The City in Darkness Read online

  Each day the Republic’s line bent beneath the Nationalist onslaught. Hilltop positions were taken, held, lost, retaken, lost again. Each day that line held only by virtue of those who died to hold it. And each evening as the sun set, and the guns were quiet, and the sour smell of cordite faded, the last heat of the day filled the air with the smell of the decomposing dead. In the silence the engine-like buzz of millions of flies was a solid bass to the chattering cicadas. Along the Jarama the crows swarmed in black clouds for the carrion; the buzzards that had circled overhead all day sailed down to feed. Here and there a soldier fired a shot to chase the birds from the feast; sometimes a shallow trench was dug to keep the bodies whole. But there were always too many bodies, and there would only be more tomorrow.

  On the bare brow the men of the Fifteenth International Brigade had christened Suicide Hill that day, an Irishman looked down at the river, smoking a thin, hand-rolled cigarette. He wore the uniform of a brigadier of the Spanish Republic’s International Brigades. The men he commanded had come to Spain to fight for a collection of ideals that didn’t always make easy bedfellows. They were big ideas: freedom, democracy, justice, socialism, communism. But what mattered was a common enemy. Here it was Franco’s fascism, but that was no different to Mussolini’s fascism; no different, above all, to Hitler’s fascism. That was what united the 400 Englishmen and Irishmen who had marched to the hills above the Jarama River that morning; less than 150 were still alive.

  Brigadier Frank Ryan watched a dozen of his men move among the bodies on the hillside, collecting guns and ammunition. On the Nationalist side the dead wore the desert fatigues of the Spanish Foreign Legion, the bright red fezzes and cloaks of the Moroccan infantry, the grey-green of the Falangist militia. The Republican dead mostly wore the tan-brown overalls of the International Brigades; their names were in Ryan’s head, above all the names of the dead Irishmen he had led up Suicide Hill that day. Men he came from Ireland to Spain with. Men he had campaigned for Irish freedom with in the streets of Dublin. Men he had fought beside in the IRA in the Tipperary hills. He dropped his cigarette end and started to roll another.

  From the olive grove behind came the sound of shovels hitting stony soil; trenches were being deepened. There was a smell of cooking; from pots of vegetable stew the scent of herbs someone had found, that smelt not of death and ideals but of being alive. There was laughter rising up out of words about nothing. It mattered that his men could laugh. Even staring at the dead he needed them to laugh, scream, cry, anything that had life in it. He heard his officers moving through the lines, making the lists that would soon come to him. The lists of the living; the longer lists of the dead.

  On the farm track behind the olive grove a truck backfired. Frank Ryan looked round. On the canvas of the battered vehicle were the words ‘Comisaría Política’, on the cab roof a trumpet-like loud speaker. The distorted martial tones of the ‘Internationale’ blasted out. A voice crackled, enthusiastic, purposeful. The language was English, though the same words had been heard along the line in Spanish, French, German. They were words that few wanted when the bodies of their friends were still warm.

  ‘Comrades, today’s victory has pushed back the fascists again! A triumph for the people of Spain! The workers of Spain give thanks to the men of the International Brigades who stand shoulder to shoulder in the struggle. Where the people are united, we are invincible! No pasarán!’

  Some dutiful comrades raised weary clenched fists and shouted ‘No pasarán!’ The ‘Internationale’ started up again and the truck disappeared.

  Brigadier Ryan took the sheets of paper that had been handed to him by the young English lieutenant. He didn’t bother to look at them.

  ‘How many, Allen?’

  ‘Two hundred and twenty dead. Thirty seriously wounded.’

  ‘Jesus, we can’t hold this place with a hundred men.’

  Frank Ryan finally looked at the names. He was a thin man, with sharp features. His face was lined; he seemed older than his thirty-five years. It was a face that was good at showing passion and enthusiasm, but not much else. It was no bad time not to show much. The men of the Fifteenth Brigade were watching; even for those who had been in the thickest of the fighting the cost of retaking Suicide Hill was only just sinking in. It wasn’t Brigadier Ryan’s business to show what he felt now; it was to prepare for the attack they all knew would come the next day.

  ‘We’d better get to Brigade HQ. I’ll shout, you beg. Now Commissar Klein has congratulated us, they need to know the price. No reinforcements, then Klein needn’t come back tomorrow. We’ll be feeding the crows too.’

  Brigadier Frank Ryan and Lieutenant Allen Armstrong left Brigade HQ. What they brought away was only the vaguest possibility of reinforcements from the stretched French and Belgian battalion, and the boot and back seat of their commandeered Renault filled with bottles of red wine and brandy. It was the best HQ could offer. Well, wasn’t there something to celebrate in the miracle of Suicide Hill? In the small white finca, surrounded by a thousand olive trees, Ryan had indeed shouted, cajoled and begged for reinforcements. The result had been yet more achingly sincere congratulations from Spanish officers and the International Brigades’ political commissariat, still barely able to believe the line had resisted the Nationalist onslaught. The men of the Fifteenth Brigade, now dead for the most part, were the heroes of the hour. But the expectation that they could repeat what they had done tomorrow was a hope that trumped arithmetic. There would be no more troops. The Fifteenth Brigade’s survivors would have to hold their line.

  It was dark as the Renault rejoined the road along the eastern ridge of the Jarama Valley. The road was busy; columns of soldiers walking with the slow tread of men who had fought all day and would fight again with the daylight; trucks carrying ammunition and pulling artillery; carts ferrying the wounded and the dead. And while Frank Ryan chain-smoked, Allen Armstrong hunched over the wheel, weaving through the melee of men and vehicles, trying to avoid the potholes and craters that the traffic of war and constant shelling had created. Then suddenly he swerved off to the right.

  ‘I’ll take the road towards Belchite. We’ll be half the night here.’

  The car headed downhill on a track that ran close to the river and the front line before climbing up to the escarpment where the Fifteenth Brigade was camped. There were a few straggling soldiers, small camps and gun positions. But it was surprisingly quiet. With the light of the moon in the sky, Ryan found himself thinking of the winding roads of the west of Ireland at night. It didn’t feel so different. He believed the war he was fighting here was the same war he had fought there. But the uneasiness that took him out of Ireland was never far away, even now, like an itch beneath beliefs that should have been as comfortable as old clothes. Fighting was fine if you didn’t stop to think. But the silence had made him think of home. He felt as if he wanted to stay on that quiet road for a long time.

  Rounding a bend, Armstrong’s foot hit the brake. They lurched forward; the Renault skidded. Something dark thudded against the bonnet.

  ‘You all right, Frank?’

  ‘Apart from my head. I hit the fucking—’

  ‘That’s all right, we all know how hard your head is – sir.’

  Frank Ryan got out. As the lieutenant did the same he unbuttoned the clip that held his revolver. A few yards away lay a man in uniform. Ryan crouched down. Armstrong pushed the pistol back into its holster and shone a torch on to the soldier’s face; it was stained with sweat and dirt and dried blood. The uniform that could have been grey or khaki or green was filthy and shredded; one sleeve was black, hardened with the same dried blood. It was a very young face; the soldier looked like he was still in his teens.

  ‘Is he alive?’ asked Lieutenant Armstrong.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ The soldier gritted his teeth in pain.

  Frank Ryan laughed. The accent, like the words, was unmistakable.

  ‘Is he one of ours then?’ Armstrong bent
down.

  A look of relief pushed away the pain in the soldier’s face.

  ‘I never thought I’d make it. I was hiding, running, hiding.’ He tried to sit up. There were tears now. He was coughing. ‘I didn’t even know where I was half the time. Jesus, weren’t they all round me, everywhere?’

  ‘What’s your company?’ Ryan asked.

  ‘I got hit when they started firing. I ran, I must’ve passed out. I took a bullet. We were cheering them on, then they fired, our own fucking side—’

  Armstrong produced a canteen of water. The soldier drank thirstily. Frank Ryan watched him, frowning; there was something odd about him.

  ‘Who’s your sergeant, who are your officers?’

  ‘Tommy O’Toole, sir. I think he was killed.’ He crossed himself. ‘He went down in front of me. When we marched over the river they thought the Bandera was Brigaders! The feckers wouldn’t stop shooting at us!’

  The last word, Bandera, left no doubt in Brigadier Ryan’s mind.

  ‘Christ!’ he said quietly.

  The Englishman nodded; there wasn’t anything else to add.

  Ryan shone the torch closer to the torn uniform. The grey-green colour was clear now. Something glittered on the collar, a small silver harp, an Irish harp. The young soldier was one of the men General Eoin O’Duffy had brought from Ireland to fight for Holy Spain and Holy Ireland against communism, atheism and darkness. They had come with the blessings of the Church in their ears, with rosaries and holy water, and all the saints in heaven looking down on their crusade. But the Irish Bandera had not lived up to its high ideals. O’Duffy’s men, stronger on drinking, whoring and praying behind the lines than fighting, were an embarrassment even to Franco. Yet there were uneasy rumours that the fascists wanted to push their own Irish troops against the Irish Brigadistas. Despite the contempt for the Bandera on the Republican side, the Connolly Column soldiers knew there were old IRA men in their ranks, men they knew, men they fought beside against the Black and Tans, against the Free State in the Civil War.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Private Mikey Hagan, sir.’

  He saluted; he was trying to get up, shaky, still in pain.

  ‘You need to look at my uniform, Mikey,’ said Ryan.

  The boy soldier frowned, not grasping what this meant.

  ‘You’re a prisoner. My name is Frank Ryan. I am a brigadier in the Fifteenth International Brigade. I’m sorry, you didn’t make it back.’

  The fear in Hagan’s eyes was momentary. He was too tired not to feel this Irishman whose name he knew offered safety.

  ‘I know you Mr Ryan, Brigadier Ryan. You’d know my father, Liam Hagan. He’s a teacher, in Cashel. He was with you in the Galtee Mountains, in twenty-two it was, fighting the Free State. He always talks about you.’

  He spoke as if they were somewhere else; a railway platform, a pub. He looked at the man whose prisoner he was with pride in the connection.

  ‘And your father’d be pleased you’re here, would he?’

  ‘And why wouldn’t he be when we’re fighting God’s war?’

  The words were defiant. Then a deeper spasm of pain wracked Mikey Hagan, spreading from his arm into his body. He was unconscious.

  ‘Get him into the car, Allen.’

  They pulled open the back door; Armstrong shoved aside crates of wine and brandy. They pushed the Bandera private into the seat.

  ‘The Sanidad Militar can sort him out. It’s all we can do.’

  ‘Or we could shoot him.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be funny?’

  ‘The Field Police will hand him to the Comisaría Política. When the party hacks have interrogated him, for sod all I’d say – they’ll shoot him.’

  Ryan said nothing; it was true.

  ‘Still, all’s fair,’ continued the Englishman, ‘and if the fascists got hold of us, well, they’d shoot us, so, quid pro quo! Buyer beware, etc.’

  ‘We’ve our own men to keep alive, Allen.’

  Lieutenant Armstrong looked at the young face through the car window. He looked at the night sky, conscious of the rare silence. There was no reason for what he was saying. It shouldn’t matter. But there was more and more that didn’t matter. It was arbitrary that this did, but it did.

  ‘When you’ve just seen a dozen of your best friends die, having another man shot for no reason, even in the wrong uniform – pisses me off. That’s all. It pisses me off.’ He grinned. ‘And you did know his father.’

  ‘I never knew his father, for Christ’s sake. What the fuck are those O’Duffy bastards doing here? It’s Eoin O’Duffy who wants shooting. He doesn’t give a shite about Spain, any more than the priests who sprinkled holy water over his men. All he wants is to go home a sainted hero. And there’s his fucking martyr.’ He looked at Mikey Hagan’s unconscious face pressed against the glass. ‘God, Ireland can produce some gobshites!’

  ‘We’ll pass the turn for Belchite,’ said Armstrong. ‘A kilometre from the Jarama. One of the Canadians said there’s a doctor there. He could be patched up and pointed across the river. More chance than we can offer.’

  ‘And what about the Republicans in Belchite?’

  ‘He’s just one of Frank Ryan’s Irishmen with a bullet in his arm.’

  ‘Fuck you, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Let’s get him out of that uniform. And get a bottle of brandy.’

  They opened the car door. As Mikey Hagan fell out, Ryan caught him. He started to unbutton the grey-green jacket. He turned to Armstrong.

  ‘The brandy.’

  ‘He’s still unconscious. It’ll choke him.’

  ‘Did I say it was for him?’

  The moonlight picked out the road into Belchite. There were patches of open ground and groves of olives and walnuts. Fires burned where Republican machine guns pointed towards the Nationalist lines. At the sentry posts, as Frank Ryan wound down the window and shouted out his name, they were waved through with the raised fists of the struggle. The militia men knew Brigadier Ryan. The story of Suicide Hill had swept along the line faster than Hermann Klein’s propaganda truck. The thin Irishman and the men of the Fifteenth Brigade needed no papers or permits here.

  In the town the battle that had pushed Belchite back and forward between the Republicans and the Nationalists all week had left its scars in the broken buildings and the pockmarked plaza. A fire, fuelled with the timber from damaged houses, burned across the square from the church, which had lost part of its white stucco façade from a shell; no one could remember which side fired it. Half a dozen Regulares sat round the fire.

  As the Renault pulled into the plaza militia men were loading two dead Republican soldiers on to a cart. The bodies of three of Franco’s Foreign Legionnaires stayed where they were. Ryan and Armstrong got out. The lieutenant spoke in Spanish, addressing the sergeant of the Regulares.

  ‘Lieutenant Armstrong, Brigadier Ryan, Fifteenth Brigade, Comrade. We’ve a wounded man losing blood. They said there might be a doctor.’

  The sergeant smiled broadly and shook their hands.

  ‘That was some fight, Comrades.’

  They all agreed it had been some fight.

  ‘The priest is a doctor of sorts. He’s in the church.’

  Armstrong pulled the Tipperary man from the car. He had drifted from unconsciousness into sleep; with waking the pain returned. He gritted his teeth, unaware of where he was. Frank Ryan’s face came into focus.

  ‘Can you understand what I’m saying, Mikey?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You’re an Irish International Brigade man. Lieutenant Armstrong and I are your officers. We’ll have a doctor look at you, then see if someone can get you out of the town, quietly, somewhere nearer your own lines.’

  Private Hagan’s head was clearer now; he could feel the danger.

  ‘Will they shoot me, sir?’

  Inside the church candles were burning. Against the walls there we
re wounded civilians and soldiers; three Regulares, one with a bloody, bandaged head, were playing cards. The priest was in his sixties, overweight, with a ruddy, bloated face. He was in shirtsleeves; he was stained with sweat and blood. His eyes, like soldiers all along the Jarama Valley, had the hollow gaze of a man who had not slept for many nights. He got up from where he knelt in prayer beside a dying old man.

  ‘It’s his arm, Father,’ said Lieutenant Armstrong. ‘I think there’s still a bullet or some shrapnel in it. The bleeding did stop, but it’s back . . .’

  The priest took the arm gently and raised it into the light. Mikey Hagan looked into his face, and then clumsily, shaking slightly, got down on his knees in front of him. He stared up, with tears in his eyes.

  ‘Bless me, Father.’

  The priest made the sign of the cross. Hagan responded with his good arm. Frank Ryan crossed himself too. The priest looked at the International Brigade brigadier, already puzzled by something that didn’t quite fit.

  Brigadier Ryan and Lieutenant Armstrong sat on the steps of the church, a circle of nicotine-brown cigarette ends at the Irishman’s feet. Ryan took a swig from the bottle of brandy. Across the square the Regulares were sleeping. The Brigadistas stood as the priest came out, lighting a cigarette. He looked at the plaza of his town with a weary familiarity, as if the broken buildings and the bodies had always been the view from the church steps.

  ‘The bleeding has stopped,’ he said in good English. ‘But I can’t do anything more for him now, Brigadier. The arm needs a surgeon to save it.’

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ said Ryan.

  ‘And what now?’ replied the priest. ‘You brought him because you can’t take him to your own hospital. He does know he’ll probably be shot.’

  ‘He told you who he is?’

  ‘He’s holding a rosary with a medallion on it offering a prayer for the crusade against the Red Terror. We’ve all heard about Franco’s Irishmen.’