Javier Cercas - Soldiers of Salamis

I didn't want to subject him to an interrogation right away, and besides, I felt like listening to him talk about things, so we chatted away about his life in the home, Estrella de Mar, Bolaiño. I could see that his mind was sharp and his memory intact and, as I vaguely listened to him, it occurred to me that Miralles was the same age my father would have been if he were still alive; this struck me as strange, stranger still that I'd thought of my father precisely at that moment and in that place. In a sense, I thought, although it had been more than six years since he'd died, my father still wasn't dead, because there was still someone remembering him. Or maybe it wasn't me remembering my father, but he who clung to my memory, so as not to die completely.

'But you haven't come here to talk about these things,' Miralles interrupted himself, at some point, a while after we'd thrown away our cigarette butts. 'You've come to talk about Collell'

I didn't know where to start, so I just said:

'Then it's true you were at Collell?'

'Of course I was at Collell. Don't play the fool; if I hadn't been there, you wouldn't be here. Of course I was there — a week, maybe two, no more. It was at the end of January '39,1 remember because the 31st of that month I crossed the border, I'll never forget that date. What I don't know is why we were there for so long. We were the remains of the V Corps of the Army of the Ebro, the majority of us veterans of the whole war, and we'd been firing away without a break since the summer until the front disintegrated and we had to make for the border like bats out of hell, with the Moors and the fascists hot on our heels. And all of a sudden, a few steps from France, they made us stop. Sure, we were grateful, because we'd taken a hell of a beating; but we didn't understand what those days of truce were in aid of. There were rumours; there were some who said Líster was preparing the defence of Gerona, or a counterattack who knows where. Bullshit! We didn't have any weapons or ammunition or supplies or anything, really, we weren't even an army, just a bunch of wrecks who'd been hungry for months, scattered through the woods. But yeah, as I said, at least we got a rest. You know Collell?'

'A little.'

'It's not far from Gerona, near Banyoles. Some of them stayed there, others in the nearby villages; others were sent to Collell.'

'What for?'

'I don't know. Really, I don't think anyone knew. Don't you see? It was unimaginable pandemonium, every man for himself. Everybody gave orders, but nobody obeyed them. People deserted as soon as they got the chance.'

'And why didn't you desert?'

'Desert?' Miralles looked at me as if his brain weren't prepared to process the question. 'Well, I don't know. It didn't occur to me, I guess. At times like that it's not so easy to think, you know? Besides, where was I going to go? My parents had died and my brother was at the front too. . Look,' he lifted his stick, as if something unexpected had come along to get him out of a fix, 'here they are.'

In front of us, on the other side of the grille that separated the garden of the residential home from the rue des Combottes, a group of small children were walking past, shepherded by two teachers. I regretted having interrupted Miralles, because the question (or his inability to answer it; or perhaps it was just the children passing by) seemed to have disconnected him from his memories.

'You can set your watch by them,' he said. 'Have you got kids?'

'No.'

'Don't you like kids?'

'I like them,' I said, and thought of Conchi. 'But I don't have any.'

'I like them too,' he said, waving his stick at them. 'Look at that little rascal, the one in the hat.'

We sat in silence for a bit, watching the children. I didn't have to say anything, but philosophized inanely:

'They always seem so happy.'

'You haven't looked very closely,' Miralles corrected me. apos;They never seem it. But they are. Just like us. What happens is that none of us notice, not us and not them.'

'What do you mean?'

Miralles smiled for the first time.

'We're alive, aren't we?' He stood up with the aid of his stick. 'Well then, it's time for lunch.'

As we walked back to the home I said:

'You were talking about Collell.'

'Would you mind giving me another cigarette?'

As if trying to bribe him, I gave him the whole pack. Putting it into his pocket he asked:

'What was I saying?'

'That it was pandemonium while you were there.'

'Sure.' He picked up the thread easily. 'Imagine the scene. There we were, what was left of the battalion; a Basque captain was in charge, a fairly decent guy, I can't remember his name right now, the commander had been killed in a bombing raid on the way out of Barcelona. But there were civilians there too, Carabineros, SIM agents. All kinds. I don't think anyone knew what we were doing there; waiting for the order to cross the border, I suppose, which was the only thing we could do.'

'Weren't you guarding the prisoners?'

He grinned sceptically.

'More or less.'

'More or less?'

'Yeah, of course we guarded them,' he gave in reluctantly. apos;What I mean is that the ones in charge of the prisoners were the Carabineros. But, sometimes, when the prisoners went out for a walk or something, they ordered us to stay with them. If you call that guarding, I guess we guarded them.'

'And did you know who they were?'

'We knew they were big shots. Bishops, officers, fifth-column Falangists. People like that.'

We'd walked back up the gravel path; the old folks who minutes before had been sunning themselves had deserted their hammocks and were now chatting in groups at the entrance to the building and in the lounge where the television was still on.

'It's still early: let them go in,' said Miralles, taking me by the arm and forcing me to sit down beside him, at the edge of the pond. 'You wanted to talk about Sánchez Mazas, didn't you?' I nodded. 'They used to say he was a good writer. What do you think?'

'That he was a good minor writer.'

'And what does that mean?'

'That he was a good writer, but not a great writer.'

'So a person can be a good writer at the same time as being a huge son of a bitch. What a world!'

'Did you know Sánchez Mazas was at Collell?'

'Of course! How could I not know? He was the biggest of the big shots! We all knew. We had all heard of Sánchez Mazas and knew enough about him — I mean that thanks to him and four or five others like him what happened had happened. I'm not sure, but I think when he arrived at Collell, we'd already been there a few days.'

'Could be. Sánchez Mazas only arrived five days before they shot them. You told me before that you crossed the border on the 31st of January. The execution was the 30th.'

I was about to ask him if he'd still been at Collell that day, and if he remembered what happened, when Miralles, who'd started picking the earth out of the cracks between the paving stones with the tip of his stick, began to speak.

'The night before they'd told us to get our things together, because we'd be leaving the next day,' he explained. 'In the morning we saw a bunch of prisoners leave the Sanctuary escorted by some Carabineros.'

'Did you know they were going to shoot them?'

'No. We thought they were going to make them do some work or maybe swap them, there'd been a lot of talk of that. Although from the expressions on their faces it didn't really look like they were going to exchange them.'

'Did you know Sánchez Mazas? Did you recognize him among the prisoners?'

'No, I don't know. . I don't think so.'

'You didn't know him or you didn't see him?'

'I didn't see him. Of course I knew him. How could I not have known him? We all knew him!'