The restaurant was run by an anarchist syndicate and they sold you wine that was all stamped with the label of the royal cellars and the date it had been put in the bins. Most of it was so old that it was either corked or just plain faded out and gone to pieces. You can’t drink labels and I sent three bottles back as bad before we got a drinkable one. There was a row about this.
The waiters didn’t know the different wines. They just brought you a bottle of wine and you took your chances. They were as different from the Chicote’s waiters as black from white. These waiters were all snotty, all over-tipped and they regularly had special dishes such as lobster or chicken that they sold extra for gigantic prices. But these had all been bought up before we got there so we just drew the soup, the rice and the oranges. The place always made me angry because the waiters were a crooked lot of profiteers and it was about as expensive to eat in, if you had one of the special dishes, as 21 or the Colony in New York.
We were sitting at the table with a bottle of wine that just wasn’t bad, you know you could taste it starting to go, but it wouldn’t justify making a row about, when Al Wagner came in. He looked around the room, saw us and came over.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“They broke me,” he said.
“It didn’t take very long.”
“Not with those guys,” he said. “That’s a big game. What have they got to eat?”
I called a waiter over.
“It’s too late,” he said. “We can’t serve anything now.”
“This comrade is in the tanks,” I said. “He has fought all day and he will fight tomorrow and he hasn’t eaten.”
“That’s not my fault,” the waiter said. “It’s too late. There isn’t anything more. Why doesn’t the comrade eat with his unit? The army has plenty of food.”
“I asked him to eat with me.”
“You should have said something about it. It’s too late now. We are not serving anything any more.”
“Get the head waiter.”
The headwaiter said the cook had gone home and there was no fire in the kitchen. He went away. They were angry because we had sent the bad wine back.
“The hell with it,” said Al. “Let’s go somewhere else.”
“There’s no place you can eat at this hour. They’ve got food. I’ll just have to go over and suck up to the headwaiter and give him some more money.”
I went over and did just that and the sullen waiter brought a plate of cold sliced meats, then half a spiny lobster with mayonnaise, and a salad of lettuce and lentils. The headwaiter sold this out of his private stock which he was holding out either to take home, or sell to late comers.
“Cost you much?” Al asked.
“No,” I lied.
“I’ll bet it did,” he said. “I’ll fix up with you when I get paid.”
“What do you get now?”
“I don’t know yet. It was ten pesetas a day but they’ve raised it now I’m an officer. But we haven’t got it yet and I haven’t asked.”
“Comrade,” I called the waiter. He came over, still angry that the headwaiter had gone over his head and served Al. “Bring another bottle of wine, please.”
“What kind?”
“Any that is not too old so that the red is faded.”
“It’s all the same.”
I said the equivalent of like hell it is in Spanish, and the waiter brought over a bottle of Château Mouton-Rothschild 1906 that was just as good as the last claret we had was rotten.
“Boy that’s wine,” Al said. “What did you tell him to get that?”
“Nothing. He just made a lucky draw out of the bin.”
“Most of that stuff from the palace stinks.”
“It’s too old. This is a hell of a climate on wine.”
“There’s that wise comrade,” Al nodded across at another table.
The little man with the thick glasses that had talked to us about Largo Caballero was talking with some people I knew were very big shots indeed.
“I guess he’s a big shot,” I said.
“When they’re high enough up they don’t give a damn what they say. But I wish he would have waited until after tomorrow. It’s kind of spoiled tomorrow for me.”
I filled his glass.
“What he said sounded pretty sensible,” Al went on. “I’ve been thinking it over. But my duty is to do what I’m ordered to do.”
“Don’t worry about it and get some sleep.”
“I’m going to get in that game again if you’ll let me take a thousand pesetas,” Al said. “I’ve got a lot more than that coming to me and I’ll give you an order on my pay.”
“I don’t want any order. You can pay me when you get it.”
“I don’t think I’m going to draw it,” Al said. “I certainly sound wet, don’t I? And I know gambling’s bohemianism too. But in a game like that is the only time I don’t think about tomorrow.”
“Did you like that Manolita girl? She liked you.”
“She’s got eyes like a snake.”
“She’s not a bad girl. She’s friendly and she’s all right.”
“I don’t want any girl. I want to get back in that crap game.”
Down the table Manolita was laughing at something the new Englishman had said in Spanish. Most of the people had left the table.
“Let’s finish the wine and go,” Al said. “Don’t you want to get in that game?”
“I’ll watch you for a while,” I said and called the waiter over to bring us the bill.
“Where you go?” Manolita called down the table.
“To the room.”
“We come by later on,” she said. “This man is very funny.”
“She is making most awful sport of me,” the Englishman said. “She picks up on my errors in Spanish. I say, doesn’t leche mean milk?”
“That’s one interpretation of it.”
“Does it mean something beastly too?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said.
“You know it is a beastly language,” he said. “Now Manolita, stop pulling my leg. I say stop it.”
“I’m not pulling your leg,” Manolita laughed. “I never touched your leg. I am just laughing about the leche.”
“But it does mean milk. Didn’t you just hear Edwin Henry say so?”
Manolita started to laugh again and we got up to go.
“He’s a silly piece of work,” Al said. “I’d almost like to take her away because he’s so silly.”
“You can never tell about an Englishman,” I said. It was such a profound remark that I knew we had ordered too many bottles. Outside, in the street, it was turning cold and in the moonlight the clouds were passing very big and white across the wide, building-sided canyon of the Gran Via and we walked up the sidewalk with the day’s fresh shell holes neatly cut in the cement, their rubble still not swept away, on up the rise of the hill toward the Plaza Callao where the Florida Hotel faced down the other little hill where the wide street ran that ended at the front.
We went past the two guards in the dark outside the door of the hotel and listened a minute in the doorway as the shooting down the street strengthened into a roll of firing, then dropped off.
“If it keeps up I guess I ought to go down,” Al said listening.
“That wasn’t anything,” I said. “Anyway that was off to the left by Carabanchel.”
“It sounded straight down in the Campo.”
“That’s the way the sound throws here at night. It always fools you.”
“They aren’t going to counterattack us tonight,” Al said. “When they’ve got those positions and we are up that creek they aren’t going to leave their positions to try to kick us out of that creek.”
“What creek?”
“You know the name of that creek.”
“Oh. That creek.”
“Yeah. Up that creek without a paddle.”
“Come on inside. You didn’t have to listen to that firing. That?
??s the way it is every night.”
We went inside, crossed the lobby, passing the night watchman at the concierge’s desk and the night watchman got up and went with us to the elevator. He pushed a button and the elevator came down. In it was a man with a white curly sheep’s wool jacket, the wool worn inside, a pink bald head, and a pink, angry face. He had six bottles of champagne under his arms and in his hands and he said, “What the hell’s the idea of bringing the elevator down?”
“You’ve been riding in the elevator for an hour,” the night watchman said.
“I can’t help it,” said the wooly jacket man. Then to me, “Where’s Frank?”
“Frank who?”
“You know Frank,” he said. “Come on, help me with this elevator.”
“You’re drunk,” I said to him. “Come on, skip it and let us get upstairs.”
“So would you be drunk,” said the white woolly jacket man. “So would you be drunk comrade old comrade. Listen, where’s Frank?”
“Where do you think he is?”
“In this fellow Henry’s room where the crap game is.”
“Come on with us,” I said. “Don’t fool with those buttons. That’s why you stop it all the time.”
“I can fly anything,” said the woolly jacket man. “And I can fly this old elevator. Want me to stunt it?”
“Skip it,” Al said to him. “You’re drunk. We want to get to the crap game.”
“Who are you? I’ll hit you with a bottle full of champagne wine.”
“Try it,” said Al. “I’d like to cool you, you rummy fake Santa Claus.”
“A rummy fake Santa Claus,” said the bald man. “A rummy fake Santa Claus. And that’s the thanks of the Republic.”
We had gotten the elevator stopped at my floor and were walking down the hall. “Take some bottles,” said the bald man. Then, “Do you know why I’m drunk?”
“No.”
“Well, I won’t tell you. But you’d be surprised. A rummy fake Santa Claus. Well well well. What are you in, comrade?”
“Tanks.”
“And you, comrade?”
“Making a picture.”
“And I’m a rummy fake Santa Claus. Well. Well. Well. I repeat. Well. Well. Well.”
“Go and drown in it,” said Al. “You rummy fake Santa Claus.”
We were outside the room now. The man in the white woolly coat took hold of Al’s arm with his thumb and forefinger.
“You amuse me, comrade,” he said. “You truly amuse me.”
I opened the door. The room was full of smoke and the game looked just as when we had left it except the ham was all gone off the table and the whisky all gone out of the bottle.
“It’s Baldy,” said one of the crap shooters.
“How do you do, comrades,” said Baldy, bowing. “How do you do? How do you do? How do you do?”
The game broke up and they all started to shoot questions at him.
“I have made my report, comrades,” Baldy said. “And here is a little champagne wine. I am no longer interested in any but the picturesque aspects of the whole affair.”
“Where did your wingmen muck off to?”
“It wasn’t their fault,” said Baldy. “I was engaged in contemplating a terrific spectacle and I was ob-livious of the fact that I had any wingmen until all of those Fiats started coming down over, past and under me and I realized that my trusty little air-o-plane no longer had any tail.”
“Jees I wish you weren’t drunk,” said one of the flyers.
“But I am drunk,” said Baldy. “And I hope all you gentlemen and comrades will join me because I am very happy tonight even though I have been insulted by an ignorant tank man who has called me a rummy fake Santa Claus.”
“I wish you were sober,” the other flyer said. “How’d you get back to the field?”
“Don’t ask me any questions,” Baldy said with great dignity. “I returned in a staff car of the Twelfth Brigade. When I alighted with my trusty para-chute there was a tendency to regard me as a criminal fascist due to my inability to master the Lanish Spanguage. But all difficulties were smoothed away when I convinced them of my identity and I was treated with rare consideration. Oh boy you ought to have seen that Junker when she started to burn. That’s what I was watching when the Fiats dove on me. Oh boy I wish I could tell you.”
“He shot a tri-moter Junker down today over the Jarama and his wingmen mucked off on him and he got shot down and bailed out,” one of the flyers said. “You know him. Baldy Jackson.”
“How far did you drop before you pulled your rip cord, Baldy?” asked another flyer.
“All of six thousand feet and I think my diaphragm is busted loose in front from when she came taut. I thought it would cut me in two. There must have been fifteen Fiats and I wanted to get completely clear. I had to fool with the chute plenty to get down on the right side of the river. I had to slip her plenty and I hit pretty hard. The wind was good.”
“Frank had to go back to Alcalá,” another flyer said. “We started a crap game. We got to get back there before daylight.”
“I am in no mood to toy with the dice,” said Baldy. “I am in a mood to drink champagne wine out of glasses with cigarette butts in them.”
“I’ll wash them,” said Al.
“For Comrade Fake Santa Claus,” said Baldy. “For old Comrade Claus.”
“Skip it,” said Al. He picked up the glasses and took them to the bathroom.
“Is he in the tanks?” asked one of the flyers.
“Yes. He’s been there since the start.”
“They tell me the tanks aren’t any good any more,” a flyer said.
“You told him that once,” I said. “Why don’t you lay off? He’s been working all day.”
“So have we. But I mean really they aren’t any good, are they?”
“Not so good. But he’s good.”
“I guess he’s all right. He looks like a nice fellow. What kind of money do they make?”
“They got ten pesetas a day,” I said. “Now he gets a lieutenant’s pay.”
“Spanish lieutenant?”
“Yes.”
“I guess he’s nuts all right. Or has he got politics?”
“He’s got politics.”
“Oh, well,” he said. “That explains it. Say Baldy, you must have had a hell of a time bailing out with that wind pressure with the tail gone.”
“Yes, comrade,” said Baldy.
“How did you feel?”
“I was thinking all the time, comrade.”
“Baldy, how many bailed out of the Junker?”
“Four,” said Baldy, “out of a crew of six. I was sure I’d killed the pilot. I noticed when he quit firing. There’s a co-pilot that’s a gunner too and I’m pretty sure I got him too. I must have because he quit firing too. But maybe it was the heat. Anyhow four came out. Would you like me to describe the scene? I can describe the scene very well.”
He was sitting on the bed now with a large water glass of champagne in his hand and his pink head and pink face were moist with sweat.
“Why doesn’t anyone drink to me?” asked Baldy. “I would like all comrades to drink to me and then I will describe the scene in all its horror and its beauty.”
We all drank.
“Where was I?” asked Baldy.
“Just coming out of the McAlester Hotel,” a flyer said. “In all your horror and your beauty—don’t clown, Baldy. Oddly enough we’re interested.”
“I will describe it,” said Baldy. “But first I must have more champagne wine.” He had drained the glass when we drank to him.
“If he drinks like that he’ll go to sleep,” another flyer said. “Only give him half a glass.”
Baldy drank it off.
“I will describe it,” he said. “After another little drink.”
“Listen, Baldy, take it easy will you? This is something we want to get straight. You got no ship now for a few days but we’re flying tomorrow and thi
s is important as well as interesting.”
“I made my report,” said Baldy. “You can read it out at the field. They’ll have a copy.”
“Come on, Baldy, snap out of it.”
“I will describe it eventually,” said Baldy. He shut and opened his eyes several times, then said, “Hello Comrade Santa Claus” to Al. “I will describe it eventually. All you comrades have to do is listen.”
And he described it.
“It was very strange and very beautiful,” Baldy said and drank off the glass of champagne.
“Cut it out, Baldy,” a flyer said.
“I have experienced profound emotions,” Baldy said. “Highly profound emotions. Emotions of the deepest dye.”
“Let’s get back to Alcalá,” one flyer said. “That pink head isn’t going to make sense. What about the game?”
“He’s going to make sense,” another flyer said. “He’s just winding up.”
“Are you criticizing me?” asked Baldy. “Is that the thanks of the Republic?”
“Listen, Santa Claus,” Al said. “What was it like?”
“Are you asking me?” Baldy stared at him. “Are you putting questions to me? Have you ever been in action, comrade?”
“No,” said Al. “I got these eyebrows burnt off when I was shaving.”
“Keep your drawers on, comrade,” said Baldy. “I will describe the strange and beautiful scene. I’m a writer, you know, as well as a flyer.”
He nodded his head in confirmation of his own statement.
“He writes for the Meridian, Mississippi, Argus,” said a flyer. “All the time. They can’t stop him.”
“I have talent as a writer,” said Baldy. “I have a fresh and original talent for description. I have a newspaper clipping which I have lost which says so. Now I will launch myself on the description.”
“O.K. What did it look like?”
“Comrades,” said Baldy. “You can’t describe it.” He held out his glass.
“What did I tell you?” said a flyer. “He couldn’t make sense in a month. He never could make sense.”
“You,” said Baldy, “you unfortunate little fellow. All right. When I banked out of it I looked down and of course she had been pouring back smoke but she was holding right on her course to get over the mountains. She was losing altitude fast and I came up and over and dove on her again. There were still wingmen then and she’d lurched and started to smoke twice as much and then the door of the cockpit came open and it was just like looking into a blast furnace, and then they started to come out. I’d half rolled, dove, and then pulled up out of it and I was looking back and down and they were coming out of her, out through the blast furnace door, dropping out trying to get clear, and the chutes opened up and they looked like great big beautiful morning glories opening up and she was just one big thing of flame now like you never saw and going round and round and there were four chutes just as beautiful as anything you could see just pulling slow against the sky and then one started to burn at the edge and as it burned the man started to drop fast and I was watching him when the bullets started to come by and the Fiats right behind them and the bullets and the Fiats.”