The tall, heavy old man looked at Gomez with his outthrust head and considered him carefully with his watery eyes. Even here at the front in the light of a bare electric bulb, he having just come in from driving in an open car on a brisk night, his gray face had a look of decay. His face looked as though it were modelled from the waste material you find under the claws of a very old lion.
"You have what, Comrade?" he asked Gomez, speaking Spanish with a strong Catalan accent. His eyes glanced sideways at Andres, slid over him, and went back to Gomez.
"A dispatch for General Golz to be delivered at his headquarters, Comrade Marty."
"Where is it from, Comrade?"
"From behind the fascist lines," Gomez said.
Andre Marty extended his hand for the dispatch and the other papers. He glanced at them and put them in his pocket.
"Arrest them both," he said to the corporal of the guard. "Have them searched and bring them to me when I send for them."
With the dispatch in his pocket he strode on into the interior of the big stone house.
Outside in the guard room Gomez and Andres were being searched by the guard.
"What passes with that man?" Gomez said to one of the guards.
"Esta loco," the guard said. "He is crazy."
"No. He is a political figure of great importance," Gomez said. "He is the chief commissar of the International Brigades."
"Apesar de eso, esta loco," the corporal of the guard said. "All the same he's crazy. What do you behind the fascist lines?"
"This comrade is a guerilla from there," Gomez told him while the man searched him. "He brings a dispatch to General Golz. Guard well my papers. Be careful with that money and that bullet on the string. It is from my first wound at Guadarama."
"Don't worry," the corporal said. "Everything will be in this drawer. Why didn't you ask me where Golz was?"
"We tried to. I asked the sentry and he called you."
"But then came the crazy and you asked him. No one should ask him anything. He is crazy. Thy Golz is up the road three kilometers from here and to the right in the rocks of the forest."
"Can you not let us go to him now?"
"Nay. It would be my head. I must take thee to the crazy. Besides, he has thy dispatch."
"Can you not tell some one?"
"Yes," the corporal said. "I will tell the first responsible one I see. All know that he is crazy."
"I had always taken him for a great figure," Gomez said. "For one of the glories of France."
"He may be a glory and all," the corporal said and put his hand on Andres's shoulder. "But he is crazy as a bedbug. He has a mania for shooting people."
"Truly shooting them?"
"Como lo oyes," the corporal said. "That old one kills more than the bubonic plague. Mata mas que la peste bubonica. But he doesn't kill fascists like we do. Que va. Not in joke. Mata bichos raros. He kills rare things. Trotzkyites. Divagationers. Any type of rare beasts."
Andres did not understand any of this.
"When we were at Escorial we shot I don't know how many for him," the corporal said. "We always furnish the firing party. The men of the Brigades would not shoot their own men. Especially the French. To avoid difficulties it is always us who do it. We shot French. We have shot Belgians. We have shot others of divers nationality. Of all types. Tiene mania de fusilar gente. Always for political things. He's crazy. Purifica mas que el Salvarsan. He purifies more than Salvarsan."
"But you will tell some one of this dispatch?"
"Yes, man. Surely. I know every one of these two Brigades. Every one comes through here. I know even up to and through the Russians, although only a few speak Spanish. We will keep this crazy from shooting Spaniards."
"But the dispatch."
"The dispatch, too. Do not worry, Comrade. We know how to deal with this crazy. He is only dangerous with his own people. We understand him now."
"Bring in the two prisoners," came the voice of Andre Marty.
"Quereis echar un trago?" the corporal asked. "Do you want a drink?"
"Why not?"
The corporal took a bottle of anis from a cupboard and both Gomez and Andres drank. So did the corporal. He wiped his mouth on his hand.
"Vamonos," he said.
They went out of the guard room with the swallowed burn of the anis warming their mouths, their bellies and their hearts and walked down the hall and entered the room where Marty sat behind a long table, his map spread in front of him, his red-and-blue pencil, with which he played at being a general officer, in his hand. To Andres it was only one more thing. There had been many tonight. There were always many. If your papers were in order and your heart was good you were in no danger. Eventually they turned you loose and you were on your way. But the Ingles had said to hurry. He knew now he could never get back for the bridge but they had a dispatch to deliver and this old man there at the table had put it in his pocket.
"Stand there," Marty said without looking up.
"Listen, Comrade Marty," Gomez broke out, the anis fortifying his anger. "Once tonight we have been impeded by the ignorance of the anarchists. Then by the sloth of a bureaucratic fascist. Now by the oversuspicion of a Communist."
"Close your mouth," Marty said without looking up. "This is not a meeting."
"Comrade Marty, this is a matter of utmost urgence," Gomez said. "Of the greatest importance."
The corporal and the soldier with them were taking a lively interest in this as though they were at a play they had seen many times but whose excellent moments they could always savor.
"Everything is of urgence," Marty said. "All things are of importance." Now he looked up at them, holding the pencil. "How did you know Golz was here? Do you understand how serious it is to come asking for an individual general before an attack? How could you know such a general would be here?"
"Tell him, tu," Gomez said to Andres.
"Comrade General," Andres started-Andre Marty did not correct him in the mistake in rank-"I was given that packet on the other side of the lines-"
"On the other side of the lines?" Marty said. "Yes, I heard him say you came from the fascist lines."
"It was given to me, Comrade General, by an Ingles named Roberto who had come to us as a dynamiter for this of the bridge. Understandeth?"
"Continue thy story," Marty said to Andres; using the term story as you would say lie, falsehood, or fabrication.
"Well, Comrade General, the Ingles told me to bring it to the General Golz with all speed. He makes an attack in these hills now on this day and all we ask is to take it to him now promptly if it pleases the Comrade General."
Marty shook his head again. He was looking at Andres but he was not seeing him.
Golz, he thought in a mixture of horror and exultation as a man might feel hearing that a business enemy had been killed in a particularly nasty motor accident or that some one you hated but whose probity you had never doubted had been guilty of defalcation. That Golz should be one of them, too. That Golz should be in such obvious communication with the fascists. Golz that he had known for nearly twenty years. Golz who had captured the gold train that winter with Lucacz in Siberia. Golz who had fought against Kolchak, and in Poland. In the Caucasus. In China, and here since the first October. But he had been close to Tukachevsky. To Voroshilov, yes, too. But to Tukachevsky. And to who else? Here to Karkov, of course. And to Lucacz. But all the Hungarians had been intriguers. He hated Gall. Golz hated Gall. Remember that. Make a note of that. Golz has always hated Gall. But he favors Putz. Remember that. And Duval is his chief of staff. See what stems from that. You've heard him say Copic's a fool. That is definitive. That exists. And now this dispatch from the fascist lines. Only by pruning out of these rotten branches can the tree remain healthy and grow. The rot must become apparent for it is to be destroyed. But Golz of all men. That Golz should be one of the traitors. He knew that you could trust no one. No one. Ever. Not your wife. Not your brother. Not your oldest comrade. No one. Ever.