I spent the next several days waiting—hungering—for news that never came. When I wasn’t listening for gossip in Bar Bristol, I was wandering the city, hallucinating Edward’s face into the most outlandish and improbable circumstances. Not that I had any good reason to suspect he might be in Barcelona; it was as likely—and unlikely—as his being in France, or Upney, or dead. Still, I had to believe something. So I drew upon my creaky draftsman’s skills and worked up a likeness of Edward in black ink, which I showed to the patrons at Bar Bristol, to soldiers, to strangers in the street. An old woman on Calle del Carmen thought she’d seen him selling fruit at the boquería, the huge open-air market near the port—a purported sighting that sent me running frantically through that maze of stalls and peddlers where openmouthed fish gaped up from beds of ice, and the guillotined heads of boars and rabbits leered behind glass partitions, and pretty girls in dresses patterned with bluebells wiped their bloody knives with their aprons. The Spanish do not fear looking death in the face. There were chickens, half plucked like poodles, still wearing their crowns. But alas, no Edward, not even beheaded behind a counter, mouth and eyes open, bewildered, appalled. One young man looked like him from behind, but when he turned around he had cheeks scarred with acne, a missing front tooth.
Various other sightings were reported. A soldier at Bar Bristol said he thought he’d seen Edward the day before walking a dog on Plaza d’España. A woman was sure he’d been at a meeting she’d attended in December. Another woman said he had a shave twice a week at a barbershop on Calle Aribau.
In my madness I followed each of these leads to its inevitable fruitless conclusion. Don’t think, however, that I required the prompting of strangers to start a wild-goose chase. I could do it just as well on my own. Thus one afternoon I hailed a taxi and had it follow a fruit truck thirty blocks through the rain, because I was convinced I’d seen Edward’s face steal a glance out the back of it. During a parade I tried—without success—to break into an apartment on the balcony of which I was sure I’d seen Edward watering some plants. I even wandered “by accident” into the kitchen of a restaurant in the old quarter where I was having lunch one day. But the boy chopping potatoes in the back corner—the boy whom I had glimpsed stumbling sleepily toward the toilet—wasn’t Edward. He didn’t even look like Edward.
A telegram arrived from Chambers. As my first assignment, I was to travel to the town of —— and interview the mayor. He, in turn, would explain to me how the town had flourished under a Communist government. As I had no compelling reason to stay on in Barcelona, I decided that I would travel to —— as quickly as possible, then hurry back to see if there was any word as to Edward’s whereabouts. Besides, —— was just as likely a place for Edward to be hiding as Barcelona.
It was a long journey to ——, almost nineteen hours. Outside the window, scenes of unrelieved harshness unfolded. The land was knotty and windblown: all edge. Periodically the train slowed to a crawl as it passed through villages where old women leaned out windows and children stood immobile on cobbled streets, watching as the train crept along, segmented like a worm, huffing and huge, almost kingly. Then the town would be gone, the old women gone; we’d pick up speed through olive groves, thorny fields of rosemary, rice paddies in watery troughs. The Spanish landscape, so much more varied than films would have you believe; and yet the light was always the same—severe, unforgiving, as if the sun were a bare bulb screwed into a ceiling socket.
In ——, I announced myself, as requested, at the mayor’s office, only to be told that no appointment had been made for me. Moreover, the mayor was in Barcelona that week. So I went to have a beer at a cervecería, where I met a British officer, one Colonel Parker-Dawes, who recognized my accent and insisted we have a drink together. This jaunty and garrulous young idiot went on to tell me that he was an official with the government in Gibraltar. He had a lot of opinions about the residents of the colony—in particular a Lady Something who made herself available to him on a regular basis.
“By the way,” I said, “I have a friend whose uncle lives in Gibraltar. I was wondering if you knew him: Teddy Archibald?”
The mention of this gentleman’s name sent Parker-Dawes into gales of uproarious laughter. It turned out that Philippa’s uncle Teddy had a reputation around town for being a gambler and a rake, his parents, prominent members of the local polo-playing set, having died twenty years earlier and left him their entire fortune to squander. Most recently he had “gone red,” shuttering up his house and leaving town: rumor had it he intended to offer his services to Republicans on the front. “If you can beat that,” Parker-Dawes said. “Although those Spanish soldiers will screw anything from what I’ve heard, even their own grandmothers. Even their own grandfathers! The fellow is, as they say, ‘so.’ Care for a cigar?” I declined, and he put his rather large feet up on the table. “It is refreshing to have visitors from home,” he said, and I nodded, surprised and disturbed by the extent to which he saw me as one of his “kind.”
Forgoing Parker-Dawes’s invitation to join him for dinner, I went out to find a pension, where I spent a restless night. The next afternoon I was on my way back to Barcelona. The train was much more crowded than it had been going in the other direction, mostly with soldiers. Soldiers everywhere: smoking between the cars, lying on the floors of the corridors, their heads on each other’s laps. My own carriage I had to share with three infantrymen, one of whom snored; a nun; and an immensely fat old woman, whose valise gave off a distinct odor of sausage. No matter: I couldn’t have slept even if I’d wanted to. I was thinking about Edward. If he’d been captured, of course, Bar Bristol would be abuzz with the news. But what if he’d made it across the frontier? What if he was back in Upney? I needed desperately to know, yet I couldn’t very well contact Lil without alerting her to the fact of his desertion, knowledge that—assuming he wasn’t back in England—would cause her immense distress. Then there were the less palatable alternatives to consider: the possibility that Edward had been captured and was languishing in a prison somewhere; the possibility that he was dead.
So the train rolled on, through the interminable night, its rumble only partly muffling the snores and thrashings of the soldiers, the slow, regular wheeze of the old woman, who had fallen asleep with her head listing on my shoulder. I watched the window, partially curtained, for changes in the light. And then—it seemed eons later—dawn was breaking in blue streaks across the sky. The old woman lifted her lolling head. One of the soldiers raised the blinds of our sweaty carriage, filling it with a fevered radiance.
The nun got up, stumbled through the legs of the soldiers, came back awash with the sickly sweet odor of eau de cologne. I had to use the lavatory too, so I went out into the corridor. Everywhere soldiers were stretching, their hair rumpled, their cheeks dented with the imprint of whatever they had slept against. Looking out the window, I saw that we were passing through the distant outskirts of some city—I hoped it was Barcelona, then concluded from the talk in the corridor that it was Saragossa. Old neighborhoods of cobbled houses and stone streets passed us, going the other way. Opening the window a crack, I felt a rush of chill air and caught the distant odor of bread baking.
Eight torturous hours later, when we arrived in Barcelona, I had convinced myself that Edward—alive when I began this journey—would be dead by the time I ended it.
I got off the train. My stomach was hollow, but I did not eat. Instead—bypassing even my pension—I went to Bar Bristol. I had no idea if Northrop would be there, if he was even in town. Still, the place served as a kind of nerve center in those days; if I was going to find out anything, I reckoned, I would probably find it out there.
Almost as soon as I walked in the door I knew something had happened. It was as if, upon my arrival, the hum of the place had gone up a register. Strangers—people I barely knew—were looking at me and whispering.
A soldier approached me. “Muchacho!” he called. “You were looking for someone, an English soldier, right?”
“Yes?”
“I think they’ve found him.”
“Where?” I cried.
“San Sebastián. Only now he’s back in Altaguera, in the barracks brig.”
“And is he all right?”
“I don’t know; I just heard the rumor—that the English maricón who deserted had turned up. Then someone said he’d seen the maricón, and he looked just like the picture the other English fellow was showing—”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry, I must go.”
“Where? To Altaguera: Qué loca—” But I was already out the door. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, siesta just over, a mass of people hurrying down the narrow street toward the Ramblas with the directional intensity of a school of fish, a flock of birds, a wave: old women in mourning black, workers drunk on cheap lunchtime wine, young men whose beauty would stop your heart. The light—more generous, softer than it had been earlier in the day—had drawn them out from their curtained flats to browse at the book stalls or read the scribbled propaganda on the Ramblas. And I sailed among them, buoyed up by panic, by an impulse that could tolerate no distraction, it was so single-minded: for the first time in weeks, I knew where Edward was.
By metro, I went back to the station. I bought a ticket to Altaguera. There was no direct route, I discovered; instead I would have to retrace a substantial portion of the journey I’d just made—all the way to Saragossa. If I’d known, of course, I could have just got off at Saragossa in the first place. But I hadn’t known.
I sat down on a hard bench to wait. Almost immediately the woman sitting next to me stood up and left. Only then did I realize I hadn’t bathed, shaved or changed clothes in almost thirty-six hours.
All around me tragic partings were taking place: mothers rent from sons, wives from husbands. Uniformed soldiers laughing and waving as the dilapidated trains that would carry them to their deaths steamed off. The station had high, vaulted ceilings that, in their grandeur, only compounded the atmosphere of sepulchral gloom: it was a cathedral in which the train itself, the terrible voyage itself, presided like a god.
And in my exhaustion, I fell into a kind of stupor; slowly, inch by inch, I felt myself slipping off the bench—it seemed beyond my control—until the small of my back was where my rump should have been. Before me a panorama of busy life was spreading out, the sort you see when you lift a wet piece of wood. Vendors hawked newspapers and sweets, chaperos lounged casually near the lavatories, their cocks crudely outlined in their trousers. Dust and smoke everywhere, a film of blackness that even the desolate-looking chars, swishing their mops around, could never entirely eradicate.
Have you noticed how all war stories end up at a station? Think of the movies, the requisite scene where the train starts up, the soldier leans out the door to wave goodbye, his girl—desperate to prolong the moment of parting—chases after him, until the accelerating beast outruns her. There is no rest in a station; a station thrives on motion, and war usually necessitates a journey: the enforced transport of soldiers to the front, the panicked exodus of refugees, the surreptitious flight of exiles. Soldier, refugee, exile. Who has not, at one time or another, played one of these roles, or all three?
The time arrived for the train to depart. I stood, collected my bags, stumbled over to where the impatient crowd—my fellow travelers—had gathered.
But the hour of departure came and went, and no train pulled up to the announced platform.
Twenty more minutes passed. A voice came over the loudspeaker, announcing that the train to Saragossa would be indefinitely delayed.
Because it was wartime, the crowd greeted this bad news not with anger but relief. The soldiers’ mothers, thanking God for the stay of execution, rushed their sons home for makeshift farewell meals.
As for me, I went to the station baths and had a shower.
And finally, around midnight, we pulled out. I remember droplets of rain slithering down the window, clinging to the glass as we picked up speed, then being snatched away by the hungry air. Saragossa—where I spent two hours—survives in my memory only as another hard bench, a fog of half sleep perpetually interrupted by unintelligible voices announcing delays. Nothing ever arrives on time during a war.
It rained for a long, long time, the rain thudding against the station’s tin roof.
Three hours and fifteen minutes late, the local to Altaguera made its departure from Saragossa.
Six hours and thirty minutes after that, we arrived in Altaguera.
I got out; I was standing with some soldiers on a bare platform in the middle of a flat, dusty plain. Early afternoon, the sun hammering, in spite of the cold.
Hoisting up my bags, I walked into town. Altaguera had no charm to speak of; its streets and squares were flat and geometrical, with few trees and little shade. Old, low buildings forged from swollen bricks listed and crumbled onto barely paved streets. Donkeys mingled with the military trucks; women carried things on their heads.
I did not stop to find a pension, to drop off my bags or bathe or have something to eat. Instead I went directly to the barracks: a clump of jerry-built flat-roofed shacks laid out on a ragged field. Two soldiers stood guard at the gate.
I asked for Northrop. They appeared not to recognize his name. The head of the British battalion, I said. The soldiers looked me over for a minute, and then one of them made a call on a walkie-talkie. After a few minutes he received what I gathered was a favorable reply and motioned me through the gate, where another soldier escorted me through the barracks buildings to an old one-room farmhouse that appeared to have been converted into a kind of central command. And there Northrop sat, in full uniform, behind an empty desk on which a clock ticked mercilessly: Northrop, with whom I had frolicked on the bucolic grounds of an English public school, whose fat cock I’d stroked—how long ago had it been? Five years? Six years? Childhood.
“Botsford! Jesus, man, you look awful!”
“I haven’t slept much,” I said. “I’ve spent the last several days on trains.”
“Well, sit down.” I sat. “I gather you must have heard about Phelan, then.”
“I have. I’ve come to ask if I could see him.”
“Now, Botsford, I told you—”
“You must let me see him, John. Please. You must.”
He looked away. “I don’t see how it could possibly—”
“I’m not asking you to let him go. I’m not even asking you to understand or tolerate. I’m just asking, as someone you’ve known since you were a boy, to let me see him. A half hour, fifteen minutes. That’s all.”
He stared at his desk.
“Please, John.”
“Oh, Christ. Look, this goes against every rule.”
“I’m aware of that. And I’m prepared to take full responsibility if any blame should be leveled.”
“All right,” he said. “Fifteen minutes. But not a second more.”
“Thank you,” I said.
We stood.
At the door, Northrop turned to me and said, “I just want to say I can’t see how this is going to possibly do any good—for either of you.”
“You can’t, I know. Still, you must let us speak.”
He held the door for me, and I passed through. We walked between the barracks buildings until we arrived at a stone structure with blacked-out windows, outside which two armed soldiers stood guard. Northrop saluted them, and they made way to let us pass.
Inside, the building smelled of sweat and urine. We were in a mean little room, unadorned except for a table, two chairs, the ubiquitous bare bulb and a portrait of Lenin. Another armed soldier stood beneath the portrait.
“Wait here,” Northrop said.
Taking a key ring from his pocket, he let himself through a second door, an inner door.
I sat down at the table.
What seemed like hours passed.
Then the door opened again.
Northrop and a soldier came through, between them Edward, his wrists handcuffed.
I stood.
“Edward,” I said.
He looked at me. His eyes widened with surprise.
“Edward, I’m here.”
The soldier sat him down at one end of the table. Northrop then waved the soldier out of the room.
“Fifteen minutes,” he said from the doorway.
He stepped out.
The door clicked shut.
An expression of utter surprise gripped Edward’s face.
I took his handcuffed hand in mine and burst into tears.
“Brian,” Edward said, “it’s all right. I’m all right. Don’t cry—”
“It’s just it took me so long to find you—I’ve been searching and searching.”
“Take a deep breath. You’ve got to pull yourself together.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” I breathed. “Ridiculous, your having to calm me down. Anyway, how are you?”
“I’ve been better.”
“You’re thin.”
“Haven’t had much to eat.”
“Well, you look wonderful to me.”
“Glad you think so.” He leaned closer. “Brian—what are you doing here?”
“I got your letter. I came as soon as I got your letter.”
“Oh. I wondered if you had. It seems like decades since I wrote that letter.” He attempted a smile. “I suppose I’m in a lot of trouble, eh?”
“A little,” I said, smiling as well, wiping my eyes. “Edward—what happened?”
“Well, like I said in that letter, I reached a point where I couldn’t bear it anymore. The fighting, that is. So when Northrop wouldn’t let me leave, I stole off. I got as far as San Sebastián, where I met this fellow in a bar. You must know him by now—Mr. Archibald.”
“Philippa’s uncle?”
“I knew who he was, Brian, on account of reading your journal, which of course I shouldn’t have done. And in spite of—well, in spite of his relation to you, he was still someone familiar. Believe me, over here I would have welcomed my worst enemy if only he’d been English. Anyway, he was nice and civil to me, and I thought I could trust him. What a joke that turned out to be! Still, I confessed and told him what was up. Oh, at first he couldn’t have been more cordial: he let me stay in his hotel with him, he gave me fruit and milk and coffee—things I hadn’t had for weeks! And he said he’d take me back to England with him. He said he could arrange things, knew who to bribe to get me across the border. But first he wanted to stay a bit longer in San Sebastián on account of he had some business to finish there.
“Five days we stayed in the hotel. Nothing happened. I had my own room. And though I could tell this fellow wanted something from me, I pretended I couldn’t, on account of—well, I just didn’t fancy him. Anyway, how could I have done that, with anyone but you? I’m sorry to say it, Brian, believe me, but it’s how I felt. And then the last night he came into my room, and I had to tell him point-blank I wasn’t about to do anything with him. Well, you can imagine his reaction. Hurt and angry all at once. ‘After all I did for you, after everything I’ve risked for you.’ Finally he stormed out. And then the next morning we were having breakfast, all very tense and silent-like, when the doorbell rang and it was the police. Apparently they’d tracked me down from a photo. And he just let them right in, like they were coming to breakfast, stood by while they put the cuffs on, saying how sorry he was that he wouldn’t be able to help me after all. As I left, he wouldn’t meet my eye.” Edward looked into his sleeve. “My own stupidity. I thought I could trust him, him being Miss Archibald’s uncle—or is it Mrs. Botsford now?”
“Oh, God,” I said, laying my head on the table. “Everything is my fault.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“What? Oh. No. No, of course not.”
“You did ask her to marry you.”
“Yes—but, Edward, it was a dreadful mistake. A mad fantasy. She laughed at me.”
Edward raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Well, never mind about that. The point is to get you out of here. Are you feeling all right? You look pale.”
“I think I’ve got influenza.”
“But are they treating you all right? Have you got enough food?”
“If you can call it that. They’ve got four of us right now—a Pole, two Russians and me. They’re decent fellows, the others, though we can’t say a word to each other. One of them had a deck of cards, and we play with that, day in, day out. And it’s clean—well, I mean, it’s not the Savoy Hotel, but compared to the police cell . . . Makes our flat—your flat—seem like paradise. Still, I’d rather be here than on the battlefield.” He looked behind himself, as if to make sure no one was listening. “Brian,” he said, “it’s not like they said at the meetings. Nothing is nearly so simple. Most of the blokes in my battalion are upper-class boys out to prove they can be rebels. Even so, if you’ve got an accent like mine they treat you like a servant. The leaders, the ones like Northrop, they see us as expendable on account of us mostly being from the lower classes. And the fighting—it’s horrible, Brian! Those Moors would shoot you just as soon as shake your hand. I’ve had to kill; there wasn’t any choice.” He leaned closer. “Is there anything you can do? I’m sorry to trouble you, I know I’m of no concern to you now, but you’re my only hope. All I want is to go home.”
“Edward, don’t say these things. I care about you more than anyone.”
He stiffened. “If that’s true, why did you ask her to marry you?”
“I was confused—”
He laughed. “I was the idiot. I should have seen the signs.” Suddenly his face grew harsh. “You never did say you loved me, did you?”
“Edward—”
“I never was disloyal to you, Brian, not once! I’d never have done that to you! Whereas you . . . But there, I’ve said it. It’s off my chest now.”
I laid my head on the table. “Oh, Edward,” I said. “If you told me right now you’d never forgive me, I’d say you have every right.”
He leaned back and shook his head. “I loved you, Brian,” he said quietly. “I really loved you. How could you have done that to me?”
“If only there was some way to make it up to you—some way to show you—”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Edward said. “This matters: I don’t want to die.”
And suddenly I realized I must get control of myself. So I sat up, held my head erect. “You’re not going to die,” I said. “I’ll go to the consulate. You’re a British subject; they can’t just hold you against your will. I promise you, Edward, something will work out.”
The door opened; Northrop and the soldier came back in.
Immediately I felt Edward’s body tense.
We pulled our hands apart.
“Fifteen minutes,” Northrop said.
We stood. Taking Edward firmly by the arm, the soldier motioned him back toward the door.
“I’ll do what I can,” I called again hopelessly.
I thought he smiled. I couldn’t be sure. Then they were through the door, the door was closing behind them.
The door clicked shut. Edward was gone.
I stumbled back toward the station. Dusk was settling; the streets were crowded with shoppers: men and women whose faces were marked by a kind of uniform savage austerity. Every cheek had a scar on it, every lip a boil, every hand seemed to have been maimed in some horrible industrial accident. Even the children looked old, darting as they did among the market stalls, which were colorless, drab, all cabbages and root vegetables—a desiccated parody of the boquería. Nowhere had the slightest concession been made to pleasure or comfort; there were no parks or fountains or playgrounds, just church after church. Still, one had the sense these people would hang on forever, as their town did, teetering but not falling, while frailer, pleasure-seeking souls gave up the ghost.
I took a room at the first pension I saw, pulled off my clothes, lay down and tried to sleep. But the bed was narrow, the mattress straw-filled, sagging in the middle. The room—tiny and spare, lit by a single ceiling bulb—had the severity of a monk’s cell. Through the tiny window I could hear dinner conversation, smell dinner smells: boiled meat, potatoes frying in rancid oil. A baby wailed, its parents argued. Then windows clattered open, another voice started up, this one high and thin and furious, screaming at the top of its lungs, an endless monologue that was more complaint than lament and the contents of which I could barely make out. Next the neighbors’ windows: “Cállate, puta!” “Señora, por favor!” But she went on and on.
I closed my eyes. I must have slept then, because when I bolted up and looked at the clock, three hours had passed. Amazingly the same thin, high voice was still shrilling, pouring out its enraged miseries to indifferent ears.
Dizzily I got up, got dressed again, stumbled out into the streets. What I felt was not dread but lust, which can be the doppelgänger of dread: panic and grief translating into an itch in the fingers, an erection that wouldn’t quit. Luckily the streets were full of soldiers, a steady stream that led to a café near the hotel in the center of town. Thank God, I thought, for soldiers.
I entered the café. It was dark, hectic. Flamenco music played on an old wind-up gramophone, cigarette smoke hung in the air like a fog. I ordered a beer. There were almost no women in the café, aside from a few beleaguered-looking whores. Russian soldiers, Polish soldiers, English and American soldiers, mingled with the Spanish.
I would have taken any of them at that terrible moment; any man who had approached me, grabbed me by the arm and led me away, I would have gone with.
I cast my eyes over the crowd; I cast and cast, like a fisherman, until they locked, for a millisecond, with another pair of eyes. The soldier in question had curly dark-blond hair, a bracingly clean face, black eyes. He was standing alone, smoking, at the opposite end of the bar.
I moved nearer. Next to him a whore sat on a barstool, regaling the bartender with stories about her days as a maid in Barcelona. “Every place I worked in I got fired,” she said. “And why? Only because I had affairs with the heads of the houses! Well, don’t look at me that way; is it my fault if they found me irresistible? Big houses, these were, up in Bonanova. Listen to me: if I’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s that the rich are always the sickest. One of these gentlemen wanted me to whip him, another liked me to bark like a dog, another asked me to rub marmalade into his head while he masturbated. The wives, of course, got jealous and showed me the door. Farther and farther downtown I went, to poorer and poorer houses, until the men just wanted an ordinary fuck, and I ended up in the Barrio Chino. Now, carino, couldn’t you give me just a little more whiskey? You know I’ll pay you tomorrow. All I want is half a glass—”
The bartender merrily refused her, and cursing him, she got up from her stool, thrusting out her breasts for good measure. “Maricón!” she shouted at me, laughing, and her laughter rang out, getting softer as she rounded the corners of the streets.
I sat down on the barstool she had vacated, next to where the soldier was standing. The cracked black leather was warm and slightly damp from her sweat. The soldier smiled at me.
“Do you want another beer?” I asked him in Spanish.
“Ah,” he said in perfect English, “so you’re English.”
“It’s that obvious?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“And do you accept offers of beer from Englishmen?”
“Well, it would depend. This is the first one I’ve received. In this case, yes, with gratitude.”
Relieved, I called for the beer. The soldier’s name was Joaquim, and as it turned out, he was part English himself, his mother’s father having been born in Warwickshire. But he had grown up in Gerona and had never visited England. Now he was a captain with the Republican forces.
“And what are you doing in this horrible place?” he asked me. “You’re not with the brigade, so you must be a journalist.”
“More or less.”
“And do you stay near here?”
“Down the street, at a pension.”
“And what brings you out tonight?”
I looked at him. He smiled.
“You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Well, to be perfectly honest, I was looking for sex.”
“How convenient,” he said. “So was I.”
I laughed. He laughed. “Too bad the whore’s gone,” I said.
“A pity,” he said.
“Unless of course—”
“Yes?”
“Well—we could go to my room.”
“What a good idea,” he said. He finished his beer in a single swallow. “Are you ready?”
I said that I was, and together we headed out into the street. The building where my pension was located had a huge ancient wooden door out of which a smaller, human-sized door had been jaggedly carved. Through this we passed. There was no light in the stair, and we had to grope our way.
On the fourth-floor landing Joaquim suddenly stopped me, reached his arms around my waist, pulled my face toward his and kissed me.
For a few minutes we groped each other there in the dark, my body pushed by his against the chilly stone wall. His mouth tasted of the honey and almond nougat Spaniards eat at Christmas.
As soon as we were inside my room I started stripping off my clothes. Taking my cue, Joaquim followed suit. We watched each other intently as jackets, ties, shoes, belts, shirts, vests, trousers, socks, and finally drawers fell in a heap on the floor. Then we were naked. He had a line of hair running from between his nipples to his navel, an erection that looked cumbersome, almost painful to maintain, bobbing up and down.
I got on my knees and sucked him. He moaned, gripped my head in his hands. Then I stood again, lay on the bed, put my legs in the air. I did not have to tell him what I wanted; he knew. Taking my legs in his hands, he pushed his cock against me, eager for entry, but I was too dry, so I told him to hand me some lotion that was in my case. As if I were he, I slathered my fingers and inserted them inside myself until the channel was wet enough for them to slide in and out easily. Then I took his cock and made it slick with my hand and guided it inside. The pain, at first, was enormous; I closed my eyes, counted to ten, tried to obliterate it, and found I could do so by wanking ferociously. “Are you all the way in?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. “Good,” I said. Cautiously he started moving, but it was too much; I cried out. He loomed over me, stone hard, a frozen statue. Then, once again, he started moving. He slid out and eased in again and hit something, some region of fire. Suddenly there was sensation, a flaring pleasure that seemed to radiate out in waves, that seemed initially to exist alongside the pain I was feeling, and then, miraculously, seemed part of the pain, and then swallowed the pain up. My eyes bulged out, my mouth opened into an uncontrollable shout. I understood, suddenly, what had driven Edward so mad those times I’d done it to him; it was this, this quadrant of pleasure hidden deep up inside. And Joaquim thrust harder, and with each thrust the radiating pleasure revived, flailing my limbs and rolling my head and twitching the length of my cock until it seemed I might come from it, from this thrusting, I might not even have to touch myself or be touched by him, but I did not want to come, I wanted this to last, I wanted to say things, filthy things, utter words I’d never uttered, and I did, I said, “Fuck me,” I said, “Come inside me,” and with a loud shout Joaquim thrust one final time and the warm flood of his semen was pouring down my legs like tears.
He pulled out, rolled over, heaved breath like someone rescued from drowning. I felt a chilly film of perspiration forming on my back.
I had to crap. Bolting from the bed, I pulled on my drawers and ran into the little water closet at the end of the hall, where I got on the toilet just in time. Gas erupted from me in loud explosive grunts. I put my head in my hands and, letting it drop, watched the checkerboard on the linoleum floor dissolve, reform, dissolve. I was so dizzy I thought, for a moment, I could feel the rotation of the earth.
When I got back, Joaquim was lying on the bed, smoking. I lay down next to him. Under our combined weight the bed sagged nearly to the floor.
“Cigarette?” he offered.
“No, thanks,” I said. And closed my eyes. I was terribly, terribly sleepy.
With a screech of hinges, my mad neighbor threw open her windows again and launched into another tirade.
“What’s she saying?” I asked Joaquim. “I can’t understand.”
“It’s hard to make out; she has a very strange accent.” He frowned in concentration. “Mostly it’s about a baby. ‘The baby needs to be bathed, and I don’t have time! There are dishes to be done, so many dishes! The mother just wants a rest, but the baby keeps screaming!’ She repeats the same names: Manolo, Begona. Her children, I’d guess. Probably they’ve been gone for years.” He shook his head. “People think madness is romantic, but it’s not. Madness is boring, it’s like cleaning and cleaning a room and it’s never clean.”
He cocked his ears attentively.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s nothing. It’s just that now she’s shouting so loudly, and what she’s saying is, ‘Why do people say I shout in the middle of the night? I never shout in the middle of the night!’ In such a voice!”
We both laughed.
“You know,” Joaquim said, “you never explained to me what you were doing in Altaguera.”
“What I’m doing here?” I smiled. “Trying to save someone I love. Or should have loved. Someone who loved me.”
“Save him from what?”
“From being killed.”
Then I told Joaquim the story. He listened thoughtfully, without remark, until I was finished. “The lesson here,” I concluded, “is my own unworthiness, compared to Edward’s sterling loyalty. I mean, look at me! I’m shameless! No sooner do I find him than what do I do? Betray him again.”
“My friend, you’re too hard on yourself,” Joaquim said. “Yes, you made a mistake. But consider all you’ve done. You’ve come all this way for him. I would call that extraordinary. Brave, in fact.” He extinguished his cigarette. “As for making love, what choice do we have, in these times? If you don’t mind my saying so, you did it grievously, almost as if you were seeking an exorcism. And that, I think, is something he would understand.”
Joaquim left soon after that. I never saw him again. I can’t tell you if he died in battle, or survived and married, if he’s a famous poet now, or a laborer, or a judge. So why is it that he survives so vividly in my memory—this boy I knew only for a night?
How hesitantly human souls brush against each other! Like the ads one sometimes sees in the lonely hearts column in the newspaper: “4/12: We spoke in front of the library. You were wearing a scarf, I was carrying a newspaper. I would like to see you again, love you, marry you!”
Well, Joaquim, if someday, by some miracle, you read these pages, consider this my own lonely hearts letter. Know that I remember that night in Altaguera. It’s eighteen years later now. I’m middle-aged, blacklisted, broke. Edward is under, and I am across, the sea.
Still, if you read this, call me.