The Second Son: A Novel (14 page)

Hoffner leaned his bicycle up as well. “You won’t get the chain around this, you know.”

“I wasn’t planning on trying.”

“So the painted letters manage it again?”

Mueller handed the valise to Hoffner. “No one takes a bicycle, Nikolai. It’s not the way they do things here.”

“But a fifteen-year-old car—”

“A banker or a judge or some old
marqués
used to drive one of those. Have you ever seen a banker on a bicycle? The letters, they’re just—” Mueller smiled and shrugged.

“They make sure the girls know who you’re fighting for?”

Mueller kept his smile as he led them across the street. “You’ll like this place. Quiet, serene.
Tranquilidad
.”

On the far corner was a café, tables outside, with just enough tree cover to make sitting out worth the heat. A few were occupied, though it was too early for food. Glasses and bottles with something a deep yellow stood on most of them. Two men—one with a nice full mustache, the other trying desperately to grow one—were at one of the back tables, and Mueller headed toward them.

Hoffner said under his breath, “You know them?”

“Everyone knows everyone in Barcelona these days.” Mueller raised a hand and said, “Gabriel,” loudly enough to draw the mustached man’s attention. The man smiled at once and raised his hand as he stood.

“Toby!” he said, as he stepped around the table toward Mueller.

Gabriel was barrel-chested, though not tall, with the thick arms of a man who had spent his life doing someone else’s heavy work. The cheeks were round, the nose pug, and the thick, thick mustache—on closer inspection—had a ruff of tobacco-dyed hair at its center. His lips curled around a cigarette even as he spoke.

“Finally some German reinforcements. You’ve brought—what?—thirty planes, twenty tanks, ten thousand rifles?” He didn’t wait for Mueller to answer before pulling him in for a full embrace. “You smell of sweat and beets.” Gabriel let go. Somehow the cigarette remained fixed on his lip. “You came down from Montjuïc, didn’t you? Idiot.” Before Mueller could answer, Gabriel turned back to the table. He motioned for the younger man to come over. “You know him, I’m sure,” he said under his breath. “The mustache is a mistake, but you can’t say anything.”

The younger man was strangely small and with unusually pale features for a Spaniard—light eyes, ginger hair. The hands were also soft and slender. If not for the long narrow nose it would have been hard to place him in this part of the world. There was age in the face that made the patchy stubble above the lip even more of a curiosity. He was called Aurelio, and he shook hands with the kind of firmness of a man one was meant to trust.

“They came down Montjuïc,” Gabriel said to him. “On bicycles. In this heat.”

“Good tough Germans,” said the little man, “but not terribly bright.” He smiled and led them back to the table. “We’ll need a drink.”

*   *   *

Hoffner had tried Coca-Cola—once. It had been enough. Gabriel drank nothing else. Café Tranquilidad had somehow kept a healthy stash of it. Anarchists, it turned out, liked their American fizzy drinks. Luckily, Aurelio preferred wine.

The little man refilled the empties and set the wine bottle back on the table. “You don’t sound like a socialist, Nikolai, let alone an anarchist.”

They had been through the antifascist arguments—intricate explanations of the cause and its meaning and its essentialness—an animated tour de force that had brought Gabriel’s cigarette out of his mouth for a single moment as he had stabbed at the air with it. Queipo de Llano. Son of a bitch.

Hoffner said, “It’s hard not to be one these days, isn’t it?”

Aurelio’s smile became a quiet laugh, and he brought his glass to his mouth. “Sitting with two anarchists in the middle of Barcelona,” he said. “Each with a pistol on his belt. Yes, I’d say you’re right.” He took a sip. “Did he tell you it was Jew Mountain?”

Hoffner was holding his glass on the table, staring at it. It took him a moment to answer. “Pardon?”

“Montjuïc,” said Aurelio. “Did Toby tell you it was called Jew Mountain?” Hoffner had no reason not to nod, and Aurelio said, “Are you a Jew?”

The question caught Hoffner off guard. He waited, then picked up his glass. “Odd question from a godless Spaniard. Or are you trying to make me feel more at home?” He took a drink.

“Don’t worry. It’s not Berlin. No, I was just wondering if he told you because he thought it would make you feel more—I don’t know—connected. Toby has that sort of sentimentality.”

Mueller was finishing off his second glass of wine. He shook his head and swallowed. “The Spaniard accusing the German of sentimentality. That’s rich.”

Hoffner said, “Half-Jew—my mother—so, yes—in Berlin. I didn’t think it mattered here.”

“It doesn’t,” Aurelio said. “But if it did—matter to you, that is—I’d hate to be the one to disappoint. It’s Jupiter Mountain, not Jew. Common mistake. Toby knows it, I think.”

Hoffner looked across at Mueller, who shrugged, and Hoffner said, “Then he’d know it wouldn’t make any difference to me, one way or the other.”

Aurelio glanced at Gabriel and tossed back the rest of his drink. He stared into the empty and said, “Then why are you here?” It was another few moments before he looked directly at Hoffner. The gaze was hard, and Hoffner suddenly felt very much aware of the pistol that was hanging somewhere off the little man’s belt.

Hoffner finished his drink. He placed the glass by the bottle and nodded as if in agreement. “I see. No anarchist, no socialist, no angry Jew. So what am I doing in Barcelona?”

Gabriel said, “It’s a curious place to be these days otherwise.” He looked over at Mueller. “Not that we don’t trust you, Toby, but—” The Spanish shrug had so much more to do with the chin and the tilt of the head than the German.

There was a heaviness in the silence that followed. It lent a truth to what Hoffner said. “I’m looking for someone.”

Aurelio lapped at the last of his glass. “Better that than being looked for, I suppose.”

Gabriel opened a third bottle of the Coca-Cola, and said, “You’re a policeman?”

Again Hoffner looked across at Mueller. There was nothing there. Hoffner picked up the bottle of wine. “Was. Yes.”

“The shoes,” said Gabriel. “I imagine that’s universal.”

“I imagine it is.” Hoffner poured himself another.

“The Germans who’ve come have all been wild eyes and young or dripping with nostalgia. I’m sure you’d recognize them.” He drank. “The first are useless. They think we’ll take on Hitler once we’re through here, the great International rising again. They don’t know Spain at all, do they?” He began to play with the bottle cap. “The second—also useless, but with years and years of dreamed-up arrogance to stand on. They’ve been through it before, they understand how to organize. That was quite a success all those years ago, your little Rosa Luxemburg and her band. They took Berlin for—what?—ten minutes? But then these Germans see it differently.

“Luckily,” he said, tossing the cap into a bucket on the floor, “they’re all happy to kill fascists, so we drink with them, and listen to their empty tales of struggle—workers of the world with their pretty houses and gardens and weekends by the sea—and know they haven’t the slightest idea of what it is to live every day with a boot clamped down on a throat.” Gabriel looked directly at him, and Hoffner wondered where the amiable man of only minutes ago had gone. “You seem to be neither, so you can understand our interest.”

Hoffner thought about drinking the wine. For some reason, though, he was wanting water. He looked around for a waiter.

“My son’s the Jew,” he said. The waiter was nowhere to be found. “We’ve worked it in reverse—half to full. He came to film the games, and he went missing.” Hoffner looked back at the table and found a canteen in front of him.

“The waiter,” Aurelio said. “He’ll expect you to have brought your own. It’s a miracle they had the wine.”

Hoffner nodded his thanks and drank.

“My son could be one of your young Germans,” he said, “but I doubt it.” Hoffner screwed the top on and handed it to Aurelio. “Not that I care as long as I get him out of here.”

Gabriel said, “So an old German with no politics, and a young Jew with no sense. It’s a compelling story.”

“You seem overly concerned in a city draped in red.”

“Euphoria’s a nice thing for a day or two, but I’m not so convinced this is as finished as everyone seems to say.”

“So, a Spaniard with sense.”

The round cheeks squeezed up and around the eyes, forming a smile. “I can guarantee you Toby’s thinking the same thing.”

Mueller had been running one of his pincer fingers along the table’s edge, staring at it as it went back and forth.

Gabriel said, “He knows better than to trust any of this good fortune, don’t you, Toby?”

Mueller looked up. He bobbed an indifferent nod.

Gabriel said, “It’s because you’re a criminal, isn’t it, and criminals always know better.”

Mueller said, “Is he around today?”

“Tell me, Toby,” said Gabriel, “do you think the fascist generals are done for? Are we anarchists as unstoppable as we think we are?”

It was clear Mueller was uncomfortable with this, and not because he was any less savvy than the rest. He just didn’t like the distraction. “Is he in the back?” he asked.

Gabriel said, “Toby can tell you who’s the best man to get a voucher from, where you can still find a bit of ammunition, and how to get a truckload of whiskey down the coast. He’s always been good with those sorts of things.” His cigarette had lost its flame; even so, it stayed on his lip as he continued. “You remember that banker we pulled from his car—paying off scabs to work during one of the general strikes? What was that—’thirty, ’thirty-one? We needed to know which gas station he used on Fridays. Toby figured it out. That’s why he got to keep the car.” Gabriel laughed—it was tobacco-laced, and he pulled the dead cigarette from his mouth. A fresh one was in its place and lit within seconds. “What Toby won’t do is look into the future. I haven’t decided which I admire most. Yes, he’s in the back. I wouldn’t take too long with it.”

Mueller stood and reached into his pocket. Hoffner stood as well, and Mueller placed two pairs of women’s nylons on the table.

“We ask for guns and you bring us this,” Gabriel said. “You’re a good man, Toby. Maybe you
can
look into the future.”

Mueller said, “It’ll take more than a pair of these for the two of you to catch a girl. They’re all wearing trousers these days, anyway.”

Aurelio reached over for his and stuffed it in his pocket. “Every little bit helps.”

Mueller squeezed a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “Live to enjoy this.” He nodded at Hoffner to follow him.

Hoffner stepped out. “Good luck with your boy,” Gabriel said.

Hoffner picked up the valise and satchel. “Good luck with your war.” He turned and began to weave his way through the chairs toward the café door.

*   *   *

Josep Gardenyes—no one ever remembered his real name—sat at a table in the back against a wall and ate hungrily from a bowl. It looked like soup, but who would have been crazy enough to eat soup in this weather, except maybe Josep Gardenyes, whose real name no one could ever remember.

Hoffner stopped and set his bags by the bar while Mueller made his way between the empty tables. This time he had been told to stay back. Mueller pulled up, and Hoffner watched as the two men spoke.

Gardenyes was a weathered forty and not one for embraces or warm smiles. His thin glance at the bar, though brief, was enough to make clear how beautifully Gabriel and Aurelio had played it: despite himself, Gardenyes needed protecting. He might have resented the caution but he accepted the loyalty.

Mueller nodded to Hoffner, and Gardenyes pushed the bowl to the edge of the table. This was as much of an invitation as he was likely to give. Hoffner went over and pulled back a chair.

Gardenyes said, “For a policeman you have interesting friends.”

Whether it had been Mueller or the shoes, Hoffner decided on a lazy smile. “Former policeman,” he said.

“I don’t think there is such a thing.” Gardenyes was now speaking Catalan.

“You do find them from time to time,” Hoffner answered in kind. He sat.

A faint light of respect played in Gardenyes’s eyes. “A German bull—ex bull—with Catalan. I’m even more concerned.” The eyes began to show a smile.

“I spent time here as a boy,” said Hoffner. “Not that difficult to pick it up.” He looked into the bowl and found a few empty mussel shells, the remains of an overcooked potato, and the skin from a fish resting high on the rim. “Were the prawns fresh?” he said, as he picked up the potato and squeezed it in his fingers.

The smile reached Gardenyes’s lips. “I can have them make you a plate.”

Hoffner nodded and dropped the potato back in. He picked up a knife and continued to sort through the food. He said, “You like
suquet
, Toby?”

Mueller had found two more glasses and was pouring the wine. “Fish stew? Fine by me as long as they don’t put beef in it.” He set the bottle down. “No beef this time. That was disgusting.”