A Necessary Action (28 page)

‘So it was Ramon Alemany’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did you go with him then? You could have stayed on the boat?’

Willi Mohr did not reply at once, but looked at the portrait of the Caudillo. Finally he said: ‘I didn’t want to let him go alone.’

The answer was a dangerous one but truthful.

Sergeant Tornilla’s next question showed that he was either going to ignore the logical continuation or else save it for some later opportunity. He said: ‘So you went ashore. What happened then?’

‘We walked round just looking for a while.’

‘For how long?’

‘All the afternoon.’

‘And nothing unusual happened?’

Willi Mohr looked at the portrait again. The photograph had been heavily touched up and there was a vague halo round the General’s egg-shaped head. Screwed to the bottom edge of the frame was an engraved brass plate, and to gain time, he laboriously spelt his way through the inscription.

He understood the thread of this harangue only, but at once thought of the labourers up on the road works and the Asturians along the road to Santa Margarita and the nuns and their syringes and dirty black robes. Then he grew conscious of the silence in the room and lowered his gaze to Sergeant Tornilla, who was sitting absolutely still, waiting for an answer, his gaze steady and his fingertips together.

‘Ramon Alemany drank,’ said Willi Mohr.

‘A lot?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he get drunk?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he usually get drunk?’

‘This was the first time during the trip.’

‘Was there any unpleasantness?’

‘The police came.’

‘Why?’

‘He was very drunk and was accosting women outside a bar.’

‘Was he arrested by the police?’

‘No, but they took us down to the quay and let me take him on board.’

‘Had you been drinking yourself?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I very seldom drink.’

‘You told me yourself that you’d been drunk in the puerto, didn’t you?’

‘That was much earlier.’

‘That’s right. That was much earlier.’

Sergeant Tornilla looked at him long and thoughtfully, before picking up a piece of paper apparently at random from the desk.

‘Good, that saves you the bother of reading aloud again.’

Sergeant Tornilla smiled gently and silently ran through the typed sheet. Then he looked at Willi Mohr and said, as if answering a question that had never been put: ‘Senora Thorpe once more. Seems to enjoy telling what she knows, that lady. She went of her own accord to my colleague in Majorca and told him this some time ago. She happened to hear the story by chance in Ajaccio after you had gone, and she also says she was very upset, as she has always been very particular about the people working on board the
Monsoon
behaving properly. Was pleased to testify to your good character. According to my spokesman, the German behaved with presence of mind and irreproachably, she says, while the other man behaved worse than a pig.’

He placed the paper in the file and added: ‘She doesn’t say anything about the cleaning this time.’

As usual, the little joke was a prelude to a change of scene. Tornilla straightened his back a fraction and placed his hands on the desk, palms down on the blotter, as if just about to rise

‘We’ll go on to the next day,’ he said, ‘that is, the fifth of May. What were you doing on that day?’

Willi Mohr had felt danger coming and had held his breath. Now he felt a great liberating relief.

‘Don’t know,’ he said.

‘Try.’

‘I don’t even remember where I was.’

‘You were in Ajaccio.’

‘That’s possible.’

‘It was your last day in Corsica.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘How did you leave the island?’

‘By boat.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘To Marseilles.’

‘How did you get a ticket?’

‘I bought it.’

‘You had stayed in Ajaccio for ten days after signing off the yacht. Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where did you live?’

‘In a boarding-house.’

‘What did you do during those ten days?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Didn’t you go out?’

‘Seldom.’

‘Who were you waiting for?’

‘No one.’

‘Did you pay your hotel bill?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you pay for your boat ticket?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you visit the Spanish Consulate in Marseilles?’

‘Yes.’

‘What for?’

‘To get an entry-visa.’

‘Did you pay the stamp fee?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you came here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you pay for the trip yourself?’

‘Yes.’

‘You always pay for yourself?’

‘Yes, when I have money.’

‘Did you pay the fee at the Consulate in French currency?’

‘No.’

‘You had money with you when you entered the country, although you didn’t declare it at the currency-customs at the border?’

‘Yes.’

‘From whom did you get all that money?’

Willi Mohr did not reply to the question. He looked stubbornly at the shiny black boots under the desk and waited for the question to be repeated, or followed by another one. The seconds went by, lining themselves up into a long, silent minute. And another and another. And yet another. And yet another. And yet another. But of course he was misjudging the time; a minute did not go by so quickly. He glanced at his watch. It was ten to twelve. He began to watch the second hand wandering round the face of his watch with small, short steps. One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten.

He shuddered and found he had lost count. Then he raised his head. Sergeant Tornilla was still sitting there with his hands on the desk, watching him, but his gaze was unclear and his face with its plump cheeks and strong dark eyebrows looked relaxed and expressionless.

He’s had a stroke and lost his power of speech, said Willi Mohr silently to himself, and the next second he thought that if this were a joke and designed to distract him, then it had not worked. He tried to stare into those brown eyes, but was able to hold his gaze for only a few seconds.

He crossed his legs and looked at the portrait instead, again spelling his way through the inscription on the brass plate. Then he cleared his throat and said: ‘What does that mean there beneath the portrait?’

Sergeant Tornilla neither moved nor spoke.

Willi Mohr realized that he was sitting uncomfortably and changed his position again. He tried to relax and think of something else, such as the cat or the dog, but it did not work and instead of relaxation he felt a rising desire to talk or listen or at least move.

He listened, but all there was to hear was the silence. Not a sound came from the man in uniform and even the buzzing of flies had stopped. When he looked up, he saw only two small flies circling round the light, always exactly opposite each other, the glass shade between them, engaged in a grotesque, silent roundabout dance.

He dug into his pocket for his Ideales, took out the packet and placed it on the edge of the desk, sat a moment with the unlit yellow cigarette an inch away from his lips until he said, calmly and politely: ‘Please would you give me a light?’

Silence.

After a minute or so, Willi Mohr took the cigarette out of his mouth and carefully put it back into the packet. Then he sat still. He made no attempt to look into the other man’s eyes, but looked intently at his hands instead. Somewhere or other he had read that no man could help being irritated if one demonstratively looked at his hands.

Sergeant Tornilla’s hands were lying absolutely still. His fingers were short and a little fat, but only slightly sunburnt, very well-kept, with neatly polished nails.

Willi Mohr raised his right hand and scratched the back of his neck, a purely reflex action which annoyed him intensely. When he began to itch again, he controlled himself and kept his hands still.

A little later he had to change position again because his right leg had begun to go to sleep. As he was moving anyhow, he took the opportunity to scratch his head and between his shoulder blades. That was a big mistake; he saw he was behaving like a caged monkey in a menagerie and the measures he was taking were also quite pointless, as the itch immediately grew worse and spread to other parts of his body.

He began to think about the silence. Despite its elasticity it had from the beginning been very small and enclosed and compact, but as it continued it began to vibrate. The more it was
extended, the more brittle it became, and the higher grew the number of oscillations. It undoubtedly had a breaking-point but he did not know this point’s place in time and was convinced that Tornilla did not either. But he knew that sooner or later he would open his mouth and begin talking. He would answer and the answer would be a very full one. Then it would be over. But first the silence must reach breaking-point. Perhaps that was not so far away. He felt the pressure within him mount and grow explosive and importunate. Many months ago he had become aware that this pressure existed, but it had never been anywhere near as strong as it was now.

Strangely enough he was not sleepy. But that was not strange at all. The crucial moment was all too close.

Nevertheless he went on trying to find ways out, inventing possibilities.

There were only three. That the man on the other side of the desk would collapse, that someone would come into the room, and that the telephone would ring.

The light might possibly go out, but that would not make any essential difference.

The thought of Tornilla collapsing was unrealistic, and in all probability no one would come into the room. So there was the telephone left. He had never heard the telephone ring of course, but on the other hand he had never before been here in the daytime. He delved even further into the world of clichés and thought: There’s always got to be a first time.

For nearly an hour his whole mind was concentrated on the telephone. Then he decided to count to a thousand, slowly and silently to himself, without moving his lips, and if the telephone had not rung by the time he had finished—

The thought broke there.

One—two—three—four—five—six—seven …

 … five hundred and ninety-eight—five hundred and ninety-nine—six hundred—six hundred and one …

Willi Mohr fainted and fell off the bench. He lay on the stone floor with his eyes closed, half on one side with his head thrown back and his knees bent.

Sergeant Tornilla leant forward in his chair and placed his wrists against the edge of the desk. He moved his shoulders and
legs and exercised his fingers. Then he yawned, took a cigarette out of the green packet and lit it. As he smoked he sat hunched up slightly, his left elbow on the arm of the chair and his finger running over his cheek up towards his eyebrows, as if to check whether the growth had already begun to make itself felt. His gaze was directed straight out into the room, but it looked as if he were not really seeing anything.

When he had about an inch left of his cigarette, he extinguished it carefully in the ash-tray and folded the stub in the middle. Then he yawned again, pulled out a drawer in the desk and got out a tube of simpatinas. He shook two of the small white tablets into his hand and looked at them for a moment before grasping the earthenware jug behind his chair and swallowing them with a gulp of water.

Then he got up and walked round the table, the jug still in his hand.

Willi Mohr opened his eyes. His face was wet and he saw the shiny black of boot legs a few inches away from his nose.

Sergeant Tornilla had not bent down, but was standing upright with the water-jug in his hand, apparently looking down at him from a preposterous height.

As Willi Mohr began to get up and was leaning on his elbow, Tornilla put the water-jug down on the wooden bench and walked back to his seat on the other side of the desk.

‘Get up and sit up,’ he said.

Willi Mohr obeyed. He sat down on the bench, picked up the jug and brought it up to his mouth. He drank for a long time, with deep gurgling gulps.

Sergeant Tornilla sat at his desk, in exactly the same position as before, watching. After a while, he said: ‘Well? From whom did you get all that money?’

Willi Mohr felt more confident now, despite his recent collapse and the fact that his head was still empty and whirling. The telephone had evidently remained dumb, but similarly nothing unexpected had happened and he had not been the one to break the silence. He glanced down at his watch and saw that it was already a quarter-past two. The previous silence had lasted more than two hours then. The present one lasted only a minute or so.

‘From Ramon Alemany.’

‘So he gave you at least twenty thousand pesetas then? I must say, that’s a considerable sum.’

‘No. I stole it.’

His reply seemed to overwhelm or surprise the man in the armchair in some way. But he asked immediately: ‘Didn’t you find it strange that a poor fisherman like Ramon Alemany should have so much money on him, to steal?’

There was a brief pause before the word steal, very brief, but quite noticeable.

‘Yes,’ said Willi Mohr.

Sergeant Tornilla smiled kindly and put his hand in his pocket.

‘You asked me for a light,’ he said. ‘Here you are.’

Willi Mohr took out one of his yellow poor-man’s cigarettes and began to smoke.

‘My German isn’t good enough for me to give you a perfect translation of the text on that portrait, but naturally I shall make an attempt. Let me see now, it would run roughly like this: General Franco, our undefeated Leader, beneath whose invincible sword the National Army is covered in glory, General Franco, who at the head of the Salvation Movement defends and vindicates before the whole world our beloved Spain and her sacred name, in a manner that arouses a universal wave of rapture, respect and admiration, the Leader of Spain, by the Grace of God. That’s it, roughly.’