Alan Furst: The Foreign Correspondent

“There are too many words, Signor Weisz, in this war of words. It’s easy for the Bolsheviks, they have their formulas-Marx says this, Lenin says that. But, for the rest of us, it’s not so cut-and-dried. We are fighting for the freedom of Europe, certainly, for liberty, if you like, for justice, perhaps, and surely against all the cazzi fasulli who want to run the world their way. Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, take your pick, and all the sly little men who do their work.”

“I can’t say ‘cazzi fasulli.’ ” It meant “phony pricks.” “Want to change it?”

Ferrara shrugged. “Leave it out. I can’t say it any better.”

“How long will you stay?”

“To the end, whatever that turns out to mean.”

“Some people say the Republic is finished.”

“Some people could be right, but you never know. If you’re doing the sort of job we do here, you like to think that one bullet, fired by one rifleman, could turn defeat to victory. Or, maybe, someone like you writes about our little company, and the Americans jump up and say, By God that’s true, let’s go get ‘em, boys! ” Ferrara’s face was lit by a sudden smile-the idea so far beyond hope it was funny.

“This will be seen mostly in Great Britain and Canada, and in South America, where the newspapers run our dispatches.”

“Fine, then let the British do the jumping up, though we both know they won’t, not until it’s their turn to eat Adolf’s wiener schnitzel. Or let everything go to hell in Spain, then just see if it stops here.”

“And the Littorio Division, across the river, what do you think about them?”

“Oh, we know them, the Littorio, and the Blackshirt militia. We fought them in Madrid, and when they occupied the Ibarra Castle, we stormed it and sent them running. And we’ll do it again today.”

Weisz turned to McGrath. “Anything you want to ask?”

“How is it so far? What does he think about the war, about defeat?”

“We’ve done that-it’s good.”

From across the river, a voice shouted “ Eia, eia, alala. ” This was the fascist battle cry, first used by the Blackshirt squads in their early street battles. Other voices repeated the phrase.

The answer came from a machine-gun position below the road. “ Va f’an culo, alala! ” Go fuck yourself in the ass. Somebody else laughed, and two or three voices picked up the cry. A machine gunner fired a short burst, cutting down a line of reeds on the opposite bank.

“I’d get my head down if I were you,” Ferrara said. Bent low, he went trotting off across the hillside.

Weisz and McGrath lay flat, McGrath produced her binoculars. “I can see him!”

Weisz took a turn with the binoculars. A soldier was lying in a patch of reeds, his hands cupped around his mouth as he repeated the battle cry. When the machine gun fired again, he slithered backward and vanished.

Sandoval, revolver in hand, came running from the car and flopped down beside them.

“It’s starting,” Weisz said.

“They won’t try to cross the river,” Sandoval said. “That comes tonight.”

From the opposite bank, a muted thunk, followed by an explosion that shattered a juniper bush and sent a flock of small birds flying from the trees, Weisz could hear the beating of their wings as they flew over the crest of the hill. “Mortar,” Sandoval said. “Not good. Maybe I should get you out of here.”

“I think we should stay for a while,” McGrath said.

Weisz agreed. When McGrath told Sandoval they would stay, he pointed at a cluster of pines. “Better over there,” he said. On the count of three, they ran, and reached the trees just as a bullet snapped overhead.

The mortaring went on for ten minutes. Ferrara’s company did not fire back, their mortars were ranged in on the river, and they had to save what shells they had for the coming night. When the Nationalist fire stopped, the smoke drifted away and silence returned to the hillside.

After a time, Weisz realized he was hungry. The Republican units barely had enough food for themselves, so the two correspondents and their lieutenant had been living off stale bread and a cloth sack of lentils-known, after the Republican finance minister’s description, as “Dr. Negrin’s victory pills.” They couldn’t build a fire here, so Weisz dug around in his knapsack and produced his last tin of sardines-not opened earlier because the key needed to roll back the metal top was missing. Sandoval solved that problem, using a clasp knife to cut the top open, and the three of them speared sardines and ate them on chunks of bread, pouring a little of the oil over the top. As they ate, the sound of fighting somewhere to the north, the rattle of machine guns and rifle fire, rose to a steady beat. Weisz and McGrath decided to go have a look, then head northeast to Castelldans and file their stories.

They found Ferrara at one of the machine-gun positions, said goodby, and wished him luck. “Where will you go, when this ends?” Weisz asked him. “Perhaps we can talk again.” He wanted to write a second story about Ferrara, the story of a volunteer in exile, a postwar story.

“If I’m still in one piece, France, somewhere. But please don’t say that.”

“I won’t.”

“My family is in Italy. Maybe, in the street, or at the market, somebody says something, or makes a gesture, but mostly they are left alone. For me it’s different, they might do something, if they knew where I was.”

“They know you’re here,” Weisz said.

“Oh I believe they do know that. Across the river, they know. So all they have to do is come up here, and we’ll pass the time of day.” He lifted an eyebrow. Whatever else happened, he was good at what he did.

“Signora McGrath will send her story to Chicago.”

“Chicago, yes, I know, white socks, young bears, wonderful.”

“Goodby,” Weisz said.

They shook hands. A strong hand, Weisz thought, inside the glove.

Somebody on the other side of the river shot at the car as it rode along the ridge line, and a bullet came through the back door and out the roof. Weisz could see a ragged piece of sky through the hole. Sandoval swore and stomped on the gas pedal, the car accelerated and, as it hit the holes and ridges in the road, bounced high in the air and slammed down hard, crushing its old springs and landing steel on steel with a horrible bang. Weisz had to keep his jaw clamped shut so he wouldn’t break a tooth. Under his breath, Sandoval asked God to spare the tires, then, after a few minutes, slowed down. McGrath turned around in the passenger seat and poked a finger into the bullet hole. Calculating the distance between Weisz and the bullet’s path, she said, “Carlo? Are you okay?” The sound of the fighting ahead of them grew louder, but they never saw it. In the sky to the north, two airplanes appeared, German HE-111Heinkels, according to Sandoval. They dropped bombs on the Spanish positions above the Segre, then swooped down and machine-gunned the east side of the river.

Sandoval pulled off the road and stopped the car beneath a tree, as much cover as he could find. “They will finish us,” he said. “There’s no point to it, unless you wish to see what has happened to the men by the river.” Weisz and McGrath did not need to see this, they had seen it many times before.

So then, Castelldans.

Sandoval turned the car around, drove back to the paved road, and headed east, toward the town of Mayals. For a time, the road was deserted, as it climbed a long, upward slope through oak forest, then emerged on a high plain and met a dirt road that passed through the villages to the south and north.

Up here, the sky had closed in; gray cloud above empty scrubland and a ribbon of road that wound across it. On the road, a slow gray column that stretched to the far horizon, an army in retreat, miles of it, broken only by the occasional truck, pulled by mules, which carried the ones who could not walk. Here and there, among the plodding soldiers, were refugees, some with carts drawn by oxen, loaded down with chests and mattresses, the family dog on top, next to the old people, or women with infants.