“Let’s respect the dead, especially since he was a friend, man,” said the Lamb.
“Bullshit,” I yelled.
Both of them were pale and I realized that they weren’t going to fight, they just wanted to get out of the room as quickly as possible.
“Who do you think he raped?”
“That’s what I want to know. Hanna?” I asked.
The Wolf looked at me the way you look at a crazy person or a child:
“Hanna was his girlfriend, how could he have raped her?”
“Did he or didn’t he?”
“No, man, of course not, how can you think such a thing?” said the Lamb.
“Charly didn’t rape anybody,” said the Wolf. “He had a heart of gold.”
“Charly, a heart of gold?”
“I can’t believe that you were his friend and you didn’t realize it.”
“He wasn’t my friend.”
The Wolf laughed a brief, deep, heartfelt laugh and said he had realized that by now, believe it or not, he was no idiot. Then he repeated that Charly was a good person, incapable of forcing anyone, and that if anybody had come close to being fucked, it was Charly himself, on the night when he left Ingeborg and Hanna abandoned on the highway. When he returned to town he got drunk with some strangers; according to the Wolf they must have been foreigners, possibly Germans. From the bar, a group of men— it wasn’t clear how many—headed to the beach. Charly remembered the taunts, not all of them directed at him, the shoves (which might have been poor attempts at humor), and an attempt to pull down his pants.
“He was raped, then?”
“No. He fought offthe guy who was harassing him and got out of there. There weren’t many of them and Charly was strong. But he was pretty upset and he wanted revenge. He came to my place looking for me. When we got back to the beach, no one was there.”
I believed them: the silence of the room, the muffled noise from the Paseo Marítimo, even the sun behind the clouds and the sea veiled by the balcony curtains—everything seemed to stand witness for that pair of deadbeats.
“You think Charly committed suicide, don’t you? Well, he didn’t, Charly never would’ve killed himself. It was an accident.”
The three of us abandoned our aggressive and defensive stances and segued directly into attitudes of sadness (though the description is excessive and imprecise), sitting down on the bed or the floor, the three of us enveloped in a warm mantle of solidarity, as if we really were friends or as if we had just fucked the maid, gravely delivering short speeches that the others celebrated with monosyllables, and enduring the extra presence that throbbed with its powerful back to us at the far end of the room.
Luckily the Lamb relit the joint and we passed it around until it was gone. There wasn’t another. With a puff, the Wolf scattered the ash that had fallen on the rug.
We went out for beers at the Andalusia Lodge.
The bar was empty and we sang a song.
An hour later I couldn’t stand them any longer and I left.
MY FAVORITE GENERALS
I don’t look for perfection in them. Perfection on a game board: what does it mean but death, the void? In the names, the brilliant careers, in the stuffof memory, I search for the image of their sure-fingered white hands, I search for their eyes watching battles (though there are only a few photographs that show them thus engaged): imperfect and singular, delicate, distant, gruff, daring, prudent—in all of them one can find courage and love. In Manstein, Guderian, Rommel. My Favorite Generals. And in Rundstedt, von Bock, von Leeb. In neither them nor others do I demand perfection; I content myself with their faces, open or impassive, with their dispatches, with just a name and a tiny deed sometimes. I even forget whether General X started the war at the head of a division or a corps, whether he showed more skill at commanding tanks or infantry; I mix up the scenes and the operations. Not for that do they shine less bright. They fade against the larger picture, depending on how one looks at it, but the picture always contains them. No exploit, no weakness, no resistance, however brief or prolonged, is lost. If El Quemado had the slightest knowledge or appreciation of twentieth-century German literature (and it’s likely that he does!) I’d tell him that Manstein is like . . . Celan. And Paulus is like Trakl, and his predecessor, Reichenau, is like Heinrich Mann. Guderian is the equivalent of Jünger, and Kluge of Böll. He wouldn’t understand. Or at least he wouldn’t understand yet. I, however, find it easy to assign these generals occupations, nicknames, hobbies, types of house, seasons of the year, etc. Or to spend hours comparing and compiling statistics from their respective service records. Arranging and rearranging them: by game, by decorations, by victories, by defeats, by years lived, by books published. They’re not saints or anything like it, but sometimes I see them in the sky, like in the movies, their faces superimposed on the clouds, smiling at us, gazing into the distance, rehearsing salutes, some nodding as if clearing up unspoken doubts. They share clouds and sky with generals like Frederick the Great, as if the two eras and all games had merged in a single jet of steam. (Sometimes I imagine that Conrad is sick, in the hospital, with no visitors—except maybe me, standing by the door—and in his suffering he discovers, reflected on the wall, the maps and counters that he’ll never touch again! The era of Frederick and all the other generals escaped from the laws of the afterlife! The void knocking fists with my poor Conrad!) Sympathetic figures, despite everything. Like Model the Titan, Schörner the Ogre, Rendulio the Bastard, Arnim the Obedient, Witzleben the Squirrel, Blaskowitz the Upright, Knobelsdorffthe Paladin, Balck the Fist, Manteuffel the Intrepid, Student the Fang, Hausser the Black, Dietrich the Autodidact, Henrici the Rock, Busch the Nervous, Hoth the Thin, Kleist the Astronomer, Paulus the Sad, Breith the Silent, Vietinghoffthe Obstinate, Bayerlein the Studious, Hoeppner the Blind, Salmuth the Academic, Geyr the Inconstant, List the Luminous, Reinhardt the Silent, Meindl the Warthog, Dietl the Skater, Wöhler the Stubborn, Chevallerie the Absentminded, Bittrich the Nightmare, Falkenhorst the Leaper, Wenck the Carpenter, Nehring the Enthusiast, Weichs the Clever, Eberbach the Depressive, Dollman the Cardiac, Halder the Butler, Sodenstern the Swift, Kesselring the Mountain, Küchler the Preoccupied, Hube the Inexhaustible, Zangen the Dark, Weiss the Transparent, Friessner the Lame, Stumme the Ashen, Mackensen the Invisible, Lindemann the Engineer, Westphal the Calligrapher, Marcks the Bitter, Stulpnagel the Elegant, von Thoma the Garrulous . . . Firmly ensconced in heaven . . . On the same cloud as Ferdinand, Brunswick, Schwerin, Lehwaldt, Ziethen, Dohna, Kleist, Wedell, Frederick’s generals . . . On the same cloud as Blücher’s triumphant army at Waterloo: Bülow, Ziethen, Pirch, Thielman, Hiller, Losthin, Schwerin, Schulenburg, Watzdorf, Jagow, Tippelskirchen, etc. Symbolic figures with the ability to storm into your dreams to the cry of Eureka! Eureka! Awake! and make you open your eyes, if you’re able to hear their call without fear, and at the foot of the bed you find the Favorite Situations that were and the Favorite Situations that might have been. Among the former I would single out Rommel’s ride with the Seventh Armored in ’40, Student falling upon Crete, Kleist’s advance through the Caucasus with the First Panzer Army, Manteuffel’s offensive in the Ardennes with the Fifth Panzer Army, Manstein’s campaign in the Crimea with the Eleventh Army, the Dora gun itself, the Mt. Elbrus flag itself, Hube’s resistance in Russia and Sicily, Reichenau’s Tenth Army breaking the necks of the Poles. From among the Favorite Situations that never were, I have a special fondness for the capture of Moscow by Kluge’s troops, the conquest of Stalingrad by Reichenau (rather than Paulus), the disembarking of the Ninth and Sixteenth Armies in Great Britain (parachute drop included), the securing of the Astrakhan–Arkhangel’sk line, the triumphs in Kursk and Mortain, the orderly retreat to the far side of the Seine, the reconquest of Budapest, the reconquest of Antwerp, the sustained resistance in Courland and Königsberg, the holding of the line along the Oder, the Alpine Redoubt, the death of Zarina and the switching of alliances . . . Silliness, idiocy, useless feats, as Conrad says, in or
der to avoid witnessing the generals’ last farewell: happy in victory, good losers in defeat. Even in utter defeat. They wink an eye, rehearse military salutes, stare offinto the distance, or nod. What have they to do with this hotel that’s falling apart? Nothing, but they help, they comfort. Their farewells stretch on for an eternity and remind me of old matches, afternoons, nights, of which all that remains is not victory or defeat but a movement, a feint, a clash, and friends’ claps on the back.
AUTUMN 1942. WINTER 1942
“I thought you’d gone,” says El Quemado.
“Where?”
“Back home, to Germany.”
“Why would I leave, Quemado? Do you think I’m scared?”
El Quemado says no no no, very slowly, almost without moving his lips, avoiding my eyes. He only stares at the game board; nothing else holds his attention for more than a few seconds. Nervous, he shifts from wall to wall, like a prisoner, but he avoids the balcony area as if he doesn’t want to be seen from the street. He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and on his arm, on the burns, there’s a very faint gloss of mossy green, possibly the residue of some lotion. And yet it wasn’t sunny at all today, and as far as I can remember I never saw him applying lotion even on the most scorching days. Should I deduce that this is a growth? Is what looks to me like moss actually new skin, regenerated? Is this his body’s way of replacing dead skin? Whatever it is, it’s disgusting. By the way he moves I’d say that something is bothering him, though with his kind it’s impossible to say for sure. Suddenly his luck with the dice is overwhelming. Everything goes his way, even the most lopsided attacks. Whether his movements are part of an overarching strategy or the result of chance, of random strikes here and there, I can’t say, but it’s undeniable that beginner’s luck is with him. In Russia, after a series of attacks and counterattacks, I’m forced to retreat to the Leningrad–Kalinin–Tula–Stalingrad–Elista line, at the same time as a new Red threat, double-pronged, looms far to the south in the Caucasus, poised to attack Maikop, which is almost undefended, and Elista. In England I manage to hold on to at least one hex— Portsmouth—after a massive Anglo-American offensive that, despite everything, fails to achieve its goal of running me off the island. With Portsmouth still in my grasp, London remains under threat. In Morocco, El Quemado disembarks two corps of American infantry—his only simpleminded play—with seemingly no purpose other than to annoy and to divert German forces from other fronts. The bulk of my army is in Russia, and for now I don’t think I can pull out even a replacement unit.
“So why did you come if you thought I was gone?”
“Because we had an agreement.”
“Do you and I have an agreement, Quemado?”
“Yes. We play nights, that’s the agreement. Even if you’re gone, I’ll come until the game is over.”
“One of these days they won’t let you in or they’ll kick you out.”
“Maybe.”
“One of these days too I will decide to leave, and since it’s not always easy to find you I might not be able to say good-bye. I could leave you a note on the pedal boats, true, if they’re still on the beach. But one of these days I’ll get up and go and everything will be over before ’45.”
El Quemado smiles fiercely (and his ferocity reveals glimpses of a precise and insane geometry) with the certainty that his pedal boats will remain on the beach even when every pedal boat in town has retired to winter quarters. The fortress will still stand, he’ll still wait for me or for the shadow even when there are no tourists or the rains come. His stubbornness is a kind of prison.
“The truth is there’s nothing between us, Quemado. By ‘agreement’ do you mean ‘obligation’?”
“No, I see it as a pact.”
“Well, we don’t have any kind of pact, we’re just playing a game, that’s all.”
El Quemado smiles, says yes, he understands, that’s all it is, and in the heat of combat, with the dice going his way, he pulls new photocopies folded into quarters out of his pocket and offers them to me. Some paragraphs are underlined and there are spots of grease and beer on the paper that speak of likely study at a bar table. As with the first offering, an inner voice dictates my reactions. Thus, instead of reproaching him for a gift that might well hide an insult or a provocation—though it might also be the innocent device (involving politics rather than military history!) by which El Quemado engages in discussion with me—I proceed to calmly pin them up next to the first photocopies, in such a way that at the end of the operation the wall behind the head of the bed looks completely different from usual. For a moment I feel as if I’m in someone else’s room: the room of a foreign correspondent in a hot and war-torn country? Also: the room seems smaller. Where do the photocopies come from? From two books, one by X and the other by Y. I’ve never heard of them. What kind of strategic lessons do they have to teach us? El Quemado averts his gaze, then smiles innocently and says that he’s not ready to reveal his plans. This is an attempt to make me laugh; out of politeness, I do.
The next day El Quemado comes back even stronger, if possible. He attacks in the East and I have to retreat again, he masses forces in Great Britain, and he begins to advance from Morocco and Egypt, though very slowly for the time being. The patch on his arm has disappeared. All that’s left is the burn, smooth and flat. His movements around the room are confident, even graceful, and they no longer reveal the nervousness of the day before. Still, he doesn’t talk much. His preferred topic is the game, the world of games, the clubs, magazines, championships, matches by correspondence, conventions, etc., and all my attempts to steer the conversation in a different direction—for example, toward the person who gave him photocopies of the Third Reich rules—are in vain. When he’s told something he doesn’t want to hear, he sits there like a rock or a mule. He simply acts as if he hasn’t heard. It’s likely that my tactics are too subtle. I’m cautious, and ultimately I try not to hurt his feelings. El Quemado may be my enemy, but he’s a good enemy and those are hard to come by. What would happen if I were honest with him, if I told him what the Wolf and the Lamb have told me and asked him for an explanation? In the end, I’d probably have to choose between taking his word or theirs. Which I’d rather not have to do. So we talk about games and gamers, a subject of seemingly endless appeal to El Quemado. I think if I took him with me to Stuttgart—no, Paris!—he would be the star of the matches: the sense of the ridiculous that I sometimes feel—stupid, I know, but it’s true—when I get to a club and from a distance I see older people trying their hardest to solve military problems that to the rest of the world are old news would vanish solely with his presence. His charred face lends dignity to the act of gaming. When I ask him whether he’d like to come with me to Paris, his eyes light up, but then he shakes his head. Have you ever been to Paris, Quemado? No, never. Would you like to go? He’d like to, but he can’t. He’d like to play other people, lots of matches, “one after the other,” but he can’t. All he’s got is me, and that’s enough for him. Well, there are worse fates; I am the champion, after all. That makes him feel better. But he’d still like to play other people, though he doesn’t plan to buy the game (or at least he doesn’t say so), and in the middle of his speech, I have the impression that we’re talking about different things. I’m documenting myself, he says. After an effort I realize that he’s talking about the photocopies. I can’t help laughing.
“Are you still going to the library, Quemado?”
“Yes.”
“And you only borrow books about the war?”
“Now I do, but before I didn’t.”
“Before what?”
“Before I started playing with you.”
“So what kind of books did you borrow before, Quemado?”
“Poetry.”
“Books of poetry? How nice. What kind of poetry?”
El Quemado looks at me as if I’m a bumpkin:
“Vallejo, Neruda, Lorca . . . Do you know them?”
“No. Did you le
arn the poems by heart?”
“My memory is no good.”
“But you remember something? Can you recite something to give me an idea?”
“No, I only remember feelings.”
“What kind of feelings? Tell me one.”
“Despair . . .”
“Nothing else? That’s all?”
“Despair, heights, the sea, things that aren’t closed, things that are partway open, like something bursting in the chest.”
“Yes, I see. And when did you stop reading poetry, Quemado? When we started Third Reich? If I’d known, I wouldn’t have played. I like poetry too.”
“Which poets?”
“Goethe.”
And so on until it’s time to leave.
SEPTEMBER 17
I left the hotel at five in the afternoon, after talking on the phone to Conrad, dreaming about El Quemado, and making love with Clarita. My head was buzzing, which I attributed to a lack of nourishment, so I headed to the old town planning to eat at a restaurant that I’d noticed earlier. Unfortunately it was closed and suddenly I found myself walking down alleys where I’d never set foot, in a neighborhood of narrow but clean streets behind the shopping district and the port, increasingly sunk in thought, surrendered to the simple pleasure of my surroundings, no longer hungry, and in the mood to keep walking until night fell. That’s the state of mind I was in when I heard someone calling me by name. Mr. Berger. When I turned, I saw that it was a boy whose face I didn’t recognize, though he looked vaguely familiar. His greeting was effusive. It occurred to me that it might be one of the town friends my brother and I had made ten years before. The simple prospect made me happy. A ray of sunlight fell directly on his face, so that he couldn’t stop blinking. The words came tumbling out of his mouth and I could understand barely a quarter of what he said. His two outstretched hands grabbed me by the elbows as if to make sure I wouldn’t slip away. The situation seemed likely to stretch on indefinitely. At last, exasperated, I confessed that I couldn’t remember who he was. I work at the Red Cross, I’m the one who helped you with your friend’s paperwork. So those were the sad circumstances of our meeting! Resolutely, he pulled a wrinkled card out of his pocket that identified him as a member of the Red Cross of the Sea. The matter solved, we both sighed in relief and laughed. Immediately he suggested that we get a beer, and I was happy to agree. With no little surprise I realized that we weren’t going to a bar but to the rescue worker’s house, not far from here, on the same street, on a dark and dusty third floor.