A Long Petal of the Sea(3)

“What’s become of your friend Aitor?” she asked him.

“He’s still around in the thick of it, without a scratch.”

“He’s not afraid of anything. Say hello to him from me.”

“What plans do you have for when this war is over?” Victor asked.

“To find another one. There’s always war somewhere in the world. What about you?”

“If you like, we could get married,” he suggested, overcome with shyness.

She laughed, and for a moment became a Renaissance maiden once more.

“Not on your life, man. I’m not going to get married to you or anyone else. I don’t have time for love.”

“Maybe you will change your mind. Do you think we’ll meet again?”

“Without a doubt, if we survive. You can count on me, Victor, if there’s any way I can help you…”

“The same goes for me. May I kiss you?”

“No.”



* * *



—

IT WAS IN THE Teruel caves that Victor acquired nerves of steel and the medical knowledge that no university could have offered him. He learned that you can get used to almost anything—to blood (so much blood!), surgery without anesthetics, the stench of gangrene, filth, the endless flood of wounded soldiers, sometimes women and children as well—while at the same time an age-old weariness sapped your will, and worst of all, you had to confront the insidious suspicion that all this sacrifice might be in vain. And it was there, as he was pulling the dead and wounded from the ruins of a bombardment, that the delayed collapse of a wall smashed his left leg.



He was seen by an English doctor from the International Brigades. Anyone else would have opted for a rapid amputation, but the Englishman had just begun his shift and had been able to rest for a few hours. He stammered an order to the nurse and made ready to reset the broken bones. “You’re lucky, my lad. Supplies from the Red Cross arrived yesterday, so we can put you to sleep,” said the nurse, covering his face with the ether mask.

Victor attributed the accident to the fact that Aitor Ibarra and his lucky star had not been with him to protect him. Aitor was the one who had taken him to the train that brought him to Valencia together with dozens of other wounded men. Victor’s leg was immobilized by lengths of wood kept in place by bandages—his flesh wounds meant it couldn’t be encased in plaster. He was wrapped in a blanket, shivering from cold and fever, and tormented by every jolt of the train, but grateful that he was in a better state than most of those lying with him on the floor of the wagon. Aitor had given him his last cigarettes, as well as a dose of morphine that he made Victor promise to use only in a dire emergency, because he wouldn’t get any more. In the hospital at Valencia, they congratulated him on the good work the English doctor had done. If there were no complications, his leg would be like new, although a little shorter than the other one, they told him.

Once the wounds began to heal and he could stand using a crutch, they set his leg in plaster and sent him to Barcelona. He stayed at his parents’ home playing endless games of chess with his father until he could move about unaided, and then went back to work at a local hospital, where he attended civilians. To him, this was like being on vacation; compared to what he had experienced on the battlefront, it was a paradise of cleanliness and efficiency.

He stayed there until the following spring, when he was sent to Sant Andreu in Manresa. He said goodbye to his parents, and to Roser Bruguera, the music student the Dalmau family had taken in. During the weeks of his convalescence, Victor had come to think of her as one of the family. This modest, likeable girl who spent endless hours in piano practice had provided the company that Marcel Lluis and Carme were in need of ever since their own children had left home.



* * *



—



IT WAS NOT LONG after that he returned to the front. A young militiawoman, her cap tilted to counter the ugliness of her uniform, was waiting for Victor Dalmau at the door to the operating room. The moment he came out, with three days’ growth of beard and his white coat spattered with blood, she gave him a folded piece of paper with a message from the telephone operators. Dalmau had been on his feet for hours; his leg was aching, and he had just realized from the deep rumble in his stomach that he hadn’t eaten since dawn. The work was relentless, but he was grateful for the opportunity to learn in the magnificent aura of Spain’s leading surgeons. In other circumstances, a student like him would never even have gotten near them, but by this stage of the war, studies and diplomas were less valuable than experience; and he had more than his fill of that, as the hospital director assured him when allowing him to assist during surgery. By this time, Dalmau could work for forty hours at a stretch without sleeping, able to keep going thanks to tobacco and chicory coffee, and not even noticing the hindrance of his leg.

Unfolding the piece of paper the militiawoman had handed him, Victor Dalmau read the message from his mother, Carme. Even though the hospital was only sixty-five kilometers from Barcelona, he had not seen her in seven weeks, because he had not had a single free day when he could take the bus home. Once a week, always at the same time on a Sunday, she called him on the telephone, and on the same day also sent him some sort of gift, chocolate from the International Brigades, a sausage, a bar of soap bought on the black market, occasionally even cigarettes. To Carme the latter were the real treasure, because she couldn’t live without nicotine. He wondered how she managed to get hold of them. Tobacco was so prized that the enemy planes used to drop it from the sky along with loaves of bread, mocking the shortages on the Republican side and showing off the abundance the Nationalists enjoyed.