“They make fine flyers.”
“They’ll make fine tank guys too. But you have to get the ones with a vocation for it. It’s sort of like being a priest. You have to be cut out for it. Especially now they’ve got so much anti-tank.”
They had pulled down the shutters in Chicote’s and now they were locking the door. No one would be allowed in now. But you had a half an hour more before they closed.
“I like it here,” said Al. “It isn’t so noisy now. Remember that time I met you in New Orleans when I was on a ship and we went in to have a drink in the Monteleone bar and that kid that looked just like Saint Sebastian was paging people with that funny voice like he was singing and I gave him a quarter to page Mr. B. F. Slob?”
“That’s the same way you said ‘Casa del Campo.’ ”
“Yeah,” he said. “I laugh every time I think of that.” Then he went on, “You see, now, they’re not frightened of tanks any more. Nobody is. We aren’t either. But they’re still useful. Really useful. Only with the anti-tank now they’re so damn vulnerable. Maybe I ought to be in something else. Not really. Because they’re still useful. But the way they are now you’ve got to have a vocation for them. You got to have a lot of political development to be a good tank man now.”
“You’re a good tank man.”
“I’d like to be something else tomorrow,” he said. “I’m talking awfully wet but you have a right to talk wet if it isn’t going to hurt anybody else. You know I like tanks too, only we don’t use them right because the infantry don’t know enough yet. They just want the old tank ahead to give them some cover while they go. That’s no good. Then they get to depending on the tanks and they won’t move without them. Sometimes they won’t even deploy.”
“I know.”
“But you see if you had tankists that knew their stuff they’d go out ahead and develop the machine-gun fire and then drop back behind the infantry and fire on the gun and knock it out and give the infantry covering fire when they attacked. And other tanks could rush the machine-gun posts as though they were cavalry. And they could straddle a trench and enfilade and put flaking fire down it. And they could bring up infantry when it was right to or cover their advance when that was best.”
“But instead?”
“Instead it’s like it will be tomorrow. We have so damned few guns that we’re just used as slightly mobile armored artillery units. And as soon as you are standing still and being light artillery, you’ve lost your mobility and that’s your safety and they start sniping at you with the anti-tanks. And if we’re not that we’re just sort of iron perambulators to push ahead of the infantry. And lately you don’t know whether the perambulator will push or whether the guys inside will push them. And you never know if there’s going to be anybody behind you when you get there.”
“How many are you now to a brigade?”
“Six to a battalion. Thirty to a brigade. That’s in principle.”
“Why don’t you come along now and get the bath and we’ll go and eat?”
“All right. But don’t you start taking care of me or thinking I’m worried or anything because I’m not. I’m just tired and I wanted to talk. And don’t give me any pep talk either because we’ve got a political commissar and I know what I’m fighting for and I’m not worried. But I’d like things to be efficient and used as intelligently as possible.”
“What made you think I was going to give you any pep talk?”
“You started to look like it.”
“All I tried to do was see if you wanted a girl and not to talk too wet about getting killed.”
“Well, I don’t want any girl tonight and I’ll talk just as wet as I please unless it does damage to others. Does it damage you?”
“Come on and get the bath,” I said. “You can talk just as bloody wet as you want.”
“Who do you suppose that little guy was that talked as though he knew so much?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m going to find out.”
“He made me gloomy,” said Al. “Come on. Let’s go.”
The old waiter with the bald head unlocked the outside door of Chicote’s and let us out into the street.
“How is the offensive, comrades?” he said at the door.
“It’s O.K., comrade,” said Al. “It’s all right.”
“I am happy,” said the waiter. “My boy is in the One Hundred and Forty-fifth Brigade. Have you seen them?”
“I am of the tanks,” said Al. “This comrade makes a cinema. Have you seen the Hundred and Forty-fifth?”
“No,” I said.
“They are up the Extremadura road,” the old waiter said. “My boy is political commissar of the machine-gun company of his battalion. He is my youngest boy. He is twenty.”
“What party are you comrade?” Al asked him.
“I am of no party,” the waiter said. “But my boy is a Communist.”
“So am I,” said Al. “The offensive, comrade, has not yet reached a decision. It is very difficult. The fascists hold very strong positions. You, in the rear-guard, must be as firm as we will be at the front. We may not take these positions now but we have proved we now have an army capable of going on the offensive and you will see what it will do.”
“And the Extremadura road?” asked the old waiter, still holding on to the door. “Is it very dangerous there?”
“No,” said Al. “It’s fine up there. You don’t need to worry about him up there.”
“God bless you,” said the waiter. “God guard you and keep you.”
Outside in the dark street, Al said, “Jees he’s kind of confused politically, isn’t he?”
“He is a good guy,” I said. “I’ve known him for a long time.”
“He seems like a good guy,” Al said. “But he ought to get wise to himself politically.”
The room at the Florida was crowded. They were playing the gramophone and it was full of smoke and there was a crap game going on the floor. Comrades kept coming in to use the bathtub and the room smelt of smoke, soap, dirty uniforms, and steam from the bathroom.
The Spanish girl called Manolita, very neat, demurely dressed, with a sort of false French chic, with much joviality, much dignity and closely set cold eyes, was sitting on the bed talking with an English newspaper man. Except for the gramophone it wasn’t very noisy.
“It is your room, isn’t it?” the English newspaper man said.
“It’s in my name at the desk,” I said. “I sleep in it sometimes.”
“But whose is the whisky?” he asked.
“Mine,” said Manolita. “They drank that bottle so I got another.”
“You’re a good girl, daughter,” I said. “That’s three I owe you.”
“Two,” she said. “The other was a present.”
There was a huge cooked ham, rosy and white edged in a half-opened tin on the table beside my typewriter and a comrade would reach up, cut himself a slice of ham with his pocket knife, and go back to the crap game. I cut myself a slice of ham.
“You’re next on the tub,” I said to Al. He had been looking around the room.
“It’s nice here,” he said. “Where did the ham come from?”
“We bought it from the intendencia of one of the brigades,” she said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Who’s we?”
“He and I,” she said, turning her head toward the English correspondent. “Don’t you think he’s cute?”
“Manolita has been most kind,” said the Englishman. “I hope we’re not disturbing you.”
“Not at all,” I said. “Later on I might want to use the bed but that won’t be until much later.”
“We can have a party in my room,” Manolita said. “You aren’t cross are you, Henry?”
“Never,” I said. “Who are the comrades shooting craps?”
“I don’t know,” said Manolita. “They came in for baths and then they stayed to shoot craps. Everyone has been very nice. You know my bad news?”
“No.”
“It’s very bad. You knew my fiancé who was in the police and went to Barcelona?”
“Yes. Sure.”
Al went into the bathroom.
“Well, he was shot in an accident and I haven’t any one I can depend on in police circles and he never got me the papers he had promised me and today I heard I was going to be arrested.”
“Why?”
“Because I have no papers and they say I hang around with you people and with people from the brigades all the time so I am probably a spy. If my fiancé had not gotten himself shot it would have been all right. Will you help me?”
“Sure,” I said. “Nothing will happen to you if you’re all right.”
“I think I’d better stay with you to be sure.”
“And if you’re not all right
