Brother Death Page 6

  The train drew out, puffing slowly to achieve its full momentum of forty miles an hour. The vinous coastal plains traversed, the train turned, at Tarragona, towards sacred Saragossa and the mountains. Here, in these dunes smoothed daily by the wind, the forces of General Franco had reached the sea in their offensive of 1938. But who now cared, who remembered even, the blood sucked in beneath the sleepers of the track? The heads of the nuns were nodding: their chins kissed the sober habit, beneath layers of which, beneath flannel, their useless tits were shrivelling. The two schoolgirls, having exchanged photographs and discussed the holiday in hand, sucked acid drops with expressions ruminant.

  At Fuentes del Ebro, a country station not far from Saragossa, a girl entered the carriage and, diving beneath the obligingly raised feet of the nuns, secreted herself behind their calves and the plush.

  Presently, the ticket collector appeared. The nuns, fussing deep in their purses, said nothing. The schoolgirls said nothing, either. Rumbold, who could hear the breathing of the fugitive, passed across his ticket with a trembling hand.

  He could see very well the dilated eyes, the dusty cheeks, the cramped arms of the girl. “If you will only come out of there,” he said, when the official had gone, “I will willingly pay your ticket to Madrid.”

  “I am not going to Madrid,” said the girl, “I am going to Alcolea.”

  “It is best to leave her alone,” said one of the nuns. “She will come to no harm. Here,” she said, and she passed a flask of coffee down to the girl, who drank eagerly.

  “But the train does not stop at Alcolea,” persisted Rumbold. “There is no stop between Saragossa and Guadalajara.”

  “Then she must jump off,” said the nun. “In the early morning, when we pass Alcolea, the train will be going slowly, for it is there that the mechanics eat their breakfast.”

  Rumbold was defeated. He stared at the girl and the girl stared at him. Her eyes were very dark and seemed, in the obscurity of the carriage, to be immobile. Presently she turned on her side, so that he could see no more than a portion of her dress, and one hand, outstretched and grimy.

  The train rolled on. The nuns slept. They slept sedately, with hands folded upon their laps, fingers in contact with the beads. The schoolgirls also slept, their mouths open and twitching from time to time in uneasy dream. Only Rumbold remained awake. He studied his map, but beyond Saragossa, where a further mob of passengers invaded the train, staring resentfully into the full carriage from the corridor . . . beyond Saragossa the light was dimmed. At four o’clock in the morning the ticket-inspector made his second round.

  “Where are we?” said Rumbold.

  “Vargas.” The man seized the shoulder of the nearest nun and shook her. “Wake up, Sister. Whatever will you do when the last Trump sounds?”

  The nuns wrestled with their many garments, blinding each other with a swing of a crucifix, with the folds of their sleeves, as they attempted to find their tickets. Neither schoolgirl could find her ticket at all, and ten minutes passed before Rumbold, with sudden intuition, pointed to the abandoned bag of acid drops.

  “That was Vargas,” he said, when peace had been restored. “If the girl wishes to leave at Alcolea it is time for her to be woken.”

  A nun bent down and tapped the girl’s knee. There was no response, and presently it was discovered that she was unconscious, having been overcome by the fumes of the radiator system.

  “Well that settles it,” said Rumbold. “She must lie on the seat. If the man comes round again I will pay her fare.”

  “What is she to you?” said one of the nuns.

  “Sister, she is nothing to me,” and to prove it, he stood up and averted his head as they fumbled with her clothing. A crowd of excited soldiers peered in at the scene from the corridor. One of the schoolgirls began to snivel.

  “She shouldn’t have come in here . . . she shouldn’t have come in here. Why can’t she pay her fare?”

  “Here, give her some of this,” said Rumbold. He unlocked his valise and passed across a brandy bottle. “The first thing to do, of course, is to open the window.” He strode across the carriage and lowered the sash a foot. The nuns raised their hands in horror as the night breeze dispersed the fug.

  “You will kill her. She will catch her death of cold.”

  “Nonsense, if you take the trouble to look, you will see that she has opened her eyes.”

  “Don’t hurt me . . . don’t hurt me,” the girl was saying. “I have done no wrong.”

  “Oh, give her the brandy for God’s sake,” said Rumbold. He looked at the girl for the first time, and was disconcerted to receive a wink in reply. She was about sixteen years of age, very poorly dressed, very dirty; with an accent which, to him at least, was almost incomprehensible. She was not beautiful, being cursed with a thickness of leg and ankle which matched ill with the lines of her waist and neck.

  “What is your name?” he said.

  “My name is Mañuela.”

  “Señor,” said one of the nuns. “You must leave the carriage. This is an affair which concerns women alone. We shall look after your luggage. Pull down the blinds as you leave.”

  “As you wish,” said Rumbold. He looked at the girl, and again received in reply something tantamount to a wink. He stepped into the corridor. The soldiers were excited.

  “What’s up, man? What’s going on in there?”

  “A woman has fainted. It is nothing.”

  “Then why have you left? Is there a seat vacant?” They jostled him, attempting to seize the handle of the door. Rumbold planted his feet apart, occupying the maximum amount of floor space. “Stand back,” he said. “There is no seat. You can see for yourselves that she is lying down in my place.”

  “Cursed foreigner,” they grumbled. “Why can he not book a sleeper like the rest of his kind?” Rumbold paid no attention to them. He looked out of the window. The darkness was fading. Already it was possible to distinguish the outlines of culverts and bushes. In the interval between the lighting of a cigarette and the last puff drawn from it, the whole plateau of Guadalajara became visible, with the peaks of the Guadarrama in the distance. A cold prospect, a cheerless prospect: the sun not yet being risen, scrag, scrub fields and streams alike remained a lifeless grey.

  It was very cold in the corridor. On the outer glass the soldiers had drawn pictures and inscriptions with their fingers. But that had been done during the night, and at a lower altitude. Now the frost of the morning seized the trickling moisture, congealing it into ice so that the pictures and rude words were formed anew, and in intaglio.

  Wine flasks were produced, and mouths grimaced to swallow, for the wine, too, was now icy and had lost the power to warm. And some there were ate bread and cheese, masticating slowly, without enjoyment, but from habit, because the day must begin with a meal.

  The ticket inspector reappeared. Rumbold, glancing into the carriage met the stare of the girl. She was awake, lying outstretched, her head pillowed upon what appeared to be his hat.

  “I shouldn’t go in there if I were you,” he said to the official.

  “Eh . . . how’s that . . . what do you mean?”

  “You see that girl? She’s a typhoid case. Those nuns are taking her to Madrid. I came out here rather than run the risk of infection.”

  “My God, and I’ve been in there twice already,” said the inspector. He hurried on.

  The train was travelling very slowly now. After consulting his map, Rumbold opened the inner door. The nuns were asleep.

  “You must be close to Alcolea now,” he said to the girl.

  “I don’t wish to go to Alcolea any more. I shall go on to Madrid.”

  “Very well. Do as you wish, but allow me to point out that you are ruining my hat.”

  She grinned. “What are you?” she said
, “French? Why did you pay my fare?”

  “I didn’t pay it. I merely bluffed the inspector. Are you really ill, or were you shamming?”

  “I was shamming. It was uncomfortable beneath those nuns. Their feet tickled me.”

  He considered her attentively. “Do you mind if I sit down?” he said. She said no, she did not mind. He could not make her out at all. There were elements which clashed: the extreme poverty of her clothes with the assurance of her manner; certain indications of good breeding which did not harmonise with her smelliness, her evident aversion to the use of soap and water.

  “I have been sleeping in the fields for three nights,” she said.

  “Ah?”

  “It is because I have run away from school.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Don’t say ‘indeed’ like that,” she said. “If you think I am lying, you should speak up. It is more manly.”

  “I have no opinion. Perhaps you have never been at school at all? What is the past participle of the French verb ‘surseoir,’ to suspend. . . . ?”

  “Sursis,” she said.

  “And the capital of Peru?”

  “Oh, for a Spaniard, that is easy: it is Lima.”

  “Well, well,” he said admiringly. “Now tell me more about this school. Why have you run away, for example?”

  “Because I hated the place. It is an establishment to train orphans for the teaching profession. I am an orphan myself. My father was killed in the Civil War . . . with the Republicans. He was a notary.”

  “Just a minute,” said Rumbold. “Before you tell me the complete story of your life, and so lose the advantage of surprise, let us get one important point clear. What do you want . . . why were you winking at me?”

  “Well, I had read that this was the way in which to attract a man’s attention.”

  “But for what purpose?”

  “Well, I thought, since you had already offered, that you might as well pay my fare to Madrid. So I winked to encourage you . . . to be kind, as you might say.”

  “Wait . . . excuse me for mentioning the matter . . . but I thought your original intention was to drop off at Alcolea.”

  “Certainly . . . but, as I told you, I have changed my mind. I have an aunt at Alcolea, but I see, upon reflection, that she is not a suitable person to have charge of me.”

  “And you think that I am more suitable?”

  “Oh, I don’t say that. You will pay my fare in the first place. After that, we shall see.”

  “What shall we see?” said Rumbold.

  “Well . . . you are a foreigner. Therefore you have no opportunity of placing me in a brothel, for example, or of using me in any other way of which I do not approve, for, if you misbehave, I can denounce you.”

  “You seem,” said Rumbold, “extraordinarily sure of your personal charms.”

  “Oh,” she said, “I look better when I am clean. It is this cursed carriage floor. When I am clean I am even elegant.”

  “Now listen to me,” said Rumbold. “Here are two hundred pesetas. Return to your school. Inflict your presence upon your aunt. Do what you please, but abandon any designs which you may have upon me. I am travelling through Spain. I am only staying for a few days. I have no time in which to complete the education of young ladies.”

  “But,” she said, pocketing the money, “don’t you want to see more of me? Perhaps you are shy, perhaps I have not given you sufficient encouragement. At my school there was a book of deportment: ‘Young ladies,’ it said, ‘whose interest has been aroused, may indicate the nature of their feelings by any means consistent with propriety.’”

  “It is not,” said Rumbold, “a book of deportment you require, but one containing a few straightforward moral precepts. Please allow me to take my bag and my hat . . . no, don’t detain me or I will drop both on the floor and wake these admirable nuns. At present, it is true, I can go no further than the corridor, but if you molest me out there I shall shout for help.”

  He rose and, grasping his baggage, stared at her with deep mistrust. Up to this point both had been speaking in low tones, in whispers almost, but now Rumbold raised his voice, causing the nuns to stir and the schoolgirls to stretch their legs as consciousness returned.

  “You see,” he said. “Ten seconds more and they will be fully awake. You had better lie down again, hadn’t you? You certainly won’t retain your seat unless you keep up the pretence of being ill.”

  The girl stuck out her tongue at him . . . but, all the same, she lay down. Rumbold went out into the corridor with his baggage. He burst out laughing.

  Four

  In Madrid, he had booked a room in advance at the Mora: this not because of some special preference . . . rather the reverse indeed . . . but because here it was that he had stayed in the old days, here that the corridors contained memories.

  He was given room number twenty-four, with French windows and a balcony, and a view overlooking the outer shrubberies of the Retiro. Number twenty-eight, on the same floor, had once lodged his friend, Jacques de Menthon, who had died in a scuffle for a fallen Sten gun in the backyard of a Kommandantur. In number thirty-seven, down the corridor, by the bathroom, Marcelle, luckiest and most long-lived of women couriers, had received her lovers with impartiality and ardour. In those days the Mora—surely the most uncomfortable and pretentious of all Madrilene hotels—had been a recognised staging post on the road to London. Ancient governesses evacuated from the Riviera by the inexorable pressure of German circumstance, could be heard calling for tea as they returned from ceremonial visits to the Cathedral, the Prado. Whole bomber crews, dressed in non-Iberian reach-me-downs, the lusts of their flesh unsatisfied by the niggardly Embassy allowance, had played poker all day beneath the dropping palms of the lounge, for stakes measured in fractions of a peseta. At the more exclusive tables in the restaurant, old gentlemen of military . . . and sometimes of diplomatic . . . appearance crumbled their bread, asked in low voices for Anis or Pastis or Slivovitz, depending upon the country of their origin, and sketched in pencil upon the table cloth the main features of the various theatres of hostilities (the management was eventually obliged to hang a notice in the restaurant, asking clients not to use indelible pencils for this purpose). These old gentlemen—Liberal members of the Belgian Senate, French generals on the retired list who had decided that patriotism might be more remunerative in Great Britain, the occasional Italian Communist moving from one set of hard times to another, the dispossessed but still vocal Jewish business men, the fashionable violinists whose long and expensively prepared conversion to democratic principles was now expected to yield dividends in would-be clever propaganda—these gentlemen, supported by the British taxpayer, were on their way to the current Land of Promise. The main question in their minds was whether they would travel by Gibraltar, which was dull, or by Lisbon, which was lively.

  Their destinies, together with those of returning agents, of escaped airmen and soldiers, of the governesses, and of the thousand odds and coloured sods (the Parsee stranded for some inexplicable reason in Milan, the West African in Liechtenstein) . . . these destinies had been in the hands of certain young gentlemen at the Embassy, more remarkable for their good breeding than for either tact or perspicacity. A sliding scale of beneficence existed: the French general, the successful agent received one sum for living expenses each day; the Parsee, and the Yid without security, quite another.

  In so much, that that portion of the British treasury reserve, those few thousands of Victorian and Edwardian gold sovereigns which were not being scattered in the Balkans to corrupt the already corrupt and to provide mules and Turkish delight for use of liaison officers . . . that remnant was being scattered here.

  Madrid in 1942, in 1943 . . . oh, of course, to claim the real putty medal of democracy one must have seen it in 1936—but at that ti
me Rumbold had already acquired the conviction that all men are bastards (“there are bastards in all nations”, the German officer had told him shortly after a sentry had struck him when manacled). He had acquired that conviction and was uninterested and unable to associate himself with a struggle between certain reactionary elements and other elements who, without travelling to the front, succeeded in decimating themselves in Barcelona. Franco, in Rumbold’s opinion, had been the best solution. Presently he would go, having spent much blood but having spent it in an unpharisaic manner. And this was important, very important to persons like Rumbold who had observed that, with the gentle evolution of the world, it was now impossible to declare one’s dislike of certain races, certain creeds, without being called, in turn, a Fascist.

  Madrid in ’42 and ’43 . . . a wide, a so very airy city, a kind of Perpignan transported without rhyme or reason to the level of mid-Sierra, and then chopped by ten leafy variants of the Boulevard Haussmann. The suburbs drop off into dung heaps and piles of rusting petrol cans. Within a mile of all three railway stations, carts, manned by peasants, wend their way towards the outer wilderness. The occupants bear flowers to be laid upon graves, and carbines with which to shoot rabbits.

  And Madrid in 1946 was not so very different. Such, at least, was Rumbold’s discovery. The season, to be sure, was now winter: chestnuts had replaced figs upon the carts of street vendors, but the contrast between splendour and squalor remained: a contrast without its parallel in any other city except Cairo.