other.
Hoffner was fighting off his own exhaustion, the strain from his performance still knotted in his neck. Even the miracle of having come through did nothing to help. His head felt light, and there was a tackiness at the back of his throat. He imagined that nausea would follow, but for now he focused on the road.
Again he glanced in the mirror, and Mila said, “Either they’re coming or they’re not. Staring in the mirror won’t change it.”
She was suddenly aware of the fly. She followed its flight, cupped it in her hands, and held it before releasing it at the window. She closed her eyes and let the last of the sun stretch across her face.
It was nearly a minute before she said, “Do you ever miss her-your wife?”
Hoffner felt the back of his neck compress.
He had been foolish just beyond the city. He had let her ask questions. More foolish, he had answered them. Now she had Martha’s death and Sascha’s hatred to toss back at him. Seventeen years removed and he still felt the stale taste of his own arrogance in his mouth. The Nazis had been nothing then-nothing but a distant rumbling from Munich and the south. And yet he had underestimated them. He had dismissed them as thugs and charlatans, and they had murdered his wife. To have his son blame him for her death and to let them steal his Sascha away-maybe that was what lingered in his throat.
He had no strength for that past.
“The girl in the letters,” he said. “She was his wife?”
Mila took a moment before answering. “Near enough. It was a long time ago.” She opened her eyes and stared out. “She never sent them. She was killed in the fighting last week.” She looked over at him. “Do you ever miss her?”
Hoffner peered into the mirror. “No,” he said. He focused on the road ahead. “I don’t think I do.”
She nodded quietly and turned again to the window. “He was a doctor, my husband. At a clinic in the Raval. I was a terrible nurse.”
Hoffner was glad for the lift in her voice. “I don’t believe that.”
“I was. It’s what you get when you have a twenty-year-old who knows better than everyone else. They all hated me.”
“Except for this doctor of yours.”
“Yes.”
“He fell in love with you?”
“He did.”
“And he trained you?”
She smiled, recalling something. “No. He was much more of an idealist than that. He married me and took me to Moscow.”
“How romantic.”
The smile remained. “The Revolution was good for opening all those doors. He found me a place at one of the medical academies: Sechanov-old, prestigious. He was at a prison hospital: Butyrki, I think. Funny how you forget those things.”
Hoffner glanced in the mirror again. Not so hard to forget.
“It must have been cold,” he said. “Moscow-for a Spaniard.”
“It wasn’t the cold that was the problem.” A pack of cigarettes lay bouncing on the seat and she took one. She lit it, placed it between his lips, and did the same for herself. “He began to write,” she said. “Always a mistake. A pamphlet on medical reforms. They arrested him.” She spoke as if she were reading from a manual. “He was sent to build roads in a work camp near Ukhta, in the north. March of 1930. He died three months later.”
Hoffner thought to say something consoling but managed only, “I’m sorry.”
“Yes.” She was staring down at the cigarette in her hand. “Do you think you ever really loved your wife?”
Hoffner had told her almost nothing, and yet he now wondered how much she had heard. There was never any safety in this.
She wasn’t expecting an answer, and said, “I loved my husband. Very much, although it’s hard to imagine it now. I suppose you either choose to forget quickly or not at all. I chose to forget.”
Hoffner needed them past this. “And then you came home?”
There was a vague sad smile on her lips when she looked up. “No. Carlos wouldn’t be in Zaragoza now if I’d managed to make it home then.” She took a pull and spared him the question. “They arrested me a month later and sent me to a camp: Siblag, also in the north.” She thought of something and shook her head. “There was a letter I’d written, nothing in it, but I was the foreign wife of a foreign counterrevolutionary. It was easy enough.” Her voice was distant as she turned to the window. “A year in prison for two lines in a letter.”
Hoffner glanced over. She was so matter-of-fact, and yet the eyes were full as she stared out. He watched as she let the wind dry them. It was the only moment of hardness to find her face. He saw it drain from her, and she said, “It doesn’t make me callous not to remember, does it?”
What an unfair question, he thought: you only remember the pain, nothing else, so why not shut it all out? He looked out at the road and said, “No. It doesn’t.”
She seemed to agree and took another pull. “When I came back, things were bad. Carlos blamed my father- Russia, Stalin, Communism, my father again. Me.” It was another moment before she said, “And one day he said God would never have let it happen. God. Can you imagine? What could be crueler than that, until he actually began to believe it?” She tossed the cigarette out the window. “Not much God to be had in Barcelona.” Her head found the back of the seat again and she stared out at the poles. “So he left.”
Hoffner was glad for the silence. The sun had turned a blood red; he watched as it dipped lower on the horizon.
She said, “They look like giants, don’t they? Stubby arms all in a row.”
It took him a moment to understand. He bent his head closer into the windscreen and glanced over at the poles. He leaned back and nodded. Again he turned to the mirror.
She said distantly, “No knights to fight off these days.” She looked over at him and, with a sudden energy, hitched herself around and stared back through the rear window. “There’s nothing, Nikolai. No one’s following. No dust rising from tires or hooves. You pulled it off. And now you can find your son and not worry that some distraction might have thrown it all away.”
She was looking directly at him. Her hair had slipped from its knot, and her face was pale. It was an endless few seconds before she sat back and stared out at the road.
She waited for him to answer until she finally said, “It wasn’t for luck or courage, that kiss. You know that.”
Hoffner knew almost nothing. He was having trouble enough keeping up, but this-it was such a long time since any of this had made sense to him. And to have it here, now. It seemed beyond his grasp and made him feel weak.
Without warning, he jammed his foot on the brake and brought the car to a sudden stop. Mila bounced against the seat and instantly glanced back, expecting to see something on the road, but it remained empty. She looked at him as if she thought he might reach for her, but instead, he turned back and pulled on the strap that released the backseat cushion.
“What are you doing?” she said.
He opened his door and stepped out. “Slaying giants.”
“What?”
He opened the back door and took out one of the brick explosives. He then stepped around to the nearest telephone pole and, crouching down, set the brick against its base. He looked over at her in the window. “What do you think, three or four?”
She was staring at him. “What?”
“Three or four of the poles? Would that be enough?”
“You’re not serious?”
“Very serious.”
“Then you’re not thin enough to be playing the part.”
“Thank you. No, this is for Durruti and our friends back in Zaragoza. They decide to call ahead, I need them
