21

The voice had arrived.

The bitter, angry voice of a haggard man with a sagging shoulder needled with pain, dressed with meticulous carelessness in corduroy ski pants, a faded khaki shirt, a beautifully tooled leather belt for his Russian pistol, a beat-up helmet plunked on his head, clutching a mongrel pooch to his chest. A bruising, sardonic voice, of forced humor or sudden abrupt laughter, prone to rage at inconsequential error or incompetence, contemptuous, arrogant, thus Jake Starr wore the cape and sword of a bullying conscience.

For two weeks Nevins and Starr led the Americans on forced marches over the mancha of Castile, over the hills, ravines, gullies, marched with them, crawled side by side with scorpion and salamander, scaled stone walls of ancient cubist Spanish towns and villages, bayonets running red, drove them and themselves with a nervous angry energy, the victories minimal, the defeats major.

One day the battalion, the First and Second combined, hugged the earth for four hours under an oppressive, grinding, murderous Stuka attack only Starr’s brash sharp voice to hammer down the panic; lost one man to sunstroke, one to a scorpion, six to the bombs. And two burros. The Stukas, having dropped their bombs and depleted their machine-gun belts, hating to leave, dove to throw the contents of their tool chests, only darkness drove the last of them away. Gone, Jake rose to his feet and with a curt quiet command led the Americans on the run up a five hundred feet sloping hill to rendezvous with a hardbitten Spanish Anarchist regiment to beat off an attack of Moors and Navarrese.

The enemy was competent, did not run, and had the bullets, the guns, the artillery, the aviation, an iron military discipline, and the Navarrese requetés at least, a will, a religious fervor not even surpassed by the men of the International Brigades.

At staff headquarters the Loyal Spanish generals and their Russian advisers cursed with a bitter impatience. It was sabotage, it was bad communications, it was lack of materiel.

‘It’s none of those,’ Jake Starr said to one of the Russian generals. ‘We had more than enough materiel at the kick-off. It’s the war we’re fighting. We had them beaten the first three days—they were surprised, wide open, but we didn’t exploit our advantage. Too damn conservative, if you ask me. To hell with the flanks, we should be fighting in depth, using armored trains, guerrillas, small fast-moving combat units. We have the best fighting men in the world for that. And here we are fighting the stupid war of Verdun instead of the revolutionary war you fought in 1917 against the Whites. We can’t win this way!’

The Russian, a bull of a man, who had the night before wept drunkenly on Jake Starr’s shoulder, grieving the purge of the Red Army, now smiled cynically. ‘You take it too seriously, Tovarich. Before we left for Spain Stalin told us, “Podalshe ot artillereiskovo ognia! Stay out of the range of the artillery fire!” This Spain is only a game. What do we care what happens here. What is important are the lessons we learn to take home to the Red Army … Watch your tongue, young man!’

‘Da, Comrade General,’ Jake said. ‘K Vozhdyu, to the Leader,’ as the Russians greeted one another, and departed.

The Republican Spanish army together with the dwindling forces of the International Brigades fought and lost most of the ground which had been gained in the first three days of the offensive. Every evening Starr and Nevins spoke to their troops, urging them on, nagging them, cajoling them, shaming them. Romanillos, del Pardillo, Brunete, del Castillo, the Guadarrama river, wheeling from point to point on the sun-scorched mancha. Yet Jake Starr knew they were fighting with a wooden sword. On they fought, thirsty, hungry, uniforms in rags, dizzy with fatigue and defeat.

Bivouacked at night, Jake would swagger off, the lonely romantic hero who had just screwed the antique whore of war, the mongrel pooch hugged to his chest. What did the pooch give him? Warmth in the hot Spanish night? What had cooled his blood so—this young passionate man from the streets of east Harlem in the conglomerate cement and iron city of New York? Was it the remembrance of the engraved Thou shalt nots of his descendants reaching back five thousand years which froze his blood in the flaming mancha of Spain where four hundred years before an ancestor had dared the stake and fired faggots to keep his faith to the just laws of his one inescapable God?

Blood must run, he had said to his mother, and she had answered in wry jest, almost as if it had been a curse, it has become a hemorrhage, and it had, with those betrayed in Havana, with the blood of Nuñez, of Hector and Guillermo and the Andaluz and the two others—two others!—nameless Spanish boys crying, unite, proletarian brothers in the sunless dungeon of an ancient cathedral closed by the revolutionary terror, sandbags at its huge iron doors like the patient dead awaiting grace.

Thus, as his comrades drank, and sang the biting songs bequeathed to them by Mack Berg, Jake Starr stalked off into the night, the lonely hero, into the arid mancha, the crisp tang of gunpowder still scenting the mesquite mingling with the sweet rot of the dead. Friend to no man now—how dare he have a friend? Friend today, tomorrow, convicted by history, an enemy; the following day, a dead man. K Vozhdyu. Long live the leader. U!H!P!

And what about that horror of emptiness in his heart?

Where have you gone, Sarah? Where have you fled, my love? My bones are impressed on your flesh; my mark is on you. My hand has crushed your breast. We are a secret society of two. Our blood has mingled on the white linen of love. Indomitable, passionate Sarah. My heritage that I have wasted. Onan. Jacob Onan. Wastrel. Here, Sarah, on the desert of Spain I’ll sacrifice my dog to love and the law. Perro! Jake Starr, revolutionary pro. Their spit was like acid, Sarah. They have maimed me for life. They? Which they? I—I have committed a sin against myself. And now I fast.

Carrion.

Again, the next morning, he led his comrades on a march through the Castilian mancha, through mesquite, yellow sage, through the silver green olive groves and grape trees like scrub oak, through scented pine and birches, over soft rolling hills, the sky a bessemer furnace, crawling side by side with scorpion and desert mice. Fighting a battle already lost. La voz. Sardonic, bitter, enraged, swaggering, lonely, the bravado of guilt a cloak; the hand a wooden sword. The skinny mangy pooch clutched to his chest, he played the hero of history.

And his comrades? They died. Oh, yes, did they die.

Never once did he speak to Greg Ballard or Archie Cohen. They existed only as soldiers in one of his squads. He spoke to no one, except to give an order, or to exhort them as a group. Of the combined two battalions there were only a few hundred left now. (The British had eighty. The Slavs, the Poles, the Franco-Belges were almost non-existent.) Greg Ballard and Archie Cohen laughed at Jake Starr and his stupid dog; or excoriated him to one another for his arrogance. One day the mail pouch had a letter for Greg Ballard from Loney informing him of her marriage and asking him to give her best to Jake. Greg sent him a note with a runner. Jake acknowledged it with a curt thank you and a cold congratulations. Greg hated him. He was one of theirs—the compleat commissar. Thereafter, whenever Jake was close at hand, Greg turned his back and found occasion to snap out an insult about the comic stars or the party boy scouts to Archie. Greg was swaggering, too, childishly daring Starr to discipline him. If Jake saw or heard he gave no indication, which of course infuriated Greg even more.

One late afternoon, as the battalion and a regiment of Spaniards found themselves backed against a sharp rising hillock by a fierce fascist attack, Greg and Jake fought side by side, shooting what seemed endless rounds of bullets until the attackers broke and retreated in panic, chased by some Russian tanks, one of which was commanded by Bob Gladd, the American who had been awarded the Soviet Order of the Red Banner for valor in the field. As Greg and Jake reclined, dead tired, with their backs against the side of the hill, Ballard said wryly, ‘Just yellow dogs, aren’t they?’

Jake merely turned his head and looked for a long moment into his erstwhile friend’s stubborn brown eyes, then tiredly, as if his body and limbs were weighted with pigs of lead, rose to his feet, scooped out his pooch from under a rock, and straggled off. And suddenly Greg felt remorse at his anger. For in that short moment when their eyes had caught and held, he had seen that Jake Starr was feeding on a worm and that the worm was spiralling through him like a bore drill, and that his face wore that look of quiet despair which belongs to men suffering from self-hatred. It was obvious the only way the man could function was stiffly and through bravado. Worse, Jake looked like he had come to the conclusion that the best that could happen to him was a fascist bullet in his brain and immediate death, and the worst that could happen was to live in that state of constant torment which his conscience put him to as it faced up to that one rampaging cell in him which all his life had exulted in violence and blood and victory and which thus far had dominated him enough to have led him to this side of the wall, the executioner’s. And Greg Ballard knew this and saw with sharp eyes, because he had sensitive antennae, and he too had stood once on this side of the wall.

The campaign wore on. Many thousands of men died. The Slavs, the Poles mutinied against their commanders—a mutiny put down by Asaltos with tanks. And one night the Americans told their commanders and commissars they could not and would not return to fight at Brunete retaken by the fascists, they were too damn beat, tired, bushed, weary, enervated, without will. Starr and Nevins argued with them. ‘If you don’t go back to stop them there, they will kill you here tomorrow,’ Nevins argued. They were camped in the same pine forest outside of Valdemorillo from which they had jumped off for the offensive some three weeks before. Nevins was the only man in the world who could talk them into anything, a man Mack Berg had called the Bishop Sheen of the American Communist Party, he could charm a nun into joining the bolsheviki. After many hours, they agreed, and as they prepared to make a forced march on the stumps which were their feet, a dispatch arrived with the information that the Spanish marines had taken up the slack outside Brunete, now a pile of stone.

Greg Ballard fell asleep with his legs wrapped around his gun, very drunk. He was dreaming of Ursuline Washington, that same argument with her about going off to make it in the big city, the little bitch, and then suddenly he was snaking around her brown beauty when someone woke him, and he growled out, ‘Beat it,’ a part of him not asleep advising him to grab his gun. Whoever it was emptied a canteen of water on his face, shook him loose from his dream, and it was Jake Starr. His eyes half-closed, his mouth a rag, he managed to snarl, ‘Why don’t you shoot me when I’m sober?’

‘Oh, shut up! I want to talk with you.’

‘Why don’t you do it during daylight, afraid the pols …’ He just couldn’t keep his eyes open even though he thought they’ve finally come about Webster.

Jake grabbed him by the shoulders, helped him up, led him to the edge of the forest, their only company the mongrel pooch and a satiny black night.

‘I’m leaving in an hour,’ Jake said quietly; ‘ordered to Barcelona. The battalion’s going to Albarez. Those of you in Spain since January are to be repatriated.’ Greg said nothing, stunned. ‘You’re going home, Greg.’

Ballard just keeled over and went back to sleep. It must have been all that manzanilla and the shock.

He did not know how long he was out, but when he came to Jake was sitting alongside him, shaking his, Greg’s, head, muttering, ‘Wake up, Greg. You’re going home.’ And out of the shock and the fatigue and the manzanilla Ballard’s eyes suddenly assumed lens-like clarity and precision. Jake Starr’s face was a smashed portico and through the debris Ballard could see the inner architecture of the man. He had been hit by a five hundred pounder—a disaster, a complete disaster. The dog was whimpering in Jake’s arms.

When Jake saw that Greg’s eyes were wide open, like a movie running backwards the portico rearranged itself into its former grandeur, the inner architecture hidden.

Ballard sat up, wiping wet glue out of his eyes.

‘In Albacete you’ll be told your passport is lost. You’ll receive Spanish papers to keep you safe in France until you obtain a duplicate from the American consul—just keep quiet now!’ Ballard had begun to rise, his fists like rocks, but he refound his seat, and shut up. ‘Don’t make a big stink about it when they tell you in Albacete, just accept it, even if it kills you, for if you don’t it will. They will probably send you to Benacasim on the Mediterranean for some rest. And while you’re there just enjoy the sea. Something happened in those hills at Romanillos. So shut up. When you get to France, don’t wait too long, go to the nearest American consular office, tell them you want a duplicate passport, you lost yours.’

‘You mean I have to lie or inform on myself? You dirty—’

‘Tell him whatever you please, who the hell cares. But don’t go too far with those phony papers. You’re not one of us—you’re my friend …’ Jake’s voice trailed off. ‘You’ll do as I say?’

Ballard was so enraged he could barely move his lips, so he nodded. He’d lived so long, why give it up now.

Placing the dog on the ground—it promptly became entangled in Jake’s feet—Starr shoved his hand into his pocket, withdrew it clutching a wad of francs. ‘This will hold you in France and buy your transportation home. Don’t have anything to do with the Tech Bureau, handle everything yourself. Understand?’ Jake realized he sounded just like Vlanoc.

Greg took the money, angry and yet astonished at Jake’s behavior. He was too infuriated and too full of alcohol to really follow.

Then he saw Jake biting his lips, scratching his chest until he caught himself, leaned down and picked up the dog, holding it close. He looked as if he hoped Greg hadn’t noticed but Greg had and pretended he hadn’t and Jake knew he was pretending. Jake Starr was like a sailing vessel after a hurricane had hit it. Ballard could see Jake was trying to right himself, hugging the pooch closer, until it began to whimper. Greg got the feeling the dog was Jake’s heart and he held it so closely for fear he was going to drop it, perhaps lose it somewhere on the Castilian mancha. So now he had finally reached into Greg Ballard’s war-weary heart and the fisherman felt a joint misery with him. Greg could see Jake wanted to speak and couldn’t, and he himself wanted to speak and couldn’t, so they just stood there articulating noises with their tongues cut out.

Finally Greg constructed a sentence out of the misery. ‘I heard y’had a girl friend.’

Jake merely stared out into the darkness.

‘The gossip’s no slower at the front than in the rear—why don’t you go get her and make a life for yourself? Don’t pols have a right to live?’

Jake turned to him and he had a gentle smile on his wreck of a face. He was silent for a moment, thinking. ‘No,’ he finally said, ‘I can’t quit. Not yet.’ Abruptly he turned away.

Greg started to say something, but Jake interrupted. ‘It’s too late.’

‘No!’ Greg shouted, as if he were shouting no for himself, too. ‘A man—’

‘Shut up,’ Jake ordered. ‘Stop being naïve. Candide in Spain,’ he snapped with contempt. ‘The whole lot of you, a bunch of innocent romantics. It’s too late,’ he said dramatically.

‘Comic star …’ Greg began, but didn’t finish.

This time Jake laughed. ‘Here,’ he smiled, placing the pooch in Greg’s hands. Imitating him, Greg held the dog close to his chest, and dammit, if that warm throbbing little beast didn’t give him comfort. Jake was saying, ‘You and your antennae. Take him out on the mancha, make a fire, slit his throat with a clean knife, salt him, then broil him as a sacrifice to God. Hasta la vista, viejo, and keep your mouth shut. You’ll see Joe in Benacasim, he’s all right, just blind in one eye. That’s all. When you return to the States, visit my mother, will you, and tell her I love her and that I said she was right, it’s already a hemorrhage.’ Greg peered at him, not understanding, and in fact Jake laughed. ‘She’ll understand—Give Loney a kiss for me, will you. So long, Greg, and keep your damn mouth shut until you get out.’

They shook hands and then Ballard watched him till his brawny lopsided back became completely enfolded by the night’s blackness.