7

Do not go looking for five feet on a cat.

SPANISH PROVERB

Sick with misery, Pureza sent word to the car-hire company that she was not well. The message she got in reply said she could have four days without pay and would need a doctor’s certificate when she came back to work.

Mauro raced to and away from classes, missing some, pleading indisposition, not opening a book. He had become to himself a ridiculous scrambling figure, the bold bourgeois romantic caught between the common but pressing necessities of student life and the oppressive bondage of his fantasy world.

Pureza rode behind him to Hernani and out to the valley where the Anson horses ran. They climbed the wooded hills that enclosed the rich green meadows and sat among the trees, watching,

“That’s the Anson house,” Mauro explained. “The manager’s house and the stables and barns are down the valley around the corner, out of sight. Nobody but the four servants comes near the house after six o’clock. It’s all been scouted. That part will be easy.”

“It won’t work, Mauro,” Pureza insisted miserably.

“It has to work.”

They rode the fourteen kilometers into the higher hills to the house where Señora Anson was to be held. It was a large house, secluded and inhabited. “They’ve hired it and put a couple in it. Their job is to front for us. Then they’ll slip back into France. The cars will be hired in France, driven over the frontier on Saturday and driven back as soon as we get her to this house. Their calculation is that keeping her so close to the Anson place, the Civil Guard will be fooled. They’ll expect us to run for the frontier, so they’ll try to close the mountain routes.”

“Will they?”

“Probably. It’s the first thing they always think of.”

“Maybe they’ll change their way of thinking this time. God, I’m sick, Mauro. It’s not going to work. You’ll be in jail for thirty years.”

“I’ll make it work.”

“And what do we do afterwards?”

“I don’t know. We have to make it work first. Then we’ll think about afterwards.”

They went back down the twisting road toward Hernani. The road to Arano turned left off it, a narrow road, four meters wide. They rode along it for a way, and back to the Hernani road.

“Our orders are to stay three hundred yards apart,” he said, “Reis and Haro in the first car, me in the middle with the señora taped, lying in the back seat, Abril and another man I haven’t seen, in the third car. Another pro, I suppose. They’ll have the guns. Automatic pistols.”

They went up and down the road many times, always turning into the road to Arano and pulling in quickly to the side.

“Nobody’ll know she’s gone till the word is phoned from Hendaye by the men who are supposed to take the cars back. Their job is to call a link in Pamplona and the husband will get a call from there. Then the pressure comes on. All the papers in Europe are to be told so that our papers and television can’t suppress it.”

“Why don’t we run, Mauro? To France? I have enough to get us to England.”

“We have to go through with it. We have to make it work. After that, we’ll see.”

“We couldn’t even earn a living outside Spain. My God!”

They went up and down the road on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday. They knew it yard for yard, from the stock farm to the holding-house beyond the Arano road. “This is the spot. We drew our money from the Siglo tobacco shop this morning,” he said. “This is my share. Hire a car from Hertz and be exactly here on this spot, headed out.”

“I never knew till now what it’s like to be sick with fear.”

He didn’t kiss her when she leaned against him. He put an arm around her and gave her a comradely squeeze. He felt no sentiment. He was frightened, and doubtful, and desperately determined. “We’ll come out of this,” he said and wondered how. All the damage was done. Even success wouldn’t undo it. And success was a very long shot. The more he thought about it, the less likely he believed it to be.

They rode down into San Sebastian and took the superway back to Bilbao. “Sleep well,” she said hopelessly and went to her room and cried.

On Saturday morning he sought again the security of the womb and phoned his parents. They were having breakfast.

“Mauro, Mauro, this is a wonderful surprise. Can you afford it? Did you get my letter about Pureza? Will she come at Christmas?”

“She wants to come, Mama.” But Christmas is an eternity from here.

“Did you get my letter?”

“Not yet.”

“Was there some special reason for calling?”

“Nothing special, Mama. I wanted to tell you I love you.” I want to cry “Help me, please” and you can’t.

“We love you dearly, Mauro. Are you working hard?”

“Very. May I speak to Father?”

“Yes, dear, yes, dear.”

Ugalde said at once, “Is anything wrong, Mauro?”

“No, no, Father. I just wanted to talk to you.” I want to tell you what I’ve done to you and I can’t.

“You’re all right?”

“Yes, yes. Father?”

“Yes, Mauro?”

“I wanted to say how much I love you.”

“I wanted to hear you say it. Are you sure all’s well?”

“Yes, yes. I love you and Mama more than I know how to say. I wanted to tell you.” I want to warn you of the disaster that hangs over you and I haven’t the courage to tell you.

“You’re sure you’re all right?”

“Oh, yes.”

“We love you, Mauro.”

“Thank you both.”

It was a mistake to call. His father knew something was wrong. He had made a ruin of all their lives.

“Forgive me,” he said when the phone was in its cradle. He wanted Maria to open her womb and shelter him; but he didn’t know that.

And Ugalde said to Maria-Angeles, “Things aren’t right. Or he’s desperately lonely. He’s never done that before.”

“We get lonely without him, Dion.”

“Yes. Oh, yes. Yes, we do.” He went to his surgery to think, and to hide his foreboding from her.

They went separately by bus to San Sebastian and separately walked from the bus station to the fishing fleet harbor. A high wind blew and it was raining. They converged under the old archway, beyond the harbor car park. The wind increased. The Bay of Biscay beat past Santa Clare island lying in the mouth of La Concha bay, and tried to climb the sea wall. The rain turned to lashing hail. But they stood apart under the archway and did not speak.

The red and green and brown and white houses of the fishermen were stacked one on the other, against the side of Monte Urgull, where the statue of the Sacred Heart towered over all, like one of the heavenly host holding a watching brief on the mess below. The fishing fleet rode idle and secure in the harbor, still on strike. Mauro looked out through the hail and thought, “A week ago I cared about them. Now I don’t even care about Reis and Haro over there.”

Abril came down narrow, cobbled del Coro with a man none of them knew. He asked for a light from Reis and passed him the car key with his matches. The key had a tag attached to it, with the number of the car written on it.

Abril let his cigarette go out and again approached Reis as he walked out into the hail. Reis walked on into the storm and didn’t speak to him. Haro left the shelter of the archway, following Reis.

Where do they meet? Mauro wondered, watching Abril. They come and go, and know how to find one another and we never know. He received his key, with his matches, from the other man and did not leave his shelter till the hail stopped. When he moved, he did not walk to the carpark but went through the back of the arch.

“Where are you going?” he heard Abril say and looked back. Abril was facing the harbor, not looking at him.

“To eat.”

“Go to your car.”

“Go to hell. I’m starving.”

Bar Clery was no more than twenty steps away. He went through the archway and into the restaurant. He was angry. He thought he hated Abril. Go to the car! By God. Do this, you bourgeois puppet, do that, you stupid tool. Go to hell, you bloodthirsty bastard. It was good for him. He felt a little fortified, a little readier for what was to come; a little fear was displaced by a little angry courage.

Abril and the other man came into the restaurant, sat down at a corner table, ordered drinks but not food, and sat like warders till Mauro had eaten. There were so many silent lurkers among them, like tentacles reaching out from an unseen body. They made him shudder. When his bill came, he wrote on the back of it, signed what he wrote, put it in his pocket and left.

Abril and the man came after him. They caught up with him in the carpark.

“What’s the matter with you?” Abril asked him impatiently.

“Nothing now. I’ve eaten.”

“What were you writing in there?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Anything you do is my business now.”

“Abril,” Mauro said, “I just grew up. Why don’t you try it?”

Abril had no more time to waste. He issued an order in a leader-voice. “It’s time to go. Get your car and fall in behind Reis and Haro.”

“No. I have things to do first.”

“What things?”

“My things. Now will you fuck off, Abril? We went through it all twelve times and then we went through it another twenty. I’ve been over the ground every day, ten times a day. I’m doing something I don’t want to do and I’m beginning to hate the sound of your voice and the look on your face. I’ll be in place, dead on time. So fuck off.” Mauro walked away, feeling strong. Another small victory. Abril did not try to follow. That too was a sort of victory. Mauro walked to the Hotel de Londres y de Inglaterra and went in.

He didn’t know yet what he was going to do or whether he would do anything. There was a vacant coffee table by the windows looking out on La Concha bay and he sat down. The lobby was L-shaped and the glass-cage elevator was on the elbow of the L. It rattled up and down, loading and unloading the three or four passengers it could carry. He watched the elevator and the floodlit statue of the Sacred Heart in turn, waiting, and he gave no thought to why he was waiting.

The señora’s guests arrived. He supposed they were her guests. They had an air of cultural self-importance. He watched them without interest, not wondering who they were until what seemed to be the last of them had been pointed to the dining room. It was time to go.

She came out of the glass elevator as he passed it on his way to the street; the Señora Aña Anson, the painter Celaya and some fat local dignitary. As if this was what he had intended since he came, he blocked her way.

“Señor, if you please,” the fat dignitary said, pushing gently with possessive anxiety.

“Señora Anson,” Mauro said.

Her smile, he was sure, was genuine. It was for him. Her pictures were far from true; they told nothing of the impact of her real presence. “Señor?” she said as if it mattered that he was there; as if it delighted her that he was there.

And he could think of nothing to say.

“You,” she said, “spoke to me.”

“I am Mauro Ugalde,” he said.

“Yes?”

“I want to thank you …” but for what? For anything? I want to shout run, don’t go near your farm. “I want to thank you for bringing the Celaya exhibition. Thank you, señora … that is all …” He turned away, conscious of attention, and foolishness and a suddenly burning face and heard her say, “Señor … please. Señor,” she called but he was through the door, hurrying to the carpark. “That’s a pity. I was about to make you shake his hand,” she said. “Ugalde? Something Ugalde?”

“Mauro Ugalde, I think. He took me by surprise.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” She was staring at nothing, listening, as if to voices in her head. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course.”

“Señora,” the fat dignitary urged. There were guests waiting for his entrance.

“Yes, of course,” the señora said again, her mind on something else. “I hope I can remember what I was going to say.” But she stood where she was, staring at the glass door.

“Is something the matter, señora?” the fat dignitary asked unhappily, thinking of his spoiled entrance.

She did not hear him. “Why should I?” she said strongly. “Why should I? But I must, mustn’t I?”

“Señora?” The fat dignitary was puzzled. The painter was puzzled. The señora was talking to herself, on some private matter.

“Yes, of course,” she said and they went in to dinner.

They parked the three French cars out of sight among the trees in the parkland surrounding the Anson farmhouse and walked the hundred yards to the front door.

The little man who opened the door looked like a Pekinese dressed as a waiter. He stared at two destructive guns and saw with his peripheral vision the five faces that shone with eerie menace through the stocking masks. He did not speak at all. His mouth hung open, his large brown eyes stayed wide. He backed obediently into the hall.

“Ring the women in here,” Abril said when they pushed the man to the drawing room.

The three women came as summoned and had no more to say than the little manservant. It’s odd, Mauro thought, in the movies people always scream but in real life their minds die, their mouths fall open, and they stare, full of throat-paralyzing fear. He had seen women gag in an effort to scream. The four servants were herded to the little man’s room upstairs, taped and tied, and left to recover at leisure.

There was nothing to do now but wait for Señora Anson. They stuffed their stocking masks into pockets and made themselves comfortable in the drawing room.

It was a large white room with a very high ceiling and heavy black furniture. Three immense logs burned slowly in the great fireplace. Three long deep couches fenced it in. Abril and the man sat facing the fire. Reis and Haro slouched sullenly on their left. Mauro prowled the room.

“Is there any wine in that big sideboard?” Abril called to him.

“Scotch whiskey, French brandy, sherry, liqueurs, everything else you can think of—but no wine.”

Abril got up and examined it himself. “You know,” he said masterfully, like a general on active service, “the price of this one piece of furniture would keep a Basque worker’s family for three years.” He opened it. “Look at this booze. Only the best, and all we could drink in a week. Haro,” he said, “find some red wine.”

“Find it yourself.”

“Haro,” Mauro said, “I could use it. Let’s find it.”

They found it in a small cellar under the kitchen. “You want to run his errands, Mauro? That’s not the way you talked on Tuesday.”

“I want to pass something to you.”

“What?”

“I’ll put it in your pocket just before we get back. If he sees it he’ll kill both of us.”

“Then I don’t want it.”

“You don’t believe we’ll get away with this, Haro.”

“Putting the servants away was easy enough.”

“Putting the painter away and taking the señora will be just as easy. The bad bit begins when they try to collect Hierro and the money.”

“They’ll collect.”

“When? We’ll be up the road with the señora. They’ll be over the frontier waiting for Hierro and the money. We have to stay. We have to go back and try to look normal. The longer the delay of the payoff, the worse everything gets and all the time the police delay, they’ll be searching.”

“There’s a three-day limit on any delay.”

“The Assembly will extend it. Maybe they’ll extend it twice—they want Hierro and that money. And the more they extend it, the less likely they are to get anything. Then we kill her? You and me, Haro? Do we?”

“They’ll collect.”

“Or the Civil Guard will find us before they have to pay. Or they’ll not pay—they’ll stall while they search. And the three days will pass and the extensions, and then we kill her? You and me and Reis, Haro?”

“For Christ’s sake, Mauro. I’m sick enough already.”

“I couldn’t kill her, Haro. I’ve met her.”

“You’ve what?”

“I went down to the hotel and spoke to her in the lobby.”

“What in God’s name for? What did you say?”

“I don’t know. But I won’t kill her. I won’t let Abril or that other bastard kill her—and I couldn’t kill her any more than I could kill you.”

“Christ! You make me feel I’m already dead.”

“We’ve got to stop them, Haro. They’re lunatics to try this. We’ve got to stop them and argue with them afterwards. They’ll see reason when the whole thing’s over and out of the way.”

“We’ll be out of the way. They’ll kill us instead of her.”

“Here.” Mauro pushed the Bar Clery bill into Haro’s pocket. “Read that when you get into the car and not before. Just do what it says and you and Reis meet me when and where it says.”

“They’ll kill us, if we try anything.”

“No, they won’t, Haro. But we’re all done if they go through with this and it fails. We’re all ruined for life. We’ve got to try, Haro. For our own sakes.”

“I’m not trying anything.”

“All right. Hang with them, Haro, for sure as hell they’ll hang—if the Civil Guard even bothers to take them alive.”

“Christ! Are you trying to scare the shit out of me? Stop it, Mauro, for God’s sake, stop it!”

They walked back to the drawing room.

“I didn’t really expect to see you today, Mauro,” Abril said. “You must have done a lot of sound thinking.”

“When this is over, we’re going to do a lot of thinking, Abril. Better thinking than the sort that set up this stupid operation.” Mauro sat as close as the furniture allowed to the man with Abril. He felt perversely unpleasant. “Do you ever speak?” he asked insolently.

“When necessary.”

“Have you a name?”

“Not for you.”

“You don’t live in Spain. You slip over for operations. Where do you live?”

“Don’t ask any more questions.”

“Take orders but don’t ask questions?”

“Right.”

“From you?”

“Tonight, from Abril. Tomorrow, from me.”

“And if we don’t.”

“You will.” His assurance was cold and untroubled.

“Believe me,” Mauro said deliberately, “you can give orders to Abril. You’ll not give them to us.”

“I was told you were nervous.” The man was smiling. “Quiet down. Nervous people are a nuisance.”

“How many of you people only speak to threaten? You know what you remind me of? You know what you’re really like? The Civil Guard. Why don’t you join them?”

“Shut up.”

They drank the wine in hostile and uneasy silence. When it was finished Abril said, “Wash the glasses, Mauro. Rub them up well or they’ll read them like a book. Wash the bottles, too.”

In the long silence, Mauro had stopped thinking about consequences. The mere presence of Abril heated his anger. He let it grow. His mind was battened down. Everything in him was focused on purpose, like a man who has determined to beat down a brick wall with the crown of his head. He was as settled in his purpose now as he had been jubilant that the blood of Luis Arrabal and Dion Ugalde ran in his veins; as determined as he had been contrite when Lieutenant Mieza sent for him; as set on his simple goal as he had been abjectly repentant when he cried on the phone for his mother’s womb. A cold calmness settled on his spirit. There were no more questions in his mind. He didn’t ask himself how long the condition would last. It was one of the questions he never asked himself.

“Certainly,” he said agreeably and looked at Abril with the clinical curiosity with which he watched smears under a microscope. There was a certain pleasure in it. He took the glasses and bottles to the kitchen, washed and polished them and arranged them in a V-formation on a kitchen table. Then he laid the bottles in a row pointing into the base of the V. It made an arrow on the table.

When he came back to the drawing room the phone rang. “Leave it,” Abril said. It rang twelve times, and stopped, and rang again, eight times.

“They’re on their way,” Abril said.

They put out all the lights in the room except two mellow wall lights on either side of the fireplace. Mauro, Reis and Haro took up their positions behind the large couches. Abril and his man stood in the dark behind the open double doors of the room. All of them put on their stocking masks.

The wood in the fire hissed. Now and then it crackled, sparks showered out on the wide black granite slab in front. There was no other sound.

Crouching out of sight near the fire, Mauro could look through the gap between two couches and through the open doors of the room, out into the wide flagged hall. The front door was unlocked. He would see it open.

It was almost half an hour before it opened. He could hear Haro swallowing in a dry throat.

She walked slowly past the painter as he held the door open for her, looked around nervously and said, “Leave the car. Carlos will put it away.”

“You must be very tired, señora.”

“Yes.” She was not listening to the painter. She stood in the hall, looked to her left and right, and walked slowly towards the drawing room doors. The painter came, a pace behind and to her left, like a courtier attending a queen.

Slowly she came through the doors and walked to the center of the room. She stopped, her hands clasped together.

“Are you all right, señora?” the painter asked her anxiously.

“Do not move from where you are,” Abril said.

The painter shuddered visibly in the dark and made a small sound. Señora Anson stood perfectly still. “Yes,” she said, “of course.”

“Back away from the señora, Celaya,” Abril said.

The painter backed away. Mauro, Reis and Haro stood up. Señora Anson did not move. She looked steadily at the three masked faces and was afraid, but her control puzzled Mauro as much as her nervous approach to the drawing room had puzzled him. Perhaps it was the absence of light? She seemed to come, expecting something. Or she had expected Carlos, the little Pekinese waiter, to appear with the sound of the car and he had not come and the room was dark? “Take what you want and leave,” she said.

“We came for you, señora,” Abril said. “Put Celaya with the others.”

“Have you hurt my servants?” she asked sharply.

“We’ll not hurt anyone, señora,” Mauro said.

Reis, Haro and the other man took the painter upstairs. Mauro took tape from his pocket. “Please accept this, señora,” he said, “it will not hurt and it will not be for long.” He came out to her and cut the tape. She did not move when he placed it over her mouth. He took her hands gently and pulled them behind her. She did not resist. “I am sorry, señora,” he said, “I’ll take them off at the first possible moment. I don’t want to bind your ankles. Are you prepared to walk with me to my car without causing any commotion?”

She nodded. Her unwavering look unnerved him. Anxiety appeared to have left her. Nervous, yes; she could not be otherwise, but she was thoughtful rather than afraid. She’s studying me, he thought. She’s trying to see through the stocking, for God’s sake. When he spoke, her eyes had a listening look.

“Please sit down and rest, señora, till the others come.”

She sat down with what Mauro thought of as regal grace on the couch in front of the fire, very upright; he wondered if her regal bearing came from practicing sitting down with her hands clasped behind her. It was a silly thought and he looked quickly for Abril as if the man might overhear his mind. Abril was wandering about in the hall, paying no attention.

Mauro sat down beside Señora Anson. “Forgive me, señora,” he said, “and please do what I tell you when I tell you.”

She looked steadily into his face.

“Please,” he said. “When I tell you.”

There was no response. She turned her face away.

Abril wandered back into the drawing room. Mauro got up quickly.

“Getting to know one another?”

Mauro did not reply. Abril came around the couches and stood in front of Señora Anson. “Do you sleep well at night, señora?” he asked her.

Her head turned slowly. She looked at everything but did not see Abril.

“Does it disturb you that one of your horses has more spent on it in a week than a shipyard worker earns to pay his rent and feed and clothe his family?”

She examined her sideboard with careless interest.

“We have put a price on your head, señora—ten million pesetas and Vincente Hierro, in three days and no longer. Are you worth that much to your old husband?”

“Go back to the hall,” Mauro said, “or the stables.”

The others came back and cut off Abril’s reply. “All the lights out,” Abril said, “and we’re on our way.”

They walked to the cars. Mauro walked beside Señora Anson, his hand on her arm. “Can you lie comfortably on the back seat?” he asked her. She did, without consenting to his care or existence.

Haro came from his car to Mauro’s open window. “We read your note. We agree. We’ll do it. But they’ll kill us afterwards.”

“We’ll face afterwards when we reach it. Wish me luck.”

“What’s the conference?” Abril shouted from the third car.

“Matches.”

“Get moving.”

Their convoy started down the long driveway. Mauro allowed the first car its three hundred yards, but Abril stayed tight behind him. They turned left into the road. Abril did not drop back.

“Señora Anson,” Mauro said, “this is going to be a very rough ride. If the car behind drops back up where the road winds very tightly, I want you to try to sit up. Otherwise, you’ll be thrown hard onto the floor. If I tell you to move quickly, please do it. If you don’t, we’ll both be shot to death.”

He watched Abril in the rearview mirror dropping back very slowly as the road began to twist as it climbed.

“Sit up now, if you can, señora, and keep low and tight in a corner. Don’t let your head be seen from behind. Most of the time now we’ll be out of sight but I haven’t much time to play with. He’ll stay only three hundred yards behind us.”

He heard her struggling to sit up.

“Brace your feet against the front seat and be ready to be thrown about.”

He felt the pressure of her feet behind him.

The Arano road was five kilometers ahead. They drove the next four in silence.

“A kilometer up the road I’m going to turn hard right and put out the lights. When I tell you, push with your feet and your back.”

He drove a little faster, widening the gap. They were always out of sight now. “In a moment,” he said. “Push!” he shouted.

The car swung hard. He braked hard and heard her scrambling as the lights went out. The car slid along the bank on the right side of the road and two wheels climbed and tilted the señora in a heap. Pureza’s car was there for a moment in the dying lights, headed out, then it was gone. They did not move till Abril passed the end of the road. Pureza came out of the ditch, threw the back door open and dragged Señora Anson out. She had never before been hauled out of a car by her armpits and bustled clumsily into the back seat of another one.

They came back onto the Hernani road slowly. Mauro pulled off his stocking mask and threw it away. “Señora,” he said, “we’re trying to help you. In a couple of minutes they’ll know two cars are missing at the house where you were to be held. They’ll come after this one because you’re in it. If we take off the tapes will you trust us? Will you nod?”

“She’s nodding,” Pureza said, and took them off.

“Now I’ll have to drive this car, señora, and you’re not going to be comfortable. We have to get through Hernani.”

The señora did not speak.

“The only danger you’re in is from my driving,” he said. “Unless they catch us. Both of you watch for lights ahead.”

He gambled everything on the road down. Trees and banks leaped at them on corners and tight bends and slid away. Mauro alternately sank his foot and braked harshly and sweated and time and again was near to panic when his speed outstripped his driving skill, and the tires screamed for him. There was no sound from the back seat beyond an occasional hissing intake of breath. At times only chance saved them from destruction as he misjudged corners and the rear end whipped, sliding the car left and right across the road. Twice they bounced off high banks and were thrust across the road and he had no skill to do anything but hope the car would settle facing in the right direction. It was a brutal and clumsy performance. And why hadn’t Abril come? He was a better driver than Mauro. But he did not come and they went through Hernani sedately and took the road to Irun.

“They have problems now,” Mauro said with immense relief. “They don’t know where we’re going and there are too many roads we could have taken.”

“In that case, pull over, please. I shall come up beside you,” the señora said like a captain repossessing the bridge, and Mauro did as he was told.

She settled herself beside him and wearily closed her eyes, but only for a moment. Mauro and Pureza watched her like mice measuring their future against a hunting cat. The señora drew up her legs and turned on the front seat so that she could see both of them. “Well,” she said, “put on the roof light.”

Mauro turned it on. She did look tired. There was a faint puffiness under her eyes and in them a petrous light he was not able to read. While he watched it with deepening anxiety it dissolved into something he thought might be amusement. But her mouth was set, her hands clasped tightly in her lap and she searched their faces, one, and then the other, again and again, and said nothing. They waited nervously as if for some sort of permission they could not define.

“That will do. Turn it off.”

“Señora …”

“The light,” she said and he turned it off.

“There has obviously been a change of plan,” she said with faint condescension. “Where are you taking me now?”

“But … home, señora. To Pamplona.”

“Why?”

“Why? But señora, don’t you want …?”

“Don’t make assumptions about what I ought to think or want. Tell me what I want to know.”

“Because this should never have happened.”

“Why not?”

He had imagined it otherwise; that perhaps the gracious señora of the hotel lobby would be a little grateful? Might even be friendly? As a child he had often been made unhappy by the way anticipated events failed to conform to his prefabrication of them. He was still inclined to write the scenario of things to come. Somewhere in his mind he sheltered the notion that the beautiful woman with the horses and painters and musicians, the woman whose smile in the lobby was so obviously for him, would receive him as something less but not too much less than the prince who hacked through malignant thorns to set her free. “Because it was wrong to think of kidnapping a woman.”

“A woman? Kidnapping Señor Huarte was quite all right?”

“No!”

“But banks? You people have no reservations about robbing banks? You are the people who do that, are you not?” She made “the people” sound like a euphemism for creeping things. “That man at the farm said I was to be exchanged for Hierro and money. You are his Fifth Assembly crowd, are you not?”

“Señora,” he said dismally, “it’s a long story and a very stupid one and we ought to go.” There was one way to escape from the increasing asperity of her tongue; if she would let them go.

“Were you so poor? Did you lack so much?”

“No.”

“You?” She spoke to Pureza for the first time.

“It’s hard to explain,” Pureza said lamely.

“Are you lovers?”

“What does that mean?” Pureza said in a voice of protest.

“I thought it was well understood.”

“We are not lovers. We are going to be married,” Pureza said resentfully.

“Were you in this plot from the beginning?”

“No. When Mau—when he refused to do it, they said they would do to him what they did to the priest of Guecho who informed on Mendizábal. So he asked me to help him get you away.”

“They stabbed the priest to death, did they not?”

“Yes.”

“And now they will kill you both?”

Mauro said, “We ought to go, señora. They could come by here and see us.”

“You are Mauro Ugalde.”

“Yes, señora.”

“How did you know that?” She frightened Pureza.

“He told me. Did you come to warn me?” the señora asked Mauro.

“I don’t know. I think I just came to look at you,” he said simply. It was a relief to say to her something that was simple and human and truthful.

It pleased her. She smiled for the first time. “Will you accept my thanks?” she said and Pureza thought, He flattered her; she’s vain.

“For what?” Mauro said uncomfortably, burdened with guilt.

“You have been fools. You are also brave. Thank you. Now, if you will, I should like to go home.”

“Yes, señora.”

“The snow had come when I left Pamplona. Have we chains?”

We? “Yes,” Pureza said, “in the trunk.”

“Let us go then.”

The road to Pamplona from Irun runs along the Rio Bidasoa that marks the frontier for about ten kilometers. Then the line retreats to the peaks of the Pyrenees. They went cautiously, expecting to meet the snow and did not meet it, till they had climbed into the Bidasoa mountains. By then they were almost friends.

From time to time the señora curled a little tighter and rested her head on the back of the seat, catnapping. It seemed to refresh her. “This has been something of an adventure,” she said in tones like those of a young mother encouraging her young children. “What plans have you when you’re rid of me?”

“My father is the doctor of Burguete,” Mauro said. “I’m going to drive over there and talk to him. I’ve got to talk to him. I’ve done so much that’s … he’ll know what I ought to do now.”

“Yes, that would be wise.”

So she would not call the Civil Guard? Mauro and Pureza relaxed. Señora Anson relaxed. The stiffness between them melted under the touch of her forgiveness.

He talked of his father and mother, of their quiet life, his father’s practice, his own and Pureza’s plans for a life not unlike it in some small town. “We’re going to spend Christmas with my parents,” he said.

“Then you certainly are going to marry.”

“When I qualify. You must be exhausted, señora?”

She was tired, but not exhausted. They met the snow at Sumbilla. It was wet and treacherous and they roused the innkeeper at the Villa Pancho with her name. “There are things that cannot be put off any longer,” she said and asked for the bathroom. The innkeeper led her to his own and pointed Mauro and Pureza through the bar to the public lavatories. When they came back to the bar, there was coffee which they were not allowed to touch until the señora returned. They ate bread and cheese and drank a great deal of coffee and the señora said it was a great blessing on a night like this that the Basques were such acceptably, even incredibly, clean people. She had restored her appearance in the innkeeper’s bathroom. Yes, she was very beautiful, and generous, and brave. And the innkeeper’s wife came from her bed, washed and dressed, and hovered and poured more coffee and cut more bread. “I love eating,” the señora said, “and it doesn’t show.” They were friends. One hundred pesetas, the innkeeper said and Mauro tried to pay, but the señora would not have it. “You are my guests,’’ she said and gave the innkeeper the keys of the car and asked him, please, if he would put the chains on the rear wheels, and gave him another hundred pesetas for his trouble. He went out into the slush.

The snow sat like icing on the crossbars of the telephone poles. They passed a car trailer, jackknifed with its cabin in the ditch and a sheer drop across the road, and the señora was full of folksy enthusiasm for the things that came and went in the headlights. At Narvarte, ferns stacked like hay, at Oyaregui a glimpse of sheep in a field of maize, but she was silent when a large police sign said HIELO and they slowed to a crawl and the car shifted on the ice and the drop on the right yawned like the abyss, full of blackness. Their progress through the Velate pass was slower than a turtle’s. Mauro was afraid of the tight and endless turns that gave him no rest and when they were through it, as if she knew something must be said to unstring his nerves, she laughed at the pigs, lying in a crowded heap at the door of the roadside inn at Venta da Arraiz. Then the worst was over and they crossed the watershed. They were on the mesa on which Pamplona stands; the rivers no longer fed the waters that ran to the Bay of Biscay.

“When we see you safely home, we’ll go on to Burguete, señora,” Mauro told her again, as if to retest her intentions.

“If the passes are open on a night like this.”

“They usually are.”

“But you must come in and rest. And my husband will want to thank you.”

“There’s no need to thank us. He can thank Pureza if he feels he must thank anyone. She had nothing to do with the thing and she ran a big risk helping me. But me—I should thank you. And I do.”

“For what?”

“Anybody else would turn me in.”

“Would they?”

“And I’d deserve it.”

They came companionably into Pamplona. There had been companionable moments on the journey when Mauro half-regretted Pureza’s presence. There was a warmth about the señora, something in her smile, in the way she looked directly into his face when she smiled, a focused and excluding look that took possession of him and built a screen …

He searched the approaches to her house. Reis and Haro were not parked where they were meant to be. Abril went after them? Caught them? Killed them? “My friends were to be here,” he said. “They were to take the road through Leiza. Abril must have caught them.”

“Oh, dear,” she said as if of some inconvenience, “there is all the more reason for you to come in and rest.”

It was a rich house, too rich for his blood or his experience of houses. The señora retreated from him, not because anything in her bearing toward him changed but because she was in her setting and it was not his. He took Pureza’s hand and felt close to her, in need of her. “Come to my husband’s library,” the señora said, “and I will bring him to you. And while you wait, there are drinks on the table.”

She closed the door and left them, standing hand in hand in the middle of the large oak room.

“She was good luck for us, Mauro,” Pureza said. “We’ll need even better luck with Abril and his people and maybe you were right. Maybe it’s going to work.”

“It’s going to work. There has to be a way to make it work. We’ll find it.”

The library door opened. Colonel Basa came in and closed the door behind him. “Good morning, Mauro,” he said. “Señora Anson called me from the inn at Sumbilla. She and her husband have asked me to thank you again on their behalf.” His scholarly face was melancholy.

“Colonel …” Mauro began. His legs were as shaky as his voice.

“You are under arrest.”

“Colonel, my father and mother …” He looked and felt pitiful, without marrow in his bones.

“I had them in mind when I sent your father to Bilbao to see you. You, it would appear, did not.” Basa opened the door and the Guards came in.

“Please, señor, please,” Pureza cried like a child whose world is falling, “I have nobody but Mauro …”

“Where you will be for a long time to come, you will not need anybody. You may take them,” Basa said to the Guards. “They go to Burguete.”

They had to hold Mauro by the arms. He staggered as he walked.

Basa said savagely, as Mauro passed, “You stupid, clownish bull’s arse. What have you done to them?”

“Mauro, Mauro,” Pureza cried.

Mauro did not hear her. He was listening to the voices of his father and mother.