Night Soldiers

people lined the narrow lane, waved tiny Monarchist flags, and gave the cheer heard now all across the country. “Han pasado,” they called out. “Han pasado!” They have passed. Don Teodosio and Dona Flora and Miguelito the chauffeur were ceremoniously released from captivity. Both mayors, Avena from the PSUC and Quinto of the POUM, were ceremoniously shot. There wasn’t much else to do, so the captain ordered his men forward. They had liberated San Ximene, and he felt they ought to go on, to Calaguer or Santoval, before nightfall. Marching out of the village in good order, they passed through an orchard of fig trees. A sergeant was sent to reconnoiter, but there was no fruit to be had. The sergeant was a country man, and told the captain that the trees had not been pruned. Branches had broken off under the weight of the fruit, disease had spread into the trunks from the open wood, and that was the end of the San Ximene figs.

Paris,1937

“Steady on!”

“Dear boy. Trod on your paw, have I?”

“Damn near.”

“I am sorry. Can’t see a thing with the lights off. Candles are lovely in a ballroom, but they do keep one in shadow.”

“Bloody Frenchies. If it ain’t a knife ‘n’ fork they can’t work it.”

“Not the power, actually. One of Winnie’s effects I think. Makes it funereal.”

“Mmm.”

“I’m Roger Fitzware.”

“Jimmy Grey. West Sussex Fitzwares, is it?”

“C’est moi.”

“Mmm. Been in Paris long?”

“Live here, actually, most of the time.”

“Do you. I’m just in from Cairo. Over at the Bristol.”

“How do you find it?”

“Service gone to hell, of course, and full of Americans.”

“In Cairo on business?”

“Little of everything, really.”

“Hot as ever?”

“Yes. Damned filthy too.”

“Dear old thing.”

“Not my sort of place, all those little brown men running about and stabbing each other.”

“Oh well. One puts up with the little brown men. For the sake of the little brown boys.”

“Mmm. Wouldn’t know about that.”

“Ah, here’s the lovely Ginger.”

“Roddy Fitzware! You promised to call-Who’s this?”

“Ginger Pudakis, meet Jimmy Grey.”

“Delighted. Mmm. Yes, well, think I see somebody I know. Good to have met you, Fitzware.”

“See you.”

“Roddy! You are exceptionally bad. You terrified that poor man.”

“Oh well, it is Paris, after all.”

“Not here, my lamb. Here is a little corner of a foreign field, and that fellow, if I’m not mistaken, is something or other to Viscount Grey.”

“The 1914 man? ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our time.’ That the one?”

“Yes.”

“The lamps are certainly out here.”

“Where’s Mutzi?”

“Home. In a great snit.”

“Oh Roddy, you mustn’t be cruel.”

“Me! Ginger dear, I’ve been an absolute bishop, really I have. But he snuck out while I was having me nap, taxied off to Gabouchard and bought himself the most impossible tie. Couldn’t let him wear it, could I, not to Winnie and Dicky’s. Had a sunset. Some dreadful peachy pinky sort of thing they sold him. Poor Mutzi and his filthy Boche taste, he can’t help himself at all. When I left he was playing Mendelssohn on the Victrola and mumbling about Selbstmord or some such thing. Ending it all.”

“Too sad. All for a tie.”

“Told him not to get blood on the drapes.”

“You’re a horrid man, you really are.”

“C’est moi. Care to step onto the balcony?”

“And what would you do on the balcony?”

“Think of something, dear girl.”

“You probably would.”

“Speaking of that, where’s old Winnie and Dicky?”

“Grand entrance at midnight, one is told. From the ballroom elevator.”

“Too bad Mutzi isn’t here to see this, he quite loves the Teutonic style. Draped candles, urns with cypress, roses painted black. Nobody actually dead, is there?”

“Heavens no. On the stroke of midnight, Winnie Beale turns thirty-nine. It’s a funeral for her youth.”

“Ah.”

“Really, one must love the Americans.”

“You married one, my dear, so you must. Whatever became of Mr. Pudakis?”

“In Chicago, as always. Where he does something with meat. Bloody old Europe didn’t agree with poor Harry.”

“Hello! Something’s up, the music’s gone queer.”

“It’s the funeral march. Is it? Yes, I think it is. Sounds a bit odd from a jazz band.”

“Speaking of odd, regardez the elevator.”

“Good God. Now that is courage.”

“Ain’t it though? Throw yourself a birthday bash and make an entrance entirely bare-arsed. Bravo Winnie! Hurrah!”

“Well, not entirely bare-arsed. The hat is from Schiaparelli, my sweet, the pearls are Bulgari, and the little catch-me/fuck-me shoes are made by a little man in the Rue des Moulins.”

“Still, rather a decent set of flanks …”

“Now Roddy, don’t be boring.”

“Tell me, dear girl, who’s that hard-looking gent presiding over the salmon?”

“Him? You know him. It’s Mario Thoeni, the tenor, though one wouldn’t exactly say hard-looking …”

“Gawd not him. The waiter.”

“Oh who knows. Some dreadful Slav from Heininger. Winnie finds him decorative.”

“She’s right, you know. He’s quite thoroughly decorative.”

“Roddy Fitzware, you’re not to poach!”

“Dear girl, wouldn’t think of it.”

All his life he had handled tools, but this one had its own special set of perfections. It was made of silver, with a pleasing weight that sealed it to the hand, a broad filigree surface ending in a rounded point and a subtle edge of just the proper sharpness. He pressed it down through the pink flesh of the salmon-choosing a natural striation for the cut-deftly balanced the portion atop the server, then slid it neatly onto the maize-colored plate. With ceremony, he laid the server on a silver dish and took up a small ladle. He swirled it twice through the thick