Tapestry of Spies

“Christ, Julian, it’s good to see you,” Florry surprised himself in suddenly blurting. He could feel Julian’s charm like a tide sweeping in to engulf him.

You hate him, he told himself. You’ll destroy him, he told himself.

“Look at me, Stink. Yes, by God, it is you. And what a present from God you are. Let me tell you, old man, this bloody giving oneself to the revolution is a good bit of trouble. It’s a picnic in the mud among Java men. Good fellows, but the blokes haven’t even read Housman, for God’s sake. And with your usual flair for the dramatic, you’ve managed to come upon something unique in history: it’s the only time a city has besieged an army. Why, it’s?”

“Julian, before we go any farther, I must tell you something.”

“Oh, God, I do hate it when someone says they must tell me something. From the look on your face, you’re about to tell me you’ve managed to get yourself listed ahead of me in Mother’s will. I can forgive you anything, Stinky, except that. Now keep low here. First rule: never stand against a crestline. Bang, Bob the Nailer has potted you. Now, what was it you were going to tell me. Can it wait at least until?”

“Please, no. I must get this out. You must know.”

“Lord, you’re not still ticked at me for the awful thing I said on Honors Day. Stink, I’d just had a rare turn- down from a bloody trollop ? Jack Tantivy’s sister, as I recall, awful girl ? and I was drunk and looking for somebody to hurt. Lord, Stink, how I’ve often regretted that. You’re not out here for revenge, lo these many years later? Here?”

He pulled out the little pistol, snapped it prime, and handed it to Florry.

“Go on then,” he said dramatically, closing his eyes. “Do the deed. I deserve it. I can be such a cad. I hurt people all the time, Stink. Pull the trigger and rid the world of the awful Julian.”

“You bloody idiot.”

“Ah, Stink, that’s the spirit. Give as good as you get.”

Florry saw that the pistol was the little Webley automatic, in.25 caliber.

“Here. Take the bloody toy. I’ve a Webley myself. The big revolver. When it comes to shooting, I could blast the moon out of the sky.”

“A four-five-five! Topping! Now that I envy you. A bloody big four-five-five! Christ, I’d love to turn it on a Moorish sergeant. Or pot a Jerry or an Eyetye captain. What fun! War’s great fun, Stink. Better than school … better even than poetry.”

Florry exploded. “Julian, I hate your poetry! I hate ‘Achilles, Fool.’ You’ve destroyed the talent you had at Eton with debauchery and sloth. You haven’t written a good verse in years.”

Julian’s blue eyes held his for the longest time. Then he smiled.

“Well spoken, Stink. Hate it myself. It’s no bloody game when it’s your own rump they’re shooting at. Yes, as a poet I’m finished, I agree. I’m halfway through an awful poem called ‘Pons,’ and I’ve no end at all for it. It’ll remain forever undone. Come on, we’ll have a tot and I’ll show it to you and we can have a good laugh over its utter dreadfulness. And some day we’ll go back to Barbastros to the whorehouse. Now that’s a pleasure you’ll have to experience. These revolutionary tarts, Stink, they’re utterly enchanting. They take your shooter in their bloody mouths! Extraordinary!”

“Julian.” Florry idiotically, wearily, repeated.

“Now, Stink, there is one thing I absolutely have to know.” He paused. “How is Mother?”

* * *

Some days, Bob the Nailer was more active than others; like so many things Spanish, it seemed to depend entirely upon the whim of the sniper himself. If he awoke in an indifferent mood, he might prang away indiscriminately, manufacturing only enough noise to keep his own sargento and priest off his back. If he awakened with the fire of zealotry moving in his bones, he might crawl close enough to do some real damage, and make things in the English section’s crude trench at least interesting.

Curiously Florry soon came to hope for interesting days. For Bob the Nailer was like a morale officer; he made the time in the trenches bearable, because when you are ducking bullets, you may be risking death but you are also blissfully unaware of rain, cold, mud, and all the other disgusting elements of the life of static warfare.

It was ’14–’18, again, the cold, wet living in mud hovels scooped from the earth, with only the occasional scurrying patrol into no-man’s-land to liven things up, the occasional calling card from Bob to keep you honest. It was as if the tank hadn’t yet been invented, and in a certain way it hadn’t. Jerry couldn’t get his PzKpfw IIs down here, Billy Mowry allowed, because the Spanish stone bridges were too old; the rumbling of a heavy vehicle upon them would bring them crashing down, dumping Jerry and his tin toy in the drink. And of course bloody Joe Stalin wouldn’t allow any T-26s up here where it was largely a POUMista show. But Florry almost wished for a tank or two; like Bob the Nailer, they’d make things more interesting ? and boredom was almost as dangerous as the Fascists.

There was only one cure for boredom. It was Julian, who, whatever his horrors of the past, his history of cruelty, would not allow himself to be hated any more than he would allow anyone about him, particularly Florry, to appear put out.

His flamboyance and natural outrageousness seemed to cloak him in special grace and he was always happy, happier even than Billy Mowry, a true believer.

“I say, Billy, do you know why I joined this POUM thing of yours?” Julian baited on a day so like every other day it would have no place within a week or on a calendar.

Billy Mowry, sucking on a pipe while filling sandbags, delivered up the sour face of a man about to face an execution, paused, and finally sprang Julian for the pounce.

“No, comrade. Pray tell us.”

“Ah. You see, it happened like this. I saw the bloody great initials POUM on the banners outside this hotel on the Ramblas where I was rusticating one summer’s day, and I said to myself, why, these silly buggers cannot even properly spell the word POEM, and as our century’s fifth greatest living poet, I went in to correct them and the next thing I knew, here I was picking lice as big as hobnails off my balls.”

Everybody laughed. God, Julian.

Julian’s true enemy, however, wasn’t fascism or party politics or even war in general: it was time. Julian was the only one of them who could vanquish time. He could turn the months into weeks, the weeks to days, the days to hours. He could rip through the numbers on the clock and the pages of the calendar; he could make them forget where they were and how long they’d been there and how long they would be there. That was his special, most lovely gift. And as Florry settled into the troglodyte life it was Julian who freed him from his bondage to the calendar: and when Florry looked at such a document in what seemed to be his third or fourth week on the line he was stunned to discover that not only had January turned to February but February had turned to March and that March was soon to turn to April. It was, however, still 1937.

“Ain’t we low on wood?” Commissar Billy asked, part of the ritual of the sameness of days. “Whose bloody turn is it to scrounge some up?”

“I’ll go,” said Julian, shucking his blanket.

“Here, I’ll come along,” said Florry, grasping his first chance to confront Julian alone.

“Stink, you do have a use then, don’t you?”

But it wasn’t a joke. The night was coming and without wood there’d be no fires and no warmth. But by this time there was damned little wood. The ground behind the trenches had been picked clean for hundreds of yards.

With their comrades’ best hopes along as baggage, and a godsend from Bob the Nailer ? sprang! the bullet rattled off the rocks a goodly distance away ? the two clambered out of the trench and began to wander about the thickets and over the hills that lay behind them.

Florry steeled himself toward the hatred he felt he properly ought to feel and set out to trap Julian into some sort of acknowledgment of his treason.

“I say, Julian, I hope when the revolution’s secure here, it’ll move to England. Chance to set things right at last.”

“You do?” said Julian. “That’s a bit lefty, isn’t it, old man? I think it’s a revolting idea. I mean, Billy Mowry is a natural-born leader but if he tries to take my mother’s coal mine from her and give it to some committee, I’m afraid I’d have him hanged from the nearest willow.”

“But justice is?”