“Have you any more wine to spare?” I asked. My mouth was still dry.
“Yes, man. There are gallons of it,” the friendly soldier said. He was short, big-fisted and very dirty, with a stubble of beard about the same length as the hair on his cropped head. “Do you think they will shell us now?”
“They should,” I said. “But in this war you can never tell.”
“What is the matter with this war?” asked the Extremaduran angrily. “Don’t you like this war?”
“Shut up!” said the friendly soldier. “I command here, and these comrades are our guests.”
“Then let him not talk against our war,” said the Extremaduran. “No foreigners shall come here and talk against our war.”
“What town are you from, comrade?” I asked the Extremaduran.
“Badajoz,” he said. “I am from Badajoz. In Badajoz, we have been sacked and pillaged and our women violated by the English, the French and now the Moors. What the Moors have done now is no worse than what the English did under Wellington. You should read history. My great-grandmother was killed by the English. The house where my family lived was burned by the English.”
“I regret it,” I said. “Why do you hate the North Americans?”
“My father was killed by the North Americans in Cuba while he was there as a conscript.”
“I am sorry for that, too. Truly sorry. Believe me. And why do you hate the Russians?”
“Because they are the representatives of tyranny and I hate their faces. You have the face of a Russian.”
“Maybe we better get out of here,” I said to the one who was with me and who did not speak Spanish. “It seems I have the face of a Russian and it’s getting me into trouble.”
“I’m going to sleep,” he said. “This is a good place. Don’t talk so much and you won’t get into trouble.”
“There’s a comrade here that doesn’t like me. I think he’s an anarchist.”
“Well, watch out he doesn’t shoot you, then. I’m going to sleep.”
Just then two men in leather coats, one short and stocky, the other of medium height, both with civilian caps, flat, high-cheekboned faces, wooden-holstered Mauser pistols strapped to their legs, came out of the gap and headed toward us.
The taller of them spoke to me in French. “Have you seen a French comrade pass through here?” he asked. “A comrade with a blanket tied around his shoulders in the form of a bandoleer? A comrade of about forty-five or fifty years old? Have you seen such a comrade going in the direction away from the front?”
“No,” I said. “I have not seen such a comrade.”
He looked at me a moment and I noticed his eyes were a grayish-yellow and that they did not blink at all.
“Thank you, comrade,” he said, in his odd French, and then spoke rapidly to the other man with him in a language I did not understand. They went off and climbed the highest part of the ridge, from where they could see down all the gullies.
“There is the true face of Russians,” the Extremaduran said.
“Shut up!” I said. I was watching the two men in the leather coats. They were standing there, under considerable fire, looking carefully over all the broken country below the ridge and toward the river.
Suddenly one of them saw what he was looking for, and pointed. Then the two started to run like hunting dogs, one straight down over the ridge, the other at an angle as though to cut someone off. Before the second one went over the crest I could see him drawing his pistol and holding it ahead of him as he ran.
“And how do you like that?” asked the Extremaduran.
“No better than you,” I said.
Over the crest of the parallel ridge I heard the Mausers’ jerky barking. They kept it up for more than a dozen shots. They must have opened fire at too long a range. After all the burst of shooting there was a pause and then a single shot.
The Extremaduran looked at me sullenly and said nothing. I thought it would be simpler if the shelling started. But it did not start.
The two in the leather coats and civilian caps came back over the ridge, walking together, and then down to the gap, walking downhill with that odd bent-kneed way of the two-legged animal coming down a steep slope. They turned up the gap as a tank came whirring and clanking down and moved to one side to let it pass.
The tanks had failed again that day, and the drivers coming down from the lines in their leather helmets, the tank turrets open now as they came into the shelter of the ridge, had the straight-ahead stare of football players who have been removed from a game for yellowness.
The two flat-faced men in the leather coats stood by us on the ridge to let the tank pass.
“Did you find the comrade you were looking for?” I asked the taller one of them in French.
“Yes, comrade. Thank you,” he said and looked me over very carefully.
“What does he say?” the Extremaduran asked.
“He says they found the comrade they were looking for,” I told him. The Extremaduran said nothing.
We had been all that morning in the place the middle-aged Frenchman had walked out of. We had been there in the dust, the smoke, the noise, the receiving of wounds, the death, the fear of death, the bravery, the cowardice, the insanity and failure of an unsuccessful attack. We had been there on that plowed field men could not cross and live. You dropped and lay flat; making a mound to shield your head; working your chin into the dirt; waiting for the order to go up that slope no man could go up and live.
We had been with those who lay there waiting for the tanks that did not come; waiting under the inrushing shriek and roaring crash of the shelling; the metal and the earth thrown like clods from a dirt fountain; and overhead the cracking, whispering fire like a curtain. We knew how those felt, waiting. They were as far forward as they could get. And men could not move further and live, when the order came to move ahead.
We had been there all morning in the place the middle-aged Frenchman had come walking away from. I understood how a man might suddenly, seeing clearly the stupidity of dying in an unsuccessful attack; or suddenly seeing it clearly, as you can see clearly and justly before you die; seeing its hopelessness, seeing its idiocy, seeing how it really was, simply get back and walk away from it as the Frenchman had done. He could walk out of it not from cowardice, but simply from seeing too clearly; knowing suddenly that he had to leave it; knowing there was no other thing to do.
The Frenchman had come walking out of the attack with great dignity and I understood him as a man. But, as a soldier, these other men who policed the battle had hunted him down, and the death he had walked away from had found him when he was just over the ridge, clear of the bullets and the shelling, and walking toward the river.
“And that,” the Extremaduran said to me, nodding toward the battle police.
“Is war,” I said. “In war, it is necessary to have discipline.”
“And to live under that sort of discipline we should die?”
“Without discipline everyone will die anyway.”
“There is one kind of discipline and another kind of discipline,” the Extremaduran said. “Listen to me. In February we were here where we are now and the fascists attacked. They drove us from the hills that you Internationals tried to take today and that you could not take. We fell back to here; to this ridge. Internationals came up and took the line ahead of us.”
“I know that,” I said.
“But you do not know this,” he went on angrily. “There was a boy from my province who became frightened during the bombardment, and he shot himself in the hand so that he could leave the line because he was afraid.”
The other soldiers were all listening now. Several nodded.
“Such people have their wounds dressed and are returned at once to the line,” the Extremaduran went on. “It is just.”
“Yes,” I said. “That is as it should be.”
“That is as it should be,” said the Extremaduran. “But this boy shot himself so b
adly that the bone was all smashed and there surged up an infection and his hand was amputated.”
Several soldiers nodded.
“Go on, tell him the rest,” said one.
“It might be better not to speak of it,” said the cropped-headed, bristly-faced man who said he was in command.
“It is my duty to speak,” the Extremaduran said.
The one in command shrugged his shoulders. “I did not like it either,” he said. “Go on, then. But I do not like to hear it spoken of either.”
“This boy remained in the hospital in the valley since February,” the Extremaduran said. “Some of us have seen him in the hospital. All say he was well liked in the hospital and made himself as useful as a man with one hand can be useful. Never was he under arrest. Never was there anything to prepare him.”
The man in command handed me the cup of wine again without saying anything. They were all listening; as men who cannot read or write listen to a story.
“Yesterday, at the close of day, before we knew there was to be an attack. Yesterday, before the sun set, when we thought today was to be as any other day, they brought him up the trail in the gap there from the flat. We were cooking the evening meal and they brought him up. There were only four of them. Him, the boy Paco, those two you have just seen in the leather coats and the caps, and an officer from the brigade. We saw the four of them climbing together up the gap, and we saw Pace’s hands were not tied, nor was he bound in any way.
“When we saw him we all crowded around and said, ‘Hello, Paco. How are you, Paco? How is everything, Paco, old boy, old Paco?’
“Then he said, ‘Everything’s all right. Everything is good except this’— and showed us the stump.
“Paco said, ‘That was a cowardly and foolish thing. I am sorry that I did that thing. But I try to be useful with one hand. I will do what I can with one hand for the Cause.’”
“Yes,” interrupted a soldier. “He said that. I heard him say that.”
“We spoke with him,” the Extremaduran said. “And he spoke with us. When such people with the leather coats and the pistols come it is always a bad omen in a war, as is the arrival of people with map cases and field glasses. Still we thought they had brought him for a visit, and all of us who had not been to the hospital were happy to see him, and as I say, it was the hour of the evening meal and the evening was clear and warm.”
“This wind only rose during the night,” a soldier said.
“Then,” the Extremaduran went on somberly, “one of them said to the officer in Spanish, ‘Where is the place?’
“‘Where is the place this Paco was wounded?’ asked the officer.”
“I answered him,” said the man in command. “I showed the place. It is a little further down than where you are.”
“Here is the place,” said a soldier. He pointed, and I could see it was the place. It showed clearly that it was the place.
“Then one of them led Paco by the arm to the place and held him there by the arm while the other spoke in Spanish. He spoke in Spanish, making many mistakes in the language. At first we wanted to laugh, and Paco started to smile. I could not understand all the speech, but it was that Paco must be punished as an example, in order that there would be no more self-inflicted wounds, and that all others would be punished in the same way.
“Then, while the one held Paco by the arm; Paco, looking very ashamed to be spoken of this way when he was already ashamed and sorry; the other took his pistol out and shot Paco in the back of the head without any word to Paco. Nor any word more.”
The soldiers all nodded.
“It was thus,” said one. “You can see the place. He fell with his mouth there. You can see it.”
I had seen the place clearly enough from where I lay.
“He had no warning and no chance to prepare himself,” the one in command said. “It was very brutal.”
“It is for this that I now hate Russians as well as all other foreigners,” said the Extremaduran. “We can give ourselves no illusions about foreigners. If you are a foreigner, I am sorry. But for myself, now, I can make no exceptions. You have eaten bread and drunk wine with us. Now I think you should go.”
“Do not speak in that way,” the man in command said to the Extremaduran. “It is necessary to be formal.”
“I think we had better go,” I said.
“You are not angry?” the man in command said. “You can stay in this shelter as long as you wish. Are you thirsty? Do you wish more wine?”
“Thank you very much,” I said. “I think we had better go.”
“You understand my hatred?” asked the Extremaduran.
“I understand your hatred,” I said.
“Good,” he said and put out his hand. “I do not refuse to shake hands. And that you, personally, have much luck.”
“Equally to you,” I said. “Personally, and as a Spaniard.”
I woke the one who took the pictures and we started down the ridge toward brigade headquarters. The tanks were all coming back now and you could hardly hear yourself talk for the noise.
“Were you talking all that time?”
“Listening.”
“Hear anything interesting?”
“Plenty.”
“What do you want to do now?”
“Get back to Madrid.”
“We should see the general.”
“Yes,” I said. “We must.”
The general was coldly furious. He had been ordered to make the attack as a surprise with one brigade only, bringing everything up before daylight. It should have been made by at least a division. He had used three battalions and held one in reserve. The French tank commander had got drunk to be brave for the attack and finally was too drunk to function. He was to be shot when he sobered up.
The tanks had not come up in time and finally had refused to advance, and two of the battalions had failed to attain their objectives. The third had taken theirs, but it formed an untenable salient. The only real result had been a few prisoners, and these had been confided to the tank men to bring back and the tank men had killed them. The general had only failure to show, and they had killed his prisoners.
“What can I write on it?” I asked.
“Nothing that is not in the official communiqué. Have you any whisky in that long flask?”
“Yes.”
He took a drink and licked his lips carefully. He had once been a captain of Hungarian Hussars, and he had once captured a gold train in Siberia when he was a leader of irregular cavalry with the Red Army and held it all one winter when the thermometer went down to forty below zero. We were good friends and he loved whisky, and he is now dead.
“Get out of here now,” he said. “Have you transport?”
“Yes.”
“Did you get any pictures?”
“Some. The tanks.”
“The tanks,” he said bitterly. “The swine. The cowards. Watch out you don’t get killed,” he said. “You are supposed to be a writer.”
“I can’t write now.”
“Write it afterwards. You can write it all afterwards. And don’t get killed. Especially, don’t get killed. Now, get out of here.”
He could not take his own advice because he was killed two months later. But the oddest thing about that day was how marvelously the pictures we took of the tanks came out. On the screen they advanced over the hill irresistibly, mounting the crests like great ships, to crawl clanking on toward the illusion of victory we screened.
The nearest any man was to victory that day was probably the Frenchman who came, with his head held high, walking out of the battle. But his victory only lasted until he had walked halfway down the ridge. We saw him lying stretched out there on the slope of the ridge, still wearing his blanket, as we came walking down the cut to get into the staff car that would take us to Madrid.
Nobody Ever Dies
THE HOUSE WAS BUILT OF ROSE-COLORED plaster that had peeled and faded with the dampness and from its
porch you could see the sea, very blue, at the end of the street. There were laurel trees along the sidewalk that grew high enough to shade the upper porch and in the shade it was cool. A mockingbird hung in a wicker cage at a corner of the porch, and it was not singing now, nor even chirping, because a young man of about twenty-eight, thin, dark, with bluish circles under his eyes and a stubble of beard, had just taken off a sweater that he wore and spread it over the cage. The young man was standing now, his mouth slightly open, listening. Someone was trying the locked and bolted front door.
As he listened he heard the wind in the laurels close beside the porch, the horn of a taxi coming along the street and the voices of the children playing in a vacant lot. Then he heard a key turn again in the lock of the front door. He heard it unlock the door, heard the door pulled against the bolt, and then the lock being turned again. At the same time he heard the sound of a bat against a baseball and shrill shouting in Spanish from the vacant lot. He stood there, moistening his lips, and listened while someone tried the back door.
The young man, who was named Enrique, took off his shoes and, putting them down carefully, moved softly along the tiling of the porch until he could look down at the back door. There was no one there. He slipped back to the front of the house and, keeping out of sight, looked down the street.
A Negro in a narrow-brimmed flat-topped straw hat and a gray alpaca coat and black trousers was walking along the sidewalk under the laurel trees. Enrique watched, but there was no one else. He stood there for some time watching and listening, then he took his sweater off the bird cage and put it on.
He had been sweating heavily while he had been listening and now he was cold in the shade and the cool northeast wind. The sweater covered a leather shoulder holster, the leather ringed and salt-whitened with perspiration, that he wore with a forty-five-caliber Colt pistol which, by its constant pressure, had given him a boil a little below his armpit. He lay down on a canvas cot now close to the wall of the house. He was still listening.
The bird chirped and hopped about the cage and the young man looked up at it. Then he got up and unhooked the door of the cage and opened it. The bird cocked his head at the open door and drew it back, then jerked his head forward again, his bill pointing at an angle.