Danilo Kis - Tomb for Boris Davidovich

CAUTIOUS SPECULATIONS

I see Verschoyle retreating from Malaga on foot, in the leather coat he took from a dead Falangist (under the coat there was only the thin, naked body and a silver cross on a leather string); I see him charging toward a bayonet, carried along by his own war cry as if by the wings of the exterminating angel; I see him in a shouting contest with Anarchists, whose black flag is raised on the bare bills near Guadalajara, and who are ready to die a noble, senseless death; I see him under the red-hot sky by a cemetery near Bilbao, listening to lectures in which, as at the Creation, life and death, heaven and earth, freedom and tyranny are fixed within boundaries; I see him discharging a clip of bullets into the air at planes, impotent, felled right afterward by fire, earth, and shrapnel; I see him shaking the dead body of the student Armand Joffroy, who died in his arms somewhere near Santander; I see him, his head wrapped in filthy bandages, lying in an improvised hospital near Gijon, listening to the ravings of the wounded, one of whom is calling on God in Irish; I see him talking with a young nurse who lulls him со sleep like a child, singing in a tongue unknown to him, and later he, half asleep and full of morphine, sees her climbing into the bed of a Pole who has had a leg amputated, and soon thereafter he hears, as in a nightmare, her aching love rattle; I see him somewhere in Catalonia, at the improvised battalion headquarters, sitting in front of the telegraph, repeating desperate calls for help while a radio in the nearby cemetery plays the gay and suicidal songs of the Anarchists; I see him suffering from conjunctivitis and diarrhea, and I see him naked to the waist, shaving by a well of poisoned water.

BETWEEN ACTS

In late May 1937, somewhere in the suburbs of Barcelona, Verschoyle requested to see the battalion commander. The commander, just past forty, looked like a well-preserved old man. Bent over his desk, he was signing death sentences. His aide, buttoned up to his neck and wearing shiny hunting boots, stood beside him and was pressing a blotter after each signature. The room was stuffy. The commander wiped his face with a batiste handkerchief. Rhythmical explosions of heavy-caliber grenades were heard in the distance. The commander motioned to Verschoyle to speak. "Coded messages are getting into the wrong hands", said Verschoyle. "Whose?*' asked the commander somewhat absentmindedly. The Irishman hesitated, suspiciously glandng at the aide. The commander then adopted die vocabulary of Verdun: “Speak up, son. Into whose hands?” The Irishman was silent for a moment, then bent over the desk and whispered something into the commander’s ear. The commander rose, approached Verschoyle, and accompanied him to the door, all the while parting him on the shoulder the wa у recruits and dreamers are patted. That was all.

A CALL FOR TRAVEL

Verschoyle spent the hellish night between May 31 and June 1 in front of the Morse telegraph, sending stem messages to the forward positions over toward the mountains of Almeria. The night was muggy and illuminated by rockets, which made the region look unreal. Just before dawn Verschoyle handed the telegraph over to a young Basque. The Irishman walked ten paces into the woods and, exhausted, lay face down on the damp grass.

He was awakened by a messenger from headquarters, Verschoyle first glanced at the sky, then at his watch; he hadn't slept more than forty minutes. The messenger gave him an order in a tone unbefitting his tank: there was a ship in the harbor whose radio didn't work-it must be repaired; when the job was finished, a report should be submitted to the second-in-command; Viva la Republic! Vetschoyle rushed into the tent, picked up the leather bag with his tools, and set off with the messenger to the harbor. During the night, someone had written a victorious slogan with white paint, still dripping, on the door of the customhouse: viva la muerte, On the open sea far from the dock, a silhouette of a ship was outlined through the morning fog. The messenger and the sailors in the rowboat exchanged unnecessary passwords. Verschoyle got into the rowboat without looking back.

THE BRASS-PLATED DOOR

Charred timbers floated everywhere, remnants of a ship torpedoed during the night, Verschoyle watched the ashen sea, and this reminded him of scorned and scornworthy Ireland. (Even so, we cannot believe that there wasn’t a touch of nostalgia in this scorn.) His traveling companions were silent, busy with their heavy oars. Soon they approached the ship, and Verschoyle noticed that they were being watched from the upper deck; the helmsman had handed a pair of binoculars to the captain.

Here follow some technical details, perhaps unimportant to the story. The ship was an old wooden steamer of some five hundred tons which was officially transporting anthracite to the French dry of Rouen. Its brass parts- handholds, bolts, locks, and window frames-were almost green with tarnish, and the ship’s flag, covered with coal soot, could hardly be identified.

Verschoyle climbed the ship’s slippery rope ladder, accompanied by the two sailors from the rowboat (one of whom had relieved him of his leather bag, so the guest could climb more easily), There was no one on deck. The two sailors took him to a cabin below. The cabin was empty, and the door was plated with that same tarnished brass, Verschoyle heard the turning of the key in the lock. At the same time he realised-mote in rage than terror-that be had fallen into a trap, naively, like a fool.

The journey lasted eight days. Verschoyle spent these eight days and nights below deck, in a narrow cabin by the engine room, where the deafening noise of engines crushed the current of his thought and his sleep like a millstone. In a strange reconciliation with his fate (very deceptive, as shall be seen), he didn't bang on the door, he didn't call for help. It seemed he didn't even think of escape, which in any case was useless. In the morning he would wash himself over the tin basin, then glance at the food (herring, salmon, black bread, which they gave him three times a day through the round opening in the door), and without touching anything but water, lie down again on the hard sailor’s bunk. He would stare through the porthole at the monotonous waves of the open sea. On the third day Verschoyle awoke from a nightmare: on the narrow bench across from his bunk, two men sat silently watching him. Verschoyle abruptly stood up.

THE TRAVELING COMPANIONS

Blue-eyed, with healthy white teeth, the visitors smiled at Verschoyle amicably. With an unnatural politeness (unnatural for the time and place), they also rose at once, and introduced themselves, slightly nodding their heads. To Verschoyle, who introduced himself, the syllables of his own name suddenly sounded strange and altogether alien.

The next five days the three men spent in the hot, narrow cabin behind the brass-plated door in a terrible game of chance, resembling three-handed poker in which the loser pays with his life. Interrupting the discussion only to gobble a piece of dried herring (the fourth day Verschoyle also began to eat) or to refresh their dry throats and take a breather from their shouting (and then the deafening noise of the engines would become only the reverse of silence), the three men spoke of justice, of freedom, of the proletariat, of the goals of the Revolution, vehemently trying to prove their beliefs, as if they had purposely chosen this semidark cabin of a ship on international waters as the only possible objective and neutral terrain for this terrible game of argument, passion, persuasion, and fanaticism. With rolled-up sleeves, unshaven and sweaty, worn out from near fasting, they stopped the discussion completely only once: on the fifth day, the two visitors (besides their names, all that was known was that they were about twenty years old and not members of the crew) left Verschoyle alone for several hours. During that time, through the deafening noise of the engines, the Irishman heard the sound of a familiar foxtrot coming from the deck. Before midnight the music suddenly died, and the visitors returned, tipsy. They told Verschoyle that there was a celebration on board: a cablegram received that afternoon by the radioman had told them that their ship, the Vitebsk, had changed its name to Ordzhonikidze . They offered him some vodka. He refused, fearing poison. The young men understood and finished the vodka, laughing at the Irishman's distrust.