The Angel of History Read online

  ‘I’m the one who should be asking so what. I’m out there freezing my ass on the front and you’re running around, and meantime, you ugly bitch, you’re sending me messages. “I think of him all the time, send him my love.” What a tramp.’

  ‘Messages? What messages? What are you talking about – when ever?’ she started to say.

  Oh god, I thought, now I’m going to get dragged into it. I squeezed Mercedes’ hand hard and we walked ahead. The only reason I got out of that was because Mariano had already gone too far, twisting his hair and glaring like that. He wasn’t accustomed to broken promises, and that’s why he fell to pieces so quickly. He was begging, sweating, ranting.

  ‘What about all those things you said about free love?’ we heard him say.

  ‘Precisely. It’s free,’ she said, ‘and I don’t want to be with you. Do you get it or not?’

  We never got to the movies and over the next days my buddy’s mood was so ferocious that he’d have poisoned you if he bit you. I ended up sneaking around with Mercedes so that he wouldn’t suffer seeing us together. Brimming with anger and hungry for revenge, he ended up doing everything he could to get transferred into an offensive strike unit. He told them that he wanted to lead a counter-offensive commando squad to run raids and sabotage the enemy’s line before our guys even got there. It was a way of committing suicide, that’s what it was. But amazingly they took him seriously because of his merits on the field. In late April, they green-lighted his project. He threw himself into the preparations and I didn’t see him for days. I took advantage of the time to visit Mercedes. By now we’d become used to the air raids; my soldier kept up his work and she got so excited when the planes passed low overhead. It was going well with us and would have kept going that way if Mariano hadn’t caught us one afternoon eating ice cream in a café on the Ramblas.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you for three hours,’ he said.

  It was a clear May evening, a light breeze swept the air, so softly it seemed to be strolling. Mercedes shifted in her seat and grabbed my hand under the table. She knew what was going on. Mariano didn’t even sit down. Standing over me like a grenadier, he stared right at me, avoided Mercedes’ eyes.

  ‘I’m all set,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving the day after tomorrow with my division. I picked out my men, guys with balls.You’re on board, right?’

  What could I say? I looked at her for help but her expression gave away nothing. I knew what she was thinking though – it’s fine to have fun and take advantage of every instant. But when it comes time to fight, only a coward hangs back. And I would have said the same thing. To keep living this quasi-life would be a sentence to cowardice and mediocrity.

  ‘Okay,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow at headquarters.’

  The light from the street lamps on the Ramblas was shining against an almost black sky. A few stars twinkled on. That sky was so beautiful it made you curse the day the damned war started. There were people crowding around us, soldiers, mothers with their children about to go in for dinner, idlers. A van passed, anarchist flags waving, full of recruits heading for the station.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ Mercedes murmured. I put my tongue in her ear and a hand on her ass. ‘If they bomb us tonight, it won’t matter,’ I said quietly.

  Chapter Eleven

  We spent two weeks training in a quarry near the Pyrenees and then set off.We travelled by Russian Sturke jeeps, three of them, for a day, then through the night with our headlights off, and half of the next morning. There were sixteen men in our unit. I drove the first car with Mariano, our captain. With us rode: a Swiss cook, our look-out Jimmie, a blond Irishman, and Alfonso, Italian, second sergeant. He was a bit of a fool but was a genius with explosives. The rest of the unit was in the other cars: two Andalusians, a Galician, three Americans – one black – two German Communists and who else have I forgotten? Right, the Englishman and Jan, he was Dutch and a mortar expert. Then there was Lech, a short Pollack – a bundle of nerves he was and an ace at gunning down planes. Mariano had chosen his men well; they were all adventurers, sure, but they were good companions too. Most importantly, they were good with weapons, could move from grenades to machine guns without blinking and then change again to rifles, knives, pistols.

  Right before noon, we came to a village that had been bombed to the ground. There was no one there except for some rabbits, goats and chickens picking through the rubble. We caught a jackass and two mules and loaded them up with arms and provisions and started climbing the mountain. After three hours we hit the top and found an abandoned monastery, the pantry still stocked to the brim with oil, rice, beans, chickpeas, wine. So we decided to pitch camp there. Since we didn’t have trenches, we took our positions in the craters that the bombs had left. We overlooked the Ebro from here and could watch the enemy stacked out on the opposite side of the river.Yagüe’s Moroccan Regulares were here, the Guardia Civil, Carlist Requetés, the Italian volunteers and the Spanish Foreign Legion. It was quiet on the front. They only shot if we went to get water at the spring, otherwise it was as calm as could be. If only we didn’t have to patrol for miles in order to cover the ground between us and the next unit – there were so few of us out there.

  We lay low for a week, watching the troops’ movements, and marking the positions of their cannons. Then we started crossing the river at night. It was easy. The water was low and there was hardly any current.We’d take their guards by surprise and beat them, then break through their lines with grenades. We came back with a prisoner almost every night. One time we went pretty far and found the Moroccan camp. One was playing the flute next to the fire; others were sleeping half-naked on the ground.

  ‘Now,’ said Mariano.

  We attacked.We launched twenty grenades and sprayed them with two machine guns followed by rifle gunfire. It was a massacre. They were furious. As we were retreating across the river mortar shells starting falling in the water around us and then the machine-gun fire started showering on us from every direction. Frankie, an American, took one in the shoulder, but it wasn’t serious. I almost broke my foot getting up the bank. We barely made it across the river and into the ditches dug by mortar fire along the bank. We were out of bullets.

  ‘Only shoot if they try to get to this side,’ ordered Mariano.

  Soon, Jimmie the Irishman came to tell us that there was an entire column getting ready to cross. Moroccans, two or three hundred, maybe more, a whole battalion. It was like they’d gone mad, shrieking and throwing their rifles into the air. The kind of stuff that makes you shiver under a full moon.

  ‘Wild men,’ said Alfonso, spitting on the ground. ‘Should I get some dynamite ready?’

  Mariano was stretched out behind a dry wall, twisting his hair. He looked at me and then at the Moroccans, then back at Alfonso, and then at the Moroccans.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Let’s get back up to our ditches and wait for them. Once they’ve crossed the river and are out in the open we’ll attack.’

  They thought we’d retreated so they were almost casual as they waded through the knee-high water. They moved forward in groups. It looked like they were dancing in a carnival parade. Our first mortar shot dug a hole into the rear of their group, they kicked into action with the machine guns and we responded with rifle fire. They fell like mutton. But there were so many of them and they didn’t stop. The mortar fire whistled around our ears. They hit one of the Andalusians and another American. They were thirty metres to my right. I didn’t have time to even scream.

  ‘Shit,’ I said.

  ‘Shut up and shoot,’ said Mariano.

  We fought for two and a half hours. The Moroccans stood their ground in front of us, but the firing was coming from both sides.

  ‘They’re coming in from the sides,’ I yelled. ‘What the hell do we do now?’

  ‘If you spent less time yelling,’ Mariano said calmly, ‘you would have already noticed that.’

  Then he motioned behind us with his head
. I turned. Shit, it was true. Two Russian tanks, our men, were coming down the path and behind them there was an entire company. Not bad. We emerged from the ditches shooting straight ahead, while the two tanks headed right into the water and then split in different directions. Fifteen minutes later you could have crossed the river walking on dead bodies and you wouldn’t have got your feet wet. They lost six hundred men and we took two hundred prisoners. We’d only lost two men and had one wounded. But we still had to hide that night in the cellar of our monastery because they came in with planes and cannon fire. It went on continually throughout the day and night. But who cared? Everything outside was shaking. But we were safe and calm, our bellies full. The brothers had a lip-smacking dark wine in their cellar. When the truck came to pull us out four days later, we were happy and a little drunk. We had learned that we’d thwarted an offensive with our action, so we’d been celebrating. When we got to the new camp near Tarragona, the brigade commander called Mariano into his tent for a meeting. He had a scowl on his face when he came back two hours later.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Up yours,’ he said.

  He lay down on his cot, his face was so long it brushed his feet. He closed his eyes and went quiet like a mummy.

  ‘So,’ I insisted. ‘Are we going to make a night of it or are you going to tell me what’s going on?’

  He showed me a crumpled piece of paper.

  ‘Service orders from Command,’ he said. ‘Lieutenant. They’re making you one too. They say that you fought well back at Ebro. Crazy shit. I can’t believe it.’

  Shit was right. I’d been promoted. I was an officer now too. But boy was my buddy upset; he was practically shaking with anger.

  ‘You shouldn’t take it so hard,’ I stuttered. ‘You’ll always be the chief, the commander.’

  Now what? His face had collapsed into a grimace.

  ‘Of course I’m the chief,’ smiled Mariano handing me another piece of less-crumpled paper. ‘See,’ he said. ‘You’re a lieutenant now too, but as for me, precious boy, I’ve been made a captain.’

  Then he started laughing to make your blood curdle, that son of a bitch. He was still laughing when he told me that there was more. The whole platoon had been given a fifteen-day leave. By now the others had already heard and they were jumping for joy.

  ‘I bet that someone around here,’ he said looking at me meaningfully, ‘is going to go running off to Barcelona.’

  Actually we all went – obviously. First thing when we got to Carl Marx headquarters we hit the kitchen and shored up to return to our life as gentlemen. They’d handed out a good supply of cigarettes and paid us on top of that. We all went walking together through Barcelona, showing off in our uniforms, looking for trouble in the bars and out on the street. I saw Mercedes on the second day, when we all went to visit our buddy in the hospital. This time she gave me a big smile, with her mouth and her eyes and heart.

  ‘How long are you staying?’ she asked, kissing my neck and stroking my scalp with her fingers. She was proud of me and my new rank. I felt that little by little she was starting to love me for real – not the way people love during war-time, defensively gambling, trying to cheat death. That kind of love clung to you like a flea on a dog.

  I slept with her every night that she wasn’t on duty at the hospital. The Italians did some bombing but we never went down to the shelter. I admit that I’d started getting a taste for those shivers too. I was so happy that I almost forgot about the war. Alfonso was the one who had to come and remind me. He knocked on the door early one morning. It was still dark out. Mercedes and I were cuddling drowsily, my fingers stroking the hair between her legs.

  ‘You in there, Professor?’ called Alfonso from the other side of the door.

  I struggled to stand and barely managed to put on my trousers. The minute I opened the door he burst inside excitedly.

  ‘Hurry up, won’t you? Don’t you remember we’re moving out today?’

  Shit, he was right. I was about to tell him to hang on when Mercedes walked through the room naked.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said, heading over to the bathroom, a big smile on her face.

  Alfonso was enchanted. He stood stiller than a statue, and I had to nudge him to make him shut his mouth and remind him that I was standing right there.

  ‘You look like you think you saw the Madonna.’

  ‘Quasi,’ he answered in Italian.

  He was still thinking about it when we were on the truck heading back to Ebro.

  ‘Your Mercedes is really the best piece of ass I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Except for your sister,’ I growled.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Twelve

  A few months later, penning the story of Scholem’s visit to Paris in a letter, Benjamin’s tone was off-hand. ‘Our philosophical debate whose time was long due,’ he wrote, ‘proceeded in good form. If I am not mistaken,’ he added, ‘I gave him an image of me as something like a man who has made his home in a crocodile’s jaws, which he keeps pried open with iron braces.’ The image wasn’t far from the truth. For years now, Benjamin had been gathering adversity around him like a ‘pack of wolves’. The hunchbacked dwarf had never stopped chasing him and Benjamin knew that. However much trouble he took trying to foresee danger he always seemed to end up, with the uncanny precision of a sleepwalker, in the middle of trouble. Even his nostalgia, that coward, betrayed him making the happiest moments disappear from his memory. He started thinking that his life had been reduced to shards that endlessly piled up around him. The more he tried to look backward the more burdened he felt by harbingers of the future. The Angel of History spoke to him, sent signs that Benjamin interpreted quite clearly. He hardly marvelled at all when, on March 12, 1938, not a month after Scholem’s visit, Hitler invaded Austria. It was dumb fact that the world’s history and his own personal history should cross like paths in a forest. His son Stefan was at that very time studying in Vienna.

  Stefan wore his twenty years poorly. He was an isolated and rebellious man, traits that were exacerbated by the absence of a good father. Stefan risked being trapped in the Reich’s newest territory. As a Jew and a communist living in a Nazi-occupied city, the best he could hope for was a concentration camp. The only thing that Benjamin could do from Paris was to pester Dora in San Remo for news. He spent his last money of the month on agitated telephone calls. And then the telegram he’d been waiting for arrived. Stefan had managed to escape to Italy by the skin of his teeth and he and his mother were going to move to London soon. With the Fascist racial laws, Dora had to sell her pension and wanted to open a boarding house in London.

  Only then, forcing himself to feel reassured, Benjamin resumed work on the Baudelaire essay. At least he tried to. But there were obstacles: the lift at rue Dombasle, chronic migraines, a stubborn laziness that clung to him like a leech, and a gripping in his chest that sometimes left him breathless. He needed a bit of fresh air.

  He became convinced of this need to breathe freely while coming home from the library one day. The bright light of the May afternoon fell on him as he came out of the métro. Benjamin inhaled the sparkly air, trying to catch his breath. Those few stairs had been enough to make him wheeze. He crossed rue de Vaugirard with small steps, as if the light were blinding him, and ducked into Madame Suchet’s store. Koestler had first brought him to that dark little store with its dusty shelves and pungent smells. ‘The owner is intolerable,’ he warned. ‘She behaves as if she could stand around and talk until the end of time. But she gets certain cheeses.’

  Upon entering, Benjamin ventured a nod.

  ‘Bonsoir, Madame Suchet. May I have a baguette and a piece of Camembert?’

  ‘A light dinner tonight, Monsieur Benjhamèn?’

  She was teasing him.And how she went on with that Benjhamèn . . . If only one Frenchman could prove himself capable of pronouncing his last name. Just for him – as he cared so much about names. Many years earlier had
n’t he written that ‘the name is the most intimate essence of language itself,’ the only trace of the divine in human language. But he was too tired to correct her.

  ‘So this Hitler of yours . . . will 200 grams be enough? So do you think there will be a war? I lived through one already, lost two brothers to it, one in Ypres and the other at Verdun.’

  ‘Forgive me, madame, but Hitler hardly belongs to me and as to whether or not there will be a war, I don’t know. Who’s to say? I only need 150 grams, thank you.’

  ‘There won’t be a war, you’ll see. The boches,’ she said, again mutilating the word, ‘I mean, the Germans know perfectly well that we hold the Maginot Line and it would be useless to even try . . .’

  Out on the street the light dusted the slate roofs with a weathered gold and the skirts of girls riding by on bicycles swelled in the air like sails. What a sight, though it didn’t last long. Upon returning home he discovered that the lift was broken again. This was too much, even for one such as him. He had to get away, at least for a while. When was the last time he’d been to Skovsbostrand? Two years, he told himself as he faced the staircase. Two years to the day. The moment had perhaps finally come to accept Brecht’s invitation to Denmark. He’d collected almost all the material he needed for the Baudelaire essay. He just needed another two weeks to gather his notes and then he’d go off to that fishing village where he would be able to write in peace, and all that aside, the cost of living was much less up there.

  He stopped, panting, on the first-floor landing. He was convinced that he should leave perhaps immediately. But after another flight of stairs, standing by Hans’s door, he’d changed his mind again.

  He ruminated and ruminated for a month, torn by the desire to see Brecht and the fear of having to depend on him financially – between his desire for tranquillity and the strain of changing his habits. Until suddenly, as usual, he resolved it was time to pack up his few items. It was June, a tepid morning that already smelled of summer, when he boarded the train heading north.