John Masters (40 page)

"Here, Papa."

"Run," he said. As he ran he gasped, "Saul's dead...."

David said, "My side hurts, Papa.... It's numb...."

"Can you move, son? Just a bit farther."

They stumbled on for twenty minutes, all sounds died behind them, and then, deep in the cork forest, David groaned and fell.

They crouched beside him. Her father felt David's body and muttered, "He's bleeding from the belly.... Oh God ... I must give myself up. Though to whom, and for what crime, I don't know. We can't go on."

Ruy said, "We can carry David back to the soldiers." Susana burst out, "We are going to the Rock! You promised!"

From the ground David said, "It doesn't hurt, papa. But ... I just can't walk.... Don't go back. That man was going to shoot you. He would shoot me, too—all of us!"

Her father said, "Very well. We'll stop here. In the morning we can look at your wound and make up our minds then."

When light came they found they were on the edge of a small stream that trickled through the cork woods toward the Guadarranque. The ground was uneven, and at the foot of a small hill nearby there were leaning rocks which, though they did not form a cave, gave shelter from view. They carried David there, and after Susana had washed his wound—it was in his back, low down, with another larger hole at the front—her father tore off his shirt and made a bandage. Then they waited.

They waited the rest of that day. At first Susana sat by her brother's head, watching his every movement, ready to run to fetch him water when he asked, while her father and Ruy slept. Then her father awoke, and Susana left Prince and his cage in Ruy's charge and went up the hill above the rocks. From the top, as she had thought, she could see Gibraltar. It was much closer now, and seen in a gap between the lacing tops of the trees, its head again crowned with cloud, it seemed to be staring back at her whispering, "Come. Why are you so slow?"

They waited all that night and the next day. She asked her father who the Count of Grazalema was. "A nobleman," he said. "Very rich. Very conservative. He served a few years in the cavalry as a young man. He and I would have nothing in common—though his estates surround us—but that we were at that accursed public meeting together to protest the British occupation of Gibraltar.... Intellectuals, military, landowners, church, merchants. I sat next to him on the dais and spoke for the legal profession."

"Who are the Falange, Papa?"

"A political party, child—very much opposed to mine." She looked at David, dozing now a few feet from them, and said, "Is David going to die, Papa?" Her father sank his head between his hands and began to sob silently, and she knew it would be no use trying to comfort him.

They waited all that night. Before dawn David began to talk, and when the light came she saw that his skin was dull gray and his lips blue. Soon he died. Her father knelt and began to say a prayer in Hebrew, but Susana slipped away and hurried up the hill to see the Rock again so that they would know which way to go when they moved on. The cloud had gone, and the face shimmered pale gray toward her. "I'm coming," she whispered; and then she saw the soldiers, a line of about twenty of them coming round the base of the hill on the side farthest from the Rock. She ran quickly down the hill, bounding from rock to rock under the boughs. A bullet cracked over her head, and she saw her father and brother run out of the rock shelter where David had died.

"They're coming!" she screamed. "Soldiers!" She reached them, scooped up the birdcage, and started to run back up the hill. Her father said, "Stop, Susana. It's no use."

She saw that he and Ruy had raised their hands, and the soldiers were coming. It was the same ones from the bridge, in the ordinary clothes, with the Count of Grazalema in the middle.

"If you have arms, lay them down," the count said.

"We have none," her father said.

"Shoot the whole brood now, and have done with it," a man muttered, glaring at her with a bloodshot eye.

"None of that, now!" The count's voice was sharp. "That's the way the Reds behave. That's what we're trying to wipe out in Spain.... Can you walk, Senor Toledano? You must come along with us, then."

"Why?" her father burst out, "By what right? In whose name are you acting? For what government?"

"For the soul of Spain," the count said. "This is a rising of the old spirit, Senor Toledano. We have tolerated the filth of the republic long enough.... Besides, your son killed my sergeant. He is—was—a prominent wine merchant of Algeciras."

"He was going to murder me in cold blood," her father said.

The count said, "Come, please. It is no use talking here. A court-martial in Algeciras will see that justice is done to you."

They started back through the cork woods then, the count in front, then some soldiers and then her father, Ruy, and herself, followed by more soldiers with bayonets fixed on their rifles. At the bridge there was an old motor bus, very small and battered, and more soldiers cooking food. Susana's mouth watered, and when a soldier gave her a plate of beans, she ate greedily, but Prince would not touch them. He looked tired and small, and she said to cheer him up, "It won't be long now, Prince"; but she did not think the soldiers would take them to Gibraltar or let them go there. She heard her father saying, "My son, Count...?"

"Buried," the count said, "under that tree. I am sorry. I will send men to bury the other, too, as soon as ... Soon."

"And our mother," Susana said. "She is dead in a quarry."

The count shook his head. "Terrible ... I will speak to them in algeciras about you, Senor Toledano. My word may carry some weight, although..." He shook his head again. "When the men hear what is being done in Madrid, all over Spain, it is hard to hold them. And we have had five years of this, this ... rape, arson, murder, anarchy. If you will get into the bus now."

They got into the bus. By the time her father and Ruy had got into the back with half a dozen soldiers to guard them and a few more who wanted to go to San Roque, Susana had to sit in front with the count, beside the driver.

After several swings the engine started, the driver jumped in, and they bumped off down the road, southward. The railway line was on the left, cork woods beyond it, and a river close to the right. After a few minutes they turned a corner, and there was Gibraltar straight in front, seeming to rise up out of the woods.

At another corner, the driver slammed on the brakes, and lurching forward, Susana saw a tree across the road. She saw men, too, and before the bullets came knew what was going to happen. The bullets came in a wild crackle, glass shattered all round her, and the driver began to cough blood over the steering wheel. The bus ran into the tree and stopped with a crash. "Out!" the count cried, trying to clamber over her. She reached up her hand, took his little automatic pistol out of its holster, pressed the muzzle into his side, and pulled the trigger. The door swung open, and he fell out, head first. He was looking toward the wood, where men were coming, running. Then he saw Susana, the automatic in her hand and a wisp of smoke still curling from the muzzle. "Spain!" he gasped, "Oh, my God. My poor country."

A short, square, grizzled man wearing peasants' gray cotton, rope-soled shoes, and a black cummerbund was standing over her, a rifle in his hand. "Shall I finish this one off?" another asked, pointing at the count.

"Don't waste a bullet on him," the square man said. "This little beanpole of a
Pasionaria
did his business. Get rid of the rest and set fire to the bus."

"My father and brother are in the back," she cried. "Prisoners. That one's my father." She pointed. "Where's Ruy, Papa?"

"Killed," he said. "Killed in the first burst."

"I'm sorry," the square man said gruffly. "We didn't know there were any of ours with them. No more, though?" He waved a hand. His followers raised rifles and revolvers and began to fire. In a moment six of the militiamen lay sprawled in the road amid pools of blood. Two more and Ruy were dead in the bus.

The bus began to burn. "I'm Manuel Susarte, once a shepherd, till I saw the light," the square man said. "Now I'm an Anarchist. I have three brothers. One's a Communist, one's a sergeant in Africa, and one's a priest. Can't be more Spanish than that, can you?" He laughed bitterly. "Time to be going. They will have heard the shooting. Do you want to come with us? Though it's a hard life, and we'll have to farm out the little girl with some of our people. And it may go on a long time." Thick clouds of oily acid smoke enveloped them.

"We're going to the Rock," Susana said, pointing. "Papa and Prince and I."

"Oh, you are," Susarte said. "Well, maybe that'd be best, if you can just get over the border. Or swim." He pointed down the road. "San Roque railway station's about two miles down—you know it? San Roque's on the hill above, a mile or more back. If I were you, I'd keep between the two, work down to La Linea, and try to steal a boat. Or get to the British wire in some sort of disturbance." He raised a hand
—"Que siguen bien
!"—and soon disappeared into the cork woods, his ragged band on his heels.

Her father looked at her and the distorted corpses and the wide-eyed count. "He was right," he said. "Poor Spain. Come, child, or they will find us here."

They moved off in the direction indicated by Susarte. Half an hour later they saw soldiers marching along the road toward the scene of the ambush and crouched in a thicket until they had passed. Then, walking on again together, they breasted a hill, and the woods ended. Before them lay the white houses of San Roque—and beyond, a narrow neck of land; and at the end of it, the Rock. They sat down side by side and stared. She saw a row of black holes high in the face of the Rock and thought they must be windows of the inner castle. The palace clustered at the foot of the slope, washed by the sea. Her father interrupted her. "That town close under the Rock, on our side, is La Linea. It will be full of soldiers. But do you see on the right where the river flows into the bay? There was a famous city there before anyone lived in Gibraltar. Now there are a few fishermen's huts. We shall go there and buy or steal a boat. God knows what we will do when we get to Gibraltar. The only man I know is a jeweler called Conquy. I met him at a Freemasons' meeting in Algeciras a few years ago."

"Shall we start now, Papa?"

He shook his head. "Not until dark, Susana. It is..." A crackle of gunfire interrupted him. It seemed to be coming from San Roque, barely half a mile away.

"Look!" Susana pointed. Bands of men and women, some with firearms, some with billhooks and kitchen knives, were running across the heath from the left toward San Roque. The firing increased, and a few bullets smacked over their heads.

"Those aren't soldiers or Falangists," her father muttered. "They must be peasants, workers ... they're attacking San Roque."

Susana grabbed the birdcage and stood up. "Come then, Papa! To the boats! That's what Senor Susarte said we should do."

"Get to the British wire in some sort of disturbance," her father said. "Very well ... You're braver than I am, Susana." He struggled to his feet, and they started diagonally down the slope, leaving San Roque on their left.

Gradually, very slowly, the white town swung past, from in front to the side to behind. They saw soldiers at a distance, but running away from San Roque; and others, further on, walking toward it. They saw big guns, at a distance, and two dead men, close to. Women passed carrying babies, hurrying aimlessly. All the time the rattle of firing sounded from the town, irregularly—long periods of silence shattered by a few minutes of frenzy.

They came to a wide river. "The Guadarranque," her father muttered and walked down the bank toward a clump of tall trees that sheltered half a dozen houses. They reached the trees in the middle of the afternoon, and her father knocked on the door of the first house. No one answered, and when he tried the door, it opened. They went in, and he said, "We'll rest here till dark, Susana." There was water in the jar and half a ham hanging in the kitchen, and Prince ate better than he had for two days. She stroked his head with her finger through the bars and said, "Look, Prince, out of the window. There's your castle!" Then she curled up on a bed in another room and went to sleep.

Her father was shaking her, and it was dark. "We have a boat," he said. "I wanted to buy it, but the man said, 'What good is money now—take it.' Are you ready?"

She felt a real excitement for the first time, and as she slipped down a narrow, dusty lane with him, her heart pounded so loudly she could hear nothing else. There was the boat, under a tree on the sandy bank, where the river flowed into the sea. They pulled it out, and her father went away and came back with oars, then they launched it, and he started to row, while she sat in the back looking toward Gibraltar, Prince's cage on the floorboards between her feet.

It was a dark night, and the pyramid of lights in the Red Prince's castle and palace shone more brightly from the blackness of the land—not a light in San Roque behind or La Linea beside or Algeciras to the right. The water made small, oily lapping sounds, and even in the darkness some sparkle of light fell from the ends of the oars when her father pulled them out of the water.

Her feet began to get cold, and she put her hand down to them and found it wet. "There's water in the boat, Papa," she said.

"Bail with your hands," he gasped. "We're halfway." He began to row harder, the oars creaking even faster in the oarlocks. Susana put Prince's cage on the seat beside her and knelt and began to scoop the water over the side as fast as she could. The magic city towered ever closer, and she thought she heard the Red Prince's bands playing in it, but the water kept rising, and the boat went slower, and her father's groaning, frantic efforts became slower. Suddenly, they stopped. His head hit her knee as he fell forward. He was ill and could not speak. A bright light bathed them, and she saw that the water was only two inches from the top of the sides. She scrambled over her father, pushed his body aside, and took the oars. A motor chugged close as she began to row. Then the sea was flooding in, and men were shouting in a foreign language. She leaped for the birdcage and seized it just as a strong arm pulled her out of the boat, and it vanished, with her father, under the black water, the oars floating free on the surface.

The motorboat went slowly around and around, its searchlight weaving back and forth over the water. Then someone gave an order and it turned toward the lights and increased speed. The tall, grizzled, blue-uniformed old man with the big hands who had pulled her out of the boat said, in poor but understandable Spanish, "Was that your father?" She nodded. "I'm afraid he's drowned."

She nodded again. Her father had fallen forward before the boat sank. He was very tired and had to row so hard. The lights were very close. Soon she would step ashore with Prince, onto the enchanted land. To the old man in blue she said, "Conquy?"

He said in surprise, "Me? No. My name's Tamlyn, little miss—dockyard police, on a special patrol, and lucky for you we are. But I know Conquy, same Lodge as me. He'll see you're looked after."