The Second Son: A Novel (30 page)

He had no strength for that past.

“The girl in the letters,” he said. “She was his wife?”

Mila took a moment before answering. “Near enough. It was a long time ago.” She opened her eyes and stared out. “She never sent them. She was killed in the fighting last week.” She looked over at him. “Do you ever miss her?”

Hoffner peered into the mirror. “No,” he said. He focused on the road ahead. “I don’t think I do.”

She nodded quietly and turned again to the window. “He was a doctor, my husband. At a clinic in the Raval. I was a terrible nurse.”

Hoffner was glad for the lift in her voice. “I don’t believe that.”

“I was. It’s what you get when you have a twenty-year-old who knows better than everyone else. They all hated me.”

“Except for this doctor of yours.”

“Yes.”

“He fell in love with you?”

“He did.”

“And he trained you?”

She smiled, recalling something. “No. He was much more of an idealist than that. He married me and took me to Moscow.”

“How romantic.”

The smile remained. “The Revolution was good for opening all those doors. He found me a place at one of the medical academies: Sechanov—old, prestigious. He was at a prison hospital: Butyrki, I think. Funny how you forget those things.”

Hoffner glanced in the mirror again. Not so hard to forget.

“It must have been cold,” he said. “Moscow—for a Spaniard.”

“It wasn’t the cold that was the problem.” A pack of cigarettes lay bouncing on the seat and she took one. She lit it, placed it between his lips, and did the same for herself. “He began to write,” she said. “Always a mistake. A pamphlet on medical reforms. They arrested him.” She spoke as if she were reading from a manual. “He was sent to build roads in a work camp near Ukhta, in the north. March of 1930. He died three months later.”

Hoffner thought to say something consoling but managed only, “I’m sorry.”

“Yes.” She was staring down at the cigarette in her hand. “Do you think you ever really loved your wife?”

Hoffner had told her almost nothing, and yet he now wondered how much she had heard. There was never any safety in this.

She wasn’t expecting an answer, and said, “I loved my husband. Very much, although it’s hard to imagine it now. I suppose you either choose to forget quickly or not at all. I chose to forget.”

Hoffner needed them past this. “And then you came home?”

There was a vague sad smile on her lips when she looked up. “No. Carlos wouldn’t be in Zaragoza now if I’d managed to make it home then.” She took a pull and spared him the question. “They arrested me a month later and sent me to a camp: Siblag, also in the north.” She thought of something and shook her head. “There was a letter I’d written, nothing in it, but I was the foreign wife of a foreign counterrevolutionary. It was easy enough.” Her voice was distant as she turned to the window. “A year in prison for two lines in a letter.”

Hoffner glanced over. She was so matter-of-fact, and yet the eyes were full as she stared out. He watched as she let the wind dry them. It was the only moment of hardness to find her face. He saw it drain from her, and she said, “It doesn’t make me callous not to remember, does it?”

What an unfair question, he thought: you only remember the pain, nothing else, so why not shut it all out? He looked out at the road and said, “No. It doesn’t.”

She seemed to agree and took another pull. “When I came back, things were bad. Carlos blamed my father—Russia, Stalin, Communism, my father again. Me.” It was another moment before she said, “And one day he said God would never have let it happen. God. Can you imagine? What could be crueler than that, until he actually began to believe it?” She tossed the cigarette out the window. “Not much God to be had in Barcelona.” Her head found the back of the seat again and she stared out at the poles. “So he left.”

Hoffner was glad for the silence. The sun had turned a blood red; he watched as it dipped lower on the horizon.

She said, “They look like giants, don’t they? Stubby arms all in a row.”

It took him a moment to understand. He bent his head closer into the windscreen and glanced over at the poles. He leaned back and nodded. Again he turned to the mirror.

She said distantly, “No knights to fight off these days.” She looked over at him and, with a sudden energy, hitched herself around and stared back through the rear window. “There’s nothing, Nikolai. No one’s following. No dust rising from tires or hooves. You pulled it off. And now you can find your son and not worry that some distraction might have thrown it all away.”

She was looking directly at him. Her hair had slipped from its knot, and her face was pale. It was an endless few seconds before she sat back and stared out at the road.

She waited for him to answer until she finally said, “It wasn’t for luck or courage, that kiss. You know that.”

Hoffner knew almost nothing. He was having trouble enough keeping up, but this—it was such a long time since any of this had made sense to him. And to have it here, now. It seemed beyond his grasp and made him feel weak.

Without warning, he jammed his foot on the brake and brought the car to a sudden stop. Mila bounced against the seat and instantly glanced back, expecting to see something on the road, but it remained empty. She looked at him as if she thought he might reach for her, but instead, he turned back and pulled on the strap that released the backseat cushion.

“What are you doing?” she said.

He opened his door and stepped out. “Slaying giants.”

“What?”

He opened the back door and took out one of the brick explosives. He then stepped around to the nearest telephone pole and, crouching down, set the brick against its base. He looked over at her in the window. “What do you think, three or four?”

She was staring at him. “What?”

“Three or four of the poles? Would that be enough?”

“You’re not serious?”

“Very serious.”

“Then you’re not thin enough to be playing the part.”

“Thank you. No, this is for Durruti and our friends back in Zaragoza. They decide to call ahead, I need them not to get through.” He stood and moved to her door. “You’ll drive so I can light them before jumping in.” He opened her door. “Move over.”

She sat staring up at him. “You’re going to light the fuses and then jump in the car?”

“Yes.”

“And then I speed us away so you can light the next one?”

“Yes.”

“And this does what?”

“Did Sancho Panza always ask so many questions?”

“Yes.”

“Well, at least we’re true to form. Move over.”

She drove them to each of the four poles. Hoffner set the bricks in place, and she took the car back around to the first. She watched him as he stepped out. “This is madness,” she said.

“Yes.” He leaned over. “Ready?” He looked back to see that she had the car in gear. She nodded and he lit the fuse. He then ran and jumped in.

“Ride, Sancho, ride!”

Dust and earth kicked up as she accelerated, then more smoke as she screeched to a stop at the second pole. Another match, another mad dash. It was just as Hoffner was diving back in the car for the fourth time that the first of the bricks exploded.

She drove off, looking back through the mirror, while he angled his head and shoulders out the window.

It was a wonderful thing to see, the pole ripped from its roots, the wire limp to the ground. Suddenly the second exploded and the pole jumped into the air, tearing at its mooring and keeling over. The third and fourth followed suit, the last stripping the wire with such force that it snapped across the ground like the lash of a whip. Mila stopped the car, and they both got out.

Pale clouds hovered above the four felled poles, the remaining stumps jagged shards of wood cutting through the plumes of smoke. The standing poles at either end of the gap stared helplessly across at each other, as if they could conceive of nothing to fill the chasm between them: one world at an end, another begun.

Hoffner listened. There was absolute silence, not even the sound of settling dust. It was such a small thing—four meaningless poles of wood—yet he felt a surge of energy. Even the knot at the back of his neck was gone. Mila drew up next to him.

“Are we done?” she said, no less gratified.

He watched for another few seconds and said, “Get in the car.” He stepped around and slid in behind the wheel. They drove and he glanced back in the mirror, this time for the sheer pleasure of it.

*   *   *

That night, they stopped twenty kilometers from Teruel. It was late and they were exhausted. They found a tavern with two rooms above. Mila took a bath while he smoked. Hoffner bathed while she went for a second bottle of wine. And they shared a bed and knew that this was how they would find their way through.

5

TERUEL

She was still asleep when his eyes opened. There was the sound of plates or cups being stacked on a shelf somewhere beyond the door and down the stairs, but Hoffner lay quietly. She had pulled the sheet to just above her waist, her bare back to him, curved to the pillow, and her hair loose against her neck. The shoulder rose almost to her cheek, and he saw the two long scars he had traced with his fingers through the darkness last night. She had said nothing, his thumb gliding along the small of her back and across the spine, the raised skin like jagged lines of wire against the pale smoothness of the rest. He brought his face toward her neck, and she said, “You hardly move when you sleep.”

She turned and looked up at him. It would have been so easy to show the expectation of a kiss, that dizzying and ageless hope of a first morning together, but instead they simply stared. It was effortless, and Hoffner nearly mistook it for the hollow comfort of a shared loneliness. That at least would have been familiar. But this was other. It brought a softening to his face, and she smiled, and he felt its warmth like the distant pull of an unknown faith.

“I thought you were dead,” she said. “I had to listen to make sure you were breathing.”

“I’ll remember to make more noise.” He gave her a kiss on the forehead and brought his legs over the side. He sat.

“Coward,” she said.

He looked back and was thankful for the smile. “Yes. Petrified.” He stood and pulled on his shorts, then reached for his cigarettes. He tapped out two and lit them. “Do you think they’ll have eggs? For some reason I’m wanting eggs.”

She pulled back the sheet and propped her head on an elbowed hand as she rolled on her side. He imagined he had never seen this kind of perfect beauty, not for the litheness of her shape or the delicacy of her face, but for the absolute peace she felt in her own uncovered body. It brought him back to the bed, and he sat, and she took a cigarette.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“The cigarette.”

“Oh—yes.”

“What else did you think I was saying?” This was payment for the kiss on the forehead. “Was the young captain helpful?”

Hoffner took hold of the water jug and poured out a glass. He handed it to her. “Yes.”

“You must be very good at what you do.”

“You don’t need to be so good.”

She took a drink. “You should stop saying that. It’s not the truth, and it’s not all that endearing. He would have shot you.” She finished the glass and held it out to him. He poured a second, and he drank.

She said, “I’ll need to find a place to wash some clothes.” She sat and moved to the edge of the bed. She picked up her chemise and dress from the floor. “I can do it in Teruel while you”—she had to think a moment—“do whatever it is you’ll be doing there.”

Hoffner watched her slip the clothes over her shoulders. She reached back to button the collar of the dress, and he said, “You don’t have to come, you know. It’s probably safer if you head back to Barcelona.” At least he was trying to sound noble.

She reached for her hose and began to slide them on. “So it’s this you’re not terribly good at.” She finished and looked back at him. “I don’t want to go back to Barcelona, Nikolai. And I don’t think you want me to, either. Do you?”

He waited and then shook his head.

“You see? That wasn’t so hard.” She stood.

Hoffner was suddenly aware he was sitting in nothing but his shorts. He stood, found his shirt, and began to button the buttons with a newfound resolve.

She reached over and picked up his pants. She held them there and waited. “There’s no rush, Nikolai. The pants aren’t going anywhere.”

He nodded absently, took them, and slid them on.

She said, “You’re not going to tell me you don’t do this sort of thing, or that you haven’t for a very long time, or ever—are you?”

He looked across at her and, not wanting to betray himself, again shook his head.

“Good.” She moved closer and brought his suspenders up and over his shoulders. She smoothed them against his chest. “Even if it’s true, what would be the point in saying it? Love isn’t meant to stand back and stare at its past.”