Before we went anywhere, I took Esteban to a barber and had him shaved. He fought the idea every step of the way, but I managed to convince him that Frenchmen did not wear beards. Without it he looked less like a fiery anarchist and more like a backward child. I had the barber give him a haircut while he was at it and had my own hair cut so that it looked a little more like the passport photos and a little less like the picture of Evan Tanner that the newspapers had printed. Then, with Esteban in one hand and the attaché case in another, I left Madrid.
We took a train as far as Zaragoza, a bus east to Lérida and another bus north to Sort, a small village a little over twenty miles from the frontier. In Zaragoza I left Esteban for a few moments at a restaurant while I visited a few shops and spent a few pesetas. He was still eating when I returned. He slept on the bus ride. The bus to Sort was not heated, and the last lap of our journey was cold, with the sun down and the wind blowing through the drafty bus. I gave the tall man’s sweater to Esteban, who promptly went back to sleep. I wished that I had kept my Irish jacket or had brought along a flask of brandy.
At Sort I poked Esteban awake and led him off the bus. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke in my face. He had been doing this all the way from Madrid, and it was beginning to annoy me.
“Are we in France?”
“No.”
“Where are we?”
“Some place called Sort.”
“In Spain?”
“Yes.”
“I have never heard of it.”
There were four cafés in the town. We visited each of them and drank brandy. The third of the four turned out to be the worst, so we returned to it. Esteban appeared to be about half-lit. Among his many other talents, he was evidently incapable of holding liquor.
We sat in a dingy back booth. He began talking in a loud voice about the joys of Paris and the need to escape from the reeking stench of fascism. I had two choices-I could try to sober him up or I could get him drunk enough to pass out. I had the waitress bring a full bottle of brandy and I poured one shot after another into Esteban, and ultimately his head rolled and his eyes closed and he sagged in his chair and quietly passed out.
I stood up and walked to the bar. A large man with sad eyes and a drooping moustache stood beside me. “Your friend,” he said, “says things which one should not say in the presence of strangers.”
“My friend is sick,” I said.
“Ah.”
“My friend has a sickness in his mind and must go for treatment. He must go to the hospital.”
“There is no hospital in Sort.”
“We cannot stay in Sort, then, for I must take him to a hospital.”
“There is a hospital in Barcelona. A fine modern hospital, where your friend would be most comfortable.”
“We cannot go to the hospital in Barcelona. There is only one hospital that will care for my friend properly.”
“In Madrid, then?”
“In Paris.”
“In Paris,” he said. I poured us each a brandy. He thanked me and said that I was a gentleman, and I said that it was pleasant to drink in the company of worldly men like himself.
“It is far,” he said slowly, “to Paris.”
“It is.”
“And one must have the right papers to cross the frontier.”
“My friend has no papers.”
“He will have difficulty.”
“It is true,” I said. “He will have great difficulty.”
“It will be impossible for him.”
“For worldly men,” I said carefully, “for worldly men of goodwill, men who understand one another and understand how life is to be lived, I have heard it said that nothing is impossible.”
“There is truth in what you say.”
“It is as I have heard it said by wiser men than I.”
“It is a wise man who listens to and remembers the words of other wise men.”
“You do me much honor, señor.”
“You honor me to drink with me, señor.”
We had another brandy each. He motioned me to follow him, and we sat at the table next to Esteban. He was still asleep.
“Call me Manuel,” the man said. “And I shall call you what?”
“Enrique.”
“It is my pleasure to know you, Enrique.”
“The pleasure is my pleasure.”
“Perhaps among my acquaintances there are men who could help you and your unfortunate friend. When one lives in a town for all of one’s life, one knows a great many people.”
“I would greatly appreciate your help.”
“You will wait here?”
“I will,” I said.
He stopped at the bar and said something to the bartender. Then he disappeared into the night. I ordered a cup of black coffee and poured a little brandy into it. When Esteban opened his eyes, I made him drink more of the brandy. He passed out again.
Manuel returned while I was still sipping my coffee. Two other men accompanied him. They stood in the bar and talked in a language I did not understand. I believe it was Basque. The Basque language is one I do not speak or understand, an almost impossible language to learn if one is not born to it. The grammatical construction is as much of a nightmare as the language of the Hopi Indians. I felt very much at a disadvantage. I am not used to being unable to understand other people’s speech.
Manuel left his companions at the bar and approached our table. “I have consulted with my friends,” he said. “They are of the opinion that something can be done for you.”
“May God reward their kindness.”
“It must be this night.”
“We are ready.”
He looked doubtfully at Esteban. “And is he ready, also?”
“Yes.”
“Then come with me.”
I had trouble getting Esteban to his feet. He swayed groggily and offered up dramatic curses to fascism and the state of the beautician’s profession in Madrid. Manuel turned to his friends at the bar, touched his head with his forefinger, then pointed at Esteban and shrugged expressively. He took one of Esteban’s arms, and I took the other, and we walked him out into the night.
The other two men followed us. Half a mile from the café we entered a dingy one-room hut. The smaller of Manuel’s two friends, with long sideburns and denim pants frayed at the cuffs, moved around the room lighting candles. The other uncapped a flask of sweet wine and passed it around. I didn’t let Esteban have any. It seemed time to sober him up a bit.
Manuel introduced us all around. The small man with the sideburns was called Pablo; the other, fat, balding, and sweaty, was Vicente. I was Enrique and Esteban was Esteban.
“I have it that you wish to go to France,” Vicente said.
“Yes, and to Paris.”
“I will set the hair of Brigitte Bardot,” said Esteban.
“But the border is difficult.”
“So I have heard.”
Pablo said something quickly in Basque. Vicente answered him, then turned to me and resumed in Spanish. “You and your friend have a sympathetic reason for going to France. You must take your friend to a hospital, is it not so?”
“It is so.”
“For such fine purposes, one can bend laws. But you must know, my friend, that these are dangerous times. Many smugglers attempt to take contraband over the border.”
I said nothing. Manuel said something in Basque. I was furious that I had never been able to learn the language. I remembered one sentence that I had stubbornly committed to memory. “I will meet you at the jai alai fronton.” The Basque construction for this is torture-I the jai alai fronton at which is played the game of jai alai in the act of meeting I have you in the future. I don’t know how the Basques learn it.
“So you see,” said Vicente, “that it is necessary for us to examine your possessions so that we may assure ourselves that you are not smugglers.”
“I see.”
“For we help willingly but only when the motives of those we help cannot be called into question.”
I propped the black attaché case on a rickety card table and opened it. Pablo and Vicente gathered around, while Manuel stayed with Esteban. The various papers were passed over without a second glance. The clothes attracted no particular attention. The items I had purchased in Zaragoza received the lion’s share of attention.
“Ah,” said Vicente. “And what is this?”
“Beautician supplies.”
Esteban came rushing over to me. “For my salon!” He embraced me. “You are my friend, my brother. What have you bought for me?”
“Your supplies, Esteban.”
“My brother!”
Pablo was sorting through the bag of cheap cosmetics I had picked up. There were several plastic combs, a pair of scissors, some hair curlers, hardly the elaborate equipment one would use in a beauty parlor. He picked up a tin box of face powder, opened it, sniffed, and looked at me with raised eyebrows.
“Face powder,” I said.
Vicente licked a finger, dipped it into the can of face powder, licked it again, smiled, and said something in Basque to Manuel and Pablo. They began to laugh happily.
“Perhaps you will leave this here,” Vicente said.
“But it is necessary that we take it with us.”
“Ah, but can you not get better face powder in Paris? The French are renowned for their cosmetics, so I have heard.”
“This is special powder.”
“I can see that it is.”
“We have a great need for it.”
“A face powder with little scent to it,” Vicente said. “A face powder with a sweet taste, and yet a bitter undertaste. This is a most remarkable powder.”
“My friend obtains great results with this powder.”
The three of them laughed uproariously. Esteban was utterly baffled. He couldn’t understand what was so important about a tin of powder or what caused men to laugh over it. I did not enlighten him.
Vicente dropped the tin of powder back into my attaché case. I closed the case, and Vicente threw a heavy arm around my shoulder. “We can help you,” he said. “And I think you are wise to take the face powder with you, for it would be difficult to locate this brand in Paris, would it not?”
“Most difficult.”
“For so many powders are applied with a powder puff, and this one requires a needle, does it not?”
I said nothing.
“We will take you to the border, Enrique. But we must go now.”
“That is good.”
“And I will carry your suitcase.”
I looked at him.
“In case you are searched, señor. It is advisable.”
“But in the suitcase-”
“The face powder, my friend.”
We played with that one. Finally he agreed that he would carry the powder only at the moment of crossing. Pablo asked to see the tin again. I opened the case and showed it to him. He left hurriedly, explaining that he had to obtain provisions for the journey. Vicente brought out the flask of wine, and we drank to the success of our travels.
When Pablo returned, we got under way. Manuel said good-bye to us and headed back to the café. Vicente led us to a donkey cart piled high with straw. Elaborately, he explained to me how the crossing would be managed. He needn’t have bothered. I had seen the scene in countless films. At the border, he told me, we would ride on the wagon with the straw covering us, while he and Pablo rode in front. Thus, he said, delighted with his own ingenuity, the border guards would think there was only a load of straw on the wagon, when actually there would be two men beneath the straw whom they would not see.
“Two men and an attaché case,” I said.
“Of course,” Vicente said. He looked terribly sad. “Now the arrangements of the money,” he said. “We have expenses, you understand. Certain money must be passed on to certain persons. I am sure you comprehend-”
“How much?”
He quoted a price that came to less than $50 U.S. I had a feeling he would spend that much or more bribing the border guards. I started to bargain, just to avoid being too delighted with the price, and he almost instantly knocked it down a third. He wanted this fare, I realized. He wasn’t about to let us walk away.
I paid him the money. It would be a long ride, he said, and no doubt we would wish to sleep. We could stretch out on top of the hay and cover ourselves with blankets and we need not get under the hay until he told us. It would be easiest to cross the frontier at the corner of Andorra, he said. We would cross two borders, first passing from Spain into Andorra, then from that tiny Basque republic into France. But that, he said, was much the easiest way. The guards were less vigorous at those posts, and they were his friends.
Esteban and I climbed onto the hay. Pablo gave us each a blanket, and we stretched out on the hay and wrapped ourselves in the blankets. The night was cooler now, the sky alive with stars. Pablo and Vicente climbed up on the little platform behind the donkey, and the animal shifted into gear and started for the border. I lay still, watching the stars, my hand coiled tightly around the grip of the attaché case.
In the darkness Esteban whispered, “But your name is not Enrique.”
I told him to be still. Then, after I thought he had dropped off to sleep again, he was back with more questions. “When did you buy me those supplies? The equipment for the beauty parlor?”
“I will tell you later.”
“Tell me now.”
I looked over at our two escorts. I wondered if they could hear or if it would matter.
I said, “I bought them for you in Zaragoza.”
“It was good of you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“But if I may say so, my brother, I think you were cheated.”
“How?”
“The shears are cheap. They won’t last. And the Cosmetics are of the poorest sort. On a shop girl one might use such inferior goods, but on the wife of Charles de Gaulle-”
“You’ll set her hair?”
“And make a fortune. What is all this fuss about the face powder?”
“It is forbidden to bring face powder into France.”
“But why?”
“There is a very high tariff. To protect the French manufacturers, you see.”
“But to make such a fuss over one tin? And I heard the fat one say that it has no smell and tastes sweet.”
“Go to sleep, Esteban.”
“There are many things that I do not understand.”
“Do you want to go to Paris?”
“With all my heart, friend.”
“Then go to sleep.”
He fell silent. His was a hurt silence at first. He wanted me to hold his hand and tell him how good it would be for him in Paris, how they would welcome him to the town, how he would set the hair of the world’s most important women. He was a madman and a nuisance, yet in his own disquieting way he was good company for a trip of this sort. He gave me an unusual amount of self-confidence. He was so utterly lost, so incapable of coping with any situation, that by comparison I felt myself wholly in command of things.
The donkey moved steadily onward. Smoke from Vicente’s cigar wafted back over us. The road we followed wound slowly uphill, leveling off now and then, circling in and out of the mountains, then climbing upward at a sharper inclination. I lay with my eyes closed and did my Yoga exercises from time to time, getting as much rest as I could. It was at times like this, times when one had to spend several hours doing nothing at all, that I envied those who slept. Esteban could close his eyes and lose touch with the world. He could blank out his mind to all but dreams and pass over several hours in an instant of subjective time. I had to lie there in the dark with nothing to do but wait.
This had not bothered me in years. Once I originally adjusted to going without sleep, I had always contrived to have something to do, someone to talk to, something to read or study. No matter how long one lives, awake or asleep, one can never know all that there is to know. There are, for example, several hundred languages spoken throughout the world. It would take the greater portion of a lifetime to learn them all. Alone in my apartment, stretched out on my bed listening to a stack of learn-while-you-sleep records, I could rest mind and body and add another language to my collection-and not grow bored.
Lying on a mound of hay, staring at the stars and listening to the sounds of the night and the snores of Esteban and the occasional incomprehensible chatter of Vicente and Pablo, was as bad in its own way as rotting for nine days in an Istanbul jail cell.
I thought of getting up, getting out of the wagon and running alongside the donkey for a while. Or perhaps I could sit with Pablo and Vicente and talk with them in Spanish. The donkey seemed to be moving at about six or seven miles an hour. We were twenty miles from the frontier, and with the circuitous route we were following it seemed likely that we would travel forty miles to go twenty. It would be dawn or very close to it before we reached the border, and I did not feel like lying in the straw for that long a time.
As it turned out, it was a good thing I stayed where I was.
I heard Pablo speaking Spanish. “I believe we may stop now. They have not moved or made a sound for some miles.”
“You are certain?”
“Call to them. See if they answer.”
Vicente called out, “Enrique? Are you asleep?”
I did not say anything. I heard Esteban shift in his sleep and wanted to hit him with something. He had to remain still now, or we were in trouble.
“They are sleeping, Vicente.”
“All right.”
The cart slowed, then stopped. I heard them drop down from the driver’s platform and come around to the rear of the cart.
“They sleep.”
“Can you be sure?”
A hand touched my foot, raised it a few inches, then let it fall. I stayed limp.
“They sleep, Vicente. It is time to take the powder. Later will be difficult.”
“But he said that he would let me carry it across the border for him.”
“He will think of something by then. Some trick.”
“You are right. Perhaps-”
“No.”
“In one instant I could slash both their throats. I would draw two red lines upon their necks, and they would be no cause for worry. And then-”
I tensed in the darkness. I saw him in my mind, knife drawn, bending over us. I could kick out, I thought. Kick out hard and then jump backward and hope to throw myself clear. I could-
“And when their friends come? Surely you do not think that ones like this could carry something of such importance themselves. Their clothes are poor, and their shoes worn. The powder is worth a fortune.”
“They are couriers, then.”
“Couriers, yes. And if they do not arrive, there will be trouble, and men will come looking for them. But if they arrive without the powder, they will be in trouble themselves.”
“I do not know, Pablo-”
Keep talking, Pablo. I thought. Keep talking.
“It is all the more reason why we will make the switch now,” Pablo went on. “Then later we will ask to carry the powder across the border. This Enrique will argue with us. We will finally let him have his own way. Then, when he discovers the powder is gone, he will know that someone else must have taken it. That it was not we who did it.”
“Where is it?”
“In the case he carries.”
“Ah.”
Hands fastened on the attaché case and took it gently from my loose grasp. The catch was opened. A few seconds later hands slid the case back where it had been, fastened once more.
“He will never know,” said Pablo.
“And the other?”
“Nor will the other.”
“The other is a madman.”
“I think not,” said Pablo. “I think they are very clever, these two, and that the other only pretends to be a madman. One may do well at times by pretending to be that which one is not.” The sentence sounded involved enough to be a word-for-word translation from the Basque. “I think the madman is the brains of the pair.”
“But the other does all the talking and carries the powder-”
“Of course,” said Pablo. “As I said, they are clever.”
I made a great show of waking up half an hour later, yawning, stretching, having a moment’s trouble orienting myself, then swinging down from the hay cart and walking alongside the donkey. I wondered how close Vicente had come to drawing a red line on my throat.
“When we cross into Andorra,” Pablo said, “you will want us to carry the powder for you.”
“Perhaps.”
“Ah, it is necessary.”
“Perhaps. If we are under the straw, we will be safe, will we not?”
“One would hope so.”
“Then why should not the powder be safe with us?”
His explanation was involved and, I think, purposely unconvincing. If we were discovered, he said, he could bribe a guard to overlook the fact. But if the powder were found, there would be trouble, and so it would be better to let him take it. It would, he assured me, be quite safe in his hands.
“Are we close to the border?”
“Very close. An hour, perhaps two.”
I went back to the wagon. When we approached the Andorran border, Pablo stopped the cart again and made us burrow ourselves underneath the hay. He asked for the powder.
“If they search you,” I said, “and find the powder, you will be in great difficulty. But if they search us and find it, you can deny that you knew what we carried and thus save yourself from trouble.”
He let me outfumble him for the check. He and Vicente piled hay on us, and we lay there under the smelly hay while the wagon started up again. Esteban was still half asleep and very much confused. At first he tried to fight his way free of the hay. I finally managed to calm him down, but he obviously didn’t like it.
“I do not trust those men,” he said. “Do you?”
“Of course not.”
“No? I think they are thieves and entirely ruthless. I think they would kill us without a second thought.”
“I agree.”
“You do?”
“Vicente was going to kill you while you slept. But Pablo would not let him.”
“He was going to kill me?”
“With a knife,” I said. “He was going to slit your throat.”
“Mother of God-”
“But it’s all right now,” I assured him.
And it was. The border was easily crossed. Pablo and Vicente evidently did quite a bit of smuggling and were well known at that station. The wagon passed through without incident, continued on through the postage stamp republic of Andorra, and cleared French Customs on the other side. I felt a little sad about this. I was one of the few Americans actually to travel to Andorra and I saw nothing whatsoever of it, spending my entire passage through the country at the bottom of a load of hay. When one could neither see anything nor understand the language, I thought, one might as well have stayed home and watched it all on television.
I was a little worried about ditching Pablo and Vicente, but it turned out that they were more anxious to get away from us than we were to see the last of them. We had a ceremonial drink of wine together, and they went their way, and we went ours, walking north into France. In the first café we came to we ordered breakfast, and I opened the attaché case and drew out the little tin of face powder.
“I do not understand,” said Esteban.
“I bought this in Zaragoza,” I explained. “I bought a tin of face powder and spilled it out and replaced the powder with confectioner’s sugar and crushed aspirin. It was supposed to taste like heroin, and I guess it passed the test. You see, they would hardly have smuggled us across the border out of charity. There had to be profit in it for them, and a tin of heroin would represent a fairly elaborate profit.”
He was nodding eagerly.
“Do you remember when Pablo left the hut in Sort to obtain supplies? He ran off to buy a can of face powder. Then while you slept they switched cans with us. So we started with face powder and now we wind up with face powder.” I gave the can to Esteban. “For you,” I said. “For your salon in Paris.”
“Then we never had any heroin?”
“Of course not.”
“Oh. And they do not have heroin now, do they?”
“They have a dime’s worth of sugar and a nickel’s worth of crushed aspirin. That’s all.”
“Ah.”
“If they sniff it,” I said, “they’re in for a big disappointment.”