The Blind Man of Seville (36 page)

‘Where there’s money,’ he says, fixing me with his young inexperienced eyes, ‘there’s danger.’

I wonder why he addresses this to me and he just says that danger means that premiums are always paid.

R. went to Madrid to work in construction but the owner of the building ran out of money. He then bought his way into a shoeshine syndicate. Only rich people have their shoes shined. He realized that rich people are rich only because they have superior knowledge. He listened to them and their talk was of Tangier, where the administration is both Spanish and corrupt and will stay that way for the foreseeable future. R. has it all worked out. I have to remind him that I don’t need money. He disagrees vehemently and tells me just how little even well-known artists make from their work. At the end of the evening we are quite drunk and he asks if he may sleep on my floor. He is cheerful and lively so I agree on the condition that he leaves before I start work.

21st December 1943

I’ve been robbed. R. and I came back from the Bodega Salinas, unlocked my room and found that someone had got in via the patio and stolen everything except my notebooks, drawings and paintings. My clothes, paints and even the Virgin above the bed have gone. The last is the worse loss because all my money was in the backing. I have only what is in my pocket. I tell the landlady what has happened. I am angry and I imply something about the only other user of the patio. She flies at me and between us we put our relationship beyond repair. Later we find broken pots in the patio and R. points to where somebody must have got in over the wall and used the pots, which were nailed into the stucco, to climb in and out.

22nd December 1943

The fat Moorish bitch is unforgiving and has appeared with her whipped cur of a husband and some other resident bandits to persuade us to leave. With my training I’m tempted to tear them to pieces but then I’d have the Guardia Civil to contend with and gaol. R. and I leave. He works on me relentlessly and now we are heading south on foot to Algeciras.

27th December 1943

I thought some of the Russians were poverty-stricken, primitive people, but the villages we’ve been through have revealed that this part of Spain is locked in some Dark Age with no hope and insanity a constant companion. It is not unusual to see people howling at the moon. In searching for food in one village R. came across a boy chained with a metal collar to a wall. His eyes were all pupil and in looking into them R. saw nothing to indicate there was anything human residing there.

5th January 1944, Algeciras

We have arrived here half-starved and in rags after an attack by some wild dogs who were hungrier than us. I killed three with my bare hands before the pack ran off leaving us torn and bleeding. R., who has always been respectful, now holds me in something like awe. There is a shrewdness about this boy that makes me feel uncomfortable.

7th January 1944, Algeciras

Spain in this state is no country for anyone. Africa is so close, visible and near across the straits. I can smell it and surprise myself by how much I want it again.

R. has come back saying that he’s found a
contrabandista
who has offered us two months work, food and lodging on the boat with a guarantee to drop us in Tangier with $10 each in our pockets. If it works we can renegotiate terms after the two-month trial period. I ask him what we have to do, but it is not a detail that interests him. He likes to do the deal. He produces two cigarettes, which shuts me up. I wonder why I’ve put myself so completely in his hands until I remember all those other legionnaires who left and came back to Dar Riffen, unable to stomach the outside world.

R. tells me something about himself as if to bind me to him. His tone is matter of fact. He recounts how a truckload of anarchists came into his village in 1936 and demanded from the mayor all the fascists. The mayor told them that they had all fled. The anarchists returned two days later with a list of names. Among the names were Raúl’s parents. The anarchists took them off into the ravine and shot them all. ‘Almost everybody I knew was shot that afternoon,’ he said. He was twelve years old.

10th January 1944, Algeciras

The contrabandista’s boat is an old fishing vessel about 15 metres long and 3 or 4 metres wide. It has one large hold aft with all the accommodation in the fore. There’s a small wheelhouse with two cracked panes of glass; underneath is the engine, which is where we find Armando. He is thickset with black hair and a dirty, stubbled face. His eyes are brown and soft but he has a thin-lipped mouth with a taut smile. I don’t dislike him, especially when he makes up a stew of beans, tomatoes, garlic and chorizo. He tells us there are clothes in one of the cabins that will fit us better than anything of his would. We eat and drink and I feel fat and sleepy but remember to ask A. whose clothes we are wearing. They belonged to the last crew who were shot and killed by some Italians. R. asks him how he got away and he says bluntly: ‘I killed the Italians.’

After the crumbling and sordid Algeciras, Tangier is prosperous. The port is full of ships and all the cranes are working. The dockside is massed with Moroccans, either huddled under the pointed hoods of their burnouses or crouching under the weight of some cargo. Trucks and cars crawl amidst the jostle of humanity; many of them are large American automobiles. Above the port, in a commanding position, is the Hotel Continental. Other hotels line the Avenida de España — the Biarritz, the Cecil, the Mendez. I blanche at the possibility that my father has moved here to take advantage of the boom.

R. jumps about the foredeck, whooping for joy. A. looks at me with dead eyes and asks what this is all about. I tell him that R. has the same nose for money that a dog has for a bitch on heat. A. rubs his chin, which rasps against his rope-hardened hands. I would like to draw those hands … and his face, where the sensual and the brutal meet.

Once we have moored up A. has a private talk with R. who disappears. A. smokes a pipe; he gives me a paper and tobacco to roll a cigarette. He puffs away and says: ‘You’re the best crew I’ve ever had.’ I tell him that we haven’t done anything yet. ‘But you will,’ he says. ‘R. will be the trader and you’ll do the killing.’ Those words chill my guts. Is that all he could see when he looked into my face? I realize that R. has been talking.

11th January 1944

We sailed last night. R. was back within a few hours, followed by an American and two Moroccans wheeling a barrow with two 200-litre drums of diesel. The fuel was cheaper than any A. had ever bought. R. and A. talked some more prices and by nine we were loading sacks of chickpeas and flour and 8 drums of gasoline. R. offers to do the books and A. says: ‘What books?’ R. can read and write but his real gift is with numbers. He did the books for his parents from the age of eleven. ‘When they went to market they bought this and sold that. I wrote it down. After six months I could tell them where they were making money and losing it.’ This market was in the next village. ‘Now you know why your parents were shot by the anarchists,’ I say. This had never occurred to him.

13th January 1944

We held off the coast before going into the small fishing village of Salobreña under cover of darkness. A. signals from off shore and, on receiving the right reply, moves in. While we’re waiting A. lets me have a look at his only firearm, a shotgun with engraved silver above the trigger guard. ‘A work of art to kill with,’ I say. I’m only nervous that I have to do this work with just two shots, but he assures me that the shot spread is very discouraging for those on the margins. They go off to do the business and I guard the ship. They come back half an hour later arguing. The buyers would not accept R.’s inflated price. A. is furious that he has to sail to another port and find another buyer. R. tells him to be patient, they will be back to talk to us again. A. paces the deck. R. smokes. At 3 a.m. R. tells A. to start the engines. As R. prepares to cast off four men come running towards us. I patrol the deck with the shotgun. Money changes hands. We unload and leave before dawn.

15th January 1944

R. shows A. that if he’d accepted the price offered at Salobreña he would have broken even and if he’d paid his usual price for diesel he’d have made a loss. R. works on him about the type of cargo he is shipping. It’s too heavy and not profitable enough for a small ship. He says we should be doing cigarettes. ‘Cigarettes are the new money. You buy everything with cigarettes. Francs, Reichsmarks, Lire mean nothing.’ A. whitens at the idea. The Italians are running that show and he doesn’t want to get involved. R. points to me and says: ‘He’s a trained soldier. He was with the Legion. He’s been to Russia. There’s no Italian who could match him.’ R. has done his homework. I didn’t tell him any of that. A. looks at me and I say: ‘I’m not doing it with a shotgun. If you want to run cigarettes we need at least a sub-machine-gun.’ R. laughs at me. ‘One sub-machine-gun!’ he says. ‘That American who sold us the diesel and gasoline … he can get you anything you want. A howitzer, a Sherman tank, a B-17 bomber — although he said that might take a little longer to arrange.’

29th January 1944

The Allies landed in Anzio last week and R. is nervous that his precious market is going to be destroyed by the end of the war. I tell him the Allies still have plenty of work to do and that the Germans will not give up territory easily. R. is desperate to get his own boat already and I point out that we still haven’t earned our first $10, let alone enough money to put down on even a rowing boat. R. insists that A. teach him everything about the boat and the sea — how to read a chart, plot a course, read a compass and navigate by the stars. I sit in on these tutorials as well.

20th February 1944

A. has been having his own way and we’ve been making regular trips with chickpeas, flour and gasoline until R. pulls off a strange deal to run a cargo of black pepper up to Corsica for a very low freight. The shipper is a German who’s come down from Casablanca and bought this cargo from a Jew in the town. I can’t think what the Corsicans want with all this black pepper and, when the German realizes that I speak his language and fought in Russia, he confides in me that they will transship it and it will end up in Germany in a munitions factory.

24th February 1944

We have put into Corsica and R. is delighted to have made contact with both Germans and Corsicans. It now seems that we will be putting into Corsica in the future with cargoes of cigarettes and the Corsicans will have the problem of putting them into Marseilles or Genoa. As he points out to A., we make more money for less risk. A. cannot give him credit for this simple piece of business. He is king because he has the boat and does not realize how important R.’s intelligence is to making his stupid boat work profitably.

I have a conversation with A. about the difference between peasants and fishermen: Fishermen are always humble in the presence of the sea. The sea’s might draws them together. They will always help each other out. Peasants have only their land. It makes them small-minded and possessive. They are never humble, only suspicious. They are taciturn because anything said may give their neighbour an advantage. Their nature is to protect and expand. If a peasant sees his neighbour stumble and fall it fills his mind with possibilities. He finishes with the statement: ‘I am a fisherman and your friend R. is a peasant.’

R. maddens me with his endless dreaming about his own boat.

1st March 1944

We dropped off our cargo with the Corsicans and put into Naples with an empty ship for R. to find an Italian to do business with. He’s learnt from the Corsicans that permission is required. A. won’t go ashore and I realize how much the incident with the Italians shook him up.

12th March 1944

R. was determined to show A. how much money can be made from a well-organized Italian deal. Our boat is filled with Lucky Strikes. We hardly have room to sleep for the cartons and boxes, even loose packets. A. is nervous. All his money is in this one run. We slip into the Gulf of Naples at night and hang in the chill blackness of a very calm sea, waiting. R. comes to me in the cabin where I cradle the sub-machine-gun. He tells me to be ready, to stay out of sight and at the first hint of trouble I am not to question anything but to kill everybody. ‘But I thought we had permission,’ I say. ‘Sometimes you have to prove yourself first to get that permission. Nothing is certain with these people.’ I ask him why he hasn’t told A. that, and he said: ‘All men have to think for themselves. If you leave it to others you ‘re taking a risk.’

I check that all four magazines are full and click one into the breech of the gun. The water slaps against the side of the boat. After some minutes there’s the bubbling of an approaching engine. I put out my cigarette and go up to the wheelhouse and crouch below the cracked panes of glass. I sense that something has changed in R., but the approaching boat is on us before I have time to think this through. A light comes on as it pulls alongside. The old tyre buffers squeak and squeal as the boats kiss together. I hear an Italian voice, singsong and unthreatening. I put an eye over the window ledge. A. and R. are standing at the rail about three metres in front of me. The Italian understands Spanish. Two men slip over the rail aft and make their way round to the dark side of the wheelhouse. I know that this is not right. I hear the two men on the other side of the wall, their clothing brushing against the slats. Is this the first hint of trouble? I hear a shout and don’t think but put a short burst through the wheelhouse wall. I run out and jump the rail into the Italian’s boat. There’s no one on the deck of our boat. I lope around the aft of the Italian ship. The engine suddenly throttles up and I put a short burst in to the wheelhouse, killing two men. I pull the throttle back. The boat idles and drifts away from ours. I listen and check the deck and then go below. The cabin is empty. The door to the hold opens on to a diesel-smelling blackness. I find a torch in the cabin. I put my back to the bulwark and hold the torch out. Nothing. No shot. A boy, no older than seventeen, is huddled in the corner of the hold. I find only a small knife on him. He is shaking with fear. I pull him up on to the deck. The white hull of A.’s boat is still visible in the rippling darkness. A light comes on in the wheelhouse and the engine starts up. R. is at the wheel. The Italian boy is on his knees praying. I tell him to shut up, but he has found his rhythm. R. throws me a line. ‘All dead?’ he asks. I point to the boy at my feet. R. nods and says: ‘It’s better to kill him.’ The boy wails. R., who I now notice is soaking wet, gives me a handgun.