The Second Son: A Novel Read online

  “No chess tonight?”

  “There’s chess every night. Later. Down in the Raval. Seedy and smoky. Just right.”

  “I met a Bulgarian who finds it rather silly—chess as sport.”

  “I find Bulgarians rather silly, so I suspect we’re even.”

  Vollman had spent the better part of the past ten years in Moscow, teaching something, playing chess. He said he liked the cold.

  “You just happened to find yourself in Park Güell tonight?” Hoffner said.

  “They say you can’t leave the city without seeing it. Here I am. Seeing it.” Vollman looked past Hoffner to Barcelona. “Peaceful, isn’t it? Sad how we both know it won’t be that way much longer.”

  Hoffner measured the stare. Whatever else Vollman had been doing in Moscow, he had learned to show nothing in his face.

  Hoffner said, “I’m sure they’ll have a wild time of it when the Olimpiada starts up.”

  Vollman’s stare gave way to a half smile. “Oh, is that what I was talking about? The Olimpiada.” He finished his cigarette, dropped it to the ground, and watched his foot crush it out. Thinking out loud, he said, “I suppose it’s what you’re here to film, what I’m here to do. Much simpler seeing it that way.”

  Hoffner had felt a mild unease with Vollman the other night. This was something more.

  Vollman said, “I don’t imagine either of us will be in Barcelona much longer, do you?” He looked directly at Hoffner. “All those fascist rumblings in the south—Seville, Morocco. Only a matter of time.”

  Again, Hoffner said nothing.

  Vollman pulled out the pack and tapped out a second cigarette. He lit it and spat a piece of tobacco to the ground.

  “Fascist rumblings?” Hoffner said blandly. “I hadn’t heard.”

  Vollman’s smile returned. “Really? A German, working for the English, in socialist Spain just at the moment the fascists are thinking of turning the world on its head, and he hasn’t heard. How remarkable.” He gave Hoffner no time to answer. “What are you, Georg, twenty-nine, thirty?”

  Hoffner was twenty-five, but why give Vollman more ammunition?

  “Something like that,” Hoffner said.

  “Then you’re still young enough to take some advice.” Vollman spat again. “We both know why you’re in Barcelona. Which means the Spanish know why you’re here. And if the Spanish know—well, wouldn’t you think the Nazis would know as well?”

  Hoffner didn’t like the shift in tone. “And do the Nazis know why you’re here?”

  Despite himself, Vollman liked the answer. Again he smiled.

  “English, Russians,” he said, “Italians, Germans. Aren’t we all just waiting for the Spaniards to figure it out for themselves? And when they do”—Vollman shook his head with as much pathos as a man like him could muster—“that’s when we take sides. And that’s when the real games begin.” He took a last pull. He was oddly quick with a cigarette.

  Hoffner said, “You mean when they start killing each other.”

  Vollman hesitated even as he showed nothing. He tossed his cigarette to the ground and then bobbed a nod out at the city. “You keep on getting whatever it was you were getting. When you need more, you know where to find me.”

  Vollman started off.

  “It’s Paris,” Hoffner said.

  Vollman stopped. He turned.

  “The city of lights,” Hoffner said. “Not good to be confusing Paris and Barcelona these days.”

  Vollman waited. There was no telling what he was thinking. He said nothing and moved off. Hoffner watched as Vollman stopped for a few moments by the lute player, dropped a coin in the man’s hat, and headed for the stairs.

  * * *

  Back at his room, Hoffner was finishing his third glass of whiskey when he placed an empty sheet of paper on the desk. His head was spinning—from Vollman, from the booze—but there was always one place he could go to clear his mind.

  He began to write.

  A ladder?

  Brilliant, Papi. Make sure the gardener doesn’t take a shovel to your head the next time.

  It’s past eleven. They’re all heading off for dinner, so you’re the best I can do for company. Don’t pat yourself on the back. I’ve had a few, and we both know what that does to my letters to Lotte. You won’t tell her.

  I can’t promise coherence. Then again, there isn’t a lot about Spain these days that inspires it, so I think I won’t worry. Oh, and there’s nothing else to tell about the police, except that their hats are ludicrous. I’d try to draw you one, but it would come off looking like a dying bat or a headless peacock. Wonderfully appropriate but not terribly accurate.

  So that leaves the politics. Yes, the politics. At last. Just for you. I can hear you laughing. I had a strangely unnerving conversation tonight—the place seems to thrive on strangely unnerving conversations—but there’s no point in going into that. Still, it put me in the frame of mind.

  You’d feel right at home. It’s like Berlin after the Kaiser, except here the Lefties manage it without a dinner jacket or soap. They take the worker thing very seriously. Lots of shirtsleeves and bandanas. It’s Mediterranean Marxism, which has a kind of primitive feel to it—everyone sweating and opening shirt buttons and going without shoes. They have rallies all the time and write large, imposing posters with lots of dates on them. Women wear trousers a great deal, which seems to go counter to the whole heat-inspired politics of the Left. Wouldn’t a dress be cooler? It makes you wonder how much the cold had to do with paving the way for Hitler, but that’s for another time. (If the line above is blacked out by the censor, I probably deserved it, so don’t worry.)

  I’ve met anarchists and socialists. I’ve eaten with Communists and anarcho-syndicalists and Marxist-nihilists, and something simply referred to as a non-Stalinist Soviet. I thought the person introducing me was talking about a kind of napkin until a very earnest young woman began to spew in a much-too-quick Spanish for me to follow. Best recourse is just to nod.

  The bizarre thing is that they all seem to think they’re the ones running the show. Not together, of course. That would be asking too much. (At least Weimar got that right for a while.) The socialists hate the anarchists. The anarchists hate the Communists. And the Communists have no power whatsoever and seem to hate even themselves.

  I think there’s a central government somewhere, but Barcelona doesn’t like to admit that. The Lefties they elected in February—socialists calling themselves a Popular Front, which is bizarre when no one really likes them and they’re well behind the curve at every turn—are a kind of mythological beast that shouts at everyone from Madrid and tells them how to be proper Lefties—who to adore, who to hate. This week, I think it’s the anarcho-syndicalists—I still have no idea what that means—whom we’re all supposed to be burning in effigy. And that’s just the boys who are in their own camp.

  It gets much easier when they turn to the Right. There it’s basically two groups that the Lefties scream at—hard-line monarchists and hard-line fascists, and both of them marching with crosses. Very big crosses. Vast crosses. Epic crosses. There’s a scent of the Crusades in all this.

  The first call themselves Carlists. They want the king back. Very Catholic. Lots of pedigree. Spanish arrogance drunk on holy water.

  The second are the Falangists, a version of Mussolini’s Fascisti, although I suspect they find Hitler just as inspiring. They’re relatively new. I think they invented themselves around the same time the Reichstag burned. Catholic (as long as the priests tell the people to follow them). Militarists. And hell-bent on rooting out anyone who even recognizes the name Marx.

  Unlike the Left, the boys on the Right actually talk to each other. That makes them far more dangerous.

  It’s only a matter of time before it all blows up. So it’s going to be news, and that means you’ll have to bear with me. You’ll also have to make sure Lotte can bear it as well. I need you for that. I’m asking you for that. Not for too long, I
hope. But then there are always those unnerving conversations.

  Anyway, I’m losing my train of thought. And I’m tired. That seems to be a constant.

  I imagine most of this letter is blacked out. I know. My apologies.

  Watch the papers. It won’t be long. And Pathé Gazette will be there.

  Cock-a-doodle-doo,

  Georg

  He was right, of course. The opening ceremonies of the Olimpiada Popular, slotted for the nineteenth of July, never happened. Instead, two days earlier, all hell had broken loose.

  * * *

  The first reports started arriving on the afternoon of the eighteenth. They were of no help, wires and rumors coming in from Morocco and the south: ten dead, then fifty. Something had happened in Melilla on the northern coast of Morocco; a colonel had arrested a general. The question was, was the colonel on the Left or the Right? More than that, whose soldiers were dying, and what were they dying for? By the time Georg made it to the consulate for confirmation, the number was at two hundred. A fascist group of officers—calling themselves rebel Nationalists—had secured all of Morocco, and another group on the mainland was heading for Seville.

  Georg read the wire from the prime minister in Madrid—THEY’RE RISING? VERY WELL. I SHALL GO AND LIE DOWN—and knew the Lefties had no idea what they were in for. By 9 p.m., word had come through that Queipo de Llano—one of the more vicious generals in the uprising—had marched into Seville with four thousand rebel fascist soldiers and taken her in a matter of hours. Queipo was clever: he simply arrested and shot anyone who wouldn’t join him.

  Hoffner took his camera and headed for the Rambla. Everyone was out. News never waited long in Barcelona.

  There were already loudspeakers up on the trees, music for the most part—for some reason Rossini was getting the majority of the playing time—but every so often an announcement would come through:

  “These are isolated incidents.”

  “The government has put down the failed military rebellion.”

  “Do not take matters into your own hands.”

  “Anyone arming himself will be arrested.”

  The anarchists were not so convinced. Georg latched onto a small group who were more than eager to have a foreigner film their fight to save Spain.

  Down at the harbor, while waiting for more men to arrive, Georg found a sheet of paper and began to write to his father:

  11 p.m. The place is madness. They’ve already started putting up barricades, waiting for God knows what out of the barracks. An hour ago I saw thirty men armed with knives, bats, and guns that hadn’t been used for over twenty years. They broke into a police armory. The commanding officer handed out every last weapon before joining them.

  These are anarchists. They know what happens if the army finds no resistance. Women are armed as well. I suspect I’ll be seeing children. They speak about the fascists as if they were an army of foreign conquerors—not Spaniards, not brothers. They have no shared history. They are the enemy.

  We’re down at the docks. The smell of fish is overwhelming, nets abandoned, the heat suffocating. Food will be crucial soon enough, but it’s guns they need now. We’re crouching behind a pair of trucks. I’ve heard the crack of rifle fire from time to time, but everything is strangely calm. My group is after the ships. There’s a shipment of dynamite on one of them. No organization. They simply wait for critical mass and then run at what they need. They’ve told me where they want me to stand as I film. They want it filmed.

  Fifteen more arrive. They don’t look like revolutionaries. They wear trousers, leather shoes, well-shaved. Each has the red and black bandana around his neck. They, too, are glad I’m here.

  We’re not the rebels, one of them tells me. We defend what is ours. The fascists are the enemy of Spain.

  They ask me to film them as they crouch behind the trucks. They run and I film.

  They’re on the ships now. Either they’ll come back or they won’t. I’ll give them another ten minutes, and then I have to get back up the Rambla. We’ll see where I sleep.

  * * *

  Throughout the night, the workers found guns and rifles and grenades and fitted trucks and cars with armor plate. And they waited. Georg stole two hours of sleep at a café, Tranquilidad, on the edge of the Raval. It was an anarchist stronghold. News kept pouring in until the first real shots came just after dawn.

  10 a.m. I’m in a building across from one of the big fountains, I can’t remember which one. We’ve been on our feet, running from barricade to barricade for the last three hours. The smell of horse manure and blood comes up at you everywhere you go. Someone handed me a pistol. I haven’t had to use it yet.

  The entire country is in it now. Madrid sends orders that aren’t orders. The Republican government—anarchists, socialists, Communists (imagine those meetings)—are letting everyone run free. The prime minister is gone. His replacement, Barrio or Barria (no one speaks clearly enough for me to catch the name), lasted for all of about two hours. The fascist generals are claiming control of a third of the country—it’s inconceivable how easy it was for them—and we’re focusing on taking the telephone exchange.

  We’ve heard of churches pillaged, priests beaten (or worse). I saw something I couldn’t understand. A man next to me explained. Nuns, he said. Mummified corpses of nuns dragged out onto the streets. You could see the ripped cloth around the bodies, the bones. They were thrown across the steps to the church. I wanted to look away, but there’s no doing that through the viewfinder. My hand cranks and it all happens. I’ll burn the film.

  We’ve just heard there’s a battalion of Falangist rebels getting ready to take the Diagonal (they’ll cut the city in half if they do). There’s also an artillery regiment of fascist rebels marching from the Sant Andreu barracks—90,000 rifles inside. Whoever gets the Diagonal takes Barcelona. My hotel is under rebel control. I suppose I won’t have time for a nap.

  While Georg found another safe nook, a General Goded was arriving by seaplane from Majorca. He had been told to take the city for the rebels. He wasn’t counting on the Guardia Civil joining the workers, a column of four thousand men, eight hundred of whom were climbing the Via Laietana toward the Commission of Public Order. The crowds roared, rifles and fists reached to the skies, and the Republican fighters—with some crack sniper fire—retook the Ritz and the Colón, while the anarchists overran the telephone exchange. And all this by 2 p.m. It was now just a matter of time before the fascists were done for.

  4 p.m. Only a few pockets left. Hard to think I would have been up in the stadium right now, seeing flowers and doves and hearing anthems for the games. It’s unimaginable.

  I’m in the Avenida Icaria, down near the water. They’ve turned huge rolls of newsprint into barricades. It’s keeping the fascist regiment from the Sant Andreu barracks back. The other rebel soldiers are cut off.

  There was a moment of remarkable bravery a few minutes ago. A rebel machine gun was wreaking havoc. Two workers stepped out from behind the barricade and, raising their rifles over their heads, began to walk toward it. It was startling to watch from the barricade. It must have been even more so at the machine gun, because the firing stopped. The two workers shouted to the rebels that they were firing on their brothers.

  “Your officers have tricked you!” one of them shouted. “You must fight for Spain, not against her.”

  They continued walking, rifles over their heads. A minute later, the rebel soldiers turned their machine gun around and began to fire on the fascists. It was—I don’t know what it was. The rebels surrendered a minute later.

  It gives me hope.

  Two hours later, General Goded admitted defeat on the radio and was promptly shipped off to face court-martial. So ended the first full day of civil war in Barcelona. Six hundred lay dead, four thousand wounded.

  As for the People’s Games, Spain was well beyond games.

  * * *

  After that, there were no more letters from Georg. There
was nothing more from Georg. Nothing.

  And his silence headed east.

  2

  BERLIN

  “You’re a Jew, then?”

  Pimm was dead. It was six months since they had pulled the body from the water, a single shot to the back of the head. Several of his boys had been posted to the usual spots where things tended to float up—down by the grain mills, or along the little inlet just beyond the Oberbaum Bridge—but it had taken almost a week before one of them had spotted him.

  Not that it should have come as a shock. Run with the syndicates, swim in the Spree. That was the old line, and even bosses weren’t immune. Tach and Wetzmann had been idiots back in 1916, trying to horn in on Pimm’s hold on the Turkish sugar market. What had they expected? Both had ended up bobbing against the rocks. Still, the Spree was usually reserved for ratchet-and-pick men or a sloppy garrote. Bosses usually got better.

  Things had changed, though. They had changed, and the world had watched and applauded or turned away, or whatever the world does when these things happen. The new boys wanted things cleaned up—they were very keen on cleaning—and criminals were an easy target.

  “Herr Hoffner?”

  Kriminal-Oberkommissar Nikolai Hoffner looked back across the desk. He was finding his mind wandering these days—to Pimm, to Martha, even to Sascha—especially when the windows were so tall and the sky beyond such a nice clean gray. The office was a throwback to the Kaiser’s Berlin, a vast hall with two-story drapes held tightly among the rococo swirls of gold inlay that followed the moldings up and around. Above, someone’s idea of an Arcadian romp filled the ceiling and spilled down onto the upper reaches of the walls, although even the little cherubs seemed smart enough not to stray too far down. A portrait of Hitler hung behind the desk: best to remain out of the Führer’s gaze.