Читать книгу The Angel Of History - Bruno Arpaia - Страница 15

Chapter Eight

The cold, my boy. It was four below zero centigrade when we got to the front. They brought us to Saragozza in Pina to relieve the soldiers stationed on the Ebro river. There was mud, coagulated mud and mud men – frozen and bundled up in that tangle of trenches. That was the front that winter. On the bright side, things were calm there – a burst of gunfire every so often, an isolated mortar shell – just so we felt useful. Further south, Teruel was a slaughter. Our side had launched the attack but now Franco’s forces were fighting back and Italian artillery alongside the Legione Condor were crushing the advance. By the end of February, they’d taken back Teruel and collected interest along the way. They got all the way to Alfambra. We lost ten thousand men; another fifteen thousand were taken prisoner. Mariano was seething. The news kept coming in and making him hungrier than ever for combat. At night he made us patrol the river in that cold that would turn your breath to ice, just to show that we were at war too.

‘The men are tired,’ I said one morning. ‘They know these midnight walks are as good as useless.’

He seemed to think about that. Then he snorted and heaved a glob of spit the size of an egg on the ground.

‘Remember that I’m your Lieutenant,’ he said and went off to sleep.

Something ugly had come between us but we didn’t have any time to clear the air. Franco moved down the front and even those of us at Aragon came under fire. They forced us down with artillery and then charged. We were face to face with the Moroccan soldiers under General Yagüe. He was a tough character, a Falange fascist who had always been commander of the Regulares d’Africa. We couldn’t have been in a worse situation. Mariano and I had faced the Moroccans in ’34 at Gijón, and then again in Bilbao and Santander the summer before. They were worse than animals; they were inhumanly cruel, raped women and cut your throat laughing like possessed men. They even got a kick out of the lowest kind of actions, like occupying a hospital and exterminating the doctors and the wounded with their bayonets, goring them in their stretchers. Now they were advancing along the right bank and coming toward us, razing everything in their path. There weren’t many of us and we weren’t well armed. Meanwhile our front was collapsing, Belchite, Alcañiz, Rudilla. Colonel Aranda took Montalbán.

We decided that I should go to Barcelona to get more ammunition and bring it back fast. I drove the truck full-speed and pulled into headquarters in the early afternoon. The city seemed numb from a recent bombing. Over the last few months the Italians had gone mad, they were taking off from Maiorca and dropping as many bombs as they could. Barcelona had turned greyer and sadder, people dragged themselves grimly through the dusty streets. A colonel at the command station told me that it would take them all night to load the truck. Six o’clock and there I was waiting in front of the Calle Telleres hospital. Who else would I be waiting for? Mercedes. She was what she was. My woman. With her flashing green eyes, and curves in all the right places. It was like she was made just for me. I had two months to catch up on and just seeing her again triggered something in my trousers. She was happy to see me. Sure. But not happy enough.

‘Did you meet someone else?’ I asked outright as we walked up the Paseig de Gracia.

She stopped and looked me in the eyes. Then she raised her hand, folded down her thumb and waved her remaining fingers in the air.

‘I have four others,’ she answered, smiling sadly. ‘But that’s none of your business. I’m a free woman, got that?’

Free love and all that crap. Do you remember it?

‘Please,’ I managed to say to her. ‘Why would I care?’

Of course I cared and boy did I. My stomach was in knots, my intestines were growling and twisting. But little by little she kept getting sweeter and soon it was just like before. Within two hours we were back at her house in bed. She was on all fours, face in the pillow, and I took her from behind. I already told you that we liked it like that. That was when we heard the sirens and a faraway grumble, that buzz that kept getting louder and heavier and the next thing you knew all you could hear were engines rumbling. Heinkel planes.We could hear the first bombs fall, far away, beyond the train station.

‘Don’t stop,’ she said. ‘Keep going.’

Well, that’s easier said than done. The troops were already starting to pull out, abandon the front. Plop it went – getting out of the trench.You want to be able to shake it off, but nothing doing. The planes were coming and going low overhead. Mercedes turned around and looked at me, head to toe.

‘You’re really just a boy,’ she said. ‘Okay. Let’s get dressed now and we’ll go down into the shelter.

We didn’t know what was in store for us.We ended up staying there for two days, packed in like sardines. Nothing to eat or drink. All that whimpering and snivelling in between the blasts. A dust came down over us every time the walls shook from the explosion. The bombings came in waves, about every three hours, sometimes more frequently, hitting every neighbourhood and every civic and military target. We’d never seen anything like it before – it was the first time there’d ever been a bombing like that, and there I was in the middle. Once we could come out we realised right away that the death toll would be in the thousands. Streams of blood were running down the pavement; there were arms, heads and legs just scattered in the middle of rubble. The smell of burnt earth, stone and flesh got into your nose. I should’ve built up a tougher skin by then. But I couldn’t manage to keep calm. Mercedes looked slowly around and started sobbing. Then I hugged her and we kissed.

‘I have to go now,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to get to the hospital.’

‘When will we see each other again?’ I asked.

She shrugged and indicated the disaster all around us.

‘When you get back from the front,’ she answered and took off.

The front. Damn. They were still waiting for ammo back at the camp. I got there right in time – in time to partake in the dismantling. Mariano shouted when he saw me.

‘Back already? You could have stayed on for a while longer. Our own little lord out on a jaunt and we’re back here dying. Three-day lock-up.’

Mariano loved to cut people down. He liked it twice as much when he was doing it to me. But I answered back this time.

‘Didn’t you hear that they bombed Barcelona? The whole world is angry at Franco and Mussolini and you’re taking it out on your friend.’

‘Friend my ass,’ he yelled. ‘Remember that I’m your superior.’

He never got over that. I was about to jump on him when Mariano looked at me and smiled, ‘Did you see Ana María?’

‘Yes, sure,’ I lied. ‘She’s thinking about you and sends her best.’

The peace didn’t last. On March 22, Solchaga and Moscardó’s troops attacked between Huesca and Saragozza. It was our turn the next day – us against Yagüe. When I saw the Moroccans coming across the river in their fezzes and white trousers, I realised that it was all over. Even Mariano realised it; and he gave the orders to abandon our position. We ran for kilometres, days on end, we crossed Aragon under air fire, through lines of civilians abandoning their villages and cities, dragging carts filled with mattresses, chickens, goats. And then Lérida fell on April 3. Two weeks later the fourth Navarra Division led by Camilo Alonso Vega reached the sea near Vinaroz. Our territory was cleaved in two.