"All right. Leave us."
"He"s still fragile, commissar."
"I won"t excite him."
Levitsky heard the doctor walking out. Then there was nearly a full minute of silence. Listening carefully, Levitsky could hear the other breathing. He stared through the milky incandescence of his single eye at the ceiling.
At last, the young man spoke.
"Well, old Emmanuel Ivanovich, your comrades at Znamensky Street send their greetings. You"ve become quite an important fellow. This man is to be protected at all expense, they insist. But I forget myself. Pavel Valentinovich Romanov, of the Glavnoe Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenie. Lieutenant commander, actually, at a rather young age, you might say."
He paused, waiting for a response. Levitsky had none, and so the young man responded himself.
"My pride, you would tell me if you could, will be my downfall. Well, perhaps you are right." He laughed. "It certainly was yours."
Levitsky said nothing.
"Now, I know all about you, but you know so little about me. Well, I"ll spare you a list of my accomplishments. But let me just say," said the young man, with a certain hard edge to his voice, "that if you are the past of our party, one could argue that I am its future."
The young man went proudly to the window. Levitsky followed his shape with his one good eye. He was a soft, dark blur against the whiter purity of the opening.
"Lovely view! That mountain. Magnificent! Not as beautiful as the Caucasus, of course, but beautiful, nevertheless. Sends shudders up one"s spine, Emmanuel Ivanovich. So, how do you like the room? It"s nice, isn"t it? Indeed, yes, the very best. Do you know that doctor? He"s the best also. London-trained. No s.h.i.tty Russian medicine for dear old Emmanuel Ivanovich Levitsky. No! Can"t have it! Only the best Western medicine!"
The fellow laughed.
"Well, Ivanch," he said, allowing himself the intimacy of the romantic diminutive form of address, something permitted under normal etiquette only between family members, "I must be off, but I"ll be back tomorrow and every day until you"re strong enough to travel. I shall guard you like a baby and tend you like a mother."
Levitsky stared up at him furiously.
"Why?" said Pavel, with a smile. "Because the boss himself has ordered it. Your old revolutionary comrade Koba has taken a personal interest in this. I am, one might say, his personal representative here. Koba wants you back, healthy and sound and chipper in Mother Russia."
He bent over the old man to complete the thought before walking out.
" ... for your execution."
41.
NIGHT TRAIN TO PARIS.
JUST BEFORE NIGHTFALL, FLORRY LEANED AGAINST THE gla.s.s and made out the approach of a small station house that sat above what appeared, in the fading light, to be a seedy beach town spilling away in chalky white desolation down a slope to the water"s edge. The station wore a sign that said, in rusted-out letters, gla.s.s and made out the approach of a small station house that sat above what appeared, in the fading light, to be a seedy beach town spilling away in chalky white desolation down a slope to the water"s edge. The station wore a sign that said, in rusted-out letters, PORT BOU. PORT BOU.
"Christ, we"ve made it," said Florry, feeling a sudden surge of exaltation. "Look, Sylvia, has anything so scabby ever looked so b.l.o.o.d.y lovely to you?"
The train halted at last and Florry removed Sylvia"s grip from the overhead. It was only a few seconds until they had left the train, edging out among the crowd. Stepping down, Florry smelled the salt air and heard the cries of the birds that must have been circling overhead. Up ahead, he could see that the tracks ended up against a concrete barrier; beyond that, there was a fence; and beyond that, France.
"Do you see? There"s a train," he said, pointing beyond the wire to the continuation of the track. "It must be the overnight to Paris."
"You should try to get us a compartment," said Sylvia. "We are traveling as man and wife; to do otherwise would appear ridiculous."
"I say, you"ve thought awfully hard about this."
"I rather want to survive, that"s all."
"You know, it"s probably not necessary. We"re out. We could stay in separate-"
"Let"s play the fiction out to London."
He could not help but laugh. "You seem to know more about this business than I do."
They followed the drift of the pa.s.sengers toward the guard post, a smallish brick building nestled near the barbed wire by a crude pedestrian gate-the whole affair had a rough, improvised look to it-and a line had already formed into which they slipped. It seemed to be a dream play set under the calm Mediterranean moon, the line of pa.s.sengers filing listlessly into the little shack under the scrutiny of sleeping carabineros carabineros-no revolutionary Asaltos here-for a cursory examination. If you had the pa.s.sport you were all right.
Florry handed his and Sylvia"s over to the man, an old-time civil servant, who didn"t give them a second look, except to run mechanically their names off against his list.
"Arma de fuego?"
"Eh?"
"Firearms, Senor Trent?"
"Oh, of course not," said Florry, remembering his vanished Webley and the automatic he"d tossed away.
The man nodded.
"Go on to French customs," he said.
"That"s it?" said Florry.
"S, senor senor. That"s it."
They stepped out of the building and through the gate and into another little shed, which turned out to contain two little booths, each with its policeman. Florry got into one line and Sylvia the next and in time they arrived at the tables. The officer game him a quick, lazy glance.
"No tiene equipaje a portar de Espana?"
"Er, sorry?"
"Do you have bags?" the man said in French.
"Oh. My wife has it."
"You take no bags from Spain?"
"We believe in traveling light."
The man nodded him on and he emerged to find that Sylvia had already made it through and was waiting with her grip.
"Hullo," she said.
"Hullo. No problems?"
"No. The fellow opened the bag and began to go through it, but your awful raincoat was in the way and the woman behind made a scene about missing the Paris train. He was a decent chap. Rather, a lazy one. He just waved me on."
It then occurrred to them that they were standing at the gate into France. They stood in line to present their pa.s.sports to the frontier gendarme, who made a disinterested examination, and ultimately issued the proper stamp.
"Bien," he said. he said.
"Merci," said Florry. said Florry.
It was that simple: they stepped outside the shed, and they were in France.
"One should feel feel something," Florry said. "Relief, or some such. What I feel like is a smoke." something," Florry said. "Relief, or some such. What I feel like is a smoke."
"I feel like brushing my teeth," Sylvia said.
The French train up ahead hooted. Near it, a temporary French station had been built, the mirror image of the Spanish installation on the other side of the frontier.
"We must hurry," she said.
"I"ll get tickets. Darling, see if there"s a tobacconist"s, about, will you, and get cigarettes. American, if they"ve got them. Pay anything. And get some chocolate. I love chocolate."
He raced for the ticket window.
"Do you have a first-cla.s.s compartment left open for Paris?" he asked in French.
"Yes. Several, in fact; there"s not many first-cla.s.s travelers who leave Spain, monsieur. Not since July."
"I only have pesetas. Can you make the exchange for me?"
"I will only charge a small percentage."
"It"s only fair."
He pushed the money across to the man and waited while the fellow figured it out and paid him back with the tickets.
"I only took a little extra."
"Fine, fine," said Florry, grabbing them and trying to quell his exuberance.
"You must hurry; this train leaves in a few minutes."
"Believe me, this is one train I won"t miss."
He turned and ran toward it, to find Sylvia waiting at the door to the sleeping car.
"I"ve got it," he said. "G.o.d, look at that!"
"It"s only English tobacco, darling," she said, holding up a pack of Ovals.
"This must be heaven," Florry said. He could not stop himself from smiling.
"I"m sorry they didn"t have American. The tobacconist had just sold all his American cigarettes to some hulking Yank."
"It doesn"t matter, Sylvia. We"re safe at last."
The train whistled.
"Come on, it"s time to get aboard," he said.
They ate in the first-cla.s.s dining car, and whatever one could say against the French, the French knew how to cook. The meal was-or perhaps this was merely an expression of their parched tastes after so many months in Red Spain-extraordinary. Afterward, they went to the parlor car and had a drink and sat smoking as the train hurled through the darkened countryside of southern France.
"Paris by morning," said Florry. "I know a little hotel in the Fourteenth Arrondiss.e.m.e.nt. Sylvia, let"s go there. We"ve earned a holiday, don"t you think? There"s enough money, isn"t there? We haven"t to face the future quite yet, do we?"
Sylvia looked at him: her gray green eyes beheld him curiously, and after a bit, a smile came to her face.
"It really is over, isn"t it? Spain, I mean," she said.
Florry nodded.
"Well," she said. "Let me think about it will you, Robert?"
"Of course."
She hadn"t said no-quite. And it sounded wonderful: a fortnight of luxury in a small, elegant hotel in the most civilized country in Europe after what had been the least civilized. Florry sat back against the comfortable chair, smoking an Oval. Maybe the woman would be his after all. He felt he owed it to himself to begin to feel rather good.
But of course exactly the opposite occurred. A curious melancholy began to seep through him. He seemed to still smell Spain somehow, or still dream it, even when wakeful. He remembered Julian in the dust, begging for death. He remembered the bridge exploding. The blast, for all its fury, had meant nothing after all it had cost them. He remembered the POUM rifles leveled at them, and the comical idiocy of the trial, and the Communist Asaltos heading up the mountain with their Hotchkiss gun. He remembered Harry Uckley"s empty holster. He remembered the night attack on Huesca and firing his revolver into the boy"s face. He remembered the abrupt cold numbness when the bullet struck him. He remembered the ship digging beneath the surface and the flames on the water.
"Robert, what on earth is wrong?"
"Julian," he said. "I wish I had not let Julian down at the end. I know he meant so much to you."
"Julian always got what he wanted," said Sylvia with odd coldness. "And never what he deserved."
She touched his arm. "Forget the war. Forget politics. Forget it all. Forget Julian."
"Of course you"re right. Absolutely. One mustn"t let oneself get to brooding on things one is helpless to alter. And I swear I won"t."
But it was a lie. Even as he saw her pretty face he remembered Julian. Hold my hand. I"m so frightened. Kill me.
"Yes," she said. "I could not get the American cigarettes, and so I should not feel as if I"ve failed, eh?"
"I say, shall we have another drink?" he said cheerfully.