over-shivered with too much drama and said, “Someone’s dying in here. You can smell it. It was worse two weeks ago, I can tell you that. Now it’s just the old dead, not the fresh kind.”
Aurelio said, “She’s from Leon.” He was at the desk, sliding his fingers along the few papers that were spread across it. “The hair and the eyes. People always think I’m Castilian. I’m not, but they always think it. She was pretty.” Finding nothing of interest, he began to open the drawers.
“Leave it,” said Gardenyes. He seemed unable to smoke the cigarette fast enough. He was at the door, staring out, then not. Gabriel might have put a voice to it, but it was Gardenyes who truly hated this place. “What takes so long?” he said, as he dropped the cigarette to the floor. He lit another, and Hoffner stepped over and picked up the stub.
Hoffner said, “So where is it you’re from?”
All three looked over as if he had asked the most idiotic question imaginable. Aurelio shut the drawer, Gardenyes looked back out through the window of the door, and Gabriel simply shook his head in disbelief. Hoffner had no idea why.
Gardenyes suddenly stepped back and moved to the desk. He dropped the half-smoked cigarette to the floor and hid it under his boot as the door squeaked open. Gabriel and Aurelio quickly moved into line. It was like watching three schoolboys waiting for a caning. The woman reappeared, holding several small vials in her hands.
“I’ve found you a doctor,” she said, as she moved back to her chair and sat. She placed the vials on the desk. “Unfortunately, she has no idea who Josep Gardenyes is.” She looked at Hoffner and pointed to his hand. “I told you not to smoke in here.”
Hoffner realized he was still holding the butt. He nodded apologetically. “No, of course not,” and dropped it into the can at the side of the desk. “My mistake.”
She looked up at Gardenyes. “What is it I can do for you?”
Gardenyes was still trying to digest the last few moments. “You’re a doctor?” he said.
“It would seem so, yes.”
“You’re a woman.”
She nodded. “That would also be right.”
Gardenyes was still struggling. “We’re-we’re looking for Germans.”
She said, “Well, that’s two out of three. I know a little Dutch, if that helps?”
Hoffner couldn’t help but smile, and she looked over at him. He thought she might return it, but that would have done neither of them any good. Instead, she looked at Gardenyes and said, “By the way, I’ve saved fascists. The first day, the day after that, yesterday. We all did. We all have. We make no distinctions. So if you’re here to round up-”
“You misunderstand,” said Hoffner. She looked at him, and he explained. “Not Germans.
She seemed remarkably at ease with the three bandit anarchists standing over her. It was the strange one at the end-with his even stranger valise and satchel-that was causing the hesitation. Had Hoffner been looking for it, he might have seen something of the familiar in the gaze. Deep and abiding loss was so readily apparent to those who shared it, but Hoffner had long ago given up looking for such things. It was enough for her to blink it away.
She said, “And I would hand over these records to you because you happen to be in the company of Josep Gardenyes, onetime leader of the anarchist
Gardenyes was rather too pleased with himself at this. To his credit, he indulged it only a moment.
She looked again at Hoffner. “It wouldn’t make any difference even if you had Buenaventura Durruti himself standing here. This is Barcelona. We’re led by anarchists. We have no records.”
Gardenyes had fully recovered; he was once again on solid ground. “So you’ll help my friend, then?”
She was still looking at Hoffner. “You call Gardenyes a friend?”
Hoffner recognized the toying disdain in the eyes. Men like Gardenyes were a necessary irritation to a woman like this-a woman who could sit perfectly straight in a ward filled with the dying. It gave her an uncommon strength.
“He calls me one,” said Hoffner. “You can take that as you like.”
Half a minute later the three Spaniards were on their way back to the car. Gardenyes assured Hoffner that he would look into the names and locations Wilson had provided-“Yes, yes, of course, no worries, we’ll be in touch.” It was a flurry of empty promises, leaving Hoffner alone with the desk and the woman behind it.
* * *
She called herself Mila, and he had been right to think her older. Not that much older, but enough distance from thirty to make sense of the steadying compassion she showed as they walked along one of the rows. It was one thing to reassure with a well-schooled, naive precision. It was another to understand the terror that a bleach- soaked sheet and a paper-thin blanket could bring to a man staring hopelessly up at an endless ceiling.
One of the men propped himself on his elbows as she came closer. His face was full with color, healthy even, and held a look of unbridled hatred. His right hand was thickly wrapped. He glanced at Hoffner and, for a moment, seemed uncertain whether he would say anything. Mila came to the end of his cot, and the hatred got the better of him.
“Did you decide on it?” the man said. “Was it you?”
She stood there, allowing him to stare through her. “Yes,” she said, “it was. It’s a terrible thing. I’m sorry.”
There was a silence, and the man again looked unsure. He had expected more, a reason-the details for why his leg was no longer his. A man would have comforted with such things and forced the hatred to run its course.
“The other will be fine,” she said. “And the hand. But it doesn’t make any more sense of it, I know.”
The man continued to stare up at her; then he turned his head, and his eyes seemed to search for something. Finally, he began to shake his head slowly. “You’re sorry,” he said, but the hatred was already draining from him.
“I am. It’s a terrible, terrible thing.”
Hoffner saw it at once: she knew this one would never give in to self-pity. It was why she could console. She began to walk and Hoffner followed.
Ten beds down, she stopped again. “If he’s here, he’ll be in with these. I heard German from a few of them.”
She left him to it. There were six men-boys, really-all with various degrees of injuries, the worst with half his face covered in white bandages. Traces of red had seeped through where the eye would have been. Georg was not among them.
The interviews were brief. One of the boys had, in fact, been involved with the games, a javelin thrower now living in Paris whose left leg was in plaster up to the mid-thigh. He had taken a bayonet somewhere along the Diagonal but had managed to get a round off before his attacker had done more damage. The loss of blood had kept the boy in bed for over a week.
“Bit ironic,” the boy said. “A bayonet. Just imagine what it would have been if I’d been a hammer thrower.”
Hoffner was glad for the resiliency. “And you were part of the German team?” he said.
“I’m a German. What else would I be?”
The boy remembered no one resembling Georg, no filmmakers. It had all been catch-as-catch-can, half the team making it only as far as Paris before being told to turn back (to wherever they had come from) as a war had broken out. Hoffner ran through the names from Georg’s wire. It was pointless. None of the boys recognized a single one.
Mila was writing out something when Hoffner drew up.
“I thought there were no files,” he said, through a half smile.
She continued to write. “We’d have nowhere to put them even if this was one.” She quickly finished with it, set it to the side, and looked up at him. “Was he your German?”
