He wonders what she means by this. Probably that he himself is the one to be pitied. She has seen the way he lives, after all. Perhaps she has a point.
‘I don’t pity you,’ he says. He sees her relax, a little. But then some rogue urge, some need to provoke, makes him say, ‘I don’t pity you, because I understand that you’ve made some sort of choice, to be with a man like that.’
Her face has flushed red, with anger, he thinks, or humiliation. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Explain it to me, then.’
21
Madrid, March 1937
‘Hello.’
In spite of myself, I am intrigued.
‘Hello,’ I say. The man smiles. He is younger than I thought: though not young, still twice my age, perhaps. He isn’t Spanish. His clothes are foreign, English or American, I think: a fine jacket, a waistcoat, matching, spotlessly clean trousers. I wonder how he manages it, in the midst of a war.
He introduces himself: he is an American. He has a way about him in fact, an air of ease, that is even more of a rarity in this place than clean clothes.
And he is attractive, I notice – in a way that only becomes apparent when you keep looking. An elegance, perhaps, rather than a handsomeness.
‘Thank you.’
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he says. ‘It isn’t safe for someone like you.’
Where has he been, that he thinks this warm bar is a place of relative danger? ‘It’s better than anywhere else.’
‘Well,’ he says, studying me, ‘are you old enough to drink?’
‘I’d prefer food.’
‘In that case,’ he says, ‘you shall have some.’
The food comes. His eyes are on me. I am eating like an animal, I know: but I do not seem to be able to stop. Not the dreamed-of sardines but a dish of broken eggs, just as good. I slow only when I realize that if I carry on at this speed I will be sick, and it will be for nothing. I have decided what I will do: I will eat, and then I will excuse myself and leave.
But there is wine too, which I am not accustomed to even in normal circumstances. It loosens something in me. I begin to talk. I can’t speak about the circumstances, but I tell him of Papa and Tino, how the loss of them has changed everything, that without them, I don’t know myself. All the time he watches my face, as though he finds something fascinating there.
It is only at the end of the evening that I realize that while I have laid myself bare before him, I don’t know anything about him beyond his name and his nationality. Is this due to rudeness on my part, my preoccupation with my grief? Or some reluctance to tell on his?
‘Come tomorrow,’ he says. ‘I’d like to buy you supper again.’
The meal has worked its effect upon me already. I feel stronger, steadier in my thoughts. If I can eat again tomorrow as I have done this evening, it won’t matter if I can’t find food during the day. It doesn’t ever occur to me to refuse. Why would I?
*
The next evening I am determined to ask him about himself. This time I notice a definite resistance to my probing. It is subtle, but it is there. He begins to turn everything towards me again, but I have already talked enough; feel hollowed out with it. So I persevere.
‘Why are you here, in Spain?’
He takes a sip of his whisky, savours it. ‘Have you heard of the International Brigades?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you know of them?’
I tell him. They are men who have come from around the world, American, Englishmen, French – even German and Italian – to fight against Fascism. They say that their bravery is unparalleled. There is talk of how, last month, they met the rebels in the Jarama Valley and fought them off with suicidal valour.
He nods.
‘You’re one of them?’
‘Yes. In a way, I am.’
Suddenly I am seeing him in a new light. His reticence becomes something heroic. ‘Why are you here, in Madrid?’ What I really mean is: why isn’t he in uniform, as his compatriots are? Why is he staying in a hotel, drinking wine with me, rather than on a battlefield somewhere?
‘Ah,’ he smiles, and seems to understand my meaning. ‘My work is unusual. It’s … somewhat clandestine. That’s about all I can tell you, I’m afraid.’
I nod. I want him to know that he can trust me not to press him for information. That his secret is safe in my keeping. I think how much my father would have liked him, this man who is here, in a country not his own, out of a sense of moral duty.