The Return

by Victoria Hislop

  Over the past few months, Mercedes had become progressively less self-centred and now helped her mother without needing to be asked. In her own mind, however, she felt overwhelmed by the futility of it all. Serving people with coffee and small glasses of fiery cognac sometimes seemed so utterly pointless, and occasionally she could not help expressing this to her mother.

  ‘I agree with you, Merche,’ said Concha. ‘But it reminds people of normal life. Maybe that’s enough for the present.’

  Brief moments of social intercourse in a busy café were the only link with earlier days of peace and what they would soon describe as ‘the old days’. For Mercedes everything seemed bleak. Naked trees stood like skeletons in the streets and squares. The city was gradually being stripped bare of everyone she cared about. She had still not received any news from Javier.

  One morning, Concha was watching her daughter sweep the café floor, slowly and meticulously moving crumbs, ash and scraps of paper napkin into the centre of the room. She observed how her daughter drew perfect invisible arcs on the floor and how her hips rolled in a circular motion as she worked. The sleeves of her knitted cardigan were rolled up and the muscles of her sinewy arms were taut as she gripped the broom. Concha had no doubt that, in her imagination, Mercedes was in some other place. Dancing no doubt. Listening to Javier.

  Mercedes had lived in a dream world since she was a small child and now it was only her fantasies that made life bearable. Sometimes she wondered if it would be like that until she died. It was certainly the only way to survive these cursed times. She looked up, feeling her mother’s gaze.

  ‘Why are you staring at me?’ she demanded sulkily. ‘Isn’t my cleaning good enough?’

  ‘Of course it is,’ replied her mother, feeling the strength of her resentment. ‘You’re doing a very good job. I do appreciate it, you know.’

  ‘But I hate it. I hate every second, of every minute, of every hour of every day,’ she retorted petulantly, sending the broom clattering across the room.

  She pulled out one of the wooden chairs from a nearby table and for a moment her mother shrank back, thinking that she was about to throw that too.

  Instead Mercedes sank down onto it, exhausted. She rested her elbows on the table and held her head in her hands. Even if Mercedes had dealt bravely with her losses during the last few months, her ability to hide her feelings suddenly left her.

  The young woman had more than enough to weep about.Two of her beloved brothers had died, her father was in prison and Javier, the man who had ignited greater feelings of love than she had ever imagined possible, had vanished. Even Concha could not expect her daughter to dwell on what remained. This was the moment to lament what had been taken away. Gratitude and the counting of blessings could wait.

  One of their regular customers appeared at the door and then retreated; he could see that it was not a good moment for his daily café con leche.

  Concha drew up a chair close to her daughter and put her arm around her. ‘My poor Merche,’ she whispered. ‘My poor, poor Merche.’

  Mercedes scarcely heard her, so loud was her keening.

  Though their circumstances were not of Concha’s making, she felt profoundly guilty about the way her daughter’s life was turning out. It was as though the essence of it had been ripped out and she sympathised with her frustration and sadness. Though they went about their lives as normally as possible, strain was etched on the faces of everyone who lived in Granada. Fear of the Civil Guard, of the Nationalist soldiers and even of the wagging tongues of their neighbours haunted them. The tension in this city was affecting them all.

  Concha’s instincts were to lock her daughter away and to protect her from everything outside this dark, wood-panelled room. Now that her husband and her son had been seized from these four walls, home no longer seemed to offer the same security they had once taken for granted. Both women knew that the warmth and safety it appeared to offer were merely an illusion. For this reason she found herself speaking words that were contrary to every ounce of maternal instinct.

  ‘You must find him.’

  Mercedes looked up at her with surprise and gratitude.

  ‘Javier,’ Concha said emphatically, as though there could be any doubt about who she meant. ‘You must see if you can find him. I suspect he is waiting for you.’

  It took Mercedes no time to prepare and, within minutes, she was ready to go. Her eagerness to see Javier again overcame any hesitation about setting off alone. Up in her room, she grabbed her coat and a scarf. She tucked the photograph of her tocaor into her purse and then, at the last moment, noticed her dancing shoes just poking out from under her bed. I can’t go without those, she thought as she bent down to pick them up. When she found Javier, she was quite likely to need them.

  As Mercedes came downstairs, Concha was in the bar finishing the cleaning.

  ‘Look, I know your father would disapprove of me letting you go . . . and I’m not sure it’s the right thing . . .’

  ‘Please don’t change your mind,’ Mercedes appealed to her mother. ‘I’ll be back soon. So . . . wish me good luck.’

  Concha swallowed hard. She could not show Mercedes her anxiety. She hugged her briefly and handed her some money, a lump of bread and some cheese wrapped in waxed paper, knowing that her daughter had not eaten yet today. Neither could bring herself to say the word ‘goodbye’.

  Just as the bells of the nearby church of Santa Ana were clanging twelve, Mercedes hastened out of the café.

  Concha carried on. Anyone would have thought it was business as usual.

  Concha had been so preoccupied with the mechanics of keeping the café running that she had ceased to monitor Antonio’s comings and goings.With all her other anxieties, her first-born son seemed one of the few people about whom she did not need to worry. School was functioning again and Concha assumed that his late nights were being spent at school preparing lessons. In fact, all his free time was being spent with Salvador and Francisco, his close childhood friends.

  Silence had never meant solitude for El Mudo. Expressive eyes and perfect features drew people to this boy. Young women drawn into his embrace were never disappointed by his love-making, and his gentle instincts for a woman’s needs were all the more sensitive for his lack of speech and hearing. They adored him all the more for the fact that they never left his bedroom with declarations of love echoing in their ears, their hopes vainly raised in the heat of the night. His two friends were in awe of his success.

  Often the trio felt itself the object of curiosity. Strangers were fascinated by the spectacle of their sometimes wild gesticulations. Outsiders, who mostly assumed that all three of them were unable to hear or speak, found the boys as entertaining as mime artists and were intrigued by the silent world they inhabited. To local people, the sight of Antonio, Francisco and Salvador all rocking with silent mirth in the corner of the café was part of an everyday scene. When only two of them were together, they always played a game of chess.

  They met most days in the same café where they had licked ice creams as children, and had grown up to believe in similar ideals. Their socialist beliefs now bonded them more closely than ever. The blood loyalty they had sworn to each other when they were eight years old had never wavered and for all three of them, socialism was the only possible route to a fair society. They knew some of the radicals in the city, left-wing lawyers and a smattering of politicians, and they tended to go to the bars they frequented, hovering on the edge of any group where politics were being discussed.

  That evening, they had already gone over the same old ground, discussing for the hundredth time what was happening in Granada, where supporters of the Republic were still being randomly arrested. Salvador suddenly gestured to his companions that they needed to be watchful of two men in the corner of the bar. Being deaf, he could read more than most into a minor change of facial expression, which had led some to suspect him of supernatural mind-reading powers. In truth, he did what anyone could d
o: he observed the finest nuances of facial expression and learned to detect the merest hint of discomfort. His judgement was unerringly accurate.

  ‘Be careful,’ he signed. ‘Not everyone in here shares our views.’

  Generally they could communicate with each other in complete privacy but occasionally Salvador would sense an unfriendly scrutinising stare. Now was one of those moments. He was not, after all, the only sordomudo in Granada and there were others who might know the language.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Antonio.

  They would have to continue their planning elsewhere, and all three rose to leave, tucking a few pesetas under the ashtray for their beers.

  Within minutes they were back in Salvador’s apartment. With an ear pressed close to its heavy door, even a determined eavesdropper would have struggled to hear more than the occasional rustle. Salvador was currently living alone. His mother and grandmother had been at an aunt’s cortijo outside the city when the coup had taken place and had not returned. His father had died when he was eleven.

  Salvador cleared the table of a variety of cups and plates, and they sat down. He set a pan of water on the gas stove and found a small bag of coffee. Francisco was already using a dirty plate as an ashtray and the smoke coiled its way up to the high ceiling, clinging to the yellowing walls.

  They were gathered at the table to make plans together but there was a sense of unease, not only because the neighbour, a thin-faced book-keeper, had opened his door to peer at them when they had passed, but because resentment was simmering between them. The air had to be cleared.

  Like all of those who opposed Franco, the three of them had accepted that there had never been any real means of resistance to the coup in Granada. Nationalist troops had been received into this city’s strongly conservative heartland with almost open arms and it was too late to do anything about it now, since to show yourself an enemy of the new regime was tantamount to suicide.

  Though Franco’s men were firmly in charge of Granada, it did not mean that all those who opposed the alzamiento - the uprising - were apathetic. Francisco had certainly not been idle. He now knew that the charges against his father and brother had been the mere possession of trade union cards and had lost no time in seeking revenge for their deaths. He did not care how. His only desire was for the sour smell of Nationalist blood. Although the Fascists held the city of Granada with a firm fist, their grip on many of the surrounding rural areas was still tenuous. Francisco had become part of a campaign of resistance and subversion. In some places, Civil Guard garrisons that had betrayed the Republic were easily overcome and once they were out of the way, there were plenty of young men like Francisco overflowing with anger to unleash against the landowners and priests who supported Franco.

  Landworkers and trade unionists had then set about collectivising some of the great estates, and the storehouses of the landowners were broken open. Malnourished peasants waited outside, desperate for anything with which to feed their families. Bulls, that had been bred and grazed on the finest pastures, were slaughtered and eaten. It was the first meat that many of them had tasted in years.

  It was not only the blood of the bulls that Francisco spilled. Violence was perpetrated against individuals too. Priests, landowners and their families paid the price that many of those who supported the Republic felt they deserved.

  Antonio, who clung on to the ideals of justice and fairness, balked at these random and uncoordinated acts.

  ‘It does more harm than good,’ he said bluntly, churned up with a mixture of disgust and admiration at what his friend was capable of. ‘You know what your priest-killings and your nun-burnings mean to the Fascists, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I do,’ responded Francisco.‘I know exactly what they mean to them. They show them we mean business. That we’re going to run them out of the country, rather than stand by and let them stamp all over us.’

  ‘The Fascists don’t care about those old priests and a few nuns - but you know what they do give a damn about?’ he said.

  For a moment Antonio had abandoned the use of sign language. He sometimes found it hard to express himself that way. Salvador put his finger to his lips, urging his friend to keep his voice down. There was every danger that someone could be listening at the door.

  ‘What?’ said Francisco, unable to contain himself to a whisper.

  ‘They want support from outside Spain and they use your actions for propaganda. Are you too stupid to see that? For every priest that dies, they probably win a dozen more foreign troops. Is that what you want?’

  Antonio’s blood was raised as well as his voice. He could hear himself sounding like a schoolteacher, didactic, patronising even, and yet, just as when he was in the classroom, he was completely certain of his rectitude. He had to impress this on his friend. He sympathised with Francisco’s thirst for blood and for action, but he wanted his friend to make good use of this passion, in a way that was not counterproductive. Reserving their energies for a united onslaught against the enemy was how Antonio felt it should be done. It was the only chance any of them had.

  Francisco sat in silence and Antonio carried on haranguing him, ignoring the appeals of Salvador to leave him alone but reverting now to signing.

  ‘So how do you think they react in Italy? What does the Pope say when they tell him what’s happening to priests here? No wonder Mussolini is sending troops to support Franco! Your actions are giving us less chance of winning this war, not more! It’s hardly winning sympathy for the Republic.’

  For his part, Francisco had no regrets. Even if his friend Antonio was right and retribution followed, his sanity had been saved by the momentary release he felt when he pulled a trigger.The satisfaction of seeing the target of his well-directed bullet folding over and sinking slowly to the ground was immense. He had needed ten such moments to feel that his father and brother were avenged.

  In spite of these words to one of his oldest friends, a small part of Antonio despised his own inaction. His family was fragmented, his brothers killed, his father imprisoned, and what had he done? Though he disapproved of the way in which Francisco had gone about it, he quietly envied that he had enemy blood on his hands.

  Salvador added his support to Antonio’s appeal.‘And the massacre of all those prisoners too,’ he signed. ‘They’ve hardly helped our cause either, have they?’

  Even Francisco had to agree with this. The execution of the Nationalist prisoners in Madrid had been an atrocity and he conceded that it was not a moment for them to be proud of. Most importantly for Antonio’s argument, the event had been used by the Nationalists to illustrate the barbarism of the left and had cost the Republicans dearly in terms of the support they so desperately needed.

  Whatever the differences of opinion that might have existed between these three friends, there was one thing that now united them: they were all ready to break out of the prison that Granada had become, not to take part in isolated acts of barbarism, but to join a more co-ordinated campaign.

  ‘Whatever we agree or disagree about, we can’t hang around here, can we?’ urged Francisco. ‘It’s too late for Granada, but that’s not the whole of Spain. Look at Barcelona!’

  ‘I know.You’re right. And Valencia and Bilbao and Cuenca . . . And all the rest. They’re resisting. We can’t just sit here.’

  In spite of everything, there was a wave of optimism sweeping across Republican territory trapped under Fascist control that this uprising could be crushed. The resistance met by Franco’s troops was only just the beginning. Given time, they could organise themselves.

  Salvador, listening, involved and gesticulating agreement, now signed the word that had not yet been stated: ‘Madrid.’

  Antonio had left this off his list. This was the place to which they must go. The symbolic heart of Spain that must be fought for at all costs.

  Four hundred kilometres north of where they sat in the semi-darkness of Salvador’s apartment, Madrid was effectively under siege and if any
where needed to resist the Fascists, it was the capital city. A popular army had been established the previous autumn to unite the portion of the army that remained loyal to the Republic along with volunteer militia to form some kind of unified force with central command. All three friends yearned to join the action and to be part of the struggle. Unless they went soon it might be too late.

  For some months, with the volume turned so low that the listener had to sit with his ear pressed up against it, Antonio had been using the radio in Salvador’s apartment to pick up news of the situation in Madrid. The capital city had been suffering bombardment by Franco’s troops since November but, with the help of Russian tanks, had held out. Madrid continued to put up stronger resistance than the Nationalists had expected, but there was now a rumour that another great battle was about to begin.

  Antonio and his friends may have stood by and watched their own city fall into Franco’s hands, but the significance of allowing Madrid to go the same way was not lost on any of them. This had to be the moment, and the compulsion to leave was now strong. Franco had to be stopped. They had heard that there were young men coming from all over Europe: England, France and even Germany, to help the cause. The notion of this war being fought for them by foreigners spurred them to action.