They were silent, hypnotized by the straight highway, the flat, dry landscape, dazed by the rumble of the engine and the jolting of the truck. They passed farmhouses with large corrals that seemed abandoned, beside wheat fields that had been cut down and fallow fields where autumn plowing hadn’t begun yet. Along the low, whitewashed wall of a cemetery a sign in large red brushstrokes stood out in the sun: LONG LIV RUSIA UHP. They approached a checkpoint at a turnoff to a dirt road that probably led to a village not visible from the highway, watched over by two campesinos in straw hats with shotguns and cartridge belts crossed over their chests. They’d blocked the road with a cart and on each side had placed, like two scarecrows, a crucified Christ with a long head of natural hair blowing in the wind, and a Virgin in elaborate petticoats and skirts. From a distance her crystal tears and silver heart shone in the sun. But the impression of a desert didn’t last long: a large truck and a bus filled with militiamen on the way to Toledo pulled ahead of them with a great roar of horns, shouts, and shots in the air, enveloping them in a dense cloud of dust. A little farther on they left behind a slow line of old military vehicles, cars with mattresses tied to the roofs, trucks protected by makeshift sheets of armor. “By the time they get to Toledo, the Alcázar will already have surrendered out of boredom,” said Miguel Gómez, not smiling. In the silence the estrangement between them had grown, the distance of the years and of political suspicion; Miguel’s concern for his own circumstances, his instinctive gratitude but also resentment toward the man who’d paid for his secondary education and even would have helped him establish a career, if his desire not to go on being grateful hadn’t been stronger than his ambition to move up socially. Yet he hadn’t escaped a debt he could never repay: studying at night, he became a draftsman and passed his examinations without much effort, but the position he obtained in the drafting office of the Lozoya Canal wouldn’t have been his, in spite of his outstanding record, if not for the discreet help of his godfather, whom he hadn’t seen for many years. It was his father who provided the rationale: “If rich men’s sons get their positions through connections, why shouldn’t we let Don Ignacio give you a hand when you’re worth more than all of them put together?” Now Miguel was gnawed by the fear that Ignacio Abel might think he’d found easy work on the Committee for the Restoration of the Artistic Patrimony to avoid going to the front, that like so many others he showed off his leather straps and a pistol to disguise a comfortable job behind the lines. “If they’d only let me go to fight,” he said, indicating with a motion of his head the convoy they’d left behind. “Not your fault you’re nearsighted,” said Ignacio Abel. “Your father always attributed it to your love of books.” “And besides, I have flat feet,” Miguel Gómez muttered, less with resignation than self-mockery, as he tightened his grip on the wheel to take a curve around a bare limestone hill cut by erosion. At least he knew how to drive, he thought as he moved his body forward over the wheel as if to see the road better. He smelled something burning, smoke. Maybe the engine was overheating, the truck was old and had been badly mistreated recently, or he drove erratically, with abrupt braking and acceleration. The smell was not just gasoline; as they passed the hill, the air filled with light mist and the flat landscape spread out before them. Miguel Gómez felt a rumbling, as if deep beneath the earth, like thunder or an underground train, like a mallet hitting an immense drum, very distant and very close, under them and the wheels of the truck, and also vibrating in the air, something neither of them had ever heard before, the booming mixed with the stillness of the countryside and the smell of smoke whose origin they didn’t know, gasoline and something else, denser and more oppressive, hot metal, burning tires. One of the militiamen riding in the back of the truck banged on the glass at the back of the cab, saying something they couldn’t hear. “We can’t be close to the front,” said Miguel Gómez, the sweat making his hands slip on the wheel, wetting his back. “They can’t have advanced this far.” “Could we have taken the wrong road?” asked Ignacio Abel, looking for traffic signs, some indication of the distance that separated them from Toledo, but they saw nothing ahead, no houses, no village. They continued moving, their eyes fixed on the highway that was rising now, limiting their field of vision. The militiaman knocked on the glass with the barrel of his rifle and gestured, but Miguel Gómez didn’t turn around, incapable of making a decision, stepping on the accelerator to get up the slope because the motor didn’t have much more to give and was overheating. Now the smoke was visible and the smell unmistakable: burned tires and burned flesh.
At the top of the hill the smoke blinded them. Ignacio Abel shouted at Miguel Gómez to stop and lunged toward the wheel to turn the truck. The desert had suddenly been transformed into complete chaos. In front of them was a blaze and a pile of scrap metal, the remains of the bus that had passed them less than an hour before, overturned and on fire in the middle of the highway. Burning bodies jutted out of the windows, contorted faces, their features like melted rubber. Coming toward them through clouds of black smoke, a confusion of human figures overflowed the highway: they gesticulated and opened their mouths but their voices couldn’t be heard, drowned out by the explosions and the horns of motorcycles, cars, and trucks bogged down in the multitude of people, halted by the burning bus. “Go back, turn around,” said Ignacio Abel while the militiamen continued to bang on the glass, pressing their faces against it, twisted by horror. But the engine stalled and Miguel Gómez couldn’t start it again, kept turning the ignition key, couldn’t tell whether he was stepping on the brake or the accelerator. Now the long whistles of mortars, and a few seconds later the earth rose in the fields along the highway like streams of lava in an erupting volcano. They could make out the faces approaching them, militiamen tossing their weapons in order to run more quickly, old campesinos, women with children in their arms, animals weighed down by mattresses, heaps of sacks and suitcases, chairs, sewing machines, the mules’ big eyes even larger with terror, open mouths searching for air, bodies trampling one another, while at the edge of the highway, between a line of trees, red flashes and columns of smoke rose. The morning light had the opacity of an eclipse. The truck started up again with a shudder, but instead of shifting into reverse, Miguel Gómez stepped on the gas pedal, riding in a straight line toward the burning bus and the turmoil of vehicles and militiamen and animals and fleeing campesinos. On one side of the highway, his legs wide apart, the heels of his boots deep in the dust, his head bare, an army officer flailed his arms and shouted, brandishing a pistol, threatening the militiamen who ran, throwing down not only their weapons but also the French steel helmets from the Great War, canteens, cartridge belts with ammunition, jumping over corpses and smashed suitcases, hopping over the dry furrows of a plowed field, throwing themselves to the ground with heads pulled in when they heard the whistle of an incoming mortar. We’re going to run over someone and not know it; people desperate to flee will grab onto the sides of the truck and overturn it and we’ll never get out of here; at any moment the invisible enemy on the other side of that row of trees will come at us and we’ll be spellbound by the approach of the horsemen, the Moorish mercenaries who raise their sabers and shriek in the intoxication of a gallop carrying them to slaughter or their own deaths, the legionnaires who know how to advance with bayonets fixed or wait on a rise, their machine guns ready, and effortlessly mow down bewildered, foolhardy militiamen who don’t know what war is, who imagine war is a parade through Madrid where they mark time in an unmartial way with a rifle at their shoulder and a fist at their temple. Ignacio Abel saw the intermittent shreds of images unfolding before him, submerging him in an unreality that erased fear and suspended time. Beside him, Miguel Gómez drove the truck, turning the wheel, accelerating and braking, wiping the sweat from his forehead and eyes, his thick fingers under his lenses. A campesino’s mule cart came toward them, with suitcases and furniture falling off the sides, a pack of dogs chasing it. Beyond the trees and the smoke, the silhouettes of horses appearing by the score. “To the right!” he heard himself shout, turning the wheel with a blow of his hand. “Accelerate, don’t stop now!” On the right side of the highway was a burned house and in front of it a horse with its belly gaping open, its guts spilling out, and beyond that, visible for a moment and then erased by smoke, the start of a road, almost perpendicular to the highway. The truck leaned when it took the turn, barely avoiding a ditch, leaving the war behind as it drove on, the trembling of the earth easing, the mortars’ whistles fading. On the curve of a nearby hill, a line of dun-colored houses and a church tower emerged. A column of smoke rose from the hood of the dilapidated truck.