Carlos Gamerro - The Islands

‘Wouldn’t it be better to shoot?’

‘Are you mad? They’ll waste us.’

‘I mean get the fuck out of here.’

‘Where to? They’re everywhere. Better to surrender.’

‘Don’t they kill prisoners?’

‘No, they’re English.’

‘And what do you do to surrender?’

‘How should I know? You’re the corporal. Didn’t they teach you?’

‘Someone once asked in training and they drilled him till he dropped. “You fight till you die, dog,” they told him.’

‘Let’s try a white flag. Gimme something white.’

‘There’s nothing white left!’

‘What about the Porteño? Isn’t he awake?’

Chanino starts slapping me in the face. ‘Cut it out, you bloody maniac, what are you doing!’ I yell at him. He slaps me a couple more times and turns away.

‘Nothing.’

‘We are fucking dead. Carlitos is dead, the Cordobans are dead, Felipe can’t speak. Is there anyone left out there?’

‘The English.’

I turn my head. Carlitos’s face is next to mine. Mouth open, eyes open. I start to scream.

‘Don’t you know how to say “surrender” in English?’

‘They flunked me twice. And you lot up in the Chaco? What did they teach you? Quechua?’

‘I only finished primary.’

‘Listen, when one of them appears you go out with your hands up …’

‘Why me?’

‘You’re the commanding officer, you dickhead.’

‘Oh, right, before, whenever I gave orders, you just pissed yourselves laughing; now, when it comes to getting my head cut off by a Gurkha, all of a sudden I’m a fucking general.’

‘I’m not going. My surrender doesn’t count. You’re the corporal.’

‘Private Rubén Gentile, I order you to …’

‘Suck on this.’

‘Che, you lot in the foxholes! Get out of there or the English’ll shoot the shit out of you! Get out! We’ve lost!’

The voice comes from outside. Rubén and Chanino start to whisper.

‘Must be English! Let’s play dead!’

‘He said “che”! He’s an Argentinian!’

‘I didn’t hear him.’

‘Get out, che, or they’ll chuck a grenade in your foxhole!’

‘See? Che! Clear as day!’

There are several bursts of machine-gun fire; the brief silence that follows is broken by shrieks, then two explosions. I manage to turn my head and get a look. I can just make out a shape in the darkness, dragging behind it a taut rope, tethered like a dog’s lead to something or someone invisible among the rocks. When it turns side on, I recognise the visor on the helmet. It’s Argentinian.

‘You getting out or not? You’ve seen what happens,’ it shouts in the direction of the Cordobans’ foxhole. It’s not at us, I realise, they haven’t seen us. ‘They haven’t seen us, Rubén,’ I tell him.

Like a party of mountaineers, the rope is also tied to two silhouettes, who appear at the Argentinian’s side: one tall, the other short. Helmets like half water-melons.

‘I don’t want to die in this hole! I don’t want to die in this mud!’ Rubén starts to roll around furiously, landing unnecessary punches and kicks on us, though nobody tries to stop him, and sticks his arms outside. ‘I’m getting out! I’m getting out! Tell them not to shoot!’

They spot him when he’s already outside. He begins to walk towards them. The Argentinian disappears among the rocks. The English train their rifles on him.

‘Drop your weapon!’ shouts the tall one.

Rubén had gone out with his useless FAL over his shoulder. He stands still and looks at them blankly.

‘Your gun! Your FAL! Throw it away!’ I shout to him.

‘The gun, you fucking arsehole! Drop it!’

He must have understood some gesture or other because he unslings it and throws it on the ground. The Englishmen keep their rifles trained on him.

‘Hit the deck!’ shouts the same one as before.

‘Throw yourself on the floor, Rubén!’ I shout to him. Nothing. No one can hear me. I’m dead, it suddenly occurs to me. No one can hear me because I’m dead.

The English soldier fires once, a single burst. Rubén falls on his back in a pile of shit. He starts screaming hideously. The little Englishman gives the rope to the tall one and starts walking in our direction, bayonet pointing at the ground.

‘No! Please! Please!’ All his forgotten English lessons ring in Rubén’s ears at once. ‘I love Queen! Freddie Mercury! We are the champions! Please! Please!’

Rubén has both hands raised in a gesture of supplication and the Englishman seizes the chance to jam the bayonet in his stomach, but the clothes he’s wrapped in are so thick that he doesn’t stick it in far enough to kill him. Rubén starts to screech and kick and spastically flap his arms, and the English also screaming puts one boot on his stomach and starts bayoneting him in the face. When I look again, to prevent him escaping they’ve tied the Argentinian to Rubén’s body, on one of whose feet the Englishman is pulling like an ant trying to drag an insect too big for it. The tall one has him by the armpits and is also tugging, in the opposite direction, the way ants will sometimes before agreeing and pulling together. The little man mutters curses under his breath, snorting, while the tall one laughs at him, using one foot as a lever on a cracked-open rock, which glitters in the light of the flares, veined with silver and delicate traces of pink.

‘Put your back into it! You’re not fucking pulling!’

‘Let’s pull a Christmas cracker.’

They ease off a little and then on one-two-three they both pull hard and the little one flies backwards with Rubén’s boot in his hand, stumbling and falling on his arse in a pool of shit. The other one doubles up with laughter. They relieve me, the laughter and the swearing, for a few seconds we’re in no danger of them hearing Chanino’s moans, the uncontrollable grinding of my teeth, my thumping heart as it tries to choke me.

‘Shit, shit, we’re getting fucking slaughtered for a pile of fucking Argie shit!’ he curses, splashing about in the brown icy sludge. Putting the boot down, he wipes his hands on Rubén’s clothes and, hopping on the spot, takes off his own and puts it on one side. He stamps several times to get Rubén’s to fit him, then starts walking with his weight on one then the other, trying to make up his mind.

‘Are they that comfortable?’

‘Very. Compared to the crap we get.’

‘Think I’ll get myself a pair too.’

‘Hurry up, before they get stiff,’ says the little one, taking off his other boot and throwing it far away like a grenade. His companion approaches the Cordobans and grabs a hold of one of Rosendo’s boots sticking out of the mouth of the collapsed foxhole, and puts it against his own, sole to sole, the way you do in a shoe shop when you can’t be bothered taking your shoes off.

‘Too small!’

Not to feel completely frustrated he picks up Rubén’s FAL and tries it. Nothing.

‘Not my night,’ he mutters.

He gives a few tugs on the rope and the Argentinian lifts his head sunk in his arms and starts to follow them obediently, stumbling past Rubén without looking at him. They’re coming straight towards us. Miraculously, since they killed Rubén, not a single flare has gone up and they walk right past without seeing us. I grab Chanino by the hand, a second before the English stop on the roof of our foxhole. The bowing sheet of corrugated iron rings out with a voice like thunder. But they don’t hear it. It’s been snowing for a while now: a fine, dry snow, like pulverised ice, which, accumulating on the ground, solidifies into a hard crust that crunches audibly beneath the Englishmen’s Argentinian and English boots. They move away downhill and, for some time, against the light of the distant explosions and their brilliance in the snow, we can still make out their silhouettes in the wisps of fog, stopping now and again to check the boots of the dead as if out bargain-hunting in a discount store.