In the winter of 1919, at the age of sixteen, Sascha Hoffner took his mother’s maiden name and left Berlin as the newly minted Alexander Kurtzman. It was an act of unrepentant hatred and was meant to make certain that he would never have to see his father again.
Four years later, Kurtzman beat a man to death.
The killing was of no real consequence, except to the man himself, who had arrived in Munich the day before from somewhere in the Congo. The man was on his way back to Stockholm, and while he had already been traveling for several weeks, he decided to take a few days to wait for a more direct train heading north. November in Munich had always held a certain charm for him, and the man-a radical, and a great believer in the Congolese and their future-was not averse to conveying his political and social views to anyone willing to listen. Not of Africa himself, he nonetheless claimed to understand the soul of the black man. Sadly, he was not quite so savvy when it came to the men of Munich’s streets and her beer halls. The great putsch erupted on November 8, and the man-like any good radical-found himself incapable of stepping to the side. The man’s words were his weapons and, while the young Kurtzman was by no means an imposing figure, he had been fighting in the streets with the Freikorps for two years and knew well enough how to crack a skull against a brick wall. Hitler ranted from a table, General Ludendorff-war hero, and Hitler’s great supporter-turned a pale green, and Kurtzman took the man into a back alley and finished him. It was Kurtzman’s good fortune to come out relatively unscathed, so much so that he was able to make it back inside by the time Ludendorff stepped up to speak. A day later, Kurtzman watched with unimagined anguish as his heroes were sent off to prison.
Those were hard days indeed, the party disbanded, the best of them locked away. For a time Kurtzman followed his commander, the elusive and homosexual Ernst Rohm, to Bolivia-a useless place for useless men-but by then such men, such beautiful men, had become a way of life for Kurtzman. Even so, things tended to end badly on that front, and by 1926 he was back in Munich, eager to make up for lost time. He rejoined the party, redoubled his efforts with the Freikorps, and made the lucky acquaintance of a young writer and journalist. When, a few months later, the journalist was asked to take the party’s message to Berlin, Kurtzman found himself invited along as the man’s chief assistant. Overwhelmed and overjoyed, Kurtzman agreed at once and followed his new mentor, Joseph Goebbels, north to the promised land.
It was a period of unparalleled happiness and, save for one very brief episode in the winter of 1927, Kurtzman learned to love Berlin again. He lived his poverty with pride, and when the tide began to turn, he found himself a girl-on Goebbels’s insistence-and even managed to get her pregnant. He married her first, of course, and while he showed the face of a devastated husband when both she and the baby died during childbirth, Kurtzman knew that Berlin had stepped in to save him. He had accommodated respectability. He was now free.
Goebbels moved up, and Kurtzman moved with him. When Hitler finally took the chancellorship in 1933, Kurtzman celebrated with the rest, watched the Reichstag burn, and accepted his post at the Ministry with a sense of quiet destiny.
It was all as it was meant to be, until the day he was told that the whole thing had come crashing down. He was no longer a member of the party. He could never be a member of the party. He was filth: a Jew. A dirty Jew. They had discovered his secret. In a matter of hours, the once untouchable Alexander Kurtzman was forced to resume his role as the reviled and pathetic Sascha Hoffner. His life, as he had made it, was no longer his. The humiliation and despair might have killed a weaker man. Not so with Sascha. His own death was only of minor concern.
An image of that sixteen-year-old boy-before Goebbels, before the Freikorps-sat with Nikolai Hoffner as he cradled an empty glass in his hands.
Mila was next to him. Wilson leaned against the counter. Vollman stood by the door. They had finished the bottle of whiskey. They had let him drink in silence.
Hoffner set his glass down. He looked over and saw the canisters of film and the viewing machine in a crate by the door. He couldn’t recall when any of that had happened.
Mila was drinking water. She pushed her glass toward him, and Hoffner took it. He drank. It tasted of rust and sand, and he saw a few pieces of grit swirling at the bottom. They were the same color as the one he had brushed from Georg’s ear. Why that? he wondered.
Wilson said, “You saw something?”
The sound of the voice startled Mila. She looked up, and Hoffner set the glass on the table. He tapped at it, sending it across in little bursts of movement. He might have sent it over the edge had Mila not grabbed it and pulled it back.
Hoffner’s head remained unnervingly light as he stared at the table. “I saw what you saw,” he said. “Spain, guns-a well.”
“And that last image?” Wilson missed nothing.
“It went by quickly.”
“Not too quickly.”
“No,” said Hoffner, “not too quickly.” Wilson waited. Finally Hoffner turned to him. “It was my son,” he said. “My older son. Sascha. I hadn’t seen him in a long time.” Hoffner felt Mila’s eyes bore through him.
Wilson said, “You’re telling me that was Kurtzman?”
The word jarred. “How do you know his name?”
“We’re not likely to take a man on and not know everything about his family.” Wilson reached for the jug of water and poured himself a glass. He drank. “Kurtzman is in the Propaganda Ministry. Why would he be in Spain?”
The numbing at the back of Hoffner’s head returned; he welcomed it. “You saw his face,” he said, “the way he was dressed.” His eyes drifted back to the table. “You think this has anything to do with the Ministry?”
Wilson needed a moment. “So he’s here for the guns?”
Hoffner felt the first taste of acid in his throat. He took hold of Mila’s glass and held it. “No,” he said. “He’s not here for the guns.”
“How do you know that?”
Hoffner drank. He felt the water course through his chest.
“He’s no longer in the party,” he said. “He’s no longer a Nazi. They found his Jewish blood-from his grandmother-three weeks ago. And they threw him out.” Hoffner set the glass down but continued to hold it. His mind was emptying. “He’s not here for the guns or the Ministry.”
Wilson wasn’t convinced. “I thought you hadn’t seen him in quite some time.”
“I wouldn’t need to see him to know such things.”
Wilson looked as if he might press it. Instead he said, “Then why is he here?”
Hoffner heard the voices from Teruel, from Tarancon, from a part of himself he refused to listen to-An unusual German … he had death in the eyes-and said, “You say it’s not the way the SS kills a man.” There was nothing in his voice. “Perhaps you’re right.”
Wilson’s uncertainty turned to quiet disbelief. “What?”
Hoffner said nothing, and Wilson continued, “You can’t believe that.” He waited for an answer. When none came, he said, “You understand what you’re saying?”
Hoffner stared at the glass. He had nothing else. “You’re asking if I understand how my son could have killed his brother. Tell me. How could I possibly understand that?”
Wilson refused to hear it. “Even if it’s remotely true, he could have killed him in Berlin. Why follow him here?”
Hoffner had no answer, nothing but the face of Sascha staring back at him through the lens of a camera. “My son is dead. My other one is here.” He felt his throat constrict, his eyes grow heavy. “If only the world were made of such coincidence…”
Wilson looked across at Vollman. He saw his own disbelief staring back. He looked again at Hoffner. “You’re talking about your own son.”
Hoffner felt his own rage and despair like wet rope coiling around his throat. “Yes,” he said quietly, “my own son,” and the glass shattered in his hand.
It was nearly half a minute before he realized he was bleeding.
Mila was already pressing down on his wrist, pulling pieces of glass from his skin, as Hoffner stared down at the hand and saw one long cut. A single thick shard rocked easily on the table, while tiny grains of glass shimmered across his palm. Mila picked and brushed, and Hoffner felt nothing. It was a hand, not his own, until she finally took a cloth from Vollman and pressed it into the flesh. Instantly, Hoffner felt the pain shoot up through his arm like the twisting of raw muscle. He heard himself groan, and realized it was the burning of alcohol coursing into his skin. His throat constricted and he coughed.
“Bring over that bucket,” Mila said, and Hoffner angled his head as she continued to work on him. Only once did he come close to vomiting, but the acid stayed in his throat, and his hand began to throb with its own isolated pain.
Hoffner’s head cleared. He swallowed and looked over to see his hand encased in thick gauze. Wilson had produced a second bottle. He filled a glass with whiskey and held it out to Hoffner.
“He’s had enough,” Mila said.
Hoffner took the glass and drank. Wilson set the bottle on the table and retreated to the counter. Vollman was back by the door as Mila sat silently.
Finally Wilson said, “You’re saying this has nothing to do with the guns or Franco?”
Hoffner kept his eyes on the glass. He flexed his fingers. He could still move them. “Not everything shatters the world as a whole, Herr Wilson. This one shatters just mine.”
Wilson started to answer, and Hoffner said, “He left the film. He wanted it found. He wanted me to know.”
Wilson was still struggling. “But why?”
Hoffner heard the question in his own voice. “Because I’m his father.”
It answered nothing and brought a silence to the room.
Finally Wilson said, “I could help you.”
“No,” said Hoffner. “You couldn’t.” He felt the need to stand. He pushed back his chair and steadied himself against the table. “Thank you, Herr Wilson. Thank you for Doval, the doctor”-the word caught in his throat-“Georg. I imagine you’ll be leaving Spain now.”
Wilson showed a genuine sympathy even if he understood nothing. He nodded slowly.
Hoffner extended his good hand. Wilson hesitated, then took it. Vollman followed suit. It was a bizarre moment of protocol, until Vollman said, “You’re going to try and find him.”
Hoffner said nothing.
Vollman added, “I have a plane-for another two days. It has room for four.”
Mila stood, and Wilson said, “He’d be heading west. Portugal would be my guess.”
“He’ll be in Badajoz,” Hoffner said, his voice empty, his eyes distant: it was as if he were speaking to himself. “He found enough about Hisma to track Georg. He’ll know Badajoz is where the last of the guns are going. And he’ll think it’s where he can find his way back.”
Wilson hesitated. “His way back?”
Hoffner looked directly at him. It seemed as if he might answer. Instead, he took Mila’s arm and moved them to the door.
They buried Georg in the first light, in a field just beyond the last of the houses. Wilson had offered to take the boy to Berlin-he, too, had a plane-but Hoffner said no. He thought of Mendy and Lotte, standing through the taunts-those roving packs of boys who waited outside the cemetery gates, jeering while a Jew was laid in the ground. Why put them through that? It was quiet here, and simple. Whichever way things went in Spain, it would be better than in Germany.
The priest stood off to the side while Hoffner mouthed ancient words whose meaning he had never learned. He had no idea if this was the place or the time for them, but they were all he knew. His mother had insisted he say them for her. He said them now for his son.
When he finished, Hoffner took a clump of earth and tossed it onto the sheeted body. Mila did the same, then Wilson and Vollman. She held his arm.
The sun had climbed to the horizon as they stood and waited for Wilson in the square. He had gone to see Doval. Mila hadn’t let go of his arm. Vollman smoked through the silence.
Wilson appeared from the prison gate, and Hoffner said to Mila, “He’ll fly you to Barcelona. It’s the least he can do.”
Mila said nothing, and Wilson drew up.
“I told him it’s a direct request from the Admiralty,” Wilson said. His shirt was damp through at the back. “He’s promised no interference. You have two days. After that-”
“After that,” said Hoffner, “Doval gets to finish what he started.”
Wilson said nothing, and Vollman tossed his cigarette to the ground. “I can wait. I can fly on the fifteenth. That gives you enough time.”
There was no reason to answer.
Wilson said, “We’ll go get the car, then. Vollman and I.” It was a moment of unexpected chivalry: he was giving Hoffner a last few moments with Mila. It took Vollman another few seconds to catch on.
“Right. Yes.” Vollman gave an awkward nod, and followed Wilson off. Mila and Hoffner watched them go.
“They hid you in the church?” Hoffner said. It was first time he could ask.
“I’m not going to Barcelona.”
“There are good priests everywhere. All this must make them shudder. It’ll be the same in Germany one day-”
“I’m not going.” She waited until he was looking directly at her. “You don’t have to do this, Nikolai. If he was capable of killing Georg, what is there possibly to gain?”
Hoffner saw the vulnerability in her eyes. “And what if he wasn’t capable?”
“You don’t believe that.”
Hoffner waited. “No. I don’t.”
“So you go for-what? To let him finish this, to let him free you from whatever you think you deserve?”
“He killed his brother.”
“It makes you a coward.”
He hadn’t thought her capable of causing this kind of pain. Or maybe it was only now that he let himself feel it.
His voice remained low and calm. “He doesn’t get to walk away. If that makes me a coward, so be it.”
“No,” she said. “You’re a coward because you go alone.” It was an anger he had never imagined, raw and bitter, and doing nothing to hide its fear. “You’re going to stop thinking there’s something noble to be done, or that you could possibly know what it would look like. You don’t. All you do is hurt me with this and show how weak you are. I know how weak you are, and I know what terrifies you. Your boy is dead, but not because of you. And your Sascha-” She stopped. The words were tight in her throat. “You don’t get to throw yourself away because you want to believe that. There’s more to it now. You don’t get to do this alone.”
“I do it to protect you.”
“You do it to protect yourself.”
She stared across at him, her strength like shattered glass. It hung from them both and fell aimlessly to the ground. Hoffner’s hands ached, and still he gathered up the shards. He knew what it was he deserved, knew with every breath he took. It was the weight of this love-brutal and free and untethered from a lifetime of self-damning-and yet meaningless if he chose to run from his past now.
“Then you come,” he said.
The little Ford from Toledo appeared from a side street. Hoffner and Mila waited while Wilson and Vollman drove up.
The two men got out. There were a few awkward exchanges, a moment of surprise. Someone might have mentioned luck.
The car had been stripped down and searched, the rear cushioning all knife tears and disgorged stuffing. The front bench was much the same. Mila laid a blanket across it so they could sit. Even so, they felt the springs in every jolt and bump. Hoffner let Mila drive. He slept. And he dreamed.
He was sitting in a cool meadow, with the sound of flapping wings overhead. He saw a baby lying in the grass, its tiny feet kicking at the sky. Hoffner tried to stand but his legs were too heavy. He pulled at his thighs, and his hands were filled with a thick, wet tar, the smell of it like camphor oil, and he was suddenly holding flames in his hands. Mila pulled him back from the fire, and Hoffner saw her against the night sky. She was older and her body had been burned, her arms peeling in thin flakes of flesh. He reached for her, but she stepped back. He reached for her again and his eyes opened.
They were at an outpost. Twenty Republican soldiers stood off in the distance, each with a rifle and a cap. Mila was talking with a man who was holding their papers. Hoffner heard the sound of mortar fire somewhere in the distance, and he watched as each of the men ducked his head. The sound was too far off to pose any danger, but these were men not yet tested by battle. They flinched and gripped their rifles.
Hoffner pushed himself up and opened the door. His hand had stiffened, and his eye felt as if it had been squeezed shut. He could barely swallow. He forced his legs out, and he stood.
Mila and the soldier looked over while a second barrage erupted. Hoffner made his way to them, his stride unsteady, with the booze in his stomach and a scorching sun to contend with.
He drew up and thought to say something, but his mouth was too dry. He spat, and the man offered him his canteen. Hoffner drank.
“The prison in Coria,” the man said. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
Hoffner nodded and finished the canteen.
“You don’t want to go south,” the man said. “I’ve been trying to explain it to the senora.”
“The doctor,” Hoffner corrected, and spat again. “The senora is a doctor.”
“Yes. The doctor. Yague has half of Africa marching up from Seville. They’re already pressing in from Merida. It’s not going to be good in Badajoz. It won’t be good here in a day or so, but we’re not going to think about that.”
If Hoffner had any inkling who Yague was or where Merida might be, he might have known enough to show some concern. Instead, he told himself not to vomit in front of the soldiers.
Another explosion rattled behind them, and Hoffner nodded his thanks.
“We’ll take our chances.”
He took Mila by the arm and walked with her back to the car.
An untamed terror now lived in the towns and hillsides surrounding Badajoz. Hoffner had felt tremors of it in Teruel, isolated echoes in the screams behind Coria’s prison gates, but it was only here that it penetrated the smallest of gestures: a backward glance from a woman on a cart, the sudden silence from a flock of birds perched penitently in the trees, the grinding of tires on a ground too slick and too beaten down by hooves and trucks and rain to be passable. The men who walked along the roads strode with more purpose than was warranted. It was the surest sign that they meant to meet death on their own terms. Fear makes a man cower. Terror gives him strength.
Like a pouch bag, everything was getting pulled in, barricades and guns and horses to ring the approach from the south and the east. Yague was well beyond Merida. It would come tomorrow or the next day. That was what they were saying. No one was permitted to pass after sunset.
“I have to get through.”
Hoffner tried to show his papers again, but the man with the thick beard and the rifle shook his head. It was a gentle shake, one reserved for overeager children.
“If there’s still a road to be taken,” the man said, “you can take it in the morning. No one moves after dark.”
They were in a village called Villar del Rey, thirty kilometers from Badajoz. The man motioned to one of the houses along the square. It was two or three rooms, one bare bulb, the rest lit by candles, with a whitewashed courtyard in front. The sky had streaked into strips of pink and deep blue, and there was a boy of thirteen or fourteen leaning against its front wall. He was long and pale, and he held his rifle in arms taut with new muscle.
The thick beard shouted over. “Julio. Your mother needs to make a bed for these two tonight. The woman is a doctor.”
The boy pushed himself up and nodded, and Hoffner followed Mila across the mud.
Inside, the house was old stone, the ceilings too low for a tall man to stand upright. Pots and pans hung from hooks and shelves, and a drinking trough of wood stretched along the back wall. Two young girls sat at a round table, with a few photographs in frames hanging behind them. One showed a man with a mule and a rifle.
The man was seated across the room on a low stool. He was rubbing a cloth along the rifle’s barrel. He looked up when the son called for his mother.
There was silence, and then the sound of an aeroplane from somewhere above. The man set his rifle against the wall and crossed to the doorway. He stepped outside, stared up for several seconds, and then looked out across the fields to the men in their caps and their uniforms-each of them staring up-before he returned. He took the rifle, sat on the stool, and began to rub it again with the cloth.
The mother appeared from the back room in an apron skirt and green blouse of coarse cotton. She was slender, and her hair fell from its ties in thin wisps of brown and gray. In any other place, she and Mila might have been sisters.
She spoke to the boy in a kind of Spanish Portuguese, only a few words making themselves known to Hoffner. The voice was deep and quiet, and she turned to Mila and continued to speak. Hoffner heard the word “frango” several times and thought she might be referring to the general, until Mila said, “She wants to know if we’ll eat chicken. I told her yes.”
Hoffner nodded, and the woman motioned to the two girls. They followed her out into the courtyard, and the boy sat where they had been. He found a cloth and began to rub his rifle in the way his father rubbed.
Hoffner said to Mila, “Tell him the boy is too young to have a gun.”
She knew why he said it; and she knew there was no point in repeating it.
The father, still focused on his rifle, said, “Will they make such distinctions in who they kill?”
Hoffner watched as the man continued to clean. “No,” said Hoffner. “They won’t.”
“It was a German plane,” the father said, “or Italian. Hard to tell in the dark. He was lost. Tomorrow or the next day he’ll drop his bombs here. For now he saves them for the city.”
“Then you should send your family east.”
“You have a car. You’re more than welcome to take them east if you like.”
“And you’d let me?”
“No.” The father looked over. “If you want to make it to Badajoz, you need to go tonight.”
Hoffner was struck by the sudden candor. “The captain outside thinks otherwise.”
“The captain wants to herd us into trucks and send us back to where you came from, or into Portugal. He’ll take my wife and daughters tomorrow. He’ll get them somewhere safe.”
“But not the boy.”
“If Badajoz falls, a boy with a rifle sitting here won’t make any difference. Neither will his father. So we go to Badajoz with you.”
“You’ll have to talk to the captain about getting me my car.”
“Your car is already halfway to the city,” the man said. “It’s loaded with rifles and ammunition and food. The captain probably drives it himself. He’s very brave. He’ll make three trips tonight, and he’ll hope the fascists choose to sleep before they make their full assault. At dawn he’ll tell you your car was needed, and that you can’t go south, impossible now with Yague only twenty kilometers from the city. He might ask the doctor if she can stomach the war, but you-he’ll tell an old man not to think beyond himself. Do you want to get to Badajoz?”
“Yes.”
“With a boy too young for a rifle?”
“Yes.”
“Then we eat and sleep, and I come for you later.”
At just after 1 a.m. the man shook Hoffner awake. They had laid a straw mattress by the trough, and the smell of garlic and chicken fat was still thick in the air. A dog or goat lay sleeping under the table, and Hoffner looked up to see the man and his son already with their rifles slung across their backs. The man waited until Hoffner was sitting. He then held out a small pistol to him.
“I have my own,” Hoffner said. His hand was throbbing.
“I’ll take it,” said Mila. She was standing somewhere behind the man.
Hoffner looked over. He hadn’t heard her get up. They had slept. There had been no questions last night. She had given him that.
She was in trousers and had borrowed a shoulder wrap from the mother.
The man led them to the back room. His wife was sitting on the bed with the two girls, each in a long nightshirt. The mother’s hair was down across her chest, and she looked much younger. She held out her arms and the father nodded the boy to her, but the boy shook his head. The father reached over, took the boy by the shirt, and pushed him to his mother. There were no tears as she held him, and the boy finally wrapped his arms around her. He then kissed his sisters and stepped back. Hoffner looked away as the boy ran his sleeve across his eyes. The father leaned in and kissed his daughters and his wife. The wife said something too low to be heard, and the father kissed her again and then stepped over to the window. He peered out and climbed through.
He led them across a field and into a gathering of trees. Hoffner smelled the horses before he saw them, two deep brown colts tied to a tree and gnawing at the grass. Each had a blanket where a saddle should have been, but at least they had bits and reins. Mila ran her hand along the nose of the first and then quickly pulled herself up. Hoffner found a stump and brought himself up behind her. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pressed himself into the shallow of her back as she took the horse deeper into the trees. The moon followed them through the branches, and Hoffner let himself find sleep.
They were on an incline of high grass and boulders when first light came. The horses had proved more than worthy, a steady canter for much of the night. No one had said a word. Now it was little more than a walk, the horses’ nostrils heavy with breath and their hides moist and glistening.
The trees had thinned just beyond Villar del Rey, leaving an open sky and white moon to light the fields and scrubland along the way. Hoffner had lost feeling in his right foot an hour ago, but it was better than the shooting pain that now circled his thighs and backside. Either would have been enough to keep his mind distracted, and for that he was grateful.
Badajoz appeared across a valley as they crested the hill. Red tile roofs climbed haphazardly from the banks of a river and settled at the top of a hill, where a wide wood stretched up, then down another slope. Two stone towers, the color of wet sand, edged themselves beyond the tree line, no match for cannons or grenades. An ancient gate-Roman or Moorish, it was impossible to say which-stood along the bank and waited imperiously at the end of a solitary bridge.
The aeroplanes had already done their damage. Sections of the outer wall lay in rubble, with hastily positioned sandbags and trucks at the breaches. Roofs throughout had been torn away, while streams of smoke spooled up into the air. The father pointed to a larger cloud rising from a distant hill. It was from the east.
“Lobon or Guadajira,” he said. Hoffner imagined these were towns on the other side of the river. “They’re leaving nothing behind.” The man looked down into the valley. “It’s quiet. No aeroplanes. It means they’ll be here this morning. From the south. We need to cross.”
He led them down the path and spurred the horses to give what little they had left. The grass gave way to low shrubs, and the horses snorted as the ground grew more uneven. The smell of burned wood and gunpowder filled the air. At the bridge, not a single soldier was standing guard.
“There’s no reason,” the father said, as if reading Hoffner’s thoughts. “Yague and his Africans will be coming from the other side. If they take the city, we’ll need to defend this.”
They were on the bridge when the sound of a solitary motor stopped them. Instantly, the father brought them back down and pressed them close to the first of the stone stanchions.
They all peered up, waiting to see the aeroplanes. Instead, the echo grew louder off the water, and they turned to see the little Ford from Toledo driving through the gate. The car bounced its way across the bridge, until the thick-bearded captain at the wheel saw them and pulled to a stop. The father led the horses back onto the bridge, and the captain cut the engine.
“Salud,” the captain said.
“Salud.”
“I was wondering where those horses had gotten to.” It was the same easy voice from last night.
“My friend here was wondering the same about his car.”
It was a good answer. The captain nodded. “Two thousand from Madrid have come down to defend the city. Militia and Guardia. They’re setting up barricades.”
“It’s quiet.”
“The last of the aeroplanes came an hour ago.” The captain opened the door and stepped out. He turned toward the city and waved his hands above his head. A mirror glinted from somewhere on the wall, and the captain brought his hands down. “They’ll let you in the gate.”
“They would have let us in anyway.”
“Yes,” said the captain, getting back in the car, “but now you won’t waste so much time shouting up from the bridge.” He closed the door. “You choose to go in, it’s no coming out until it’s done. You know that.”
“So there’s a chance we’ll be coming out?”
The captain waited and then looked at the boy. “Your rifle is clean?”
The boy nodded.
“Good.”
The father said, “And they’ve brought guns from Madrid?”
“They have the high ground. It should be enough.” The captain looked at Hoffner. “You know how this might go, friend, and still you feel the need to get through.”
Hoffner said nothing.
“I’ve heard the stories of Coria,” the captain said. “The prison fortress. Terrible things.”
“Yes,” said Hoffner.
“Badajoz isn’t a place to find revenge for what they did.”
“I’m not looking for it.”
“Maybe revenge isn’t such a bad thing to be looking for.” The captain turned to Mila. He seemed to want to say something. Instead, he started the engine. “I’ll see you inside the walls.” He put the car in gear and headed off.
There was no escaping the silence. The streets stood empty, save for the occasional grind of a truck or a voice rising from somewhere behind the stones and brick. The horses moved slowly. Twice Hoffner saw young children-tears running down their cheeks-pulled along by mothers, whisked through doorways, and locked safely away. This was how war finally came, he thought, not in the open back of a truck with songs and rifles raised or on a road where men could trade stories and cigarettes. Even the crack of a sniper’s rifle signaled nothing. It came in the silence and the waiting, and the grim certainty that, one day, the dying here would all but be forgotten.
Hoffner heard muffled laughter and peered down an alleyway. Two men, old and unshaven, sat on stools in the shadows, a wooden crate between them. They were drunk. Their heads rested back against the stone of the building. One was humming something low. The other looked over. For some reason he nodded. The man coughed and laughed again. Hoffner nodded back.
“This isn’t their fight,” said the father. “They’ve had theirs. At least they know it.”
The father led them through the streets and into a wide plaza at the foot of the southern gate. There was a strange symmetry to it all, trucks and cars lining the wall, with blue-shirted men and women and uniformed soldiers nestled above in whatever cracks and openings they had found for cover. The two largest trucks stood in front of the gate, while a group of soldiers directed boxes of ammunition to different points along the line. It was already hot, and the dust and grit beneath their feet swirled in tiny clouds of gray smoke.
The father took the horses close enough to hear voices-orders shouted, the relay of information from men with field glasses standing at the topmost reaches of the wall. This was where they would make their stand.
The father and the boy dismounted, and the father handed Mila the reins.
“You take them where you’re going. No reason to have them here.” He nodded to one of the streets off the plaza. “You take that one around, six or seven streets. It’s to the left. You can follow the numbers.”
Hoffner had shown the father the address for the last of the names on Captain Doval’s list-the Hisma liaison in Badajoz, the man hoarding those too-thick crates. There had been no reason to tell the father why.
“Thank you.”
The father nodded and looked at Mila. “You’ll be needed here. A doctor.”
“Yes,” she said, “I know.”
Hoffner waited for her to say more. Instead, he watched as she dismounted and held the reins up to him. He stared at her, disbelieving, and saw the same eyes from the hospital, the same eyes from Durruti’s camp. She was needed here.
She squinted through the sun as she continued to look at him. “You find what you need and come back.”
Hoffner barely moved.
“Take them,” she said, and she placed the reins in his hand. “I’m needed here.”
“I thought you’d be with me.”
“Not for this.”
“I thought you’d be with me,” he repeated.
“I am. But I’m needed here.”
Hoffner hesitated. “And if you’re not here?”
She stared up at him. “Then you’ll find me.”
She drew closer. She waited for him to lean down and brought her hand to the back of his neck. She kissed him, and he felt her fingers press deep into his skin. She released him and whispered, “You’ll come and find me.” And she pulled away.
Hoffner watched as she walked off. He thought to turn and go but called out, “Mila.” She continued to walk. Again he called.
She stopped. The father and the boy moved on, and Hoffner dismounted and brought the horses behind him.
She looked almost pained as he drew up. “You need to go,” she said.
“I know.”
“Then why don’t you?”
He watched her face grow darker, and he pulled her in. His arm drew tight around her as he felt her cheek press deep into his neck.
“There is no going anymore.”
Her hands clasped at his back. Her lips pressed gently into his neck and she pulled back and he kissed her. She then turned away, and this time he let her go.
The house was like the rest, three crumbling floors of iron and stone, the wood at the bottom of the door split in wide gaps. Hoffner tied the horses to a post and knocked with the side of his fist. He listened. He knocked again, then spoke the name, loudly enough to be heard in the next house. There was movement, and the door slowly pulled open.
A man, small with gray hair, stood in a shirt, trousers, and suspenders. His left arm and hand were shriveled by disease. The fingers reached only to his waist, and the rest hung limp at his side. He leaned his head out the doorway and peered down the street, as if he was expecting to see others. He stepped back and looked up at Hoffner. He spoke with caution. “The fighting has started?”
“No,” said Hoffner. “Where is the German?”
The man continued to stare. “You have the wrong house.”
“No.” Hoffner spoke in German. “I have the right house. I don’t care about the guns. I want only the German.”
The man waited and then said, “I don’t understand this language.”
“I can find a few militiamen at the gate to translate for you. Shall I go get them?”
It was clear why the men of Hisma had picked this Spaniard. He remained unflappable. He waited another few moments and then pulled the door fully open and motioned Hoffner in.
The hall was narrow and dimly lit, with stairs at the side leading up into the shadows. The man led Hoffner beyond them, into a room at the back. It held a few wooden chairs, a low table, and something that had once been a rug. The place had the smell of wet towels left too many days moldering in a corner.
Hoffner looked over and saw the man holding a small pistol in his good hand. It was aimed at Hoffner’s chest.
Hoffner said, “Is the German here?” The man remained absolutely still. Hoffner said, “I’ve told you I don’t care about the guns.”
“Take your pistol out and place it on the table.”
Hoffner removed his pistol and set it down. “The German-is he here?”
“I don’t know about any guns.”
Hoffner stared back. What else was the man going to say?
“He’s told you he comes from Berlin,” said Hoffner. “That he’s part of Hisma, Hispano-Marroqui. He isn’t. He lied.”
The man continued to stare, and Hoffner looked around for a chair. He found the least uncomfortable one and sat.
They waited like this for perhaps a minute before Hoffner said, “I’m not sure what the sound of a bullet would do right now, but I’m thinking you’re not that eager to find out.”
He located the source of the smell. It was a rope mop propped against the wall, standing in a pool of oily water.
Hoffner said, “Yague will be here in the next few hours. He’ll take the city. He’ll thank you for the guns, and you’ll march around with him and point to the people who’ve done you and your little arm the most cruelty. Then you’ll watch him shoot them, all for your Spain. I don’t care one way or the other. I want the German. I want my son.”
The man’s eyes widened for just a moment as gunfire erupted in the distance. It was pistols and rifles. The man turned his head and listened intently. The fighting continued to build as mortars began to explode. He looked at Hoffner. “The sound of one bullet wouldn’t make much of a difference now, would it?”
Hoffner tried not to think of Mila. He shook his head easily.
“You say he’s your son.” Hoffner said nothing, and the man continued. “He told me he was forced to burn his papers. It was too dangerous to keep them in the Republican zone.”
“He never had any papers. You should clean that mop.”
“He knew important names.”
“Sanz in Teruel, Doval in Zaragoza.”
The man hesitated.
Hoffner said, “Obviously I know them as well. He isn’t here to help you. You need to believe me. When does he come back to the house?”
The man kept the gun raised.
Hoffner said, “Does he know where the crates with the guns are hidden?”
This seemed to snap some life into the face. The man waited and then shook his head.
“Good,” said Hoffner. “Then he’ll need to come back. You shouldn’t be here when he does.”
It was clear the man was running through the last few minutes, making sure he hadn’t missed anything. Yague might be at the gates, but he wasn’t inside them just yet. Slowly the man brought the pistol down and slid it into his belt.
“If you try and follow me,” he said, “I’ll shoot you. If you try and leave, I have someone who watches the house who will also shoot you. You understand?”
“Which room?” Hoffner said.
The man showed a last moment of indecision before saying, “Top floor. The attic room.”
Hoffner stood. He picked up his pistol and moved to the door.
It was hours of waiting under a row of slanted beams. There was room enough for a bed, a bureau, and an open window that peered out to the south and brought the sounds of killing up through the streets.
Hoffner had found a little alcove behind one of the beams. Mercifully it was out of the sunlight. He sat in a chair with a glass of water-two or three days old-but the heat was too intense not to drink. There was no door, just the stairs, climbing up through a breach in the floorboards. Two pictures hung in simple frames behind the bed, the Madonna gazing out and a saint pensive at his desk. There had been no attempt to hide them. Such was the faith in Yague and his troops.
Hoffner listened from his perch. The sound of gunfire crackled like oil in a hot pan. Had he been able to block out the screams and the shouts, he might have imagined himself on a summer night in Wannsee, the sky wild with lights and a warm explosion of fireworks from above. But the screams and the shouts continued. It was a time without feeling, without memory. All Hoffner had was the image of Sascha standing by that well. It waited with him.
He heard him first on the floor below, then on the stairs. Hoffner sat very still and turned his head. He remained obscured behind the beam as he stared across the room.
Sascha emerged through the opening. He had shaved, and what hair there was lay slick across his scalp in stray lines of black and gray. He was bone thin in a peasant shirt and pants, and his face was red with blotches from the heat. He carried a bag. He set it down before walking toward the window. He leaned out and peered across the city.
Hoffner found it oddly peaceful watching his son. He tried to see something he knew of the boy, in the posture or the gaze, but there was nothing. Hoffner set down his glass and said, “Hello, Sascha.”
Sascha turned, a quick movement though not sharp, and his eyes settled on his father. Whatever surprise he felt he kept to himself. He continued to stare.
Hoffner said, “You look well.”
Sascha said nothing.
“Did you kill him?”
Sascha’s eyes narrowed. It was the only hint of recognition. He saw the pistol on his father’s lap. “Are you intending to use that?”
Hoffner waited. He shook his head.
“I didn’t kill him.”
“You’re lying.”
There was something so broken-down in the way Sascha stared. It was as if all his strength lived in the tightness of his jaw, his narrow shoulders taut and high against the neck. Were he to release, he might have collapsed or wept, although Hoffner couldn’t recall even a moment’s tears from the boy.
Hoffner said, “You left the film. In Coria.”
“Yes.”
“So I would see it.”
“When it went back to Berlin. Not here.”
“What a stunning act of kindness.”
“And yet you’re here.”
Hoffner tried not to see the hatred in the eyes. “Do you ever ask yourself what you’ve become, Sascha?”
Hoffner expected anger or accusation, but Sascha showed neither. Instead, he turned slowly to the window and stared out.
Sascha said easily, “They’ll be breaching the wall soon. You can hear the grenades. They’re actually close enough to be throwing grenades. They’ll have to climb over their own dead to get to it, but they’ll take the wall.” He stared and listened and said, “You think I killed my brother.”
“I know you did.”
Sascha breathed out as he stared. He shook his head. “How could I kill him when he’d already killed me?” He continued to gaze out. “You still think you won’t be using that pistol?”
Hoffner felt suddenly rooted to his chair. It was all he could do to say, “Killed you?”
“This”-Sascha turned and glanced around the attic-“this is what I’m forced to be because of Georg. He took my life. I took his.”
Hoffner heard the words but refused to admit what they meant. His head began to compress.
“How?” he said.
“ ‘How?’ ” Sascha repeated lazily. “And that makes a difference to you?”
“Yes.”
“With my hands around his throat, and his around mine.” The voice conveyed nothing.
Hoffner heard himself say, “And the bullet?”
Sascha’s stare was equally empty. Something registered for a moment and then was gone. “I don’t know why that. Maybe it just seemed right.” He turned back to the window.
There was a long silence, and Sascha said, “Not enough for him to be the Jew. Not enough for me to tell him it was a mistake, too dangerous.”
Hoffner hadn’t been listening. “You killed him-”
“Because he was a Jew?” The bitterness poured out. “Don’t be so stupid. You think that meant anything to me? You think that could mean anything to me? He made his choice. It was his to live with. He knew it had nothing to do with me.”
Hoffner heard the unintended anguish in Sascha’s voice, the eyes searching through the memories. It was a mind now tearing itself apart. Hoffner felt no less undone. “And for that he’s dead?”
Sascha regained his focus. He looked again at Hoffner, the loathing directed at both himself and his father.
“No,” he said. “Not for that.”
Sascha reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. It looked as if it had been balled up, then flattened and folded into a neat square. The wrinkles across the front showed dirt and fingerprints. Hoffner stared at it and felt the blood drain from his face.
“This is what he did,” Sascha said. He held the paper out to his father. Somehow Hoffner found the paper in his hand. “This is what he was too much of a coward to admit.”
Hoffner felt the creases on his fingers, the moistness of the paper. He forced himself to open it and, in an instant more unbearable than any he had ever known, Hoffner saw the words he knew would be there:
To the Ministry Secretary in the Matter of Alexander Kurtzman:
Hoffner closed his eyes, and the air drew out of him. There was no reason to read any further. No reason when he knew the letter by heart.
“At least he led me to the guns,” Sascha said, now staring out. “At least here they’ll show me some respect.”
Hoffner heard the desperate certainty in the boy’s voice, the invented logic of a mind no longer in control. Sascha had convinced himself the Spaniards would take him for a Hisma envoy, a man sent from Berlin. He had convinced himself he could be Alexander Kurtzman again.
Sascha said, “They’ll probably have to be taught how to use them. Still-”
Hoffner felt his hand begin to shake, his throat tighten. It was barely a whisper when he spoke.
“Georg didn’t write this.”
Hoffner saw the paper scrolling through the typewriter, the keys planting themselves on each line, and the words:
Alexander Kurtzman, born Alexander Hoffner, is the son of Nikolai Hoffner, the son of Rokel Hoffner, a Jew. By the Nuremberg Statutes of 1935, Kurtzman is a Jew. He must be expelled from the party.
Hoffner had left his signature off the page when he had sent it-a month ago, maybe more-and here it was in his hands again. Such letters always came with anonymity. It gave them substance. Even the fool at the Ministry-Steiner or Stiegman or Steckler-had said it.
Hoffner opened his eyes and saw Sascha staring at him.
Hoffner said, “I was the one to tell them you’re a Jew.”
Sascha’s stare became almost hypnotic.
Hoffner continued. “It didn’t matter what happened to me. But you-you had to be given a way out.”
Sascha’s brow lowered and his face began to contort. “A way out?”
“I wrote it to save you, Sascha. To get you away from these people, once and for all.” Hoffner struggled to find the words. “I did it to save you, and you killed him.”
Sascha began to shake his head, slowly at first, then more forcefully. He turned to the window and tried to stifle his breath, but each came with greater force.
“You’re lying,” he said. It was as if he were pleading with himself. “You were in the letter. You were mentioned in the letter. He wanted to destroy us both. Don’t you see that?”
Hoffner felt the weight of Georg’s death like a vise pressing down on his head. There was no escaping it now. He had killed his son, just as if he had wrapped his fingers around the boy’s throat himself.
“No,” Hoffner said, his voice hollow. “Georg would never have done anything to you. He loved you.”
Sascha’s hands clenched at the sill.
“I did it to save you,” Hoffner said. His eyes filled. “I did it because-”
Sascha turned. There was no seeing beyond the hatred in the eyes now. He came at Hoffner, hands stretching out. He grabbed his father’s chest and pulled him from the chair. The force brought them into the beam, and Hoffner felt the wood slap across his face. A moment later, Sascha was throwing him against the wall; Hoffner tripped back, down onto his knees. He tried to bring himself forward, but Sascha began to kick his feet into Hoffner’s gut, the face pure madness. It was a face beyond redemption.
“You stupid, selfish man!”
Hoffner reached for Sascha’s legs. He pulled them out from under the boy, and Sascha toppled back, his head smacking against a beam. Sascha began to stumble toward the floor, and Hoffner pulled himself up. He began to speak, but Sascha’s foot caught him across the cheek as the boy fell. Hoffner felt the room begin to spin, and he saw Sascha on his back. Hoffner lunged.
The body was so thin, the chest and arms little more than bones and flesh; Hoffner felt his own weight clamp down onto the boy. Sascha’s fingers dug into Hoffner’s chest, but Hoffner leaned his arm farther into the throat. He heard him choke-he heard his son gasping for breath-and he stared into Sascha’s face, the cheeks red, the lips full with blood.
“You killed him.” Hoffner heard his own voice, small and desperate. “You killed your brother.” Sascha struggled, and Hoffner brought his other hand to the neck. “You let me kill my own son.”
Sascha broke his arm free. Hoffner braced for the nails against his cheek, but he saw Sascha’s fingers begin to claw against the floor. The pistol lay just out of reach. Hoffner watched as Sascha’s hand drew closer to it. He saw the fingers on the barrel, the sound of the pistol scraping against the wood, and he felt his own weight press down, his own hand tighten around the throat. There was no voice, no pleading, no miracle to save this boy from himself.
Hoffner stared at the pistol. He heard Sascha cough for breath and felt his own life drain out of him.
I did it to save you, he thought.
Hoffner saw the gun in the boy’s grip, and he closed his eyes.
A silence came, filling Hoffner whole. He lay there, pressing down on the boy’s throat and begging to feel the metal of the pistol against his own skin. If this was prayer, it was the only one he had ever spoken. He heard the snap and he called out, but it was his own chest, his own gasping for air that he felt. The stillness was suffocating, and Hoffner opened his eyes.
“Oh God.”
He stared down and saw Sascha perfectly still, eyes frozen on the gun, arm outstretched. The boy’s neck had broken.
Hoffner staggered back. He pushed himself up and sat with his head against the bed. There was no thought. There was nothing but to stare at this lifeless boy. Hoffner cried out to a God he had never known and damned Him for His silence.
Outside, the guns breached the wall, the dying began, and Hoffner grabbed for Sascha’s chest. He pulled him in and wept-for the boy who had been his and who now lay in his arms.
Hoffner cradled his son to his chest and wept for the life he had never known.
It was nearing sunset when he heard the grenade. Hoffner opened his eyes. He was still sitting, his back to the bed. The gunfire had drawn closer. Sascha’s body was heavier, his face paler. A second grenade exploded, and Hoffner turned toward it. His neck was stiff. He wondered if he had slept.
Hoffner’s hand was still under the boy’s head. He moved it to the shoulder and tried to lift. Down in the street a man talked about the smell of pigs. Hoffner heard laughter. He got to his knees and hoisted the body up. He stood and brought the boy up onto the bed.
Hoffner looked at the face, the way the hair had matted against the ear. He smoothed it back. There was no texture, no heat in his hand.
He turned from the boy and saw the pistol on the floor. He leaned over and picked it up. He held it in his hand and heard more of the shouting, a single shot from a rifle, laughter. He felt the weight of the gun and slid it slowly into his belt.
Hoffner turned to the bureau. Inside, he found a brush and a razor, worn-through clothing, and a collection of pins. They were small, each with the swastika or SS insignia. Hoffner closed the drawers. He looked around the room and saw the bag Sascha had brought. He stepped over and placed it on the bed.
It was a tunic and pants, and when Hoffner laid them out, he recognized the uniform of a Waffen-SS Oberleutnant. The shoulder boards held one gold pip each, the collar the usual dark blue-green felt, with sewn-in boards of its own. They were a deep Bordeaux red, and the white braiding was frayed at the edges. The breast eagle showed bleach on the left wing. Hoffner smelled the lye and realized the wool had recently been washed. There were signs of repair in the lower pockets and on the French cuffs, and the third button down was a slightly darker gray than the rest.
Hoffner began to undress the boy.
It was rough bringing him down the steps. Hoffner held Sascha over one shoulder, the boy now in full uniform. He leaned him against the wall when they reached the bottom floor, and then carried him to the door. Hoffner listened. The gunfire was more sporadic now, and deeper into the heart of the city. Yague’s men were going street to street, house to house. Hoffner waited and pulled open the door.
At once the smell of gunpowder and blood filled his nose. There was a smoky residue in the air, and the windows along the street were smashed in jagged lines of glass. By some miracle, the horses were still tethered to the post. One of them was on its side, dead, its eye shot through. The other was bucking from exhaustion, pulling at its reins. Hoffner placed his hand on the animal’s nose and waited until it began to calm. He then hoisted Sascha onto its back, took the reins, and began to walk.
Bodies lay in pools of blood in the doorways and along the street. There were screams and shouts and the sound of glass shattering in the distance behind him. Hoffner continued to walk toward the plaza and the southern gate. He kept his pistol in his belt. If this was how he was to die, so be it.
He saw a pair of legs, stretched out and moving in a doorway. They were sliding back and forth. He heard a woman’s stifled moan and a man’s laughter and drew closer.
The man was on top of the woman, her legs pulled high, her face bloodied. The man continued to drive himself into her. Hoffner kicked at the man’s feet, and the man turned. Hoffner pulled out his pistol and shot the man in the face. He then pulled the body off the woman, turned away, and continued to lead the horse.
If there were other such moments, Hoffner never remembered them. All he knew was that he found himself at the southern plaza, where the wall had been blown to rubble, and where bodies lay stretched across the stone and earth like packed rolls of soiled newspaper. The sun had gone, and there were long poles with white lights perched at the top of them. There was no gunfire here. Yague had taken the square.
Hoffner saw a group of uniforms standing by a door. He moved toward them.
One of the soldiers turned, and Hoffner said in German, “I have the body of a lieutenant. Waffen-SS. He was protecting the guns sent in from Morocco. He’s dead. I was sent by Captain Doval from Coria.”
The man stared at Hoffner. Hoffner repeated what he had said, this time in Spanish, and the man continued to stare. The man called another soldier over. Hoffner spoke the same words a third time, and the new man said, “You’re the German.”
Hoffner said nothing.
“We have orders not to touch you. We have your woman.”
Hoffner handed the reins to the first man. “Leave the body as it is,” he said. “He’s not to be moved.” Hoffner looked at the other. “Take me to the woman.”
The man led him across the plaza to a building where the doors had been blown off. The front wall was pockmarked from machine-gun fire, the windows above all but gone.
The man took him inside. “You wish to meet General Yague?”
Hoffner felt the darkness of the place; he smelled the stench of cigars. “No,” he said. “I don’t wish to meet him.”
The man looked momentarily confused and led Hoffner down the hall.
Mila was sitting on a stool in a small room lit by a lamp. There was an alleyway through the window. She was leaning against the wall, staring out, her hands limp in her lap.
The soldier left them, and Hoffner heard heavy footsteps on the floor above, the sound of men’s voices. Mila continued to stare out.
She said, “They had use for a doctor.” It was a false strength that masked her pain. “They had use, until the wall fell.”
Hoffner watched as she stared out. She began to rub her thumb across her open palm.
She said, “They knew who I was. They shot the rest.” He saw her thumb dig deeper in. “Did you find him?”
It took Hoffner a moment to answer. “Yes.”
“Is he dead?”
Again Hoffner waited. “Yes.”
She nodded quietly. She released her hand and turned her head to him. There were black streaks of gunpowder residue across her cheeks and neck, and her eyes were red from the crying. She showed no feeling behind them.
Whatever comfort they had hoped to find in each other was no longer possible here. Hoffner waited and stepped over. She seemed incapable of helping herself, and he cupped his hand under her elbow. He brought her up. He started to move them to the door and she stopped.
“I don’t want to see any of them,” she said. “I don’t want to see their uniforms, their faces.”
Hoffner looked into her eyes. He thought he saw the unimaginable.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t me they touched.” There was no relief even in that.
He brought his arm around her. She laid her cheek against his chest and closed her eyes, and he took her out into the square.
The sound of gunfire echoed from somewhere up on a hill, and Hoffner moved them across to the men. Sascha was still on the horse. A small car was waiting with them.
One of the men said, “The road to Coria is secure. The guard posts have been informed.”
The man nodded to two of the others, and they stepped over to Sascha.
“Don’t touch him!” Hoffner shouted.
The men stopped and stared. Hoffner stared back, filled with rage at his own helplessness. His throat was suddenly raw. He moved Mila to the car and placed her inside. He opened the rumble seat and went to Sascha. As he pulled him down and onto his shoulder, he stumbled momentarily. One of the men moved to help him, and again Hoffner shouted, “Don’t you touch him!” The man stepped back, and Hoffner carried Sascha to the car and placed him in the seat.
The man from behind him said, “Follow the truck out.” There was an open-back truck with bodies laid across it. “It goes as far as the river.”
Hoffner nodded without turning. He got in behind the wheel, fixed his eyes on the tires in front of him, and drove.
* * *
Beyond the river the road climbed through scrubland and brush, the sounds of Badajoz faded, and the moon kept itself hidden behind the clouds.
The night’s darkness brought pockets of scampering figures, men and women with frantic stares, darting in front of the headlights and vanishing into the blackness. Trucks appeared from every direction, their lights blinding, with the stench of men still fresh from battle. Echoes of gunfire drew closer, then drifted. Hoffner stopped again and again at makeshift barricades, showed his papers, and drove on.
All the while, Sascha sat perfectly straight in his seat. A guard at one of the posts asked him for a light, then saw he was dead and stepped away.
Mila woke just before daybreak. She said nothing and took Hoffner’s hand. It was resting on the seat, and she laid it on her lap and unwound the gauze that had grown tight around his palm. He felt the air across the wound, as she dabbed at it with his handkerchief. She stared along the lines of the cut. It seemed a very long time before she rewrapped it, set it on the seat, and placed her hand on his.
Hoffner said, “It’s not so far from here.”
She nodded as she stared out.
He said, “It feels better.”
“Good.”
They found the priest in Coria, and a man with a spade. He brought his brother, and they dug a good grave by the side of Georg’s. Hoffner watched as the spades moved through the dirt. He saw the pile rise higher and the men grow wet under the first light of the sun. He let them take Sascha from the car and watched as they lowered him on a white sheet and then pulled the sheet up and rolled it into a ball. The priest read and spoke. It was simple and without time, and when the priest had finished, he walked away, and Hoffner and Mila watched as the men covered Sascha with earth. Hoffner gave them money and they nodded their thanks before moving off.
Hoffner let Mila take his hand. He stared at his sons’ graves.
“I cried for the wrong one,” he said. There was nothing in his voice. “He was so small, so thin. How does a man become like that?”
He felt her draw his hand up. She kissed it. It was strange to feel so much life standing here.
The door to a house at the edge of the field opened, and a woman stepped out. She didn’t notice them. She continued around to the other side and was gone.
Hoffner looked back at the graves. “I brought them to this.” He felt almost nothing, saying it. “I brought my sons to this, and there’s no coming back from it, is there?”
Mila waited. “It depends on what you come back to.” She let go of his hand and started to walk. “You come when you want.” She continued toward the houses.
Hoffner closed his eyes and let the sun settle on his face. He crouched down and placed a hand on the earth. If there were words he was meant to say, he didn’t know them. Instead, he clutched at the earth and felt it squeeze through his fingers. He had no rage, no despair, no need to ask forgiveness. It was an emptiness without end. He turned and saw Mila moving slowly past the houses.
Hoffner opened his hand and let the earth fall away. He then stood and followed behind her.
Vollman had waited. The aeroplane was fitted with enough gasoline to get them to Barcelona. He would refuel, then go on to Berlin.
They slept for the three hours of the flight, and when Vollman brought the plane low they both woke and looked out to see Barcelona as they had left it. The stories of Badajoz had yet to reach this far east; news that the armies of the north and the south had joined hands would wait another few hours. For now, the city stretched out contentedly under the sun.
Mila and Hoffner stood in the short grass of the runway and watched from a distance as Vollman tipped canister after canister of gasoline into the fuel tank. A car would come for her. They had telephoned her father.
“The wife and the little boy,” she said. Her arms were across her chest as she stared out at the plane. “You have to go. To Berlin. You have to tell them, make arrangements. I understand.”
Hoffner nodded. He hadn’t asked her to come. He knew she wouldn’t. Anywhere else, he would have given himself over to this kind of will. He would have acquiesced or backed away or fallen silent in her presence. But that’s not what this was.
“And what is it you understand?” he said, as he turned to her. He forced her to look at him. “You think there’s something for me to find in Berlin? What Berlin? There is no Berlin, at least nothing in it I know. So I go for the wife and the boy. I go to destroy what life they have left. What is there to understand in that?”
“You go because you love them,” she said. “You go because nothing else matters. Why is it so hard for you to see that?”
Hoffner tried to answer, and she said, “You go for the same reason you’ll come back to Spain.”
Hoffner saw his own need in her eyes. He saw a way beyond a life lived in the shadow of those two graves, beyond the dampness of the earth still on his hands and in his nails.
She said quietly, “I’m not asking you to stay.”
“I know that.”
“I’m not asking you to come back. I’m telling you what’s here. What more is there?”
The buzz from the propeller cut through, and they both turned to see Vollman walking to the ladder. She waited for Hoffner to speak. Finally she said, “You have to go.”
Hoffner stared across at the plane. He watched as Vollman slipped on his goggles.
Hoffner turned to her. He took her in his arms and he kissed her, her body pressed against him. She pulled back and brought her lips to his ear. She whispered, “Then love them, Nikolai. Love them and know it’s enough.”
He held her. Her body shook, and he knew it would never be enough.
Hoffner let go and started toward the plane. He let the sound of the propeller draw him. He reached the ladder, climbed up, and stepped into the seat. The plane began to move, and he felt the air against his face. He waited for the speed, and the plane lifted.
Somewhere below, the sea crashed against the rocks and the sun played havoc on the surf, but Hoffner kept his eyes on the blue of the sky. To look back, even for a moment, would have made living beyond this an impossibility.