We all do it and we all don't do it. That is to say, we all, at least sometimes, treat others unlike the way we wish to be treated: with unkindness. Alternatively, we all neglect, not unusually, to utter that kind word for usually one of just several reasons. Perhaps we don't possess confidence in articulating the needed remark. Or we aren't paying full attention to the emotional need of a particular person at a particular moment. Or we are thinking exclusively of our own desires then and there. Or, rarer but certainly not unheard of, we know the agony of our fellow pilgrim but we take pleasure in his trials while silence enshrouds our devilish delight, giving our suffering fellow man no apparent cause for protest as we sneak away, free from reproach or illusorily, for the moment, from responsibility. Or worst of all, we simply don't give a tinker's damn (or a plain one). How many moments do we endure or allow to happen, that are converted into days, then months, then years and finally for some, into lifetimes that are devoid of the kind word, the compassionate communication, the enquiry that expresses caring?
Many silences are good and necessary, I'll grant. Life might quickly devolve into a suffocating existence if one and all assumed the role of a nanny with hands and nose as invading, clawing paws and poking instrument of enslaving possessiveness: concern corrupting into cajoling or even coercion, causing privacy and peace to be lost forever. Contrastingly, we all know about modernity's vaunted and coveted "space" and how inviolate we deem our privacy and autonomy: the freedom to sit in our own room, to think our own thoughts and to derive satisfaction from the fact (or to pretend) that we have licked that old bogeyman of loneliness and have raised victoriously, the arm of its far more socially attractive cousin: aloneness. After all, we have self-help guides, gurus of the contemplative life and other champions of meditation to, in turn, hold our hands (but, alas! not literally).
Ah, the Golden Mean, as well as the Golden Rule: down with both subjugation and freedom's isolation. How do we help without hindering, heal without bringing to heel? Is love a broken gift, long since smashed, when and if the useless remembrance to stamp "Fragile: Handle With Care" on it is at last heeded? This I know: there is no such thing as too small a kindness. This should cheer those who suppose their gifts trash. It is more difficult to believe in the converse: that there is no such thing as too great an unkindness. Christianity teaches this, but it's a hard lesson. And the world clearly has not or will not yet learn it.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Dad and Jack E. Leonard, Circa 1962
My Dad, Salvatore J. Salemi was a very hardworking, primarily self-employed vendor in the retail fruit and produce business, spanning eight decades. A most loving and compassionate guy, he was also a decorated combat veteran of WWII and, to reemphasize, nearly a workaholic, who did not suffer fools when it came to his livelihood. After about 35 years as owner and/or operator of various stores in Queens, N.Y., he was convinced by my Mom and favorable circumstances, to relax a bit from his six day work weeks of 12-16 hour days, to accept a part time position in the Produce Dept. of the Madison Avenue Gourmet Shop which was, appropriately, on Madison avenue in the vicinity of East 63rd street in Manhattan.
It must have been about 1962, because I recall Dad remarking that he had had the pleasure of serving various stellar customers there, including I believe, the father-in-law of the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. These persons (including Jacqueline herself on one occasion), were likely introduced to my Dad by his employer. Beyond knowing who the current Commander-in-Chief and First Lady of our nation were, Dad's lifestyle for most of his adult life (and even some of his pre-teen years) precluded any acquisition of extensive, or even much beyond rudimentary knowledge about celebrities of the stage, screen, radio, television, society or politics. He was just too busy working. Friendly to a fault and with an irresistible personality that drew customers like flies to honey, but again, unaware of the identities of nearly any celebrity, including theatrical pranksters of any kind, Dad was vulnerable while quite literally, minding his own business one particular day. Enter: Jack E. Leonard.
Self-service was still a relatively new concept in the world of retail shopping in the early 1960s, even in the fresh produce field, especially in an upscale non-supermarket, and Jack made the most of his opportunity to examine the merchandise. He pawed many a melon and when "squeezin' became less pleasin'" he went on to the next fruit, then the next, and the next and still another: all the while remarking with increasing vocal volume, about the inferiority of each fruit, directing his comments of disapproval more and more directly to the person of my Dad whose undivided attention he was now happily (unhappily for Dad) receiving. Dad kept his powder dry ("the customer is always right"), but when Jack decided to up the ante by sending several bananas airborne, Dad had had enough. The biggest bouncer at Jack Dempsey's had nothing on my Dad at that point. With all of his 5'6" frame and 129 lbs., he collared the taller and more than portly Mr. Leonard and started to give him the bum's rush. An associate and a small crowd of customers relinquished their front row seats to the fun to rescue Jack, quickly explaining to Dad who the "nut" was. Dad didn't give a hoot. This made Jack, who no doubt had been charmed like everyone else by Dad's naturalness, love him even more. The famed comedian extended his hand and with that ever present cigarette with its extra long ash in the other, then reached out and hugged Dad, thanking him for putting up with the mayhem.
Back home early one evening several months later, after years of Dad being nonplussed after reading to him the list of guests on television's "The Tonight Show" on any given night, I had this time simply said "Dad, Jack E. Leonard is on!" He finally looked up.
It must have been about 1962, because I recall Dad remarking that he had had the pleasure of serving various stellar customers there, including I believe, the father-in-law of the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. These persons (including Jacqueline herself on one occasion), were likely introduced to my Dad by his employer. Beyond knowing who the current Commander-in-Chief and First Lady of our nation were, Dad's lifestyle for most of his adult life (and even some of his pre-teen years) precluded any acquisition of extensive, or even much beyond rudimentary knowledge about celebrities of the stage, screen, radio, television, society or politics. He was just too busy working. Friendly to a fault and with an irresistible personality that drew customers like flies to honey, but again, unaware of the identities of nearly any celebrity, including theatrical pranksters of any kind, Dad was vulnerable while quite literally, minding his own business one particular day. Enter: Jack E. Leonard.
Self-service was still a relatively new concept in the world of retail shopping in the early 1960s, even in the fresh produce field, especially in an upscale non-supermarket, and Jack made the most of his opportunity to examine the merchandise. He pawed many a melon and when "squeezin' became less pleasin'" he went on to the next fruit, then the next, and the next and still another: all the while remarking with increasing vocal volume, about the inferiority of each fruit, directing his comments of disapproval more and more directly to the person of my Dad whose undivided attention he was now happily (unhappily for Dad) receiving. Dad kept his powder dry ("the customer is always right"), but when Jack decided to up the ante by sending several bananas airborne, Dad had had enough. The biggest bouncer at Jack Dempsey's had nothing on my Dad at that point. With all of his 5'6" frame and 129 lbs., he collared the taller and more than portly Mr. Leonard and started to give him the bum's rush. An associate and a small crowd of customers relinquished their front row seats to the fun to rescue Jack, quickly explaining to Dad who the "nut" was. Dad didn't give a hoot. This made Jack, who no doubt had been charmed like everyone else by Dad's naturalness, love him even more. The famed comedian extended his hand and with that ever present cigarette with its extra long ash in the other, then reached out and hugged Dad, thanking him for putting up with the mayhem.
Back home early one evening several months later, after years of Dad being nonplussed after reading to him the list of guests on television's "The Tonight Show" on any given night, I had this time simply said "Dad, Jack E. Leonard is on!" He finally looked up.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
To Serve (Part 2)
Heriberto awakened to the sound of a dull thud near his head. A whining and sputtering were also detected above him as he pulled on his trousers and shirt. His comrade, and more importantly, good friend Corporal Leandro Escobral y Aloma entered the tent and advised him and the three other occupants to go to their battle stations. "Cabo, es un 'Chato'?" asked Blazquez. "Si, senor. Es raro ahora!" remarked Leandro. They both knew of course, that the fact of the obsolescence of the Russian bi-plane, its numbers decimated since '36, made its unlikely appearance not in the least any less dangerous. The man from Zaragoza thought of his neighbor's grandfather, who nearly twenty years earlier had run over the old man's sister-in-law with an old Peugeot flivver that he had always complained about, its cranking a constant bother, the vehicle seemingly impossible to start. Down into the trench nearest his abandoned sleeping quarters, Heriberto checked his Astra 400 sidearm and adjusted a helmet he hadn't strapped on for days. The Reds were hellbent to make up for what they lacked in numbers and technology with their vaunted "revolutionary spirit." All morning the exchange of artillery and mortar fire went on, though the 'Chato' for now, did not return. To become inured to such unpleasant noises, whether from the earth or the sky, it was perhaps best, if one could achieve the state of mind in which one was unwilling or unable to imagine what an accurately aimed missile would mean. Heriberto and Leandro were somewhat accomplished in this art, the latter more successful, his civilian life in Orense province as a subsistence farmer enhancing his congenitally fatalistic outlook. A sunny disposition surely was his, but the swarthy and diminutive Senor Escobral y Aloma knew that crops or bullets had their own kind of autonomy and this clearly contrasted with Heriberto's belief that the world was a place that his hands and mind could mould and tame. They were drawn to each other, not just as opposites attracting, but because they sensed each other's decency and abhorrence for the madness even as they determined to do their duty.
Blazquez was using a Mauser, model 1916, known as a "short." He was no marksman, but thankfully, he thought, there was nothing or no one close enough to shoot at during much of that morning and early afternoon. Glad too was Heriberto because there had been no bayonet charges from either side, as he had experienced a few weeks earlier. The chaos and terror of battle nonetheless, of course, held sway and several confusing orders moved men and materiel around and about with no seeming purpose until a fix on an enemy position shortly before one o'clock brought concentrated artillery fire on a now particularly active sector of Republican forces. The barrage went on for some forty minutes and counterattacking efforts were neutralized with the help of some withering enfilading fire to the west of Blazquez's unit. Catching his breath after another attempt at strafing (by probably the same 'Chato' of early that morning) was thwarted by a pair of Fiat CR.32s, Heriberto was surprised by his own glumness when he thought of the probability that these planes with markings of the "Aviacion Nacionalista" were flown by pilots who were not Spaniards. Then he thought of the Genoese priest who had shared the awful photo album with him and his local priest and had visited Heriberto's ailing grandfather one afternoon, playing checkers with him and telling funny tales in broken Spanish. He felt ashamed of his ingratitude. Now he turned towards the place where Leandro had stood behind a greasy pile of sandbags that had been smeared by a smashed jerrican of motor oil and rainwater. He was not there. Out of habit he looked towards the ground, steeled against any flinching of the sight of a crumpled body as he had seen too often in the fighting in the Auts. There was no one. He looked up and down the length of the trench and toward some other positions not far from the holding pen that last night held three prisoners including the American. No sign of Leandro. A curious calm seemed to encourage a search, as if the war had been temporarily postponed so that he might seek his friend at his leisure. He sought permission from Sargento Ojeda to leave his position, but could not find him either. He decided to simply ask a comrade who shared his tent, Soldado de primera Raimondo. He was not able to help, Blazquez belatedly remembered, as all this raw recruit's energy was devoted, as usual, to standing and maintaing his position while fighting against a shivering of his body that could not be explained by any inclement weather or other external cause. Raimondo was a good man, but his limits needed to be understood to extract the best performance from him. Attention to the movements of Cabo Escobral y Aloma and Sargento Ojeda was too great an expectation of him.
A mortar round came crashing in about fifty yards from Heriberto and he refocused very speedily on the task of staying alive, though he did not stop thinking about Leandro. Sporadic fire, mostly small arms, commenced and lasted for about fifteen minutes and then stopped. His Mauser rifle had performed well, Blazquez thought, while holding fire though still squinting and aiming into the middle distance at a clump of hedges. The sudden odor of sulfur startled Blazquez and he heard the voice of Ojeda behind him within a puff of smoke, its origin a mystery to the Zaragozan. "Come with me, Cabo Blazquez!" said the sergeant. He followed immediately, even before Ojeda had completely come into view. He was led to the far end of the trench towards the other positions near the holding pen and then quickly to the open gate of the "al fresco" gaol that now held two prisoners. They hugged the ground in very shallow depressions, the taller one with a pot for cooking over his head and the other donning a "poilu's" helmet, dented and strapless. Inscrutable were they, both Madrilenos, who had been and no doubt would continue to be, neither dissembling nor forthcoming. Ojeda spotted the "carcelero" who closed and locked the gate with a mannered nonchalance. "Donde esta el norte americano?" barked the sergeant. The jailer cast his eyes while jerking head and neck in the same direction: towards no-man's land several dozen yards away through the dusty beams of sunlight and haze. There was Leandro, towered over by Philmont, but gripping in one hand the end of a stout rope knotted around the P.O.W.'s wrists that were behind his back and pulled taut, its other end forming a kind of short leash and held in Leandro's other. The man from Orense marched the prisoner back to the holding pen and saluted Ojeda (while acknowledging his friend) as soon as the "carcelero" had trained his Astra 300 on Philmont. Leandro explained that he had given this man some water upon request while enroute to spell the jailer at his battle station. Philmont had stepped back from the gate's chicken wire still holding the cup given to him and had turned his head pretending to have been distracted by something. His body lurched forward unexpectedly, shoulder and head down like an American football lineman, as he crashed into the flimsy door of the pen and knocked Leandro, on the other side, nearly off his feet. Philmont had bent the gate's frame just enough to squeeze his body through the opening created. He tried to sprint, but he lumbered instead like a drunkard imagining an olympic prowess. The man from Orense, fleet of foot, had pounced on the prisoner just as he approached the edge of no man's land and they struggled for several minutes at close quarters. Unarmed, Leandro had managed to subdue the bigger man with a well placed kick to his groin. Several bullets whizzed by both men and Philmont thought it best to fight another day. Why the Madrilenos did not make a break for it was the difference between their prudence and experience and Philmont's zealotry and hatred.
Ojeda ordered the hulking Moroccans to accompany Philmont to a rear echelon. His life was likely forfeit. Blazquez's mind flashed back on yesterday evening. The decision to not deal with this troublemaker then, like a watchmaking problem he thought best to "sleep on", now began to trouble him insistently. He tried to shrug it off as he started to return to his post. Now as Philmont and his guards receded into the distance, the sight of Leandro on the ground stunned the Zaragozan. Another rifleman, an older rotund man, spotted the fallen man at the same time and they leaned down to learn the problem. Leandro's eyes were open and unblinking. Heriberto called out his name inches from his right ear. "Medico!" he then shouted, tuning out what he sensed, while turning plaintively to no one in particular. "Es muerto, senor" said the soldier to Blazquez.
Coroners were a luxury, as were so often, medics. Carrying the body back to near Leandro's post, a surprisingly sharp eyed Raimondo spotted the entry point of the small caliber bullet that had caused no easily noticeable bleeding. A clot at the site behind his left ear had proven an effective stopper, explained a belatedly arrived medic. A burial detail was out of the question until these firefights were totally at an end. Blazquez wept silently, tearlessly and briefly, shoulders shaking until he willed himself to a state of grim stoicism and shoved down into a black pit every tender feeling that had arrived uninvited, each one of which he sentenced to oblivion, like a stern judge dealing with hopeless reprobates.
He continued to fight and fix timepieces, unlike most any Franquista soldier. He never interrogated another prisoner. Ojeda wanted to investigate Heriberto as well as the "carcelero" and Leandro's strange movements before his death, but the war's fury crowded out such matters. The year waned. Heriberto did not learn the fate of the foreigner. The winter brought a grip to Blazquez that worsened into pleurisy shortly after the new year. The assistant to General Valino, most pleased with Heriberto's work, arranged for a brief furlough when his condition had at last improved by late January. This kind of holiday was almost unheard of in this particular unit. Heriberto was preparing to go home when news of his cousin Antonio's death came from his father in a simple note unmarked, i.e. with no black bordered envelope to warn him. Like Horacio, the end had come unnaturally and malevolently. And, as when the chattering of the "Chato" was heard and when the Norte Americano's ugly grin was seen, his muscles tensed half way through the reading of his father's words: "members of an underground kind of Guardia Civil took a foreigner into custody in connection with the murder. The Reds' grip on Barcelona is now loosening. A surviving witness said men calling themselves 'anti-Fascists of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade' had strung up Antonio after he had already been knifed. All but one of the Reds seemed to have escaped." "My cousin was a clerk in a forgotten civil court for traffic fines and squabbling neighbors. A damned clerk! How did that merit the grave?" he thought. Blazquez's emotions were so mixed at this juncture: going home, his friends still fighting, his brother Horacio long gone, Antonio: one of his favorite uncle's only son never to go home, thoughts of Leandro, and the recurrence of the invasion into his world of this entity known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. "Who are these people? What do they know of the Spanish people? What do they want?" The Lincoln that he read about was a liberator, not a communist. The man his history books mentioned was a person who understood sorrow, easily offering his compassionate ways and forgiveness, even toward his defeated enemies. "Why do they robotically do the bidding of monsters like Stalin in the name of the Great Emancipator?" Many of these thoughts had come to Heriberto before and he would only occasionally give them voice, and only with the ease and comfort that came when talking to Leandro. Now he thirsted for a companion or at least a listener.
A bottle of wine, a rare block of a few hours of off duty time, a great need and the propinquity of Sargento Ojeda: all emboldened Blazquez one evening to speak to him of some of these thoughts. Ojeda was not dismissive for once. He warmed to one particular enquiry. "Why NOT 'Lincoln' brigade? Or 'Jefferson' brigade or 'Confucius brigade?' These little darlings, children of the Father of All Lies, would be smashed like rotten gourds on cobblestones by 'El Diablo' for waving a banner of Truth in their ranks: like the image of a piece of excrement on a field of blood red. Their Lord and Master would be incensed if they spoke truth. Of course sweet lies and the invocation of great men's names would be part of their plans. Are they not 'Bolsheviks?' The word is Russian for 'majority.' Another lie and a most useful one at the time to try to puff up seemingly their not so swollen ranks and so to impress the people." Ojeda paused, as if remembering the chain of a cistern he had forgotten to pull on. A curious light came into his eyes and he spoke almost as if offering the secret of the location of a beloved fishing hole. "Forget about all this 'cabo.' Have another glass before you return to your watch fobs and think of we poor fools in these trenches when you kiss your sweetheart back in Zaragoza. And even if she has found another, there is a road and vista just a few kilometers north of your town that will make you forget war, sickness, death and even fickle ladies. I'll wager that you do not know it. Go there, 'cabo.' Adios." There had been very little rancor or envy in the sergeant's tone thought Heriberto as Ojeda walked away, and for once, Heriberto wished there was time to discover more of this human side of his immediate superior. His heart was still heavy, but he felt less alone. A flare went up in the near distance and he said a quick "Hail Mary" that his journey would come to pass and safely. END OF PART 2
Blazquez was using a Mauser, model 1916, known as a "short." He was no marksman, but thankfully, he thought, there was nothing or no one close enough to shoot at during much of that morning and early afternoon. Glad too was Heriberto because there had been no bayonet charges from either side, as he had experienced a few weeks earlier. The chaos and terror of battle nonetheless, of course, held sway and several confusing orders moved men and materiel around and about with no seeming purpose until a fix on an enemy position shortly before one o'clock brought concentrated artillery fire on a now particularly active sector of Republican forces. The barrage went on for some forty minutes and counterattacking efforts were neutralized with the help of some withering enfilading fire to the west of Blazquez's unit. Catching his breath after another attempt at strafing (by probably the same 'Chato' of early that morning) was thwarted by a pair of Fiat CR.32s, Heriberto was surprised by his own glumness when he thought of the probability that these planes with markings of the "Aviacion Nacionalista" were flown by pilots who were not Spaniards. Then he thought of the Genoese priest who had shared the awful photo album with him and his local priest and had visited Heriberto's ailing grandfather one afternoon, playing checkers with him and telling funny tales in broken Spanish. He felt ashamed of his ingratitude. Now he turned towards the place where Leandro had stood behind a greasy pile of sandbags that had been smeared by a smashed jerrican of motor oil and rainwater. He was not there. Out of habit he looked towards the ground, steeled against any flinching of the sight of a crumpled body as he had seen too often in the fighting in the Auts. There was no one. He looked up and down the length of the trench and toward some other positions not far from the holding pen that last night held three prisoners including the American. No sign of Leandro. A curious calm seemed to encourage a search, as if the war had been temporarily postponed so that he might seek his friend at his leisure. He sought permission from Sargento Ojeda to leave his position, but could not find him either. He decided to simply ask a comrade who shared his tent, Soldado de primera Raimondo. He was not able to help, Blazquez belatedly remembered, as all this raw recruit's energy was devoted, as usual, to standing and maintaing his position while fighting against a shivering of his body that could not be explained by any inclement weather or other external cause. Raimondo was a good man, but his limits needed to be understood to extract the best performance from him. Attention to the movements of Cabo Escobral y Aloma and Sargento Ojeda was too great an expectation of him.
A mortar round came crashing in about fifty yards from Heriberto and he refocused very speedily on the task of staying alive, though he did not stop thinking about Leandro. Sporadic fire, mostly small arms, commenced and lasted for about fifteen minutes and then stopped. His Mauser rifle had performed well, Blazquez thought, while holding fire though still squinting and aiming into the middle distance at a clump of hedges. The sudden odor of sulfur startled Blazquez and he heard the voice of Ojeda behind him within a puff of smoke, its origin a mystery to the Zaragozan. "Come with me, Cabo Blazquez!" said the sergeant. He followed immediately, even before Ojeda had completely come into view. He was led to the far end of the trench towards the other positions near the holding pen and then quickly to the open gate of the "al fresco" gaol that now held two prisoners. They hugged the ground in very shallow depressions, the taller one with a pot for cooking over his head and the other donning a "poilu's" helmet, dented and strapless. Inscrutable were they, both Madrilenos, who had been and no doubt would continue to be, neither dissembling nor forthcoming. Ojeda spotted the "carcelero" who closed and locked the gate with a mannered nonchalance. "Donde esta el norte americano?" barked the sergeant. The jailer cast his eyes while jerking head and neck in the same direction: towards no-man's land several dozen yards away through the dusty beams of sunlight and haze. There was Leandro, towered over by Philmont, but gripping in one hand the end of a stout rope knotted around the P.O.W.'s wrists that were behind his back and pulled taut, its other end forming a kind of short leash and held in Leandro's other. The man from Orense marched the prisoner back to the holding pen and saluted Ojeda (while acknowledging his friend) as soon as the "carcelero" had trained his Astra 300 on Philmont. Leandro explained that he had given this man some water upon request while enroute to spell the jailer at his battle station. Philmont had stepped back from the gate's chicken wire still holding the cup given to him and had turned his head pretending to have been distracted by something. His body lurched forward unexpectedly, shoulder and head down like an American football lineman, as he crashed into the flimsy door of the pen and knocked Leandro, on the other side, nearly off his feet. Philmont had bent the gate's frame just enough to squeeze his body through the opening created. He tried to sprint, but he lumbered instead like a drunkard imagining an olympic prowess. The man from Orense, fleet of foot, had pounced on the prisoner just as he approached the edge of no man's land and they struggled for several minutes at close quarters. Unarmed, Leandro had managed to subdue the bigger man with a well placed kick to his groin. Several bullets whizzed by both men and Philmont thought it best to fight another day. Why the Madrilenos did not make a break for it was the difference between their prudence and experience and Philmont's zealotry and hatred.
Ojeda ordered the hulking Moroccans to accompany Philmont to a rear echelon. His life was likely forfeit. Blazquez's mind flashed back on yesterday evening. The decision to not deal with this troublemaker then, like a watchmaking problem he thought best to "sleep on", now began to trouble him insistently. He tried to shrug it off as he started to return to his post. Now as Philmont and his guards receded into the distance, the sight of Leandro on the ground stunned the Zaragozan. Another rifleman, an older rotund man, spotted the fallen man at the same time and they leaned down to learn the problem. Leandro's eyes were open and unblinking. Heriberto called out his name inches from his right ear. "Medico!" he then shouted, tuning out what he sensed, while turning plaintively to no one in particular. "Es muerto, senor" said the soldier to Blazquez.
Coroners were a luxury, as were so often, medics. Carrying the body back to near Leandro's post, a surprisingly sharp eyed Raimondo spotted the entry point of the small caliber bullet that had caused no easily noticeable bleeding. A clot at the site behind his left ear had proven an effective stopper, explained a belatedly arrived medic. A burial detail was out of the question until these firefights were totally at an end. Blazquez wept silently, tearlessly and briefly, shoulders shaking until he willed himself to a state of grim stoicism and shoved down into a black pit every tender feeling that had arrived uninvited, each one of which he sentenced to oblivion, like a stern judge dealing with hopeless reprobates.
He continued to fight and fix timepieces, unlike most any Franquista soldier. He never interrogated another prisoner. Ojeda wanted to investigate Heriberto as well as the "carcelero" and Leandro's strange movements before his death, but the war's fury crowded out such matters. The year waned. Heriberto did not learn the fate of the foreigner. The winter brought a grip to Blazquez that worsened into pleurisy shortly after the new year. The assistant to General Valino, most pleased with Heriberto's work, arranged for a brief furlough when his condition had at last improved by late January. This kind of holiday was almost unheard of in this particular unit. Heriberto was preparing to go home when news of his cousin Antonio's death came from his father in a simple note unmarked, i.e. with no black bordered envelope to warn him. Like Horacio, the end had come unnaturally and malevolently. And, as when the chattering of the "Chato" was heard and when the Norte Americano's ugly grin was seen, his muscles tensed half way through the reading of his father's words: "members of an underground kind of Guardia Civil took a foreigner into custody in connection with the murder. The Reds' grip on Barcelona is now loosening. A surviving witness said men calling themselves 'anti-Fascists of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade' had strung up Antonio after he had already been knifed. All but one of the Reds seemed to have escaped." "My cousin was a clerk in a forgotten civil court for traffic fines and squabbling neighbors. A damned clerk! How did that merit the grave?" he thought. Blazquez's emotions were so mixed at this juncture: going home, his friends still fighting, his brother Horacio long gone, Antonio: one of his favorite uncle's only son never to go home, thoughts of Leandro, and the recurrence of the invasion into his world of this entity known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. "Who are these people? What do they know of the Spanish people? What do they want?" The Lincoln that he read about was a liberator, not a communist. The man his history books mentioned was a person who understood sorrow, easily offering his compassionate ways and forgiveness, even toward his defeated enemies. "Why do they robotically do the bidding of monsters like Stalin in the name of the Great Emancipator?" Many of these thoughts had come to Heriberto before and he would only occasionally give them voice, and only with the ease and comfort that came when talking to Leandro. Now he thirsted for a companion or at least a listener.
A bottle of wine, a rare block of a few hours of off duty time, a great need and the propinquity of Sargento Ojeda: all emboldened Blazquez one evening to speak to him of some of these thoughts. Ojeda was not dismissive for once. He warmed to one particular enquiry. "Why NOT 'Lincoln' brigade? Or 'Jefferson' brigade or 'Confucius brigade?' These little darlings, children of the Father of All Lies, would be smashed like rotten gourds on cobblestones by 'El Diablo' for waving a banner of Truth in their ranks: like the image of a piece of excrement on a field of blood red. Their Lord and Master would be incensed if they spoke truth. Of course sweet lies and the invocation of great men's names would be part of their plans. Are they not 'Bolsheviks?' The word is Russian for 'majority.' Another lie and a most useful one at the time to try to puff up seemingly their not so swollen ranks and so to impress the people." Ojeda paused, as if remembering the chain of a cistern he had forgotten to pull on. A curious light came into his eyes and he spoke almost as if offering the secret of the location of a beloved fishing hole. "Forget about all this 'cabo.' Have another glass before you return to your watch fobs and think of we poor fools in these trenches when you kiss your sweetheart back in Zaragoza. And even if she has found another, there is a road and vista just a few kilometers north of your town that will make you forget war, sickness, death and even fickle ladies. I'll wager that you do not know it. Go there, 'cabo.' Adios." There had been very little rancor or envy in the sergeant's tone thought Heriberto as Ojeda walked away, and for once, Heriberto wished there was time to discover more of this human side of his immediate superior. His heart was still heavy, but he felt less alone. A flare went up in the near distance and he said a quick "Hail Mary" that his journey would come to pass and safely. END OF PART 2
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