A Long Petal of the Sea(18)
Soon they were all alone. The narrow, icy goats’ track they had been following petered out. Their feet sank into the snow, and they had to avoid rocks and fallen tree trunks on the edge of the precipice. One false step and they would crash to the ground a hundred yards below. Aitor’s boots, which like the goggles had once belonged to an enemy officer fallen in battle, were worn out, but they protected his feet better than Roser’s thin city shoes. After a while, neither of them could feel their feet anymore. The enormous, snow-topped mountain loomed high above them, silhouetted against a purple sky. Aitor was afraid he had gotten lost, and realized that at best it would take them several days to reach France; if they couldn’t join a group, they would never succeed. He silently cursed his decision to leave the main road, but reassured Roser, promising her he knew the terrain like the back of his hand.
As night was falling they saw a dim glow in the distance, and with one last, desperate effort drew near to a tiny camp. From a distance they could make out human figures, and Aitor decided to run the risk of them being Nationalists, because the alternative was to spend the night buried in the snow. Leaving Roser behind, he crept closer, until by the light of a small campfire he could see four thin, bearded men dressed in rags. One of them had a bandaged head. They had no horses, uniforms, boots, or tents: they were a disheveled group that didn’t look like enemy soldiers, but could well be bandits. As a precaution, Aitor cocked the pistol he carried hidden beneath his overcoat, a German Luger he had acquired some months earlier in one of his miraculous exchanges. He approached them, arms raised in a conciliatory gesture. One of the men advanced, pointing his rifle, with another two close behind covering his back with shotguns. All three were as wary and suspicious as he was.
They came to a halt, sizing one another up. On a hunch, Aitor called out in Catalan and Basque: bona nit! kaixo! gabon! After a pause that to him seemed an eternity, the one who appeared to be their leader welcomed him with a brief ongi etorri burkide! Aitor realized they were fellow comrades, no doubt deserters. His knees buckled with relief. The men surrounded him, but seeing he was no threat, were soon patting him on the back in a friendly manner. “I’m Eki and these are Izan and his brother Julen,” the man with the rifle said. Aitor introduced himself in his turn and explained he had a pregnant woman with him, and so they all set off to get her. Two of the men almost carried her to the miserable camp that seemed the height of luxury to the new arrivals, because there was a canvas shelter, warmth, and food.
From then on they passed the time exchanging bad news and sharing cans of beans heated in the fire, as well as the small amount of liquor left in Aitor’s canteen. He also offered them the remaining meat from the mule and the hunk of bread he was carrying in his rucksack. “Keep your provisions, you’ll need them more than we do,” Eki declared. He added that the next day they were expecting a local guide who was bringing them food. Aitor insisted on repaying their generous hospitality by giving them his tobacco. For the past two years only the rich and political leaders had smoked cigarettes bought on the black market; everyone else had to make do with a mixture of dried grass and licorice that was consumed in a single puff. Aitor’s bag of English tobacco was received with religious solemnity. The men rolled cigarettes and smoked in silent ecstasy. They served Roser a portion of beans, then installed her in the improvised tent, settling her down with a hot water bottle for her frozen feet. While she was resting, Aitor told their hosts about the fall of Barcelona, the Republic’s imminent final defeat, and the chaos of the Retreat.
The four men received the news without reacting—they had been expecting it. Nearly two years earlier, they had escaped alive from Guernica when it was bombed by the much-feared Condor Legion planes that razed the historic Basque town and sowed death and destruction in their wake. Afterward, they had survived the fires started by incendiary bombs dropped in the nearby forests, where they had sought refuge, and went on to fight in the Euzkadi Army Corps until the final day of the battle for Bilbao. Before the city fell into enemy hands, the Basque high command organized the evacuation of the civilian population to France, while the soldiers continued fighting, dispersed among different battalions. A year after the defeat at Bilbao, Izan and Julen learned that their father and younger brother, prisoners in Nationalist jails, had been shot by firing squad. The two of them were the only ones left of a large family. It was then they decided to desert as soon as they got the chance: democracy, the Republic, and the war no longer meant anything; they no longer knew what they were fighting for. After that they wandered through forests and over steep mountainsides, staying in the same place for no more than a few days at a time, and tacitly following Eki, who knew the region well. In the previous few weeks, as the inevitable end of the war was approaching, they had come upon the other wounded man on the run. They weren’t safe anywhere. In France they wouldn’t be treated with the respect due to a vanquished army or retreating combatants, not even as refugees. They would be regarded as deserters, arrested, and deported back to Spain, into Franco’s clutches.
With nowhere to go, Republican deserters wandered about in small bands. Some hid in caves or the most inaccessible areas, hoping to lie low until the situation returned to normal; others were suicidal, determined to carry on fighting guerrilla warfare against the might of the conquering army. However, such was not the case of the brothers on the mountain. They were disillusioned with everything, as was Eki, who was only interested in surviving in order to one day return to his wife and children. The man with the bandaged head, who looked very young and took no part in the conversation, turned out to be from Asturias. His wound had left him deaf and confused. Jokingly, the others explained to Aitor that they couldn’t get rid of him as they would have wished, because he was such a good shot: he could hit a hare with his eyes closed, didn’t waste a single bullet, and it was thanks to him that they could occasionally eat meat. In fact, they had with them some rabbits they were planning to exchange for other provisions with the mountain guide when he arrived the next day. Aitor couldn’t help but notice the clumsy tenderness they showed the Asturian youth, as if he were a backward child. The men thought Aitor and Roser were married, and so obliged him to sleep in the tent with his wife; that meant two of the men would have to stay out in the cold. “We’ll take turns,” they said, and refused to allow Aitor to take one as well: what kind of hospitality would that be, they protested.