Most of Chicote’s old customers are on Franco’s side; but some of them are on the Government side. Because it was a very cheerful place, and because really cheerful people are usually the bravest, and the bravest get killed quickest, a big part of Chicote’s old customers are now dead. The barrel whisky had all been gone for many months now and we finished the last of the yellow gin in May of 1938. There’s not much there to go for now so I suppose Luis Delgado, if he had come to Madrid a little later, might have stayed away from there and not gotten into that trouble. But when he came to Madrid in the month of November of 1937 they still had the yellow gin and they still had Indian quinine water. They do not seem worth risking your life for, so maybe he just wanted to have a drink in the old place. Knowing him, and knowing the place in the old days, it would be perfectly understandable.
They had butchered a cow at the Embassy that day and the porter had called up at the Hotel Florida to tell us that they had saved us ten pounds of fresh meat. I walked over to get it through the early dusk of a Madrid winter. Two assault guards with rifles sat on chairs outside the Embassy gate and the meat was waiting at the porter’s lodge.
The porter said it was a very good cut but that the cow was lean. I offered him some roasted sunflower seeds and some acorns from the pocket of my mackinaw jacket and we joked a little standing outside the lodge on the gravel of the Embassy driveway.
I walked home across the town with the meat heavy under my arm. They were shelling up the Gran Via and I went into Chicote’s to wait it out. It was noisy and crowded and I sat at a little table in one corner against the sandbagged window with the meat on the bench beside me and drank a gin and tonic water. It was that week that we discovered they still had tonic water. No one had ordered any since the war started and it was still the same price as before the revolt. The evening papers were not yet out so I bought three party tracts from an old woman. They were ten centavos apiece and I told her to keep the change from a peseta. She said God would bless me. I doubted this but read the three leaflets and drank the gin and tonic.
A waiter I had known in the old days came over to the table and said something to me.
“No,” I said. “I don’t believe it.”
“Yes,” he insisted, slanting his tray and his head in the same direction. “Don’t look now. There he is.”
“It’s not my business,” I told him.
“Nor mine either.”
He went away and I bought the evening papers which had just come in from another old woman and read them. There was no doubt about the man the waiter had pointed out. We both knew him very well. All I could think was: the fool. The utter bloody fool.
Just then a Greek comrade came over and sat down at the table. He was a company commander in the Fifteenth Brigade who had been buried by an airplane bomb which had killed four other men and he had been sent in to be under observation for a while and then sent to a rest home or something of the sort.
“How are you, John?” I asked him. “Try one of these.”
“What you call that drink, Mr. Emmunds?”
“Gin and tonic.”
“What is that kind of tonic?”
“Quinine. Try one.”
“Listen, I don’t drink very much but is a quinine very good for fever. I try little one.”
“What did the doctor say about you, John?”
“Is a no necessity see doctor. I am all right. Only I have like buzzing noises all the time in the head.”
“You have to go to see him, John.”
“I go all right. But he not understand. He says I have no papers to admit.”
“I’ll call up about it,” I said. “I know the people there. Is the doctor a German?”
“That’s right,” said John. “Is a German. No talk English very good.”
Just then the waiter came over. He was an old man with a bald head and very old-fashioned manners which the war had not changed. He was very worried.
“I have a son at the front,” he said. “I have another son killed. Now about this.”
“It is thy problem.”
“And you? Already I have told you.”
“I came in here to have a drink before eating.”
“And I work here. But tell me.”
“It is thy problem,” I said. “I am not a politician.”
“Do you understand Spanish, John?” I asked the Greek comrade.
“No, I understand few words but I speak Greek, English, Arabic. One time I speak good Arabic. Listen, you know how I get buried?”
“No. I knew you were buried. That’s all.”
He had a dark good-looking face and very dark hands that he moved about when he talked. He came from one of the islands and he spoke with great intensity.
“Well, I tell you now. You see I have very much experience in war. Before I am captain in Greek army too. I am good soldier. So when I see plane come over there when we are in trenches there at Fuentes del Ebro I look at him close. I look at plane come over, bank, turn like this” (he turned and banked with his hands), “look down on us and I say, ‘Ah ha. Is for the General Staff. Is made the observation. Pretty soon come others.’
“So just like I say come others. So I am stand there and watch. I watch close. I look up and I point out to company what happens. Is come three and three. One first and two behind. Is pass one group of three and I say to company, ‘See? Now is pass one formation.’
“Is pass the other three and I say to company, ‘Now is hokay. Now is all right. Now is nothing more to worry.’ That the last thing I remember for two weeks.”
“When did it happen?”
“About one month ago. You see is my helmet forced down over my face when am buried by bomb so I have the air in that helmet to breathe until they dig me out but I know nothing about that. But in that air I breathe is the smoke from the explosion and that make me sick for long time. Now am I hokay, only with the ringing in the head. What you call this drink?”
“Gin and tonic. Schweppes Indian tonic water. This was a very fancy cafe before the war and this used to cost five pesetas when there were only seven pesetas to the dollar. We just found out they still have the tonic water and they’re charging the same price for it. There’s only a case left.”
“Is a good drink all right. Tell me, how was this city before the war?”
“Fine. Like now only lots to eat.”
The waiter came over and leaned toward the table.
“And if I don’t?” he said. “It is my responsibility.”
“If you wish to, go to the telephone and call this number. Write it down.”
He wrote it down. “Ask for Pepe,” I said.
“I have nothing against him,” the waiter said. “But it is the Causa. Certainly such a man is dangerous to our cause.”
“Don’t the other waiters recognize him?”
“I think so. But no one has said anything. He is an old client.”
“I am an old client, too.”
“Perhaps then he is on our side now, too.”
“No,” I said. “I know he is not.”
“I have never denounced anyone.”
“It is your problem. Maybe one of the other waiters will denounce him.”
“No. Only the old waiters know him and the old waiters do not denounce.”
“Bring another of the yellow gins and some bitters,” I said. “There is tonic water still in the bottle.”
“What’s he talk about?” asked John. “I only understand little bit.”
“There is a man here that we both knew in the old days. He used to be a marvelous pigeon shot and I used to see him at shoots. He is a fascist and for him to come here now, no matter what his reasons, is very foolish. But he was always very brave and very foolish.”
“Show him to me.”
