Free Tomb in Seville by Norman Lewis Page A

volunteers, the captured cannon, and the brass band still managed to be in good heart.
    There was a bust of Lenin, brushed over with aluminium paint, on the café table and a small red flag was given away free with a cup of coffee. The scene was one of nervous good humour. Four smallish teenage girls in soldiers’ uniforms were surrounded by admirers, and we arrived at the moment when they had decided to shear a few inches off the tunics’ sleeves to smarten them up. A middle-aged captain with a greying walrus moustache was in command here, and I waited my turn to ask him a question. ‘How far away are the Fascists at the moment?’
    ‘No way of knowing,’ he said. ‘We’ve got them on the run. Getting out while they can. That’s if we let them. Are you a volunteer?’
    ‘No, my friend is,’ I told him.
    ‘They told me about him. English, isn’t he?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘Well, we’ll be going after them any minute now. You ought to come along with us anyway. Be quite an experience.’
    ‘Thanks. Perhaps I will,’ I said.
    The moment had come. I decided to tackle Eugene on his volunteer obsession, and I took him aside. ‘I gave your father a promise to look after you,’ I said, ‘and that naturally included bringing you back alive.’
    He laughed. ‘That’s understood,’ he said. ‘You’re not going to let him down.’
    ‘What you don’t seem to be able to see is that the Red Army we’ve been hearing so much about is a figment of the imagination. They were supposed to have entered Madrid by today. Where are they?’
    ‘I’ve just listened to the six o’clock news,’ he said. ‘They were reported to have occupied Tetuan this morning.’
    ‘I listened to the eight o’clock news,’ I told him. ‘Nothing was said about it. The locals don’t take these stories seriously any more. What they do believe is that a thousand of the new Assault Guards took over the central area of the city yesterday.’
    ‘We shall have to wait and see,’ Eugene said. ‘In the meantime, have they told you about Casas Viejas?’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘What about it?’
    ‘It’s a village in the hills five or six miles from here. It was occupied a week or two ago by the Liberation Army. We could go and see it for ourselves if you like. The road is open. Why don’t we do that?’
    ‘I’ll do a deal with you,’ I told him. ‘Your father provided all the necessary funds for this trip, the objective so far as he was concerned being the pilgrimage to Seville. I can’t see myself going back to break the news to him that you’ve joined a revolutionary army. I’ll go to Casas Viejas with you and talk to the Liberation Army people, but after that we must either go on to Seville, or I personally shall feel obliged to turn round and go home.’
    ‘What happens about the tickets and the money?’
    ‘I’ll have to think about that. It’s his money. It would be a question of ringing him up and finding out what he wants done. You have to realise that the responsibility is mine.’
    ‘So there’s nothing for it really?’
    ‘No, not really.’
    ‘But you wouldn’t object to going over to Casas Viejas?’
    ‘No, why should I? It should be an interesting experience.’
    I had read somewhere that twenty-odd villages scattered throughout Spain bore this name. It meant simply that they were old. Nothing was said about starving to death. It was a place name likely to be found among the swamps of a river delta, or the barren lower slopes of a mountain range, or in a borderland area of a province subject to invasion by starving soldiers from across the frontier.
    The café-owner’s younger brother, who was an enthusiastic Red, was happy to run us over there in his veteran Seat through a landscape turning into a wilderness within a mile of the village. A few twisted oaks had been able to root themselves among the rocks, but were shortly to be smothered by a dense growth of spiny bushes. I asked the driver what was