THE days grew hotter and even the nights grew tolerably warm. On a bullet — chipped tree in front of our parapet thick clusters of cherries were forming. Bathing in the river ceased to be an agony and became almost a pleasure. Wild roses with pink blooms the size of saucers straggled over the shell-holes round Torre Fabian. Behind the line you met peasants wearing wild roses over their ears. In the evenings they used to go out with green nets, hunting quails1. You spread the net over the tops of the grasses and then lay down and made a noise like a female quail2. Any male quail that was within hearing then came running towards you, and when he was underneath3 the net you threw a stone to scare him, whereupon he sprang into the air and was entangled4 in the net. Apparently5 only male quails were caught, which struck me as unfair.
There was a section of Andalusians next to us in the line now. I do not know quite how they got to this front. The current explanation was that they had run away from Malaga so fast that they had forgotten to stop at Valencia; but this, of course, came from the Catalans, who professed6 to look down on the Andalusians as a race of semi-savages. Certainly the Andalusians were very ignorant. Few if any of them could read, and they seemed not even to know the one thing that everybody knows in Spain — which political party they belonged to. They thought they were Anarchists8, but were not quite certain; perhaps they were Communists. They were gnarled, rustic-looking men, shepherds or labourers from the olive groves9, perhaps, with faces deeply stained by the ferocious10 suns of farther south. They were very useful to us, for they had an extraordinary dexterity11 at rolling the dried-up Spanish tobacco into cigarettes. The issue of cigarettes had ceased, but in Monflorite it was occasionally possible to buy packets of the cheapest kind of tobacco, which in appearance and texture12 was very like chopped chaff13. Its flavour was not bad, but it was so dry that even when you had succeeded in making a cigarette the tobacco promptly14 fell out and left an empty cylinder15. The Andalusians, however, could roll admirable cigarettes and had a special technique for tucking the ends in.
Two Englishmen were laid low by sunstroke. My salient memories of that time are the heat of the midday sun, and working half-naked with sand — bags punishing one’s shoulders which were already flayed16 by the sun; and the lousiness of our clothes and boots, which were literally17 dropping to pieces; and the struggles with the mule18 which brought our rations19 and which did not mind rifle-fire but took to flight when shrapnel burst in the air; and the mosquitoes (just beginning to be active) and the rats, which were a public nuisance and would even devour20 leather belts and cartridge-pouches. Nothing was happening except an occasional casualty from a sniper’s bullet and the sporadic21 artillery-fire and air-raids on Huesca. Now that the trees were in full leaf we had constructed snipers’ platforms, like machans, in the poplar trees that fringed the line. On the other side of Huesca the attacks were petering out. The Anarchists had had heavy losses and had not succeeded in completely cutting the Jaca road. They had managed to establish themselves close enough on either side to bring the road itself under machine-gun fire and make it impassable for traffic; but the gap was a kilometre wide and the Fascists22 had constructed a sunken road, a sort of enormous trench24, along which a certain number of lorries could come and go. Deserters reported that in Huesca there were plenty of munitions25 and very little food. But the town was evidently not going to fall. Probably it would have been impossible to take it with the fifteen thousand ill-armed men who were available. Later, in June, the Government brought troops from the Madrid front and concentrated thirty thousand men on Huesca, with an enormous quantity of aeroplanes, but still the town did not fall.
When we went on leave I had been a hundred and fifteen days in the line, and at the time this period seemed to me to have been one of the most futile26 of my whole life. I had joined the militia27 in order to fight against Fascism, and as yet I had scarcely fought at all, had merely existed as a sort of passive object, doing nothing in return for my rations except to suffer from cold and lack of sleep. Perhaps that is the fate of most soldiers in most wars. But now that I can see this period in perspective I do not altogether regret it. I wish, indeed, that I could have served the Spanish Government a little more effectively; but from a personal point of view — from the point of view of my own development — those first three or four months that I spent in the line were less futile than I then thought. They formed a kind of interregnum in my life, quite different from anything that had gone before and perhaps from anything that is to come, and they taught me things that I could not have learned in any other way.
The essential point is that all this time I had been isolated28 — for at the front one was almost completely isolated from the outside world: even of what was happening in Barcelona one had only a dim conception — among people who could roughly but not too inaccurately29 be described as revolutionaries. This was the result of the militia — system, which on the Aragon front was not radically30 altered till about June 1937. The workers’ militias31, based on the trade unions and each composed of people of approximately the same political opinions, had the effect of canalizing into one place all the most revolutionary sentiment in the country. I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism32 were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely33 of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling34 on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing35 mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives36 of civilized37 life — snobbishness38, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc. — had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money — tainted39 air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master. Of course such a state of affairs could not last. It was simply a temporary and local phase in an enormous game that is being played over the whole surface of the earth. But it lasted long enough to have its effect upon anyone who experienced it. However much one cursed at the time, one realized afterwards that one had been in contact with something strange and valuable. One had been in a community where hope was more normal than apathy40 or cynicism, where the word ‘comrade’ stood for comradeship and not, as in most countries, for humbug41. One had breathed the air of equality. I am well aware that it is now the fashion to deny that Socialism has anything to do with equality. In every country in the world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek42 little professors are busy ‘proving’ that Socialism means no more than a planned state-capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this. The thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them willing to risk their skins for it, the ‘mystique’ of Socialism, is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all. And it was here that those few months in the militia were valuable to me. For the Spanish militias, while they lasted, were a sort of microcosm of a classless society. In that community where no one was on the make, where there was a shortage of everything but no privilege and no boot-licking, one got, perhaps, a crude forecast of what the opening stages of Socialism might be like. And, after all, instead of disillusioning43 me it deeply attracted me. The effect was to make my desire to see Socialism established much more actual than it had been before. Partly, perhaps, this was due to the good luck of being among Spaniards, who, with their innate44 decency45 and their ever-present Anarchist7 tinge46, would make even the opening stages of Socialism tolerable if they had the chance.
Of course at the time I was hardly conscious of the changes that were occurring in my own mind. Like everyone about me I was chiefly conscious of boredom47, heat, cold, dirt, lice, privation, and occasional danger. It is quite different now. This period which then seemed so futile and eventless is now of great importance to me. It is so different from the rest of my life that already it has taken on the magic quality which, as a rule, belongs only to memories that are years old. It was beastly while it was happening, but it is a good patch for my mind to browse48 upon. I wish I could convey to you the atmosphere of that time. I hope I have done so, a little, in the earlier chapters of this book. It is all bound up in my mind with the winter cold, the ragged49 uniforms of militiamen, the oval Spanish faces, the morse-like tapping of machine-guns, the smells of urine and rotting bread, the tinny taste of bean-stews wolfed hurriedly out of unclean pannikins.
The whole period stays by me with curious vividness. In my memory I live over incidents that might seem too petty to be worth recalling. I am in the dug-out at Monte Pocero again, on the ledge51 of limestone52 that serves as a bed, and young Ram6n is snoring with his nose flattened53 between my shoulder-blades. I am stumbling up the mucky trench, through the mist that swirls54 round me like cold steam. I am half-way up a crack in the mountain-side, struggling to keep my balance and to tug55 a root of wild rosemary out of the ground. High overhead some meaningless bullets are singing.
I am lying hidden among small fir-trees on the low ground west of Monte Oscuro, with Kopp and Bob Edwards and three Spaniards. Up the naked grey hill to the right of us a string of Fascists are climbing like ants. Close in front a bugle-call rings out from the Fascist23 lines. Kopp catches my eye and, with a schoolboy gesture, thumbs his nose at the sound.
I am in the mucky yard at La Granja, among the mob of men who are struggling with their tin pannikins round the cauldron of stew50. The fat and harassed56 cook is warding57 them off with the ladle. At a table nearby a bearded man with a huge automatic pistol strapped58 to his belt is hewing59 loaves of bread into five pieces. Behind me a Cockney voice (Bill Chambers60, with whom I quarrelled bitterly and who was afterwards killed outside Huesca) is singing:
There are rats, rats,
Rats as big as cats,
In the . . .
A shell comes screaming over. Children of fifteen fling themselves on their faces. The cook dodges61 behind the cauldron. Everyone rises with a sheepish expression as the shell plunges62 and booms a hundred yards away.
I am walking up and down the line of sentries63, under the dark boughs64 of the poplars. In the flooded ditch outside the rats are paddling about, making as much noise as otters65. As the yellow dawn comes up behind us, the Andalusian sentry66, mufHed in his cloak, begins singing. Across no man’s land, a hundred or two hundred yards away, you can hear the Fascist sentry also singing.
On 25 April, after the usual mananas, another section relieved us and we handed over our rifles, packed our kits67, and marched back to Monflorite. I was not sorry to leave the line. The lice were multiplying in my trousers far faster than I could massacre68 them, and for a month past I had had no socks and my boots had very little sole left, so that I was walking more or less barefoot. I wanted a hot bath, clean clothes, and a night between sheets more passionately69 than it is possible to want anything when one has been living a normal civilized life. We slept a few hours in a barn in Monflorite, jumped a lorry in the small hours, caught the five o’clock train at Barbastro, and — having the luck to connect with a fast train at Lerida — were in Barcelona by three o’clock in the afternoon of the 26th. And after that the trouble began.
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1
quails
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| 鹌鹑( quail的名词复数 )； 鹌鹑肉 | |
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quail
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| n.鹌鹑；vi.畏惧，颤抖 | |
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underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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entangled
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| adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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professed
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| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
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anarchist
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| n.无政府主义者 | |
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anarchists
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| 无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
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groves
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| 树丛，小树林( grove的名词复数 ) | |
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ferocious
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| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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dexterity
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| n.(手的)灵巧，灵活 | |
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texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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chaff
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| v.取笑，嘲笑；n.谷壳 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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cylinder
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| n.圆筒，柱(面)，汽缸 | |
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flayed
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| v.痛打( flay的过去式和过去分词 )；把…打得皮开肉绽；剥（通常指动物）的皮；严厉批评 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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mule
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| n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人 | |
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rations
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| 定量( ration的名词复数 )； 配给量； 正常量； 合理的量 | |
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devour
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| v.吞没；贪婪地注视或谛听，贪读；使着迷 | |
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sporadic
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| adj.偶尔发生的 [反]regular；分散的 | |
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fascists
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| n.法西斯主义的支持者( fascist的名词复数 ) | |
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fascist
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| adj.法西斯主义的；法西斯党的；n.法西斯主义者，法西斯分子 | |
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trench
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| n./v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕 | |
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munitions
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| n.军火，弹药；v.供应…军需品 | |
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futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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militia
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| n.民兵，民兵组织 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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inaccurately
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| 不精密地，不准确地 | |
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radically
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| ad.根本地，本质地 | |
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militias
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| n.民兵组织，民兵( militia的名词复数 ) | |
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capitalism
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| n.资本主义 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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snobbishness
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| 势利； 势利眼 | |
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tainted
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| adj.腐坏的；污染的；沾污的；感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏 | |
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apathy
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| n.漠不关心，无动于衷；冷淡 | |
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humbug
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| n.花招，谎话，欺骗 | |
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42
sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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43
disillusioning
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| 使不再抱幻想，使理想破灭( disillusion的现在分词 ) | |
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44
innate
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| adj.天生的，固有的，天赋的 | |
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decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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46
tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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boredom
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| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
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48
browse
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| vi.随意翻阅，浏览；(牛、羊等)吃草 | |
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49
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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50
stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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51
ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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52
limestone
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| n.石灰石 | |
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53
flattened
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| [医]（水）平扁的，弄平的 | |
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54
swirls
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| n.旋转( swirl的名词复数 )；卷状物；漩涡；尘旋v.旋转，打旋( swirl的第三人称单数 ) | |
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55
tug
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| v.用力拖(或拉)；苦干；n.拖；苦干；拖船 | |
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56
harassed
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| adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词 | |
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57
warding
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| 监护，守护（ward的现在分词形式） | |
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58
strapped
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| adj.用皮带捆住的，用皮带装饰的；身无分文的；缺钱；手头紧v.用皮带捆扎(strap的过去式和过去分词)；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带 | |
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59
hewing
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| v.（用斧、刀等）砍、劈( hew的现在分词 )；砍成；劈出；开辟 | |
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60
chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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61
dodges
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| n.闪躲( dodge的名词复数 )；躲避；伎俩；妙计v.闪躲( dodge的第三人称单数 )；回避 | |
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62
plunges
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| n.跳进，投入vt.使投入，使插入，使陷入vi.投入，跳进，陷入v.颠簸( plunge的第三人称单数 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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sentries
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| 哨兵，步兵( sentry的名词复数 ) | |
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boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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65
otters
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| n.（水）獭( otter的名词复数 )；獭皮 | |
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66
sentry
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| n.哨兵，警卫 | |
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kits
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| 衣物和装备( kit的名词复数 )； 成套用品； 配套元件 | |
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massacre
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| n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀 | |
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passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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