The Magnet - A Novel of the Rif War
Ramón Sender's 1930 novel is counted among the era's greatest works of Spanish literature. Despite its reputation, it was largely forgotten in the Anglophone world after the initial 1935 translation.
Barring some vague notions of the Spanish Civil War as a prelude to the coming World War, 20th century Spain largely remains a mystery in Anglophone quarters. Spain had long since lost its status as the international colossus of centuries past, the final blowing coming in 1898 with the Spanish-American War which deprived Spain of what little remained of its once vast overseas empire. But its relegation to the periphery of Europe did not spell an end to its ambitions. In fact, in large sectors of Spain’s middle and upper classes, the defeat of ‘98 stirred a rabid mania for the “regeneration” of Spain. This took many forms, but in an age where imperial frenzy was at its global apogee, hungry eyes looked abroad for greatness — and loot.
Directly across from Spain, separated by a mere 7 miles of sea, Spanish imperialists found just what they were looking for. Morocco was by no means a new target, the two countries’ histories were long intertwined. Morocco was the launchpad for the 8th century invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, and several dynasties which came to exercise power over large swathes of what became Spain originated in Morocco. With the extripation of the last Islamic state from the peninsula in 1492, many dreamed of extending the ‘Reconquista’ into North Africa. These efforts were not entirely fruitless, after all the coastal cities of Ceuta and Melilla remain Spanish territories to this day, but most of Morocco remained out of reach. In the 19th and 20th centuries Spain would launch several wars to increase its footprint in Morocco. These wars would have a profound effect on Spain itself, sparking changes in governments, draft riots, assassinations, and even a military coup d’etat.
As part of a 1912 agreement with France, Morocco, while retaining formal sovereignty, was divided into a Spanish protectorate at the northernmost tip of Morocco including the Rif Mountains (as well as what is now the West Sahara) and a French protectorate over the rest. Territorially it was a small prize, but the land was rich in mineral wealth which would be extremely valuable to Spanish capitalists. Spain tried to impose its rule over its portion of the country, first by means of soft power and later by military force. It was this military push that precipitated the events in the novel, as well as the aforementioned military coup.
Muhammad ibn Abd-el-Krim was the son of a well-regarded qadi of the Ait Waryaghar tribe. The father had been a “pensioner” of the Spanish authorities, somebody who received payments from Spain in exchange for preaching a pro-Spanish line to his fellow tribesmen and sowing discord in a way that would be beneficial to Spain’s agenda. The Spanish showed their gratitude by giving his sons a European education, a common reward granted to native agents of empire. Muhammad thus became intimately acquainted with the Spanish, and with time his pro-Spanish leanings dissipated as it became apparent to him that Spain had neither the desire nor the means to bring material improvements to his people. Using his talents, Muhammad ibn Abd-el-Krim was able to bring many disparate tribes into a united anti-Spanish bloc. They fought against Spanish encroachment ferociously, with the goal of creating, in ibn Abd-el-Krim’s words, “a country with a government and a flag.”
On paper the Spanish military was the superior force. Fuelled by ideas of racial and religious supremacy and overconfident in their control over the situation, the Spanish felt themselves invincible. But the situation looked very different on the ground. In truth, these were almost entirely conscripts from the poorest segments of Spanish society. Those with means were able to pay a fee to have their sons perform military service within Spain itself, far out of harm’s way. Among rank and file men, very few wanted to be in Morocco in the first place. In many cases, their military service meant privation for families who needed every pair of working hands they could get. To make matters worse, their military uniforms were of extremely low quality and much of the food was, without exaggeration, rotten. Conscripts thus had to spend much of their already meager incomes on new clothing and produce from the locals. To say that morale was low is an understatement. The groundwork was laid for the “Disaster of Annual.”
In 1920 General Manuel Silvestre had taken it upon himself to bring the area under military control. He was an arrogant and violent man with little respect for the local population. He believed that, "the only way to succeed in Morocco is to cut off the heads of all the Moors." His army had luck penetrating the Moroccan countryside at first, but success would be short-lived. In July 1921, disaster struck. The united forces of Abd-el-Krim, now numbering in the thousands, surged forth and inflicted a deadly blow on Spanish positions near the town of Annual. Silvestre himself was slain on the battlefield, but this was only the beginning. The Moroccans surged across the front and pursued what remained of Spanish forces as they retreated. All told, out of 25,000 troops, 13,000 were slain, both Spaniards as well as their Moroccan allies. Some were taken prisoner to perform hard labor for the Riffi state and to be traded for ransom. This was the greatest blow dealt to any modern European empire by a native force.
These events would have heavy reverberations. Investigations were launched to assign blame for the disaster to the chagrin of the military, which was not keen on civilian involvement in what it considered to be its internal affairs. In 1923, General Miguel Primo de Rivera (father of the later Falangist leader José Antonio) seized power and dissolved the parliamentary government with the king’s blessing. Spain was now free to fight its Moroccan War without any holds barred. The Spanish resorted to widespread aerial warfare, including chemical warfare usually targeted against civilian areas. This left the land and its people scarred to this day. Although not the first instance of chemical warfare in a colonial setting (that honor would go to the British in Iraq), it would be the largest instance until the Italians invaded Ethiopia. Much agricultural land was rendered barren and the Rif region continues to have disproportionately high cancer rates to this day. Ibn Abd-el-Krim would finally be defeated by joint Franco-Spanish military operations in 1925 after his rebellion began to spread into French-controlled regions.
Ramón J. Sender was a prolific Spanish journalist and novelist. Although he did not personally experience the Battle of Annual, he performed military service in Morocco from 1922 to 1924. In this time he witnessed a great deal of violence and collected many stories which would serve as the foundation of his first novel Imán. These experiences would inspire to write his first novel, the first chapter of which is reproduced below. Imán, or Magnet, is the nickname given to the protagonist of the novel because he seemingly attracted an endless stream of bad luck. Sender certainly has a way with words, and his novel is widely considered to be the best depiction of Spanish military life during the period. It is very reminiscent of a wider genre of interwar war literature, the most prominent example being All Quiet On the Western Front.
Unfortunately The Magnet does not enjoy even a fraction of the fame of Remarque’s work. It was only ever published in English once in 1935, under the title Pro Patria for the American edition, and Earmarked For Hell in the British edition. It is our opinion that this remarkable work of literature deserves more attention, and we are proud to announce that we will soon be republishing the work in English for the first time in over 90 years.
Below you may read the first chapter of this harrowing book. It provides an excellent look at the conditions experienced by the Spanish rank and file soldiers (and what they inflicted on locals) even in the best of times. Stay tuned for more.
Chapter One
Four tanks entered the camp halfway through the afternoon. They made an unidentifiable sound, as of the dinking of scrap iron, in the otherwise soundless silence. They brought with them the dry chalk of the deserts which surrounded the position and shut it in on all sides. There was not a single tree, not a single bird, to be seen.
A little earlier two battalions had marched in, preceded by the crows which are the invariable vanguard of military columns. They had done 90 kilometers in three days. We had performed the same feat prior to our arrival. The August sun had shone in our faces all morning, from dawn onward, later upon our heads, and then transferred itself to our backs as the day wore on. We had 30 kilograms of equipment to carry, our shoulders were flayed by the leather straps working into the sweating skin; the soles of our feet were a mass of wounds into which the lime of the roadway entered. By midday we were already expectorating a thick, grayish mud. Water, even warm water, would have done us a lot of good if it had not all been drunk up in the first 10 kilometers. Our 800 men, deaf and dumb, marched resignedly like machines. The bag of the man to our front limited each of our horizons. Nobody knew where we were going. Perhaps we were not going anywhere; or perhaps we were going to the end of the world. It might have been one’s fate at birth to march forevermore. The dust lay thick upon our eyebrows and covered all our faces with gray masks that made us unrecognizable to one another. The 50 cartridges in the belts slung over our shoulders stuck to our backbones. And our other cartridge belts contained one 155 more of them. Then there were the diagonally slung blanket; the haversack containing the field dressing, the drinking cup, the plate; each man’s mattress case tied to his shoulder; the pack holding the winter equipment and three changes of linen, the great boots, the thick military cloak, heavy as a friar’s habit, to say nothing of the straps that supported the full cartridge belts, the new type of bayonet and the rifle.
We were drugged by weariness. We could not feel our feet, nor the bruises in our flesh made by the straps across our chests, nor the heat. If we could have breathed a clean atmosphere and deposited our burdens, we might almost have risen into the air by some strange, impalpable kind of mechanism. It seemed that we were to march on forever, and that would be best, for the moment we halted we should fall to the ground like straws. We thought of nothing and we looked at nothing. During the last few kilometers, while our fatigue mingled with the first shadows of evening, we experienced a kind of nightmare. For two hours the camp could be seen apparently within reach of our hands and yet some devilish power continually drew it away from us. When at last we did enter it, we should have passed through it and gone tramping on like sleepwalkers if we had not received the command to halt, close ranks and shoulder our rifles properly, “Slope Arms!” so as to march in singing the regimental ditty. The battalions that had arrived today had entered singing theirs too. The camp commandant, seated with a glass of beer before him, was invariably indignant at the lack of spirit in the men’s voices.
90 kilometers. The faces of the men exhibited a brutish fatigue, that of convicts serving sentences of hard labor. Useless labor. The labor of fetching today the stone that will have to be returned to its place tomorrow. The eyes of almost all had a dulled look, which in Viance was a gray and distant look of stupefaction. There could be traced in it, more than surprise at our surroundings, astonishment at the condition to which one had oneself been reduced and a breathless anxiety in case that life which had only just begun might have actually disappeared forever.
The yokes of red oxen and dappled mules, the green corn, the good smell of the wood in the workshop, the fire of the forge, glowing so cheerfully, and the asthmatic panting of the bellows and the burning pinecones with their blue-and-red flames. All that belonged to another life, of which only a vague memory, like a dream, remained. That was intelligent labor which gave a logic to one’s existence and had rewards for the man who could give himself up to it with a cheerful song in his heart.
When Viance was drunk, he always thought of these things, and deliberately forgot them when he was sober. He experienced a sort of sweet despair in intoxication, which consoled him by awakening a certain self-pity. At times the significance of his real situation was so lost upon him that he would pride himself on the commission of some foolish act, saying to his comrades with a certain arrogance:
“It’s just habit. I’m like that.”
⁂
There were signs in the camp that operations were soon to be undertaken. That night, for certain, general orders would be issued with all that ‘right wing’ rigmarole, detailing the composition of our column. ‘Column Three will be formed by the N Battalion with its machine gun section and those from positions R. and X. Battalions N and V will take the first-line baggage train of the 112th of the line, light artillery of the 92nd, tanks numbers 7, 8, and 15, the San Vicente bombing section, the tabor of the 15th Alhucemas and machine guns of the same regiment.
Where were the operations to take place? The bugler attached to general headquarters knew all about it. Although he was a consistent liar, questions were addressed to him as if he were bound to tell the truth. The convoy for X was three days overdue. A bombardment had been going on ever since daybreak, and two heliographs flashed across the blue hills the message: “The 35th have taken a hell of a beating.” But the regiment had behaved well.
The telegraphists were busy. Officers continually passed on their way to or from the hospital. Then the first trucks of a convoy of wounded arrived. As the afternoon was far advanced and would not leave them time to reach the base, the motors would spend the night here. Additional tents were erected round the hospital. The last of the light showed itself in the small windowpanes through the still, heated air. The wounded men had cards hanging from the lapels of their uniforms, like bazaar or custom-house tickets. “Lacerated wound. Close and sew. Drain.” “Femoral fracture. Bandage as provisional reduction.” “Cranium. Rest, plug, wash edges of wound. Eyes show symptoms of compression.” “Contused wound. Wash with Dakin Carrel solution.”
There was a smell of phenic acid gas. The men’s tunics were torn, and blood stained the snowy bandages. One man began to curse as his bed was moved, and another, who had a “lucky” wound, laughed as he went by and winked from his bed. “Ordered to the base with two months’ leave in Spain.” In the covered end of the truck the corpses were piled in a heap, inadequately covered with a waterproof canvas. There were officers, mere boys, and privates. Tiny trickles of red blood ran down the side curtains.
“They’re all equal now,” said a soldier with a sort of gloomy levity.
In a neighboring group the general headquarters bugler could be heard talking.
“It’s not my fault if you don’t understand, is it? We’ll be in the third column.”
The evacuation of the wounded men was a monotonous and fatiguing business. Nearly all of them went off to the canteens.
“What’s that?”
“The tanks. They’ve brought them up to protect the sanitary service.”
“That won’t do any good. Everyone shirks their duties here, tanks or no tanks.”
The mention of the subsidiary services at once precluded all other topics of conversation. The building of fortifications and the transport of stone was avoided by the men as far as possible. The labor of sweeping, especially, was unpopular. The party appointed at each parade disappeared the next day half an hour after it had started. If any of the corporals resorted to violence, we all became volunteers at once. The duty was excessive. The list was changed only every two days. The work on the new parapet was interminable. Armed duty and the coming and going of convoys would have been a welcome relief if there had not been such a mania for cleaning on those occasions. Sweeping went on from nine to eleven, when the batteries were mounted for action.
After the ambulances a convoy of mules arrived with more wounded. The yellow plains, undulating at intervals like a stormy sea, all converged upon the river and the convoy left a red trail of blood across them. The scene did not resemble that of a tragic and disastrous war but the return of a hunting party. The camp itself presented a transparently peaceful spectacle, hardly interrupted by the distant thunder of the airplanes. The tanks, the ambulances, and the presentiment that something extraordinary was pending gave the afternoon the vulgar and festive atmosphere of a holiday. Corpses hung across the backs of the mules, their swinging arms extended in the form of a compass. That was one of the 35th. So was that. But that fair fellow was a man of the 61st. There was another of the 35th. The mules shambled on with an indifferent air, bearing their still fresh burdens. And that one? What regiment did he belong to, the one with his cloak wrapped around his head?
Viance, from the parapet, advised: “Go have a look. He won’t bite!”
The soldier approached and lifted the white drill cloth. Suddenly he let go of it and shook his hand, which was stained with blood.
Viance laughed, leaning over the barrel of his rifle. “What’s his regiment?”
The bodies with the cloaks in that position were those of men who had been decapitated.
“Suppose they do the same to you! Not that your head’s much use to you anyway!”
The recruit muttered something, wiping his hand on his trousers, and Viance reprimanded him with contempt: “Respect your elders, rookie!”
⁂
Obsessions are tenacious in the camps. As it was impossible for any man to develop his own life separately, we were driven to adopt the most insane idiosyncrasies. It was Viance’s turn to sweep tomorrow. The fatigue party was unlucky. Their clothes were stained with dung and dust.
“If I shook my uniform, I’d bury you alive.”
Elbows were showing through rent sleeves. There were rows of lice lining the seams. The beards under the greasy caps resembled those of dying men. Dirt was everywhere. In the mornings I washed with the breakfast coffee. The officers told us there was nothing to worry about in all that. To put up with it cheerfully was the sign of a good soldier. On the other hand, to keep the sector occupied by the battalion cleaner than that of the neighboring battery was the sign of esprit de corps. The veteran Viance grumbled to himself among the sandbags. He had long since given up trying to account for the mysteries of military service. “The best thing you can do is to make an idiot of yourself.” After murmuring that, he remained silent, staring at the long shadows cast by the stakes of the wire entanglements.
The solitude of a sentinel is a harsh, bleak affair. To think aggravates it. The plains looked cold and gray. They collected in a single solitude all the loneliness of the countryside and of the sky, which seemed wider and chillier in these desert regions. By day were heard the distracting sounds of the camp at its diversions. In the heat of the afternoon the sandbags, which formed a semicircle beyond the edge of the parapet, surrounding the sentinel, burned, as did, too, the rifle lying within reach of his hand. When a rat, one of those enormous brutes with paws as large as those of a hare and bald patches on it, showed its nose between the sacks, Viance passed the time of day with it. The rat did not move. There was a twisted piece of wire on the brim of his cap which burned, too, in the blazing sun. And the heated brain was not led, by contemplating the desolation of the wide spaces before it, to feel homesick, but shut them within itself in a terrible maze of impossibilities. One could not escape from oneself by reflection because one would be led straight into that maze and there was no torment like that of trying to get out of it. The more educated of the soldiers took refuge in political speculation. But apart from this solution, which aggravated their uneasiness with its stings of conscience, one felt enveloped in all directions by a suffocating moral void.
Between the tents and the covered emplacements of the batteries, shattered by the bombardment of the last offensive and repaired with sacks of earth, the 5,000 men in the camp paraded by companies and batteries. Each man had half a loaf of bread under his arm and his tin plate in his hand, hanging against his thigh. There was a smell of burnt rubber, rancid bacon, the starch of sweat-soaked shirts and rice. At the rear of each sector were piled huge saucepans and great, tarnished cooking-pots. “Troops!... Ten-hut!” “Present and correct! All’s well.” “Good. Carry on!” “Atten... tion!” “Company, Ten-hut! Forward!... rations! Keep in line, now!” “Three at a time... What’s that? More potatoes? If you got them you’d re-enlist, wouldn’t you? You eat more than a saw!” After mess the whole place resounded with the noise of the plates being banged against the stones. The men, dismissed, went off to the canteens. Two soldiers muttering to one another passed the cold-storage tents.
“If you get reinforcement duty, you’ll have plenty to do. Look at them posting four sentries to look after the stiffs.”
“Do you mean to say they guard the stiffs as if they were prisoners? They’re not going to run away, are they?”
“It isn’t that. There’re always a few tough nuts who go and steal their boots and anything else they have with them. There’s such a thing as a dead man having a nice watch on him. And lots of them are special drafts with well-lined pockets.”
“Nonsense! Did you hear that we may be going off tomorrow? I’ll go spend the rest of my dough just in case.”
⁂
Viance was getting impatient at his sentry post. The relief was late. He could see the ravine before him. It was already black at the bottom, bright green on the slopes. He could see, too, the white highway checkered by the dark patches of a few deep holes and the stakes supporting and fencing the barbed-wire entanglements across the road. The ground descending toward the dead river, with its bed submerged among sandy rocks, had a bluish cast. The level plains of Dríus, to the west, were growing red. To the left, the heights of Tizzi Asa, like the humps of a dromedary, seemed to be rising in search of the moon. But they would not find it. Tonight there would be no moon until after two o’clock in the morning. A few red stars began to sparkle, collecting in the fissures of the hills, and there came to his ears across the plain the leisurely sound of long rolls of thunder. A little later, he heard the regular series of reports denoting artillery fire.
The bugle at general headquarters rang out and those of the battalions and batteries answered it like farmyard cocks. Viance the sentry, with the absent air which made him appear so distant and unconcerned, repeated the names of the calls as they sounded:
“I’ve got the pretty girl” — that’s the 15th infantry. “Fuck me, there’s so many rats!” — those are the sappers — “Who’s lost his powder fuse?”
The last call was long and melodious, like an operatic theme. Viance lay down on the sacks and went to sleep. He slept like a hare, hardly closing his eyes, with pricked-up ears. Any sound that was at all unusual woke him. But there was no fear of any well-known noises interrupting his sleep. The patrol — “All’s well” — and a piece of paper rustling in the breeze among the wire. A recruit probably would’ve fired. The hill was rising like a wave now, swelling higher and higher. His feet stirred uneasily in the straw that covered the ground, trying to avoid the chilly dew of the night. It was worse in winter, with the mud. As for the company, if they had no respect for him, that didn’t matter.
They did not know what a good blacksmith he was back home. That was his trade. Six years of tending the forge had given him, in compensation for the blows and the hunger he had endured, a skill which no one could dispute. He attracted iron like a magnet. What a swine that old man was who had told him so. He had scars, though, which proved the old fellow was right. His trade would have gotten him a good job in the regimental armory, at the base, and he would not have had to go and wear his guts out in the desert. But there were 11 shirkers in the workshops already. The shrewdest had been a waiter in a café at Barcelona. To get a job like that it was not enough to be a skilled workman. You had to “fork out.” “If you can fork out, that’s another matter.”
Viance went on dozing. The company was the best in the battalion since that barbarian of a sergeant came with his pink mosquito net and his club. The other sergeants did not carry clubs, so his success was natural. All the same, if he gives you a good one you get three days off duty. “He fell down,” he would say, and the doctor asked no questions, for to strike a soldier was forbidden. So was stealing. That was the reason why they called the sergeant a “pretty boy.”
⁂
Madame Blanca’s canteen was filled with a thick fog of petroleum smoke and crammed with heads dizzy with sun and alcohol. 20 or 30 soldiers, seated on the floor, were drinking out of two large bottles and singing, accompanying themselves with hand-claps and blows of their fists against the tables. The song was a comic one and referred to a certain Felipe, a fly-by-night who came home drunk in the morning and got a hiding from his wife. But they sang it very seriously, in soft and deep voices, and it had, somehow, a dramatic power which became, at times, heartrending. At the other side of the room billiards were being played on an ancient table without a cloth. The peeling balls rolled to and fro, leaping and rebounding. The flagstones of the floor were so uneven that a player would almost disappear as he walked round the table.
“What a thrashing the 35th got!”
“They had guts alright,” was the commendatory phrase of an Áscari.
“If it hadn’t been for us helping them,” one of the Regulares told the rest, “There wouldn’t have been one left. There were the machine guns — tatatatatac — putting down a barrage over their heads, 15 batteries, the howitzers of the training group and the warships on the other side of the mountain. All the same, the sappers came back without having fixed a single peg of wire. They ran like rabbits, they did. The Áscaris stuck where they were and Christ Himself couldn’t have made them move an inch.”
“Listen neighbor,” a native soldier put in. “I make war like rat. Spaniard Government make Ali go up corporal and Corporal Ali never go operations. On my body 23 bullets and nothing show for it. Once I fought head in air, now crawl like rat, nothing but cover, cover, and when no cover, no fight.”
“Are the tanks coming with our column?”
“What else can they do? They go where they’re ordered.”
“They go up mountains just the same as on the road. Hear that, rookie? And they knock down houses, too.”
Sometimes those entering banged against the arch of the doorway and the whole hut shook, the wood and tin of its material cracking and splitting. The canteens were built of fragments of boxes and shattered petrol cans. There were bits of field-service tent cloth, too, and some rickety tin-plating. Fragments of bombs, like the tops of huge iron flasks, protected the roof against the wind. The canteen-keeper was a lame man with the appearance of a shipwrecked sailor in a Zarzuela. One was never absolutely sure whether he was the father, the husband, or the employer of Madame Blanca. The latter hardly ever emerged from behind the counter, whence she served the more select of the customers. The lame man slunk about in dark corners supplying the groups scattered about the floor with boxes to sit on and serving them with wine. He suited his movements to his lameness so that he could walk about the canteen with both hands full of glasses and not spill a drop. But he despised the soldiers for resorting to the canteen for the sake of drinking two reales’ worth of wine. One of the causes of his pride was that he possessed a supply of more expensive spirits for the consumption of the sergeants and officers. The canteen was completely packed.
“Who’ll buy a stamp? Come on, damn it all!”
But as there was no charge on correspondence the price had to be reduced and even so no one wanted to buy.
Another group entered, two in front with their dinners on their plates, walking carefully so as not to spill anything.
“I counted 47 dead, nearly all of them officers.”
“Rotten luck!” was the answer, given with a shrug of the shoulders.
Two soldiers were talking confidentially at the counter, comporting themselves with diplomatic delicacy.
“I’m not going to go around barefooted. All I have is half a sole and a piece of sacking. One has to remember that the army is the army, of course. I went to the sergeant-major because my boots had needed soling for three months.”
“Well, what happened?”
“He chucked a ruler at my head. Lucky thing I was only standing at the door of the tent. We’re starting tomorrow and he doesn’t want to issue any new leather. For who’s to tell him, after all, that I’m not to get mine? And if I do get it, you see, there’ll be one less of us.”
“Sounds just like him.”
“Then he told me to bring him the ruler.”
“Did he strike you?”
“No.”
“Nice way for sergeant-majors to act. I try to make my soles last me a good five months and they do, too, unless I have the misfortune of stepping in shit. That rots the leather.”
⁂
The air was thick and hot under the dome formed by the ill-fitting boards of the roof. Sweat glistened on the faces illuminated by the gas lamp, which distributed lunar shadows about the room. Blanca’s high breasts presided at the counter and attracted, like electric poles, the soldiers’ vagrant desires.
The patrols on duty passed between the canteen and the parapet. In the doorway a group was discussing how they were to spend five pesetas, which represented for each of them five days’ pay. They came in to change the money. The troopers of the squadron, in the last stages of intoxication, were singing a ballad with improvised words, still popular, relating how the commander of the squadron had lost his life in heroic circumstances. The tune was languorous and melancholy. Caracol the legionary watched them with impatient contempt, drank and spat. When the lame man passed near him, he seemed suddenly to wake up, uttering an obscenity and adding: “You cripple, I’m going to wring your neck!”
“Hope a sniper gets you!”
The lame man continued to serve the wine repeating in his wrath with the legionary: “I hope they take you for a nice ride, that’s all, I do.”
He meant a ride in a hearse. But he had to explain himself because no one understood at first. Who would be in command of the third column? A name was mentioned.
One of the Regulares remarked: ‘That guy annoys me, going about always with one hand on his hip, allowing people to exist. He’s such a conceited pig. The other day he had a chat, on the road, with Burrahai. Burrahai saw the car coming along, halted his men and went up to the colonel.
“At Your Excellency’s service! All’s well with the Beni-Said harka.”
“Thanks. Where are you going?”
“To the pass, to lay an ambush.”
“Good. Go ahead.”
“At Your Your Excellency’s service!”
“And that was Burrahai?”
“Burrahai. He went to the pass, as he said, and there he killed the lieutenant-colonel of the Ceriñola regiment, who was just about to withdraw his flanking party.”
After a long silence a blonde-haired lad who had been sitting apart from the group, listening to their talk, burst out laughing: “My God that’s funny! At Your Excellency’s service!”
The lame man, at the legionary’s invitation, took a drink. But the latter, of course, refused to pay. That was what always happened.
“Damn you! I hope a sniper...”
But once he had got his fourth drink inside him his mood changed. The soldiers hoisted the canteen-keeper, already half-drunk, onto the billiard table and the usual flamenco session began. The lame man took it very seriously, swore that he had been the best dancer in Almería, and kept time, with limping agility, to the rhythm of the hand-claps. Caracol jumped up behind him to join in. They had become reconciled in their cups. They danced together. The lame man took the part of the woman and Caracol went through the various gyrations of the dance, stepping around him, flattering him and generally playing the gallant. The delight of the audience knew no bounds when Caracol gave him a pinch. The bearded faces of the soldiers, reddened by the sun, and their cropped heads, were packed together, roaring and uttering bursts of rattling laughter. Drinks passed from hand to hand into those of the dancers. Suddenly shots were heard from the advanced post.
The lame man, alarmed, said, as usual: “That was quite near.”
He jumped off the table and went toward the counter with a preoccupied air.
“I’ve told the officer in charge of the line about that before. If you don’t want to put any more sentries on the parapet, I said, you’d better give us canteen-keepers in this sector a rifle and we’ll mount guard on our own account every night. A man comes here to try and earn his crust of bread and he’s left as unprotected as a dog. ‘It’s not that we’re afraid Colonel,’ I told him, ‘but you ought not forget that they’ve broken in ‘round here three times already.’”
⁂
Viance was getting bored on the parapet. He wanted to think about himself but couldn’t. He kept losing his train of thought as if he were trying to explain the origins of the world. He seemed to have lost interest in everything, like a plant concerned with nothing but light, water and soil. But what about his hatreds? Ah yes! That was a different matter. He hated a certain officer. But he had hated him long before he himself had enlisted and, moreover, his hate had become concentrated and purified by its very intensity. He hated Diaz Ureña without any hope of paying him out and without even any desire to animate such a hope.
Who was Diaz Ureña? But had not Viance any other affective sentiments? Were there no other passions in him? His eyes reflected, under the permanent expression of surprise so characteristic of him, a gray and infinite desolation. He stared at the eight or ten strands of intersecting barbed wire, then at the road that wound out of sight behind a bend. He remembered, again, that the trainees’ battalion would be reinforcing them that night.
Drafts from Spain with newly minted money. He’d work the draw for the best posts that night and then sell his, which would of course be the best of the lot, to one of those young gentlemen. Last time he sold his post, which he had got by a trick, to that chemist with glasses for five reales. And there was a veterans’ detachment due that night too. Madame Blanca, the canteen manageress, who wouldn’t give him credit now, would certainly restore it to him if she saw him pull out a peseta. A faint laugh sounded in his thin beard. His lightless and sunken eyes had a vision of the girl standing there, her hands on her hips, humming, without looking at him, when he asked her for two reales’ worth of wine on credit:
When I draw the cash I’ll pay, I’ll pay,
When I draw the cash I’ll pay.
It was a silly jingle that had rung in his head ever since they had been in that camp, wherever he went. A new battalion; that meant firing all night. God Himself wouldn’t be able to bat an eyelid in the tents nearest to the parapet. But Viance would. He could sleep standing or walking so long as he had something to lean upon. Sometimes the rifle was enough. When he was walking, the rump of a mule would do, although one had to be careful, because some of them were ticklish and “read out their lists from the tail end.” What was happening to the relief? The patrol which was coming up was not as a matter of fact the new sentry post but the night patrol on its way to the advanced position. The outline of the blockhouse could be seen on top of the ridge, commanding the slope of the ravine to the river-bed. The patrol marched with their web equipment strapped over their blanket coats, laughing and joking. The corporal carried a huge pistol, for firing signal rockets, in his belt. Suddenly, the patrol formed into line.
“Silence! Form two deep! Unsling rifles and take cover.”
The men instantly ceased their chatter. They crossed the wire entanglements some distance away and disappeared into the blockhouse. Viance stared, amazed, in the opposite direction. He could see a horseman and three soldiers on foot.
“Halt! Lie down!”
“It’s Commandant Ansuago, boys.”
I don’t care about that, thought Viance. He always brings me bad luck and it’s past the time for coming into the camp.
He knew Ansuago well. The latter was in the habit of going down to the riverbed to amuse himself. There was an old woman to be found there with a girl called Fatima whose price was a duro. That was what he called administration of the civil population.
“Halt! Lie down! Corporal of the guard!”
“I’m the commandant, you idiot!”
But the sentry insisted stubbornly. Ansuago saw that he was about to fire and remembered that a short time ago one of his own friends had been killed in just the same way. He dismounted and lay down, swearing. The men with him lay down with him, but in silence. Viance, keeping the group covered, growled angrily and incomprehensibly through his set teeth.
The commandant shouted: “I’ll break your neck for this!”
“Same to you,” returned Viance in a low tone.
The corporal came up.
“What’s the matter here?”
The sentinel foresaw that he would be held responsible for what he had just done. But anyhow the guy deserved it.
“Yes, Commandant, sir. Nothing to report at the south sentry post, sir.”
“Relieve that sentry and tell him to report himself to the officer.”
The party entered the camp. The corporal went up to Viance. “You asked for it!”
“All the same, I might have let him have it without even challenging him.”
“But dammit man, what possessed you to do such a stupid thing? I think you go crazy sometimes.”
Viance shrugged his shoulders. He was a veteran. Four years in the army, he was doing extra service on account of proceedings which had formerly been taken against him, had given him a certain amount of experience. He wanted to assume a superior attitude. But all the corporal saw was a mask of stupidity.
“They say you’re as mad as a hatter.”
Ansuago was drunk nearly every night and would often go around the tents paying surprise visits to the reserves on guard duty.
“How many are there of you here?”
An answer had to be given without hesitation. The commandant would note the figure in his book.
“How many rifles? How many sick?”
Then he would go into the tents and verify the truth of the answers. He noted the discrepancies and added them together in order to inflict on the reserve guard in question as many strokes as the number of units he had been out in his reckoning. Sometimes they amounted to 40 or 50. He had it out for Viance.
“You’re an abandoned rascal, an anarchist, that’s what you are,” he would say as he beat him, remembering the trial.
The commandant’s beatings ended by terrifying the soldier. But he grew used to being afraid and managed from time to time, as in the present case, to get revenge. But tonight the idea of his guilt weighed more heavily than ever before upon him. He had to throw a glance at the tents where the corpses had been stored and at the rear end of one of the trucks where they were still lying piled up under the waterproof canvas in order to resume an air of indifference.
The corporal warned him: “You’ll be relieved now, at once, while we’re drawing for positions. Then you are to report to the officer. Your mess gear has been taken away and you’ll join the two posts farther out.”
“He’s nuts!” He added as he went off.