A Necessary Action (22 page)

‘And you could buy those things if you had money, I suppose?’

‘Only necessities, simple things. Everything else was called a luxury and was for export only.’

‘Why?’

‘To improve the economy. Our money wasn’t worth anything in other countries.’

‘But there was food?’

‘Yes, everyone had food and clothes and somewhere to live. And work.’

‘Why did you leave it then?’

The question was direct and caught him off his guard. Willi Mohr sought for words for a moment. For some reason he wanted to answer as explicitly as possible.

‘Such huge sacrifices were demanded and so little given in return. Everything, your whole life, was built on a concept of a
system. If you lived there, you had to be convinced that the system was really worth the sacrifices, you had to believe in the justification of the ideas, so to speak. If you didn’t, then it was all pointless, and you couldn’t stand outside it.’

‘It was Communism there, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you have to be a Communist?’

‘Yes.’

‘And otherwise? Prison? Or …’

He made an international gesture, raising his chin and drawing his forefinger across his throat.

‘No, not like that. You didn’t have to be a Communist like that. No one demanded it and you couldn’t even be a member of the party just like that either, even if you wanted to. But you have to be one from conviction, to be really able to work in that way and on those conditions.’

Santiago sat in silence for a while and looked absently in the direction of the door.

‘When I was a boy, during the war, there were Communists here too. I remember them arranging meetings. Andres Nin came here and spoke, on the quay in the puerto. I was about ten then. Or eleven. Then the war came. I had two brothers, older than me, and they were both killed.’

Willi Mohr nodded.

‘Communism is forbidden here now,’ said Santiago, after a minute or two.

‘So are all socialist movements, aren’t they?’

‘Yes,’ said Santiago.

He looked searchingly at Willi Mohr. Then he said: ‘I’ve never bothered with politics. But last winter something happened which …’

Willi Mohr started and his eyed widened.

Santiago stopped abruptly and got up.

He pushed the dish away with his foot, picked up a packet of cigarettes from the stone bench and went out of the kitchen.

Willi Mohr gathered up the dishes into a heap and put them in the corner by the water-jar. Then he opened a packet of Ideales and smoked with deep long draws. He had not had any cigarettes for a week.

When he went out on to the steps, he saw that the evening was already drawing in. The sun was low and throwing long, violet shadows along the ground. The air was dry and hot and in the east the sky flaring in colours varying from indigo blue to purple above a thick black band of the rising dusk.

Santiago Alemany was standing by the camioneta, absently kicking one of the flat front tyres.

‘Punctured?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘It shouldn’t stand like this. Wrecks the tyres.’

Willi Mohr shrugged his shoulders.

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Gasket.’

‘A gasket’s not the whole world.’

‘Perhaps the cylinder-head too.’

Santiago bent down over the engine and ran over it with his fingers.

‘Don’t think so,’ he said.

Willi Mohr did not reply.

‘It’ll be difficult to get it going again.’

‘Yes.’

Santiago walked round the truck and extracted the spare tyre lying on a rack above the back axle. He rolled it round a couple of times and pushed his fingers in it to test it.

‘This is a good tyre,’ he said.

He was right. There had been no spare tyre when Dan Pedersen had taken over the camioneta, and as that had been at a time when he and Siglinde had had money, they had bought one to be on the safe side, but they had never had a puncture and the spare had never been used.

‘I could use it,’ said Santiago. ‘I’ve been thinking of buying one for some time, but haven’t done anything about it.’

‘It’s not mine.’

‘No, I suppose not, really.’

Santiago smiled joylessly. He took a roll of notes out of his pocket and extracted three hundred pesetas. Willi Mohr made no effort to take the money. He was looking suspiciously at the fish-van.

‘They’re exactly the same size,’ said Santiago.

He put the notes down on the running-board of the camioneta, found a small stone and placed it on top of them.

‘Not that anything gets blown away in this weather,’ he said.

‘It’s too much,’ said Willi Mohr.

‘On the contrary, a tyre like that costs at least a hundred duros.’

Santiago rolled the tyre across to the Ford.

‘Your Spanish is really good now,’ he said.

He turned his back to the steps, bent down and jerked the starting-handle. The engine started immediately. Dusk was falling quickly and it was almost dark.

Santiago climbed into the driver’s seat and switched on the lights.

He said something, but his words were drowned by the sound of the engine.

As he backed away, the beam from the headlights fell on the man on the steps, standing quite still, his hands in his trouser pockets.

When the sound of the engine had died away, Willi Mohr went back into the house and fumbled for the pistol under the pillow. He stood with the gun in his hand, talking to himself.

‘It won’t come off,’ he said.

He had a sense of helpless unreasonable despair, as if the very foundations of his existence had suddenly collapsed.

He pushed over the safety catch and tucked the gun under the mattress. Then he went out into the kitchen and struck a match to look at the things lined up on the stone bench.

‘Hell,’ he said.

He went out to the camioneta and found the notes, rolled them up and pushed them into his pocket.

As he shut the door from the outside and turned the key, he had collected himself sufficiently to think: This won’t do. I must wait him out as I did the other one. There’s plenty of time.

Willi Mohr went to the Café Central to drink his evening coffee.

Although there were only fourteen days left until Christmas, the hot weather continued and the stone floor felt warm under his bare feet. It was half-past eight and Willi Mohr had just woken up. He was wearing creased pyjama trousers, his hair was untidy and he was yawning as he unlocked the outer door. The heat stood like a wall outside the house, white and blinding.

On the running-board of the camioneta sat Santiago Alemany, elbows on his knees, hat pulled down over his eyes, whittling boredly on a stick. At his feet stood a metal tool-box and beside it lay a gasket, a brand-new one, of shining copper.

‘Good-day,’ he said, pushing back his hat off his forehead.

Willi Mohr nodded. Then he cleared his throat and spat indifferently on the ground.

He was dumbfounded and painfully moved. This, to be caught in bed, was something he had not reckoned with and he looked round incredulously.

‘I was forced to leave the van down there,’ said Santiago. ‘They were killing a pig in the middle of the road.’

He dropped the piece of wood, but still went on fiddling with his knife.

‘It’ll soon be Christmas,’ he said. ‘Then they’ll eat themselves full.’

Willi Mohr glanced down at the knife and went back into the house. He did not like the situation and had no desire to stand naked in the kitchen with his back to the door. On the other hand, he could hardly take the gun with him and put it down beside the basin. He scratched his chest and thought. Then he shrugged, took off his trousers and began to wash.

When he came out again Santiago had taken out the tools and was already bending over the engine.

‘This’ll take several hours,’ he said.

Willi nodded. They would probably have to carry on all day and perhaps the next day too, if they wanted to get the truck going. And then he would not use it, anyhow. The whole operation seemed pointless to him, unless something lay behind it all.
Perhaps Santiago was thinking of using the camioneta instead of his worn-out Ford.

‘Let’s start then, shall we?’ said Santiago.

‘We must drain it first,’ said Willi Mohr.

Santiago handed him the spanner.

Willi hesitated a moment before getting down on his back to get at the stopper. He was painfully aware that he was lying with his head and arms under the camioneta and the rest of his body utterly defenceless outside. The stopper was jammed and it took quite a while for him to loosen it; the mixture of oil and rusty water ran out of the engine and was sucked up into the dry soil between the cobblestones.

They worked in silence and without haste. When they had taken off the cylinder head and exposed the broken gasket, they took a rest and ate some bread with slices of sausage, then sat in the meagre shade of the outhouse wall for a smoke. Santiago said: ‘I’ve a friend who’s a seaman. He’s been to Hamburg several times. He says there are whole streets there full of bars and night-clubs, where the women dance with no clothes on and the girls parade naked in front of you in the brothels. And that the kiosks and ordinary tobacconists have books and papers full of naked women.’

‘That’s more or less true,’ said Willi Mohr.

‘Last time he told me he’d been to a place where a woman made love with a goat if you paid her twenty-five duros.’

Willi Mohr stuck out his lip and thought about Hugo Spohler, who had once told him that the whores in Egypt lay naked in the shop windows and smoked cigars from their cunts to demonstrate their professional skills. The world was full of exaggerations and anyhow Hugo had probably never been to Egypt.

‘It’s possible,’ he said.

‘Is it like that in your part of Germany?’

‘No, things like that are arranged better in the Federal Republic.’

‘Where?’

‘In West Germany, I mean.’

‘What are the women like in your country?’

‘Well, they don’t make love with goats,’ said Willi Mohr.

He was not particularly amused by the conversation and would
have preferred to put an end to it, but when he looked at Santiago he realized that even the last question had been quite serious.

‘They have quite different conditions from here,’ he said. ‘They work, at different things, in all kinds of occupations. As bus-drivers and building workers and engine-drivers, for instance. In factories and in the Customs. Well, everywhere. They have the same education as men and have quite a different place in society. So they also have the right to take the same liberties if they want to.’

They had gone back to the truck and were standing leaning over each side of the engine.

‘Liberties?’

‘Yes, to sleep with whoever they want to, for example, as often as they like and with as many as they like. They don’t all do that, but some do.’

‘And no one criticizes them?’

‘Of course, but no one they need bother about or take any notice of.’

‘And the brothels?’

‘Aren’t any.’

‘How do things work then?’

‘Quite well, I imagine. It’s not a problem. The problems are of quite a different kind.’

There was a short silence as they levered off the gasket and trimmed the edges. Willi Mohr tried out the pistons and found that the play was pretty large. As he did so, he thought about a couple of questions he was considering asking. Silently he formulated them but waited until the other man was leaning over the engine, trying out the new gasket, before he said: ‘It’s different here in Spain, isn’t it? It isn’t easy for you to make contact with other women, except those in the brothels, is it?’

‘No, it’s not easy,’ said Santiago.

He did not look up when he replied. He had taken off his hat, as it was in his way, and Willi Mohr stared at the back of his head with its smooth brown whorl of hair.

‘But what about the tourists?’ he said, grasping the spanner hard. ‘Don’t you try making love with them now and again?’

Santiago Alemany raised his head and looked at him, first straight in the eyes, then at the hand holding the spanner.

‘It happens,’ he said coldly.

He bent down and went on with the job. Willi Mohr had an impression that he had stiffened for a moment, as if expecting something, but he was not certain.

They said nothing else to each other for the rest of the afternoon.

The repairs were not complete and soon after six Santiago looked at his watch, picked up his tool-box and left. He did not say whether he was thinking of coming back the next day.

Willi Mohr did not allow himself to be surprised the next morning. When the little fish-van braked in front of the house, he was already sitting on the steps, waiting.

The engine was ready at midday but it took another hour before they could start it. Finally they pumped up the tyres, a tiring job as the foot-pump was old and inefficient, and they took turns at it. When Willi Mohr was doing the last wheel, Santiago stood just behind him and said: ‘We’ve a very strong sense of family here.’

‘I’ve heard that.’

‘If anything happens to a member of the family, we look upon it as a very serious matter.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Willi Mohr.

He did not bother to look up.

A moment later Santiago left. Willi Mohr had a feeling that it would be some time before he came back.

The events of the last two weeks had had a confusing effect on Willi Mohr. His relations with Santiago Alemany had developed into a series of situations which were not simple and he had not anticipated their origins.

He was still certain that sooner or later he would kill Santiago, but he no longer knew when or how.

For the first time in a year he grew quite conscious of his loneliness and isolation; he no longer had anything to wait for and so his life suddenly seemed artificial and meaningless.

He realized that he would probably live on for a number of days, but because that future could not be foreseen and also was not limited by any particular aim, it seemed to him only vague and repugnant.

When Santiago had gone, Willi Mohr had been seized with a genuine desire for companionship which he had not felt for a very long time. By tiring himself out physically, he found a reason for postponing thinking about it, at least until the following day.