The sound of the sea wind echoed in a haunting way as the ship where
the worn out volunteers were heading out for Euskadi. What would have
been a fast travel by land, became unbearable with the extra steps of
having to reach the Catalonian ports to make sure the Franquist
officers wouldn’t sniff on them before even their mission
initiated the last phase.
As the ship kept crossing the cold waters of
Northern Spain, most of the volunteers that already fought in the
Barcelonian rooftops were bickering the most. The topic would
constantly jump from joking about the Republicans being so
confrontational and antagonist to both their enemies and allies, and
the culinary arts of the regions they had visited prior.
Before running away to Barcelona, the team was first
shipped like mere crates of guns to Galiza, where they first made the
field and base operations to get all the information they needed.
Research and linking with all those rebellious groups that battled all
around the country. If anything, and fond of fish, most of the Soviet
soldiers and officers were happy about how abundant the rations were.
Even in the direst houses, the people would try to feed them well,
although of course not all families were happy to share their slacking
pantry products as easily.
Yet, most of the collaborators would offer them as much as possible.
“Hey, Andrey”.
“What is it, Yuri.”
“Do you think they will give us some proper meal as we land?”
Yuri would sniff and scrub his face with his wool
gloves to keep the face warm and safe from the freezing mist.
“Gets boring to eat these packed soups straight out of the
can.”
Andrey just took a puff of smoke as he watched the horizon as he cockily sat on a crate.
“For all that I care, I hope they don’t
serve us some of those potato cakes with onion. Last time at
Margarita’s house was a pain in my tummy for that alone, no
flavor at all.”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re saying.”
“Yes I do.”
“Grab your knife and come say it.”
Both guys, being deprived of any
rationality from the hunger and humid cold, which was unlikely on their
homeland, jumped at threatening each other with the knives.
“Potato cake has onion!”
“No it doesn’t!”
Before they could really hit each other to wander
off the boredom, an authoritative voice pierced their ears, already
hurting from the cold.
“Enough already! Some are trying to read here.”
A distinguished figure of a man in a dark and thick
coat and glasses looked at them. His eyes like decaying gold and
inspecting the place like a mountain cat. His cap contrasting the one
of his former rank comrades, as he got ascended from his previous and
brutal achievements on the Barcelonan streets, lynching as much
fascists he could. He held a book full of girth against his chest, as
if it was a dear treasure, and a metallic mug which emanated a lot of
steam of freshly made tea.
“Officer?”
“Comrade Muzhik, this guy had it coming!” Yuri crudely pointed to Andrey.
“I know Spaniards cannot save their life if
they ever had to start this discussion over omelette, but at the margin
of your personal preferences, there is nothing more lowly of fellow
fighters acting like small dogs barking at each other for the table
leftovers.”
They looked at him.
“We were having fun.” Andrey excused himself sheepishly.
“Go have fun playing cards like everyone
else.” Muzhik adjusted his glasses. “Or next time I see you
guys drawing your weapons out just because you are bored I will make
sure you’ll get that written down back to the heads in the
homeland.”
Both guys looked at each other and just decided to join one of the card players in the lower level of the ship.
Once the deck was clear, Muzhik sat down on the
crate he previously rested and left the tea cup on the side. Getting as
comfortable as he could with his back laying against the rotting wood,
he raised the book and started to read it over again, as he did back in
Barcelona. In his hands, he would treat the pages with the most
cautious and devotional appreciation. For the book was a present of the
one person he would never see again.
The adventures of the deluded knight, Don Quixote,
has been his heart and mind’s fixation during the last few
months. How could he feel so warned about the tale of Alonso Quijano,
yet so related to the character? If he was still back in Russia, he
would have come back to his colleague just for the sake of presenting
the most extensive thesis ever written on the novel. Something he
already started, in a notebook full of his chaotic notes, a product of
how his passion was stronger than his usual cool and educated writing.
However, there was only one person he would like to read what he had to say about any novel.
Dear Matilde. Where in this hellish peninsula are you now?
Seven months. Seven months since last time he had
seen her face as they left for Barcelona. And ever since, communication
was completely cut. After all, they were snitched and her position,
vulnerable as coming from a humble family of Republicans, was
compromised by the former Spanish Literature professor and dean at the
university back in Galiza, who ratted them out.
That fucking old dog.
De Ascanio was always butthurt about not getting the benefits of
collaborating with Soviets as other agents undercover at the campus,
but he wouldn’t figure he would have a last laugh and make him
have to run away with his team.
He would defect for the Francoists, offered money by
the church, and specially put a price on his head as “Public
Enemy Red”. But of course, it wasn’t all about the money.
Before even the rat sold his soul for the poisoned piece of cheese, he
actively lurked and made himself the most gross of reputations as
getting close to the youngest freshmen ladies that got the luck to
study in the university. And of course, such an inhuman being would get
his fangs wet at a small, trembling prey looking Matilde, who got the
capacity of studying in exchange of her skills being at use of the
Operation Buterbrod. Poor, good for just a few things, Matilde was
pursued by De Ascanio.
What infuriated Muzhik the most was how subtle the
manipulation was. He could only wonder - what would have happened if he
didn’t come to that place? What would have happened if Matilde
wouldn’t have the courage to fight him back?
The more he let his mind wander on his memories, the
more the smell of iron came back to his senses, as if it was a live
play.
An archive room full of blood.
Stains of dark red covering the floor. The file cabinets. The wall. The
figure of Matilde looking at the ceiling, standing completely still,
and the comatose and twisted body of De Ascanio on the floor. All of
it, covered by the nastiest shade of crimson and the most putrid smell
of death coming. There were no weapons on the place.
His body started to automatically fill in the
sensations even further, as he remembered how he held her and she
didn’t respond. One thing was clear, he knew that whatever that
happened was beyond any rational force. More and more, his ideals of
killing delusions by being the deluded king himself were shattering on
small pieces. Matilde was small, and always a bit frail. If she ever
did hurt her former professor in a way that created that scene, it was
certainly not in a conventional way.
Witchcraft is just a fairy tale thing. She probably found him that way and was just too shocked to speak it out.
Muzhik diverted his mind again at the book. His
memories were starting to hurt him in both the emotional and
logical sense.
There is no point in repeating this loop over again. I won’t see her again, and probably that is the best for her.
He sipped the tea, which warmed him as he got hit with the cold sea wind.
***
Unha vez tiven un cravo
cravado no corazón,
i eu non me acordo xa se era aquel cravo
de ouro, de ferro ou de amor.
(There was once I had a nail
stuck in the heart
and I don’t remember what the nail was
of gold, of iron or love.)
Follas Novas, Rosalía de Castro (1880)
***
With the air
full of vulgarities after a rough stop, the passengers were leaving the
ship and getting their feet on the lively and discret port of Algorta,
in Getxo. Unlike the big city of Bilbao, this port was much better for
the volunteers to reincorporate once again to complete their mission
without being busted over.
Muzhik smelled the salty filled breeze and let
himself admire the place, still wary of the surroundings for any
undercover agent that would enjoy them peeled off their conflict. The
white rusty painted houses, colored with the redness of the twilight,
and terraces full of colorful plants with already fallen leaves. A big
set of stairs from the port to the elevated town in the place, full of
green and dirt. For some reason, he could tell the houses apart, as
every region in the country of Spain seemed a world of their own. And
while he knew the town had been bombed not long ago, the town stood
still proud and strong.
His comrades urged towards the inn they got their
link with the Spaniards. The infamous topic of the potato omelette was
in their mouth once more.
“Guys…not again.” Muzhik scolded in advance.
“Hey, Muzhik. How do you like it?” Yuri asked.
The question caught him off-guard. He stuttered for a moment.
“We won’t judge.” Promised Andrey.
Muzhik closed
his eyes and let his mouth remember the taste of the one he remembered
the most. His nose twitched.
“Actually, I just like it as long as it is runny and with some goat cheese inside…”
“What? Where did you eat like that?”
“Huh, uh.” He noticed he was close to
letting his mouth water. “At some collaborator’s family
house, that’s it. They liked to put whatever they had on
it.”
“Lucky bastard. The house I was in liked to
put those small devil’s tiny peppers. Fuck, they almost killed
me!” Andrey complained.
They started to bicker as they climbed the stairs
towards the inside of the town. Mood was drowned out as soon as they
saw the people there. Civil war had just ended, and despite the forces
of State having become just a bit lax in their unification of the
country, the traces of inhumanity were easy to see at first glance.
Unlike the most wild and rural places of Galiza, hidden enough of the
Juntas, the Getxoarras were clearly practicing a forced conduct of
proper mannerism - all of them spoke Spanish, and there was a clear
effort to not denote the Basque accent. Some of them spoke a broken
language or used just words, especially older people, and they resorted
to just avoiding social contact to evade any trouble.
Muzhik didn’t know how rich the Iberian
Peninsula was in terms of containing more than just one language,
hearing first Galician in Matilde’s house and she eagerly
explained about the story of the other regions. And only after a really
long passionate speech, her smile faded away explaining why the regime
was suppressing anything that wasn’t Spanish words.
The irony of it. Franco and his men would condemn
other cultures and even intellectuality, and create a homogenous
country, in their noble task to fight communism, only to become quite
communist themselves unifying the country that way.
There was no worse sin than killing the diversity
that had bloomed previously in the regions. Kids would be humiliated in
school, and the adults pursued if they even complained or joked. Much
like any banter between friends would turn you in the gulag under
Stalin’s hand.
“Do you know where the inn is?” Yuri was
looking at his notes. “I don’t see any name like the one we
got.”
“Chances are it was changed to a different
one. Even the name of the streets seem to not match any of our
information.” Andrey answered.
“Getxo was infamously ravished by the Flechas
Negras. They completely washed out almost all reference to Basque
language in 1937. Let’s try to guess properly with the physical
direction they gave us. Our inn should be passing the main plaza and
closer to the outskirts…”
“What are the Flechas Negras, exactly?”
Yuri stepped faster to match the speed of Muzhik. “Weren’t
we fighting the Legion?”
“It is a special Division of the Flechas
Battalions.” Muzhik kept a hand over his mouth to keep the sound
of his voice lower. “Flechas meaning Arrows. In particular, the
Black Arrows were a mixed Spanish-Italian aggrupation used for the
final offensives as the ones we fought in Catalonia. They would
viciously fight the far away places during the Civil War and
occupation, then wipe any individual that didn’t go by
Franco’s book against reds.”
“So, just a fancy name for another of his groups, huh.”
“Kind of. They would try to eliminate records
of cultural centers and take possession of any governing office of the
towns they attacked. They would proceed to offer salvation with the
guise of Catholicism as it was the widespread religion, but still had a
lot of people executed. It is known they would even joke about the
statistics of communist and other individuals going down.”
“Heh… they wish they knew it is just going the other way around now.”
After a bit more of walking the stone roads, the
group found the inn. It was already pitch black. Perfect to not get as
much vigilance, as of course Spaniard guards were drinking or sleeping
by the time of midnight, if not playing cards. Muzhik cleared his voice
and approached an old lady that was sitting on a stone by the door.
“Excuse me, are you selling sunflowers?”
The lady nodded. “As bright as the sun.”
“It 's safe. Let 's go.”
Muzhik helped the old lady to get up, who was being
supported with a walking stick on the other side. He also apologized
for taking so long to find the place and making her wait out in the
cold. His small team followed inside.
The bar that worked as a hall for
the inn was completely relaxed. Unusual for a Spanish drinking local,
but he guessed much that the strict catholic values were at work in
that area as well, probably enforced more by the guardias, to be
ignored by the guardias the most as well.
Old lady got close to the resting clerk, who was
cleaning some of the last glasses left by clients, and whispered
something - the clerk then woke up from his slumber and looked toward
the team.
“My pleasure. Sorry that the place is on rags
at the moment. A patrol left not long ago. One of the guards got his
daughter engaged to some big fish… They made a mess.” He
got carried away, and opened his arms toward Muzhik. Used to the
profusely physical Spanish people, even within the usually cold
Basques, he accepted the hug. “You guys are really helping
us?”
“We don’t have specific orders for
liberating any place, but certainly we have the command to fight anyone
that gets in our way.” Muzhik adjusted his glasses once more as
the clerk took a step back. He proceed to take off his fedora,
replacing his military cap for obvious reasons. “And certainly,
Franco’s choir boys do want to get in our way.”
The ever honest Muzhik took the clerk back, but
despite of all that, his now quite fluent yet distinct Siberan accented
Spanish made the old man feel confident.
“Nire etxea zure etxea da.” He let his native language to speak for his gratefulness. “My home is your home.”
“Thank you.” Muzhik managed to smile a
bit, something he barely used to do. He shook hands with the old man
and nodded. Then proceed to look at the old lady, who was quietly
sitting on one of the tables, biting on a toothpick. “Your
mother?”
“No… Old Irene was a
grandmother of two after the passing of her daughter… but then
the Flechas Negras grabbed the kids… She was getting insane
living alone, so I gave her a home here.”
Muzhik grabbed a few bills of the old Pesetas from
his coat. For the look of the old man, he guessed it was really a big
quantity. “Make her some hot chocolate right now, and keep the
rest.”
And as the clerk looked in disbelief, Muzhik got his trunk case and started to march towards the upper floors for a free room.
***
Han, hik eta nik,
biok bat,
galdera bakar bat dinagu egingo,
eta erantzun bat bakarra jasoko:
Nor zaitugu?
Zu nauzu.
There, you and I,
Two being one,
We’ll just ask one question,
and receive a single answer:
Who are you?
It's you.
Han, hik eta nik, Artze (1987)
***
Such a
long time since he felt the embrace of a proper blanket. Muzhik found
himself being actually somewhat lazy at the comfyness of a bed - a rare
sight for a sleepless man like him. Of course, the more he enveloped
himself, the more he couldn’t leave. For once, he just wanted to
take a rest instead of having an early recognition mission as he always
did in every new place he was sent to.
He looked at his feet and felt them heavy, as if he
had dead weight over them. The pressure was slight for a moment, as he
let his head wander to the pleasant pillow…only for the feet to
utter a pain that would make him awake at a second.
“Fuck!”
He got up and looked around the room. Nothing else
was there. Nothing on top of his feet. The pain almost broke his mind.
Why the hell did I
get this pain? Is my body finally giving up to old age? No, damn,
I’m not that old. Why would my body hurt randomly as if I had a
dead cat on top?
The ache reminded him of that one cat. That little
curse that his grandmother gave him as a present, so many years ago.
Such a hairy and fat cat that would love to sit on him when he was the
most comfortable. Cursing some more, he sat on the border of the bed,
looking at his feet trembling. The pain was finally going away, but the
confusion didn’t.
“Guess I should start my day no matter what.”
He got up and walked toward the window to check the streets. There was
only one guard and it was busy already downing a wine bottle. Once they
got a place secured, they didn’t seem to feel bothered of keeping
the vigilance as high as it was in the climax of the war. He wondered
how badly they would look in front of the Reich watch dogs.
He got clothed with his civilian clothes and hastily
turned himself down to the bar. He already knew the best way to get
acknowledged as a simple traveler was to look way more cheerful than
the usual Slav, and chug down a jug of alcohol right in the morning.
To his surprise, there were no more people than the
locals and his crew already munching pretty enthusiastically. The clerk
happily greeted him and made a gesture for him to get to the bar.
Muzhik approached and decided to order some coffee,
as tea wasn’t the common thing of a pub in southern Europe. The
hot beverage was served promptly with some churros on the site. He
guessed the money he gave the clerk was put to good use. The old lady
was sitting to his side and looking at him, smiling without saying
anything, and munching some churros herself slowly.
“I’m sorry that last night was cold,
mister. Autumn has hit full force this year so it became way too humid.
Would you need another blanket?”
“It was okay.” Muzhik stirred the coffee a bit with a silver spoon to cool it down.
“It was colder than a witch’s
tit.” Andrey protested on the chair by the other side of Muzhik.
“I do want that extra blanket.”
“Sure thing.” The clerk offered him a
couple of extra fried doughs to the soldier. “Anyone need
anything else?”
“Newspaper.”
The clerk went all the way from the counter to one
of the tables and grabbed the day’s newspaper and put it aside
for the breakfast he served him.
23 of October, 1940. The interview of Hendaye.
A picture depicting Adolf Hitler and Franco walking
down the Hendaye train station in France, just right by the border with
Spain. The picture immediately jumped at him as strange, as it was
probably manipulated like it was done back in the regime by Stalin.
Although rather than eliminate comrades of pictures, Franco was now
resulted with the garments displayed way brighter than they should. He
wondered if his Spanish Legion medals were originally those of the
Reichstag to please the Fuhrer.
The news also seemed bitter but still bootlicking.
Apparently, Hitler couldn’t consider Franco’s demands to
boost Spain’s economy and his ridiculous demands, from claiming
back African territories to get guns, rations and many other things
more to fight the reds in their country.
He would probably try over and over again,
considering the state of his own victory against republicans did
anything but make any good use. The constant shootings of those
against, whose mayor representantives were poets and artists that
defied the nationalist propaganda, still resonated in the big cities
where youngest people still went underground to keep it alive.
Sad that the small towns could only bow down, as
Getxo, full of family and older people, had to suffer without being
able to put up a proper fight. He looked at the clerk and Irene.
“Anything wrong, señor?”
“Nothing at all.” Muzhik left the
newspaper to the side for a bit and took a sip from his coffee.
“Do you know if there are more robins coming to the town?”
“Just another group that will arrive today. I
doubt they will stay, as they said they would go towards the woods
later, closer to the frontier, in the county of Gipuzkoa.” The
clerk commented.
“But they didn’t sound like military boys at all.”
“Hm-mmh.” Muzhik munched on one of the churros.
“Friends of yours?”
“Could be.”
Muzhik finished his breakfast and paid, despite the protests of the clerk.
He decided to pass time writing more of his essay,
entertained on the adventures of Don Quixote. He would certainly amuse
how he reached the episode where the knight fought a Basque, and of
course that would be the one that would take a challenge with such a
man, although with disastrous consequences.
His notebook was taking a polished appearance as he
finally had started organizing his thoughts linearly, with impolite
words that showed his devotion for the book. By the time the twilight
broke, he had a rough final idea he could finish later, if he was still
alive by then.
The local city hall was clearly haunted. The
decorations with the Spanish flag with the black eagle, trailing all
the inside in a feast of crimson and yellow that almost hurt his eyes,
was not in his reach.
It was only when the night came that his knife
carved the neck of the only guardia that was watching the current
shift. Almost ceremoniously, he picked the corpse of the Falangist and
pulled it far away from the light. When inspecting the hall, he noticed
a cleaning utensils cabinet. Perfect place. And thankfully, the blood
only spurted in their clothes. He got his leather gloves off and put
them in the coat, just to replace them with the wool ones. One could be
just so cautious with the finger prints. No matter how incompetent the
low rank Francoists would look, he knew the upper police could still do
a job trying to find him.
After placing the corpse, he could freely roam the
archive. Most of it was just barely some records of the new
Junta’s policies. Nothing new that he knew. His fingers worked as
fast as possible. The heads back in Moscow wanted him to find something
related to the Tree of Life. He was just clueless about what they
exactly mean by that. Was it the name of the operation overseas? Or did
they hide details of his mission on purpose?
Nothing popped out in the files at all. No folder,
no book. Anything was completely plain Civil Wars records. It was then
when it dawned on him. The Nazis were at it too, and it wasn’t
weird to see Reich insignias in some of the places where the Spanish
Nationalist made their bases as some sign of their crumbled alliance.
He looked at the place once again. No swastika was on the place at all,
either.
He had to be sharper. What could have any slight
relationship to the Tree of Life? If they trusted him with the job, it
means some intellectual capacity and love for culture should be part of
the trick to find it without the need of explicit hints. There was one
cabinet he hadn’t inspected, so he checked it out. Names of the
different Basque cities and towns that were seized during the big
offensive back in 1937, where they were sublimated violently. Right
next to Getxo… Gernika.
The tree of Gernika.
Symbol of the town that was bombed during April of
the dreadful year, lived through successors for centuries. Protected
against the Falangist who pretended to cut it down, as it was the
representation of the Basque Nationalism. A symbol of life and
liberation.
He grabbed the file and checked out. The papers
seemed just the regular blog of notes of the attacks and invasion, but
in between there it was. Only a yellowed envelope, small, and marked
down with a Nazi swastika.
“Finally, jackpot.”
He grabbed the envelope and hid it in one of the
pockets inside his coat. Then left the file as exactly as it was,
avoiding to disturb much of the dust on top of them.
Sound of soft steps resonated in the hall. He
immediately blended himself in the shadows, as far away from the window
that illuminated the main office. The sounds certainly were not of the
boots of guards. They disappeared and faded into the night. Nervous, he
got out of the hall and made sure he wasn’t being followed. The
streets were as calm as before. There were hours before the next
guardia had to replace the shift.
Muzhik finally reached the inn. It was all dark, but
he could enter the back door, towards the kitchen, with the key he was
provided by the clerk to avoid any other late trouble and closed back.
Rather than staying again, he went to wake up his team. Yuri was
sleepy, but managed to get out of bed. Andrey woke up the rest of the
members, and they all got his stuff right away as Muzhik commented it
was certainly better to leave without a trace. Otherwise, they would
probably cause suspicion on the inn workers. It was still dark when
they were ready, and Muzhik, before leaving, noticed that the old lady
was in the kitchen when they were on the way out.
“Miss Irene?” He got the key and gave it
to her. “We are going out now. If we stay longer, we could
attract too much attention. You know what I mean, yes?”
The old lady just nodded.
“Oh, and…just in case, grab this for the inconvenience.”
Muzhik got a handful of bills, not even thinking of
his budget as much as it was rational for his mission. “Make sure
they don’t find it if they come to sniff it out and then tell the
owner, yeah?” He patted the old lady’s shoulder as she
looked at the money. “We are leaving. Just pretend we never were
here and you’ll be all okay.”
They left and started to walk into the woods, inside
Euskal Herria’s heart. Muzhik gave a last look and saw the old
lady making sure the door was closed behind them.
He didn’t know that they would take a few
months before the clerk found the money, since Irene forgot where she
hid it the first time, only to appear between the foils of fat
chocolate bars for hot beverages.
***
El Árbol de Guernica ha conservado
la antigüedad que ilustra a sus señores,
sin que tiranos le hayan deshojado,
ni haga sombra a confesos ni a traidores.
The Tree of Gernika has conserved
the antiquity that illustrates it’s lords,
with no tyrants took its leafs,
nor its shadow casted over self-confesses and traitors.
Tirso de Molina, La Prudencia en la Mujer (1634)
***
There were just
a few things more tiring than traveling incognito in a country that
wouldn’t welcome you so easily. The communications with the rest
of the members was becoming scarce, and the information becoming
progressively more cryptic. Muzhik had started to feel his last threads
keeping his sanity tall and proud. Was this mission just a prank on
him? A tasteless joke, where the officer was wavering on the harshest
conditions of the Basque woods.
Navigating them at ease in the physical realm, but
his conscience started to feel separate from its own right. Only the
notes he frantically was scratching with his old fountain pen kept a
coherent telling of his achievements, every meal he ate, every guess he
made to keep forward, every stain of blood marked by the enemies he
slaughtered.
Those papers were probably the only thing that
nailed his humanity to the world. His comrades were starting to worry,
for he stopped showing any emotion on his face. Not even when the
beheaded corpse of Andrey was in his arms, after an ambush of one of
the Italian volunteers. He did remember holding the heavy body,
twitching its last warm breath on him, before starting to fall down on
the floor with a soundly thud that only the rest of them heard.
It was not the only one becoming crazy, but somehow,
the one that was feeling the contrast of the other side of the veil
welcoming him into his personal penitence.
Yuri sobbed most of the trip south, where they were
greeted with the saddened fields covered with the last dry leaves
before the winter arrived. He became much more sharp, and his
sloppiness disappeared when his bickering companion left them. Muzhik
could not muster any encouragement as he usually would. He was absorbed
in his own darkness.
They trespassed the ruins of what was left of
Gernika. The gruesome scenery welcomed them with a hiss of wind
crossing the destroyed buildings. Shambles and dust of what one time
was home to proud inhabitants, now redacted to ashes. Only a few things
standed, and proud amidst all of it, as it was protected by something
divine, the Tree.
The Son Tree, named as it was the successor of the
Old Tree, which was prepped in the middle of a small shrine as memory,
while the young tree was within the land of the House of the Juntas of
Bizkaia. It was there where in 1936, the first official political
leader of the Basques, the Lehendakari,
would form the words every other would keep as jurament in the future
years. Words that were crushed by the mere humans of their neighbors,
that turned their hopeful city into the hell’s landscape that was
now.
Muzhik, however, was guided in autopilot, and his
face couldn’t even form a face of disgust. His feet only marched
toward the Tree, where he just looked at it, trying to guess where his
next destiny was. Yet, looking at it, he couldn’t figure anything.
Yuri, observing the lost eyes of his commandant, tried to shake him off. But there was
no response.
“Comrade!”
The rest of the team looked even more dirty and ragged than before.
“Where do we go now?” Yuri insisted.
“We know the other group has passed here already. They are just a
bit away. Maybe we can reunite with them…”
“Leave it alone. Let’s just have a meal before we keep marching.”
They all left for the Casa de Juntas, abolished back
in the past century. Now just a dusty museum with old portraits, passing
through the hall to the main act room. The team sat down on the red
chairs and started to unpack the now scarce food, as they looked at the
portraits of those nobles, trying to guess who was who. Meanwhile,
Muzhik was walking slowly, as a ghost, with his mind wavering. All his
brain activity was in a passive mode, unable to tie up together the
hints until now. He could only look at the streets he was passing.
The Tree of Gernika was not the Tree of Life, but it
was a hint to find it, was it? It should be able to find a link between
the terms. He didn’t even notice he already crossed the city
towards the edge of it. Did he encounter anyone? Did he murder another
Falangist in the way? Even his sensations started to stop working, as
he couldn’t recollect any physical feeling over his own body.
Then there was a field.
A prairie that opened between a small park of other
woods, where the Old Tree was. A piece of the decaying Gernika Tree,
father of the young one at the Juntas. Getting close to it, he felt his
feet finally falter over his own tiredness. He hadn’t sleep. He
hadn’t eat. For over the last few days, his body was an avatar
for his own memories and nothing more. He knew, however. If he got
closer to the small temple, he would be liberated upon admitting his
reality has merged with another one, the one he was completely denying.
What was so bad about being deluded in his own
convictions? Was atheism such a bad thing? Negating, in favor of his
own knightley dream, like the character of the novel he still held with
him to this day? He felt the weight of that book, of all the papers he
wrote.
So heavy, in both of his body and heart, as he fell
to the floor. Panting over his own exhaustion, eager to just keep
writing some more. To keep his own façade. For he knew that
accepting the truth he came to avoid would make him an enemy of the
whole forces hunting for it.
Was it the right thing to do? To reject any leader
that would want to get ahold of the power lying ahead? Was it selfish
to act on a desire to be a hero, even if no one would sing his
greatness? Muzhik had to hold his tummy as he felt nauseous. Finally
understanding - his essay was not a way to keep himself sane and being
cautious, but to understand how everyone was crazy on their own. Driven
by our values, our ideals. And he had come to terms that his ideal was
not alienated with his comrades, at least, not as in terms of obeying
upper heads. He wasn’t also the cup of ideals for the Fascists,
either. It was somehow beyond powers, but to keep a root of peace for
humanity.
I am Don Quixote. My own delusion is my own want to protect a future where kids don’t cry and old people can just smile.
His hand reached forward and tried to keep his body
not on the floor. Slowly, he approached the temple. His heartbeat
matching the steps of his conviction. And after crawling in pain, he
finally was able to lay his fingers on the iron fence that surrounded
the temple.
And so, his conscience had just come back. His eyes
flickered. Looking upward, he saw his gloved hand grabbing strongly the
fence. Why was he holding it like it was the nail that kept him from
falling off a cliff? He suddenly felt ridiculous. Yet, his mind was
clear. The fogginess that occupied it was gone.
He slowly got up. His legs shaking slightly, and his
stomach still twisted for nausea. The feelings came all to him. Like a
fast showcase of pictures, the memories of the events between the
leaving of Getxo and until now. Anger at the loss of Andrey. The hunger
suppressed by his investigation. The sadness for the dogged down
people. His thirst for blood for all the dictators that roamed current
history. His obsession for literature and his essay just being his own
diary to understand his own convictions. And one last haze of emotion,
the one buried for even more than he wanted to admit. Longing.
“Matilde…”
He looked at the decaying wood imprisoned in the
temple. The Old Gernika Arbola seemed to look back at him.
“Matilde, where the hell are you?” He finally let his tears
run down his face. The last rays of sun, as bloody as they were during
the last days of Autumn, bathed the park.
Spurting his words without expecting an answer, for
the same he knew he wouldn’t get it sometime soon. And yet…
“I am here.”
Haha. Muzhik chuckled. I finally lost my mind, did I?
“Muzhik.”
Was it his own heartbeat? Or he was hearing the steps of soft lady shoes clacking on stone, marching closer?
“Muzhik, you should move apart from the
Tree.” The voice was clear. Unamused, soft spoken, but full of
tenderness, just as he remembered it. “You had suffered the test
of the Lady of the Woods, but if you keep closer to that power for long
after denying it for longer, it will break you down.”
The man slowly turned his face back as the steps finally stopped. There she was.
Petite. Frail. With a face of perpetual sadness.
Topped with a bittersweet smile. The figure of Matilde, covered in
strange green robes, with several fluffs and a woolen scarf, stood
there as her skirt fluttered along the wind. Her glasses would still
shine and making hard to read her eyes.
“Is this real?” Muzhik felt his body
about to fall again. No matter how strong and beastly he was, there was
something about the whole scenery that made him feel like a thin branch
that would break at any minute. “Are you real? I’m not
hallucinating?”
“If you were to not swear your convictions to
the Tree, you would have been blessed with the curse of not being able
to go back to reality again.” Matilde looked past him, towards
the temple. “But something within you seemed to please her, so
the Lady of Wood released you.”
“How do I know that is true, I
wonder…” Muzhik tried to guess and make his pace towards
her. “How do I know this is not the curse?”
“There is no worse curse than fake happiness
to crush over and over again.” She trailed a hand toward her
mouth to make some steam to warm up her face. “Does this reality
look like that you are lured from happiness to cruelty?”
He didn’t understand well. Past her, the ruins
of Gernika were still visible. His eyes now were able to also see the
people he couldn’t before.
“The goal is to find the beauty in the
ugliness.” She explained. “The other way around, it would
mean you were cursed.” Muzhik still looked puzzled and cocked his
head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to exactly
explain-”
The thigh hold of Muzhik almost crushed her like a
tiny piece of chalk. She couldn’t react more than with a squeak,
just like she always did at the touch of her dear senior.
“I’m not ever letting you behind
anymore. Fuck this mission!” Muzhik spurted as he held her even
closer. “Fuck Franco, fuck Hitler and fuck Stalin! They can all
rot in hell! I just want a world where I can be with you.”
Matilde clearly blushed and was beyond confused,
unable to keep her focus in any place as the towering shape of Muzhik
kept her pressed to his chest, to his heart. Her unlike cool started to
wear as he felt herself finally letting some of her own feelings out.
She did her best to not start sobbing loudly, but some tears made their
way out.
“Muzhik. Muzhik, we should move.” She
patted him on the ribside to make him pay attention. “The
operation has just started… it’s just not for any of those
men, but a personal war.”
“Sorry, I just… I am so
exhausted.” Allowing some breathing air, he let her get just a
bit apart, still holding her by the shoulders. “My
body…”
“It has been sustained by the Lady of the
Woods, but you should eat and drink something before it starts
decaying. Come with me. I’ll explain it in a more discreet place.
We can reunite with your crew later.”
Muzhik followed the little lady towards the prairie,
to a building close. He could only read it as a museum, but his mind
was still tired, so he failed at understanding what it was about.
“Have you been following us?”
“Huh-uhn.”
The night came fast, and only the moonlight bathed
the haunting hall, filled to the brim of scabrous wooden sculptures.
Nothing from them looked polished, but a conjunction of familiar shapes
like animals and human heads, with the most grotesque proportions. The
shadows cast by them covered Muzhik, while he watched how Matilde
navigated between them towards the stairs of the center, followed by
the eyes made out of chunks from several trees. Muzhik could almost
feel the sculptures, their own disgusting and raw artistic expression,
fruit of the harsh times and pursuit of artists, had something that
made them look alive. But not in a beautiful sense, but it was far more
mystic.
“How long have you been there?”
“Hm? Since you guys arrived at Getxo. I
finally felt your presence. I’m…” She looked away
and kept getting to the up floor as Muzhik still stood on the center of
the hall. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help you during the
test. The Lady of the woods suppressed my capacity to do so.”
“I still have no idea who that Lady
is..” Muzhik looked at a supposed horse sculpture that was beside
him. “Some kind of witch?”
“Yeah. Kind of.” She cleared her throat.
“She is finding a fit heir for her to protect the Tree of
Life.”
“The Tree of Gernika?”
“No. You already know that is not it.”
Muzhik was
having a hard time. Occult wasn’t precisely his area of
expertise. Thankfully, Matilde would be caring enough to explain
without coming across as an eccentric and pedantic enthusiast of the
matter.
“The Tree of Life is all the Roots of the
Magic Trees that are scattered across the whole world. Although, due to
the current events and the past years of violence, Gernika Arbola
condensed more magic roots to try to sustain the hope of people. But
sadly it wasn’t enough.” Matilde got curious toward a
carved painting on the wall. Her voice was echoing all the hall.
“The roots themselves are in the woods. But the Lady
wouldn’t let me know where exactly, however. For the Nazis have
seized with some of that bullshit of dark occult magic Hitler is into,
not even the woman with the most powerful magic alive can pinpoint the
place. We only guessed here, in Euskadi, there is the biggest
concentration of such power. But not the exact place.”
“And how did you know where I was? Did that
lady of the grass tell you?” He chuckled to hide his own
thinking. Somehow, he started to accept the idea of her being able to
use some magic. Maybe, that one cursed afternoon, it was only her
defending herself with such a thing…Probably just a bit over
what she would have desired, of course.
“I’d suggest you to be a bit polite
toward hers. She could get you back towards your previous state as you
have not any mana that protects you in you, you know?” She came
along the center of the glass, looking down towards the down floor
where Muzhik was. “Besides, I had a little helper, with no
restrictions, that checked on you.”
“A helper?”
“You can guess who?” Matilde got herself
comfy against the rail. Her figure becomes almost like a shiny ghost,
with a beautiful shade of pure blue covered in her. Almost perfectly,
the full moon was visible on the glass behind her. Muzhik had to gulp,
his body still craving her so much. She knew. But both of the star
crossed souls, how much clearly fated to become lovers, had to seal a
deal and put their feelings on stand-by for a moment.
A trail of soft steps, just like those that Muzhik heard back at the City Hall of Getxo,
revealed a black Siberian cat.
“Little curse!” He let out. He got down
on his knees to give the black cat some pets, something he never
thought he would miss. Yet, his loyal furry friend showed his usual
sassiness and went past him, only to get out of the building.
“Ack. Not even after months, you can be nice to me.”
He heard a chuckle. When he looked back, Matilde was
already in front of him. After skipping a few beats, she looked at her
in silence. Enduring. Sweet and huggable. Not even in his most
animosity and wild feral executions, he felt such a desire to own a
body - but only for actually loving and protecting it.
“Muzhik. Do you forgive me?”
“No.”
She opened his usual sleepy and droopy eyes. Yet, she did seem to calm down as her dear man smiled gently.
“There is nothing that I have to forgive. You still kept me sane…”
“Muzhik…” She whispered, as he
fell with his bag to the floor, and started to hastily rummage into his
things. “What are you doing?”
“Here.” The man, with his hardened face,
his now messy grown beard, and rustled hair, and his glasses broken and
fixed crudely after the constant fights, looked like some kind of crazy
theoretic frantically preparing for exposing his thesis. Which he kinda
did, as he didn’t even get up to give her his extensive notebook
and all the papers of his essay on Don Quixote. “Let’s say
the book you gave me kept me entertained for all these
months…”
Matilde grabbed the essay with the most delicate
hands, and started to read the first page. Muzhik got up, and showed
his pride. Matilde knew very well how such a scholar he was when it
came to his hyperfixations.
“This is amazing…And you say you have
done this in these last months?” Her eyes again open and read
more pages. “This is some Manga Cume Laude level
writing…”
“Well, maybe you should read the whole thing when we are saf-”
His lips were locked by hers. She, standing in her
tiptoes to be able to reach them. Warm. Trembling. Rejuvenating. Muzhik
slowly took her cheeks between his hands, and they allowed to feel all
the sensations that coursed in them. In the dark, the touch was nothing
but more intense. They didn’t know how much time passed when they
let the slow motions of their mouths get apart.
“You are right.” She smiled and closed
the notebook, pressing it against her heart. Cracking another of her
rare smiles, melting Muzhik even further. “Well, we should get
moving toward our new location.”
“And you have any hint where that magic
containment or whatever it is?” Muzhik adjusted his glasses,
trying to assert himself, just to disguise how blushing and
soul-shaking he felt at the moment. He really was realizing now - that
was
just the start.
“Well, you tell me.” Matilde looked at
him with a mysterious smile. Some kitten told me you got some intel on
the matter.”
“The only thing I ever recall
is…” He snapped. His hands rushed inside his coat, where
the hidden pockets kept away from inspection, there was the envelope.
He obsessed so much to protect it, that made him completely forget he
had it. “You mean… this?”
“Yes.” The little nerdy girl nodded.
“Only Getxo’s Junta got a copy for this mission, so
probably…”
“They will be delayed when they want to get back at us?”
“Yes. It’s time for a
counterattack.” Matilde smiled once more. He knew, all that
happened in these last months made her more confident, despite her
usual stoic face. “Let’s take those white butt fascists
down.”
Muzhik looked at the envelope. And with firm hands,
he ripped the wax seal, and revealed the documents within.
***
Yo sueño que estoy aquí
destas prisiones cargado,
y soñé que en otro estado
más lisonjero me vi.
¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño:
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.
I dream that I am here
from this prisons charged,
and I dreamt that in another
more desirable state I saw myself.
What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
a shadow, a fiction,
and the mayor good is small:
that all life is dream,
and dreams, dreams are.
Monologue of Segismundo of The Life is Dream,
Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1635)
***