“Do we have to hear it?” Al asked. “Remember I’m in the people’s army. You don’t think it will discourage me, do you?”
“You know his head is swelled so badly now he’s getting sort of mad. He is Prime Minister and War Minister and nobody can even talk to him any more. You know he’s just a good honest trade union leader somewhere between the late Sam Gompers and John L. Lewis but this man Araquistain who invented him?”
“Take it easy,” said Al. “I don’t follow.”
“Oh, Araquistain invented him! Araquistain who is Ambassador in Paris now. He made him up you know. He called him the Spanish Lenin and then the poor man tried to live up to it and somebody let him look through a pair of field glasses and he thought he was Clausewitz.”
“You said that before,” Al told him coldly. “What do you base it on?”
“Why three days ago in the Cabinet meeting he was talking about military affairs. They were talking about this business we’ve got now and Jesus Hernandez, just ribbing him, you know, asked him what was the difference between tactics and strategy. Do you know what the old boy said?”
“No,” Al said. I could see this new comrade was getting a little on his nerves.
“He said, ‘In tactics you attack the enemy from in front. In strategy you take him from the sides.’ Now isn’t that something?”
“You better run along, comrade,” Al said. “You’re getting so awfully discouraged.”
“But we’ll get rid of Largo Caballero,” the short comrade said. “We’ll get rid of him right after his offensive. This last piece of stupidity will be the end of him.”
“O.K., comrade,” Al told him. “But I’ve got to attack in the morning.”
“Oh, you are going to attack again?”
“Listen, comrade. You can tell me any sort of crap you want because it’s interesting and I’m grown up enough to sort things out. But don’t ask me any questions, see? Because you’ll be in trouble.”
“I just meant it personally. Not as information.”
“We don’t know each other well enough to ask personal questions, comrade,” Al said. “Why don’t you just go to another table and let Comrade Henry and me talk. I want to ask him some things.”
“Salud, comrade,” the little man said, standing up. “We’ll meet another time.”
“Good,” said Al. “Another time.”
We watched him go over to another table. He excused himself, some soldiers made room for him, and as we watched we could see him starting to talk. They all looked interested.
“What do you make of that little guy?” Al asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Me either,” Al said. “He certainly had this offensive sized up.” He took a drink and showed his hand. “See? It’s all right now. I’m not any rummy either. I never take a drink before an attack.”
“How was it today?”
“You saw it. How did it look?”
“Terrible.”
“That’s it. That’s the word for it all right. It was terrible. I guess he’s using strategy and tactics both now because we are attacking from straight in front and from both sides. How’s the rest of it going?”
“Duran took the new race track. The hipódromo. We’ve narrowed down on the corridor that runs up into University City. Up above we crossed the Coruña road. And we’re stopped at the Cerro de Aguilar since yesterday morning. We were up that way this morning. Duran lost over half his brigade, I heard. How is it with you?”
“Tomorrow we’re going to try those farm houses and the church again. The church on the hill, the one they call the hermit, is the objective. The whole hillside is cut by those gullies and it’s all enfiladed at least three ways by machine-gun posts. They’re dug deep all through there and it’s well done. We haven’t got enough artillery to give any kind of real covering fire to keep them down and we haven’t heavy artillery to blow them out. They’ve got anti-tanks in those three houses and an anti-tank battery by the church. It’s going to be murder.”
“When’s it for?”
“Don’t ask me. I’ve got no right to tell you that.”
“If we have to film it, I meant,” I said. “The money from the film all goes for ambulances. We’ve got the Twelfth Brigade in the counter-attack at the Argada Bridge. And we’ve got the Twelfth again in that attack last week by Pingarron. We got some good tank shots there.”
“The tanks were no good there,” Al said.
“I know,” I said, “but they photographed very well. What about tomorrow?”
“Just get out early and wait,” he said. “Not too early.”
“How you feel now?”
“I’m awfully tired,” he said. “And I’ve got a bad headache. But I feel a lot better. Let’s have another one and then go up to your place and get a bath.”
“Maybe we ought to eat first.”
“I’m too dirty to eat. You can hold a place and I’ll go get a bath and join you at the Gran Via.”
“I’ll go up with you.”
“No. It’s better to hold a place and I’ll join you.” He leaned his head forward on the table. “Boy I got a headache. It’s the noise in those buckets. I never hear it any more but it does something to your ears just the same.”
“Why don’t you go to bed?”
“No. I’d rather stay up with you for a while and then sleep when I got back down there. I don’t want to wake up twice.”
“You haven’t got the horrors, have you?”
“No,” he said. “I’m fine. Listen, Hank. I don’t want to talk a lot of crap but I think I’m going to get killed tomorrow.”
I touched the table three times with my fingertips.
“Everybody feels like that. I’ve felt like that plenty of times.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not natural with me. But where we’ve got to go tomorrow doesn’t make sense. I don’t even know that I can get them up there. You can’t make them move if they won’t go. You can shoot them afterwards. But at the time if they won’t go they won’t go. If you shoot them they still won’t go.”
“Maybe it will be all right.”
“No. We’ve got good infantry tomorrow. They’ll go anyway. Not like those yellow bastids we had the first day.”
“Maybe it will be all right.”
“No,” he said. “It won’t be all right. But it will be just exactly as good as I can make it. I can make them start all right and I can take them up to where they will have to quit one at a time. Maybe they can make it. I’ve got three I can rely on. If only one of the good ones doesn’t get knocked out at the start.”
“Who are your good ones?”
“I’ve got a big Greek from Chicago that will go anywhere. He’s just as good as they come. I’ve got a Frenchman from Marseille that’s got his left shoulder in a cast with two wounds still draining that asked to come out of the hospital in the Palace Hotel for this show and has to be strapped in and I don’t know how he can do it. Just technically I mean. He’d break your bloody heart. He used to be a taxi driver.” He stopped. “I’m talking too much. Stop me if I talk too much.”
“Who’s the third one?” I asked.
“The third one? Did I say I had a third one?”
“Sure.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “That’s me.”
“What about the others?”
“They’re mechanics, but they couldn’t learn to soldier. They can’t size up what’s happening. And they’re all afraid to die. I tried to get them over it,” he said. “But it comes back on them every attack. They look like tank men when you see them by the tanks with the helmets on. They look like tank men when they get in. But when they shut the traps down there’s really nothing inside. They aren’t tank men. And so far we haven’t had time to make new ones.”
“Do you want to take the bath?”
“Let’s sit here a little while longer,” he said. “It’s nice here.”
“It’s funny all right, with a war right down the end of the street so you can walk to it, and then leave it and come here.”
“And then walk back to it,” Al said.
“What about a girl? There’s two American girls at the Florida. Newspaper correspondents. Maybe you could make one.”
“I don’t want to have to talk to them. I’m too tired.”
“There’s the two Moor girls from Ceuta at that corner table.”
He looked over at them. They were both dark and bushy-headed. One was large and one was small and they certainly both looked strong and active.
“No,” said Al. “I’m going to see plenty Moors tomorrow without having to fool with them tonight.”
“There’s plenty of girls,” I said. “Manolita’s at the Florida. That Seguridad bird she lives with has gone to Valencia and she’s being true to him with everybody.”
“Listen, Hank, what are you trying to promote me?”
“I just wanted to cheer you up.”
“Grow up,” he said. “What’s one more?”
“One more.”
“I don’t mind dying a bit,” he said. “Dying is just a lot of crap. Only it’s wasteful. The attack is wrong and it’s wasteful. I can handle tanks good now. If I had time I could make good tankists too. And if we had tanks that were a little bit faster the anti-tanks wouldn’t bother them the way it does when you haven’t got the mobility. Listen, Hank, they aren’t what we thought they were though. Do you remember when everybody thought if we only had tanks?”
“They were good at Gaudalajara.”
“Sure. But those were the old boys. They were soldiers. And it was against Italians.”
“But what’s happened?”
“A lot of
