The Frozen Heart (49 page)

‘I don’t get it,’ he would say, ‘why won’t they help us? The people living in the log cabins over there, or even people from the village . . . I mean, surely they approve of what we’re doing? They’re going to use the roads too.’

‘They’re doing it to piss us off, Eugenio.’

‘To piss us off?’ He looked at Julio with utter astonishment. ‘Why would they piss us off? We’ve come to liberate them, we’re freeing them from a tyrant, dragging them out of the Middle Ages . . .’

‘Come on, don’t be so fucking stupid !’ The strain of everything had eroded Julio Carrión’s patience. ‘Think about it, we’re a foreign army and we’re invading their country. Because that’s what we’re doing, conquering them, requisitioning their livestock, eating their food, destroying their harvests . . . and you think they should be out here helping us?’

‘That’s why we can’t cross the river.’

Pancho, who had listened to the daily variations on the subject, unexpectedly interrupted one afternoon.

‘What?’ Julio and Eugenio asked simultaneously.

‘That’s why we can’t cross the river,’ Pancho said again, his voice calm and clear. ‘Because everyone on the other side is Russian, and occupying a country and defending it are two different things. It’s much easier to fight alongside your family than it is to be thousands of miles from home. It doesn’t matter whether we’re better or braver or have better weapons, they have something we’ll never have.’

‘Righteous anger,’ said Julio, thinking of Madrid. ‘Because we’re turning them out of their own homes.’

Pancho did not waste his breath agreeing, he simply nodded as Eugenio hurled himself against the truck they had been pushing with such fury that he managed to shift it by himself. Julio went to help him, but said nothing more because he realised that for all his zeal, his unshakeable principles, it had just occurred to Eugenio that the Russians might win this war.

Pancho had put his finger on something Julio had unconsciously intuited the first time Eugenio complained that the Russians refused to help them; he had often railed against his friend’s foolishness, but until Pancho’s comment, it had never occurred to him to connect the enemy’s strength with the reluctance of the Russians to help. From that moment, he no longer felt so compassionate towards the local populace, whose apparent laziness bolstered the morale of their countrymen on the far side of the river.

And yet Pancho, whose real name was Luis Serrano Romero, did cross the Voljov. He did so at sunset one summer evening when the river was at low ebb, and he did so alone, though his friends recognised the furtive figure slinking toward the narrow, stony bend where the water was shallow. Later, they realised that he had counted on them seeing him because that night, sentry duty fell to Eugenio Sánchez Delgado.

‘Over there . . . doesn’t that look like Pancho?’ Recognising the figure on the riverbank, Eugenio turned to Julio with his usual expression of disbelief. ‘Where the hell is he going? Has he gone mad?’

Pancho was moving quickly, soundlessly, not looking back, and they did not dare call out his name because he was their friend, and although they did not know where he was going, they knew he had no business being there, he should have been in the trench, sleeping in his dugout. To call out would have been tantamount to turning him in, and yet they couldn’t simply stand there with their arms folded while Pancho waged war on his own.

‘What’s he up to?’ Eugenio voiced his worst fears. ‘You think he’s deserting?’

‘No,’ Julio suddenly understood what was happening, ‘he’s going over.’

‘What?’ Eugenio stared at him, wide eyed, his lower lip quivering.

‘He’s going over to the Russian side. Come on!’

Julio started to run and Eugenio followed, trusting to a plan that did not exist, for there was only one thought in Julio Carrión González’s mind, something that Romualdo had said which came back to him now, that even the cleverest people could be fools. He was the biggest fool in the division, because he should have known, should have guessed, should have been able to read the signs - signs he knew only too well: Pancho’s silence, his stoicism, his willingness to eat only half his food and give the rest to the Polish women at Grafenwöhr, his comment about the people in his village not being accustomed to eating much, and his eloquent explanation of the Russian resistance. He should have realised why Pancho knew by heart the number of soldiers in every regiment, the number of officers and their ranks, but he had been a fool, he, Julio Carrión González, who had thought himself the cleverest of them all. It was impossible to know how many traitors figured among the number of deserters the High Command reluctantly admitted to. Among those who had been court-martialled and sentenced to death were many who had been captured while trying to defect to the enemy, he knew that, but Pancho had been more intelligent than all of them. This was what Julio Carrión González was thinking as they reached the riverbank and found themselves looking down the barrel of Pancho’s sub-machine gun.

‘Not another step,’ he said, his voice as composed as always, ‘not another step or I’ll shoot you.’

‘Don’t do anything stupid, Pancho.’ Eugenio raised his rifle, his hands shaking as Julio held up the lantern to illuminate the scene. ‘Come back with us and we’ll say no more about it.’

‘No.’ Hearing him speak, Julio realised that he would rather die than come back. ‘First of all, my name isn’t even Pancho. Pancho is my little brother. I used his name when I enlisted, because they would never have taken me under my own name. My name is Luis Serrano Romero, private first-class, Seventh Brigade, the Zapadores Battalion. And I’m not twenty, I’m twenty-four.’ Then, still holding his gun in his right hand, he slipped his left into his pocket and took out a small red cardboard folder that Julio immediately recognised. ‘See this? It’s right here in black and white: Luis Serrano Romero, membership number ninety-three, Socialist Youth Movement, 16 September 1936, Villanueva de la Serena, Badajoz.’

He put the card back into his pocket, and Julio realised that he had never heard the man string so many words together.

‘I set out from Villanueva de la Serena with this card tucked in my boot, survived the freezing cold and the thaw, the dust and mud and sand . . . And here I am - here we are, both of us.’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘No, Eugenio, I’m completely sane. So sane I gave the Nazi salute every day, sang your fucking anthem, knelt during your masses, swore your fucking oaths, and I cursed every one of you every day, just so I could get here, and do what I’m going to do.’

‘You’re crazy . . .’ Eugenio repeated dully, his eyes wide.

‘No. I’m not.’ Pancho almost smiled. ‘You’re the one who doesn’t get it. Well, right now I’m going to join my comrades. Dead or alive. But if you try to kill me, I’ll shoot one of you first. Maybe both. I’m a better shot than either of you, I’ve been to war before, you know.’

That moment seemed to last a lifetime. All three knew what Eugenio and Julio should do, and all three knew that they would not do it. Julio and Eugenio knew that Pancho was not the first nor would he be the last, that one more desertion does not change the course of a war. Julio and Pancho knew that Eugenio would never kill a friend. Eugenio and Pancho did not know that Julio would never kill someone who might be useful to him at some point.

‘Go,’ Eugenio said, lowering his rifle, ‘go on, you fucking traitor !’

Pancho started sideways across the river, turning back at every step, still pointing his gun until he knew he was safe. Then, standing on a boulder halfway across, he stopped, tied a white handkerchief to the barrel of his gun and took out his identity card.

‘I’m not the traitor, Eugenio,’ he yelled, ‘you’re the traitors. Traitors to your country, to your independence, to the law your generals swore to uphold. Long Live the Spanish Republic! Long Live the People’s Glorious Struggle!’

‘Fuck you, you bloody Red!’ Eugenio raised his rifle and was about to fire when Julio stopped him with a furious swipe.

‘What are you doing, you idiot?’ He took Eugenio’s gun. ‘Now you decide to fire? If you were going to shoot him you should have done it before, moron. What are you trying to do, wake everyone up so they can all come down here and see that we let him escape? You want the both of us to end up in front of a firing squad ?’

Eugenio shook his head, then he started to cry, and there was so much grief and despair and loneliness in those tears that for an instant Julio Carrión González was a child again and he hugged his friend until Pancho was on the other side of the river, until Pancho’s cry, ‘
Tovarich, spanski tovarich!
Don’t shoot, I’m coming over!’, faded into the distance.

‘I’m going back, Julio.’ For Eugenio Sánchez Delgado, who would go on to fight for months at the Leningrad front before his battalion was repatriated, the war ended that night. ‘Hitler can go screw himself, I’m going home, I don’t understand this war . . . You saw him, didn’t you? You saw how much he hated us. But still he was able to befriend us, march with us for thousands of kilometres, fight alongside us, save our men when they were wounded, shoot his own comrades . . .’ His last remark seemed incomprehensible so Eugenio felt compelled to explain it. ‘The people he thought of as his own - Russians - people from a different country, who speak a language he doesn’t even understand, “my comrades”, he called them. How much hatred does it take not to break down, to be a Spanish soldier fighting for the Russians against his own people?’

Julio Carrión did not answer straight away. ‘I don’t think he’s fighting for the Russians, Eugenio.’ He spoke slowly because he needed to be certain of what he was saying. ‘And I don’t think he hates us personally, or that he hates the Spanish. I think that what he hates is Franco, the Falangists, the Nazis . . . He’s fighting with the Russians, but not
for
the Russians. I think he’s fighting for Spain.’

‘For Spain?’ Eugenio attempted a sardonic laugh. ‘But Spain isn’t even involved in this war!’

‘Really?’ Julio smiled. ‘Then what are we doing here? We’re allies with the Germans, and they don’t have many allies. And if Germany loses the war . . .’

‘Then we lose too . . .’

‘That’s what he must be thinking. And if that happens, then his comrades - his real comrades, the Spanish republicans - will have won. That’s why he’s on their side.’

Eugenio squeezed his eyes shut and when he opened them again there were no tears.

‘I’m going back, Julio,’ he said simply, ‘I’m going back.’

Well, I’m not, thought Julio Carrión González. Pancho’s desertion had triggered something in his mind. He had just discovered that, although it was still a threat, his past might well turn out to offer him security against the future, because regardless of who lost the war, he could win, and being on the winning side was all he cared about.

‘Eugenio, can I ask you a favour?’ A couple of days later, while they were resting in their dugout, he had already begun to fashion a plan. ‘The other night, that thing with Pancho . . . I’ve always thought I wouldn’t be wounded, that nothing would happen to me, but if something does happen . . . In the bottom of my kitbag there’s a leather-bound Bible, it’s quite beaten up, you can hardly make out what it says on the spine. It was my father’s Bible, he gave it to me when we went to see him the day before we enlisted, I don’t know if you remember . . .’ Eugenio nodded. ‘Well, it occurred to me . . . I don’t have any brothers here, not like you, so if anything does happen to me . . . I don’t know why I’m asking, I’m not really religious or anything, but . . . would you bring that Bible to me?’

The subject was never mentioned again, the war went on, ever the same, ever worse, the interminable marching, the cold, the frost, the corpses, the blood, the lice, orders to advance, orders to retreat, major offensives that melted into nothing, resounding victories that never came. It was brutal, monotonous, mind-numbing, but its cruelty did not prevent them from fulfilling their promises. The day Julio found out that Romualdo had woken at dawn with frostbite, he did not waste time finding Eugenio. There was only one thing to do, and he knew it, others in his division had done it before: he loaded his pistol, headed straight for the small field hospital and screamed that he would gun down anyone who amputated so much as one of Romualdo Sánchez Delgado’s toes.

When Eugenio found him, he still had the pistol trained on the puzzled German doctor, who, through an interpreter, repeated over and over that the Führer’s army would provide Romualdo with first-class prosthetics free of charge.

‘Tell him I’ll kill him,’ Julio said to the interpreter, his eyes still locked on the doctor’s face.

In the end, the doctor shook his head, disappeared and came back with two ampoules of yellowish liquid which the Spanish nurse recognised immediately.

‘It’s to stop him getting gangrene,’ she explained as she injected Romualdo first in one leg, then the other, ‘but I’m not promising anything.’

Some days later, Julio Carrión guessed where he was when he saw the same woman’s face, but the first thing that he saw when he woke in pain was his father’s Bible.

‘That lunatic friend of yours brought it in the day before yesterday, the one who was with you when you were raising hell,’ the nurse said, smiling. ‘He said it meant a lot to you. There’s a letter from him inside, I guess because he is one of the ones on his way home.’

‘What happened to me?’

‘You have a head injury. It didn’t seem serious, but then you lost consciousness and it’s taken you quite a while to come round. How do you feel ?’

‘My head hurts. A lot.’

‘Take it easy, I’ll give you something for the pain. And don’t worry, I’ll send you to Riga with the next convoy. Your brother’s friend will be going with you - the one who came in with frostbite.’

‘Romualdo?’

Nine months later, in the Spanish War Hospital in Riga, Julio Carrión said the name again when he recognised the back of the head of a lieutenant who was moving an armchair to the window to enjoy the illusory October sun.