A Necessary Action (33 page)

As he stood there, a large piece of masonry loosened from the wall and fell down on to the soaking ground. He thought he heard the crack of a shot through the noise of the rain, but he was not certain.

Willi Mohr did not once leave the house in Barrio Son Jofre during the afternoon or evening. Once or twice he considered getting himself something to eat, but he only had to think about
the squid tentacles and the offal for his appetite to disappear immediately. Although he was wet through and everything indoors was quite damp, he did not feel especially uneasy and was not cold.

Although he did not think the arms-smuggling story was of any great significance and was convinced no one would find the compromising goods on the rubbish-heap, he sensed a rising excitement in face of the events ahead. He knew that something was about to happen, but he did not know what.

Most of the afternoon he sat on the stairs and thought. For more than an hour he turned over the pages of his passport. He studied the different visas thoroughly and suddenly found himself wondering about when and where and for what reason his passport would be stamped next.

His thoughts were muddled and undisciplined for long spells at a time. The events of the day had indeed enriched his store of new facts and lead-threads, but he was incapable of sorting them out or following them up. Nothing fell in with the pattern he had already defined and held to for a long time. The equation was not working out, although it ought to be doing so, and as a result life refused to appear simple and free of problems.

And it seemed to him that if his will to live was about to return, then it was doing so at a particularly ill-chosen moment.

Even after darkness had fallen, Willi Mohr still went on sitting on the stairs, thinking that there were altogether too many pieces of the jig-saw puzzle. Then he started listening. The downpour continued with the same monotonous force, but when he listened carefully and grew familiar with the sounds, certain nuances began to come through, for instance that sometimes it decreased in order to work itself up again to new strength soon afterwards. As if the rain itself were alive and breathing.

It was nine o’clock. He closed the door, undid his belt, pulled his shirt out of trousers and went and lay down on the mattress, flat out under the blanket, now swollen and decomposing like a piece of grey paper in a plant-press.

He fell asleep twenty minutes later, but before that he experienced a moment of sexual obsession, coming suddenly and violently and its physical manifestation was so ungovernable that
he realized that using his will-power to overcome it would be useless. There was only one way of freeing himself.

Willi Mohr lay on his back and looked at naked women. Barbara Heinemann, and the Norwegian woman who had lived upstairs, and oddly enough the girl on the tractor-paper too. He had in fact never seen her undressed and the only time he had let his fingers glide over her cheek and neck down under her vest, she had blushed and perspired and gone on talking. He remembered a collar-bone which was slender and brittle and a breast beneath her bra and her polo-necked sweater. It lay in his hand like a terrified animal, soft and warm and small, its hard little nose hidden in his palm. And all the time she had talked on and on, her head down, quickly and disjointedly and mostly about production. The course of events was violent and strictly mechanical, the cramps beginning in his testicles and spreading out all over his loins. Then his thigh and calf muscles knotted and all his sinews stretched, first in his feet, but soon after in his neck and arms too, and then the dam burst into a scarlet pulsating haze.

He was almost naked, as he had had enough presence of mind to take his pants and trousers off and unbutton his shirt. He lay in the dark dripping room, on a flock mattress which had begun to go mouldy, alone, his heart thumping.

A minute or two later he found his damp clothing and pulled them on again.

Eighteen months had past since he had slept with a whore in a brothel in Cologne. Since then he had had only one other opportunity, in Marseilles at the beginning of May, and then he had had other things to think about. So it was natural that he masturbated, but it irritated him all the same. More than anything else, it seemed ridiculous.

Willi Mohr fell asleep and was woken by the sound of the fish-van’s engine. It was one o’clock, and raining as before. Santiago came in from the darkness in his shining wet oilskins. He took off his sou’wester and said: ‘The whole district is crawling with police and soldiers. I was stopped twice on the way here. The last time I thought they were going to take the van apart.’

He took out a cigarette and lit it above the paraffin lamp.

‘The stuff must be got there before the siesta tomorrow. The action will presumably be postponed, but the man I spoke to didn’t think it’d be abandoned. But they must have got wind of something. There can’t be that many people on the roads for a round-up or an ordinary routine check.’

‘What action?’ said Willi Mohr.

‘The strike. Four hundred factory workers above Santa Margarita are going on strike tomorrow afternoon. They must have that load before then.’

‘I wonder if violence is the right way,’ said Willi Mohr.

‘The strikes that can be achieved now, and which can in some way be organized beforehand, are not very big ones. As strikes are illegal and the ones that occur are small and local, then they’re always broken with violence. And as that’s what happens anyhow, there’s no point in the workers letting themselves be butchered like a flock of sheep, without putting up any resistance. Instead it’s important that they show that there are still people who dare fight and that we can get help from outside, with arms for instance. In that way it’ll be possible to carry through bigger actions later on and those actions needn’t be armed, but will be effective all the same.’

Willi Mohr looked questioningly at him. Santiago smiled joylessly and said: ‘I didn’t think all that up. Do you know who said that?’

‘No.’

‘A man you mentioned earlier today.’

‘Antonio Millan?’

‘Yes, I asked him about it one day.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘No idea.’

‘Has he got a wart between his eyebrows?’

‘How did you know that? Have you met him?’

His voice had turned suspicious again.

‘No. They showed me a photograph at the guard-post.’

Santiago had been kneeling down by the lamp as he smoked. Now he crushed his cigarette-end against the stone floor and got up.

‘The arms must be got away from here at once,’ he said. ‘This isn’t a good hiding-place.’

‘Are you going to try now? Tonight?’

‘No, I’ll get through in daylight in the morning. That’ll be better. But I’ll move the stuff now, to a safe place, not far down the road to the puerto. I couldn’t take it there this morning because of that jeep.’

‘But the patrols?’

‘They’ll withdraw them later on, or at dawn.’

‘You might as well let the things stay here. The rubbish-heap’s a good place.’

‘When I came from town, it had stopped raining there. It’ll stop here too, perhaps tonight, perhaps early tomorrow morning. Then you can see this house with its rubbish heap and everything from miles away, up in the mountains. There are always people up there. I know the ropes in this business. Been at it a long time. It was coffee and cigarettes before. There’s always been something, ever since I was small. The priest, one of them that is, for there are lots of them, once said I was too intelligent to get caught. And my father says I’m a wastrel. Although it’s thanks to me he earns more money than any other fisherman down there. Although he was all through the war on the
Libertad
, even at Cabo Palos where we won a great victory, he would still do nothing against
them
. Not now, and neither would he agree to me doing so. He argues that if you’re once beaten, then you’ll never rise again. Lots of them who were in on it seem to think that way.’

‘Not all that strange, perhaps.’

‘Perhaps not. And he’s right about me. I am a wastrel.’

Santiago took out a plug of tobacco, drew out his knife and cut off a piece with a quick slash.

‘Good knife,’ said Willi Mohr.

‘All my tools are perfect,’ said Santiago and he laughed loudly.

When Willi Mohr looked at him, he saw that his eyes were shining and exalted under the rim of his sou’wester. His sunburnt face was tense and glittering, not with raindrops, but with sweat.

‘I must load up now,’ said Santiago. ‘Goodbye.’

‘I’ll help.’

‘No need. This is nothing to do with you.’

‘I’ll help all the same.’

They went round the house, slipping and stumbling over the half-buried stones sticking out of the ground. The rain was heavier than ever, beating down with a roaring sound, as if wishing to do its very best before its predicted end.

The move was troublesome in the darkness and wet, and although they worked as quickly as they could, it took them forty minutes to get the boxes stowed on to the fish-van. On one occasion Santiago tripped and fell against the wall. The box slipped out of his hands and the parts of two automatic-pistols hurtled down into the mud, together with a foul mess of stinking pig’s stomachs and rotten intestines. He hit his knee against a stone in the fall and found it difficult to move. While Willi Mohr shovelled up the horrible mixture, Santiago leant against the house and held the paraffin lamp, shaded with a flap of his oilskin jacket.

When the boxes were on the back of the van, well roped and with the tarpaulin over them, they went into the house and locked the door behind them. They had been working hard and were breathing heavily. Both were soaked with sweat and rain, and in spite of the downpour, their arms and legs were covered with clay and filth under their clothes.

Santiago stood with his back to the wall beside the door. He drew in a deep breath and said, unevenly and jerkily: ‘Hope there are no guards at the cross-roads. Then I can free-wheel the whole way with the lights out and the engine switched off.’

Willi Mohr nodded.

‘You can go down first and check. I’ll stop the van at the entrance to the alleyway and wait. If anyone’s down there, then hurry back. Otherwise I’ll count to a hundred before I take off the brakes. If there’s a checkpoint, then I’ll start the engine and drive in the other direction.’

Willi Mohr nodded again.

After a brief pause he said: ‘O.K. Let’s get going.’

‘Yes,’ said Santiago.

The house was silent. Outside the rain was crashing down with apocalyptic force. Santiago was still leaning against the white-washed wall, now grey with damp. Willi Mohr stood in the middle of the room, his feet apart and his arms hanging. Neither of them moved.

Time floated by, perhaps a minute, perhaps two, long and unreal.

‘Where’s my brother?’ said Santiago Alemany.

‘He’s dead.’

‘I know. Where is he?’

‘On the sea-bed.’

‘How did he die?’

‘I killed him.’

The cat came in through the hole in the door, thin and soaking wet, with scratches round its eyes. It looked from one man to the other and miaowed.

‘Who killed Dan Pedersen?’ said Willi Mohr.

‘My brother.’

‘And Siglinde?’

‘I did.’

‘How?’

‘With the knife. From behind.’

Neither of them moved. The cat sat between them and licked its behind.

‘I don’t ask you to believe me,’ said Santiago Alemany, ‘but we didn’t mean to, not from the beginning. And when I did it I thought it the only solution. Ramon didn’t want to do it. It was a … a necessary action.’

Willi Mohr noted those last words ‘una cosa forzada’. It was a good expression.

‘That’s no excuse,’ said Santiago. ‘It wasn’t planned, but I knew it might suddenly happen. I have never wanted anything so much as I wanted her. I betrayed two hundred people, who were relying on me, just for the chance of seeing her bathing. After that I didn’t know what I was doing. And yet everything happened quite by chance. It wasn’t a matter of chance that you killed Ramon.’

‘No,’ said Willi Mohr.

‘It was planned. You lay in wait for him.’

‘Yes. Especially towards the end. Every minute, for twenty days. It was a long time before he realized it.’

‘He didn’t think all that clearly. Especially the last six months.’

The conversation was being carried on quite calmly. They still hadn’t moved.

‘You took the money he had with him,’ said Santiago absently, as if he were thinking of something else.

‘Some of it.’

‘It wasn’t his. He was supposed to give it to a contact over there. In Corsica.’

‘I didn’t know that. And if I had, I shouldn’t have bothered about it.’

‘It was all wrong,’ said Santiago Alemany. ‘I haven’t thought about anything else except those people for the last six months. I’m no good at killing people.’

‘Neither am I.’

They looked at each other, silently and blankly.

‘It’s time we got going now,’ said Santiago Alemany, pushing himself away from the wall.

He stopped with his hand on the handle and turned his head.

‘What are you going to do now?’ he said.

‘Go home.’

‘To your country?’

‘Yes.’

Santiago opened the door and went out, and Willi Mohr followed him. When the other man had climbed into the driver’s seat, Willi Mohr put his shoulder against the back and got the van moving. It ran easily on the gentle slope and he felt it rolling away from him. As he made his way down the narrow crooked alley, he felt surprised that Santiago had been able to get there without lights. Suddenly he bumped into a corner of the back of the van and realized that he had reached the main road. As he walked past he rapped on the mudguard with his knuckles to show he had passed. There was no patrol at the crossroads. He walked ten yards in each direction but saw nothing. Then he stood on the roadside with one foot on the stone wall and waited. A few seconds later the fish-van rolled past. He heard the bearings squeaking and the splashing round the wheels, but all he saw was a vague movement in the darkness.