Victor del Arbol - The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel (24 page)

They took that from her too. As she listened to the sound of the electric razor destroying her mane, she cried in silence. She watched the locks fall to her bare feet, like the past raining down.

Once again in the darkness of her room, she touched her shaved skull and felt more naked than ever. She lay down on the floor in the fetal position, shivering with cold. She bit her hands to keep the guards from hearing her cries, and she remained that way for hours, thinking about her loved ones, about every trivial detail of her former life.

She remembered her father, the advice he always gave her as they sat at the table with her mother. “Marta, don’t put your elbows on the table, don’t slurp your soup, don’t leave the table until your mother says you can be excused.” She and her mother looked at each other through the pitcher of water and smiled complicitly. Her father was too strict, but he never had any idea of what was going on at home.

She thought about her house, about the last time she saw her father. He was shaving in the bathroom. Above his head an old electric water heater hung threateningly. You had to shower quickly, before the muffled gurgling of the pipes announced that the hot water was running out. He dressed carefully. That last morning he put on his gray suit and matching shirt, the one he wore when he had to go to trial. Then he tied his tie with a knot too thick to be stylish but which he liked. He combed his short black hair to one side without drying it, letting wavy bangs hang over his wide forehead. He put a few drops of Agua Fresca cologne behind his ears and on the insides of his wrists. He sighed deeply, ran the palm of his hand over the cracked surface of the mirror to wipe off the steam, and looked at himself.

“Do you think your father looks presentable?” he asked her through the split reflection in the mirror.

“Yes, Papá. You look wonderful,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek, taking with that last kiss a bit of cologne stuck to her lips.

Those embers that no longer warmed her were all that she had left of her previous life. She tried to rock herself to sleep with those memories. She knew that her father would never stop looking for her, that he would move heaven and earth until he found her.

She knew that even if everyone forgot her, he wouldn’t. Ever. And she clung desperately to that idea.

15

Mérida, January 1942

The soldier had never seen a barbershop like that one. It was small and elegant; on the walls were glass shelves crammed with colognes, makeup, and creams. The rotating armchairs were red and had a headrest for washing hair.

The barber was a trained professional. A short, gaunt man with little hair and a thin mustache, he had learned his trade in Paris, and he used to say, smugly, that in Europe cutting hair was a true art filled with preambles. He worked with a white coat on, and from the top pocket stuck out a comb and the handle of a pair of scissors. He applied himself seriously and conscientiously, ignoring the pains in his wrist and the hairs that flew into his face like pointy bristles.

“On leave to visit your girlfriend?”

The young soldier smiled with a certain sadness. He didn’t have a girlfriend to visit, or family with whom to spend his leave. He didn’t even know anyone in Mérida. He had been transferred there a few days earlier for no apparent reason. At least they had given him the weekend to get to know the city. And that was more fun than keeping watch over an abandoned quarry.

“Do you like how it’s coming out?” the barber asked him. The sound of the shaving was rough and threatening, as if a yoke were plowing through a dry field very close to the green stalks. The precise gesture of collecting the foam on the knife blade was a hypnotic art that the barber practiced as few did.

The soldier was one of those people who liked to get lost in his thoughts in front of his image in the mirror. He examined his profile absently, as if for a second he didn’t recognize himself. He made a strange face, and then he stroked his chin, satisfied.

When he went out into the street, the soldier smiled. The haircut and shave relaxed his face, and the gentle to and fro of the breeze between the washing hung out in front of the buildings felt pleasant. He was happy, but not like a boy or someone celebrating something. His happiness was deliberate and unhurried, and he showed it calmly, merely singing softly as he walked. When he was a boy, people said he had a good voice, and that he did very good versions of the greats like Lucrezia Bori and Conchita Badía. He hummed a little popular ditty, “La Muslera,” perhaps hurting over a lost love.

El día que tú te cases,

Se harán dos cosas a un tiempo:

Primero tu boda,

Después mi entierro
.
*

Gradually, the fear of the first few days had evaporated, when he saw that no one asked him any questions about the dead woman in the quarry. It was as if it hadn’t happened. Yet that apparent calm made him uneasy. He couldn’t get the intelligence officer out of his head; at night he awoke frightened, afraid of finding him by his folding bed. But apart from his dreams, that sinister character had also vanished.

On a corner, an itinerant musician wearing an Italian army jacket played the guitar and sang a song in his language. It was an evocative melody, with a calm pace. The soldier stopped for a moment to listen to it. Then he continued his stroll toward the riverbank. By the boggy curves of the river rested some vagabonds, people fleeing from hunger, mostly peasants who had given up farming and were headed to the cities. They formed part of a flood as powerful as it was sterile; tired and dusty, they were busting open garbage bags in search of rotten food.

Near the station he came across a large standing crowd. At the bus stop packed with people, bags, and suitcases, some children escaped their parents, whose shouts mingled with the cries and other hollering, creating a dizzying cacophony. Suddenly, the soldier found himself dragged by that tide. He lifted his head above the crowd toward the start of that mass that moved slowly forward, channeled through an aisle of fences that ended in front of a desk, where two civil guards discriminatorily checked documents and luggage. When his turn came he showed his military identification. The members of the civil guard were unmistakable in their three-pointed hats with protective flap and visor wrapped in oilcloth. They stood side by side, in their capes, with some strange sort of displaced hump that was merely their satchels.

They observed the soldier with reluctance. One of them had a lustrous mustache that filled his entire upper lip, and his hat strap shone beneath his chin. When he spoke he released thick steam. He carefully examined the identification, comparing the photograph on the document with the young man’s face.

“Is everything in order?” asked the soldier.

“No. It’s not,” said the officer, making a gesture for his colleague to come over. “This is him,” he pointed. “Put the cuffs on him.”

Before the soldier could understand what was going on, the guards threw him to the ground and cuffed him, dragging him inside the bus station. They stuck him in a small room and took off his handcuffs.

“Take off your clothes,” one of them ordered.

The soldier tried to explain to them that he was on leave, and that he was stationed at the artillery barracks in Mérida. But that agent with the rough face shook his head and lay down his concise sentence.

“There is no mistake. You are Pedro Recasens, with an order for capture for desertion. They’re going to cut off your balls, young man.”

The soldier couldn’t believe his ears. That was a huge mistake. They only had to call the command headquarters to prove that what he was saying was true.

“I’m telling you that I was just transferred and I’m on leave for the weekend.”

His protests stopped when one of the guards gave him a backhanded slap on the mouth. Drops of blood sprang to his lip.

“I told you to take off your clothes.” They shoved and shouted at him; they shook him like a muscle without bone, and he let them, head lowered and trembling. They searched him again with exasperating meticulousness. They went into his underwear, his pants, his shoes.

Time and time again they asked him the same things, without listening or caring about the answers he gave. That was a macabre and well-rehearsed dance. Naked in front of strangers, blinded by the weak light of a desk lamp. There was nothing sadder. He modestly covered his genitals and looked away, ashamed. For a few minutes the guards observed him, deliberating among themselves. They repeated the questions: What’s your name? Where are you from? Why did you desert?… Recasens denied the charge to the point of the absurd, to the point of nausea.

Finally, as if suddenly they had tired of that game, they stopped asking questions. They threw his clothes to him and made him dress. Recasens thought that finally they were going to let him leave, but he was wrong. They had him sit in a chair, and they left him there without offering any explanation.

A few minutes later the door opened again, and a man in plainclothes came in. The newcomer lit a filterless Ideales cigarette that he pulled from a wrinkled pack, and looked at Recasens with a frank smile.

“My name is Publio, and I’ve come to help you.”

“I haven’t done anything. They say I’m a deserter, but it’s not true. I have permission from my commanding officer.”

Publio took a drag on the cigarette, squinting his eyes.

“I know. Your commander owes us some favors, and I asked him to give you two days’ leave.” He pulled out a document and showed it to Recasens. “This permission.”

“Then this is all cleared up,” said Recasens with slight hope.

“This permission is worth nothing, Pedro. It’s fake. In the eyes of the law, you ran away from your barracks two days ago. I’ve done my research on you. I know that you fought against us at Ebro. With your background, imagine what will happen to you.”

Pedro Recasens went white. He understood that the man had set a trap for him, but he didn’t understand why.

Publio leaned against the wall with his hands in his pockets. He looked at Recasens with pity. Deep down, he felt bad for the poor wretch.

“Are you religious?”

Pedro Recasens didn’t understand the question. He said yes, because he thought that was what he had to say.

“That’s good. Where I’m sending you, you’re going to need strong faith. Although the Russians don’t like Catholics much.”

“The Russians?” asked the soldier incredulously.

The man nodded.

“I’m going to send you to the Soviet front, this very week. Unless you do something for me.”

The soldier swore up and down that he was willing to do whatever was necessary to be left alone.

“That’s good, cooperation. Come with me.”

“Where?”

“You’ll see.”

*   *   *

Beyond the Aqueduct of Milagros extended the meadow with its fields of grains, vineyards, and olive groves. Herds of pigs and flocks of sheep blocked the roads that went up in a gradual ascent, curve after curve, toward the hillock. From the top a lovely view of the city could be seen. A network of cisterns and sewers, of baths and hot springs ran along the entire colony of Emerita from the swamps of Proserpina. To the north you could make out the basilica of Santa Eulalia. Bordering the city, the Guadiana extended like a bright ribbon crossed by several bridges.

As he drove his car, Publio kept his gaze firmly on the olive groves that extended from the other bank. His face dissolved into the river’s calm course. The soldier looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but he barely dared to breathe. They continued up the mountainside until they ended up on a straight gravel path, escorted on both sides by tall cypress trees that rocked meekly. Soon the magnificent Mola estate came into view.

The house was a hotbed of staff working silently and efficiently, like a brigade of ants with their heads lowered, packing up furniture, paintings, and books and loading them onto trucks with their canvas covers down. Most were prisoners condemned to hard labor. The only crime that many of them had committed was being on the side of the Republic when the war broke out. Every morning, at dawn, the guards brought them from the Badajoz jail, and they came back to pick them up when the sun was setting. They wore uniforms of shabby blue coveralls with a number sewn onto the sleeve and espadrilles covered with holes. Many had poorly healed scars on their faces, bruises on their legs and arms, and a saffron skin color from chronic diarrhea. They worked beneath the gaze of a fat prison guard who kept shouting insults at them.

Publio parked near the gate and had Recasens get out. They went into the estate and headed toward a somewhat isolated large lemon tree.

Sitting on the ground was a man who was no longer young, but still wasn’t old. He was shackled, and his face had been beaten. He was watched over from a slight distance by young soldiers who smoked as they sat in the shade of some sycamores with their shotguns leaning on the fence.

“Do you recognize this man?” Publio asked Recasens.

“I’ve never seen him before in my life,” the soldier answered without hesitation.

“Take a good look,” insisted Publio. And he tendentiously asked if that wasn’t the man he had seen with a woman the night he was keeping guard over the quarry.

The soldier didn’t need to take a closer look. No, that was not the man. He was sure. But judging by Publio’s look, he understood that his future depended on what he said. He swallowed hard.

“I can’t be certain,” he stuttered. “It was dark.”

Publio grabbed him by the shoulder and whispered threateningly that it wasn’t true; that morning it was sunny and clear, and Recasens saw that man come to the quarry with a woman, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Then he heard two shots and saw that man run into the car as fast as he could.