The Soundmaker

And Care for To-morrow so Soon Put Away

Friday, April 23, 1937.

1700 Hours.

Town Barracks.

By the time I woke up, Torito was missing, as usual.

Still no sign of Tuerto anywhere. More fodder for the Lieutenant to use against me later on, I was sure. It was still early, but we had to pull a double shift that evening anyway. I could feel my face and eyes puffy from my almost useless nap. You can't pretend to cram three days of sleep in five hours of rest. You just wake up more tired than before. But I'm digressing.

I was already preparing to wake up Camarada to go look for Torito at the Zurito when the man himself appeared through the door. True to his nickname, he was fuming with anger. Something had happened.

"You're early," I commented, but only got a dismissive wave as a response.

"Couldn't concentrate," he mentioned, "the lack of sleep is getting to me."

"You mentioned that earlier."

"Yes, well," said Torito as he plummeted on his straw bed, "now it's serious."

At some point, we managed to wake Camarada up with our chatter, given that he was sitting up on his own bed.

"Lack of sleep can mess with your performance," said Camarada with a deadpanned expression.

It was an innocent comment, but it seemed to make Torito more irritated and mad. He threw away his satchel and punched his bed in frustration. "No, no. It's not that. The Torito doesn't suffer from any performance issues. It's this fucking noise."

"Yes," said Camarada as he stood up, "artillery fire does get annoying after a while."

"Not that," said Torito. "it was different."

I remembered he mentioned something about a scrapping noise earlier that day. Maybe it was our minds playing games with us. We were sleep deprived, almost starved, and constantly on edge. At that time, several people had gone mad. Some tried to escape, only to be caught either by us or by the revolutionary forces. Some tried to fake an illness, or even go as far as to injure themselves to have an excuse not to fight. But in such wars, every man had to stand his ground.

Of course, when you apply such pressure to a man, with no way out, you can understand how attractive the barrel of a gun seems to be. Peace at the pull of a trigger. The easy way out.

After all, the wait was the worst part.

"What noise?" asked Camarada.

It was actually quite rare to have them both talk to eachother without trying tear their eyes out, so I just made myself blend into the background to see how things went.

"It was like...music."

"Most people like to have some music while they-" Camarada started to say, but Torito started to screech a syncopated tune that made both Camarada and me reel back.

"Stop!" yelled Camarada, making Torito smile wickedly.

"Didn't you like the beautiful background music to my lovemaking?" said Torito. "Now, imagine that inside my head. I had to run from there."

"And it stopped?" I asked.

"That's the weird thing," said Torito. "As I went further away from the Zurito, the music became fainter and fainter. I can't even hear it right now."

"Weird," said Camarada.

Weird indeed. It didn't occur to me at the time to connect his noise to my noise or to realize that the same thing happened to me earlier when I was walking through town. Hindsight is a curse. But Torito did notice it. He was the brains in our group, but I was the leader. The responsibility of the events following that day were, and are still, on my shoulders.