Two policemen with rifles, who had come in off the street patrol, were standing by the door and at this announcement I saw six men form up just like the line-up of a football team coming out of a huddle and head out through the door.
Three of them were the men who had first thrown the flit king out. One of them was the man who shot him. They went right through the policemen with the rifles like good interference taking out an end and a tackle. And as they went out one of the policemen got his rifle across the door and shouted, “No one can leave. Absolutely no one.”
“Why did those men go? Why hold us if anyone’s gone?”
“They were mechanics who had to return to their air field,” someone said.
“But if anyone’s gone it’s silly to old the others.”
“Everyone must wait for the Seguridad. Things must be done legally and in order.”
“But don’t you see that if any person has gone it is silly to hold the others?”
“No one can leave. Everyone must wait.”
“It’s comic,” I said to the forceful girl.
“No it’s not. It’s simply horrible.”
We were standing up now and she was staring indignantly at where the flit king was lying. His arms were spread wide and he had one leg drawn up.
“I’m going over to help that poor wounded man. Why has no one helped him or done anything for him?”
“I’d leave him alone,” I said. “You want to keep out of this.”
“But it’s simply inhuman. I’ve nurse’s training and I’m going to give him first aid.”
“I wouldn’t,” I said. “Don’t go near him.”
“Why not?” She was very upset and almost hysterical.
“Because he’s dead,” I said.
When the police came they held everybody there for three hours. They commenced by smelling of all the pistols. In this manner they would detect one which had been fired recently. After about forty pistols they seemed to get bored with this and anyway all you could smell was wet leather coats. Then they sat at a table placed directly behind the late flit king, who lay on the floor looking like a grey wax caricature of himself, with grey wax hands and a grey wax face, and examined people’s papers.
With his shirt ripped open you could see the flit king had no undershirt and the soles of his shoes were worn through. He looked very small and pitiful lying there on the floor. You had to step over him to get to the table where two plain clothes policemen sat and examined everyone’s identification papers. The husband lost and found his papers several times with nervousness.
He had a safe conduct pass somewhere but he had mislaid it in a pocket and he kept on searching and perspiring until he found it. Then he would put it in a different pocket and have to go searching again. He perspired heavily while doing this and it made his hair very curly and his face red. He now looked as though he should have not only an old school tie but one of those little caps boys in the lower forms wear. You have heard how events age people. Well, this shooting had made him look about ten years younger.
While we were waiting around I told the forceful girl I thought the whole thing was a pretty good story and that I would write it sometime. The way the six had lined up in single file and rushed that door was very impressive. She was shocked and said that I could not write it because it would be prejudicial to the cause of the Spanish Republic.
I said that I had been in Spain for a long time and that they used to have a phenomenal number of shootings in the old days around Valencia under the monarchy, and that for hundreds of years before the Republic people had been cutting each other with large knives called navajas in Andalucia, and that if I saw a comic shooting in Chicote’s during the war I could write about it just as though it had been in New York, Chicago, Key West or Marseilles. It did not have anything to do with politics.
She said I shouldn’t. Probably a lot of other people will say I shouldn’t too. The German seemed to think it was a pretty good story, however, and I gave him the last of the Camels. Well, anyway, finally, after about three hours the police said we could go.
They were sort of worried about me at the Florida because in those days, with the shelling, if you started for home on foot and didn’t get there after the bars were closed at seven-thirty, people worried. I was glad to get home and I told the story while we were cooking supper on an electric stove and it had quite a success.
Well, it stopped raining during the night, and the next morning it was a fine, bright, cold early winter day and at twelve forty-five I pushed open the revolving doors at Chicote’s to try a little gin and tonic before lunch. There were very few people there at that hour and two waiters and the manager came over to the table. They were all smiling.
“Did they catch the murderer?” I asked.
“Don’t make jokes so early in the day,” the manager said. “Did you see him shot?”
“Yes,” I told him.
“Me too,” he said. “I was just here when it happened.” He pointed to a comer table. “He placed the pistol right against the man’s chest when he fired.”
“How late did they hold people?”
“Oh, until past two this morning.”
“They only came for the fiambre,” using the Spanish slang word for corpse, the same used on menus for cold meat, “at eleven o’clock this morning.”
“But you don’t know about it yet,” the manager said.
“No. He doesn’t know,” a waiter said.
“It is a very rare thing,” another waiter said. “Muy raro.”
“And sad too,” the manager said. He shook his head.
“Yes. Sad and curious,” the waiter said. “Very sad.”
“Tell me.”
“It is a very rare thing,” the manager said.
“Tell me. Come on, tell me.”
The manager leaned over the table in great confidence.
“In the flit gun, you know,” he said. “He had eau de cologne. Poor fellow.”
“It was not a joke in such bad taste, you see?” the waiter said.
“It was really just gaiety. No one should have taken offense,” the manager said. “Poor fellow.”
“I see,” I said. “He just wanted everyone to have a good time.”
“Yes,” said the manager. “It was really just an unfortunate misunderstanding.”
“And what about the flit gun?”
“The police took it. They have sent it around to his family.”
“I imagine they will be glad to have it,” I said.
“Yes,” said the manager. “Certainly. A flit gun is always useful.”
“Who was he?”
“A cabinet maker.”
“Married?”
“Yes, the wife was here with the police this morning.”
“What did she say?”
“She dropped down by him and said, ‘Pedro, what have they done to thee, Pedro? Who has done this to thee? Oh, Pedro.’ ”
“Then the police had to take her away because she could not control herself,” the waiter said.
“It seems he was feeble of the chest,” the manager said. “He fought in the first days of the movement. They said he fought in the Sierra but he was too weak in the chest to continue.”
“And yesterday afternoon he just went out on the town to cheer things up,” I suggested.
“No,” said the manager. “You see it is very rare. Everything is muy raro. This I learn from the police who are very efficient if given time. They have interrogated comrades from the shop where he worked. This they located from the card of his syndicate which was in his pocket.
Yesterday he bought the flit gun and agua de colonia to use for a joke at a wedding. He had announced this intention. He bought them across the street. There was a label on the cologne bottle with the address. The bottle was in the washroom. It was there he filled the flit gun. After buying them he must have come in here when the rain started.”
“I remember when he came in,” a waiter said.
“In the gaiety, with the singing, he became gay too.”
“He was gay all right,” I said. “He was practically floating around.”
The manager kept on with the relentless Spanish logic.
“That is the gaiety of drinking with a weakness of the chest,” he said.
“I don’t like this story very well,” I said.
“Listen,” said the manager. “How rare it is. His gaiety comes in contact with the seriousness of the war like a butterfly—”
“Oh, very like a butterfly,” I said. “Too much like a butterfly.”
“I am not joking,” said the manager. “You see it? Like a butterfly and a tank.”
This pleased him enormously. He was getting into the real Spanish metaphysics.
“Have a drink on the house,” he said. “You must write a story about this.”
I remembered the flit gun man with his grey wax hands and his grey wax face, his arms spread wide and his legs drawn up and he did look a little like a butterfly; not too much, you know. But he did not look very human either. He reminded me more of a dead sparrow.
“I’ll take gin and Schweppes quinine tonic water,” I said.
“You must write a story about it,” the manager said. “Here. Here’s luck.”
“Luck,” I said. “Look, an English girl last night told me I shouldn’t write about it. That it would be very bad for the cause.”
“What nonsense,” the manager said. “It is very interesting and important, the misunderstood gaiety coming in contact with
