He stepped over and picked up the rucksack. He spun it onto his back and started to walk. “We need to go.” He then limped off across the grass-sloped trees to one side, fortress to the other-and Hoffner found a moment’s relief in the absurdity of it.
Hoffner forced himself to his feet. “Not sure how much more walking I’ve got in me, Toby.”
Mueller tossed the cigarette to the grass. “Then this is your lucky day.”
* * *
They were bicycles, black, at least ten years old, but with enough leather on the saddles to make them workable. Mueller had them chained to a tree on the far side where the rutted paths, such as they were, led down into the city.
Hoffner stood a few meters behind and above as Mueller pulled open the lock.
“You’re joking,” Hoffner said.
Mueller double-looped the chain under the seat and pulled up the taller of the two bicycles. He stood waiting for Hoffner to take it before pulling up the other. Both had the letters CNT-FAI painted across the handlebars. Hoffner also noticed how the right-hand pedals on both were fitted with a block of some sort to compensate for Mueller’s limp.
“I always keep a spare,” said Mueller. “Told you it was your lucky day.”
Mueller slotted the valise-cum-satchel into the rack and began to limp with the bicycle over to what passed for a path. He was surprisingly agile as he jumped onto the seat and let the slope take him. Hoffner watched as Mueller’s head bobbled with increasing speed-down, around a turn, and gone. Hoffner shouted after him, “You’re a son of a bitch, Toby!” then stepped up, climbed on, and found some speed of his own.
Hoffner had no reason to worry about the oversized pedal. He was simply holding on as best he could, his grip firmly planted on the hand brakes as the wheels seemed to take every root and rock with miraculous finesse. There was a strange familiarity to it, a thousand years of cigarettes and brandy tossed aside by something almost impatient. Hoffner began to smell the rubber on the tires, and gently released the brakes until he found himself letting go completely. He was actually managing the thing: more than managing it, he was gaining on Mueller. Somehow the bumps were a help as well, relieving the strain from the valise in his lower back. Hoffner might even have heard himself laugh.
“Enjoying yourself?” Mueller shouted over his shoulder.
Hoffner hadn’t the courage to answer as the turns came more quickly. It was nearly fifteen minutes of catching his breath until the taste of sugared beets began to recede, the canopy of trees was thinner-then gone-and the path became smooth. The glare from the sun took several seconds to adjust to as Hoffner looked down: to his amazement he was staring at pavement. He looked up again and saw a massive building farther down the slope- domes and steeples tinted by the sun-and, beyond it, the city and its harbor.
Mueller slowed, and Hoffner gently squeezed the brakes. The two were now side by side as they rode.
“Palau Nacional,” Mueller said. “No guns inside so they left it alone. It’ll be the People’s something-or-other by next week. Could be now.”
Hoffner might have been drawn to the sight of its wide fountain, or its endless steps, or its twin pillar gates planted at the far end of the plaza-these, in their perfect symmetry, were meant to hold the eye-but instead he saw only the city stretching out beyond them. It was a sea of white stone and tiled roofs.
“Bring your knees in, Nikolai,” said Mueller. “You’re beginning to look like an old priest.”
It was another twenty minutes before they came to even ground. Hoffner was grateful for the cramped feel of the side streets. The smells coming from the open doorways might have left the taste of boiling wool in the mouth, but at least the buildings were packed tightly enough together to make direct sunlight rare: six stories on either side, with balconies draped in red and black. His head was throbbing from the heat or thirst or lack of booze-or maybe just the thought of continued exertion-but whatever it was he knew he needed to get off this horrible machine and find something without wheels to sit on.
It didn’t help that at almost every intersection it was a test to see how well he and Mueller could wend their way around the barricades that littered the streets. Most of the sandbag and brick obstructions were unmanned, although there had been one a few blocks back where they were forced to bring out Mueller’s magical piece of paper. Their interrogator had been without a gun, only a sack on a rope over his shoulder and an airman’s cap stitched with the letters FAI along one side. He stood atop a bullet-strafed sandbag in a white shirt-sleeves rolled high and neat to the upper arm-and an elegant pair of pleated dress trousers, his shoes fine if slightly worn. He would have looked the perfect part-cigarette dangling from his lips, a few days’ growth of beard-had he not been, at best, ten years old. Even so, he spoke with an authority that made the boys back on the coast road look like amateurs.
“You know why we must destroy the fascists?” the boy said, as he glanced across the paper. It was unclear whether he knew how to read.
Mueller nodded vigorously and Hoffner did the same.
The boy said, “So that Spain can be free.”
Mueller pulled a wrapped bar of chocolate from his pocket-Hoffner wondered what else might be inside should he go looking for himself-and handed it to the boy.
“
The boy pocketed the chocolate and nodded them along. Half a block later, Mueller pulled a second bar from his pocket and handed it to Hoffner. “You weren’t thinking that was real, were you, Nikolai?”
Hoffner peeled back the wrapping and took a bite. It was good Swiss chocolate. “I’m glad he didn’t have a rifle.”
“He’s got one somewhere. It doesn’t work, but he’s got one.”
“That’s encouraging.” Hoffner handed the bar back and Mueller pocketed it.
“They’re all so damned sure of themselves,” Mueller said, with a tinge of bitterness.
The streets began to grow more peopled. Men and women-all with the red neckerchief-walked in small groups, bags with food, newspapers. They were inside stores or leaning from balconies, conversations and laughter, caps and hats arrayed in the various emblems of their new-won power. It was a city on a Sunday, like any other, except here there had been no prayers to God or hopes of salvation. They had left those behind. And of course the guns-a rifle over a shoulder or a pistol at the waist. They carried them with the same easy certainty one wears a new pair of shoes: moments here and there to recall the novelty, but always that sense of purpose and pride. That these had been used to kill other Spaniards ten days ago hardly seemed to matter. Or perhaps that was what mattered most of all.
Mueller smiled at a girl in a doorway. She smiled back, and Mueller continued to walk. “One day to take the city, and now it’s boys playing at soldier.”
Hoffner was thinking about the chocolate; he could have used another bite. “So you’re telling me that wasn’t a checkpoint back there?”
Mueller laughed quietly. “With a boy standing guard? They may be arrogant, Nikolai, but they’re not stupid.” He spat something to the ground. “Ten days ago-maybe that was the genuine article. Now it’s for a boy to run out when his friends dare him to stop the two foreigners and see if he can get a bit of chocolate. He’s a hero today. When we find a checkpoint, you’ll know. Trust me.”
They had come to the far end of the Conde del Asalto, a narrow strip of road identical to the rest except it marked the edge of Poble Sec, a workers’ district. The Paralelo-a wide avenue that had seen its fair share of the fighting-was a stone’s throw away, and Mueller found a nice big tree to rest the bicycles against.
“You thirsty, Nikolai?” he said, as he pulled the valise out of the rack.
Hoffner leaned his bicycle up as well. “You won’t get the chain around this, you know.”
“I wasn’t planning on trying.”
“So the painted letters manage it again?”
Mueller handed the valise to Hoffner. “No one takes a bicycle, Nikolai. It’s not the way they do things here.”
“But a fifteen-year-old car-”
“A banker or a judge or some old
