Waiting for Robert Capa (17 page)

She didn't like focusing on things that were still; it caused her to feel apprehension. But it was better to look at the dead through the viewfinder than directly at them. It made it more bearable. While she was squatting, she could feel the grass tickling her ankles. There's nothing as solitary as a dead person, she thought, as she calculated the depth of field for the shot. And it was true. She remembered the book of Job: “Behold, this is the joy of his way; And out of the earth shall others spring.” She thought of touching him, of closing his eyes. But she didn't do it.

Days later, Franco's army entered Toledo and rescued the Alcázar, clearing for the Fascists the path toward Madrid. The Republican combatants' morale plummeted to the ground.

Afterward, Gerda and Capa joined the Twelfth International Brigade, made up of German and Polish Communists from the Thälmann Battalion, whom they'd already met in Leciñena on the Aragón front. The battalion was under the command of the writer Máté Zalka, widely known as General Lukács, a very handsome Hungarian who sported a leather jacket, had a foul-mouthed and cutting sense of humor, and was also a great strategist. The brigade had to get to the Manzanares River in order to join the other regiments that were also headed to Madrid for the first major attack on the capital by Franco.

What neither of them expected to find there was Chim. Though the three of them had left Paris at the same time, the Pole had gone his own way. He was a lone hunter. He was sitting on top of a large rock, checking his equipment with the concentration of an erudite Talmudist when he saw them approaching from the other side of the road. With his index finger, he pushed his glasses up along the bridge of his nose as if to adjust his vision. He also didn't expect to see them there.

There are embraces that don't need words. A good slap on the back that can transmit all the damn words needed. A contact that's close, hard, and of rough-and-tumble men. Capa and Chim's embrace was just that. Gerda threw her arms around her friend's neck, kissing him on the forehead, on the eyes, repeating his name without end. Slightly embarrassed, he allowed himself to be loved, and joked as if all that show of emotion bothered him.

“Enough, enough, enough already…” he said, trying to separate himself with the shyness of a hermetic Jew. But deep down, he was happy.

It was one of those moments of extreme fulfillment that can occur sometimes in the midst of war. Two men and a woman walking along a tree-lined path, their cameras over their shoulders, twilight, a cigarette … At that point, each had their clocks set to their hour, their hour of death, and perhaps, in some way, the three of them knew it.

There are images that simply float through our memories, waiting for time to put them in their proper place. And though nobody can know beforehand, there's always a vague premonition, an omen, something we're not certain of, but that's there. Many years later, that would be the last image that David Seymour, Chim to his friends, would remember before he was struck down by an Egyptian sniper. It was November 10, 1956, at a border crossing, where he'd arrived with another photographer from France on an assignment to cover a prisoner exchange in the Suez Canal while peace negotiations were already underway. Dying is always a tragic event that is made more incomprehensible when it occurs during overtime, when the war has already ended. Suddenly, the rattle of machine-gun fire, and everything collapsed around him, and he found himself on the ground, vomiting blood. But before closing his eyes for good, for a split second he returned to that white point of memory: Capa, Gerda, and he, three young people walking along a trail. Smiling.

No one can choose what they remember, and Chim had no way of knowing that chance meeting would be the last vision he'd leave behind. The Twelfth Brigade made their way through the weeds of no-man's-land. The explosions caused the trees to shake.

The only good thing about close combat was the way it caused any metaphysical anxiety to vanish before an infantry weapon. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Schopenhauer can all just take a hike. Philosophy was something you felt in your vitals, so that all you could think about was saving your hide, getting to a wall, reaching a crest as quickly as possible, a church, a house in ruins … And if the machine guns started up again, throw yourself on the ground, embed yourself within it, so you could pass under the bullets, over uneven terrain, a hole in the ground, a dugout, a mine crater, a puddle, and lap through a swamp like a buffalo up to your ears in mud, trying to advance. It was a contradictory sensation that was strangely addictive because of the incredible surge of adrenaline that's released in the act. Like removing the muscles from your body and tying them tightly along a rope. Transforming conviction into action. Awaken latent instincts. Take careful aim. A vertigo similar to what athletes must experience before a race. Reflexes. Strength. Concentration. All war correspondents have felt this sensation at least once, like Troy's warriors did, though the war Homer sung was made up of men who never would have dreamed of being characters in
The Iliad
. It's not that they had begun to like it, it was that they had never felt more alive. The Achilles syndrome. Gerda, Capa, and Chim had begun to show symptoms, though they were unable to fully understand what was happening to them. It was their first conflict.

A road full of debris, a mule ripped open and lying in a ditch; Chim went ahead to mentally prepare the photograph. Lukács talking and gesticulating a lot with his hands; Bob at his side with a camera over his shoulder, arguing, with a frown on his face. Gerda a few paces behind, smoking and laughing quietly. Click.

They shared the same attitude about danger: a kind of challenge. Something that was hard to explain that perhaps had to do with the courage and passion of one's twenties, and its way of devouring a plate of rice and a bottle of wine before heading to the front, its desire for love in any corner, with that anger and loyalty and those ideas. And with life. Or a certain way of living it.

They were convinced that Europe's future was at stake in Spain, and they were fully committed to it, taking sides, abandoning any professional distance, everyone fighting the best they could, with the weapon that was closest to them, becoming more involved each day. Half-reporters, half-combatants. A camera in one hand and a pistol in the other.

Capa felt at home speaking in Hungarian with Lukács, except for a few words here and there that he preferred to say in Spanish. Gerda, on the other hand, didn't speak much. She liked to listen. And she did so by paying lots of attention, her head slightly tilted, that knowing look on her face, never missing a detail, a certain hint of arrogance, marking the necessary distance you need when living with men. Chim supplied the common sense, the fundamental criterion of any serious and cultured Jew, though perhaps he was too thin for that way of life and not one to flatter often, though cautious and as trustworthy as an old seaman.

The three learned a lot from the general. How to recognize a bullet's caliber; distinguish between an entrance and exit wound; prepare a withdrawal before entering a high-risk area; move blindly in the fog, like ghosts, with water up to their waists, watching the ripples as they advance, with their hands in the air, holding up their cameras or guns; and to fully train their ear for orientation so that they wouldn't mistakenly head in the direction of enemy lines. But when they finally arrived at the place where the river split, the trenches were deserted. None of their people were waiting for them. They were on their own.

In the distance, Madrid was a white rabbit at the mercy of hunting hounds.

T
HE CRUCIFIED CAPITAL
, declared the front-cover headlines for Capa's photo report in
Regards
. Gerda threw a thick gray wool jacket over her shoulders and sat next to Ruth on the couch of their apartment, like in the old days, just the two of them. On the other side of the window, the day was overcast, with that touch of fog that can sometimes cover Paris's rooftops with sadness. Her friend was the mother rock to all those who returned late or early from battle. Capa, Chim, her … Ruth Cerf listened to them all with that generous attitude that only truly maternal people can have. Attentive eyes, an understanding forehead, with that protective instinct that women used to have when they buttoned up a coat properly and wrapped their children's scarves around them on chilly mornings. Sitting on top of the Moroccan table, next to two cups of tea and a small plate of Breton cookies, the magazine was open to an image of aerial bombing. Gerda looked at the faces of women from the working-class neighborhood of Vallecas, captured only minutes after they had returned home to find their houses in flames and their neighbors buried beneath the rubble. A sloping street with skeletal trees and two militiamen sharing the same rifle, waiting for the opportune moment to shoot at the enemy. A young refugee mother with three small children on a platform in the metro station. Gray countryside and burning stables on the other side of the highway. Several brigadists with backpacks walking in a straight line with their heads down, one step in front of the other, staring at the footprints they were leaving behind in the mud, concentrated, like warriors before combat. A close-up of a militiawoman, nearly an adolescent, squatting, aiming her Mauser from a barricade in front of the School of Medicine. Gerda passed from one scene to another and her mind always returned to Madrid, to that well of memories that she couldn't stop submerging herself in since she'd returned. After all the intensity she had experienced in Spain, she couldn't bear the routine of Parisian life.

She took a sip of tea and the longing embraced her lips. She missed it. She remembered the Gran Vía during the last days of September, just before her return trip, and how it rained artillery shells day and night. Or how floodlights pierced the sky and the building's facades on a revolving angle. The rooftops of Madrid de los Austrias; the Telefónica building that housed the government press office from where she had sent dispatches several times, hunched over, while the projectiles passed over her head. The Calle de Alcalá; the tall windows of the Círculo de Bellas Artes. Those blue intersections and geometrical formations on the ceiling of her hotel room where her mind had now wandered.

“We have to go down to the shelter,” she had said when it seemed the buzzing of the engines was only escalating, followed by the crisp and tight rattle of antiaircraft fire the day the Fascists launched their second deadly attack on the city.

They were in the Hotel Florida. They had just returned from Casa del Campo, in the western part of the city where the Republicans had entrenched themselves and built barricades with cushions, doors, and even suitcases they'd taken from the Northern Station's lockers. They'd been able to get some great shots. Capa would review the images, looking at them up against the lamplight, his eye pressed up against the magnifying loupe, marking the best negatives with a cross. As she watched him work, from the foot of the door, Gerda felt an uncontrollable tenderness toward him. He was both a child playing with his favorite toy and a grown man completely dedicated to a job that was challenging, mysterious, essential, and for which he sometimes risked his life.

When he turned around, she surprised him with a kiss. And he just stood there for a few seconds with his arms open, more from shock than indecision, before unbuckling his belt and pushing her softly onto the bed so she could feel his hardness over her lower abdomen. She opened her legs, holding him prisoner inside, while she kissed his neck and the rough stubble on his face that tasted like sweat—masculine and pungent.

“We should head down,” she said in a mumbled voice lacking conviction, while the sirens wailed outside, and he entered deeper. Firm, serious, without ever taking his eyes off her, as if he wanted to store her forever in the camera obscura of his memory, just as she was in that moment, with her gathered eyebrow, her hungering mouth, half-open, moving her head slightly from side to side, as she always did when she was about to come. That's when he held on tightly to her hips and entered her even further, slowly, deep down inside her, to release himself long and languidly, until letting out a groan and dropping his head onto her shoulder. The blue floodlights swirling across the ceiling. She had taught him to declare himself like that, noisily. She enjoyed hearing him express his pleasure in that animal-like manner. Though for reasons having to do with intimacy, modesty, and male shyness, he was hesitant to do it. He had never shouted during an orgasm as he did that day, with the deafening sounds of planes passing right over their heads and a series of air-defense explosions across the street. They remained in bed silent for a while in the midst of those bluish shadows circling the ceiling, while Gerda caressed his back, and Madrid breathed through its wounds, and he looked at her in silence, as if from a distant shore, with those eyes of a handsome Gypsy.

She placed her teacup back into the tray with the same dreamy expression on her face.

“I'm going back to Spain,” she told Ruth.

Capa had been in Madrid since November. Thanks to the success of his work, especially “The Falling Soldier,” he'd been offered a new assignment. All the French editors had already discovered a while back that the famous Robert Capa was none other than the Hungarian André Friedmann. But his photographs had greatly improved, and he went to such great lengths to risk getting them that they went along with his game. They felt obliged to pay him his going rate. His
nom de guerre
had completely devoured that ragged, if slightly naive man raised in a working-class neighborhood in Pest. Now he was Capa, Robert, Bobby, Bob … He no longer needed a costume; the world of journalism had accepted him as he was, and he'd done his part to take on the role, firmly believing in his character, remaining loyal to him until the very end. More than ever, he believed in himself and in his work. With hopes his photographs could help gain intervention from the Western powers in backing the Republican government, he had given up on that alleged journalistic impartiality, up to his nose in a war that would only wind up shattering his life.