The Sun and the Snow

By Rodrigo Royo

NOVEL OF LOVE AND WAR AMONG THE MEN OF SPAIN'S BLUE DIVISION SENT BY SPAIN TO FIGHT IN RUSSIA IN 1941

First published in its English translation by Anthony Kerrigan in 1956, this novel is an account of the Spanish nationalists who fought against the Soviets—as well as loyalist refugees—on the Eastern Front during World War II.

Here, Spanish journalist and writer Rodrigo Royo recounts vividly his experiences as a former member of the famed “Blue Division” that was sent by Spain to fight in Russia in 1941. After the war, he became attached to the United Nations in New York as correspondent for the Madrid daily, Arriba.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eschenburg Press
• Release date: Apr 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789121889

Rodrigo Royo

RODRIGO ROYO (1922-1982) was a Spanish journalist and writer. He was born Rodrigo Royo Masía in Ayora, Spain in 1922. In 1941 he enlisted in the División Azul (Blue Division) of the Spanish Army and fought on the Eastern Front, where he was wounded. On his return to Spain he wrote several accounts of his war experiences. He studied at the Escuela Oficial de Periodismo (Official School of Journalism), graduating in 1944. He also studied law and political science at the Universidad Central de Madrid (Central University of Madrid). He subsequently became a foreign correspondent for the Arriba newspaper in Washington, D.C., and also collaborated with publications such as Haz magazine and the Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia Española. Royo was the editor of Arriba from 1960-1962 before launching the newspaper SP, a Falangist editorial line that maintained a critical position against the Opus Dei. Royo was appointed editor of the newspaper Informaciones in 1980. He died in Madrid in 1982. ANTHONY KERRIGAN (1918-1991) was an American poet and translator of works by Spanish and Latin American writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Camilo Jose Cela and Jose Ortega y Gasset. He also translated Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations by the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, which earned Kerrigan a National Book Award in 1973. His own poetry was published in three collections: Lear in the Tropic of Paris (1952), Espousal in August (1968) and At the Front Door of the Atlantic (1969). He was born on March 14, 1918 in Winchester, Massachusetts, but lived in Cuba until the age of 12. In 1988, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded him a grant for lifetime contributions to American letters. He was also a senior guest scholar at the University of Notre Dame and at Indiana University. He died in Bloomington, Indiana, on March 7, 1991, aged 72.

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Text originally published in 1956 under the same title.

© Eschenburg Press 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE SUN AND THE SNOW

by

RODRIGO ROYO

translated by

ANTHONY KERRIGAN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

CHAPTER ONE 5

CHAPTER TWO 10

CHAPTER THREE 22

CHAPTER FOUR 29

CHAPTER FIVE 42

CHAPTER SIX 55

CHAPTER SEVEN 66

CHAPTER EIGHT 81

CHAPTER NINE 92

CHAPTER TEN 105

CHAPTER ELEVEN 112

CHAPTER TWELVE 119

CHAPTER THIRTEEN 123

CHAPTER FOURTEEN 128

CHAPTER FIFTEEN 134

CHAPTER SIXTEEN 138

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 148

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 150

CHAPTER NINETEEN 162

CHAPTER TWENTY 175

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 178

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 184

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 194

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 208

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 218

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 229

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 234

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT 238

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE 244

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 253

DEDICATION

To Maria Francisca and Clemencia

THE SUN AND THE SNOW

CHAPTER ONE

SNOW. Nothing else could be seen from the tower of the Orthodox hermitage. In every direction, snow and more snow, an immensity of snow. And it was still snowing. The snowflakes fell thickly, and yet parsimoniously, with an anxious, irritating languor. It had been snowing in this fashion for forty-eight hours, without a moment’s halt, always at the same pace. The flakes were thick and corpulent, and waddled petulantly in the quiet air of the Russian winter.

The soldier on guard duty in the tower followed the flakes with his eyes, watching for the moment they would hit the ground, as if they might then make some noise and break the stillness. But they went on falling without producing the slightest sound, as if death were inside them. Inside them, and outside, and around all the millions and millions of impassive flakes.

Whenever it snowed like this, nothing could be made out. Everything appeared equally white and oppressive. A thick white gauze which sometimes seemed like a backdrop, very far away, hung on the edge of the horizon; and then again the snow took on the appearance of a ball of cotton on a branch, within which the entire universe was enveloped. In accordance with military regulations, the sentry was forced to keep watch from the tower, despite the snow.

There’s no logic in the Army, no logic worth a damn, the sentry said aloud, speaking to himself.

His name was José Luis Alonso; he had not meant to give form to any definite thought about logic or the Army. He was merely testing his lips, experimenting to see if he still maintained sufficient control over them to articulate words, after having spent more than an hour in the exposed tower in a temperature of twenty-five degrees below zero.

Yes, that’s better. It’s all right, he said, when he realized his mouth was not frozen. And then, continuing the bent of his observations on logic he spoke aloud again: What weather! If the Russians happen to attack on a day like this, we won’t see them until we rub noses....But what’s the difference? Let them come on when they want to.

José Luis Alonso was a rank and file infantryman in the Blue Division. He belonged to the Third Company of the 263rd Regiment, known also as the Vierna Regiment, from the name of the colonel in command. For two months José Luis had been detailed to stand watch from the top of the tower twice daily, one hour for each watch. With the arrival of December, the days had grown shorter and an hour a day by each man remaining in the platoon was sufficient, for the day did not begin until nine o’clock and by three o’clock night had already fallen on these Nordic latitudes. The coldest Christmastide in Europe for a hundred years was approaching.

By dint of frequenting the lookout, José Luis had begun to accommodate himself. His post was a kind of fortified sentry box which had been installed in the campanile of the tower. If it were not for the cold, he would have felt at home. But the Russian weather was ferocious. One gets accustomed to anything, he thought, and yet....Suddenly he burst out again, unconscious of whether or not his lips were moving as he exclaimed, half in thought: Get used to this cold? My foot!...No son of a bitch, not even a Russian, could ever get used to this cold.

His actual task was simple enough: the object of his stay in the campanile of the tower was to watch any possible movement on the part of the enemy. On clear days, the Russian positions on the other side of the Volkhov River could be observed with amazing clarity. But when it was snowing as it was now, three people riding the same donkey could not have seen each other, and, in consequence, the sentry could simply forget the enemy’s existence. He was forced to keep his post, nevertheless, freezing his bones, for the express purpose, apparently, of proving the absurdity of Army routine.

But on clear days, when the Russian air was like crystal, the sentry on duty in the tower had little trouble in watching the enemy lines for any possible movement. In order to sound a warning the guard was equipped with a primitive telephone; this device consisted of a long cord leading to a tin can which was filled with stones and which hung in the dugout close up under the hermitage. Whenever he saw something of interest the sentry would pull on his end of the cord and thus send the stones dancing in the tin can in the dugout.

The telephone! Don’t you hear the telephone? You, Eugenio, go and find out what’s going on, Corporal Pacheco bellowed at one of his men.

Eugenio, utterly discomposed and growling to himself, stuck his head out the opening of the dugout and hollered: What’s up?

A Russian company is leaving the woods and heading toward the town, the sentry yelled back at the top of his lungs.

Corporal Pacheco scurried to the lieutenant’s dugout with the information. The lieutenant seized the real telephone and talked to the captain. It was no longer an affair which concerned the soldiers in the dugout. Still, within a few minutes, the sentry in the tower would have the pleasure of seeing the Russian company on the run as the shells from the six-inch howitzers began to fall.

Delighting in the spectacle, the sentry stretched as high as possible to watch the scene, which unfolded some three miles from his position. He began to roar with laughter, and shout imprecations at the enemy.

All of a sudden there was a spray of sub-machine gun fire from the other side of the river. The laughter froze on the sentry’s face, as the beams which held up the cupola of the tower began to explode shreds of wood. He ducked behind the stone parapet; as soon as he was sure he was not hit, he began a new, but somewhat modified series of invective.

He knew exactly which Russian sub-machine gun had fired on him, and he waited for his revenge. For the moment, there was nothing else he could do. He let a few seconds go by, and then peered out a corner of the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the continuing effects of the artillery fire. He drew back almost at once. Then he pulled on the telephone line for the second time.

Tell those bastards to lay off, will you? he yelled now. There’s not a man in sight over there. They’ve disappeared. But there’s one other thing needs attention. There’s a Russian machine gun over there beside that house with the shot-up roof, right in front of us; it’s giving me a hard time up here. Tell the corporal. It’s to the left of the house, seven or eight yards to the left.

A little later the communication system was again in operation. A minute after the conversation on the field telephone, the artillery fire ceased; but then some mortar shells began to fall near the house with the ruined roof. The mortarmen were firing 81 mm. mortars from the river bed where the company commander had set up his command post. The mortar shells sowed the ground inch by inch, and suddenly the Russian marksman and his sub-machine gun blew up in bits, the parts flying up into the air confusedly together.

Fuck you, you bastard, the sentry bellowed from the tower by way of funeral oration.

This kind of thing, and others like it, might occur whenever there was good visibility. José Luis was much more at ease on the clear days than on these days of continuous snow. There was much greater danger on clear days, of course, especially for the sentry on duty in the tower, and then the temperature sank to fifty degrees below zero. But it was worth the trouble, for on a day of heavy snow like this one the very lice went mad with boredom and roamed around in a frenzy.

Yes, there could be no doubt of it, the front was much more enjoyable on a clear day. From time to time, a man might move from one spot to another behind the Soviet lines. Or some Russian women, as close to the lines as they could get, would make an attempt to wrest some roots or potatoes from the black and fertile Russian earth, which had acquired, under the thick layers of snow, the hardness of steel. Or, a troika might even appear on the distant horizon. In short, something diverting was constantly taking place. On cloudless days, the sun shone from a taut sky—a frozen, melancholic sun which was like the landscape. But, for the Spanish soldiers, to see the sun, even though it gave no warmth, was like seeing the face of a saint. In the tremulous light of its rays the sentry was enabled to indulge in the sights afforded by the height; he might even be able to imagine himself in his own sun-drenched country. Less than 200 yards away lay the River Volkhov, frozen to rock bed, twisting, forming an S curve in front of the position. On the other side of the river were the Russian positions: some half-shattered isbas beside the forward Russian trenches; behind, stretched a bare, white plain flanked by woods on the left and a hamlet on the right. Beyond everything, on the other side of the horizon it seemed, lay the ocean of spray which was the Russian steppe.

Whenever the Spanish sentry caught sight of a Russian moving from one point to another he cocked his gun, in the manner of hunters who hunt partridges with decoys, and waited. Several minutes might pass thus, waiting in ambush. He knew that the Russian had gone to fulfill his bodily needs, to relieve himself, and that he must return as he had come. At last, the Russian started back. The Spanish sentry, posted in the cupola of the tower like a lookout in the mast of some ship sailing through the icy waters of the Pole, took careful aim and lowly fired. Automatically, as soon as he heard the whistle of the bullet, the Russian dropped to the ground.

I know I didn’t hit you, old fox, but wait a bit, and the sentry got ready again.

It was a moment of extreme tension, for it was a matter of tenths of a second, just as when the setter has already pointed and it is impossible to tell exactly when the rabbit will pop out or in what direction he will go. Suddenly, the Russian soldier leapt up and set off in desperate flight, zig-zagging, his body bent down to the snow; the Spanish soldier followed him in his sight and fired the second shot, but that, too, missed.

You got a good scare anyway....And now, I know what’s in store for me.

The sentry crouched behind the parapet and listened to the bullets as they began to fall around him. The Russian had sprayed him with his sub-machine gun; it was a Soviet custom, made possible by American lend-lease, which permitted the Russians to expend ammunition without rationing. The sentry was prepared for the Russian gesture, however, and he listened to the sound of the falling bullets as if they had been rainfall. If he had been able to locate the position of the Russian firing at him he might have sent word to the mortarmen; it was not easy to do so unless he could watch for the gunflashes, however, and that was impossible without exposing himself.

But all this was something which might happen on a clear day. And now, in the enervating boredom which overcame him, in the midst of that overpowering monotony of snow, José Luis was trying to light a cigarette and could not. It was forbidden, in any case, to smoke on sentry duty; but that was not the reason he failed to smoke now. The fact was that the soldier’s fingers were so numb they were incapable of the simple but delicate act of taking out and lighting a match.

José Luis stared impatiently down below. His relief must soon be due, for he could no longer feel either his hands or his feet; his face he could feel only as frozen into some kind of an idiot’s grimace. His very mind, his thoughts, were frozen.

The silence was absolute. The snow was so thick that the enemy lines were obliterated. The quiet, which seemed vertical and descending, was accentuated by the subtle, silent and poetic fall of the great snowflakes. Moved by impatience, José Luis peered out the window and searched the blackness below as far as he could penetrate. He could scarcely make out the entrance to his dugout, which was at the very foot of the tower. He could see, as if in a dream, the Russian cemetery which circled the hermitage and among whose tombs the Spanish lines were dug. The Spanish had made an attempt, in digging their trenches, to avoid desecration and destruction, and the sentry’s gaze now traveled over the humble obelisks and tombstones which still stood and which the snow was gently and piously covering, as if protecting the dead from a second, more violent death.

In the midst of this ineffable Dostoyevskian landscape, José Luis felt an impulse, an urgent desire to put an end to it all, to dissolve his substance into a flake of snow. At great intervals, the sound of a single rifle shot would ring out or a machine gun would rattle, but everything sounded far away and muffled. Every noise was drowned in the recently fallen snow, as if absorbed in an enormous and magical sponge of silence.

Through the snow José Luis Alonso at length managed to see a soldier leaving the dugout and approaching the tower. A few seconds later, he could hear the noise made by his replacement as he clambered up the wooden ladder to the belfry. The sentry’s face was like stone, and he still wore the idiot’s grimace, but he managed to call out the challenge:

Halt! Who goes there?

Spain! answered the voice from below. It was El Nene.

José Luis slung his rifle over his shoulder and began the descent, moving torpidly; he neglected even to greet his relief, and said not a word. Since his fingers were useless to him, he hung on to the ladder by bending his wrists over the rungs. Each step of the way he was forced to look down to check his passage, for his feet told him nothing and he could not feel whether or not he had reached the next rung.

At length he found himself at the entrance to the dugout. The snow was falling with the same tantalizing insistence as before, disconcerting in its universal whiteness. Atop the dugout there was a small Spanish flag, stiff and faded; the soldiers made a point of planting it on the deepest drift. At the moment it was half-hidden, and José Luis stopped to raise it again, using both hands, one held against the other; he pulled it up, shook it out, and planted it again, as high as he could. Then he pushed aside the canvas which covered the entrance to the dugout; a warmish, fetid breath of foul air hit the soldier full in the face which the cold had turned to stone.

That air would have made the most callous man vomit, but to José Luis it smelled of glory.

CHAPTER TWO

THE SOLDIER entered the dugout with leaden feet. His comrade Eugenio was killing lice by the light of an oil lamp. Corporal Pacheco seemed to be lost in contemplation, his blue eyes fixed among the embers still glowing in the brick and clay stove; his red beard two months old, shone in the light of the coals, and his kindly face had the appearance of an early Christ in an Italian painting. His mystic aspect, however, did not accurately mirror his thoughts, which were utterly depraved. He and Eugenio had been discussing women; the latter had alluded to the virtues of the thin ones, the former had cited the value of the meaty. The pair never agreed on anything, and were therefore necessary to each other; they passed all their time arguing; it was the only pleasure they had ever squeezed out of the present war.

The corporal had fallen silent, thinking of the girls he had known; he tried to recall them in every detail, and went on to imagine the women he was still to know, what the knowledge of them would be like, how he would kiss them, mouth, neck, ears, and elsewhere, his strong fingers sinking into their naked shoulders, how he would....He went over the entire field, fixing finally on a creature of imagination, with round and robust bosoms, and he ended by wondering if he could do what he wanted now that he had a large, thick beard. He wondered, too, if the women would like his beard.

Maybe they’ll like it, he said, translating his thoughts into words. As I said the first day I came into this filthy hole, I’m not going to shave until I get out of this pigsty, and until I find a girl I can try it out on, to see if she likes it or not. Maybe she’ll like it, maybe all the women will like it, and I won’t ever shave it off, but instead wear a beard all my life...

You’ll be eaten alive by lice, Eugenio interposed, as he conscientiously continued killing his own.

It’s you they’ll eat, because you’re a pig and never wash yourself.

Me? They’ll never eat me!...Just look at this, and he held up what he considered a prize and which he had just taken from his chest. He crushed the object savagely between his fingernails. I’m not leaving a single one alive, not one! But I’d make a bet that I could find more than a hundred in your beard alone.

What are you talking about? Are you crazy?

José Luis understood that this discussion had been going on for a long time and that it was beginning to die out. Customarily Eugenio and the corporal discussed every matter at the top of their voices. Their style of conversation was very Spanish, the conviction being that logic and reason were naturally on the side of the loudest. After a while, the fire in the voices would begin to die down, and the discussion would perish of inanition.

Eugenio was cultured, quick of phrase, intelligent. Pacheco, on the other hand, possessed the wisdom of the Castillian countryman to a supreme degree. Though Eugenio, with his doctorate earned in law and philosophy at the University of Salamanca, might quote Plato in Greek and Seneca in Latin, Corporal Pacheco, who scarcely knew how to read and write, usually caused the educated man’s dialectic to founder on the rock of his rustic philosophy, in which there were no sophisms or evasions. In addition to his regular studies, Eugenio had also spent a year in the United States, attending Harvard University with the aim of perfecting his English, for he had ambitions for a diplomatic career. But all of his learning was held in very light esteem by the corporal, who had inherited a complete philosophy from the Spanish earth, which provided him an answer for every question, while Eugenio the free-thinker was racked with doubt and a prey to scepticism.

Will you put some wood on the fire, Corporal, if it’s all the same to you? José Luis asked; he had unslung his rifle and taken off his coat and gloves. He rubbed his hands vigorously and, after a moment, touched his ears carefully, to test the extent of the cold’s effect: if they proved too stiff, it would be dangerous to rub them, for they might break off like crackers.

Every time I come back in and feel my ears I remember poor Lozano.

What a brute that fellow was, the corporal recalled warmly.

I can never forget the night he came back from his post and rubbed his ears and one of them came off in his hands, José Luis continued.

What a spectacle! said the cultured Eugenio.

That Lozano Was the biggest beast that any woman ever conceived, insisted the corporal. I told him a hundred times that something like that was going to happen to him. The first day we got here he came in out of the snow and stuck his feet, boots and all, into the fire. I said to him: ‘Watch out. Your feet are going to get gangrened. So, two hours later he did the same thing again, and of course his boots got cooked and fell off in pieces. But nothing happened to his feet.

I can almost see him breaking off his ear. A good brisk rub, and there it was, just as if he’d cut it off with a knife.

The corporal let a few seconds pass, while he crammed the stove with firewood so that José Luis could warm up; then, following his habit, he hit out at his opponent.

What do you remember about it, when you weren’t even here at the time...

I wasn’t here?

No, sir, you weren’t?

"You’re going to tell me whether or not I was here, are you?" demanded Eugenio, his voice beginning to rise again.

I’ll tell you, or tell your father, if you want.

Leave my father out of this, or there’ll be some trouble.

What’s the point of this discussion now? interposed José Luis, who was used to the role of mediator, although he was at present solely concerned with getting some feeling into his feet.

Nothing at all, except that he says he was here when Lozano lost his ear, the corporal said to José Luis. Turning to Eugenio he continued: Well, sir, you were not. The only ones present at the time were José Luis and myself. And Lozano came back from his post, snorting like a horse as usual, and he came and sat here, where I’m sitting now, next to the light, and José Luis was over there writing on a piece of paper, or reading something. Lozano went and took off his gloves and all of a sudden I heard him say: ‘What the hell is this?’ He didn’t know himself what had happened to him, or why he had an ear in his hand. I didn’t understand it myself, at first; I thought it was some trick of his, and that he had gotten a hold of some dead man’s ear or something. But then, I got up and looked him over, and I could see that on one side he was missing an ear, that there was nothing there but a hole. Then I understood and told him: ‘I think one of your ears has fallen off.’

While the corporal was talking he had gone on cramming wood into the stove, the smoke from which had now begun to fill the narrow dugout. The dugout itself was nothing more than a hole dug in the ground, like a rabbit burrow, where as many as ten men could be accommodated, if each man was put practically on top of the other. The roof was made of wooden beams, holding up a thick layer of earth, which in turn was now covered by an even heavier layer of snow, and the cold had frozen the earth and snow into a consistency stronger than cement. Protected by this covering, the soldiers felt completely safe, even against the Russian howitzers. The stove with which the dugout was equipped gave off more smoke than heat, but it enabled the Spanish to think they were keeping warm; in truth, this dark and nauseous hole seemed to them like a palace, considering the terrible rigor of this Nordic war.

Don’t stick any more wood in there, will you! Don’t you see that you’re about to smother the fire, and it’s getting impossible to breathe in here with the smoke, Eugenio yelled, wiping away the tears.

The smoke is better than the frost, replied the corporal. He pushed two more large pieces in and began to blow on the fire, his cheeks swelling with the effort, until a flame appeared which seemed to swallow the smoke in an instant. Once again the soldiers were able to see each other’s faces. José Luis had been standing close up to the fire, and now he was forced to move back a bit, so that the heat would not strike directly on his feet, which were as hard as rocks. The process of bringing them back to life was a painful one, and had to be gone through on each return from the tower. It was not wise to get too close to the fire, for then the process was more painful; moreover, there was the danger of rupturing the veins and ruining the circulatory system for good. This outcome was known as a third-degree frostbite, and, according to general belief, it could only be treated by amputation.

You can say what you like, but I recall the Lozano affair perfectly, Eugenio persisted. I’ll leave it up to José Luis as to whether I was here or not.

José Luis was now forced to participate in the pointless argument. He knew the corporal was right, but it was amusing to see him wrought up, fighting for the truth against them all, even though the truth was completely ephemeral and unimportant, as in this instance. To Corporal Pacheco, the truth was the TRUTH, and there was only the one.

Wait until I try and remember... said José Luis, acting as if it were a serious question.

The corporal concentrated his calm and blue-eyed gaze on the mock-meditative face of the soldier; his look held no anxiety, for he felt that no number of testimonials to the contrary would alter the fact that Eugenio had not been present at the Lozano affair.

José Luis took his time in his pretended effort to remember. He himself enjoyed a special position among his comrades by virtue of his fame in Spain as an outstanding political figure of the younger generation; his presence in the front lines of the present war, moreover, had increased his prestige at home. He was thirty years old, and had already held positions of responsibility in the government of Spain. Although he had served as an officer during the Spanish Civil War (as had the well-educated Eugenio), José Luis had signed up in the Blue Division as a simple line soldier. Moreover, he knew most of the divisional staff well enough to address them with the familiar pronoun, for he had worked with them on the political level. And though he might have gone to see his staff friends at any time and asked for a transfer to some safer and more comfortable duty, he had never done so, and no one could accuse him of having taken advantage of these friendships. In point of fact, he possessed a kind of authority among his comrades at the front which he was in no wise willing to trade for a rearguard assignment, whatever it might have been.

Eugenio is right, he said at last. Of course he was here when Lozano lost his ear. The cold is causing you to lose your memory, corporal, he said with an air of preoccupation, by way of further inciting Pacheco.

The corporal was on the point of breaking into violent language, wildly indignant at so much cynicism, when he realized that José Luis had winked at Eugenio, and that the latter was smiling in mockery. He looked at one and then the other before bursting into a tremendous roar of infantile laughter, like a child who had just discovered the trick in a sleight of hand. The other two were infected by the laughter and burst out in a chorus.

Take a look at the corporal....There’s some life in there. And he seemed dumb! Eugenio cried out.

Dumb, your grandfather! countered the corporal, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles after his burst of laughter. Nobody gets a hold of Pacheco by the short hair, no matter how intellectual they are; it was one of his habits to speak of himself in the third person.

No, of course not. Our corporal is a lynx, said José Luis. The liveliest and readiest corporal in the division. He catches his game on the fly....

Pacheco continued laughing, completely appeased. José Luis was at length able to come up to the fire, his limbs restored to some feeling. After heating a glass of tea for himself, he lit his last cigarette with the burning end of a stick of firewood. For more than a month the troops had received a daily ration of only one indefinite-sized piece of bread, a tin of some kind of canned goods—usually kidney beans, as sweet a marmalade, which the Spanish did not relish—a canteen-full of tea, and five cigarettes per man.

Silence descended on the dugout. The shadows made by the fire danced across the yellow, exhausted faces of the three soldiers. The nostalgic eyes of the men followed the rhythm of the fire dance taking place on the stage of the stove, each man sunken in his sensory imagination. The three were united only by a strong sense of being inexorably tied to the same blind destiny.

Eugenio was the first to struggle free of the painful sense of the past and the present, of the oppressiveness of memory and conjecture. He strove to think of a way to bait the corporal, who served as his emotional punching bag. When he could not think of something concrete, he muttered:

What a life!...

You’re right, said the corporal, agreeing with Eugenio for the first time. Some life! Nothing to eat, no women, nothing...

Why are you always talking about women, corporal? What would you do with a woman here? objected Eugenio, intent on starting the battle.

What would I do? Father, father! Why, almost nothing!...

In this cold? Don’t show off, I don’t think you’d be capable of doing a thing.

That’s what you think. If you want to make a test, all you’ve got to do is bring me one of them....Bring me your sister, for instance, the one in the picture with the dog. You’d see...

Leave my family out of it, corporal. You’ve already mentioned my father, and then my grandfather, and now my sister...

Let me see that picture again, come on...

What a pig you are! If we weren’t cut off and in need of men, I’d fix you so you’d land in a hospital—en route to the cemetery.

Cut off? Have you swallowed that line, too? And you supposed to be so wise!

What line? Everybody knows we’re cut off. There’s a blockade in operation. That’s why the winter clothes haven’t reached us, and that’s why there’s nothing to eat.

What a genius! Only yesterday I was in Chechulino and there’s no sign of any blockade. The highways are open and I saw the German trucks going by on their way to the Leningrad front. There’s nothing going on, I can tell you, concluded the corporal with the air of one who knows.

Then why is it we have no food? And why is it we don’t move out of here?

I’ve already said it before. The Germans have put their foot into it, and they’re mules about it. You can see it from their looks; those square heads are made out of brick—regular blockheads. They thought they’d win the war in a month; they weren’t prepared. And then they go and halt the offensive and leave us stranded here in the middle of all this ice, with no food and no clothes....Here’s where we all shed our skin!

And what were the Germans supposed to do?

They should have pushed on, and put an end to the Russians.

That’s easy to say.

Easy to say, and easy to do! What can’t be done is just what these mules have done: stop the offensive here in the month of October, in the face of winter. They don’t know any geography. Probably not one of the generals knows it freezes here in Novgorod.

The corporal had been touched in his weak point, that is to say, what he considered his strong point. Pacheco, a simple Castillian tiller of the soil, had been in the Spanish army from the beginning of the Civil War, and had developed an interest in what he conceived to be military strategy. After his first military service, he had re-enlisted, and eventually had volunteered for service in Russia. He had forgotten what he knew of farm work, in exchange for a practical knowledge of soldiering; in point of fact he knew nothing of life except how to fight and live in the field.

So that, as far as you’re concerned, the Prussian generals are a bunch of bell-oxen who don’t know where they’re headed? José Luis asked by way of leading him on.

That’s exactly it. The proof is that they’ve driven us all into the mouth of the wolf. Just as the chief of the French did, after he had brought on the Second of May in Spain....

You’re talking about Napoleon?

Yes, of course. He was left around here, too—stranded. And all his men died off in this same snow, just as we will, if we don’t push on.

And where did you pick up the history of Napoleon’s campaign? José Luis asked him with some surprise.

"A book called War and Peace; it belonged to a fellow who was killed on the Teruel front, and I kept it when they came to get his things. I like books and I told them it was mine."

You’re quite an educated man, said José Luis, drawing a smile of gratification from Pacheco. "And what did you think of War and Peace?...Tolstoy is a great novelist isn’t he?"

I don’t know about that, now. The book was very interesting. But very heavy; it had too many activities going on in the palaces, too many princes, and counts. Anyway, you get the idea that marching into Russia isn’t a game for children.

Well, so you think we are going to have the same luck as Napoleon, then? asked Eugenio, priming the interrogation.

I don’t say that. What I said was that to beat the Russians it’s necessary to push forward without a stop, and that if you call a halt half way, you’re lost.

There’s real strategy for you, real military thinking, sneered Eugenio.

What’s wrong with it?

Nothing; except that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

The two wranglers had already begun to shout again, and this time they woke up Corporal Pepe, who had been asleep in a corner. The newcomer staggered up to the fire and savagely addressed himself to his fellow-corporal:

Can’t you talk a little lower, or keep your mouth shut for once? All you do is shoot off your mouth like a parrot.

Corporal Pacheco is explaining how the Prussian generals don’t know any geography.

What do I care about the Prussian generals! The only thing needed here is some sleep, and this pig Pacheco spends the whole day screaming like a market-woman. While he was saying all this, the newly-awakened man was casting his glance around the underground room, as if in search of something.

But where’s El Nene? he finally bellowed.

He’s in the tower, answered José Luis, for it was El Nene who had come as his replacement.

And you, Pepe turned on Pacheco again, "don’t