen; someone might doubt his orthodox loyalty to the cause in spite of his dedicated work at the Alliance and the articles he wrote blazing with a rage for justice; he might be compromised by having been seen with Ignacio Abel that morning in the courtyard of the Alliance, or making inquiries regarding the whereabouts of his German friend; he might be too late to board the plane at Barajas Airport that would take him to Paris and then on to Geneva to participate in the International Congress for Peace as a representative of Spanish intellectuals. He came out to the staircase of the Heredia Spinola Palace wearing a vaguely English formal suit for travel instead of the open shirt and aviator’s leather jacket, and the morning sun made him blink, his eyes sunken beneath his eyebrows, not used to the light, fatigued by so much work in the gloomy office where he spent nights on end writing articles or ballads in his tiny, meticulous hand, correcting galleys of The Blue Coverall. After calling Ignacio Abel, he’d sat with both hands in front of his face, his thin fingertips brushing his damp nose. He’d consulted his watch, confirming that the large baroque clock hanging on the wall with the weapons of the marquises of Heredia Spinola was running slow — weapons repeated in all the palace’s decorations, on the backs of chairs and fake-Renaissance carved credenzas, on ceiling frescoes and the chimneys of fireplaces. The plane to Paris was supposed to depart at eleven in the morning; it had the French flag clearly painted on the fuselage, so there was no danger of its being pursued by the enemy. He checked with his secretary that the car to the airport was ready in the courtyard and his briefcase with his passports, visas, and safe-conducts was already inside. With distracted pleasure he looked over the day’s newspapers spread out on the enormous desk in his office, with their usual news that at no moment relieved the uneasiness, the disquiet that he shouldn’t show even to himself, the fear that insinuated itself in his eyes, the drumming of fingers that reached for a cigarette or a match or counted the syllables of verses. He looked at the clock again and put on the tweed jacket suitable for travel, gathered up papers and put them in his portfolio and his pen in the breast pocket of his jacket, impatient, restless, irritated with Ignacio Abel, who sounded sleepy on the phone, who still hadn’t arrived though he’d told him to hurry. “Mariana, I’m leaving. When the architect Abel arrives give him the instructions, tell him how important it is for him to complete the mission he’s been entrusted with.” In a nearby hall the band was rehearsing for the masquerade ball the poet Alberti and his wife had been organizing for several days to honor the French writers visiting Madrid, taking advantage of the abundance of dress uniforms and carnival outfits in the wardrobes and trunks of the fugitive marquises. Bergamín was happy to miss the party. He avoided the collective festivities that Alberti and María Teresa León enjoyed so much, just as they relished poetry readings and speeches at the end of banquets honoring someone or other. Alberti had the slick profile of a film star; his wife, blond and buxom, her lips painted bright red, would put her hands on her hips and sway beside him, as if at any moment she might begin to sing a jota instead of reading a proclamation or reciting a war ballad. He heard her now, speaking loudly over the discord of the rehearsing instruments, giving instructions. When Bergamín spoke in public, he placed his lips too close to the microphone and hunched his shoulders instead of thrusting out his chest and lifting his chin; when anthems were sung and he raised his fist, he did so as if contracting rather than clenching it; and he was conscious of his own posture as well as his weak voice when singing “The Internationale.” He probably looked ridiculous now as he stepped out onto the palace stairs, his eyes squinting, frail among the militiamen and drivers going back and forth in the courtyard among the trucks that came and went, the workers gingerly moving paintings, sculptures, boxes of books, so many valuable objects rescued from churches in danger of being burned or palaces abandoned, subject to looting after the owners had been detained or executed. The implacable surgery of the people’s justice. He’d written the sentence himself in his beautiful hand, so tiny it damaged his eyes. He thought of the line when he saw Ignacio Abel coming through the entrance gate, agitated, for once not wearing a tie, afraid Bergamín had left. He’d have preferred not to see Abel. One minute more and he’d have watched him through the window of the car now waiting for him at the foot of the stairs, a gleaming Hispano-Suiza that perhaps had also belonged to the owners of the palace, on which there were no painted slogans but a modern, discreet sign on the doors: ALLIANCE OF ANTI-FASCIST INTELLECTUALS — PRESIDENT’S OFFICE. Ignacio Abel had already seen him. Bergamín signaled that he should follow him into the vestibule, where the leaded stained glass diffused an opalescent light tinted with bright reds, yellows, blues.

“Do you know where they’re holding Professor Rossman?”

“Not so loud, Abel, slow down. Slow and steady wins the race, says the Spanish proverb. You’re compromising yourself and compromising me as well. It’s imprudent to go around asking about someone who sounds a little shady. I have some information, not much. It’s not a good idea for either you or your friend to make too much noise about this case.”

“They detained him by mistake, I’m sure.”

“You can’t be sure of anything these days. Our Soviet friends were sure of Bukharin and Kamenev and Zinoviev, and look at the monstrous conspiracies they were plotting and eventually confessed to. We’re facing an enemy without compassion who unfortunately isn’t just on the other side of the frontlines. They’re active here in Madrid as well. You know what General Varela says on insurgent radio: he has four columns ready to attack Madrid, and a fifth that will conquer the city from within. They’re among us and with impunity take advantage of the confusion they themselves created when they rebelled, and the moral scruples and bureaucracy that paralyze us—”

“What are you talking about, Bergamín? A few minutes ago, on my way here, I saw several bodies along the fences of the Retiro. They’re loaded into garbage trucks like trash, and people laugh.”

“Don’t you wonder what they might have done to end up like that? Don’t you read the papers, don’t you listen to the radio? They believe their people are about to arrive, and they want to make the conquest easier. They shoot from terraces and the bell towers of churches. They speed past barracks in cars and machine-gun the militiamen on duty and whoever is in front. Their planes bomb working-class neighborhoods, and they have no misgivings about women and children dying. I told you the other day and I’ll say it again: it wasn’t the people who began this war. We can’t allow ourselves any weakness or carelessness. We can’t trust our own shadows. Do me a favor and do the same. I don’t have time to explain too much because I have to be at the airport in half an hour. Risking a great deal and out of consideration for you, I’ve made inquiries and can assure you your friend is in no imminent danger.”

“Tell me where he is, what he’s accused of.”

“You’re asking too much. I don’t know.”

“At least tell me who’s holding him. Is he in a Communist cheka?”

“Be careful what you say, Abel. I’ve been assured he was detained because of an accusation that seemed well founded but turned out to be not too serious. The normal thing would be for them to let him go tomorrow or the day after. Maybe today, who knows? Our side doesn’t act as blindly as you imagine, man of little faith.”

“Tell me where to go and I’ll make a statement in his favor. Negrín is also prepared to answer for him.”

“Negrín has just been named minister in the new government… Didn’t you listen to the radio this morning?”

“I’ll call Professor Rossman’s daughter. She hasn’t slept in two nights.”

“You’re not going anywhere, Abel, only where I tell you to. They called me this morning from the Committee for the Restoration of the Artistic Patrimony asking for a favor, and I thought of you. They’re swamped with work, as you can imagine.”

“They wouldn’t be if they hadn’t burned so many churches.”

“You always blame everything on our side, Abel. You see only our errors.”

“The entire world sees them.”

“The entire world sees what it wants to see!” Bergamín’s voice grew shrill. “They have eyes and do not see, ears and do not hear, says Scripture. The entire world refuses to acknowledge that it was the insurgent planes that bombed the palace of the duke of Alba, and the people’s militias who risked their lives rushing into the fire and rubble to save artistic treasures that a family of landowning parasites has been usurping for centuries.”

Bergamín looked at his watch. He was uncomfortable and in a hurry. His pale face tinged by the colors of the stained glass, he watched the flow of people between the great staircase and the courtyard and grew uneasy when he saw André Malraux, who would accompany him on his flight.

“Speaking of treasures, you’ve probably heard about the retable on the main altar of the Capilla de la Caridad in Illescas. It has no less than four paintings by El Greco. The Committee asked for our help in rescuing it.”

“The enemy has already reached Illescas?”

“Don’t be alarmed, Abel. Someone will hear you and think you’re a defeatist.”

“If it’s not one thing it’s another. It’s obvious I don’t strike you the right way, Bergamín.”

“Don’t get angry. I’m alarmed by your political naïveté and would like to make you more aware or at least protect you. As you know, the militias are forcing the enemy to retreat on all fronts, including Talavera. If the Fascists haven’t been able to take Talavera with forces much larger and better armed than ours, how will they approach Illescas, which is much closer to Madrid? This is a different problem. We’ve been told that in Illescas those rather wild-eyed boys from the Iberian Anarchist Federation have seized power and decided to proclaim Anarchist communism. For the moment they’ve eliminated private property and money and converted the Capilla de la Caridad into a warehouse for collectivized foodstuffs. A Socialist councilman managed to call the Committee for the Patrimony yesterday from the only phone in the village. In the commune they’re debating what to do with the altarpiece — sell it and collect funds to buy weapons, which is the position of the more moderate members, or burn it in a bonfire in the middle of the town square. Don’t look at me like that, Abel. We can’t reproach the people for not appreciating what they haven’t been taught to appreciate. With the help of our friends in the Fifth Regiment, we’ve prepared a small rescue expedition. Discreet but effective. A few well-armed militiamen were provided with a decree from the National Directorate for Fine Arts authorizing them to remove the El Greco paintings from the retable and store them temporarily in the basement of the Bank of Spain, which is what we’ve been doing with many other endangered works of art. You’re the person chosen to direct the operation. Don’t protest. I’ve told you on various occasions: make yourself visible, make yourself useful. Make your loyalty to the Republic known with actions and not just words. Though words are also a good idea. Why didn’t you sign the intellectuals’ manifesto of loyalty to the regime?”

“No one asked me to.”

“Everything has a solution. Write something for the next issue of The Blue Coverall. A few pages on whatever subject you like, architecture in the new society, or something along the lines of what you gave me for Cruz y Raya that everybody liked so much. The masters of popular architecture, as anonymous as the authors of the old ballads. And please leave right away for Illescas, an Alliance truck will be waiting at the corner of Recoletos. Time is of the essence, Abel.”

“Give me your word that nothing will happen to Professor Rossman.”

“I can’t promise anything. I’m not in charge. Do as I advise and no promise will be needed. If you hurry, you can be back with the paintings this afternoon. Ask Mariana. She is in charge. She’ll have a message for you.”

This time Bergamín didn’t offer his hand when he said goodbye. He saw a tall man with an arrogant profile going down the stairs in a leather jacket, breeches, and riding boots, and in a hurry to meet him Bergamín forgot about Ignacio Abel, but not without first telling him who the man was.

“There’s Malraux.”

Why had he foolishly allowed himself to be persuaded, taking Bergamín at his word? Why, instead of climbing into the truck that would take him to an uncertain and probably dangerous destination, didn’t he leave the Alliance and keep looking for Professor Rossman, who might still have been alive that morning? The militiamen taking the sun at the entrance, sitting in wing chairs removed from the palace — smoking, chatting on the sunny sidewalk, their rifles across their laps — wouldn’t have done anything to stop him. Problems have a solution for a certain period of time, almost always brief, and then they are irreparable. He went into the courtyard and a militiaman told him the truck was ready, its motor running, the men prepared. Bergamín’s secretary came down the marble staircase, heels clicking, to give him a folder with documents whose contents she reviewed quickly with him, not giving him time to ask questions. How strange to have lost so easily the almost arrogant feeling of control that had become a character trait when he made decisions and gave orders at the construction sites in University City. The band was playing somewhere, he could hear the Linotype machines at work, orders and shouts around him, raucous engines and horns in the courtyard, boot heels pounding, weapons firing. In the rooms where only two months earlier liveried servants and maids in black uniforms and white caps went about their work, a disorderly crowd swarmed: unshaven men in blue coveralls, rifles over their shoulders, and women in militia caps, pistols at their waists. The war was a state of improvisation and urgency, a reckless, convulsive theatricality in which he was caught up, knowing that he shouldn’t allow himself to be persuaded, that he lacked the courage or simple adroitness to resist. He remained motionless, like an animal caught in the headlights. When he did nothing, the danger increased; if he did something, it was futile, wrong, and he knew it, but he couldn’t overcome his own incompetence. In one of the improvised jails in Madrid, in a dark basement where prisoners crammed together could barely see one another’s faces, Professor Rossman might be waiting for a door to open and someone to say his name, aware that in all of Madrid Ignacio Abel was the only one who could save him. That morning he should have turned again to Negrín, even more influential and activist, just named a minister. Through large open doors came the sound of the bugle that announced war dispatches on the radio, and people came from all directions to gather around a radio as ostentatious as the palace’s carved doors, desks, and credenzas. Militiamen, clerks, workers, musicians who interrupted their rehearsal, girls dressed in eighteenth-century ball gowns and wigs. Beside Ignacio Abel stood Bergamín’s attentive secretary. The first solemn, blaring measures of the Republican anthem sounded, and the voice of the announcer declaimed: “Attention, Spaniards! The victory government has been formed!” Applause rang out each time the name of one of the new ministers, Socialists and Communists now, was announced, but almost none when the name of Juan Negrín López, minister of finance, came up. Silence was restored with difficulty, and the rhetorical voice announced a speech from the new prime minister, Don Francisco Largo Caballero. As had happened so often in his life, Ignacio Abel found himself surrounded by a fervor he would have liked to share, yet it merely accentuated his feeling of distance, his sense of being an outsider. How strange that on those young faces, Largo Caballero’s unpolished oratory, his way of speaking in front of a microphone — an old man, disconcerted by modern inventions — should awaken unanimous attention and enthusiasm. The unbreakable unity of all the organizations in the Popular Front guaranteed the imminent defeat of the Fascist aggressors. The enemy retreated on all fronts, desperately trying to resist fierce attacks by the workers’ heroic militias. The Spanish people would expel the Moorish mercenaries and the invaders sent by German Nazis and Italian Fascists, just as it had expelled Napoleon’s armies in the War of Independence. To each “Viva” pronounced by Largo Caballero, the people grouped around the radio responded with a “Viva” that resounded in the hall. They stood up and raised their fists and sang “The Internationale,” played by the band. Ignacio Abel raised his fist too, with an involuntary yet true emotion awakened by the music and the beautiful words learned as a child at the Socialist meetings his father took him to: Arise, you prisoners of starvation! Arise, you wretched of the earth! They think the revolution is now reality, that they’ve triumphed just because they occupy the palaces of Madrid and march in parades with bands and red flags. They’re intoxicated by words and anthems, as if they were breathing air too rich in oxygen and didn’t know it. But perhaps it was he who was mistaken, his lack of fervor proof not of lucidity but the mean-spirited hardening of age, favored by privilege and his fear of losing it.

He left the Alliance, obeying the militiaman’s brusque orders when he should have gone to find Negrín, who must have been in the office of the prime minister at the foot of the Castellana, so close he could have walked there in less than fifteen minutes. Nothing could shock Negrín. In exceptional circumstances he unleashed, knowledgeably and without hesitation, his formidable capacity for action. Too late now: they were beside the small truck, its motor running, and the militiaman who’d accompanied him jumped in the back where his comrades were, sitting in the shade of the canvas, laughing as they passed around a bota of wine, perched on gasoline drums and lighting cigarettes. War was a job for the young. Older people who took part did so with the cold sordidness of propagandists, or were themselves caught up in a delirium of imbecilic rhetoric and monstrous vanity. The driver waited in front, younger than the rest, bareheaded, with an overgrown boy’s round face, round glasses, and curly hair flattened by combing it back with pomade. The war was an obscene slaughterhouse of defenseless people and very young men. Dressed in bizarre military fashion — officer’s shoes, worker’s trousers, peasant’s jacket, leather straps, a pistol — the driver seemed a recruit destined for the battalion of the dimwitted.

“Don Ignacio, don’t you remember me?”

In the young face he could see enduring signs of a childhood that had been familiar to him. The driver blushed as he smiled.

“Miguel Gómez, Don Ignacio. Eutimio’s son, the foreman at the School of Medicine…”

“The Communist?”

“Did my father tell you that? With the Unified Young Socialists, for now.”

“Miguelito…”

Ignacio Abel put both hands on his shoulders, resisting the temptation to pull him close, as he would have done not many years before. He must be twenty-one now, twenty-two at most, but he was still chubby and hadn’t grown much. Only his eyes had the intensity of an adult, anguished life, fevers fed by reading until the small hours of the morning, debilitating arguments about philosophy and politics. “My kid’s turned out to be a reader on me, like you turned out on your father, may he rest in peace,” Eutimio once told him. That the boy had the same name as his own father and son caused a rush of tenderness in Ignacio Abel: he’d been the boy’s godfather, and Eutimio had asked his permission to name him after the elder Miguel. He recognized him fully when he saw him climb awkwardly into the driver’s seat, the pistol’s holster catching on the door handle. This Miguel had been a late child, the last of Eutimio’s five or six, weak when he was little, and several times it seemed he might die of a fever or develop lung disease. He started driving the truck with an abrupt acceleration that provoked laughter and falls in the rear, intimidated perhaps by Ignacio Abel, who’d been a mysterious presence in his childhood, the godfather he was sometimes taken to visit in a building with an elevator and marble stairs that seemed immense to him, though he and his father didn’t walk on them or take the elevator, they climbed up the narrow, dark service staircase; the distant protector from whom came toys and books on his saint’s day; the man who’d intervened when he was a little older so that instead of going to work as an apprentice in construction like his other brothers, he could study for his high school diploma (perhaps Ignacio Abel had used his influence to get the boy enrolled in a good school free of charge, or had taken on the payments without telling anyone). A maid would open the door for Eutimio and Miguel and show them to a room that had a window overlooking an interior courtyard. They waited in silence, Eutimio stiff in a chair, uncomfortable in the boots he seldom wore and that squeaked when he walked and pinched his feet; Miguel’s chair was so high his feet barely touched the floor. Just as when he was a child, it was difficult for Miguel to look into his godfather’s eyes and speak to him. “Thank Don Ignacio,” his father would say. “Nice and loud, we can hardly hear you.” He was a careful driver, conscious of Ignacio Abel’s presence, afraid of seeming clumsy or making a mistake, his chest over the wheel, his glasses sliding down his nose at each jolt of the truck. The former child was now a man with the beginnings of a beard and had a pistol at his waist and his own convictions. Ignacio Abel liked saying the name aloud, Miguel, like my father who died so many years ago, like my son, whom I don’t know when I’ll see again, and if I do see him, he’ll already have made a huge stride in time that will take him out of childhood and away from me, even more irreversibly than physical distance.

“Your Miguelito must be a man by now.”

“He’s twelve.”

“Hard to believe! You’d bring him and the girl to University City and my father would bring me so I could watch them and play with them. How they fought. Scratching like cats.”

“Your father used to take care of me when he worked on my father’s crew.”

They’d crossed the Toledo Bridge and were driving up the dusty slope of Carabanchel. When they saw the red banner of the Fifth Regiment flying from the cab, the militiamen at the checkpoints moved to one side to let them pass, raising their fists. Groups of men with an air of city people unaccustomed to such tasks were digging trenches that were more like shallow ditches at the sides of the road, their barracks caps pushed back.

“Is it true your father was one of the founders of the Socialist Party?”

“I don’t think so. But he joined when he was very young, and the union too. Pablo Iglesias liked him a lot. He once asked him to do a small job in his house.”

“My father told me he was at your father’s funeral. Do you remember?”

“Pablo Iglesias? Your father has a good imagination. What he did was send my mother a letter that a comrade from the union read aloud at the cemetery. Calle Toledo was filled with people, construction workers from Madrid grouped by trade, directed by the UGT. Neighborhood women gossiping because it was a secular burial. My mother was very religious, but when the priest from San Isidro arrived, she thanked him and said there was no need for him to stay. She’d go alone to pray afterward, but her husband would be buried in the way he would have wanted.”

They were silent, hypnotized by the straight highway, the flat, dry landscape, dazed by the rumble of the engine and the jolting of the truck. They passed farmhouses with large corrals that seemed abandoned, beside wheat fields that had been cut down and fallow fields where autumn plowing hadn’t begun yet. Along the low, whitewashed wall of a cemetery a sign in large red brushstrokes stood out in the sun: LONG LIV RUSIA UHP. They approached a checkpoint at a turnoff to a dirt road that probably led to a village not visible from the highway, watched over by two campesinos in straw hats with shotguns and cartridge belts crossed over their chests. They’d blocked the road with a cart and on each side had placed, like two scarecrows, a crucified Christ with a long head of natural hair blowing in the wind, and a Virgin in elaborate petticoats and skirts. From a distance her crystal tears and silver heart shone in the sun. But the impression of a desert didn’t last long: a large truck and a bus filled with militiamen on the way to Toledo pulled ahead of them with a great roar of horns, shouts, and shots in the air, enveloping them in a dense cloud of dust. A little farther on they left behind a slow line of old military vehicles, cars with mattresses tied to the roofs, trucks protected by makeshift sheets of armor. “By the time they get to Toledo, the Alcázar will already have surrendered out of boredom,” said Miguel Gómez, not smiling. In the silence the estrangement between them had grown, the distance of the years and of political suspicion; Miguel’s concern for his own circumstances, his instinctive gratitude but also resentment toward the man who’d paid for his secondary education and even would have helped him establish a career, if his desire not to go on being grateful hadn’t been stronger than his ambition to move up socially. Yet he hadn’t escaped a debt he could never repay: studying at night, he became a draftsman and passed his examinations without much effort, but the position he obtained in the drafting office of the Lozoya Canal wouldn’t have been his, in spite of his outstanding record, if not for the discreet help of his godfather, whom he hadn’t seen for many years. It was his father who provided the rationale: “If rich men’s sons get their positions through connections, why shouldn’t we let Don Ignacio give you a hand when you’re worth more than all of them put together?” Now Miguel was gnawed by the fear that Ignacio Abel might think he’d found easy work on the Committee for the Restoration of the Artistic Patrimony to avoid going to the front, that like so many others he showed off his leather straps and a pistol to disguise a comfortable job behind the lines. “If they’d only let me go to fight,” he said, indicating with a motion of his head the convoy they’d left behind. “Not your fault you’re nearsighted,” said Ignacio Abel. “Your father always attributed it to your love of books.” “And besides, I have flat feet,” Miguel Gómez muttered, less with resignation than self-mockery, as he tightened his grip on the wheel to take a curve around a bare limestone hill cut by erosion. At least he knew how to drive, he thought as he moved his body forward over the wheel as if to see the road better. He smelled something burning, smoke. Maybe the engine was overheating, the truck was old and had been badly mistreated recently, or he drove erratically, with abrupt braking and acceleration. The smell was not just gasoline; as they passed the hill, the air filled with light mist and the flat landscape spread out before them. Miguel Gómez felt a rumbling, as if deep beneath the earth, like thunder or an underground train, like a mallet hitting an immense drum, very distant and very close, under them and the wheels of the truck, and also vibrating in the air, something neither of them had ever heard before, the booming mixed with the stillness of the countryside and the smell of smoke whose origin they didn’t know, gasoline and something else, denser and more oppressive, hot metal, burning tires. One of the militiamen riding in the back of the truck banged on the glass at the back of the cab, saying something they couldn’t hear. “We can’t be close to the front,” said Miguel Gómez, the sweat making his hands slip on the wheel, wetting his back. “They can’t have advanced this far.” “Could we have taken the wrong road?” asked Ignacio Abel, looking for traffic signs, some indication of the distance that separated them from Toledo, but they saw nothing ahead, no houses, no village. They continued moving, their eyes fixed on the highway that was rising now, limiting their field of vision. The militiaman knocked on the glass with the barrel of his rifle and gestured, but Miguel Gómez didn’t turn around, incapable of making a decision, stepping on the accelerator to get up the slope because the motor didn’t have much more to give and was overheating. Now the smoke was visible and the smell unmistakable: burned tires and burned flesh.

At the top of the hill the smoke blinded them. Ignacio Abel shouted at Miguel Gómez to stop and lunged toward the wheel to turn the truck. The desert had suddenly been transformed into complete chaos. In front of them was a blaze and a pile of scrap metal, the remains of the bus that had passed them less than an hour before, overturned and on fire in the middle of the highway. Burning bodies jutted out of the windows, contorted faces, their features like melted rubber. Coming toward them through clouds of black smoke, a confusion of human figures overflowed the highway: they gesticulated and opened their mouths but their voices couldn’t be heard, drowned out by the explosions and the horns of motorcycles, cars, and trucks bogged down in the multitude of people, halted by the burning bus. “Go back, turn around,” said Ignacio Abel while the militiamen continued to bang on the glass, pressing their faces against it, twisted by horror. But the engine stalled and Miguel Gómez couldn’t start it again, kept turning the ignition key, couldn’t tell whether he was stepping on the brake or the accelerator. Now the long whistles of mortars, and a few seconds later the earth rose in the fields along the highway like streams of lava in an erupting volcano. They could make out the faces approaching them, militiamen tossing their weapons in order to run more quickly, old campesinos, women with children in their arms, animals weighed down by mattresses, heaps of sacks and suitcases, chairs, sewing machines, the mules’ big eyes even larger with terror, open mouths searching for air, bodies trampling one another, while at the edge of the highway, between a line of trees, red flashes and columns of smoke rose. The morning light had the opacity of an eclipse. The truck started up again with a shudder, but instead of shifting into reverse, Miguel Gómez stepped on the gas pedal, riding in a straight line toward the burning bus and the turmoil of vehicles and militiamen and animals and fleeing campesinos. On one side of the highway, his legs wide apart, the heels of his boots deep in the dust, his head bare, an army officer flailed his arms and shouted, brandishing a pistol, threatening the militiamen who ran, throwing down not only their weapons but also the French steel helmets from the Great War, canteens, cartridge belts with ammunition, jumping over corpses and smashed suitcases, hopping over the dry furrows of a plowed field, throwing themselves to the ground with heads pulled in when they heard the whistle of an incoming mortar. We’re going to run over someone and not know it; people desperate to flee will grab onto the sides of the truck and overturn it and we’ll never get out of here; at any moment the invisible enemy on the other side of that row of trees will come at us and we’ll be spellbound by the approach of the horsemen, the Moorish mercenaries who raise their sabers and shriek in the intoxication of a gallop carrying them to slaughter or their own deaths, the legionnaires who know how to advance with bayonets fixed or wait on a rise, their machine guns ready, and effortlessly mow down bewildered, foolhardy militiamen who don’t know what war is, who imagine war is a parade through Madrid where they mark time in an unmartial way with a rifle at their shoulder and a fist at their temple. Ignacio Abel saw the intermittent shreds of images unfolding before him, submerging him in an unreality that erased fear and suspended time. Beside him, Miguel Gómez drove the truck, turning the wheel, accelerating and braking, wiping the sweat from his forehead and eyes, his thick fingers under his lenses. A campesino’s mule cart came toward them, with suitcases and furniture falling off the sides, a pack of dogs chasing it. Beyond the trees and the smoke, the silhouettes of horses appearing by the score. “To the right!” he heard himself shout, turning the wheel with a blow of his hand. “Accelerate, don’t stop now!” On the right side of the highway was a burned house and in front of it a horse with its belly gaping open, its guts spilling out, and beyond that, visible for a moment and then erased by smoke, the start of a road, almost perpendicular to the highway. The truck leaned when it took the turn, barely avoiding a ditch, leaving the war behind as it drove on, the trembling of the earth easing, the mortars’ whistles fading. On the curve of a nearby hill, a line of dun-colored houses and a church tower emerged. A column of smoke rose from the hood of the dilapidated truck.

“We’ll have to stop, Don Ignacio. We have to put water in the radiator. The motor’s burning out.”

“Do you have any idea where we are?”

“I’m a disaster. I’m lost.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll ask in the village. We’ll find a road back to Madrid around here.”

“But we have to go to Illescas, Don Ignacio. They entrusted us with a mission.”

“Our mission right now is to not get killed.”

“Did you see the Fascists? Did you see the Moors’ sabers shining?”

“Slow down. The village seems empty.”

“They must’ve evacuated it.”

Never having learned the name of the village, Ignacio Abel remembered it as a phantom site. There was a fountain with several spouts at the entrance, and Miguel Gómez stopped the truck beside it. The three militiamen jumped down from the back, shaking their legs, telling jokes. Whose idea was it to send them for paintings, as if they worked for a moving company instead of killing Fascists? They were young; the evidence of danger and the spectacle of death were lost on them. “What do we do now, comrade? Go to Madrid without the paintings and not take any insurgents back with us?” Past the fountain, the only street in the village curved toward a small, arcaded square where the church stood. Not a single tree, no shade. Ignacio Abel washed his face in the fountain, drying it with the handkerchief he hadn’t forgotten to fold that morning into the breast pocket of his jacket. Miguel Gómez had unscrewed the radiator cap and was letting the engine cool before putting in water. The militiamen had taken out lunch pails and a bota of wine. They left their rifles leaning against the fountain wall and sat down in the sun to eat. Ignacio Abel moved away from the group, impatient to be alone, to find someone who’d tell him where they were and what would be the best way back to Madrid. He walked down the middle of the street. A little farther on a woman’s shawl, an open suitcase filled with tableware, folders of what seemed to be legal documents. He saw a door ajar and, after knocking on it a few times, pushed it open. He entered a kitchen, its walls curved like a cave and black with soot, where embers smoldered in a stove and a cooking pot sat nearby. The air held a residual odor of boiled garbanzos and rancid bacon. Something moving at the edge of his field of vision caused a rush of alarm: a canary in a cage, fluttering about, bumping into the wire sides. Back on the street, the vertical sun hit his eyes. Ignacio Abel was about to go back when he saw something projecting from the next corner: a shoe, the bottom edge of corduroy trousers, a man against the wall covered with bulletholes and spattered blood, in the middle of his chest a black hole of torn flesh and coagulated blood. He was lying face-up, but next to him was another man with his face to the ground, and a little beyond them two or three more piled up, and a barefoot woman with broad white thighs, her dress soaked in blood. Flies buzzed around their wounds, mouths, eyes. The air smelled of excrement and intestines. A vertical swaying shadow was projected onto the whitewashed wall: in a hayloft a man had been hanged from a hook on a pulley. His eyes were bulging, his swollen tongue sticking out of his mouth. At his feet a puddle of urine, both of his ears cut off.

He tested his back against the wall, close to the legs of the hanged man. He felt rough wood: a door. He slipped inside. It was a stable. He stepped in manure. A hen looked at him with a severe air as she sat on a straw nest on top of a sack of wheat. We’re lost on the other side of the lines, he thought. No sign, no border. Madrid suddenly a place as unreachable as America. They kill as they advance, methodically eradicating with a pitiless efficiency no one can stop. They’ll discover the truck and in a few seconds they’ll have machine-gunned those three boys playing at war and poor Miguel Gómez, who won’t be able to get his hand on his pistol. An oblique thread of sun traversed the ground in the stable; a shadow crossed it, and then another. Ignacio heard with absolute clarity the metallic sound of a rifle on a shoulder. Then an engine starting up, the neighing of a horse, the sound of hooves, first on paving stones, then on the ground. In the silence, the minutes had the inconsistency of time in dreams. He was struck by fear that the engine he’d heard was the truck’s. But Miguel would never leave without me. He went out to the street, staying close to the wall, and when he reached the corner, he heard at his back the mechanism of a rifle bolt and a gruff voice ordering him to halt. Fear was a stab wound in the middle of his spine. He turned his head slowly and the person aiming at him was one of the three militiamen, pale in the wounding light of midday and as frightened as he was, and just as much a stranger. “Don Ignacio,” said Miguel Gómez, “where have you been?”

They advanced along stray highways, unsure whether they were approaching the enemy or had already met him on the other side of the shifting frontline, whether at any moment they would fall into an ambush. The empty fields were a threat. No signs at the crossroads. They tried to be guided by the position of the sun and head north, but the roads seemed to go only west and south; in that direction lay Talavera de la Reina, and there the enemy certainly was advancing. But then where had they been when they came to that nameless village? Had they come across a regiment or just a scouting party? “They cut off her nose and ears,” said Miguel Gómez. Before or after raping her. Ignacio Abel was driving now. Miguel had agreed with no resistance, relieved really, leaning against the seat, holding on to the door handle, unable to forget the woman’s face, the enormous purple feet of the hanged man. The motor vibrated and roared beneath the sole of the foot stepping on the accelerator. Soon it would begin smoking again. A little faster, taking maximum advantage of the truck’s scant power and crude machinery. A little faster, but where? Along the harsh plain where they didn’t cross paths with anyone, a country uninhabited as if after a plague, barren fields and solitary houses, their roofs fallen in, vineyards disappearing into the distance on the reddish earth.

“It was a miracle they didn’t see us. And those three idiots joking and making noise as if nothing was going on.”

“Or maybe they thought there were more of us and ran away.”

“How scared I was not to see you, Don Ignacio. How could I face my father if anything happened to you?”

A sign carved into a boundary stone finally indicated the road: TO MADRID, 10 LEAGUES. They want Anarchist communism and we haven’t gotten as far as the decimal metric system. The road led to the national highway, and the slow river of refugees moving toward Madrid forced them to slow down. The multitude looked at the red banner with the emblem of the Fifth Regiment, didn’t move out of the way when the horn sounded. They had the air of fatigued, solemn poverty, of a primitive exodus, a universal migration leaving deserted lands behind. The mules, the donkeys, the carts with crude wooden wheels, the old men, fathers with children on their shoulders, women in black skirts and shawls, herds of goats, the cry of a newborn searching for its mother’s dry breast, the dust and silence enveloping everything, the unanimity of the flight, the urgency lessened by the exhaustion of walking since before dawn, leaving everything or almost everything behind, dropping on the road what became too heavy or unnecessary, like a trash heap the length of the highway, traces of shipwrecks in the dirty foam left by the sea when it recedes. They flee from an army of legionnaires, Moors, and Falangists who’ve been advancing toward Madrid since the end of July, fatigued from their killing spree. Now they lift their eyes and see Madrid for the first time, in the distance, as fantastic as the shapes of clouds, the formidable buildings, the terrifyingly wide streets they won’t dare cross for fear of the cars, the great yellow Telephone Company tower that Ignacio Abel and Miguel Gómez were grateful to see, shining in the sun above the rooftops.

Night was falling when they entered the city, and under the trees along the Prado and Recoletos the café tables were full. A heavy rain had fallen; the air was clean and the leaves on the trees glistened. On the wet paving stones streetcar rails gleamed. The setting sun illuminated the width of Calle de Alcalá with a dusty light, gold and violet, striking the glass in the high windows of the buildings. Ignacio Abel took his leave of Miguel Gómez in the courtyard of the Alliance without saying much. He was dying of hunger, weariness, thirst, but he climbed the stairs of the palace two by two in search of Bergamín’s secretary. From the large hall came the sound of an energetic paso doble. He was in the doorway of Bergamín’s office when the poet Alberti appeared, dressed as a lion tamer in a red jacket with gold braid, white trousers, high boots, carrying a folder of printer’s proofs. He looked at Ignacio Abel and made a distracted gesture of greeting or recognition. In the waiting room Mariana Ríos was taking dictation at her typewriter from a tall man who was standing behind her, his hand resting on the back of her chair. The secretary stopped typing, opened a drawer, and handed Ignacio Abel a sealed envelope. She told him he’d find Professor Rossman in the morgue of the National Security Agency, on Calle de Víctor Hugo. He walked out of the Heredia Spinola Palace, leaving behind the lit balconies and dance music, tearing open the envelope to read its contents in the light of a street lamp: a judicial document written in an ornate hand and detailing the discovery of a man killed by bullet wounds caused by an unknown perpetrator or perpetrators, the sole identity document on his person a card issued by the National Library in the name of Don Carlos Luís Rossman. On the table at the morgue, Professor Rossman wasn’t wearing his glasses but he did have on one of his felt slippers, held by a rubber band around the instep of his right foot. He had one eye open and the other almost closed, his face turned to one side, his upper lip drawn back and showing his gums with a few uneven teeth, his expression a frozen smile or one of surprise. Hunger and exhaustion, the growing unreality of it all, sank Ignacio Abel into a daze. In the labyrinth of narrow streets around the National Security Agency he walked to the Gran Vía to find the pensión where Señorita Rossman must have spent another day waiting for his call. The globes of the street lamps, painted blue as a precaution against night bombing raids, lit the corners with the sickly light of a theater set. Some militiamen asked for his papers in the Plaza de Vázquez de Mella, and he saw only the metal of their pistols and the lighted ends of their cigarettes. From a door came a reddish light, the noise of loud laughter, the music of a barrel organ, a brothel smell of disinfectant and perfume. What would he say to Señorita Rossman? What could he do but stand silent in the doorway of her room, so narrow her father would go out to a café to allow his daughter a few hours’ privacy. But Señorita Rossman wasn’t in the pensión, and the landlady told him she hadn’t appeared for several days; they’d come to ask for her from the office where she worked in the Telephone Company, and she, the landlady, had told them she didn’t know anything, she had enough troubles of her own — probably the German had left to avoid paying her monthly rent, and if she didn’t show up in another two or three days, she would have to collect the debt by taking anything of theirs that had value, even if it was only the suitcase on top of the wardrobe.

From time to time Ignacio Abel thinks of Señorita Rossman; the phone rings and he thinks she must be calling, and before the ringing stops he knows he’s been dreaming. Before he left Madrid, he called the press censorship office in the Telephone Company Building several times, and was told that Señorita Rossman was out sick or had left for unknown reasons, and finally that no one by that name worked there. He didn’t call again.