A Necessary Action (37 page)

Although Tornilla had not said anything of the kind, he was sure that Santiago had been shot in the stomach and had not died until three or four hours later.

He did not notice anyone or anything during his walk through the town. Not until he reached the alleyway which led up to Barrio Son Jofre did he stop and listen to something which he had not at once recognized. But a few seconds later he realized it was the sound of the streams from the mountain rushing and bubbling through their underground passages.

The door to the house was shut but the key was outside in the door. He went in, looked round and everything was just as before, apart from a large number of muddy footmarks on the floor.

Then he went back out on to the steps. The truck was still there and was standing where it had always stood. Seven months had gone by since someone had last driven it, but only a week since they had tried out the engine, so it ought to function still. And there was enough gas in the tank to get him to the provincial capital.

A plane flew low over the town and with a narrow margin rose up over the mountain ridge. A slow grey military plane; he did not know what type, but he could see that it was anything but modern. As he had never before seen a plane over the town, he gazed after it and the episode had the effect of at once making him more aware of his immediate surroundings.

He looked round and observed a number of things, the dog rolling about at his feet for instance, and a small, bare-legged boy standing in the shadow of the houses down in the alley, and the sun beginning to break up the clouds, first in the east, over the sea. What could he do with the dog? Take her with him? Let her loose? Try to find someone to look after her? In that case, who?

It was a problem, and he brooded over it as he went into the room and aimlessly began picking over his scattered possessions.

He was out in the kitchen when he saw a shadow fall over the patch of sun on the floor and someone knocked on the door, energetically and decisively.

The little civil guard with a round face was standing on the steps.

No, thought Willi Mohr, it’s not possible. It can’t be.

The man thrust his hand inside his uniform jacket and took out a brown envelope with an official stamp on it.

‘From Sergeant Tornilla,’ he said, saluting.

By the time Willi Mohr had opened the envelope and was standing with the receipt for the pistol in his hand, the civil guard had already gone.

In the upper left hand corner of the receipt, Tornilla had clipped a small piece of torn-off paper and written on it in his neat backward-sloping handwriting:

You won’t forget about Amadeo Prunera, will you?

Willi Mohr felt the dressing pulling on his face. It must have been because he was smiling. He was smiling because he had been frightened for the first time for more than a year.

He began to gather up the articles in the room again, a little more systematically, but still slowly and indolently. He thought about the dog and said half-aloud: ‘I’ll have to take her with me after all.’

There was a rustle at the door and he turned round. The small ragged boy he had seen down in the alley was standing with one foot in the doorway, watchfully, as if prepared to run away immediately.

‘Are you the German gentleman?’

Willi Mohr nodded.

‘Are you quite sure?’

‘Yes, absolutely.’

The boy took two steps forward, cautiously and suspiciously, like a cat in a strange house, then stretched out his clenched right fist and opened it. On the dirty palm lay a piece of paper, crumpled and folded firmly.

Willi Mohr did not understand and several seconds passed before he came to sufficiently to take the piece of paper and unfold it. It was the back of an old envelope and the pencilled writing was unsteady and feeble, as if written in the dark.

Fetch 600 yards from cross-roads side-road right

left first fork second farm. Abandoned. In big

house under stairs. Deliver to S. Margarita Fontane’s

garage right of entrance brown Dodge with load of

wood. Inside garage Definitely before three

Under the last sentence the writer had drawn a wobbly line,
and slightly lower down there were six more words, very carelessly written:

Caught now am sending money gas.

Willi Mohr read through the text twice. His brain was working slowly and sluggishly. Then he looked for a long time at the boy, before saying: ‘Who gave you this?’

‘Santiago, mister.’

‘Have you shown it to anyone?’

‘No, mister.’

‘Have you read it yourself?’

‘Can’t read, mister.’

‘How did you get here?’

‘Ran, but didn’t dare come near at first.’

‘Where’s Santiago?’

‘Don’t know, mister. He ran into the fish-shed and there was a bang. There were civil guards there too.’

The boy was perhaps eleven years old. He was ragged and dirty and it was clear that he had recently been sweating profusely, for there were long light streaks down his brown face. He dug into his thin shirt and took out a roll of filthy tatty notes.

‘That’s all of it, mister.’

They were hundred-peseta notes. Willi Mohr thanked him, then gave him back two notes. The boy’s mouth fell open in dumb astonishment.

‘You can go,’ said Willi Mohr, ‘and you must promise not to tell anyone about this.’

‘Yes, mister,’ said the child, backing towards the door.

‘No, wait a minute.’

Willi Mohr took out two more hundred-peseta notes, folded them into a piece of wrapping-paper and wrote on the outside with a red crayon that happened to be lying on the stairs: To Amadeo Prunera for the brushwood from the German.

‘Take this and go and sit somewhere where no one can see you. Wait until you’ve seen me drive away in the truck. Then wait for two more hours and then go and find someone called Amadeo Prunera and give him this.’

‘I haven’t got a watch, mister.’

‘Listen to the church clock. When it strikes three times you can go. Understand?’

‘Yes, mister.’

The child walked backwards to the door and vanished.

Willi Mohr sat down on the stairs and stared out through the open door. Clouds of flies were buzzing round in the sun that was just breaking through. He sat there for twenty minutes without moving.

Then he looked at his watch. It was already a quarter-past one.

He got up, fetched the piassava brush and went out to sweep out the truck. Then he began to carry his belongings out from the house. He did not possess much and in ten minutes everything was placed between or under the seats; clothes, painting gear and pictures. He had put only two things in his pockets, his pocket-book and his passport.

Willi Mohr returned to his place on the stairs, unfolded Santiago’s note and read through it ten times. Then he went out to the kitchen, tore the paper up and put the pieces in the fireplace. He got out the notebook and systematically tore out page after page. When he had crumpled them up one at a time and placed them in a heap on the hearth, he struck a match and set light to them, watching until there was nothing left but a small pyramid of white ash on the blackened stones.

Willi Mohr went out of the house in Barrio Son Jofre, locked the door and left the key in the lock. He picked the dog up by the scruff of her neck and lifted her into the truck. Then he stood in front of the radiator, bent down and turned the handle. He had to keep turning for a long time before the engine finally got going.

He looked round once more and raised his hand to the cat which was just slipping round the corner of the house.

‘ ’Bye,’ said Willi Mohr.

He climbed up into the camioneta and drove away.

Two civil guards were standing at the cross-roads. They were smoking, their carbines on their backs, and one of them raised his arm in a vague gesture which might have been either a greeting or a halt-signal.

Willi Mohr braked. One of the guards looked idly at his luggage, raised a corner of the blanket and drove his arm at random under the heap of clothes and canvases and other
rubbish. The other one came round to the driver’s place and shouted: ‘Are you moving?’

Willi Mohr leant out of the truck and bent forward to make himself heard over the sound of the engine.

‘Yes, but I’m coming back soon. I’m just going down to the puerto to leave the dog.’

‘Difficult with bitches,’ shouted the civil guard. ‘I’ll shoot her for you if you like.’

He laughed and waved. Willi Mohr drove on.

The side-road was narrow and twisty and stony and the camioneta rocked violently. Just beyond the fork lay the first abandoned farm and six or seven hundred yards farther up the second. Willi Mohr drove into the stony yard and stopped.

The place had been well chosen, wedged between bushy, inaccessible mountain hills and hidden from sight by the ruined terraced fields. The house was built of rough yellow stones and was half in ruins. The pump pointed crookedly up towards the sky above the dried-up well, like a tombstone commemorating wasted toil.

The air in the house was oppressive and hot, the mud feet deep after the rain, and a heavy smell and the buzzing of myriads of flies indicated where the boxes were standing piled up beneath the remainder of the staircase.

Willi Mohr dragged them out one by one, turned them upside down and carried the arms out to the camioneta. The fish and butcher’s offal lay there in heaps, the entrails and pig’s stomachs already crawling with maggots.

He worked for half-an-hour before he was satisfied with the loading. The weapons, hand-grenades and boxes of ammunition lay well hidden under his own modest possessions. He had one automatic-pistol over and did not dare put it in. As he carried it over to the well, he absently tried to make out the Czechoslovakian inscription on the barrel. Then he dropped the weapon down the well and went back to the truck, lifted down the dog and starting-handle. When he had turned the first bend, the dog was already far behind him.

The civil guards at the cross-roads had not been relieved. They smiled and saluted carelessly as he drove by.

Willi Mohr was out on the main road. He jammed the accelerator
down to the floorboards and drove into the first serpent-like coil. High above he could see the pass in the mountain range, its outlines shimmering beneath the clear blue sky.

The camioneta roared and shook, slowly making its way upwards.

He felt excitement tugging at his diaphragm, making him draw in his stomach and lean over the steering-wheel.

He considered it unlikely that there would be any more checkpoints in the district at this time of day and if there were one, then it would be on the other side of the pass. On the other side it was downhill, and then he would soon be out of the district and would again be able to benefit from the advantages of being a foreigner.

He grew calm again and remembered the civil guards at the cross-roads. They would laugh when the dog turned up and would think she had run all the way up from the puerto. He hoped they would not shoot her.

He was already half way up the series of bends. The pass seemed to lie directly above him. He felt as if he were one with the truck, functioning as an integral part of a rational and purposeful piece of machinery. The old engine rattled and roared, but he knew it well and was sure it would not let him down.

The sky had cleared and the sun blazed down on his back and shoulders. He drove round the next bend. And the next. And the next. It was slow going but he was nearly up now.

He knew that for every yard the chances of people from the guard-post taking the trouble to go that far on their bicycles lessened. At that, he immediately realized that he was in the process of committing a crime which they had attributed to him in advance.

Just before he got to the pass, he overtook a donkey-cart loaded with jumble and scrap-iron.

He drove round the last bend. He was up.

The pass was empty.

He switched off the engine, let the truck roll over the crown, put his foot on the brake and stopped just by the low stone wall.

On the other side of the crown, the road changed. It did not wind down in snake-like curves, but ran in a long uneven curve
along the side of the mountain. From up here he could see several kilometres of it, far into the next district. The whole of the bit that he could see was quiet and desolate, with no vehicles or people.

And yet he stayed there and listened to the hard metallic clicking from the cooling engine. He waited until the old man with the donkey-cart came past, his head down, moving at exactly the same jog-trot as the donkey.

‘Good-day,’ said the old man, without looking up.

‘Good-day,’ said Willi Mohr.

He gazed after the cart until it was nothing but a dark dot which vanished round a protruding rock far away.

It had been moving at the same even jog-trot all the way. No one had stopped it. The coast was clear.

Willi Mohr took his foot off the brake and let the truck roll, at first slowly, then swiftly and accelerating rapidly. He smiled and felt the adhesive tape pull at his face. For the first time in his life he was doing something positive, something he found meaningful and with a point to it. He enjoyed the situation and relished controlling the rushing truck. Half the road surface and sometimes even more was dotted with rocks and stones washed down from the mountain. But drive a truck he certainly could, and he avoided them without much difficulty.

His speed was now quite considerable and at the approaches to the first bend he began to brake. The braking system locked for a fraction of a second, then freed itself completely and the brake pedal sank unresisting to the floorboards.

He managed to think: It doesn’t matter, I’ll brake with the engine.

Then he was round the bend and he saw a civil guard rush out on to the road, making a halt-signal thirty yards ahead of him. Two others were standing at the roadside, their bicycles flung down against some low bushes.

The situation gave him no choice. He drove on. The guard on the road only just had time to leap aside, and then he was past. No shots came from behind.