“What passes with that man?” Gomez said to one of the guards.
“Está loco,” the guard said. “He is crazy.”
“No. He is a political figure of great importance,” Gomez said. “He is the chief commissar of the International Brigades.”
“Apesar de eso, está loco,” the corporal of the guard said. “All the same he’s crazy. What do you behind the fascist lines?”
“This comrade is a guerilla from there,” Gomez told him while the man searched him. “He brings a dispatch to General Golz. Guard well my papers. Be careful with that money and that bullet on the string. It is from my first wound at Guadarama.”
“Don’t worry,” the corporal said. “Everything will be in this drawer. Why didn’t you ask me where Golz was?”
“We tried to. I asked the sentry and he called you.”
“But then came the crazy and you asked him. No one should ask him anything. He is crazy. Thy Golz is up the road three kilometers from here and to the right in the rocks of the forest.”
“Can you not let us go to him now?”
“Nay. It would be my head. I must take thee to the crazy. Besides, he has thy dispatch.”
“Can you not tell some one?”
“Yes,” the corporal said. “I will tell the first responsible one I see. All know that he is crazy.”
“I had always taken him for a great figure,” Gomez said. “For one of the glories of France.”
“He may be a glory and all,” the corporal said and put his hand on Andrés’s shoulder. “But he is crazy as a bedbug. He has a mania for shooting people.”
“Truly shooting them?”
“Como lo oyes,” the corporal said. “That old one kills more than the bubonic plague. Mata más que la peste bubonica. But he doesn’t kill fascists like we do. Qué va. Not in joke. Mata bichos raros. He kills rare things. Trotzkyites. Divagationers. Any type of rare beasts.”
Andrés did not understand any of this.
“When we were at Escorial we shot I don’t know how many for him,” the corporal said. “We always furnish the firing party. The men of the Brigades would not shoot their own men. Especially the French. To avoid difficulties it is always us who do it. We shot French. We have shot Belgians. We have shot others of divers nationality. Of all types. Tiene mania de fusilar gente. Always for political things. He’s crazy. Purifica más que el Salvarsán. He purifies more than Salvarsan.”
“But you will tell some one of this dispatch?”
“Yes, man. Surely. I know every one of these two Brigades. Every one comes through here. I know even up to and through the Russians, although only a few speak Spanish. We will keep this crazy from shooting Spaniards.”
“But the dispatch.”
“The dispatch, too. Do not worry, Comrade. We know how to deal with this crazy. He is only dangerous with his own people. We understand him now.”
“Bring in the two prisoners,” came the voice of André Marty.
“Quereis echar un trago?” the corporal asked. “Do you want a drink?”
“Why not?”
The corporal took a bottle of anis from a cupboard and both Gomez and Andrés drank. So did the corporal. He wiped his mouth on his hand.
“Vamonos,” he said.
They went out of the guard room with the swallowed burn of the anis warming their mouths, their bellies and their hearts and walked down the hall and entered the room where Marty sat behind a long table, his map spread in front of him, his red-and-blue pencil, with which he played at being a general officer, in his hand. To Andrés it was only one more thing. There had been many tonight. There were always many. If your papers were in order and your heart was good you were in no danger. Eventually they turned you loose and you were on your way. But the Inglés had said to hurry. He knew now he could never get back for the bridge but they had a dispatch to deliver and this old man there at the table had put it in his pocket.
“Stand there,” Marty said without looking up.