“I don’t have anything against you. Javi is an asshole.” The Wolf sat on a corner of the bed and started to roll a joint. A single, distinct wrinkle spread until it reached the far edge of the coverlet, the precipice.
“A fucking idiot,” said the Lamb.
I smiled and shook my head several times as if to inform Clarita that I was taking charge of the situation. I didn’t want to say anything, but deep down it bothered me that they would take the liberty of smoking in my room without asking my permission. What would Frau Else think if she showed up all of a sudden? What would the hotel guests and staffsay if they heard about it? Who, when it came down to it, could promise that Clarita wouldn’t blab?
“Want some?” The Wolf dragged on the joint a few times and passed it to me. For appearances’ sake, out of timidity, I inhaled deeply just once, relieved that it wasn’t damp, and handed the joint to Clarita. Inevitably our fingers brushed, maybe for longer than was strictly necessary, and it seemed to me that her cheeks turned red. Resignedly, and as if assuming that her mysterious business with the Spaniards was settled, the maid sat down by the table with her back to the balcony and blew a steady stream of smoke over the map. What a complicated game! she said in a loud voice, adding, in a whisper: For brains only!
The Wolf and the Lamb exchanged glances, whether troubled or uncertain, I can’t say, and then they too sought my approval, but I had eyes only for Clarita, and especially for the smoke, the immense cloud of smoke hanging over Europe, blue and pearly, augmented by the dark lips of the girl, who painstakingly, like a builder, exhaled long, fine tubes of smoke that flattened out over France, Germany, the vast expanses of the East.
“Man, Clarita, pass it back,” complained the Lamb.
As if we were wrenching her from a beautiful and heroic dream, the maid looked at us and without getting up reached out her arm with the joint between her fingers; she had thin arms dotted with small circles lighter than the rest of her skin. I said that maybe she felt sick, maybe she wasn’t used to smoking, maybe it would be better if everyone got back to what they were doing, this last suggestion meant to include the Wolf and the Lamb.
“Nah, she loves it,” said the Wolf, passing me the joint, which this time was soggy and which I smoked with my lips curled inward.
“What do I love?”
“Smoking, cunt,” spat the Lamb.
“It’s not true,” said Clarita, jumping up in a way that was more theatrical than spontaneous.
“Cool it, Clarita, cool it,” said the Wolf in a suddenly honeyed, velvety, even faggotty voice, as he grabbed her by the shoulder and with his other hand tapped her in the ribs. “Don’t knock over the playing pieces, what would our German friend think? That you’re an idiot, right? And you’re no idiot.”
The Lamb winked at me and sat on the bed, behind the maid, miming sex in a way that was doubly silent because even his earto-ear smile was turned not toward me or Clarita’s back but toward . . . a kind of realm of stone . . . a silent zone (with raw staring eyes) that had surreptitiously established itself in the middle of my room . . . say, from the bed to the wall where the photocopies were tacked.
The Wolf’s hand, which only then did I notice was balled into a fist—so the taps
could
have hurt—opened and closed around one of the maid’s breasts. Clarita’s body seemed to surrender completely, melted by the confidence with which the Wolf explored it. Without getting up from the bed, his torso unnaturally stiffand his arms moving like a mechanical doll’s, the Lamb grabbed the girl’s buttocks with both hands and whispered an obscenity. He said “slut,” or “bitch,” or “cunt.” I thought I was going to witness a rape and I remembered the words of Mr. Pere at the Costa Brava about the town’s rape statistics. Whether rape was their aim or not, they weren’t in a hurry: for an instant the three of them composed a living tableau in which the only jarring element was the voice of Clarita, who every so often said no, each time with different emphasis, as if she wasn’t sure of the most appropriate tone in which to refuse.
“Should we make her more comfortable?” The question was directed at me.
“Yeah, man, that would be better,” said the Lamb.
I nodded, but none of the three moved: the Wolf standing and gripping Clarita by the waist, her muscles and bones seemingly turned to jelly, and the Lamb on the edge of the bed massaging the girl’s ass in a circular, rhythmic motion as if he were shuffling dominoes. Such a lack of dynamism led me to act without thinking. I wondered whether it wasn’t all a performance, a trick to make me look ridiculous, a strange in-joke. I reasoned that if this was the case, the hallway wouldn’t be empty. Since I was the one closest to the door, it was easy to reach out and open it, thus clearing up any doubts. With unnecessary swiftness, that’s what I did. There was no one there. Nevertheless, I left the door open. As if they’d been dashed with a bucket of cold water, the Wolf and the Lamb interrupted their gropings with a leap; the maid, meanwhile, gave me a
warm look that I fully appreciated and understood. I ordered her to leave. This instant, no arguments! Obediently, Clarita said goodbye to the Spaniards and went offdown the corridor with the weary step of all hotel maids. Seen from behind she looked vulnerable and not very attractive. Which probably she wasn’t.
When we were left alone, and before the Spaniards had recovered from the surprise, I asked in a tone that admitted of no rejoinders or subterfuge whether Charly had
raped
anyone. In the moment, I was convinced that my words were divinely inspired. The Wolf and the Lamb exchanged a glance that was equal parts blank and wary. They had no idea what was about to hit them!
“Rape a girl? Poor Charly, may he rest in peace?”
“Yes, Charly, that bastard,” I said.
I think I was prepared to get the truth out of them even if it came to blows. The only one who would make a worthy opponent was the Wolf; the Lamb wasn’t much over five feet tall and he was the scrawny type who could be dropped with a single punch. Though it didn’t pay to trust them, nor was there reason for me to be overly cautious. Strategically, I was ideally situated: I controlled the only exit, which I could block if it seemed convenient or use as a means of escape if things went badly. And I counted on the surprise factor. On the terror of unexpected confessions. On the Wolf’s and the Lamb’s predictable lack of mental agility. To be completely candid, none of this had been planned; it simply happened, like in those thrillers where you see an image over and over again before you realize that it’s the key to the crime.
“Let’s respect the dead, especially since he was a friend, man,” said the Lamb.
“Bullshit,” I yelled.
Both of them were pale and I realized that they weren’t going to fight, they just wanted to get out of the room as quickly as possible.
“Who do you think he raped?”
“That’s what I want to know. Hanna?” I asked.
The Wolf looked at me the way you look at a crazy person or a child:
“Hanna was his girlfriend, how could he have raped her?”
“Did he or didn’t he?”
“No, man, of course not, how can you think such a thing?” said the Lamb.
“Charly didn’t rape anybody,” said the Wolf. “He had a heart of gold.”
“Charly, a heart of gold?”
“I can’t believe that you were his friend and you didn’t realize it.”
“He wasn’t my friend.”
The Wolf laughed a brief, deep, heartfelt laugh and said he had realized that by now, believe it or not, he was no idiot. Then he repeated that Charly was a good person, incapable of forcing anyone, and that if anybody had come close to being fucked, it was Charly himself, on the night when he left Ingeborg and Hanna abandoned on the highway. When he returned to town he got drunk with some strangers; according to the Wolf they must have been foreigners, possibly Germans. From the bar, a group of men— it wasn’t clear how many—headed to the beach. Charly remembered the taunts, not all of them directed at him, the shoves (which might have been poor attempts at humor), and an attempt to pull down his pants.
“He was raped, then?”
“No. He fought offthe guy who was harassing him and got out of there. There weren’t many of them and Charly was strong. But he was pretty upset and he wanted revenge. He came to my place looking for me. When we got back to the beach, no one was there.”
I believed them: the silence of the room, the muffled noise from the Paseo Marítimo, even the sun behind the clouds and the sea veiled by the balcony curtains—everything seemed to stand witness for that pair of deadbeats.
“You think Charly committed suicide, don’t you? Well, he didn’t, Charly never would’ve killed himself. It was an accident.”
The three of us abandoned our aggressive and defensive stances and segued directly into attitudes of sadness (though the description is excessive and imprecise), sitting down on the bed or the
floor, the three of us enveloped in a warm mantle of solidarity, as if we really were friends or as if we had just fucked the maid, gravely delivering short speeches that the others celebrated with monosyllables, and enduring the extra presence that throbbed with its powerful back to us at the far end of the room.
Luckily the Lamb relit the joint and we passed it around until it was gone. There wasn’t another. With a puff, the Wolf scattered the ash that had fallen on the rug.
We went out for beers at the Andalusia Lodge.
The bar was empty and we sang a song.
An hour later I couldn’t stand them any longer and I left.
MY FAVORITE GENERALS
I don’t look for perfection in them. Perfection on a game board: what does it mean but death, the void? In the names, the brilliant careers, in the stuffof memory, I search for the image of their sure-fingered white hands, I search for their eyes watching battles (though there are only a few photographs that show them thus engaged): imperfect and singular, delicate, distant, gruff, daring, prudent—in all of them one can find courage and love. In Manstein, Guderian, Rommel. My Favorite Generals. And in Rundstedt, von Bock, von Leeb. In neither them nor others do I demand perfection; I content myself with their faces, open or impassive, with their dispatches, with just a name and a tiny deed sometimes. I even forget whether General X started the war at the head of a division or a corps, whether he showed more skill at commanding tanks or infantry; I mix up the scenes and the operations. Not for that do they shine less bright. They fade against the larger picture, depending on how one looks at it, but the picture always contains them. No exploit, no weakness, no resistance, however brief or prolonged, is lost. If El Quemado had the slightest knowledge or appreciation of twentieth-century German literature (and it’s likely that he does!) I’d tell him that Manstein is like . . . Celan. And Paulus is like Trakl, and his predecessor, Reichenau, is like Heinrich Mann. Guderian is the equivalent of Jünger, and Kluge of Böll. He wouldn’t understand. Or at least he wouldn’t understand yet. I, however, find
it easy to assign these generals occupations, nicknames, hobbies, types of house, seasons of the year, etc. Or to spend hours comparing and compiling statistics from their respective service records. Arranging and rearranging them: by game, by decorations, by victories, by defeats, by years lived, by books published. They’re not saints or anything like it, but sometimes I see them in the sky, like in the movies, their faces superimposed on the clouds, smiling at us, gazing into the distance, rehearsing salutes, some nodding as if clearing up unspoken doubts. They share clouds and sky with generals like Frederick the Great, as if the two eras and all games had merged in a single jet of steam. (Sometimes I imagine that Conrad is sick, in the hospital, with no visitors—except maybe me, standing by the door—and in his suffering he discovers, reflected on the wall, the maps and counters that he’ll never touch again! The era of Frederick and all the other generals escaped from the laws of the afterlife! The void knocking fists with my poor Conrad!) Sympathetic figures, despite everything. Like Model the Titan, Schörner the Ogre, Rendulio the Bastard, Arnim the Obedient, Witzleben the Squirrel, Blaskowitz the Upright, Knobelsdorffthe Paladin, Balck the Fist, Manteuffel the Intrepid, Student the Fang, Hausser the Black, Dietrich the Autodidact, Henrici the Rock, Busch the Nervous, Hoth the Thin, Kleist the Astronomer, Paulus the Sad, Breith the Silent, Vietinghoffthe Obstinate, Bayerlein the Studious, Hoeppner the Blind, Salmuth the Academic, Geyr the Inconstant, List the Luminous, Reinhardt the Silent, Meindl the Warthog, Dietl the Skater, Wöhler the Stubborn, Chevallerie the Absentminded, Bittrich the Nightmare, Falkenhorst the Leaper, Wenck the Carpenter, Nehring the Enthusiast, Weichs the Clever, Eberbach the Depressive, Dollman the Cardiac, Halder the Butler, Sodenstern the Swift, Kesselring the Mountain, Küchler the Preoccupied, Hube the Inexhaustible, Zangen the Dark, Weiss the Transparent, Friessner the Lame, Stumme the Ashen, Mackensen the Invisible, Lindemann the Engineer, Westphal the Calligrapher, Marcks the Bitter, Stulpnagel the Elegant, von Thoma the Garrulous . . . Firmly ensconced in heaven . . . On the same cloud as Ferdinand, Brunswick, Schwerin, Lehwaldt, Ziethen, Dohna,
Kleist, Wedell, Frederick’s generals . . . On the same cloud as Blücher’s triumphant army at Waterloo: Bülow, Ziethen, Pirch, Thielman, Hiller, Losthin, Schwerin, Schulenburg, Watzdorf, Jagow, Tippelskirchen, etc. Symbolic figures with the ability to storm into your dreams to the cry of Eureka! Eureka! Awake! and make you open your eyes, if you’re able to hear their call without fear, and at the foot of the bed you find the Favorite Situations that were and the Favorite Situations that might have been. Among the former I would single out Rommel’s ride with the Seventh Armored in ’40, Student falling upon Crete, Kleist’s advance through the Caucasus with the First Panzer Army, Manteuffel’s offensive in the Ardennes with the Fifth Panzer Army, Manstein’s campaign in the Crimea with the Eleventh Army, the Dora gun itself, the Mt. Elbrus flag itself, Hube’s resistance in Russia and Sicily, Reichenau’s Tenth Army breaking the necks of the Poles. From among the Favorite Situations that never were, I have a special fondness for the capture of Moscow by Kluge’s troops, the conquest of Stalingrad by Reichenau (rather than Paulus), the disembarking of the Ninth and Sixteenth Armies in Great Britain (parachute drop included), the securing of the Astrakhan–Arkhangel’sk line, the triumphs in Kursk and Mortain, the orderly retreat to the far side of the Seine, the reconquest of Budapest, the reconquest of Antwerp, the sustained resistance in Courland and Königsberg, the holding of the line along the Oder, the Alpine Redoubt, the death of Zarina and the switching of alliances . . . Silliness, idiocy, useless feats, as Conrad says, in order to avoid witnessing the generals’ last farewell: happy in victory, good losers in defeat. Even in utter defeat. They wink an eye, rehearse military salutes, stare offinto the distance, or nod. What have they to do with this hotel that’s falling apart? Nothing, but they help, they comfort. Their farewells stretch on for an eternity and remind me of old matches, afternoons, nights, of which all that remains is not victory or defeat but a movement, a feint, a clash, and friends’ claps on the back.