Waiting for Robert Capa (23 page)

With his travel bag hanging from his shoulder, he said good-bye to everyone downstairs in the vestibule. Promising to come back soon, shaking hands, repeating his favorite jokes … Masculine and somewhat coarse.

Everyone protects themselves from emotions as best they can. But when he came upon Ted Allan, he gave him a hard and frank pat on the back. The young man had just returned from the front two days ago, thinner than ever, with that withdrawn expression of shyness on his face, and that clumsy gait of a colt.

“Promise me you'll take good care of her, Teddy,” he said.

To the east of Madrid, more than 100,000 Spaniards were on the verge of killing one another in the war's bloodiest battle.

S
he appeared different, younger. She was lying facedown on the bed wearing a man's military shirt with big pockets. Her chin resting in one hand and a book in the other, slowly turning the pages. There are people who weren't born to accept things as they are, she thought. Figures lost in a world that never lived up to their standards. Individuals who don't always behave according to codified morals but to certain laws based on chivalrous ethics, people who face the world head-on, fighting in their own way, the best way they know how, against hunger, fear, or war.

Fear never held back John Reed. On the contrary, it was his natural element. When it came to reporting his stories, he would always arrange it so he could arrive at the most complicated areas. Once he was caught by surprise on the Riga front when German artillery began firing. A projectile landed a few yards away from where he was positioned, and everyone took him for dead. But a few minutes later, he was spotted walking in the middle of a dense column of smoke and dust, partly deaf, with his hands in his pockets. Gerda realized she had spent the last five minutes in a trance, staring at the paper's pores, caressing the skin of the cloth binding, as if she were sailing across a faraway sea. Afterward, she turned the page and found a photograph that Capa had left as a bookmark on page 57. She picked it up and held it up to the oil lamp so she could study it closer:

A plump naked baby lying on a sofa. Its eyebrows full and dark, its skin tan, eyes enormous and black, the color of carbon, and so much hair on its head that it looked like he could already be in high school. Gorgeous enough to eat with a spoon. There are photos that contain all the possibilities of a future within them. As if there was no other purpose to life but to confirm those freshly formed traits: the Gypsy smile, the skeptical forehead, the lucky sixth finger. The back of the photo had a date: October 22, 1913. Gerda smiled. Another one who didn't conform to things just as they were. How about that, another one.

She was restless throughout the night. She dreamt that the two of them were walking through a market in Paris, very early in the morning, with that translucent light from when they first met and the war had not yet begun, and she dreamt of being Greta Garbo, and he carried Captain Flint on his shoulder … She slept as if her life depended on it, or perhaps as if she wished to change her life so that it would push her far beyond those scarce opportunities. She tossed and turned in bed, from one city to the next, passing through exasperating autumns, and cried in her dreams with her eyes closed, her left knee tucked under her stomach, lying diagonally across the bed. Until she awoke with the first oblique ray of light over her pillow and the clock set on her hour.

The one of truth.

June 25, 1937. Sunday.

“When I think about all the extraordinary people who have been killed during the course of this war, it seems that one way or another, it's unfair to still remain alive,” she wrote in her notebook that morning.

It had been a few days since the Republican army under the command of Líster had launched a strong offensive in Brunete at a crossing for the main supply routes used by Franco's troops stationed in Casa de Campo and Ciudad Universitaria. The attack caught the Fascists by surprise and the militia was able to quickly advance toward Quijorna and Villanueva de la Cañada. But in no time, the rebels received massive reinforcements, and in the middle of a plateau baking at 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, the battle began.

Nobody was exactly certain which territories they controlled, or who controlled each
pueblo
, or which part of the
pueblo
was theirs. So they fought house-to-house. There was so much confusion that sometimes bands would accidentally bomb their own positions. Houses burning in the sun, tanks maneuvering through the streets, Fascist sympathizers positioning themselves in windows, narrow alleyways closed off, targeted bell towers, French and Belgian volunteers advancing through a wheat field…

What was being printed in the newspapers only confused the situation even more. To Franco, the battle had been won, while the Republicans still hadn't given up. Gerda harbored hope for a victory. She wanted those photos. Whatever it took.

“I can't carry both the Eyemo and the Leica, Ted, I need you to help me,” she told her guardian angel over the phone. It was around eight in the morning. “I got hold of a car. Come on, Teddy, please say yes … Just this once. Tomorrow I return to Paris.”

Who would have been capable of saying no? Especially Ted Allan, who would have given her the moon on a silver platter if she asked him to. There was barely any vehicle activity on the highway. From Villanueva de la Cañada and on, not even a dust cloud in the distance. Decayed rocks and pumice stones, fields of stubble, a midsummer silence that stretched across the fallow land. Bad sign. When their French driver refused to go any farther, they had to continue on foot through the wheat fields. It wasn't the type of terrain you associate with an ambush, but within that golden wheat, several men could remain hidden and completely out of sight. Around one in the afternoon, they arrived at General Walter's campsite. He was a Polish Bolshevik with square shoulders and with experience in the Red Army's strategies during the Russian Revolution. When he saw them approaching through the wheat fields, undulating like vapors in a desert mirage, their cameras in tow and their shirts drenched in sweat, he was ready to tell them to turn right back.

“Are you two crazy, or what?” he shouted at them with a harsh expression on his face, before he began ranting and raving about journalists and the mothers that birthed them. “Five minutes from now this is going to be a living hell.”

He was only off by thirty seconds. Time enough to hand them each a Mauser for whatever was to follow. In no time, Francoist artillery opened fire and ten Heinkel medium bombers covered the sky over the Castilian plain. An interminable day lay ahead; bombs were suddenly exploding everywhere, and everyone barricaded themselves wherever they could while rebel aircraft dove low, riddling that corroded land with shrapnel. Gerda and Ted threw themselves into the first shallow dugout they spotted. The cordite smell in the air was sickening. German fighters swooped down to strafe the field without mercy.

“We have to get out of here,” Ted screamed, leaning on her shoulder. It was impossible to hear anything above the din. “They're going to sear us.”

Flashes, short bursts followed by longer ones, rattling all over the ground, snapping against rocks, explosions resonating in their eardrums.

Gerda stretched open her mouth so the noise wouldn't damage her hearing. Through her camera lens, she saw the war in black-and-white and never stopped shooting. This helped sharpen her concentration and keep her fear at bay. At one point, the reflection of the sun bounced on the metal rim of her camera, and it must have caught the attention of a biplane fighter that took a nose dive toward their position. She was fascinated by that sinister bird's vertical route that looked as if it were about to crash into the ground. Ted instinctively covered his head with his arms, but she stuck out half her body to capture the image of the dust trails the bullets' impact had left a few feet aboveground … Raa-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta…

“If we get out of this, I'll have something to show the Non-Intervention Committee,” she said, lying on the ground, changing the roll with haste. Her face contorted by the sun, her teeth clenched, those agile fingers working. They were the best photos of her life.

But Ted snatched the camera out of her hands. His lungs hurt from breathing in all that smoke; he stifled his cough as much as he could.

“Forget about it—we have to get out of here before they blow us to pieces.” He tried using the Eyemo as a shield to protect her from the bits and shards of rock flying everywhere. He scanned the grounds around them for a safer spot. But there was nowhere to go.

The sounds of sporadic detonations were linked together by the continuous rattle of machine-gun fire and a new round of mortar attacks. The day the world ended. And then widespread panic broke out. The soldiers succumbing to panic before the deluge of artillery fire. Breaking ranks and fleeing in the direction of the highway. It was a devastating spectacle, a game of target shooting for the Fascists with their machine guns. As soon as they surfaced, they were gunned down like rabbits. There was no escape. General Walter, the head of the Thirty-fifth Division, tried his best to commandeer the combat situation, but the disbanding continued within the western sector. Gerda saw pieces of three militiamen fly through the air after a bomb exploded. It was then that she ran for cover, alone, snorting fury and humiliation, swearing in Yiddish to the god of armies, with her Mauser aimed at any Republican soldier who attempted to flee. Ted tried to hold her back by grabbing onto her shirt but failed. “They have to be stopped, can't you see they're destroying them?” she said. “Wait for me,” he shouted back, reloading his rifle so he could cover her. He had never seen her so strong and sure of herself. With a gun in her hand, a torn shirt and an exposed shoulder. Impetuous, enraged, implacable, letting out wrenching screams during the last battle there was to lose. Full of rage and disappointment and an undeniable boldness of heart. As a result of their bravery, the two were able to help get the soldiers to regroup back into position.

Around five thirty in the afternoon, the planes began to retreat, leaving an empty silence over the dirt, a sense of extreme solitude in the field.

It was a miracle to have come out alive. Gerda fixed her gaze on Ted, with a mixture of gentleness and pride. Taking his face into her hands and kissing him softly on the lips. Nothing more. Barely a few seconds. For being her guardian angel.

“Thank you,” he responded softly.

And though he could feel a burning flame rising to his face, he simply smiled in that way of his, both distant and timid.

The plateau was strewn with bodies and the groaning wounded who were too damaged to get up. Some were evacuated in tanks, others in blankets of canvas dragged by mules. Covered in dust, with faces blackened by smoke, Gerda and Ted began walking along the highway in the direction of Villanueva de la Cañada, listening to the sound of their own footsteps on the gravel, with a desire to remain silent out of respect for all the lives that were taken on that plateau that cursed day. In the distance, they could see farmhouses ablaze, explosions, a ravaged landscape.

An hour later and completely exhausted, the two of them continued walking as the sun was starting to set. In the distance, they heard an engine purring, and as the vehicle made its way around the curve, they could make out that it was General Walter's touring car. It was black, with a dent on its hood. They began to wave their arms in the air to capture his attention. The two of them, dying of thirst, unable to take much more. The general was not inside, and the backseat of the car was packed with wounded men, so they both jumped onto the running board and sped off.

On the way, they passed several Republican tanks and armored trucks in retreat. At one point, they found themselves within a stretch of broken terrain, with hills as majestic as medieval castles. Gerda took a deep breath and looked straight ahead, thankful for the wind on her face. She was still astonished that there wasn't a single scratch on her, thinking about the shower she'd take the minute they arrived in Madrid, overcome by that strange euphoria of the survivor, her Leica on her shoulder, her hair blowing back, thanking her star for saving her life. She had bought a bottle of champagne to say her good-byes to everyone at the Alliance. She planned to leave the next morning. That's when, in less than a tenth of a second, the car swerved, and out of the corner of her eye she could see the nose of a tank coming down on her. It was a T-26, the most powerful tank in the world. She wanted to move away from it, dodge it, but something stopped her. Its chains of iron passing over her. Ten tons of metal. The weight trapping her over her abdomen, not allowing her to move. Pulling her down, as if she were at the bottom of the lake in Leipzig and the mud had wrapped itself around her legs, forbidding her to rise to the top. She knew that she should try and relax, breathe slowly, and propel her body upward. She could almost see the lake house, with its lights turned on. And up-close, the table with white linen, a vase of tulips, and John Reed's book. She could hear screams, voices coming from far away, planes roaring high above, and the sound of Ted's voice calling out to her in a tremulous tone modulated by a sharp inflection of alarm: “Gerda, Gerda…” as if he were standing on a distant shore. It seemed to her that nightfall had started much too soon and that it was very cold. She tried everything she could not to drown, to push her head through the water's surface, finding it harder and harder to keep on swimming…

D
on't give up, Little Trout, you're almost there.” It was the sound of Karl's voice from the shore pulling her in, while Oskar, timing it on a fob watch—ten years old, his nose covered in freckles, and wearing a striped sailor's shirt—stood waiting on the dock.

Deep below the surface, there are fantastic cities with domes made of sand and strange sparkles that shine brightly, like phosphorus in bones. Gerda felt an intense reflex of pain, so she pushed her head out of the water and felt the sun evaporating thousands of minuscule droplets over her skin.