The Second Son

Mila kept her eyes on her brother as he flipped to the back of the one in his hand, read it, and set it down. He stared for several moments before saying, “That’s the last?” His eyes remained fixed on the table.

“Yes,” said Mila.

Piera’s eyes moved as if he were reading something only he could see. “She wrote well.”

“She did.”

He nodded. His mind was struggling to find its way back. The eyes filled and his breathing became heavier, but he refused to cry. Mila placed her hand on his.

She said, “I don’t like the beard.”

Even his smile showed pain. “Then you’re lucky you don’t have to see it that often.” He looked at Hoffner. “Forgive me. A friend has died. I’ve just been told of it.”

It was clearly more, but Hoffner knew to say only, “I’m sorry.”

Piera tried to move past it. “You’ve been to see Captain Doval?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve come from Barcelona?”

Hoffner nodded. He had no intention of opening this up, but Piera saved him by saying, “Thank you, then. For bringing Mila. I won’t take any more of your time.”

Piera stood. He reached down and collected the letters, and Hoffner noticed how large the hands were. Odd to notice that, he thought. He watched as Piera embraced his sister. Mila was not so good with the tears. She rubbed her eyes against her brother’s shoulder. Piera released her and said, “It’s a bit strange, isn’t it?”

She stared into his face. “Yes. It is.”

“To see each other this way.”

They were finding anything to keep him from going. She nodded. “Yes.”

Piera looked at Hoffner. “She’s a doctor, you know. Did you know that?” Hoffner nodded and Piera tried a ragged smile. “Of course you knew. We could use doctors this side, too.” He looked at his sister and seemed momentarily confused.

Her eyes filled, and she said, “Be well, Carlos. God be with you.”

Piera stared a moment longer and then nodded. He looked again at Hoffner and went past him. As he walked to the door, Piera set his beret on his head. He opened the door and stepped out onto the street.

Mila watched him through the glass, even when she could no longer see him.

She said, “I asked him to come with us.”

Hoffner could only imagine that moment.

“We should go,” he said. He turned to the soldiers at the bar. “Lieutenant.” He was once again the man from Berlin. “Bring my car around. And I’ll have a cup of the chocolate with the-” He pointed to the strips of dough.

“Churros,” the man said.

“Yes. And call ahead to the city’s southern barricade. The road to Teruel. Tell them to expect us in the next half hour.”

The sky took on a deep blue just before sunset, softening a landscape that was growing more desolate by the hour. The few patches of green now came as sudden eruptions, clumps on a hillock or straggling weeds of wild brush that seemed beaten down by earth and rocks. It was a place unchanged for centuries, and it made the past a kind of comfort.

There had been no further contact with Captain Doval. The car had appeared fully gassed; the two lieutenants had been sent on their way. Nonetheless, it was now more than an hour, and Hoffner was still expecting to peer into the rearview mirror and see the dust of an approaching car rising in the distance.

Mila was staring out, her head resting back against the seat. She had slipped in and out of sleep, barely moving, not even to swat the fly that seemed incapable of finding its way to an open window. The thing battered itself against the dashboard, and she began to follow the lazy line of telephone poles, one after the other after the other.

Hoffner was fighting off his own exhaustion, the strain from his performance still knotted in his neck. Even the miracle of having come through did nothing to help. His head felt light, and there was a tackiness at the back of his throat. He imagined that nausea would follow, but for now he focused on the road.

Again he glanced in the mirror, and Mila said, “Either they’re coming or they’re not. Staring in the mirror won’t change it.”

She was suddenly aware of the fly. She followed its flight, cupped it in her hands, and held it before releasing it at the window. She closed her eyes and let the last of the sun stretch across her face.

It was nearly a minute before she said, “Do you ever miss her-your wife?”

Hoffner felt the back of his neck compress.

He had been foolish just beyond the city. He had let her ask questions. More foolish, he had answered them. Now she had Martha’s death and Sascha’s hatred to toss back at him. Seventeen years removed and he still felt the stale taste of his own arrogance in his mouth. The Nazis had been nothing then-nothing but a distant rumbling from Munich and the south. And yet he had underestimated them. He had dismissed them as thugs and charlatans, and they had murdered his wife. To have his son blame him for her death and to let them steal his Sascha away-maybe that was what lingered in his throat.

He had no strength for that past.

“The girl in the letters,” he said. “She was his wife?”

Mila took a moment before answering. “Near enough. It was a long time ago.” She opened her eyes and stared out. “She never sent them. She was killed in the fighting last week.” She looked over at him. “Do you ever miss her?”

Hoffner peered into the mirror. “No,” he said. He focused on the road ahead. “I don’t think I do.”

She nodded quietly and turned again to the window. “He was a doctor, my husband. At a clinic in the Raval. I was a terrible nurse.”

Hoffner was glad for the lift in her voice. “I don’t believe that.”

“I was. It’s what you get when you have a twenty-year-old who knows better than everyone else. They all hated me.”

“Except for this doctor of yours.”

“Yes.”

“He fell in love with you?”

“He did.”

“And he trained you?”

She smiled, recalling something. “No. He was much more of an idealist than that. He married me and took me to Moscow.”

“How romantic.”

The smile remained. “The Revolution was good for opening all those doors. He found me a place at one of the medical academies: Sechanov-old, prestigious. He was at a prison hospital: Butyrki, I think. Fu

Hoffner glanced in the mirror again. Not so hard to forget.

“It must have been cold,” he said. “Moscow-for a Spaniard.”

“It wasn’t the cold that was the problem.” A pack of cigarettes lay bouncing on the seat and she took one. She lit it, placed it between his lips, and did the same for herself. “He began to write,” she said. “Always a mistake. A pamphlet on medical reforms. They arrested him.” She spoke as if she were reading from a manual. “He was sent to build roads in a work camp near Ukhta, in the north. March of 1930. He died three months later.”

Hoffner thought to say something consoling but managed only, “I’m sorry.”

“Yes.” She was staring down at the cigarette in her hand. “Do you think you ever really loved your wife?”

Hoffner had told her almost nothing, and yet he now wondered how much she had heard. There was never any safety in this.

She wasn’t expecting an answer, and said, “I loved my husband. Very much, although it’s hard to imagine it now. I suppose you either choose to forget quickly or not at all. I chose to forget.”

Hoffner needed them past this. “And then you came home?”

There was a vague sad smile on her lips when she looked up. “No. Carlos wouldn’t be in Zaragoza now if I’d managed to make it home then.” She took a pull and spared him the question. “They arrested me a month later and sent me to a camp: Siblag, also in the north.” She thought of something and shook her head. “There was a letter I’d written, nothing in it, but I was the foreign wife of a foreign counterrevolutionary. It was easy enough.” Her voice was distant as she turned to the window. “A year in prison for two lines in a letter.”