A Necessary Action (31 page)

Willi Mohr listened absently to this exchange of words as he sipped his cognac. The remarks were quite ordinary and yet they reminded him of Sergeant Tornilla and the room with its four pieces of furniture and green glass lampshade.

‘You should try some of this,’ said the bald man to Willi Mohr, pointing to his glass. ‘Just what you need in this weather. The peasants drink it in the mornings before they go out to work in the fields.’

Willi Mohr had gone out to find company and listen to human voices. Now when someone was actually talking to him, he did not like it.

‘Cazalla,’ said the man. ‘A genuine Spanish drink. Very good for you.’

‘Not for your liver,’ said the handsome one in the overcoat, taking a gulp of his coffee.

‘Everything should be enjoyed in moderation,’ said the bald man philosophically.

Then he raised his glass to Willi Mohr and said with a laugh: ‘Health and money and good luck with your virility.’

‘Your health,’ said Willi Mohr.

‘You must be a foreigner from those spots of paint. English?’

‘No, German.’

‘Do you live here?’

‘Yes.’

From the other side of the bar the proprietor caught his eye, for one brief second only and without saying a word or making any sign whatsoever.

‘This is an unusually dull town,’ said the bald man. ‘Thank God I’m only passing through.’

He seemed to have given up the idea of getting a conversation going and stared ahead of him, emptying his glass.

The man’s inquisitiveness and obvious garrulousness had
irritated Willi Mohr. The strangers were probably commercial travellers or at the most lowly government officials.

The bald man seemed quite unable to keep silent.

‘It really is very raw and chilly out,’ he said, pulling on his fingers so that the joints cracked. ‘Must warm up a bit.’

He went over to the brazier but could not get near, as the circle round it was tight and not one of the men moved.

‘Is the fire reserved for honoured guests?’ said the handsome one sarcastically.

‘Move up so the man can get in,’ said the proprietor.

The road-workers moved up.

‘Thanks boys,’ said the bald man genially, and he knelt down with his hands outstretched over the glowing charcoal.

No one replied.

The tall man in the overcoat leant over the bar and asked: ‘Are those men unemployed?’

‘Their place of employment has been washed away,’ said the proprietor. ‘They’ve lost their wages.’

After a while the bald man came back, paid and picked up his raincoat.

‘Fine,’ he said, for no apparent reason. ‘See you again some time, my friends.’

The strangers walked towards the exit, but did not go out, remaining standing just inside the door, again discussing the question of food.

Without being asked to, the proprietor took a bottle down from the shelf and filled Will Mohr’s glass. Then he dried a glass and helped himself.

‘That man’s right,’ he said. ‘Cazalla is good in weather like this.’

‘Bottoms up,’ he added, raising his glass.

The dry anise-spirits burnt his throat and sank like a ball of fire into his stomach. Willi Mohr was shaken by an involuntary shudder as the cold from his wet clothes chilled his skin. The air coming in from outside was heavy and raw and damp.

‘Warm yourself up a bit,’ said the proprietor.

Willi Mohr went over to the brazier and the men round it at once made room for him. He sat like the others, squatting and spreading out his hands to the warmth. They all sat apathetically
in silence, sullenly staring down into the sinking embers. Only the man on Willi Mohr’s right moved, nudging him slightly in the side, a small toothless man with a thin face and deep-set eyes. He looked much like the others, just as ragged and emaciated, though his eyes were perhaps a little sharper and livelier.

The men by the door seemed to have come to some agreement at last. The jalousies rattled behind them, then car doors slammed and a starter began to rattle. After the third try, the engine started up and the car drove away.

‘The bastards have gone,’ said the toothless man.

The others sat without moving. Willi Mohr was the only one to raise his head and glance questioningly at the man who had broken the silence.

‘Policia Secreta, the secret police,’ said the man contemptuously. ‘I can recognize the swine anywhere and anytime, even if they dress up as nuns or priests.’

‘Perhaps mostly then,’ he added, spitting on the floor.

‘Careful,’ said one of the men sitting opposite him.

He made an almost imperceptible movement of his head towards the civil guards still doing their football coupons.

‘Huh, we needn’t bother about them,’ said the toothless man. ‘They’re locals and they’re deaf when they’re not on duty. What’s so special about them? Nothing, just ordinary peasants and workers like us—who’ve taken on a shitty job to be able to live. But those other snooping swine … just think, did you hear … do you sell cigarettes here too … oh, only Ideales … give me a cigar then …’

He looked round wildly and shouted to the proprietor: ‘Juan, you’ve got cigarettes here, haven’t you? Supposing they’d looked under …’

He stopped and nervously bit his thin lips.

The café-owner gave him a long look and put his hand on the tap of the vermouth keg. He poured out two generous drinks, put them on a tray and carried them over to the table by the door. Neither of the civil guards looked up from their task, but one took his glass immediately and emptied it.

The proprietor went back towards the bar, but on the way stopped behind Willi Mohr, gently striking his leg with the tray.

‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘They’re looking for contraband, coffee and foreign cigarettes.’

The man on Willi Mohr’s right chewed at his bottom lip with his toothless gums and said wildly: ‘To hell with that. They’re after one of us, or some other poor bastard. I know them, I know …’

‘Calm down,’ said the man sitting on Willi Mohr’s left.

He was a black-haired man in a ragged faded overall, with large gnarled hands.

‘Calm, careful,’ said the toothless man in a hoarse whisper. ‘I don’t know anyone who’s as calm and careful as we are and this is what we get in thanks. Fifteen pesetas a day and nothing when the weather’s bad or when they stop the work to hold their damn manoeuvres up there. I’ve a woman and three kids who’re starving to death and yet I’ve got to be calm and careful. And grateful for my three duros a day. I met someone who worked at some swanky spa hotel where there wasn’t even a well and the water had to be carted there in a truck. Formentor, the hotel was called, and he said people staying their paid four duros for every glass of water they drank and most of them weren’t foreigners, but Spaniards … d’you hear that … Spaniards …’

He fell silent and hunched up a little, perhaps because none of the others seemed to be listening to him.

They were sitting as before, silent and immobile.

They had presumably heard all this many times before and were satisfied that the conversation had become sufficiently low-toned that what was said could not be heard over by the door. A couple of them moved a little nearer to the brazier as the warmth from it began to decrease.

After a while the man in the overall turned his head towards Willi Mohr and said quietly: ‘Have you any children?’

He spoke with a strange dialect, making an effort to speak clearly and understandably.

Willi Mohr shook his head.

‘I’ve two,’ said the man, ‘a son of nine and a daughter of five.’

‘Here?’

‘No, far away, near Bilbao. I come from there; Basque, that’s my home country.’

There was a moment’s silence. Then he put two fingers up in the air and said:

‘My son’s already done two years in school and he’s learnt to read and write. Look at this. My wife sent me his first writing book.’

He thrust his hand inside his overall and pulled out a folded much-thumbed exercise book with a dog-eared yellow cover.

‘Would you like to look?’

Willi Mohr nodded and took it.

‘I never learnt to read and write myself,’ said the man seriously, ‘but my son can already, although he’s only nine. It’s a pity I can’t read what he’s written and see if he writes well.’

Willi Mohr weighed the thin exercise book in his hand without opening it.

‘Why do you do nothing?’ he said suddenly and quite unpremeditatedly.

‘I work,’ said the man in surprise. ‘Work and send home the money I earn.’

After a moment’s silence he added: ‘Though someone has to help me with the envelope.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Willi Mohr quietly.

‘No, I understand what you mean. You mean the other, but that’s over a long time ago. It was no good. When we were to fight against … them. We were at it a whole year and everyone said the whole world would help us but I didn’t see anyone. We were going to be independent, we were, but we weren’t all that many, although we had rifles and a few old guns and tanks. Then those … those … they had awful great aeroplanes and bombs and tanks; it was many years ago, in March 1937, and we had nothing but our rifles, and we fought up in the pass in the mountains and every day they rained their bombs down on us, and there was something in the bombs which set everything on fire, thermite, I think it was called, and everything burnt all round us. They went on all through May and June and we got orders to counter-attack and retake a mountain, and we did too, and then they came with more aeroplanes and more bombs and more guns. Urquiola Pass … that’s the name of the place where I was. They took Bilbao from us later, when there weren’t so many of us left, and then the end came. I don’t want to talk about it.’

The man in the overall sat in silence for a while. Then he laughed roughly and said: ‘It’s not so strange that I’ve never learnt to read, because I never had a chance. But you see, we who were in on that then can’t do it again, as that’s the kind of thing you only do once. Someone else has got to try next time, the younger ones, who’ve learnt more. We went on for a whole year and we gave the bastards what for many times, although they came with their aeroplanes and bombs and tanks. And I was a prisoner-of-war later and when the war was over, I couldn’t go home after all, and that didn’t matter all that much because nearly all of them were dead, but I wanted to all the same. But then they put me in Formentera for six years and we dug salt there. You don’t do that again, even if you are still starving and have to look at those bastards on the streets.’

Willi Mohr knew very little about the Basque tragedy, but it was not the first time he had heard about the concentration camps in Formentera.

He said: ‘In the salt mines? Were you a Communist?’

The man in the overall started and although he had been whispering all the time, he looked round anxiously and licked his lips.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, not that … no, you mustn’t think that …’

In this case the teacher had evidently succeeded in his task without the need to kill his pupil. Willi Mohr was ashamed that he had even begun the conversation and even more that he had been the one to continue it, forcing the other man to reveal himself and talk about things he did not want to remember. He lowered his gaze and looked at the yellow exercise book.

‘My son wrote that,’ said the Basque. ‘You can read it if you like.’

Willi turned the pages of the book. It contained three compositions, printed in laborious childish handwriting. The first was about Francisco Franco Bahamonde, the second about José Antonio Primo de Rivera and the third about Jesus. With each composition was a coloured illustration which the children had been allowed to copy from some publication. The first was the best, and despite various irregularities, one could distinguish the General’s egg-shaped head, high curved hairline and small triangular moustache. The picture had probably been copied
from the same original as the portrait in Sergeant Tornilla’s office.

Willi Mohr shut his eyes for a few seconds and then he opened the book at random and read:

‘José Antonio Primo de Rivera was a youth with more courage than any mature man, who sacrificed his life for the sake of the fatherland, its greatness and perpetuation, in the great just struggle for liberation against the bestial red hordes. This noble young Falangist …’

He shut the book again and handed it back.

‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Very well written.’

‘He’s only nine,’ said the man in the torn overall.

Before putting the book back, he looked at it tenderly and lovingly.

Willi Mohr straightened up and went across to the bar and paid. He still had a few duros in his trouser pocket and wondered for a moment whether to offer the Basque a couple of bottles of wine. Then he decided against. It would be a meaningless gesture, almost an insult. He put on his hat and thin plastic coat and walked away. The men round the rapidly cooling brazier had begun to sing melancholy and sentimental songs about their home country, the words indistinct and incomprehensible and all he could catch was the refrain:

No somos de aqui—somos de Bilbao …

We are not from here—we are from Bilbao …

The civil guards had left unobtrusively, but at the doorway he had to make way for two more just coming in from the square. As they folded back their pointed hoods, he recognized one of them, the middle-aged man with a grey moustache, who had already fetched him twice from the house in Barrio Son Jofre. He was now looking very tired, his eyes swollen and bloodshot, but he smiled in recognition and shook his head, saying as he jerked his thumb out towards the rain:

‘Terrible.’

Nothing had changed outside. The rain was still falling straight down, just as heavily as before. The dog splashed round his feet. During his visit to the Central he had not noticed her, but she had almost certainly been there, lying flat under one of the tables.

He would be wetter than ever when he got back, but that did not matter.

On the way home he saw two people and a car. The people were two half-naked children yelling and shrieking as they played about in a deep puddle, yellow with stirred-up mud, and the car a covered gas-powered army truck which drove along the Avenida so close to him that the camouflaged side-flaps brushed his sleeve in a shower of spattering drops of water.