The Mule by Juan Eslava Galan

Author:Juan Eslava Galan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780553904727
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Pablo Benavides—wearing striped pajamas, a cape thrown over his shoulders, service cap pulled right down to his eyes—uses his elbow to wipe the misty window of his room and looks out. He hasn’t slept a wink, what with the tractors towing cannons, cars driving by, trucks full of soldiers, ambulances, horns honking, orders being shouted; it’s been going on all night. When day breaks, Plaza Peñarroya becomes a seething mass of men and military equipment. Beneath his window passes a canvas-covered truck with half a dozen mud-covered bare feet and one sergeant’s arm—judging by the stripes on the cuff—sticking out the back. Another load of bodies, still warm, off to the cemetery.

“What a shithole,” Benavides mutters. “Valley of Pedroches, my ass. Valley of Cojones, more like it. The bastards don’t fire a shot the whole damn war, and then the second I show up all hell breaks loose. And everything was going so well in Sevilla!”

But Sevilla is a long way away, and the national edition of ABC newspaper has sent him to do a feature on life in the trenches. He blew into town on January 5, after lunching in Córdoba with a lady friend, and took a room at the best pensión he could find, the Imperial. Then, just as he was getting ready to report from some nice, peaceful trenches, the shit hit the fan.

Benavides dresses quickly to go to headquarters, where one of the commanders, a family friend, will make travel arrangements to get him back to Córdoba. He doesn’t care if it’s by train, car, or truck—even if he has to ride with the cargo. He just wants to get out of this dump as soon as possible.

He’s hardly walked a hundred yards when a wing of low-flying red bombers appears and panic breaks out. Benavides trembles just thinking about it: A bomb goes off a mere hundred yards behind him, knocking down a house he’s just passed. Benavides hurls himself to the ground, terrified, though in his article he’ll say it was the force of the blast that knocked him down and will go on to describe it—with elegant metaphor—as the deadly flick of an invisible giant’s hand. When the reddish cloud of brick and adobe dust settles like a thick fog, Benavides sees the rubble of two houses.

“Ay, Mother of God, Blessed Virgin, if you get me out of this I swear I’ll give up my whoring and gambling and all my unsavory habits!”

As he’s closing his temporary deal with divinity, he takes refuge in the doorway of an old granite house that appears solid and reassuring. From there he continues praying and promising.

The planes make two more passes, machine-gunning vehicles in the plaza, then fly off. The journalist stays in his little shelter until he hears people shouting orders and engines back on the street. Only then does he venture from his hiding place.

“Is it over?” he asks a liaison passing by.

“Seems so.”

Benavides is carrying his Agfa camera, a gift from his friend Captain Kluger of the Condor Legion.

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