Soldiers of Salamis

'Really? I'm glad: I always thought he was talented, as well as an out-and-out liar. But I suppose you have to be an out-and-out liar to be a good novelist, don't you?' I heard a brief, dry, distant sound, like a laugh. 'Well, how can I help you?'

'I'm investigating an episode of the Civil War. The execution by firing squad of some Nationalist prisoners at the Sanctuary of Santa Maria del Collell, near Banyoles. It was at the end of the war.' In vain I waited for Miralles' reaction. Impulsively I added: 'You were there, weren't you?'

During the interminable seconds that followed I could hear Miralles' gravelly breathing. Silently, exultantly, I realized I had struck home. When he began to speak again, Miralles' voice sounded darker and slower: completely different.

'Bolaiño told you that?'

'I figured it out. Bolaño told me your story. He told me you spent the whole war with Líster, even retreating with him across Catalonia. Some of Líster's soldiers were at Collell just then, the same time as the execution. So you could easily have been one of them. You were, weren't you?'

Miralles was silent again; I heard his gravelly breathing again, and then a click: I thought he must have lit up a cigarette; a distant conversation in French fleetingly crossed the line. As the silence lengthened, I told myself I'd made a mistake, been too abrupt, but before I could try to rectify it, I finally heard:

'You said you were a writer, didn't you?'

'No,' I said. 'I'm a journalist.'

'Journalist.' Another silence. 'And you're planning to write about this? You really think any of your newspaper's readers are going to be interested in a story that happened sixty years ago?'

'I'm not going to write about it for the paper. I'm writing a book. Look, perhaps I've put it badly. I just want to talk to you for a while, so you can give me your version, so I can tell what really happened, or your version of what happened. It's not a question of settling scores, it's about trying to understand —'

'Understand?' he interrupted me. 'Don't make me laugh! You're the one who doesn't understand. A war is a war. And that's all there is to understand. I know all too well, I spent three years shooting off bullets for Spain, you know? And do you think anyone's ever thanked me for it?'

'Precisely because of that —'

'Shut up and listen, young man,' he cut me off. 'Answer me, do you think anyone's ever thanked me? I'll tell you the answer: nobody. No one has ever thanked me for giving up my youth, fighting for their fucking country. Nobody. Not a single word. Not a gesture. Not a letter. Nothing. And now you come along, sixty years later, with your shitty little newspaper, or your book, or whatever, to ask me if I took part in an execution by firing squad. Why don't you just accuse me of murder straight out?'

'Of all the stories in History,' I thought as Miralles spoke, 'the saddest is Spain's, because it ends badly.' Then I thought: apos;Does it end badly?' I thought: 'And damn the Transition!' I said:

'I'm sorry you've misunderstood me, Seiior Miralles —'

'Miralles, for Christ's sake, Miralles!' roared Miralles. 'No one in my fucking life has ever called me Señor Miralles. My name is Miralles, just Miralles. Got it?'

'Yes, Señor Miralles. I mean Miralles. But there is a misunderstanding here. If you'll let me speak I'll explain.' Miralles didn't say anything; I proceeded. 'A few weeks ago Bolaiño told me your story. I had just finished writing a book about Rafael Sánchez Mazas. Have you heard of him?'

Miralles took his time answering, though clearly not because of any doubt.

'Of course. You're talking about the Falangist, aren't you? José Antonio's mate.'

'Exactly. who escaped the firing squad at Collell. My book is about him, about the execution, about the people who helped him survive afterwards. And about one of Líster's soldiers who spared his life.'

'And what do I have to do with all of this?'

'The other fugitive from the firing squad left a testimony of the event, a book called / Was Murdered by the Reds!

'What a title!'

'Yes, but the book's good, because it tells in detail what happened at Collell. What I don't have is any Republican version of what happened there, and without one my book's hamstrung. When Bolaiño told me your story I thought perhaps you were at Collell too at the time of the execution and could give me your version of events. That's all I want: to chat with you for a while and for you to tell me your version. Nothing more. I promise I won't publish a single line without consulting you beforehand.'

Once again I heard Miralles' breathing, mixed in with the confused conversation in French that crossed the line again. When Miralles began to speak again his voice was as it had been at the beginning of our conversation, and I realized my explanation had managed to placate him.

'How did you get my phone number?'

I told him. Miralles laughed out loud.

'Look, Cercas,' he then began. 'Or do I have to call you Señor Cercas?'

'Call me Javier.'

'Okay, Javier. Do you know how old I am? Eighty-two. I'm an old man and I'm tired. I had a wife and I don't have her any more. I had a daughter and I don't have her any more. I'm still recovering from an embolism. I haven't got much time left, and the only thing I want is to be left alone. Listen, those stories don't interest anyone any more, not even those of us who lived through them; there was a time when they did, but not any more. Someone decided they had to be forgotten and, you know what I say? They were probably right. Besides, half of them are unintentional lies and the rest intentional ones. You're young; believe me I'm grateful for your call, but it would be best if you listened to me, if you forgot about this nonsense and devoted your time to something else.'

I tried to insist, but it was futile. Before hanging up, Miralles asked me to give his regards to Bolaño. 'Tell him I'll see him in Stockton,' he said. 'Where?' I asked. 'In Stockton,' he repeated. 'Tell him: he'll understand.'

Conchi exploded with joy when I phoned to tell her we'd found Miralles; then she exploded with rage when I told her I wasn't going to see him.

'After all this?' she screeched.

'He doesn't want to, Conchi. You have to understand.'

'And what's it matter to you that he doesn't want to?'

We argued. She tried to convince me. I tried to convince her.

'Look, do me a favour,' she finally said. 'Phone Bolaño. You never listen to me but he'll convince you. If you don't call him, I will.'

Partly because I was already planning to, and partly to prevent Conchi from calling him, I phoned Bolaño. I told him about the conversation I'd had with Miralles and the old man's blank refusal of my proposal to go and see him. Bolaiño said nothing. Then I remembered the message Miralles had given me for him; I told him.

'Damn the old guy,' muttered Bolaiño, his voice self-absorbed and sardonic. 'He still remembers.'

'What's it mean?'

'The Stockton thing?'

'What else?'

After a long pause Bolaiño answered my question with another question:

'Have you seen Fat City?' I said I had. 'Miralles really liked movies.' Bolaiño went on. 'He'd watch them on the TV he had set up under the awning of his trailer; sometimes he'd go into Castelldefells and in one afternoon he'd watch three movies in a row, everything that was playing, he didn't care what was on. I usually took advantage of my few days off to go to Barcelona, but one time I ran into him on the seafront in Castelldefells, we went to have an horchata together and then he suggested I come to the pictures with him; since I didn't have anything better to do, I went with him. It might seem incredible that in a holiday resort town they'd be showing a John Huston film, but these things happened back then. Do you know what Fat City means? Something like "city of opportunities", or "fantastic city" or, even better, "some city!" Well, some sarcasm! Because Stockton, the city in the movie, is an atrocious city, where there aren't any opportunities for anybody no opportunities except for failure, that is. For the most absolute and total failure, really. It's strange: almost all boxing movies are about the rise and fall of the protagonist, about how they attain success and then they fail and are forgotten; not here. In Fat City neither of the protagonists an old boxer and a young boxer even glimpse the possibility of success, nor do any of those around them; like that old washed-up Mexican boxer, I don't know if you remember the one, he pisses blood before going into the ring, and enters and leaves the stadium alone, almost in darkness. Anyway, so that night, after the movie, we went to a bar, and ordered beer sitting at the bar and we were there talking and drinking until very late, facing a big mirror which reflected us and the bar, just like the two Stockton boxers at the end of Fat City, I think it was probably both the coincidence and the beer that made Miralles say at some point that we were going to end up the same, defeated and alone and punch-drunk in a dead-end city, pissing blood before going into the ring to fight to the death against our own shadows in an empty stadium. Miralles didn't say that, obviously, the words are mine, but he said something very similar. That night we laughed a lot and when we got back to the campsite it was practically daybreak, everyone was sleeping and the bar was closed, and we kept talking and laughing in that loose way that people laugh at funerals — or places like that, you know and when we had said goodnight and I was going to my tent, stumbling along in the dark, Miralles called me and I turned and saw him: fat and lit by the pale light from a lamp-post, standing straight with his fist raised, and before his repressed laughter burst out again, I heard him whisper in the slumbering darkness of the campsite: quot;Bolaiño, see you in Stockton!" And from that day on, every time we said goodbye, whether it was until the next day or the next summer, Miralles always added: "See you in Stockton!"