“I wish I could feel that blasé,” Luna replied.
“Preciosa, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I guess.” Luna watched her boys point out goldfish swimming in the shallow pond. Beyond them, there were little white row boats bobbing around under the cloudy sky. “Have you ever tried the boats?”
“Lots of times. We should take the boys one day.”
“Now?” Enzo asked.
“Sorry, little E. We need to go soon, for dinner at my parents’ house,” Cayetano replied.
“Tomorrow?” Giacomo asked.
“Sure. The sun will come out tomorrow, and I will row you all around the lake, as much as you like.” He looked up from the happy redheads and looked at the statue on the other side of the lake, the King atop his horse. “Hey, that guy is your great-great-grandfather.”
Luna snorted with a smile. “Terrific. He spent most of his life in exile, too.”
“But he got his crown and his country back when forces crushed the Republic.”
“And then died of tuberculosis before the birth of his son and heir.”
“And his son went on to engage in a torrid affair with a maid and produced your mischievous grandfather. There is a habit of wild behaviour.”
“But my father was a good man.”
“Who had you, la chispa, the spark to set off a thousand fires.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“We should get back to the apartment, we need to head out to La Moraleja soon.”
“Do we have to go? Can’t we just stay home? Or better, find a no-name little bar somewhere and have something to eat and relax?”
“I see,” Cayetano said and steered the boys away from the water’s edge and in the direction of the gate towards the nearby Salamanca barrio. “You want to find a dirty little place that some foreigner like Ernest Hemingway hung out in, and sit there with beer, cigarettes and speak in waxing lyricals?”
“Hadn’t thought of that… but yes, I do.”
“What about tomorrow night? Sofía could babysit, and we could go out.”
“Go out? Without the kids?”
“Yes, it’s been known to happen, Luna. Couples doing couple-like things. It’s allowed.”
“Maybe…”
“Definitely. They will be asleep and won’t know the difference.”
“Why can’t we do it tonight?”
“Because we are going to a wedding meeting,” Cayetano said with the biggest fake smile he had ever produced.
“You mean I get to be grilled about bringing shame to the family with my suspension and my marido drogadicto?” She doubted the children had learned the phrase ‘drug addict husband’ in school.
“That won’t happen. I won’t let it.”
The group strolled towards one of the entrances to the park, through scores of tourists dotted around the trees that hung limp on the still spring day. The bustle of the city lay before them, with traffic whizzing around the circular Plaza de la Independencia. It wasn’t far to Cayetano’s building, but the conversation was silent.
“You do believe me, don’t you?” Luna asked as they went into the fifth floor apartment. “That Fabrizio didn’t do all the things the papers claimed?”
“If you believe him to be innocent, then I will believe you.”
Luna took the children to wash and get ready to go out, unaware that Cayetano felt terrible about lying right to her face. Everyone but Luna could see her denial.
~~~
The dull Madrid day gave away into night when Luna and Cayetano arrived the Beltrán house in swanky La Moraleja. It was lucky that Sofía would be there, at least Luna could sit and talk with her future sister-in-law. The rest of the family seemed to heap a whole lot of questions on her.
Cayetano opened the front door without even a knock and called out as they went in from the cold. Luna could see the disinterest that Giacomo and Enzo had for the evening, and their faces matched hers. She put on her best smile when Inés appeared in the entrance way.
“My darling boy,” Inés said and kissed her tall son hello. “You’re late.”
“Nice to see you, too,” he joked.
“Come in, come in, we have so much to talk about this evening. Unfortunately, Luna, the wedding dress has not yet arrived. But the bridesmaid dress has come for Sofía, so you can give us your opinion. Sofía is being her usual stubborn self.”
“Mamá,” Cayetano warned her.
“I’m not criticising,” she said in a tone that made her sound very insincere. “I’m just saying, I never argued with my mother the way that Sofía argues with me.”
“Mamá, you argued with Papí José plenty of times.”
“My father and I never got along after I got pregnant.”
“That must be difficult,” Luna remarked. “I was very close to my father.”
“My mother was the one who cared the most for me and my brothers,” Inés said. “Different times, I suppose. How are you, Luna? All this business in the papers…”
“I’m fine,” she lied. “None of it is true.”
Inés and Cayetano shared a look, but Luna didn’t see it as she straightened the collar on Enzo’s white shirt.
“At last!” Paco said when they all trailed into the living room. He jumped from his luxurious leather chair and kissed his daughter-in-law on the cheek. “How are you, my girl?”
“Okay.”
“Good. Don’t worry, we will get your good name back yet.”
Luna smiled and said hello to everyone else, a friendly sister-in-law, a quiet but polite Consuela, and a miserable-looking José. The man had probably never smiled in his life.
“So,” Cayetano announced as they sat down on the leather couch. The boys sat on the plush white carpet to indulge in cookies put out on the coffee table. “I have something to tell you. Big news.”
“Dios mío, ella esta embarazada!” Consuela cried.
“No, Mamí, Luna isn’t pregnant.” Cayetano did his best not to cringe. They had been in the house five minutes, and it had already begun. “I am going to adopt Giacomo and Enzo.”
“¡Vaya! That is a surprise,” Inés said. “You seemed unsure last time you visited together.”
“Good man,” Paco said to his son. “Perhaps now you can grow up and be an adult that can act as a positive role model.” He smirked at his son’s indignant look.
“Adoption is a wonderful thing,” Consuela said. “I’m very proud of you, nieto. She reached out for a hug and Cayetano jumped up and embraced his frail grandmother.
“So what will the children call you?” Inés asked.
Cayetano looked at Luna, who didn’t have an answer. “I’m not sure, we didn’t discuss it with the boys.”
“What, Mummy?” Enzo asked.
“Nothing, sweetheart, you just play with your brother.”
“I guess it will be Papá,” Cayetano said. “Let’s be patient with that.”
“I had a woman in my office at the Registro Civil today,” Sofía said. “She had the death certificates of both her parents, and her own birth certificate, but she thinks she had been adopted. But I looked through everything, and it said they were her natural parents. It was bizarre.”
“Either she was adopted, or she wasn’t,” Paco said.
Sofía shrugged. “I suggested she look at the hospital records, but she had been born in a little private hospital here in Madrid, and it has long since closed. There are no records. She is convinced that someone stole her from her natural mother and sold to the people she thought were her parents for thirty years.”
“We saw something like that in the Valencian paper,” Cayetano said. “A woman was convinced that her baby was alive and stolen. The woman heard the baby cry at birth, but it was taken away before she could see the baby. The doctors could lie on birth records and put adoptive parents as natural parents, to lie about who they are.”
“What nonsense,” José said in a loud voice. “These women cannot give away the
ir babies and then have a change of heart a whole lifetime later. The babies went to better homes, and they can’t just interfere.”
“What constitutes a better home?” Luna asked.
“There are plenty of examples of terrible mothers,” José continued. “They could be unmarried, they could be poor, or uneducated or lack a proper moral compass guided by the Catholic faith. Some people, they moan and say nasty things about the church or God, or the government. They shouldn’t be mothers. The decision to give up the baby needed to be taken from them.”
“José, please, stop,” Consuela asked.
“For the interests of the child and families, babies should be given better lives.”
“They shouldn’t be stolen. Babies and the mothers deserve the truth,” Luna replied.
“No, they don’t! You’re a prime example. You had two children to a man who has shamed himself, and also you, the children you bore, and now my grandson because his association with you. Luna, you should be grateful Cayetano agreed to take you and your kids, or you would be ripe for having them removed from your care.”
“Stop!” Cayetano cried.
“Please don’t raise your voices in front of my children,” Luna said calmly, but she felt the opposite of calm. “You don’t have the right to speak like that in front of them.”
“This is my home,” José said.
“That is no excuse.” The outburst was enough to reduce her to tears, but Luna wouldn’t give José the satisfaction.
“I will say whatever I like, Luna. Everyone here is smiling, but you won’t believe the gossip behind your back! All those things in the papers about your dead husband and his drug use? We aren’t stupid. You were his wife; you would have known what happened. You are involved in things that bring shame on people, and you have the nerve to try to marry into our family? How stupid do you think we are?”
Luna looked around at everyone around the room, who had nothing to say. “Is that true? Do you all have a problem with the unwelcome attention of my late husband’s career?”
“We can’t lie, it’s not a good look,” Cayetano conceded.
He was the last one Luna expected to speak against her. “A few weeks ago, you were all complaining that the papers were inaccurate when writing about Cayetano’s fight. Now, you assume those same outlets to be telling the truth. Why is that?”
“Luna, we don’t believe you to be a bad person, not at all,” Inés said.
“We aren’t in a position to judge,” Paco added.
“Oh yes we are,” José said. “We can judge anyone we like. This family has enough to worry about without the added embarrassment of a drugs scandal.”
“What’s a drugs scandal?” Giacomo asked.
“Good news, boys,” Luna said and stood up. “Time to go.”
The two little redheads jumped to their feet and followed their mother from the room, without the resistance of anyone. Even Cayetano didn’t object to her leaving. Luna fished his car keys from the pocket of his jacket that hung on the rack by the front door. She may as well drive back to the apartment and leave Cayetano here. It was obvious what he wanted. Bastard.
Giacomo and Enzo stepped out into the night air, and Luna followed. With the huge area around the house filled with trees, the rest of the city seemed so far away. She heard footsteps on the stone work behind her and she sighed. Now Cayetano wanted to talk to her?
“Luna, my dear,” Consuela said.
Luna stopped and turned to the old woman with her walking cane. She smiled, but Luna didn’t know what to expect.
“Can I talk to you?” Consuela asked.
“One moment.” Luna unlocked the Mercedes and the boys jumped in the back seat. She clipped them into their booster seats and shut the door to keep them warm. “I guess so.”
“Please excuse José. He is so protective of his family.”
“I am not the enemy.”
“I know that. Under different circumstances, José would not be so difficult. He agrees with adoption. It’s no lie that he wants a blood relation, a natural child from Cayetano, but adoption is close enough.”
“I am not a breeding factory. Women don’t exist to pump out babies for husbands.”
“We are from a different time, Luna.” Consuela put her hand on Luna’s shoulder. “The world keeps changing, and for José, it’s hard to take. We have not had an easy life.”
“It’s made worse by lies in newspapers.”
“Did Cayetano tell you that that José and I lived in Valencia for a short time?”
“Yes, he mentioned it.”
“It was lovely, the best time of my life.” Consuela’s eyes had almost glistened over, whether with tears or not was hard to tell. “Of course, until the flood.”
“What happened?”
“It is a long story, but come October 1957, the world changed in a way that could never be undone.” The old woman shook her head. “Please don’t be angry at José. He doesn’t understand what you’re going through.”
“I buried the ashes of my husband last year. Fabrizio is not just some distant memory.”
“Trust me, my dear, I know how that feels better than you realise.”
“How so?”
“That isn’t important. I can understand why it hurts to hear people say hurtful things about a man who was good.”
“On the plaque on Fabrizio’s grave it says, ‘step softly, a dream lies buried here’. The dream of an upstanding man and our family and our life together is dead because people have told lies in the last few weeks.”
“I can understand how that feels. Dreams are painful; they tell us what we want, and we know we can’t have the peace they promise. Bad things happen, evil things, things that push you beyond the boundaries of what you thought you could handle, but we survive. Our dreams don’t. José knows that. José has been involved in things that he is very ashamed of in his life.”
“José doesn’t seem ashamed.”
“He is; once upon a time, José was a different man. We can’t understand what it has been like for him.”
“What did he do?”
“My dear, my lips don’t wish to speak it, and your ears don’t wish to hear it.”
The front door opened again, and there stood Cayetano with an angry face. “I’m sorry, Mamí, we have to go,” he said.
“I know. All storms pass, nietas, remember that.”
“Some storms break things beyond repair.”
“I thought that once, the day the water raced through Valencia and changed my life forever. Here I am, fifty years later, with the family I wanted. We have to live with certain things, but as a group we can cope.”
“This isn’t my family, and no one is on my side,” Luna said. “I understand that.”
Cayetano took the keys from Luna’s hand but didn’t say anything. All his support during these weeks of having his name alongside that of Fabrizio Merlini, now the sporting world’s disgrace, had made him angrier than Luna thought. No one could be trusted anymore. If José felt ashamed of his own past actions he would have understood, but he didn’t. No one really understood anyone.
14
Valencia, España ~ Septiembre de 1957
The Barrio del Carmen was its usual dirty self at just after 2am. José walked in time with Fermín as they monitored the streets of the ancient district, the oldest part of Valencia city. The nightshift in the area always brought trouble in some form or another. Their footsteps echoed around the narrow cobbled street of Calle del Portal de Valldigna. The windows of apartments around them hung open, the owners in search of cooler air on the predictable hot summer night. There wasn’t a breath of wind along the confined street, and José would have sold his soul to be far away from this place. He could be somewhere quiet and crime-free, somewhere cool, somewhere private. Hardship hung in the stifling air as much as the echoes that came from his knee-high uniform boots on the street. Even ditching the uncomfortable hats would help them cool off, but no, they were the
re to protect the innocent and keep the peace while dressed ready to take on snow. They wandered underneath the portal that gave the street its name, the 550 year-old archway that crossed above the tiny cobbled street. As they passed by, a light came on in the window, in the building built over the arch which connected the buildings that lined the one-lane road.
José looked up above the arch to see an older woman, illuminated by the faint light.
“¡Buenas noches!” she said down to them, and José nodded in reply. “Can I interest you officers in some fun?”
“Would you ladies like to spend a night in the cells?” he called back to her.
“Don’t be so hasty,” Fermín said. Since the meeting with the doctor several weeks ago, Fermín had looked at every woman like a womb that could be used for money. “We have specific tastes,” Fermín called up to the old whore.
“Officer Belasco,” José reprimanded him. “If you sleep with whores in your free time so be it. But not while we’re on duty.”
A door on the ground floor opened next to José, and there was another woman. Woman was overstating it; she couldn’t be more than thirteen or fourteen years old. She watched José finger the handcuffs on his belt. “Mamacíta says you can have a free trial if you agree to let us do business in peace,” she all but whispered.
Fermín smiled. “How interesting.”
José glanced around. The windows that overhung the tiny street from the three-story buildings were all open, and faces would come and go from each of them. They were either single women, or a woman in the presence of a man. Pimps and customers alike were nervous when the Guardia Civil appeared.
“José,” Fermín muttered his ear, “this is a superb opportunity to survey what is going on around here. We could find candidates for Operación Nacimiento.”
Fermín had taken to calling the baby-stealing project Operación Nacimiento, Operation Birth. José didn’t want to admit it, but Fermín was right. “But we shouldn’t do it while on duty.”
“Why not? We went in and inspected a brothel. That’s all we have to say if our motives are questioned. It’s our job; we are the law.”
Secrets of Spain Trilogy Page 54