said Ana María. ‘So what if there is?’
I turned and saw Mariano, fist digging into his curls, staring at her.
‘I’m the one who should be asking so what. I’m out there freezing my ass on the front and you’re running around, and meantime, you ugly bitch, you’re sending me messages. “I think of him all the time, send him my love.” What a tramp.’
‘Messages? What messages? What are you talking about – when ever?’ she started to say.
Oh god, I thought, now I’m going to get dragged into it. I squeezed Mercedes’ hand hard and we walked ahead. The only reason I got out of that was because Mariano had already gone too far, twisting his hair and glaring like that. He wasn’t accustomed to broken promises, and that’s why he fell to pieces so quickly. He was begging, sweating, ranting.
‘What about all those things you said about free love?’ we heard him say.
‘Precisely. It’s free,’ she said, ‘and I don’t want to be with you. Do you get it or not?’
We never got to the movies and over the next days my buddy’s mood was so ferocious that he’d have poisoned you if he bit you. I ended up sneaking around with Mercedes so that he wouldn’t suffer seeing us together. Brimming with anger and hungry for revenge, he ended up doing everything he could to get transferred into an offensive strike unit. He told them that he wanted to lead a counter-offensive commando squad to run raids and sabotage the enemy’s line before our guys even got there. It was a way of committing suicide, that’s what it was. But amazingly they took him seriously because of his merits on the field. In late April, they green-lighted his project. He threw himself into the preparations and I didn’t see him for days. I took advantage of the time to visit Mercedes. By now we’d become used to the air raids; my soldier kept up his work and she got so excited when the planes passed low overhead. It was going well with us and would have kept going that way if Mariano hadn’t caught us one afternoon eating ice cream in a café on the Ramblas.
‘I’ve been looking for you for three hours,’ he said.
It was a clear May evening, a light breeze swept the air, so softly it seemed to be strolling. Mercedes shifted in her seat and grabbed my hand under the table. She knew what was going on. Mariano didn’t even sit down. Standing over me like a grenadier, he stared right at me, avoided Mercedes’ eyes.
‘I’m all set,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving the day after tomorrow with my division. I picked out my men, guys with balls.You’re on board, right?’
What could I say? I looked at her for help but her expression gave away nothing. I knew what she was thinking though – it’s fine to have fun and take advantage of every instant. But when it comes time to fight, only a coward hangs back. And I would have said the same thing. To keep living this quasi-life would be a sentence to cowardice and mediocrity.
‘Okay,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow at headquarters.’
The light from the street lamps on the Ramblas was shining against an almost black sky. A few stars twinkled on. That sky was so beautiful it made you curse the day the damned war started. There were people crowding around us, soldiers, mothers with their children about to go in for dinner, idlers. A van passed, anarchist flags waving, full of recruits heading for the station.
‘Let’s go home,’ Mercedes murmured. I put my tongue in her ear and a hand on her ass. ‘If they bomb us tonight, it won’t matter,’ I said quietly.
Chapter Eleven
We spent two weeks training in a quarry near the Pyrenees and then set off.We travelled by Russian Sturke jeeps, three of them, for a day, then through the night with our headlights off, and half of the next morning. There were sixteen men in our unit. I drove the first car with Mariano, our captain. With us rode: a Swiss cook, our look-out Jimmie, a blond Irishman, and Alfonso, Italian, second sergeant. He was a bit of a fool but was a genius with explosives. The rest of the unit was in the other cars: two Andalusians, a Galician, three Americans – one black – two German Communists and who else have I forgotten? Right, the Englishman and Jan, he was Dutch and a mortar expert. Then there was Lech, a short Pollack – a bundle of nerves he was and an ace at gunning down planes. Mariano had chosen his men well; they were all adventurers, sure, but they were good companions too. Most importantly, they were good with weapons, could move from grenades to machine guns without blinking and then change again to rifles, knives, pistols.
Right before noon, we came to a village that had been bombed to the ground. There was no one there except for some rabbits, goats and chickens picking through the rubble. We caught a jackass and two mules and loaded them up with arms and provisions and started climbing the mountain. After three hours we hit the top and found an abandoned monastery, the pantry still stocked to the brim with oil, rice, beans, chickpeas, wine. So we decided to pitch camp there. Since we didn’t have trenches, we took our positions in the craters that the bombs had left. We overlooked the Ebro from here and could watch the enemy stacked out on the opposite side of the river.Yagüe’s Moroccan Regulares were here, the Guardia Civil, Carlist Requetés, the Italian volunteers and the Spanish Foreign Legion. It was quiet on the front. They only shot if we went to get water at the spring, otherwise it was as calm as could be. If only we didn’t have to patrol for miles in order to cover the ground between us and the next unit – there were so few of us out there.
We lay low for a week, watching the troops’ movements, and marking the positions of their cannons. Then we started crossing the river at night. It was easy. The water was low and there was hardly any current.We’d take their guards by surprise and beat them, then break through their lines with grenades. We came back with a prisoner almost every night. One time we went pretty far and found the Moroccan camp. One was playing the flute next to the fire; others were sleeping half-naked on the ground.
‘Now,’ said Mariano.
We attacked.We launched twenty grenades and sprayed them with two machine guns followed by rifle gunfire. It was a massacre. They were furious. As we were retreating across the river mortar shells starting falling in the water around us and then the machine-gun fire started showering on us from every direction. Frankie, an American, took one in the shoulder, but it wasn’t serious. I almost broke my foot getting up the bank. We barely made it across the river and into the ditches dug by mortar fire along the bank. We were out of bullets.
‘Only shoot if they try to get to this side,’ ordered Mariano.
Soon, Jimmie the Irishman came to tell us that there was an entire column getting ready to cross. Moroccans, two or three hundred, maybe more, a whole battalion. It was like they’d gone mad, shrieking and throwing their rifles into the air. The kind of stuff that makes you shiver under a full moon.
‘Wild men,’ said Alfonso, spitting on the ground. ‘Should I get some dynamite ready?’
Mariano was stretched out behind a dry wall, twisting his hair. He looked at me and then at the Moroccans, then back at Alfonso, and then at the Moroccans.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Let’s get back up to our ditches and wait for them. Once they’ve crossed the river and are out in the open we’ll attack.’
They thought we’d retreated so they were almost casual as they waded through the knee-high water. They moved forward in groups. It looked like they were dancing in a carnival parade. Our first mortar shot dug a hole into the rear of their group, they kicked into action with the machine guns and we responded with rifle fire.
