war before all those German guns find their way through.”
Mila said, “He’s not coming with me.”
“But that’s not true,” Durruti said. He took a last pull and dropped his cigarette to the floor. “He’s the only way I get you inside Zaragoza.” Not waiting for a response, Durruti looked past Hoffner to Gabriel. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
Gabriel had been leaning quietly against a wall. He pushed himself up and said, “I was sure last night. Why should it be different now?”
Durruti nodded. He looked back at Hoffner. “You still have the German clothes you came in?”
It took Hoffner a moment to answer. “Yes.”
“Good. You’ll need to change.”
It made perfect sense. Hoffner was looking for fascist guns and he was looking for Germans. Why not be a German fascist and see where it took him? Mila was less convinced.
“And Gabriel?” she said.
Durruti was placing bricked explosives inside a hollow in the backseat of an old Mercedes sedan. He leaned farther in. “You’ll need someone to shoot the checkpoint guards if the passes fail,” he said. He was making sure each one had a fuse.
Mila stood outside the door. “I could do that.”
“No-you couldn’t.” Durruti brought the cushion down and bolted it by pulling a lever near the window; it looked like a hanging strap. “Neither could your German. It’s why you need Ruiz.”
Hoffner was sitting back against the car’s bonnet. He was almost halfway through a pack of cigarettes and it wasn’t even ten o’clock. At some point in Barcelona, Mila had washed his shirt. It smelled of lavender. The rest of him wasn’t quite so floral.
She stepped over and sat next to him. They had said nothing to each other since the shack. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head back and let the sun fill her face. She said, “He’s wrong, you know.”
Hoffner tossed his cigarette to the ground and stared over at a group of men who were in line for something- food, toilet, maybe both. They each had a rifle slung over a shoulder or a pistol strapped to a belt. There were berets, metal helmets, an airman’s cap that had frayed at the back, but nothing to say they belonged together. They didn’t stand like soldiers. They didn’t smoke like soldiers. But they talked like soldiers-that hushed, half-joking pose of false hope and unexamined fear. It was good to be brave, thought Hoffner, good to believe in this beyond all else. He looked again at Mila. It was good to believe in something.
Durruti closed the door and stepped over. He took a cigarette from Hoffner’s pack and leaned in for a light.
Hoffner said, “And you really don’t care where we set them off?”
Durruti pulled a piece of tobacco from his tongue and flicked it to the ground. “You won’t have enough to do any real damage. You do it to make them know we can. The real destruction will come from the aeroplanes.”
“If the bombs ever manage to go off.”
“That was bad luck.”
Mila still had her eyes closed. “For whom?” she said.
Durruti forced a tired smile. “Don’t make me think twice about this.”
“I’m glad you’ve thought about it at all.”
Hoffner shook out another cigarette; what else was there to do? He lit up. “You really want to bring it all down to rubble, don’t you?”
Durruti was now looking over at the men. There was nothing in the eyes to show the pain or pride he felt. “I want a free Spain,” he said. “I want collectives-purpose. I want all of what was to be gone. This socialist government won’t give me that. They might even kill me once I get rid of the fascists for them. So it all has to go.”
“And then?”
“We rebuild.” This was something Durruti had thought long on. “We destroy because we’re capable of building. We were the ones who built the palaces and the cities. We’ll build them again, this time better. We’re not afraid of ruins. We have a new world-inside-in our hearts.”
A man emerged from a nearby building and spoke as he made his way over. “It’s Colonel Villalba,” he said. “He’s on the telephone.”
Hoffner said to Durruti, “They have a telephone here?”
Durruti said under his breath, “It’s why we picked the town.” He looked at the man. “Do I need to take a drive?”
“He wants to come here.”
For the first time, Hoffner saw genuine surprise in Durruti’s face. Mila opened her eyes.
“And why is that?” said Durruti.
The man did his best to hide his disgust. “He wants to see what the enemy looks like up close.”
“You’re joking.”
“It was my fault,” the man said. “He asked what we were up against.”
“And?”
“I said the rebels.”
“And?”
The man shrugged. “He wanted to know who exactly, what forces, how many cannons and machine guns, do they have cavalry?”
They all waited until Durruti said, “And what did you tell him?”
“I told him that they’re the enemy because they don’t report their troops or forces. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be the enemy.”
Hoffner couldn’t help a quiet laugh, and Durruti said, “I thought you were a baker, not a comedian.”
The man said, “I’m a soldier.”
“Bravo. A soldier keeps his mouth shut. Tell him I’ll come to the telephone. Don’t let him hang up.”
The man headed off, and Hoffner said, “He has a point.”
Durruti tossed his half-smoked cigarette to the ground. It was his only moment of frustration, but it was enough. “I should be in Zaragoza by now,” he said. “Villalba knows it. All this waiting.” He looked around. “Where the hell is Ruiz?”
Gabriel had insisted on burying the Germans. He had taken three men with him almost an hour ago.
Hoffner said, “It takes time to put a man in the ground the right way.”
“It takes time,” Durruti said sharply, “because he’ll want the same for himself. Gabriel might not believe in a God but he believes in a balance to things.”
Up to this moment Hoffner hadn’t known what to call it with Gabriel, but this made perfect sense. He said, “And he thinks he’ll be with the fascists when he needs burying?”
“He knows it.” Durruti had no reluctance for the truth. “He’s dead if he goes back to Barcelona. The
Durruti spat a piece of tobacco to the ground, and Mila-realizing what Durruti had meant-said, “He’s heading home. To fight in Gijon.”
“Yes. But first he fights here.”
“You mean first he dies here.”
Durruti took his time before answering. “He’ll set off the fuses. He’ll get out. And then he’ll fight in Gijon.”
“I don’t think you believe that.”
“No?” said Durruti. “I’ll tell him when he gets back. I’m sure that’ll make a great deal of difference to him.”
Hoffner said, “There’s no reason for that.”
“There’s no reason for any of it,” said Durruti, “but none of us have that luxury.”
