Tapestry of Spies

“Will we be able to tour the battlefield?”

“In due time.”

“Will you release casualty figures?”

“It would serve no purpose.”

“Were British troops involved in the action?”

“The British Centura of the POUM militia ? excuse me, the Twenty-ninth Division ? had a brave and leading role in the drama. The Centura is a unit of roughly one hundred men, who have been a proud part of the militia since August of 1936. These were among the most ardent troops in the attack.”

At last the Dutch reporter spoke.

“Were there any British casualties?”

Steinbach paused a second.

“It is with deep regret,” he said, “that I announce the death of a revolutionary fighter of great heroism, idealism, and discipline. He was also a great poet and scholar. Julian Raines, author of the famous poem ‘Achilles, Fool,’ was killed in action in the attack against Fascist troops on the outskirts of Huesca.”

There was a gasp.

“Also,” Steinbach continued, “a British writer named Robert Furry perished.”

The press party moved to the trench and Steinbach showed the correspondents the line of attack through a brass telescope.

“As you can see, gentlemen,” he said, “it’s terrible terrain to cross at night, but our brave fighters were able to get within bomb range before being spotted. You can see the redoubt.”

“Keep your ’eads low, boys,” called a redheaded Cockney captain with a bloody leg. “Bob the Nailer don’t give a bloody damn who you are.”

“Is that where the Englishmen died?” asked Sampson.

“Bloody right,” said the runty little man. “Up there. Comrade Julian went out alone to bomb an enemy machine gun. His chum went out after him. They sent the gun to hell, but neither man made it back.”

“I say, captain,” said Sampson, “what’s your name? And what part of England are you from.”

“Legion, chum. And I’m from all over.”

“Hmmm. So there are no bodies?”

“No. But no man could survive up there,” said Steinbach.

“Perhaps they were taken prisoner,” said a young American correspondent ? to some laughter.

“I’m afraid prisoners are seldom taken on this front,” said Steinbach, a special, almost magical vividness coming into his good eye. “We all feel his loss keenly. He was one of those special men. You are all familiar with his poem ‘Achilles, Fool,’ which has been taken to express the confusion of a generation. Well, perhaps by the end, Comrade Raines had solved his confusion.”

“What about this other chap?”

“Only Julian Raines is important, as the symbol of a revolutionary generation who, rather than living his life in the comfortable circumstances of his birth, instead chose to come to Spain and risk everything for his beliefs.”

“Sounds like you’re trying to get one more drop of blood out of the poor wasted sot,” said the Reuters man.

“Gentlemen,” said Steinbach, coyly pretending to shock, “you are too cynical. Let me read you from Comrade Raines’s last, unfinished poem. It’s called ‘Pons’ and was discovered among his effects.”

Steinbach took out a sheet of paper, cleared his throat, and read:

“… if I should die, think this of me,
Wher’ere I rest, men one day will be free.”

“Good Christ, that’s from the man Auden called the most promising voice of his generation? Come on, Steinbach, get your boys to give it a little distinction before you put it out.”

Again there was much laughter, and even Steinbach seemed to take part in it. He was able to laugh because he knew it was a good story and they’d use it. Salvage something out of this bloody mess, if only one more martyr for the English left.

When it came his turn, Levitsky worked the telescope back and forth across the scaggily vegetated ridge near the city, a good half mile off. He could see brush, gulches, mud, and the Fascist line of sandbags running across the crest. It was, as this sly one-eyed propagandist Steinbach had said, terrible terrain for an attack at night, in the rain.

Julian, you idiot. To die like a flea among millions of fleas in the mudbath of history.

He stepped back, turned for a second, and looked where the Englishman Sampson stood, a hard, trim young man with narrow, suspicious eyes and precise, perhaps military manners and authority. Sampson smoked a pipe and took notes with impressive efficiency and wrote beautifully, it was said. Levitsky, a little shaken perhaps, tried to adjust to the immensity of his loss and, worse, the hideous resonating irony of it.

I was so close. I came so far, I was so close.

It had been snatched away by Julian’s utter stupidity. How could he be so frivolous with his own life? And poor Florry’s, too. God knows, Florry had reason to follow him, but it was all such a bitter waste.

He went back to the instrument. Nothing. It was just the same, scruffy no-man’s-land. Did he expect to see the dead rise?

“Mr. Ver Steeg?”

It was Comrade Steinbach, calling from the group of reporters farther down the trench. “We are returning to La Granja. You don’t want to be left up here if a Fascist bombardment begins.”

“Ah,” said Levitsky. Yet he did not at once move. For if Julian were gone, there was nothing left to do, except save himself.

If Koba’s hounds are to hunt me, let them hunt me hard.

“Best get goin’, chum,” said the little English captain, then turned away and headed back to his men gathered at the other end of the trench.

But Levitsky suddenly felt naked and vulnerable. Without his mission, he was just a man. His death, which might have had political meaning, suddenly had only a personal one. It was as if his life, in all its fragility, had been handed back to him.

He started up the trench and as he was drawing near the ladder, he ducked into a bunker scooped in the wall. It was filled with gear; two men slept noisily.

Several bombs lay on the table, iron eggs with checkerboard surfaces. He made his decision in a split second, and snatched one up and put it into his hip pocket. He gripped the thing out of sight. It felt heavy and authoritative in his hand. He could remember flinging them by the dozens into White positions during the civil war.

“Comrade!”

Levitsky turned. It was the English captain.

“Forgot this, old man,” he said, holding out Levitsky’s notebook. “Sure you ain’t too old for this sort of thing?”

Levitsky smiled, took the notebook, and headed out after the other reporters moving back through the scrubland to La Granja.

By the time he caught up, they had come through the orchard and into a meadow. Ahead, through the line of trees, Levitsky could see the big house with its red tiles.

In the courtyard the reporters milled around amid the soldiers, all of them waiting to be served a meal. The smell of rice and chicken from nearby cook pots filled the air. There was much laughter and camaraderie. Levitsky could see the Britishers teasing the American about his prisoner question and he could see the French reporters arguing strenuously among themselves over some political point.

And he could see Comrade Bolodin, with one man, walking toward him.