The Second Son: A Novel (34 page)

The wrap folded over on itself and had a zip fastener. Inside was flannel.

“We have only one,” the one who stirred said. “It can fit two.” His friend was already by the carts. They had slung hammocks between the wheels, and the other now dropped himself into one.

The stirrer built the rocks higher around the flame and then, in a way Hoffner had never seen, brought the flame low, though not completely out. It was suddenly much darker, but he could still feel the heat. The man stood and weaved his way to his hammock. Hoffner thought, All men should speak so well this drunk.

Hoffner pulled off his boots and slid in next to Mila. He reached down and pulled the fastener up and felt her body press close against his. He lay back, and they stared up at a sky infinite with night.

She said, “If the sun comes again, you’ll forget it can look like this. The ground will forget as well.”

“The sun will come.”

“It seems a shame, though, doesn’t it?”

Maybe it was the wine, but the stars momentarily shuddered, and Mila turned on her side to him and pressed her lips to his cheek. Her hand moved across his chest, then her arm, her torso until she was slowly above him.

She saw it in his eyes and said, “They’re already sleeping.”

Her lips found his again, the warmth of them and the coolness of the air, and beyond a cradling of stars, and Hoffner let his hands glide across the smoothness of her back, her legs, the clothes unloosed and his own body freed, and he felt her chilled skin across his own like the pale breath of absolute need.

He would love her. He knew this. He would find this life and he would love her.

*   *   *

They arrived in Tarancón by mid-morning. Hoffner learned to play a game with a stick, something with the words
dedo
and
pelota
, although even the men and boys who played with him seemed to have any number of opinions as to what it was called. They sweated under the sun in the courtyard of a small clinic—little more than the front room of a house—while a woman and a girl lay dying inside of burns from a house fire. It had been a terrible thing, quick, and nothing to do with the fighting. In fact, Tarancón had seen almost none of the fighting. The Guardia had quickly pledged themselves to the Republic and had even stepped in to make sure the killing was kept to a minimum. Tragedy remained a thing of fires and falling trees and a boy drowned in early spring—as it had been for as long as anyone could remember. It was so much easier to understand than the news of the horrors sprouting up everywhere around them. The two inside were dying. Infection had set in. And the comfort of a woman doctor—so strange and yet perhaps a miracle (although no one would have called it such a thing)—gave them peace as they slipped quietly away through the morphine.

It was hours before Mila emerged from the house, walking with a man a good deal older. He had come the night before from Cuenca. He was a doctor as well, but the woman and the girl had already been fighting the burns for five days—why had it taken so long to send a boy on the two-day ride for him?—and there was nothing he could do. He hadn’t slept and was grateful that Mila had been there to take the two to the end.

Hoffner tossed the ball to one of the boys, then ran his handkerchief over his neck as he walked toward her.

“They’re both gone,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” said Hoffner.

“No, it’s better. It should have happened three days ago.” She introduced the doctor. He said he was tired of watching peasants die this way. He needed to sleep and get back to Cuenca. He left them to each other.

She said. “He was a good doctor, but he would have tried to keep them alive.” They sat on a bench. Hoffner’s hat was lying on it.

He said, “You need to eat something.” She said nothing, and he added, “Some of the men remembered Georg. ‘The man with the camera’ they called him. They said he was here for a few hours. The day before the house burned. They don’t remember anyone else.”

She stared across the courtyard. She nodded distantly.

He said, “I didn’t mention any names.”

Again she nodded. Finally she said, “The name from the contact list, here in Tarancón.” Hoffner had shown her everything from Captain Doval and Major Sanz. She had memorized the names as well. “He was called Gutiérrez,” she said. “What was the first name?”

He knew she knew it, but he answered anyway. “Ramón,” said Hoffner. “Why?”

It took her another moment to answer. “Because he was in the room with me the entire time. Because the woman was his wife, and the girl was his daughter.”

*   *   *

Hoffner had trouble looking at the man, not because Gutiérrez hadn’t bathed or shaved in five days, or that his face was bloated from the crying, or even that his left arm to the shoulder was an oozing scar of blisters and flaked skin beneath a thin wrapping of gauze. It was because he sat there, unaware that he damned Georg with every breath he took.

Hoffner imagined the crates, the guns, the fire set to destroy them all. Had Georg really been capable of this? Had he been so callous, so cowardly, as to slink off in the night knowing that this was to come? Hoffner wore his son’s shame as if it were his own.

Gutiérrez continued to stare across at the sheeted bodies, his good elbow on his knee, his body leaning forward, hand pressed against his brow. Hoffner had no idea if the man was even aware they had stepped inside the room.

Mila knelt down next to Gutiérrez. She ran her hand across his back and spoke softly. Slowly, Gutiérrez began to nod. He looked at her. His eyes moved to Hoffner, then the sheets. With her hand still on his back, Mila helped him past the curtain and down the hall. She led him to a chair by the door to the courtyard, and Gutiérrez said, “I want the air. We’ll go outside.”

“No,” she said. “Outside isn’t good until they dress your burns again. You should sit here.”

Gutiérrez seemed aware of his arm only now. He looked at it as if someone had just handed it to him, a thing to be studied: an arm had been burned, flesh, but whose was it and how? Gutiérrez sat and asked for water.

There was a table across from him with a pitcher and two glasses. Mila filled one and handed it to him. Gutiérrez held it but did not drink.

Hoffner was a few paces down the hall, breathing air heavy with the smell of rotting limes and soap. So this was the scent of burned flesh, he thought. He stepped over and filled the other glass. He drank.

Hoffner said, “You should drink as well.”

Gutiérrez’s gaze was fixed on the wall, mindlessly searching for something. “Should I?”

Hoffner was glad to hear the anger. It colored Gutiérrez’s despair and gave it purpose. The man would find his way back.

Hoffner said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Gutiérrez barely moved.

“There was a man with a camera,” Hoffner said. “A German. A few days ago.”

Gutiérrez showed nothing.

Hoffner repeated, “There was a man with a camera—”

“Why are you asking me this?”

“You know why I ask.”

Gutiérrez continued to stare at the wall. Finally he said, “Yes.” He was unrepentant. “I know why.”

“He came about the crates, about Hisma.”

“Yes.”

Hoffner waited and then said, “Did he set the fire?”

The question came so effortlessly—questions like these always did—even if every moment beyond them lay in their grasp.

Gutiérrez’s stare hardened. “You mean did he murder my wife and daughter?”

And there it was. Why not call it what it was. A low humming began to fill Hoffner’s ears, but he refused to look at Mila. “Yes.”

Gutiérrez said, “You ask only about the one with the camera. Why not the other?”

“The other is not my concern.”

“No? He also wanted the one with the camera.”

There was a pounding now in Hoffner’s chest, the urge to grab Gutiérrez by the arm, scream in his face—Was this Georg? Was this what my son has become?—but instead he asked again, “Did he set the fire?”

Gutiérrez waited, his cruelty unintended.

“No,” he finally said. “That is my misfortune. Are you here to rid me of my burden?”

Hoffner felt his breath again. He said, “Then the fire was an accident?”

“There are no such things.”

“And the guns?”

“Guns,” Gutiérrez said, with quiet disbelief. “What guns? We have no guns. There will be no guns.” Self-damning made such easy work of the truth. He refused to look at Hoffner. “You need something more from me, you tell Sanz to come and get it himself. He does me a favor. Otherwise no more messengers, no more visitors, no more questions from this German, that German, talk of those crates”—his voice trailed off—“make room for those fucking crates.”

Gutiérrez shut his eyes, trying not to see it.

“A can of oil”—it was little more than a whisper, the creases of his eyes wet from the memory—“a tiny can of oil and all that heat.” The tears ran and he forced his eyes open. He looked at Hoffner. “God has sent His message, and I damn Him for it.” Gutiérrez looked upward.
“Viva la República
,
”
he said. “
Viva la Libertad
. Do you hear?” He looked again at Hoffner. “My cause is no longer yours. No longer Sanz’s. No longer His. Either shoot me or get out of my town.”

Gutiérrez stood. He moved past Hoffner to the curtain. He was about to step through when Hoffner said, “The other German. When was he here?”

Again Gutiérrez’s gaze hardened. He peered into the room. This time, though, he hadn’t the strength for it. He was suddenly aware of the tears, and he wiped them. “I don’t know,” he said. “Two days ago, three.”

“He came to ask about the one with the camera?”

“Yes.”

“In this place?”

Gutiérrez nodded.

There was no point; the man had nothing more to give.

Hoffner nodded and turned to Mila, and Gutiérrez said, “He was strange, that German.” Hoffner looked back and saw Gutiérrez staring at him. “Not like the others,” said Gutiérrez. “Not like the one with the camera. He had death in the eyes.”

“There are Germans like that now.”

“No.” Gutiérrez shook his head. “Not SS. Not soldiers. Something else with this one.” It was as if he were seeing the man in front of him. He stared a moment longer and then pushed through the curtain, and Hoffner watched as the cloth puckered and grew still.

*   *   *

That night they stayed in Tarancón.

The days were slipping by, but Hoffner let them go. He might have convinced himself it was to keep them safe: they had been lucky last night; driving after dark seemed beyond even a Spaniard’s arrogance. Or he might have said it was for the time he could take with Mila, hours to sit or walk or stare up from a rusted bed and wait for the breeze to find its way into a room so small that the ledge of the window served as table for both pitcher and glass.

But the truth was easier than that. Hoffner simply believed Georg was alive. He had no idea why he believed this, or why he knew Georg would still be alive when he found him, but time was no longer a concern. There was nothing he could point to in the last days to make this sudden certainty real, and yet here it was.

Hoffner had felt it only once before, this kind of ease, in the same heat, the same silence, the same taste of soured milk in the air. It sat deep in his past and yet lay quietly by his side, and Hoffner chose not to ask why.

He sat up and took a sip of the water, brown with silt. He stared out through the window and saw the hills under the moon.

Mila said, “He’s out there.”

He had thought her asleep. He nodded and lit a cigarette.

She said, “You thought he’d set that fire.”

Hoffner felt the heat of the room on his face. He let the smoke spear through his nose. He said nothing.

She said, “And what if he had?”

Hoffner took another pull as he stared out. “But he didn’t.”

“No—he didn’t. So you don’t have to save him from himself.”

He looked at her. “What does that mean?”

“The way you do with the other boy. Sascha. That’s the one you think you need to save. Georg didn’t set the fire, so it wasn’t your fault.”

He continued to stare at her. “That’s a stupid thing to say.”

“Is it?”

“You don’t understand.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” She reached out and took his cigarette. “So I’m left to bring out the trite and the obvious.” She took a pull. “I’m thirsty.”

Hoffner handed her the glass and watched as she drank.

He said, “I made him what he is.”

“No one makes anyone else into anything.”

“He was sixteen. A boy. I had a girl on the side.”

“A boy with a cheating father. What a remarkable story.”

“I threw it in his face.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Then you’d be wrong.”