История жизни. (Anamnesis vitae). 31 страница

Now they rode on a long slanting, rising stretch of road that ran across the face of the mountain and the grade was so steep as they neared the top that Gomez told him to get down and together they pushed the motorcycle up the last steep grade of the pass. At the left, just past the top, there was a loop of road where cars could turn and there were lights winking in front of a big stone building that bulked long and dark against the night sky.

"Let us go to ask there where the headquarters is," Gomez said to Andres and they wheeled the motorcycle over to where two sentries stood in front of the closed door of the great stone building. Gomez leaned the motorcycle against the wall as a motorcyclist in a leather suit, showing against the light from inside the building as the door opened, came out of the door with a dispatch case hung over his shoulder, a wooden-holstered Mauser pistol swung against his hip. As the light went off, he found his motorcycle in the dark by the door, pushed it until it sputtered and caught, then roared off up the road.

At the door Gomez spoke to one of the sentries. "Captain Gomez of the Sixty-Fifth Brigade," he said. "Can you tell me where to find the headquarters of General Golz commanding the ThirtyFifth Division?"

"It isn't here," the sentry said.

"What is here?"

"The Comandancia."

"What comandancia?"

"Well, the Comandancia."

"The comandancia of what?"

"Who art thou to ask so many questions?" the sentry said to Gomez in the dark. Here on the top of the pass the sky was very clear with the stars out and Andres, out of the dust now, could see quite clearly in the dark. Below them, where the road turned to the right, he could see clearly the outline of the trucks and cars that passed against the sky line.

"I am Captain Rogelio Gomez of the first battalion of the Sixty-Fifth Brigade and I ask where is the headquarters of General Golz," Gomez said.

The sentry opened the door a little way. "Call the corporal of the guard," he shouted inside.

Just then a big staff car came up over the turn of the road and circled toward the big stone building where Andres and Gomez were standing waiting for the corporal of the guard. It came toward them and stopped outside the door.

A large man, old and heavy, in an oversized khaki beret, such as _chasseurs a pied_ wear in the French Army, wearing an overcoat, carrying a map case and wearing a pistol strapped around his greatcoat, got out of the back of the car with two other men in the uniform of the International Brigades.

He spoke in French, which Andres did not understand and of which Gomez, who had been a barber, knew only a few words, to his chauffeur telling him to get the car away from the door and into shelter.

As he came into the door with the other two officers, Gomez saw his face clearly in the light and recognized him. He had seen him at political meetings and he had often read articles by him in Mundo Obrero translated from the French. He recognized his bushy eyebrows, his watery gray eyes, his chin and the double chin under it, and he knew him for one of France's great modern revolutionary figures who had led the mutiny of the French Navy in the Black Sea. Gomez knew this man's high political place in the International Brigades and he knew this man would know where Golz's headquarters were and be able to direct him there. He did not know what this man had become with time, disappointment, bitterness both domestic and political, and thwarted ambition and that to question him was one of the most dangerous things that any man could do. Knowing nothing of this he stepped forward into the path of this man, saluted with his clenched fist and said, "Comrade Marty, we are the bearers of a dispatch for General Golz. Can you direct us to his headquarters? It is urgent."

The tall, heavy old man looked at Gomez with his outthrust head and considered him carefully with his watery eyes. Even here at the front in the light of a bare electric bulb, he having just come in from driving in an open car on a brisk night, his gray face had a look of decay. His face looked as though it were modelled from the waste material you find under the claws of a very old lion.

"You have what, Comrade?" he asked Gomez, speaking Spanish with a strong Catalan accent. His eyes glanced sideways at Andres, slid over him, and went back to Gomez.

"A dispatch for General Golz to be delivered at his headquarters, Comrade Marty."

"Where is it from, Comrade?"

"From behind the fascist lines," Gomez said.

Andre Marty extended his hand for the dispatch and the other papers. He glanced at them and put them in his pocket.

 

"Arrest them both," he said to the corporal of the guard. "Have them searched and bring them to me when I send for them."

With the dispatch in his pocket he strode on into the interior of the big stone house.

Outside in the guard room Gomez and Andres were being searched by the guard.

"What passes with that man?" Gomez said to one of the guards.

"_Esta loco_," the guard said. "He is crazy."

"No. He is a political figure of great importance," Gomez said. "He is the chief commissar of the International Brigades."

"_Apesar de eso, esta loco_," the corporal of the guard said. "All the same he's crazy. What do you behind the fascist lines?"

"This comrade is a guerilla from there," Gomez told him while the man searched him. "He brings a dispatch to General Golz. Guard well my papers. Be careful with that money and that bullet on the string. It is from my first wound at Guadarama."

"Don't worry," the corporal said. "Everything will be in this drawer. Why didn't you ask me where Golz was?"

"We tried to. I asked the sentry and he called you."

"But then came the crazy and you asked him. No one should ask him anything. He is crazy. Thy Golz is up the road three kilometers from here and to the right in the rocks of the forest."

"Can you not let us go to him now?"

"Nay. It would be my head. I must take thee to the crazy. Besides, he has thy dispatch."

"Can you not tell some one?"

"Yes," the corporal said. "I will tell the first responsible one I see. All know that he is crazy."

"I had always taken him for a great figure," Gomez said. "For one of the glories of France."

"He may be a glory and all," the corporal said and put his hand on Andres's shoulder. "But he is crazy as a bedbug. He has a mania for shooting people."

"Truly shooting them?"

"_Como lo oyes_," the corporal said. "That old one kills more than the bubonic plague. _Mata mas que la peste bubonica_. But he doesn't kill fascists like we do. _Que va_. Not in joke. _Mata bichos raros_. He kills rare things. Trotzkyites. Divagationers. Any type of rare beasts."

Andres did not understand any of this.

"When we were at Escorial we shot I don't know how many for him," the corporal said. "We always furnish the firing party. The men of the Brigades would not shoot their own men. Especially the French. To avoid difficulties it is always us who do it. We shot French. We have shot Belgians. We have shot others of divers nationality. Of all types. _Tiene mania de fusilar gente_. Always for political things. He's crazy. _Purifica mas que el Salvarsan_. He purifies more than Salvarsan."

"But you will tell some one of this dispatch?"

"Yes, man. Surely. I know every one of these two Brigades. Every one comes through here. I know even up to and through the Russians, although only a few speak Spanish. We will keep this crazy from shooting Spaniards."

"But the dispatch."

"The dispatch, too. Do not worry, Comrade. We know how to deal with this crazy. He is only dangerous with his own people. We understand him now."

"Bring in the two prisoners," came the voice of Andre Marty.

"_Quereis echar un trago?_" the corporal asked. "Do you want a drink?"

"Why not?"

The corporal took a bottle of anis from a cupboard and both Gomez and Andres drank. So did the corporal. He wiped his mouth on his hand.

"_Vamonos_," he said.

They went out of the guard room with the swallowed burn of the anis warming their mouths, their bellies and their hearts and walked down the hall and entered the room where Marty sat behind a long table, his map spread in front of him, his red-and-blue pencil, with which he played at being a general officer, in his hand. To Andres it was only one more thing. There had been many tonight. There were always many. If your papers were in order and your heart was good you were in no danger. Eventually they turned you loose and you were on your way. But the _Ingles_ had said to hurry. He knew now he could never get back for the bridge but they had a dispatch to deliver and this old man there at the table had put it in his pocket.

"Stand there," Marty said without looking up.

"Listen, Comrade Marty," Gomez broke out, the anis fortifying his anger. "Once tonight we have been impeded by the ignorance of the anarchists. Then by the sloth of a bureaucratic fascist. Now by the oversuspicion of a Communist."

"Close your mouth," Marty said without looking up. "This is not a meeting."

"Comrade Marty, this is a matter of utmost urgence," Gomez said. "Of the greatest importance."

The corporal and the soldier with them were taking a lively interest in this as though they were at a play they had seen many times but whose excellent moments they could always savor.

"Everything is of urgence," Marty said. "All things are of importance." Now he looked up at them, holding the pencil. "How did you know Golz was here? Do you understand how serious it is to come asking for an individual general before an attack? How could you know such a general would be here?"

"Tell him, _tu_," Gomez said to Andres.

"Comrade General," Andres started--Andre Marty did not correct him in the mistake in rank--"I was given that packet on the other side of the lines--"

"On the other side of the lines?" Marty said. "Yes, I heard him say you came from the fascist lines."

"It was given to me, Comrade General, by an _Ingles_ named Roberto who had come to us as a dynamiter for this of the bridge. Understandeth?"

"Continue thy story," Marty said to Andres; using the term story as you would say lie, falsehood, or fabrication.

"Well, Comrade General, the _Ingles_ told me to bring it to the General Golz with all speed. He makes an attack in these hills now on this day and all we ask is to take it to him now promptly if it pleases the Comrade General."

Marty shook his head again. He was looking at Andres but he was not seeing him.

Golz, he thought in a mixture of horror and exultation as a man might feel hearing that a business enemy had been killed in a particularly nasty motor accident or that some one you hated but whose probity you had never doubted had been guilty of defalcation. That Golz should be one of them, too. That Golz should be in such obvious communication with the fascists. Golz that he had known for nearly twenty years. Golz who had captured the gold train that winter with Lucacz in Siberia. Golz who had fought against Kolchak, and in Poland. In the Caucasus. In China, and here since the first October. But he _had_ been close to Tukachevsky. To Voroshilov, yes, too. But to Tukachevsky. And to who else? Here to Karkov, of course. And to Lucacz. But all the Hungarians had been intriguers. He hated Gall. Golz hated Gall. Remember that. Make a note of that. Golz has always hated Gall. But he favors Putz. Remember that. And Duval is his chief of staff. See what stems from that. You've heard him say Copic's a fool. That is definitive. That exists. And now this dispatch from the fascist lines. Only by pruning out of these rotten branches can the tree remain healthy and grow. The rot must become apparent for it is to be destroyed. But Golz of all men. That Golz should be one of the traitors. He knew that you could trust no one. No one. Ever. Not your wife. Not your brother. Not your oldest comrade. No one. Ever.

"Take them away," he said to the guards. "Guard them carefully." The corporal looked at the soldier. This had been very quiet for one of Marty's performances.

"Comrade Marty," Gomez said. "Do not be insane. Listen to me, a loyal officer and comrade. That is a dispatch that must be delivered. This comrade has brought it through the fascist lines to give to Comrade General Golz."

"Take them away," Marty said, now kindly, to the guard. He was sorry for them as human beings if it should be necessary to liquidate them. But it was the tragedy of Golz that oppressed him. That it should be Golz, he thought. He would take the fascist communication at once to Varloff. No, better he would take it to Golz himself and watch him as he received it. That was what he would do. How could he be sure of Varloff if Golz was one of them? No. This was a thing to be very careful about.

Andres turned to Gomez, "You mean he is not going to send the dispatch?" he asked, unbelieving.

"Don't you see?" Gomez said.

"_Me cago en su puta madre!_" Andres said. "_Esta loco_."

"Yes," Gomez said. "He is crazy. You are crazy! Hear! Crazy!" he shouted at Marty who was back now bending over the map with his red-and-blue pencil. "Hear me, you crazy murderer?"

"Take them away," Marty said to the guard. "Their minds are unhinged by their great guilt."

There was a phrase the corporal recognized. He had heard that before.

"You crazy murderer!" Gomez shouted.

"_Hijo de la gran puta_," Andres said to him. "_Loco_."

The stupidity of this man angered him. If he was a crazy let him be removed as a crazy. Let the dispatch be taken from his pocket. God damn this crazy to hell. His heavy Spanish anger was rising out of his usual calm and good temper. In a little while it would blind him.

Marty, looking at his map, shook his head sadly as the guards took Gomez and Andres out. The guards had enjoyed hearing him cursed but on the whole they had been disappointed in the performance. They had seen much better ones. Andre Marty did not mind the men cursing him. So many men had cursed him at the end. He was always genuinely sorry for them as human beings. He always told himself that and it was one of the last true ideas that was left to him that had ever been his own.

He sat there, his moustache and his eyes focused on the map, on the map that he never truly understood, on the brown tracing of the contours that were traced fine and concentric as a spider's web. He could see the heights and the valleys from the contours but he never really understood why it should be this height and why this valley was the one. But at the General Staff where, because of the system of Political Commissars, he could intervene as the political head of the Brigades, he would put his finger on such and such a numbered, brown-thin-lined encircled spot among the greens of woods cut by the lines of roads that parallel the never casual winding of a river and say, "There. That is the point of weakness."

Gall and Copic, who were men of politics and of ambition, would agree and later, men who never saw the map, but heard the number of the hill before they left their starting place and had the earth of diggings on it pointed out, would climb its side to find their death along its slope or, being halted by machine guns placed in olive groves would never get up it at all. Or on other fronts they might scale it easily and be no better off than they had been before. But when Marty put his finger on the map in Golz's staff the scarheaded, white-faced General's jaw muscles would tighten and he would think, "I should shoot you, Andre Marty, before I let you put that gray rotten finger on a contour map of mine. Damn you to hell for all the men you've killed by interfering in matters you know nothing of. Damn the day they named tractor factories and villages and co-operatives for you so that you are a symbol that I cannot touch. Go and suspect and exhort and intervene and denounce and butcher some other place and leave my staff alone."

But instead of saying that Golz would only lean back away from the leaning bulk, the pushing finger, the watery gray eyes, the graywhite moustache and the bad breath and say, "Yes, Comrade Marty. I see your point. It is not well taken, however, and I do not agree. You can try to go over my head if you like. Yes. You can make it a Party matter as you say. But I do not agree."

So now Andre Marty sat working over his map at the bare table with the raw light on the unshaded electric light bulb over his head, the overwide beret pulled forward to shade his eyes, referring to the mimeographed copy of the orders for the attack and slowly and laboriously working them out on the map as a young officer might work a problem at a staff college. He was engaged in war. In his mind he was commanding troops; he had the right to interfere and this he believed to constitute command. So he sat there with Robert Jordan's dispatch to Golz in his pocket and Gomez and Andres waited in the guard room and Robert Jordan lay in the woods above the bridge.

It is doubtful if the outcome of Andres's mission would have been any different if he and Gomez had been allowed to proceed without Andre Marty's hindrance. There was no one at the front with sufficient authority to cancel the attack. The machinery had been in motion much too long for it to be stopped suddenly now. There is a great inertia about all military operations of any size. But once this inertia has been overcome and movement is under way they are almost as hard to arrest as to initiate.

But on this night the old man, his beret pulled forward, was still sitting at the table with his map when the door opened and Karkov the Russian journalist came in with two other Russians in civilian clothes, leather coats and caps. The corporal of the guard closed the door reluctantly behind them. Karkov had been the first responsible man he had been able to communicate with.

"Tovarich Marty," said Karkov in his politely disdainful lisping voice and smiled, showing his bad teeth.

Marty stood up. He did not like Karkov, but Karkov, coming from _Pravda_ and in direct communication with Stalin, was at this moment one of the three most important men in Spain.

"Tovarich Karkov," he said.

"You are preparing the attack?" Karkov said insolently, nodding toward the map.

"I am studying it," Marty answered.

"Are you attacking? Or is it Golz?" Karkov asked smoothly.

"I am only a commissar, as you know," Marty told him.

"No," Karkov said. "You are modest. You are really a general. You have your map and your field glasses. But were you not an admiral once, Comrade Marty?"

"I was a gunner's mate," said Marty. It was a lie. He had really been a chief yeoman at the time of the mutiny. But he thought now, always, that he had been a gunner's mate.

"Ah. I thought you were a first-class yeoman," Karkov said. "I always get my facts wrong. It is the mark of the journalist."

The other Russians had taken no part in the conversation. They were both looking over Marty's shoulder at the map and occasionally making a remark to each other in their own language. Marty and Karkov spoke French after the first greeting.

"It is better not to get facts wrong in _Pravda_," Marty said. He said it brusquely to build himself up again. Karkov always punctured him. The French word is _degonfler_ and Marty was worried and made wary by him. It was hard, when Karkov spoke, to remember with what importance he, Andre Marty, came from the Central Committee of the French Communist Party. It was hard to remember, too, that he was untouchable. Karkov seemed always to touch him so lightly and whenever he wished. Now Karkov said, "I usually correct them before I send them to _Pravda_, I am quite accurate in _Pravda_. Tell me, Comrade Marty, have you heard anything of any message coming through for Golz from one of our _partizan_ groups operating toward Segovia? There is an American comrade there named Jordan that we should have heard from. There have been reports of fighting there behind the fascist lines. He would have sent a message through to Golz."

"An American?" Marty asked. Andres had said an _Ingles_. So that is what it was. So he had been mistaken. Why had those fools spoken to him anyway?"

"Yes," Karkov looked at him contemptuously, "a young American of slight political development but a great way with the Spaniards and a fine _partizan_ record. Just give me the dispatch, Comrade Marty. It has been delayed enough."

 

"What dispatch?" Marty asked. It was a very stupid thing to say and he knew it. But he was not able to admit he was wrong that quickly and he said it anyway to delay the moment of humiliation, not accepting any humiliation. "And the safe-conduct pass," Karkov said through his bad teeth.

Andre Marty put his hand in his pocket and laid the dispatch on the table. He looked Karkov squarely in the eye. All right. He was wrong and there was nothing he could do about it now but he was not accepting any humiliation. "And the safe-conduct pass," Karkov said softly.

Marty laid it beside the dispatch.

"Comrade Corporal," Karkov called in Spanish.

The corporal opened the door and came in. He looked quickly at Andre Marty, who stared back at him like an old boar which has been brought to bay by hounds. There was no fear on Marty's face and no humiliation. He was only angry, and he was only temporarily at bay. He knew these dogs could never hold him.

"Take these to the two comrades in the guard room and direct them to General Golz's headquarters," Karkov said. "There has been too much delay."

The corporal went out and Marty looked after him, then looked at Karkov.

"Tovarich Marty," Karkov said, "I am going to find out just how untouchable you are."

Marty looked straight at him and said nothing.

"Don't start to have any plans about the corporal, either," Karkov went on. "It was not the corporal. I saw the two men in the guard room and they spoke to me" (this was a lie). "I hope all men always will speak to me" (this was the truth although it was the corpora! who had spoken). But Karkov had this belief in the good which could come from his own accessibility and the humanizing possibility of benevolent intervention. It was the one thing he was never cynical about.

"You know when I am in the U.S.S.R. people write to me in _Pravda_ when there is an injustice in a town in Azerbaijan. Did you know that? They say 'Karkov will help us."

Andre Marty looked at him with no expression on his face except anger and dislike. There was nothing in his mind now but that Karkov had done something against him. All right, Karkov, power and all, could watch out.

"This is something else," Karkov went on, "but it is the same principle. I am going to find Out just how untouchable you are, Comrade Marty. I would like to know if it could not be possible to change the name of that tractor factory."

Andre Marty looked away from him and back to the map.

"What did young Jordan say?" Karkov asked him.

"I did not read it," Andre Marty said. "_Et maintenant fiche moi la paix_, Comrade Karkov."

"Good," said Karkov. "I leave you to your military labors."

He stepped out of the room and walked to the guard room. Andres and Gomez were already gone and he stood there a moment looking up the road and at the mountain tops beyond that showed now in the first gray of daylight. We must get on up there, he thought. It will be soon, now.

Andres and Gomez were on the motorcycle on the road again and it was getting light. Now Andres, holding again to the back of the seat ahead of him as the motorcycle climbed turn after switchback turn in a faint gray mist that lay over the top of the pass, felt the motorcycle speed under him, then skid and stop and they were standing by the motorcycle on a long, down-slope of road and in the woods, on their left, were tanks covered with pine branches. There were troops here all through the woods. Andres saw men carrying the long poles of stretchers over their shoulders. Three staff cars were off the road to the right, in under the trees, with branches laid against their sides and other pine branches over their tops.

Gomez wheeled the motorcycle up to one of them. He leaned it against a pine tree and spoke to the chauffeur who was sitting by the car, his back against a tree.

"I'll take you to him," the chauffeur said. "Put thy _moto_ out of sight and cover it with these." He pointed to a pile of cut branches.

With the sun just starting to come through the high branches of the pine trees, Gomez and Andres followed the chauffeur, whose name was Vicente, through the pines across the road and up the slope to the entrance of a dugout from the roof of which signal wires ran on up over the wooded slope. They stood outside while the chauffeur went in and Andres admired the construction of the dugout which showed only as a hole in the hillside, with no dirt scattered about, but which he could see, from the entrance, was both deep and profound with men moving around in it freely with no need to duck their heads under the heavy timbered roof.

Vicente, the chauffeur, came out.

"He is up above where they are deploying for the attack," he said. "I gave it to his Chief of Staff. He signed for it. Here."

He handed Gomez the receipted envelope. Gomez gave it to Andres, who looked at it and put it inside his shirt.

"What is the name of him who signed?" he asked.

"Duval," Vicente said.

"Good," said Andres. "He was one of the three to whom I might give it."

"Should we wait for an answer?" Gomez asked Andres.

"It might be best. Though where I will find the _Ingles_ and the others after that of the bridge neither God knows."

"Come wait with me," Vicente said, "until the General returns. And I will get thee coffee. Thou must be hungry."

"And these tanks," Gomez said to him.

They were passing the branch-covered, mud-colored tanks, each with two deep-ridged tracks over the pine needles showing where they had swung and backed from the road. Their 45-mm. guns jutted horizontally under the branches and the drivers and gunners in their leather coats and ridged helmets sat with their backs against the trees or lay sleeping on the ground.

"These are the reserve," Vicente said. "Also these troops are in reserve. Those who commence the attack are above."

"They are many," Andres said.

"Yes," Vicente said. "It is a full division."

Inside the dugout Duval, holding the opened dispatch from Robert Jordan in his left hand, glancing at his wrist watch on the same hand, reading the dispatch for the fourth time, each time feeling the sweat come out from under his armpit and run down his flank, said into the telephone, "Get me position Segovia, then. He's left? Get me position Avila."

He kept on with the phone. It wasn't any good. He had talked to both brigades. Golz had been up to inspect the dispositions for the attack and was on his way to an observation post. He called the observation post and he was not there.

"Get me planes one," Duval said, suddenly taking all responsibility. He would take responsibility for holding it up. It was better to hold it up. You could not send them to a surprise attack against an enemy that was waiting for it. You couldn't do it. It was just murder. You couldn't. You mustn't. No matter what. They could shoot him if they wanted. He would call the airfield directly and get the bombardment cancelled. But suppose it's just a holding attack? Suppose we were supposed to draw off all that material and those forces? Suppose that is what it is for? They never tell you it is a holding attack when you make it.