Dusted

After three months of indecision, she arrives at the front. The air ripples and gleams like molten glass.

Anne jumps down from the back of the truck and dusts off her trousers and the embroidered collar of her once-white shirt. Her back aches. It took eight hours to reach Brunete, and the canvas she rested on offered no protection from the metal joint she had to lean on.

Her legs falter. Unbearable heat.

A courtyard made of compacted soil. A huge, two-story, gray stone building, flanked by two hangars. Many soldiers lined up in formation, equipped with metal helmets and uniforms that don’t quite match. None of them smiles.

Anne remains in the shade of a dusty pine tree with long needles and cones the size of a thumb, splashing herself with lukewarm water from the fountain.

Her comrades from the Dimitrov Battalion grab their packs and run toward the smaller hangar at the back of the yard. They don’t wait for her. Anne lifts her own pack, her eyes on the stunted rosemary bush with delicate purple flowers hiding a tangle of thin, bare branches.

“Are you Anne?” a low, raspy voice startles her. From the voice alone, she would have guessed he was older, but a young man wearing a leather jacket and aviator helmet stands behind her, his heels dug in. He’s smoking Blue Gauloises. The brand of those in charge.

“Mhm.” The heat has plastered her cropped hair to her scalp.

“You’re late.” The harsh and well-known smell of cigarettes fills her nostrils.

She checks her shirt to ensure it’s tucked in, then adjusts the rope belt. “It’s July eighth,” she says shyly. “As I announced.” And waits.

He tilts his head, lips drawn tight at one corner. He has to be El Segundo Comandante.

Four planes fly closer, dropping incendiary bombs a few kilometres off. The ground trembles, and the air cracks. Tall arborvitae burn, sending columns of smoke skyward. Dust rises, clouding her vision.

Anne drops into a crouch and covers her ears. She opens her mouth but doesn’t know if she’s screaming.

“First time at the front?”

“What did you say?” Her ears ring and ache.

El Segundo grabs her shoulder and pulls her up. “I’ll give you a piece of wood to bite on. Now come.”

Anne gulps the sour panic, dragging her pack behind her.

Some soldiers laugh. She can’t hear their remarks. The truck that transported her to Brunete is now waiting for the comrades of the Chapaev battalion to re-board.

The air grows hollow. The sky overhead is once more light blue.

“Anne?”

The same Blue Gauloises scent behind her. The drawn-out accent on the last sound of her name. His voice reverberates in her ears with the force of an explosion. It cannot be M.

Is fear making her hallucinate? They should have been married by now. Two hundred and seventy days.

Her breathing slows down. The sweat is running down her spine, not only from the forty-degree heat baking the ground. She wipes her damp temples, salty streams swell the freckles on her cheeks. Removing her glasses, she rubs her face with a dirty handkerchief. Anne stammers.

El Segundo spits. “You have three minutes,” he says, eyes on his wristlet watch, “then report to the rear hangar. The commander is expecting you. Your French classes start at two.” He licks his lips to clear the dust and leave them alone.

Drowsiness makes Anne sway. She doesn’t turn to face him. Red ants thread their way through the yard’s dust toward the stunted rosemary bush by the well.

“I knew you’d come,” M whispers in her ear. “I just hoped I’d catch you before we leave for Villanueva de la Cañada. We have orders to reinforce the hills.” Another detonation rolls across the hills. “Anne, I have something for you.” He raises his voice.

With his right hand, he touches her shoulder, her arm. His touch sends goosebumps across her skin, a sensation her body seemed to have forgotten. His fingers intertwine with hers, his palms rougher than she remembers, but digging trenches is no easy task. Anne gasps.

His Adam’s apple shifts as he pulls a brown envelope from inside his shirt. “You’re so beautiful.” He flinches. A blast cracks somewhere behind them.

Anne snatches the letter and steps back. The paper is hot. Her mother’s handwriting.

“How?” The color drains from her cheeks. She lifts a hand to her hair. M has never seen it this short.

“Your mother found out you fled to Spain to join the International Brigades.” He presses his palms to his eyes. “My mother knows how to reach me.”

Her fingers tighten around the letter. He’s thinner. Older. Distant. Seeing him causes pain.

The harming sound returns. Two planes fly low again. One is dark, almost black, with thick wings and a body like corrugated skin. The other is green, the color of dried mint. Fire crackles. Whistles everywhere.

Metallic taste in her mouth.

“I have to go,” M says. “Take care, Anne. I love you. We are both fighters now.” He doesn’t smile. His hand brushes against her heated cheek. M wants to embrace her, but she recoils.

Someone shouts orders. The engine roars.

He doesn’t look back while getting into the truck with the noisy Chapaev Battalion. He gave her up two weeks before the wedding for an ideal, for scorched earth and explosives, for blood that now dyes every stone of this broken land. A country of half-burned wheat fields and rocky hills, treeless, only skeletal shrubs even here, on the outskirts of Madrid.

How lonely do I seem?

Anne traveled this far to figure out why he abandoned her. She’s the new translator for the campaign commander. And the French teacher, the language of the Internationale that all these boys who abandoned their homes want to learn.

The ground explodes nearby. Smoke. Dust. The smell of explosives, harsh as the lye her mother used to wash sheets.

The ground trembles, and great black swirls twist through the air. El Segundo urges her to hurry, his hands fluttering like a dove’s wings. Her legs stand as if buried in the sun-baked soil of headquarters.

Her ears burst. Pain detonated behind her eyes. Dust wraps around her. She tastes it on her tongue, between her teeth, on her heat-dazed freckles. Why didn’t she hug him? Why didn’t she read the letter?

She wants to crawl beneath the earth to escape the infernal noise. Like the red ants vanishing before her eyes into cracks wide enough to swallow her arm.

The scent pierces the chaos. Thyme. Rosemary. Crushed, burnt herbs, maybe incense.

Why can’t I feel my legs? Her body loosens.

The End