The truck was a re-built 1931 model Fiat-camioneta. It had no fenders and no hood and the driver’s cabin and back had been stripped and replaced with two wooden seats rather like park benches. All these alterations had been made purposefully, to make the vehicle lighter and more useful as transport for people on bad roads.
The vehicle had a history, as it had come to Spain during the Civil War with General Bergonzoli’s first blackshirt division and had fallen into the hands of the worker’s militia after the battle at Brihuega in March, 1937. But no one knew anything about that now, so the camioneta was not considered of any historical value.
Dan Pedersen had taken it over from an acquaintance who was a builder in Santa Margarita and although it was twenty-five years old, it functioned quite satisfactorily.
The road ran in long curves down the mountainside and down there, on the other side of the bay, the houses of the fishing settlement lay piled up along the quay. The surface of the water was calm and blue and sunlit, and out by the pier a number of people could be seen bathing. Several white yachts lay by the harbour wall and farther in, along the quay itself, were half a dozen dirty yellow trawlers with their nets draped like mourning veils round their masts. Despite the distance, one could see groups of lightly-clad tourists standing on the quay, looking at the fishing-boats.
It was the beginning of August and very hot. The truck rolled swiftly down, its engine switched off, and all that could be heard was the squeal of the mechanical brakes and the noise of stones striking the underneath of the vehicle. The road was narrow and rough, but then it also led to the most distant and isolated houses in the community.
There were three people in the truck. Dan Pedersen, who was driving, and beside him Siglinde, his wife. On the bench behind sat Willi Mohr, his straw hat pulled down over his forehead as protection against the clouds of dust. Now and again he had to use both arms and legs against the bodywork to prevent himself from being thrown off on the sharp corners.
He was looking at the girl’s slim, sunburnt neck and when the breeze raised her short blond hair, he saw a string of small drops of sweat along the roots of her hair. He also saw that the hairs were darker at the roots and realized that she had bleached her hair and wondered why.
‘Don’t drive so damned fast,’ said Siglinde. ‘The dust’s choking me.’
Dan did not reply. He thought: The Scandinavians have got their money and now they’re drinking at Jacinto’s. They’ve forgotten that they owe me two thousand pesetas and that I’ve not paid the rent for two months and have hardly enough money for food. But they’ve also forgotten that this is a pretty small place and that one finds things out almost at once. And now they’ve damn well got to pay up. Hope I can get hold of Santiago and Ramon, for there’s going to be a row, and the German here’s not much use. He’s only good for sitting goggling at Siglinde when she’s sunbathing, and why not, as that’s what I’d do too, if I didn’t already know what she looks like all over.
Dan Pedersen did in fact use the term Scandinavians, but with a certain contempt, forgetting that he himself belonged to that same group.
At this time of the year there were perhaps a couple of hundred foreigners in the puerto and about a dozen of them were residents, people of various nationalities, mostly painters or writers, or at least pretending to be, and most of them were Swedes or Finns. Among them was a small group which never had any money. They were the Scandinavians. They were very fond of their liquor.
Siglinde thought: There’s going to be trouble, I know it, as I know Dan, and I hope we meet Santiago or Ramon on the way, because this German’s not much use, although he seems kind, and he can’t paint either, poor thing, and it’s hell Dan let him come and live with us, so that now I can’t sunbathe naked.
She was a young woman of fairly ordinary nordic type, healthy and strong and moderately beautiful. She was wearing pants and bra, dusty thonged sandals and a pale blue dress with shoulder-straps. She was blond and grey-eyed and much more sunburnt than genuine blondes usually get.
The man in the back seat stared coolly at her bare shoulders and held a silent monologue with himself.
What on earth have I got to do with these people? I’m as indifferent to them as they are to me. But what could I do when Hugo went and I was left with nowhere to live and not a word of the language? Stay at a boarding-house? Then my money would not have been enough and I was to stay here a year and paint. I said I would and I’m going to. Even if it is meaningless, really. Anyhow, I can’t understand what people like Hugo see in this country and this sort of place. It’s warm, but that’s about all. Now these people are expecting me to help them in some private row, and I suppose I ought to, as I’ve lived with them for a week. I don’t know what it’s all about but what does that matter.
They had come down on to the smooth shore road which ran in a curve round the inner part of the bay, connecting the village with the little group of houses lying near the lighthouse and the pier. Dan started the engine, which rattled alarmingly. He drove quickly and carelessly round the bay.
Two nights earlier a couple of fishing-boats had happened to get a shoal of turtles in their nets, and halfway to the village the damaged nets were stretched out on a rack which was about a hundred yards long. The nets took up one half of the road and about every ten yards men and women were sitting mending the holes.
At the third net-mender, Dan Pedersen braked the camioneta and stopped.
‘Hullo,’ he said.
When the shadow of the vehicle fell over him, Santiago Alemany raised his head, and with two fingers pushed his straw hat off his forehead. He was sitting with his legs stretched out in the sun-scorched gravel and had stretched the net out by hooking his big toe in one of the holes.
‘The Scandinavians have got their money and are drinking at Jacinto’s.’
‘I heard. Even when you sit here, you get to know everything.’
‘Are you coming with us?’
Santiago Alemany carefully worked the net loose and rose. His movements had a studied leisureliness, giving him a kind of grandeur, although he was bare-footed and rather dirty from the work, and although his faded clothes were of a very indefinite colour.
He was twenty-seven, roughly the same age as the people in the truck, and had calm light-brown eyes, a broad forehead and not especially dark hair.
He is well built, thought Siglinde, who often thought about such things.
‘A calamity,’ he said, gesturing towards the net. ‘This ought to be finished today. Or tomorrow.’
He laughed, took out a crumpled packet of Ideales and handed them round. Everyone took one except Willi Mohr, who had not yet got used to the pungent local tobacco. And the fact that he did not understand what they were talking about also put him into a state of apathetic passivity.
Santiago climbed up on the truck and sat down beside Willi Mohr.
‘Let’s take little brother with us,’ he said. ‘He’s useful … in this sort of situation.’
When the truck started up, the nearest net-mender turned his head and called behind him, without ceasing to work:
‘Now Santiago’s gone off with the foreigners again—as usual.’
Ramon Alemany was sitting right at the end of the row, bent forward, fumbling with the stitches. The family likeness was there, but he was in many ways very different from his brother. When he saw the truck, he at once untangled himself from the nets, flung them down and jumped up, small, muscular and with lively eyes. Under his carelessly knotted shirt could be seen his hairy, sweaty chest and large, dark brown nipples.
He clambered up on to the back bench and eagerly shook everyone by the hand.
The brothers spoke to each other in Catalonian. Both laughed.
Dan Pedersen drove on.
Singlinde turned and smiled at the three people behind her.
Willi Mohr did not understand a thing. He felt utterly indifferent to them all.