Chanino decides not to risk them coming back and, keeping tight hold of my hand, pulls me out of the foxhole and we start our descent of the mountain, dragging ourselves through the rocks, playing dead every time we hear a shot or an explosion nearby, but the only Englishman we encounter is twisted and black and lying on the ground, utterly absorbed in learning how to smile with a single row of teeth. Eventually the rocks thin and the land levels out and we reach the edge of the plain, a reliefless piece of open ground spread out before us until it merges with the black of the sky. No sooner have we set off across it than I feel an uncontrollable urge to look back over my shoulder. What I see in the intermittent flashes is so bizarre that I think I’m hallucinating at first: under the hail of fire and flames that falls relentlessly from the reddened sky, and the hoarse roar of the explosions, the mountain looks like an erupting volcano, heaving with creatures in motion like a trampled anthill; as far as the eye can see, taking cover among the rocks, jumping over the craters, carrying the wounded and dodging the dead, descends an army of spectres, fleeing the English advance. They look like they’re moving slowly, but it turns out to be an effect of the distance, because three, then four, immediately run past me, their blankets and ponchos flapping over their heads and backs as if by hiding beneath them they stood a better chance of dodging the tracer fire zinging between the crags or the shells, mortars and grenades that advanced on them like a curtain of fire caught up in their clothes and drawn by them across the plain towards where I stand and wait. More flares begin to float down from the sky and out of reflex we all do what we’ve been taught in training and freeze in the position we’re in to blend in with the trees, like in a game of statues — except there aren’t any trees on the Islands. In the blinding white light the plain becomes a grotesque open-air sculpture exhibition born of the delirium of a demented artist: gargoyles, satyrs, dragons, hunchbacks, fantastic and monstrous beings, alone or in compositions of two or three, standing out clearly against the snow for the English to practise their marksmanship on, which they start doing immediately, breathing life back into one, then another and another, until an NCO’s voice finally breaks the spell:
‘Run, you silly gits! Run! They’ll fucking kill us all!’
We start to run across the plain, which booms and buckles under our feet, flapping our arms in the air like windmill sails, in pursuit of a balance that’s always just a few steps ahead, charging at the dizzying darkness amid the explosions that come more and more frequently and dazzle without providing light. Nothing counts in our headlong rush but chance, chance rampant and reigning equally over all, without bigotry or bias: a hooded shadow easily overtakes me — I’m going as fast as my legs will carry me — and enviously now I think to myself that man is going to save himself and just then, as if running into its arms, he crosses the path of a grenade, which lifts him up and shakes him in its drooling, rabid jaws of fire and then drops him; the last of a blanket-covered group of four — a Chinese dragon at New Year dancing to the firecrackers! — is hit in the legs by a sweep of shrapnel and falls screaming to the ground, wrapped in the blanket while the front end carries on under its own momentum; two of the men stop in their tracks, then turn back for him; the remaining one, deciding to save his arse, runs on for a few metres and is engulfed by a wave of earth, at which his companions panic and leave their comrade, his arms reaching out for them. I stand there for a few seconds to wait for Chanino to catch up and find myself face to face with a shell enveloped in flames that, with all the time in the world, like a frisbee suspended over the beach, is flying through the sky at me; I tell myself that its leisurely approach will allow me time to dodge it, but to my horror I discover that my movements have slowed proportionally, the air around me acquiring the consistency of glycerine and the mud clinging to my boots like fresh cement; with as much chance as a fly on a sheet of flypaper I throw myself to the ground on my face — it takes me an interminable length of time to fall — before the viscous air disappears in a violent suction of two giant mouths kissing my ears at the same time and a piercing howl replaces my brain inside my skull. The shell sinks into the mud half a metre from my head without exploding. I drag myself away from it and fall into Chanino’s arms, pulling him to the ground. I have a vague idea that on either side of us stretches the neatly sown expanse of the minefields, so we have no alternative but to lie here on the ground — if it weren’t for the cluster bombs bursting in the air and spitting hails of shrapnel from the sky, we might still stand a chance — or go back to the mountain which, less accurately shelled now by our own artillery, offers better prospects of survival. Through the fog a ghostly hulk is coming our way with inhuman screams, forcing us to make up our minds without thinking, and we run in the direction of the advancing English shells, pursued by the thundering white ghost bearing down on us.
‘It’s the mare!’ shouts Chanino.
The thunder of her hooves passes so close that I’m splashed by her snorts and just catch the tall columns of fire reflected in the hemisphere of her bulging eye. A couple of pieces of shrapnel or bullets have already opened up bloody furrows in her dirty white coat and, adding to her panic, they goad her on more than any whip ever could. For a few seconds, after her rump is swallowed up by the smoke and fog, I can see myself mounting her bareback and riding invulnerable through the curtain of smoke and fire that separates me from our lines, saving myself; until intermingled with explosions a dreadful scream shakes me out of the spell. Piebald with shrapnel, the mare reappears stumbling towards us, dragging a long snake of intestines, the other end of which is lost in the fog, like a rope tied to a post that sooner or later will force her to stop. She falls on one side waving her legs in the air and looks at us over her shoulder with her big, brown, trusting eyes, waiting for us to go and help her. How often I’d pulled up a tussock of tough grass for her and held it to her mouth, patting her strong neck as she chewed; she looks at me now as if she remembers. Chanino leads me away by the hand and soon we can see her no longer.
We sit down among some rocks at the foot of the mountain to wait for the English to find us. They must have cleared most of it because the shots are more and more sporadic and the bombardment’s stopped. It’s also stopped snowing. A shadow barely emerges from the light reflecting from the snow. NCO voice:
‘Every soldier that can, pick up a gun and come with me!’ it croaks in a broken voice. ‘We’re organising the counter-attack!’
‘Shut up, you tosser!’ a voice finally answers from high up. The milico pretends not to hear.
‘I know you’re out there,’ he shouts, as if warned by a sixth sense. ‘I’ll count to three. One …’
Two shots ring out, the bullets fly high above our heads and zing into the rocks. Anyone can see they’re from one of our FALs. The officer doesn’t speak again and after a while we hear him a long way off: ‘… we have to retake the hill … everyone in a condition to fight …’
We’re beginning to freeze solid from our lack of movement by the time they arrive, and we have trouble standing and putting our hands up. There are two of them and, signalling, they make us line up — a line of five — and march uphill. They’re rounding up the prisoners near where the mortars were. The earth and rocks look as if they’ve been churned up by bulldozers and most of the mortars — lying on their sides and twisted — are still pointing in the wrong direction. All their operators have fled or died, except one, who’s dying with a stomach full of iron, and screaming; his cries are making the English nervous. One of them gives him two shots of morphine and after a while he calms down and dies dreaming he’s back home. The look on his face was unmistakable: he could already smell the café con leche and medialunas.
Читать дальше