Javier Cercas - Soldiers of Salamis

'My name is Rafael Sánchez Mazas and I am the most senior living leader of the Falange in Spain,' he finally said to the man who listened without looking at him.

Sixty years later, when neither her parents nor Sánchez Mazas were alive to do so, Maria still recalled those words exactly, perhaps because that was the first time she'd heard of the Falange, just as she recalled that Sánchez Mazas went on to relate his implausible adventure at Collell, told them about his wanderings of the last few days and, addressing the man, added:

'You know as well as I do that the Nationalists will be here any time now. It's a question of days, if not hours. But if the reds catch me I'm a dead man. Believe me, I'm very grateful for your hospitality, and I wouldn't want to take advantage of your good faith, but if you could give me what your daughter just gave me to eat once a day and a sheltered spot to spend the night, I shall be eternally grateful. Think it over. If you do me this favour you'll be well rewarded.'

Maria Ferré's father didn't need to think it over. He assured him that he could not have him in the house because it would be too risky, but he proposed a better alternative: Sánchez Mazas would spend the day in the woods, in a safe field nearby beside the Mas de la Casa Nova — a farm abandoned by its owners since the beginning of the war — and at night he would sleep warmly in a hayloft, a couple of hundred metres from the house, where they would make sure he didn't lack food. Sánchez Mazas was delighted with the plan, he took the blanket and package of food Maria prepared for him, took his leave of her and her mother, and followed her father along the dirt track that passed in front of the door to the house and then went along through sown fields the top of which through the clear air of the sunny morning — overlooked the road to Banyoles and the valley full of farms and further off the jagged, distant profile of the Pyrenees. After a while, once Maria's father had pointed out in the distance the hayloft where he should spend the night, they crossed an open, uncultivated field and stopped at the edge of the woods, just where the track thinned out into a narrow path; the man then told him that at the end of the path was the Mas de la Casa Nova and insisted he not return until night had fallen. Sánchez Mazas didn't have time even to reiterate his gratitude, because the man turned and started walking back towards Mas Borrell. Following his instructions, Sánchez Mazas entered a forest of ash trees, holly and enormously tall oaks which barely let the sun through and got thicker and more impenetrable as the path went down the slope of a hillside, and he'd been walking for long enough for a little voice to start injecting him with the venom of mistrust when he came out into a clearing in the middle of which stood the Mas de la Casa Nova. It was a two-storey stone farmhouse, with an artesian well and a big wooden door; once he was sure it had been uninhabited for a long time Sánchez Mazas considered forcing one of the entrances and holing up inside, but after a moment of reflection he decided to follow Maria Ferré's father's instructions and look for the field he'd recommended. He found it quite nearby, as soon as he crossed a steep, rocky, dry streambed lined with elms, and he lay down there, in the tall grass, under the clear, perfectly blue sky and the dazzling sun that warmed the cold, still morning air, and although every bone in his body ached with exhaustion and an endless fatigue weighed down his eyelids, for the first time in a long time he felt safe and almost happy, reconciled with reality, and as he noticed the pleasant weight of sunlight on his eyes and skin and the irrevocable slipping of his consciousness towards the waters of sleep, like an anomalous offshoot of that unforeseen plenitude, some lines appeared on his lips that he didn't even remember having read:

Do not move

Let the wind speak

That is paradise

Hours later, anxiety awakened him. The sun shone in the middle of the sky and although he still had a twinge of pain in his muscles, sleep had restored part of his energy and strength that he'd burnt-up over the last few days in the desperation to cling to life; but as soon as he got free of Maria Ferré's blanket and heard in the silence of the field a distant noise of many running motors he realized the cause of his uneasiness. He went to the far edge of the field and from there, needlessly hidden, he watched from afar the procession of a large column of trucks and Republican soldiers swarming along the Banyoles road. Although in the immediate future he'd experience the threatening proximity of enemy troops many more times, only that morning did he consider it a danger, and feel he must return to his improvised bed, collect the blanket and package of food, and duck into the edge of the forest to hide. There, in a shelter made of stone and branches, which he planned that very afternoon but didn't start building until the following dawn, he spent most of the next three days. At first the construction of the shelter kept him busy, but then time went by as he lay on the ground sometimes sleeping, recouping the energy that he could see he might need at any moment, searching through his memory for every forgotten instant of his wartime adventure and especially imagining how he would tell it once he was liberated by his own people — a liberation that the logic of events brought ever nearer, yet his impatience made him feel was ever further away. He didn't talk to anyone except Maria Ferré or her father, with whom he'd chat for a while in the hayloft when they came in the dark to bring him food, and on the only night when her father allowed him to come inside and have dinner with them he also talked to two Republican deserters the family knew, and who, as they ate a little and warmed up by the fire before continuing their journey to Banyoles, told him the Nationalist troops had entered Gerona that morning.

The following day passed as usual; on the next everything changed. As he had every morning, Sánchez Mazas got up with the sun, picked up the package of food they'd brought him from Mas Borrell and started walking towards Mas de la Casa Nova; as he was crossing the streambed, he tripped and fell. He didn't hurt himself, but he broke his glasses. The event, which under normal circumstances would have inconvenienced him, now drove him to despair: he was extremely short-sighted and, without the help of corrective lenses, reality was nothing but an unintelligible handful of smudges. Sitting on the ground, with his broken spectacles in his hands, he cursed his clumsiness; he was on the point of weeping with rage. Pulling himself together, he crawled up the bank of the stream on all fours, and feeling his way, guided by the routine of the last few days, searched out the shelter by the field.

That was when he heard the order to halt. Stopping dead and instinctively putting his hands up, he made out at a distance of fifteen metres, barely distinguishable against the confusing green of the woods, three cloudy figures starting to advance towards him with an expectant, watchful attitude. When they were closer Sánchez Mazas realized they were Republican soldiers, they were very young, and they were pointing two long-barrelled nine-millimetre pistols at him; they were as nervous and startled as he was, and their shabby fugitive air and the undisciplined disparity of their uniforms made him assume they were deserters, but he didn't have time to figure out a way of confirming his suspicion because the one who spoke for them submitted him to an interrogation which lasted for almost half an hour of tension, guesswork and insinuations, until Sánchez Mazas resolved that this fortuitous encounter, just after breaking his glasses, could only be a favourable play of fate and decided to put all his money on it and admit that he'd spent six days wandering in the woods waiting for the arrival of the Nationalists.