Death of a Nationalist

by Rebecca Pawel

  “Aleja found out that she had lost the book when she got home. She says that Tía Viviana agreed to go and get it back for her. Apparently. . . .” the teacher hesitated. “Well, naturally, the guardia civil were still acting under wartime orders, and. . . .”

  “Oh, my”—Tejada remembered, barely in time, that there was a lady present, and rapidly swallowed several of the curses he was thinking—“goodness,” he finished, with a vehemence that did not match the words. “So you’re saying that Corporal López never had the notebook in his possession at all?”

  “In his possession?” If Elena Fernández’s surprise was not genuine, she was a very good actress. “Of course not, why would he?”

  Tejada choked on another swallowed curse. “And you came here to tell me?”

  “That Alejandra may have been the witness to a murder,” the teacher said quietly. “That was why I asked to speak to you, instead of another guardia. Her testimony implicates a guardia civil, you understand, and I wanted to protect her.” She flushed faintly. “I assumed that you would not be guilty of the murder, Sergeant.”

  Tejada put his head in his hands, hardly sensible of the compliment. “Did you ever meet this aunt of Alejandra’s?” he asked, without much hope. “Viviana?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Could you describe her?” Tejada felt his last hopes that the teacher was lying fade away and die under her hesitant description. It would have fit many people, but the height, age, and coloring all matched what he remembered of the miliciana. As he strained to remember the woman he had taken the notebook from, he suddenly remembered that she had denied killing Paco. “Who did kill him then? One of your friends?” he had asked. “One of your friends, more likely!” she had retorted. If Alejandra had told her that a guardia civil had been responsible for the killing . . . “I hope there’s a special Providence for fools,” he said when Señorita Fernández had finished her description.

  “Sergeant?” She sounded a little puzzled.

  He raised his head and smiled bitterly. “Señorita, before you came forward with this information I was positive that I knew who had killed Pa—Corporal López, and fairly sure why he had been killed. Now I have no idea who killed him or why, and I have just spent the last week working on a false lead.” He opened the pouch designed for spare cartridges, where he had been keeping the notebook, and tossed it onto the table. “Here. Give this to Alejandra, with my compliments. I’m sorry she has missed it for so long.”

  She hesitated for a moment. “That’s very kind of you, Sergeant. . . .”

  “I doubt she would think so,” he retorted, thinking that if he and Jiménez had been five minutes slower Alejandra would have had her notebook without delay.

  “If you would be so kind as to give me Aleja’s address I will gladly return it to her.”

  Something in Elena’s tone caught the sergeant’s attention. “Give you her address?” he repeated. “It’s in the school records. And surely you’ll see her after the Easter break?”

  “I do hope that Aleja will return to school after the vacation.” Her voice was colorless. “But unfortunately, I will not.”

  It occurred to Tejada that Señorita Fernández was twisting her hands in her lap, and that this was the first unnecessary motion he had ever seen her make. “Why?” he asked.

  For a moment he thought she would not respond. Then she said, reluctantly, “Today was my last day of employment at the Leopoldo Alas School.”

  “Isn’t that rather sudden?” Tejada said with surprise.

  She stared at her lap. “Señor Herrera thought it would be best for the school if I resigned.”

  Tejada remembered the fussy little man. “He thinks you’re a Red because I asked to talk to you, and he’s afraid that we’ll close the place and arrest all the staff,” he translated.

  She made no reply. Bravo, Tejada thought. So far in this investigation you’ve killed a woman looking for her niece’s notebook and thrown another one out of a job. “You’ve been very helpful,” he said. “Would you like me to speak to Señor Herrera?”

  “No.” She smiled at him, and her voice had regained its calm. “No, thank you. He deserves to be left in peace.”

  At another time, Tejada would have quarreled both with Señor Herrera’s merits and with the implication that the Guardia Civil harassed people. At the moment he was preoccupied. “What will you do?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Go home, probably. My parents are in Salamanca.”

  “Salamanca? Your people are Nationalists then.” Tejada was irrationally pleased. Paco might still have been killed because he knew something about the disappearing provisions, he thought. It just means that they did it themselves. And now I know what to look for, I can find the bastard who killed him. He smiled at the teacher, certain now that she was telling the truth. “I’m very much in your debt, Señorita,” he said, standing and holding out his hand.

  He had risen rapidly and the movement caught Elena unprepared. She stood up more quickly than she had intended and, to Tejada’s surprise, leaned her palms on the table as if to balance herself. The shaky furniture shifted under her weight, and she swayed unsteadily for a moment. “Are you all right?” Tejada leaned across the table to steady her and found that his hand easily spanned her arm.

  “Yes, thank you.” She put her free hand up to her head for a moment. “It’s nothing, just a touch of dizziness. I’ll be fine.”

  Her blouse was cream-colored, with long tapered sleeves. They were designed to cling to the forearms, but as she raised her arm one sleeve sagged, and Tejada saw the bones of her wrist and arm clearly defined against the skin. He wondered if the train with foodstuffs for the civilian population had arrived as scheduled. “Have dinner with me,” he said abruptly, releasing her arm.

  “What? Oh, thank you, but I couldn’t possibly. . . .”

  “Consider it a payment of the debt,” Tejada suggested. “It wouldn’t be anything too elaborate. Just the officers’ canteen. It would be my pleasure.”

  Elena looked distressed. “Thank you. But I’m not . . . accustomed to eating much in the evenings.”

  Tejada, who correctly guessed that she had intended to say “not hungry,” was pleased by this further evidence of veracity. “Then come and have a drink with me,” he said, taking her elbow and guiding her out of the office.

  The dormitory housing the Manzanares post had been selected partly because it contained a large cafeteria with adjacent kitchen, originally intended for students, suitable for adaptation to a mess hall. Lieutenant Ramos had designated one of the nearby common rooms as a canteen. Tejada escorted his guest past the cafeteria with as much haste as possible and ushered her into the canteen. It was empty when they entered, except for Ramos, who was eating with the single-minded intensity of a man who has things to do and does not wish to waste time on supper. He looked up as the door opened and then gaped, with unaesthetic results.

  Tejada saluted, wishing that his superior officer would close his mouth. “Permission to bring a guest, sir?”

  “Restricted to family members, Tejada.” The lieutenant swallowed hastily, and then stood, brushing crumbs from his uniform. “Is the young lady . . .?”

  “My cousin, sir,” Tejada said firmly.

  “Then of course.” One of the maddening things about Tejada, Ramos reflected, was his capacity to tell barefaced lies with absolute assurance. Still, he had never abused the privilege before, and it would be a shame to embarrass the girl. Ramos held out his hand. “Your servant, Señorita,” he said, making a mental note to have a discussion with his sergeant about the definition of family members. He finished his supper and left, still wondering about Tejada’s guest.

  As Tejada had expected, Señorita Fernández did not protest when food was set in front of her. She took a few deep breaths and then began to eat. Tejada, watching her carefully take tiny bites and chew each one with painstaking thoroughness, marveled that she had still had sufficient pride to make a to
ken protest earlier. She was clearly well past the kind of hunger that made people gobble and into the region where a morsel of food was slowly treasured. He sat and watched her eat. After a few minutes she looked up, aware of his silent scrutiny. She blushed. “I’m sorry, Sergeant. Did you say something?”

  “I asked how long you’d been in Madrid,” Tejada said, quickly picking the first question that came to mind.

  “Almost eight years now. Since I started university.”

  “You didn’t want to study at Salamanca?” Tejada asked.

  She smiled. “I grew up at the university in Salamanca. I wanted to see the capital.”

  She would, Tejada thought, have arrived in Madrid just around the time the Second Republic was proclaimed. He found that he did not want to probe her political convictions. “I got to Salamanca a few years before you left,” he said, to avoid asking another question. “Perhaps we have acquaintances in common.”

  “Perhaps,” she agreed politely. “It’s a small world. Do you have family from there?”

  “No,” Tejada laughed. “I have a law degree from there. A souvenir of the last time I let myself be guided by my father.”

  She set down her fork, and her eyes widened. “You’re a university graduate?” There was something very like horror in her voice. “But you’re a guardia civil. I mean . . . I thought they came from their own academy?”

  Tejada snorted. “It’s a long story. When I was eighteen I wanted to do my military service. My father wanted me to buy a substitute and continue my education. He finally told me that he would support me at university and pay for a substitute, and that if I still wanted to go into the army when I graduated he would see about a commission but that otherwise I’d be disinherited. I agreed to study law and planned to spend four years sulking.”

  “And did you?” the teacher asked, reflecting that she had never thought about why someone might wish to become a guardia civil. They were born, or perhaps sprang fully grown from the head of some general.

  “Well, I did become interested in criminal law but I’d wanted to be a soldier for as long as I could remember. The Guardia Civil seemed like an obvious compromise.” Tejada grinned. “My mother says that I shortened my father’s life by years when I told him.”

  Elena laughed, as she was supposed to. She had a pleasant laugh, Tejada thought. Unaffected. “What did Señor Tejada want you to become?”

  The sergeant shrugged. “How would I know? He certainly had no need for me at home. My brother’s more than able to manage the farm.”

  “The farm?” Elena raised her eyebrows, wondering where the sergeant was from. He spoke, she realized, like an educated man, without strong regional accent.

  “Mostly grain,” Tejada explained. “Although we do have a few vineyards. It’s . . . oh, maybe five thousand acres . . . my brother could tell you the exact number. Outside Granada.”

  “You grew up there?”

  “In the summers. We have a house in Granada as well.” Perhaps in an attempt to put Elena at her ease, and perhaps because she seemed genuinely interested, Tejada talked about himself far more than he had intended to over dinner. He talked about his childhood, about the academy, and then, somewhat against his better judgment, about meeting Paco. Aware that he was monopolizing the conversation, he tried a few times to draw her out but many subjects seemed taboo. He did not wish to ask her what she had done in Madrid during the war. Nor would it be courteous to press her for the details of her background.

  Elena, who was as tense as a crouching cat, had been acutely aware of his earlier questions, and relieved by his willingness to let her remain silent. She ate steadily, at first with a desperation that precluded shame and then with increasing embarrassment. The sergeant ate little. He had placed a loaf of bread on the table between them and seemed to expect that she would eat it all. She ate, hating herself at first for accepting his charity, fearful of the payment he might demand. As he continued speaking, her fear dulled to a bearable level, but she found she was more ashamed of showing weakness in front of him. She made some attempts to respond to him, or at least to make comments, partly to prolong the meal, and partly to prove that she had some manners. “So,” she said, a little awkwardly, during a pause in the conversation, “you . . . you’ve been a Falangist for some years now?”

  “I first became interested in the Falange at the end of my university courses.” Tejada saw her raise her eyebrows and realized that she had sensed his evasion about when he had actually joined the party. “It seemed like a party that had a lot of answers to questions I was interested in.”

  “Oh.” Elena felt her smile freeze on her face, remembering the blue-shirted youths who had roamed the streets during the last years of the Republic, wielding coshes and bicycle chains. She concentrated on chewing, although the food tasted like sawdust in her mouth.

  The sergeant took her silence as a further question. “I didn’t actually join the movement until General Franco took command, when the war started,” he said, somewhat embarrassed.

  The teacher gave a little gasp of relief. Tejada, misinterpreting the smothered gesture, hastily expanded his explanation. “It wasn’t just a question of expediency,” he justified himself. “I’d been very interested in the Falange’s land redistribution programs for some years. It’s just that they might affect my family quite directly, and. . . .” He paused, uncertain how to explain that he had been unwilling to strain his parents’ patience further by coming home wearing not only a guardia’s uniform but a fasces in his lapel.

  “Your parents wish to retain the title to their family home?” To Tejada’s surprise, Señorita Fernández helped him finish the awkward sentence. Her eyes were twinkling slightly.

  He laughed. “Shall we say that my grandfather was a rather prominent Carlist?” he said, relieved that she seemed to be sympathetic.

  “Understood.” Elena nodded firmly, although she really did not understand at all. She could see why the sergeant’s family had no love for the Falange. For all his pointed self-deprecation, his voice and manners belied his uniform; he was clearly a member of one of the old landowning families who formed the monarchist Carlist party. But she could not understand why the sergeant would disoblige his parents by abandoning the Carlists for the radical populism of the Falange. He did not seem like the type of man who enjoyed gratuitous brutality, or one of those who were overly concerned with making sure that Spain was as European as possible. He would not have been attracted to the Falange simply because there were successful Fascist parties elsewhere in Europe. Surely he could not have been impressed by the Falange’s pretended concern for peasant laborers? If he were a little brighter he might have turned into a Socialist, she thought. She looked at the uniform in front of her and brushed away the idea. It was ridiculous. He was simply a gentleman who enjoyed playing at being a policeman.

  Tejada, sensing that his guest was uncomfortable with the extended discussion of politics, cast about for a change of subject. “Do you enjoy teaching?” he asked finally, and then kicked himself, remembering that she had just lost her job.

  “Oh, yes!” Her enthusiasm was obvious, and untempered by resentment. The school was, at least, a safe subject. “I love working with children. It’s so fascinating to watch them grow and change. And they’re so generous!”

  “Generous?” Tejada asked.

  There was a long pause. Then she said slowly, “Well . . . for instance . . . most of the children, if they come to school at all now, they don’t go home for lunch—to save the extra walking, you know—and, well . . . of course, the rule is that we share anything that’s brought to class. And it’s terribly hard for the little ones, never being full, but they always share. They’ve even offered to share with me.” She blushed. “Of course I couldn’t take food from them.”

  Tejada, who had watched her eat, wondered about the “of course” and privately thought that if her students were generous it was because their teacher set them the example. “I’m surprised
you’ve never married,” he said. “You ought to have children of your own to raise.”

  “It’s never come up.” Her voice was unembarrassed, but Tejada was suddenly ashamed of the comment. The only men she would have met in Madrid would have been the Reds, who did not marry their women anyway, and the liberal apologists for the Republic. It was inconceivable that she would have lived in sin with some grubby miliciano, and as for the so-called better classes—Cowards, Tejada thought. Pasty little half-men like that Herrera. Probably fairies anyway, most of them. They haven’t got half her strength and they couldn’t appreciate her. And how could she respect them?

  Señorita Fernández could not guess his thoughts, but she saw that he was looking grave. Since she much preferred it when he was smiling, she said lightly, and as jokingly as possible, “I suppose it’s a distinction to be the living embodiment of a proverb.”

  “Which one?” Tejada asked, noticing her forced gaiety and thinking that she would never pity herself for having no shoes when there were others with no feet.

  “Oh, you know. A girl who studies Latin . . .”

  Tejada had in fact forgotten the saying, possibly because it was one of his mother’s favorites. A girl who studies Latin will never wear white satin. He mentally clothed Elena Fernández in his sister-in-law’s wedding gown. It was an attractive picture, and startlingly easy to visualize. “Surely you don’t actually know Latin?” he suggested.

  “I’m afraid I do.” Elena returned his smile. “My father is a”—she remembered to whom she spoke, and caught herself quickly—“very devoted admirer of classical literature. He taught me, at home.”

  “He’s also a teacher?” The sergeant’s question was casual, but Elena knew it was dangerous.

  “He was,” she answered carefully. “But I don’t know. I haven’t seen my parents since the war started.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Elena bit her lip, remembering her mother’s last letter.

  Your father has been arrested, because they say he is a Marxist. He told them the truth—that he was a friend and colleague of Don Miguel’s for years, and that he had felt compelled to protest what had happened to him, but that he is no revolutionary. I’m sure this will all be settled soon, and I’ll write again as soon as I have news.