“So why did you come if you thought I was gone?”
“Because we had an agreement.”
“Do you and I have an agreement, Quemado?”
“Yes. We play nights, that’s the agreement. Even if you’re gone, I’ll come until the game is over.”
“One of these days they won’t let you in or they’ll kick you out.”
“Maybe.”
“One of these days too I will decide to leave, and since it’s not always easy to find you I might not be able to say good-bye. I could leave you a note on the pedal boats, true, if they’re still on the beach. But one of these days I’ll get up and go and everything will be over before ’45.”
El Quemado smiles fiercely (and his ferocity reveals glimpses of a precise and insane geometry) with the certainty that his pedal boats will remain on the beach even when every pedal boat in town has retired to winter quarters. The fortress will still stand, he’ll still wait for me or for the shadow even when there are no tourists or the rains come. His stubbornness is a kind of prison.
“The truth is there’s nothing between us, Quemado. By ‘agreement’ do you mean ‘obligation’?”
“No, I see it as a pact.”
“Well, we don’t have any kind of pact, we’re just playing a game, that’s all.”
El Quemado smiles, says yes, he understands, that’s all it is, and in the heat of combat, with the dice going his way, he pulls new photocopies folded into quarters out of his pocket and offers them to me. Some paragraphs are underlined and there are spots of grease and beer on the paper that speak of likely study at a bar table. As with the first offering, an inner voice dictates my reactions. Thus, instead of reproaching him for a gift that might well hide an insult or a provocation—though it might also be the innocent device (involving politics rather than military history!) by which El Quemado engages in discussion with me—I proceed to calmly pin them up next to the first photocopies, in such a way that at the end of the operation the wall behind the head of the bed looks completely different from usual. For a moment I feel as if I’m in someone else’s room: the room of a foreign correspondent in a hot and war-torn country? Also: the room seems smaller. Where do the photocopies come from? From two books, one by X and the other by Y. I’ve never heard of them. What kind of strategic lessons do they have to teach us? El Quemado averts his gaze, then smiles innocently and says that he’s not ready to reveal his plans. This is an attempt to make me laugh; out of politeness, I do.
The next day El Quemado comes back even stronger, if possible. He attacks in the East and I have to retreat again, he masses forces in Great Britain, and he begins to advance from Morocco and Egypt, though very slowly for the time being. The patch on his arm has disappeared. All that’s left is the burn, smooth and flat. His movements around the room are confident, even graceful, and they no longer reveal the nervousness of the day before. Still, he doesn’t talk much. His preferred topic is the game, the world of games, the clubs, magazines, championships, matches by correspondence, conventions, etc., and all my attempts to steer the conversation in a different direction—for example, toward the person who gave him photocopies of the Third Reich rules—are in vain. When he’s told something he doesn’t want to hear, he sits there like a rock or a mule. He simply acts as if he hasn’t heard. It’s likely that my tactics are too subtle. I’m cautious, and ultimately I try not to hurt his feelings. El Quemado may be my enemy, but he’s a good enemy and those are hard to come by. What would happen if I were honest with him, if I told him what the Wolf and the Lamb have told me and asked him for an explanation? In the end, I’d probably have to choose between taking his word or theirs. Which I’d rather not have to do. So we talk about games and gamers, a subject of seemingly endless appeal to El Quemado. I think if I took him with me to Stuttgart—no, Paris!—he would be the star of the matches: the sense of the ridiculous that I sometimes feel—stupid, I know, but it’s true—when I get to a club and from a distance I see older people trying their hardest to solve military problems that to the rest of the world are old news would vanish solely with his presence. His charred face lends dignity to the act of gaming. When I ask him whether he’d like to come with me to Paris, his eyes light up, but then he shakes his head. Have you ever been to Paris, Quemado? No, never. Would you like to go? He’d like to, but he can’t. He’d like to play other people, lots of matches, “one after the other,” but he can’t. All he’s got is me, and that’s enough for him. Well, there are worse fates; I am the champion, after all. That makes him feel better. But he’d still like to play other people, though he doesn’t plan to buy the game (or at least he doesn’t say so), and in the middle of his speech, I have the impression that we’re talking about different things. I’m documenting myself, he says. After an effort I realize that he’s talking about the photocopies. I can’t help laughing.
“Are you still going to the library, Quemado?”
“Yes.”
“And you only borrow books about the war?”
“Now I do, but before I didn’t.”
“Before what?”
“Before I started playing with you.”
“So what kind of books did you borrow before, Quemado?”
“Poetry.”
“Books of poetry? How nice. What kind of poetry?”
El Quemado looks at me as if I’m a bumpkin:
“Vallejo, Neruda, Lorca… Do you know them?”
“No. Did you learn the poems by heart?”
“My memory is no good.”
“But you remember something? Can you recite something to give me an idea?”
“No, I only remember feelings.”
“What kind of feelings? Tell me one.”
“Despair…”
“Nothing else? That’s all?”
“Despair, heights, the sea, things that aren’t closed, things that are partway open, like something bursting in the chest.”
“Yes, I see. And when did you stop reading poetry, Quemado? When we started Third Reich? If I’d known, I wouldn’t have played. I like poetry too.”
“Which poets?”
“Goethe.”
And so on until it’s time to leave.
SEPTEMBER 17
I left the hotel at five in the afternoon, after talking on the phone to Conrad, dreaming about El Quemado, and making love with Clarita. My head was buzzing, which I attributed to a lack of nourishment, so I headed to the old town planning to eat at a restaurant that I’d noticed earlier. Unfortunately it was closed and suddenly I found myself walking down alleys where I’d never set foot, in a neighborhood of narrow but clean streets behind the shopping district and the port, increasingly sunk in thought, surrendered to the simple pleasure of my surroundings, no longer hungry, and in the mood to keep walking until night fell. That’s the state of mind I was in when I heard someone calling me by name. Mr. Berger. When I turned, I saw that it was a boy whose face I didn’t recognize, though he looked vaguely familiar. His greeting was effusive. It occurred to me that it might be one of the town friends my brother and I had made ten years before. The simple prospect made me happy. A ray of sunlight fell directly on his face, so that he couldn’t stop blinking. The words came tumbling out of his mouth and I could understand barely a quarter of what he said. His two outstretched hands grabbed me by the elbows as if to make sure I wouldn’t slip away. The situation seemed likely to stretch on indefinitely. At last, exasperated, I confessed that I couldn’t remember who he was. I work at the Red Cross, I’m the one who helped you with your friend’s paperwork. So those were the sad circumstances of our meeting! Resolutely, he pulled a wrinkled card out of his pocket that identified him as a member of the Red Cross of the Sea. The matter solved, we both sighed in relief and laughed. Immediately he suggested that we get a beer, and I was happy to agree. With no little surprise I realized that we weren’t going to a bar but to the rescue worker’s house, not far from here, on the same street, on a dark and dusty third floor.