“That doesn’t matter now.”
“You could have stayed with me at least that afternoon. You knew I was waiting for you. You must have spoken softly so I wouldn’t hear you. I’m sure you gave Madame Mathilde a good tip.”
“If I’d gone into the room, I probably wouldn’t have had the strength to leave.”
“If I’d seen you that afternoon, I’d have left everything to go with you.”
“As in that poem you couldn’t take seriously? Don’t tell me things that aren’t true. That was what offended me about you. That you told me lies. That you said yes to something when both of us knew it was no. There’s no reason to lie anymore. We’re alone in this house and I’ll be leaving soon.”
“Did you leave Madrid that same night? Were you at Van Doren’s house?”
“I was frightened. They stopped me at every corner to ask for my papers and I didn’t have my passport with me, why would I? I don’t know how I managed to get on a streetcar, on the running board, hanging on. I wanted to leave and I wanted to find you so you could protect me. See what happened to my decision to leave you and my yen for adventure? I reached the pensión and tried to call Phil or the embassy but the phones weren’t working, or sometimes they did and other times they didn’t. I called your house several times but you never answered.”
“I was looking all over Madrid for you.”
“It was better for me you didn’t find me.”
“Would you really have stayed with me?”
“You’re yourself again. You want me to flatter you and say yes.”
“Now you don’t want to tell me why you’re going to New York.”
“I’m leaving on a trip.”
“You’re going to meet another man.”
“Is that the only thing you can imagine in my life? Aren’t you curious to know anything else about me?”
“And your job at the college?”
“I left it.”
“To go where?”
“To Spain.”
She answered so quickly it surprised her to hear the words she didn’t intend to say, hasn’t said to anyone yet. The immediate silence has another quality, of resonance, expectation, vigilance, while their eyes remain fixed, locked, each detecting the slightest movements in the other’s face, both aware of the silence and the sounds behind it, the crackle of the fire in the hearth, the first sporadic drops of a light rain that will last all night, their breathing, each waiting for a sign the other will speak. They’ve been lowering their voices as they remained motionless, Judith sitting upright now that she’s said what perhaps she shouldn’t have said, Ignacio Abel serious, one hand resting on the other on the edge of the table, the bony hands that now seem as stripped of sensuality as his diminished, rigid body, his general mood of dignified capitulation. A passenger on the train they hear passing now will see in the distance, through the successive shadows of the forest, a wide lit window but won’t be able to distinguish the two silhouettes. Someone approaching in the light rain would see two motionless figures on either side of a large table, leaning slightly toward each other, as if about to tell or hear a secret. He’d enter the house and advance silently along the dark hall, and though he came close to the open door of the library, through which come the light from the fire and a current of warm air, he’d hear nothing, perhaps indistinct voices, interrupted by silences, then superimposed, isolated words in Spanish or English, the secret of their two lives, protected by the walls of the house, the isolation of the forest, the darkness of the night, the intimacy in which there’s room only for two lovers and where they’ve returned without knowing it yet, though they don’t touch, and when they look into each other’s eyes they sense a guarded secrecy not even the most shameless confession could break. They circle each other with looks and words, laying siege, testing the boundaries of their silence. Between the sound of lips separating, the first word is the emptiness of expectation. The next steps of your life, your entire future, will depend on what is said or left unsaid in an instant. Judith has taken a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment, as if to give herself courage, to store up the air she will need if she wants her words to sound as clear and confident as they do in her mind.
“I should’ve guessed.”
“Don’t try to talk me out of it. Don’t. Any reason you can give me for not going I’ve already thought of myself and heard many times. I’m not going to change my mind. As soon as you start telling me what I already know you’re going to say, I’ll get up and go back the way I came. You have to live according to your principles. I can’t ease my conscience by occasionally attending an event in favor of the Spanish Republic or going out to the street with a money box to collect donations. I don’t want to think one thing and do another. I don’t want to read the paper or listen to the radio or see a newsreel and die of rage seeing what the Fascists are doing in Spain, and then go on living as if nothing were happening. It’s that simple.”
“And what will you do? Madrid’s about to fall.”
“Why are you so sure? So you’ll feel less remorse because you left? The Soviet Union’s begun to send aid. Just this morning I heard on the radio that the French are going to open the border to let armaments through. There are things the newspapers don’t publish. There are thousands and thousands of volunteers traveling to Spain right now.”
“And what will they do when they arrive? You don’t know what it’s like. My country is nothing but an insane asylum, a slaughterhouse. We don’t have an army, or discipline. And almost no government.”
“I never heard you use the first person plural when talking politics.”
“I didn’t realize I was doing it. I must’ve got into the habit when I left Spain.”
“Not everything is lost.”
“You don’t know what war is like.”
“Stop telling me the things I don’t know. I’m going so I’ll find out.”
“Do you plan to join the militias?”
“Don’t talk to me in that tone.”
“What tone?”
“As if I understood nothing. As if I were acting on a whim. I know very well what I’m going to do.”
“Nobody knows. In a war nobody understands anything. The ones who seem to understand are the biggest charlatans of all, or the most demented, or the most dangerous. I’ve seen war. Nobody told me about it. I saw it in Morocco when I was young and now I’ve seen it again in Madrid, and it’s the same thing, nothing to do with two armies and a battle with advances and retreats and then a bugle blows and everything’s over and you collect the dead. In a war nobody knows what’s going on. The professional military pretend they know, but it’s not true. At best the only thing they’ve learned is to dissimulate or push others in front of them. A bomb explodes and you’re dead or bleeding to death and holding your insides in your hands, or you’re left blind or missing your legs or half your face. And you don’t even have to go to the front. You go to a café or a movie theater on the Gran Vía and when you leave a mortar shell or an incendiary bomb falls and if you’re lucky you don’t know you’re going to die. Or someone denounces you because he doesn’t like you, or because he thinks he saw you coming out of Mass once or reading the ABC, and they take you in a car to the Casa de Campo and the next morning the kids have fun with your body, putting a lit cigar in your mouth, calling you an idiot. That’s war. Or revolution, if you think that word’s more appropriate. Everything else they’re telling you is a lie. All those parades that look so good in films and illustrated magazines, the posters, the slogans — They Shall Not Pass. Brave, honorable men climb into an old truck to go to the front and the other side mows them down with machine guns, and they don’t even have time to aim the rifles that in most cases they haven’t learned to handle properly, or they have very little ammunition, or it’s not the right kind. In half an hour they can be dead or lose both arms or both legs. The ones who seem the fiercest and most revolutionary stay behind the lines and use their rifles and clenched fists to get free service in bars or whorehouses. The Fascists have machine guns mounted on their planes and amuse themselves by firing on the lines of campesinos and militiamen fleeing toward Madrid. The militiamen waste ammunition firing at the planes because, even if they know how to aim, they don’t know their guns aren’t powerful enough to reach the planes. The pilot is annoyed, and instead of continuing on his way he turns around and machine-guns them in an open field as if they were ants. The only ones who end up on the frontlines, where death is almost certain, can’t help it because they were dragged there or because they believed the propaganda and got drunk on banners and anthems. Every man who can, escapes, except the innocent and the deluded, and they’re the first to die or be mutilated or disfigured. Not on the first day but in the first minute. Some don’t even carry weapons. They think that going to war means lining up and keeping time while you follow a band playing ‘The Internationale’ or ‘To the Barricades.’ They see the enemy coming and can’t run because their legs are trembling and they shit themselves in fear. It’s not a figure of speech. Extreme fear causes diarrhea. The other side hunts them down with no difficulty. Just like hunting rabbits. Do you know what they enjoy? They get bored when it’s so easy to kill, and they look for entertainment. You can imagine what they do to women. With men they often cut off noses and ears and then slit their throats. They cut off their testicles and stuff them in their mouths. They put a head with the ears and nose cut off on a broomstick and carry it in a parade. But our men do that too sometimes. Don’t look at me like that. It’s not enemy propaganda. I saw the decapitated head of General López Ochoa marched around Madrid. The leftist parties and the unions hated him because he led the troops in Asturias in ’34. On July 18 he was in the military hospital at Carabanchel because he’d had an operation, and some brave man got the idea of killing him right there. They dragged the body through the streets and cut off his head, ears, and testicles. It was like a procession, a carnival, with a swarm of children running behind. You’re going to tell me the other side is worse. I don’t doubt that at all. I’ve also seen what they do. They rebelled, and it’s their fault the slaughter began. They deserve to lose, but we’ve done so many savage and stupid things, we don’t deserve to win.”