The Return

by Victoria Hislop

  Señora Duarte tearfully left the room and Mercedes hid in the shadows as she passed. She had needed her shoes and seized the moment to run in to fetch them. Señor Duarte looked up. He would always wonder if they had been overheard.

  That afternoon the four of them would be ready to leave.There was a bus departing for Murcia.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  THE GRANADINOS WERE leaving Madrid for the second time. La Pasionaria’s rousing words would go with them to the front line.

  For a while, the Italians had been withdrawing their troops from the Jarama area and now, in early March, they began a new offensive at Guadalajara, thirty miles north-east of Madrid. This was what the trio had been waiting for and their morale was high as they faced new action.The reality of the conditions they would be fighting in, however, was not what they had envisaged. With a huge armoury of tanks, machine guns, planes and trucks, Mussolini’s men were about to commence a massive assault on Republican territory.

  By the time Antonio, Francisco and Salvador arrived at the front, the Italians had already broken through and were in a position of dominance. With the strength of their artillery, it was looking bleak for the Republican forces.Then the weather changed. Sleet began to fall and from then on the elements played a role almost as significant as the guns.

  Shivering in a sparse copse under leafless trees that afforded no protection, everyone began to stiffen with cold. Dampness extinguished their cigarettes.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Francisco, examining his palm. ‘I can hardly see my own hand. How are we going to tell our own men from the Fascists?’

  ‘It won’t be easy,’ said Antonio, pulling up his collar and folding his arms tightly to keep warm. ‘Perhaps it will let up.’

  He was wrong. During the day, the sleet turned to snow and then fog descended. As the Republicans began their counterattack on the ground, the Italians, in tropical gear, were suffering even more from the cold than they were. Arctic temperatures became the enemy of both sides and many died from hypothermia. To his satisfaction, Antonio learned that the Italians had been over-ambitious about the speed they could move at, and in the chaos of the fog and snow their units were losing communication with each other. Their fuel was beginning to run low, vehicles were getting stranded and aircraft were struggling to take off.

  The Republicans were becoming more dominant by the hour.

  ‘Luck seems to be on the right side for once,’ Antonio signed to his friends.

  ‘Perhaps it’s because we’re here,’ quipped Salvador, with a smile. ‘Franco’s had it now.’

  If the Italians had little communication with each other, for much of the time Antonio’s militia band had an only marginally clearer idea of the whole picture. Action raged all around them but almost zero visibility allowed them to see little of it. In the cold chaos, Antonio could hear the agonising cries of dying men, some shot by their own side.

  Antonio had kept as close as he could to Salvador when they advanced into battle. He had already proved his courage at Jarama, but nevertheless Antonio felt a great sense of responsibility towards his friend.

  Salvador had already found certain advantages to being deaf in battle. He could hear neither the whine of bullets nor the screams of the wounded, but nor could he hear the warning cry of a friend. To the very moment of his death, Salvador experienced no fear. All he saw was a brief glimpse of the grimace that registered on his friend’s face. The cry of anguish that then followed was not the victim’s but Antonio’s as he watched his oldest friend, the beloved El Mudo, fall to the ground.

  The blood-soaked shirt was Antonio’s. It turned red as he cradled his dying friend. And the ground about them changed to scarlet as it absorbed the rest.

  On this battlefield there was no time for the self-indulgence of grief. Salvador had been killed at the end of the day’s fighting so, unlike many whose bodies lay for hours where they had fallen, Francisco and Antonio were soon able to bury him. The frost-hardened soil did not make it an easy task. As they hacked at the solid earth, they were warmer than they had been for days. It takes a sizeable space to bury a man’s body, and the great mound of earth that lay to the side of the hollow seemed absurd next to Salvador’s shrouded corpse.

  The next day they were assigned to the task of gathering equipment left behind by the Italians. Others were given the task of guarding prisoners and Antonio was glad that they had been spared this duty. He would not have trusted Francisco to give them humane treatment. Nor himself for that matter.

  Fury fuelled them from this moment. There was no need for any further reminder that they were fighting for the right cause. Though everyone knew it already, the abandoned weapons and other material they were gathering proved that Italy was breaching an agreement of non-intervention that was supposedly being observed in Europe.This policy, not to take sides in Spain’s internal conflict, was already being flouted by several countries, and the documents the Republican militia seized were useful to the politicians as evidence of this. The equipment itself was a huge boost to the Republican cause, too.They needed every piece of artillery they could get.

  When the battle at Guadalajara was over, they returned to Madrid. If their homes were close enough and they still had family to visit, men might go back to their villages on leave. For Antonio and Francisco, there was no question of visiting their home city. Granada was firmly in Nationalist hands and travelling there would have resulted in certain arrest.

  They stayed behind in the capital to help strengthen the barricades. Though it was hard to defend the city from the air, the aim was to build a strong enough defence to turn the capital into a fortress. For many days Antonio and Francisco worked on building walls of rain-sodden sandbags, their bulbous shapes as smooth as huge rounded pebbles. Many of the city’s buildings now looked like honeycomb, their windows blasted out with the force of explosives. They were a constant reminder of the need to protect Madrid, even if Franco had now moved the focus of his offensive elsewhere.

  Antonio and Francisco missed Salvador sorely. Their friendship had depended on his moderating influence and his absence left a void at its heart. After caring for him for so many years, their sense of failure at not having protected him from the enemy bullet was immense. Combined now with a period of uncertainty over where the fighting would take them, disillusion began to set in. The left was becoming increasingly fragmented and Franco would take advantage of its lack of cohesion.

  ‘The problem is that there is still no unity, no solid core,’ said Antonio anxiously. ‘So what hope have we got?’

  ‘But if people have strong principles, Marxist or communist, why should they give them up?’ asked Francisco. ‘If they did, would they still fight?’

  ‘There are plenty of people with passion around,’ answered Antonio. ‘Even if they aren’t extreme in their politics. And lots of us are prepared to fight. But until the leaders agree on a few things . . .’

  ‘. . . We won’t get anywhere,’ finished Francisco. ‘It’s beginning to look as though you’re right.’

  Though the militia brigades were now united into the Popular Army, there were factions growing within factions among those opposed to Franco. The struggle against Franco seemed to be intensifying but inside the ranks of communists, anarchists, Marxists and many other smaller groups, there was infighting, back-biting and disagreement. Antonio longed for the leaders of each group to see that the only way forward was unity, but each day seemed to bring new divisions and arguments.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  MERCEDES WAS NEARING the end of her bus journey to Murcia. She gazed out of the window and thought of her parents. Señor and Señora Duarte had not spoken for the entire duration of the six-hour journey, and she reflected that the hostility between them was something that would never have been possible between Concha and Pablo. Even when there might have been disagreements between them, the overriding atmosphere was always warm.

  Ana had slept for most of the ride.

  In Mu
rcia, as in so many places, people were reduced to begging on the street but their hands were only held out to others in a similar state of need.As they descended the steps of the old rickety vehicle that had brought them, the girls caught sight of an elderly man playing a trumpet while his dog danced.

  ‘Look, Mercedes!’ Ana tugged Mercedes’ sleeve with delight. For an instant the spectacle had some charm and brought the first moment of light relief to their day. ‘It’s sweet, but look how scrawny it is . . .’

  The dog’s eyes were as sad as his master’s and the sight of this duet, initially so charming, now seemed pathetic. It was demeaning both for the animal and his owner. A couple of coins that were tossed into the hat in front of them probably more than made up for the degradation, but few people actually lingered to watch.

  ‘I can’t think of anything but my stomach,’ complained Ana. ‘It’s the only part of my body that I can feel.’ Her bottom and legs were numb from sitting most of the day. ‘I wonder where we can eat.’

  The shops here were not badly stocked, but the Duartes had to make sure that their money lasted a while. Señor Duarte had withdrawn everything they had in the bank some weeks before and they had no way of telling how long this would have to last them. He was keeping the purse strings tight.

  Though they seemed willing to share with Mercedes, her conscience often pricked her.Apart from her company and conversation (and she was aware that Ana depended on her completely for both) she had little to give in return. She had run out of money many days earlier.

  Ana and Mercedes wandered off while Señor Duarte looked for somewhere to stay. As they walked along, the image of the dancing dog with its frilled collar remained with Mercedes. It suddenly seemed obvious what she must do, even though the idea of it filled her with trepidation. If she could find someone to play for her, she would dance and then, if someone paid, she could give something back to this family. In this way she would not be a burden.

  They went first into one of the cafés in the square. Like the rest of the town at this hour, it had the air of abandonment. Many of the younger men had gone off to join the militia, so it was as though a whole layer of their society had vanished. The middle-aged man running the bar was jovial enough, though. He would still have plenty of customers that night and he was getting the place ready. Alcohol was still in reasonable supply and people were drinking plenty. Business was not bad. He smiled at the two girls as they walked in.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

  ‘We would like to ask you something,’ Ana said boldly. ‘My friend wants to dance. Could she do that here?’

  The barman stopped polishing the glasses.‘Dance? In this café?’ He reacted as though it was an extraordinary request even though these wooden floorboards had taken a hammering from some of the region’s greatest dancers. On the wall behind the bar there was even a signed photograph of the celebrated bailaora, known as La Argentina.

  In former times, dancing had been such a simple act: a natural response to music, enjoyed by everyone from child to adult. Now even such an innocent activity as this had political undertones.

  It had not surprised anyone that the sensual, free-spirited art of flamenco that had thrived in so many parts of Spain did not meet with the approval of Franco’s strict and sanctimonious regime. What was more alarming was the sense of disapproval in some Republican areas where posters had begun to appear listing dance as nothing less than a crime. They had been put up by the anarchists, and instilled both guilt and fear. When Mercedes spotted one of these on a wall in Murcia she was chilled by it. How could dancing ever be outlawed?

  ‘GUERRA A LA INMORALIDAD,’ screamed the poster headline. Along with drinking in bars, visiting cinemas and going to the theatre, dancing was listed as an obstruction to the fight against fascism.

  ‘El baile es la antesala del prostitutión,’ the poster continued - ‘Dancing leads to prostitution.’

  To connect dancers with prostitutes might have had some validity in the cities, but these innocent young women who stood in his bar seemed far too sweet and naïve. The café owner was a Republican and as appalled by the prospect of criminalising dance as Mercedes.

  ‘And what would you want for it?’ he asked, trying to put on a businesslike tone to conceal what was going through his mind.

  ‘Payment of some kind,’ said Mercedes, putting on her best act of confidence. It would be the first time she had ever specifically danced for money but life had changed and so had the rules.

  ‘Payment . . . Well, I suppose if it attracted more people into the bar, then I could justify paying you. And if customers wanted to give you something, there’d be nothing wrong with that, I suppose. All right. Why not?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ana. ‘And is there anyone around here who could play?’

  ‘I should think so,’ the proprietor said, rather amused now. Every village and hamlet around here had someone that could play well enough to accompany a dancer. He could have someone there at nine and they could practise a few things out in the courtyard before they performed.

  ‘There’s just one other thing,’ he said. ‘I think you should wear something more . . . um, suitable.’

  Mercedes flushed, suddenly embarrassed by her appearance. She had been wearing the same skirt and blouse for several weeks now. There had been few opportunities to wash her clothes and she had grown used to the grime.

  ‘But I don’t have anything else,’ she confessed. ‘This is what I left home with. Just shoes, that’s all I have.’

  ‘María! María ’The man was already shouting up the stairs that led directly from the bar and a moment later a slight woman, his wife, appeared.

  There were no introductions.

  ‘She’s going to dance tonight,’ the man said pointing at Mercedes, ‘but she needs a dress. Can you find something for her.’

  The woman sized Mercedes up and turned her back.

  ‘It won’t take her long,’ said the bar owner. ‘Our daughter used to dance - she was a bit fatter than you, but something will fit.’

  Moments later the wife returned. She had two dresses slung over her arm and Mercedes tried them on in the back room. It was strange to feel the weight of the ruffles again and the eloquent way in which they moved around her ankles. There was one, red with huge white polka dots, that fitted her better than the other. It gaped around the chest and the arms, but anything would be better for dancing in than her threadbare skirt.

  The girls left, promising to return later that evening.

  The guitarist was competent enough, a man of about fifty, who had played in many juergas, but was more contented as a soloist than an accompanist. They worked through a repertoire that pleased and distracted the audience for a few hours and from time to time there were a few mutters of ‘Olé’.

  Mercedes was surprised by how mechanical it felt to dance just in order to earn money. It was so unlike the emboldening experience of the night in Almería. But coins were tossed into the cup that Ana took around, and the café owner took a handful of change from his till and handed it to her with a smile. His takings had been improved that night.

  ‘It was so wooden,’ Mercedes lamented to Ana as they went to sleep.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ consoled Ana. ‘The crowd didn’t notice. They just loved the entertainment.You were better than the dog anyway!’

  Mercedes laughed.‘They would have been better off at a puppet show,’ she said.

  They repeated the formula in several towns as they journeyed slowly towards Bilbao. Mercedes learned what pleased the audience and what failed to stir them, and discovered a new way of dancing that was competent and functional. Only a few members of the audience noticed how little of herself she gave. She knew that she would never move anyone this way but it was a way of making a living and she was happy to share the money with Ana and her parents. Dance was saving her in a different way now.

  During the hours when they were travelling by bus or in a farmer’s truck, Ana’s par
ents remained mostly silent, and Mercedes often found herself observing Señor Duarte and wondering how hard it was for him to pretend she was his daughter. By the middle of March they had crossed into Nationalist territory. Señor Duarte was even more tense than before. There were informers on every street corner.

  ‘No more dancing now,’ he said one night to the girls. ‘We don’t know how it will be received here.’

  ‘But does it matter, Father?’ exclaimed Ana. ‘Everyone loves Mercedes’ dancing, so what’s the harm in it?’

  ‘It means that people notice us. And we don’t want that. We want to lie as low as possible.’

  The nights of dancing had added so much colour to the journey. Mercedes had begun to enjoy the release of each performance and her enthusiasm for it had returned. She was sorry to give it up but understood why the Duartes felt the need to restrict it.

  Señor Duarte trusted no one, and it was often difficult to tell where people’s sympathies truly lay, even though they were now well inside Nationalist-held territory.