“Yes,” Luna said. “That’s Porta Coeli monastery, ¿no?”
“Sí.”
“The one used as a concentration camp after the civil war?”
Alejandro sighed. She had said those words out loud without any hesitation. “The place has been down there for over 700 years. It’s seen worse.”
Luna glanced over at him. “That doesn’t make it right.”
“It was a long time ago now.”
“Time doesn’t heal all wounds, because grief is infinite.”
“Some things don’t heal.”
“They say that thousands of prisoners in that monastery are listed as dying of tuberculosis, but they were murdered and dumped in graves around here.”
“It was more people than they claim it to be. But those details are hidden away. The courts have made sure those papers aren’t released.”
“You lived here back then?”
Alejandro just shook his head. “I don’t look back if I can help it.”
“You were a Republican, weren’t you? I know Scarlett was.”
“I… I can’t… some things just…”
“Did you hide out here, you know… when they were rounding people up to kill once the war was won?”
“La chispa, you have to stop.”
“Who will hear us out here?”
“The dead can hear you. I can hear them. You won’t ever understand.”
“Try me.”
“Why?”
“Somewhere out there, I bet some bastard killed my grandfather, and he’s dumped in a grave. I’m one of thousands of people whose identity is in the soil here, along with the blood of our family members.”
“I know that. But surely you have more immediate family. Scarlett had a baby, I take it that the baby is your…?”
“Father. Alexander was my father. Both of my parents died a long time ago.”
Alejandro squinted at the young woman. “You’ve had it tough.”
“Haven’t we all?”
“Scarlett named the baby Alexander after everything.”
Luna turned to him. “You spoke to her about her baby?”
“I knew Scarlett exceptionally well. My wife, Sofía, was drawn to Scarlett when she came to town.”
“Cuenca.”
“Yes. We were close. Cayetano lived across the street from me, and he offered Scarlett a place to stay. They met at a meeting about the war. The war was not kind to your abuela.”
“My father told me that she was a tough, outspoken woman.”
“She was when she came to us.” Alejandro almost smiled. “But she came to Spain to change the world, and reality taught her some harsh lessons. After she was raped out in Huete just before the camp was bombed…”
“What?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“Are you sure?”
“She told Sofía about it. Raped by a group of Falange members who thought women deserved it. Scarlett was darkened by it. The fact she met Ulrich was a relief, and then all that business…”
“Who?”
“Ulrich Hahn was a German volunteer with the International Brigade, like Scarlett. They got married during a visit to Barcelona before he went to fight at Ebro. She buried him a month later, and returned to Cuenca instead of going home, as all foreigners were asked to do.”
“I had no idea she was married.”
“All wartime Republican marriages were annulled by Franco. I guess there was no sense to mention it.”
“But she would have carried that pain her whole life.”
“We all carry something.”
“So, how did she ever get pregnant to Cayetano Ortega?” Luna’s heart leapt in her chest. If Ulrich fathered the baby, then she and her own Cayetano wouldn’t be related…
“That was just a one-time mix-up. A night drinking in Requena… it happens.” He had no idea how much hope that comment crushed.
“Are you sure?”
“I was in the next tent. I remember more than I ever wanted to know.”
“Cayetano was definitely the father?”
“La chispa, my body is old, but my mind isn’t. Why?”
“What happened to Cayetano? He was your best friend.”
Alejandro shook his head, his gaze at the uneven ground beneath their feet. “He’s gone.”
“Murdered?”
He nodded his head. “Like so many.”
“And dumped somewhere?”
“You better come inside.”
The house was sparse at best. While the stone building was enormous, Alejandro’s whole life appeared to be jammed in one room in the front. It consisted of no more than a single kitchen sink and table in the corner, with a gas cooker on the floor. A single bed lined the opposite wall of the large room, and all else in there was a small table and chairs in the centre of the room. But papers, they were everywhere. So many newspapers and magazines and books, in piles, all seemingly put around the room at random. The table was covered in newspapers, which Alejandro hastily tried to move away.
“Don’t go to any effort on my account,” Luna said.
“I don’t want you prying through my things,” he shot back.
Bullfighting. So many things about bullfighting. “You follow your family.”
“They’re not my family.” He didn’t bother to look at her as they both sat down at the table.
“How can you sit here, knowing who they are and not go to them?”
“I haven’t left this place in years. I will never go to Madrid.”
“Not home to Cuenca?”
“I shut my home, and the building across the street in 1939 and never went back.”
“You own them?”
“I can only presume they’re still there. I get a bill from the town hall now and then.”
“Then why not sell them, and not this place?”
“I want nothing to do with them.”
“I was there, not long ago.”
Alejandro frowned. “In Cuenca?”
“Yes. Not much there. I looked for any trace of Cayetano Ortega. There isn’t one.”
“You need to look under his full name.”
“Medina.”
“You have been doing well, la chispa. That’s a hefty secret.”
“Cayetano wrote it in a note to your sister, Luna. I found the letter.”
“A letter to my sister? How did you get it?”
“It’s a long story.” Luna’s eyes were on her hands on her lap. Across the table was a magazine article about Cayetano and his accident a few months ago and she didn’t want to look at it.
“Isn’t all of this?”
“Cayetano Beltrán and I… we looked together to figure out a story. He has so much from your sister. His father, Paco, kept it all.”
“What is Paco like?”
“You have never met him?”
“Never.”
“He’s a hard man. Strong. Fanatical about bullfighting and his family. Your sister, Luna, told him that his family loved it.”
“We did,” Alejandro smiled. “We did love it. There was a bar… up from our house, the Libertad. We would spend hours in there talking bullfighting with others from around the town. But… the war ended that love for me…”
“But your sister saw to it that Paco grew to love it. And he does.”
“Paco has done well. I have followed his career. He did well marrying that Morales girl.”
“Inés. I hear they’re happy. They have a daughter, Sofía.”
“I didn’t know that,” Alejandro whispered.
“Sofía likes to stay away from the family business.”
“You know much about the Beltrán family.”
“Yes… well… Cayetano and I…”
Alejandro watched the woman across the tiny table from him. “How well do you know Cayetano?”
“Pretty well.”
“Like I said, my body is old, but my mind isn’t. The boy…”
“He’s hardly a boy.”
“He is when you’re my age. I thought you were married. So is he.”
“I was. I am.”
“Look me in the eye and tell me that there is nothing going on with Cayetano Beltrán.”
“Nothing is going on,” Luna said sternly. “Anymore.”
“So, your end has as many secrets as mine. You won’t even look up at the boy in the paper here. Did he break your heart? I doubt you’re the first.”
“I’m not.” The moment she said it, Luna realised she had given herself away.
“I see. You have had a rough time.”
“So don’t chastise me for wanting to come out here. From the cavemen of the Bronze Age, to the Romans to the Muslims to the Christians, hiding out here has been popular.”
“Are you as eager to leave your mark as them?”
“No. I want a bit of peace.”
“It’s not out here, Luna.” Alejandro wished he could say something to the woman to make her feel better, but he knew the same pain she was going through. “As the saying goes… we are all curious about the things that can hurt us.”
“Your nephew’s son doesn’t need to take the blame. None of it was Cayetano’s fault.”
“Paco isn’t my nephew.”
Luna finally looked up at the old man. “Luna had a baby…”
“My sister had a baby? With who? Ignacio was gay. That’s why we married her off to him, because we knew he wouldn’t touch her. It was all part of a kind of ‘insurance’ deal, somewhere to hide her if we lost the war.”
“I mean Paco. He knows that Ignacio isn’t his real father…”
“I knew that Luna would tell him the truth about that. But we can’t deny that Ignacio provided for my sister and the baby, even if he was a Nationalist. Gave my sister to a Falange member,” he muttered to himself. “Our father, what a fool. He sealed his own fate.”
“It’s the problem of Cayetano Ortega being my abuelo, and also being Cayetano Beltrán’s abuelo…”
“Cayetano wasn’t Paco’s father.” Alejandro looked at her as if she were stupid.
“Luna Beltrán and Cayetano Ortega’s baby is Paco. Paco told us.”
“Paco is wrong. I think I need to tell you the whole truth.”
29
Valencia, España ~ Marzo de 1939
Luna stopped for a moment outside a church, the Santa María del Mar. “What happened here?” It was a mess. “Was it bombed?”
“They used the bell tower as a point of defence,” Scarlett said. “Made the church a target.”
They carried on past the damaged church that sat at the end of Avenida del Puerto where they had left the truck. A white building stood at the port, a beautiful clock on top. It too had been bombed; rubble sat around the largely roofless building. There were people everywhere. “Is that where we’re going?” Luna asked. The baby in her arms cried out in protest; the sun was in his eyes, and he rubbed his little face against her coat in an attempt to get away from it.
“Sí, that’s where you go to get a ticket to get on a boat from the Valencia port,” Alejandro said as they walked down the crowded street. “But there are no tickets or boats to be had anymore.”
Cayetano couldn’t waste any time. He left Scarlett and Luna outside in the sun, and he and Alejandro pushed their way through the busy crowd and into a room in the damaged building, all seemingly patched up after its destruction. They found the man at a desk, a cigarette in his hand. He looked exhausted.
“Back so soon,” he said to the pair, who looked as desperate as the tired man. “You know there are no ships coming into Valencia port. I told you that on your last trip. Whoever you have in your truck, you need to send them to Gandia.”
“Is anything getting out of the port in Gandia? Jávea? Alicante?” Cayetano asked.
“No, not that I know of.”
“It’s different this time,” Cayetano said and pulled a chair out from under the filthy table. “This time we need to get ourselves out.”
“You?” Antonio looked at Cayetano’s face across from him. He watched Alejandro sit next to his friend, the man was dirty and worn out. Normally these two good-time guys looked their best. “Why?”
“We don’t want to live in a country ruled by Franco and his ultra-conservative religious pigs.”
“We need to get used to it. Madrid yesterday, Valencia tomorrow. They have won this war.”
“Doesn’t mean we have to like it,” Alejandro snapped.
“Yes it does, or you will get a bullet. I’m surprised that you two men aren’t dead already. Everyone knows which side you’re on. It’s a miracle that you weren’t marched from your home in the night, shot and dumped in a ditch.”
“We weren’t home often enough,” Cayetano quipped.
“How many poor families from Madrid did you transport to Valencia? Around 100? More?”
“Don’t know,” Cayetano shrugged. “We want on the Stanland. We know it’s the Británico ship ready to leave Valencia.”
“It’s carrying aid, it’s not taking passengers.”
“Surely there’s room for four of us.”
“And why should I get you on there and not many of the others who would like to leave the country? Franco might open the ports to ships again, I don’t know. Maybe you can wait…”
Alejandro looked at his friend for a moment and turned back to Antonio. “What about just two people? My sister Luna has a child, and Scarlett, you remember her…”
“The redhead with the icy eyes. We all remember her.”
“She’s pregnant. Surely we could slip the pair of them onto the ship. Scarlett is Inglés, she wouldn’t stick out on the ship. And Luna, bless her, she is still young…”
“What about your wife, Sofía?” Antonio asked with a frown.
“She passed away,” Cayetano answered for his friend. “It’s very sad, but now we can only think of the other women in our lives.”
“Luna is the one you liked, ¿no?” Antonio asked. “Is the baby yours?”
“No, Scarlett’s baby is mine.”
Antonio rolled his eyes. “Anyone else and I would be surprised, but not you, Ortega.”
“Can you help us, or not?” Alejandro asked. “And if you want money, I’ll pay.”
“Why do you think I can convince a ship captain to help you?” Antonio asked.
“We don’t, we know you can sneak us on that ship. Hide somewhere on board if we have to.”
“The four of you? I doubt it.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “I might know someone who is working on the ship. Maybe we can get the girls on… but no guarantees.”
The air was fresh back outside the office, but the streets were filled with worry. People hurried everywhere, and Cayetano was at a loss. If he told Luna and Scarlett that they were going alone, he wasn’t sure what their reaction was going to be. Scarlett needed to go home; he wouldn’t see her again after that ship left port. The spring sun may have held a little warmth, but Cayetano couldn’t feel it on his skin. There was too much on his mind – Sofía’s bloody death, Alejandro’s grief, Scarlett’s worry, Luna’s anger.
“Caya,” Alejandro said. “Caya, are we doing the right thing here?”
“What do you mean?” He squinted in the sun at his friend.
“I mean, do we need to run? Maybe we will be okay.”
“It was you just yesterday going on about getting your son out of España for good.”
“I know… but…”
“But?”
“Do you want to send Scarlett and Luna away?”
“I want to get Scarlett safely home. She deserves that. What I’ve done to her, and the rest of her life, is unforgivable.”
“Had it been easier to travel to Barcelona, she could have got rid of that baby.”
“It would be safer to stand on the front line and get shot than to take up one of those abortions in Barcelona. There is only so much pain a woman can, and should ever have to, take.”
“And Luna?”
“You know how I feel about your sister.”
“That’s a subject we don’t need to discuss.”
“I want her to be safe. She’s got my diamond. That could get her a long way.”
“But where? It’s one thing for Scarlett to travel to Nueva Zelanda, but what about Luna? It’s not that simple. She doesn’t even own a passport or anything to identify herself. Who knows where that would leave her.”
“I don’t know, Ale!” Cayetano cried. “I don’t know what to do here!”
“What if we go back up to Escondrijo in the mountains and just hold tight. Scarlett can still go home.”
“Let’s go to Francia. The Medina’s told us that any time we needed help, they would take us in. Pilar is my mother. Luna would be safer there in Pau than here.”
“Pau is a long way from here! We would need to get over the Pyrenees and head a long way west to get there. If we get there at all.”
“We have the truck.”
“And need to drive it through regions all already captured by Franco’s troops. And what about the rumours of refugees being arrested and imprisoned in camps, in Francia, for the sole crime of being from España?”
“That is in the east, not in the west.”
“That we know of. Plus, there’s all those rumours that now that Hitler has practiced bombing our magnificent country that he’s going to take on the rest of Europe. Nowhere is safe.”
“Maybe the suggestion of Argentina isn’t so stupid. This is the kind of thing we have been saving up for. There is a lot of cash in the chest that Luna is sitting on with Scarlett right now.”
“And no ships leaving port here!”
“Do you want to die?” Cayetano asked. “You haven’t come up with anything.”
“Everything I hold dear is already dead and hidden away on a mountain. I loved Sofía, and if I can find a safe place for her baby, then I’ll do it.”
“Ale, I’m not saying what you have suffered with Sofía isn’t important.”
“Then stop pushing me. I can’t make a decision. I don’t want to leave. Let Scarlett go, and Luna, but only if she wants to. We don’t need to make decisions for these girls; they’re perfectly capable of looking after themselves.”
Secrets of Spain Trilogy Page 30