Hermanos! by William Herrick

Author:William Herrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504009805
Publisher: The Permanent Press

15

When Capitán Jacobito Estrella was finally escorted by two pistoleros to Comrade Roegen in the fortress of Figueras, he found himself confronted by a tiny man with a long narrow head, with cheeks so flat and smooth he resembled a horse, huge yellow teeth kept bared in a picador smile. He also was proud possessor of a wild mane of black hair. Before the Moscow Master had chosen him to grace his stable, Roegen had been a poet. A true leader of the proletariat, he had been born into the upper middle classes. His father, a Budapest banker, was a great huntsman, and the only callus he ever developed was on his trigger finger. Like father, like son. In Spain Roegen was known as General Ernesto, a rear echelon commander who deployed his disciplined troops with professional efficiency and deadly stealth.

Upon reading Stepanovich’s instructions concerning Jake Starr, Roegen laughed triumphantly. Not that he cared one bread crumb either way for Starr, but Starr was Vlanoc’s man, and Vlanoc was leading Roegen—and Comrade Step—in Stakhanovite competition: more bones. Now he would have an opportunity to catch up.

He examined Jake Starr with interest, was a little surprised to see the boy’s composed features, his relaxed stance, a smile in his eyes, the old washerwoman hadn’t done a bad job. ‘You’re going to the front,’ he said, and, as Starr grinned, Roegen smiled slyly. ‘Salud!’

So the rumor heard at the San Martin road was fact, except of course it was not the German comrade who had disappeared from Madrid—and never heard of again—it was Jake Starr. When Roegen’s pistoleros threw Jake out of the Hispana Suiza, they did not bid him adios, which was then taboo in Loyal Spain, but did manage, ‘Go fight, Comrade Hero.’ And they departed, four of the great anti-fascist fighters of Spain. Since Jake Starr had the hero syndrome, it was assumed he would manage to die; and everyone knew, it’s a natural historical law, the best hero is a dead one.

Thus the legend of la voz y la mano was, despite him, a Roegen creation.

He was supposed to die; he should have died; he almost died for lack of blood one frantic night. Blood ran in that charnel house by the barrel, over its tiled floors, out into the mesa of Castile and, diluted by the rain, was sucked into the insatiably thirsty earth of Spain. Jake Starr would have died but for a Canadian doctor, Norman Bethune, headquartered near The Road, who had just recently discovered the secret of banking blood. And a blood transfusion was given to Jake Starr and he lived that night.

More dead than alive, Starr was placed on a pallet, the pain monstrous, the doses of morphine heavy, and shipped by hospital train to Murcia where the wildly bending Segura river flowed doltishly under the furnace sun, garbage and human offal like a fleet of old barges lolling in its torpid currents, bringing cholera, typhoid and dysentery to the wounded who filled its hospitals.

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