The wind was fresh now in the trees and it was cold on the porch. He put the dishes back in the basket and wiped his mouth on the napkin. He wiped his hands carefully and then put his arm around the girl. She was crying.
“Don’t cry, Maria,” he said. “What has happened has happened. We must think of what there is to do. There is much to do.”
She said nothing and he could see her face in the light from the street lamp looking straight ahead.
“We must check all romanticism. This place is an example of that romanticism. We must stop terrorism. We must proceed so that we will never again fall into revolutionary adventurism.”
The girl still said nothing and he looked at her face that he had thought of all the months when he had thought of anything except his work.
“You talk like a book,” she said. “Not like a human being.”
“I am sorry,” he said. “It is only lessons I have learned. It is things I know must be done. To me it is more real than anything.”
“All that is real to me are the dead,” she said.
“We honor them. But they are not important.”
“You talk like a book again,” she said angrily. “Your heart is a book.”
“I am sorry, Maria. I thought you would understand.”
“All I understand is the dead,” she said.
He knew this was not true because she had not seen them dead as he had in the rain in the olive groves of the Jarama, in the heat in the smashed houses of Quijorna, and in the snow at Teruel. But he knew that she blamed him for being alive when Vicente was dead and suddenly—in the small and unconditioned human part of him which was left, and which he did not realize was still there—he was hurt deeply.
“There was a bird,” he said. “A mockingbird in a cage.”
“Yes.”
“I let it go.”
“Aren’t you kind!” she said scornfully. “Are soldiers all sentimental?”
“I am a good soldier.”
“I believe it. You talk like one. What kind of soldier was my brother?”
“Very good. Gayer than me. I was not gay. It is a lack.”
“But you practice self-criticism and you talk like a book.”
“It would be better if I were gayer,” he said. “I could never learn it.”
“And the gay ones are all dead.”
“No,” he said. “Basilio is gay.”
“Then he’ll die,” she said.
“Maria? Do not talk like that. You talk like a defeatist.”
“You talk like a book,” she told him. “Please do not touch me. You have a dry heart and I hate you.”
Now he was hurt again, he who had thought that his heart was dry, and that nothing could hurt ever again except the pain, and sitting on the bed he leaned forward.
“Pull up my sweater,” he said.
“I don’t want to.”
He pulled up the back and leaned over. “Maria, look there,” he said. “That is not from a book.”
“I cannot see,” she said. “I do not want to see.”
“Put your hand across the lower back.”
He felt her fingers touch that huge sunken place a baseball could have been pushed through, that grotesque scar from the wound the surgeon had pushed his rubber-gloved fist through in cleaning, which had run from one side of the small of his back through to the other. He felt her touch it and he shrank quickly inside. Then she was holding him tight and kissing him, her lips an island in the sudden white sea of pain that came in a shining, unbearable, rising, blinding wave and swept him clean. The lips there, still there; then overwhelmed, and the pain gone as he sat, alone, wet with sweat and Maria crying and saying, “Oh, Enrique. Forgive me. Please forgive me.”
“It is all right,” Enrique said. “There is nothing to forgive. But it was not out of any book.”
“But does it hurt always?”
“Only when I am touched or jarred.”
“And the spinal cord?”
“It was touched a very little. Also the kidneys, but they are all right. The shell fragment went in one side and out the other. There are other wounds lower down and on my legs.”
“Enrique, please forgive me.”
“There is nothing to forgive. But it is not nice that I cannot make love and I am sorry that I am not gay.”
“We can make love after it is well.”
“Yes.”
“And it will be well.”
“Yes.”
“And I will take care of you.”
“No. I will take care of you. I do not mind this thing at all. Only the pain of touching or jarring. It does not bother me. Now we must work. We must leave this place now. Everything that is here must be moved tonight. It must be stored in a new and unsuspected place and in one where it will not deteriorate. It will be a long time before we will need it. There is much to be done before we will ever reach that stage again. Many must be educated. These cartridges may no longer serve by then. This climate ruins the primers. And we must go now. I am a fool to have stayed here this long and the fool who put me here will answer to the committee.”
“I am to take you there tonight. They thought this house was safe for you to stay today.”
“This house is a folly.”
“We will go now.”
“We should have gone before.”
“Kiss me, Enrique.”
“We’ll do it very carefully,” he said.
Then, in the dark on the bed, holding himself carefully, his eyes closed, their lips against each other, the happiness there with no pain, the being home suddenly there with no pain, the being alive returning and no pain, the comfort of being loved and still no pain; so there was a hollowness of loving, now no longer hollow, and the two sets of lips in the dark, pressing so that they were happily and kindly, darkly and warmly at home and without pain in the darkness, there came the siren cutting, suddenly, to rise like all the pain in the world. It was the real siren, not the one of the radio. It was not one siren. It was two. They were coming both ways up the street.
He turned his head and then stood up. He thought that coming home had not lasted very long.
“Go out the door and across the lot,” he said. “Go. I can shoot from up here and make a diversion.”
“No, you go,” she said. “Please, I will stay here to shoot and they will think you’re inside.”
“Come on” he said. “We’ll both go. There’s nothing to defend here. This stuff is useless. It’s better to get away.”
“I want to stay,” she said. “I want to protect you.”
She reached for the pistol in the holster under his arm and he slapped her face. “Come on. Don’t be a silly girl.
They were going down the stairs now and he felt her close beside him. He swung the door open and together they stepped out the door and were clear of the building. He turned and locked the door. “Run, Maria,” he said. “Across the lot in that direction. Go!”
“I want to go with you.”
He slapped her again quickly. “Run. Then dive in the weeds and crawl. Forgive me, Maria. But go. I go the other way. Go,” he said. “Damn you.
They started into the weeds at the same time. He ran twenty paces and then, as the police cars stopped in front of the house, the sirens dying, he dropped flat and started to crawl.
The weed pollen was dusty in his face and as he wriggled steadily along, the sand-burrs stabbing his hands
