Death's Other Kingdom

by Woolsey, Gamel; Jacobs, Michael;

  I hate war, I have a perfect horror of it; and what little of it I saw in Spain confirmed me in my fear and hatred. And yet after that early morning walk across the fields I understood, better than Bertrand Russell could ever explain it, Why Men Fight.

  And when we got near Don Carlos’s house we saw that it was not on fire at all! Two incendiary bombs had fallen near it, one on an empty chicken house in the backyard and the other in some dry grass and both were still burning and sending off great clouds of white smoke. But the house itself was untouched and we could see figures moving calmly about. We went on anyway; we had other reasons besides the danger of bombs to make us anxious about Don Carlos and his family.

  We crossed the main Algeçiras road and reached their gateway and Don Carlos and his family came to meet us full of surprise at seeing us there at five o’clock in the morning, and full of gratitude when they found out that we had come to rescue them, however unnecessarily. They were excited but not at all frightened. Don Carlos was tall and florid and slightly bald, and always somehow reminded me of a charming, aristocratic, Spanish Wilkins Micawber (if such a combination can be imagined!); he had spent a lifetime of difficulties but was always full of hope that something was ‘just going to turn up’. He had been in Chile and Tierra del Fuego for years, where he was sheep farming, acting as consul for other South American countries, and in fact doing anything that ‘turned up’. Don Carlos and his family particularly attracted me because they reminded me of my half-brother and his family who lived on the cotton plantation he had inherited from our father (where I was brought up) in a state of extraordinary happiness and improvidence, with half a dozen riding horses and no money to speak of.

  Doña Maria Louisa, I might as well say without mincing words, was almost the nicest woman I ever knew anywhere. Tall, fair and handsome, a devoted wife, mother, daughter, friend, very kind, and courteous and friendly with rich man, poor man, beggar or thief. The whole family were gay and amusing, and Don Carlos had the Spanish genius for telling a story and for making gossip and personalities interesting and vivid, and somehow universal in their application. Their children were charming too; there were two nearly grown-up boys and two nearly grown-up girls and little Emilio who was only six.

  ‘Have you been all right here?’ we asked Don Carlos rather anxiously. He was unfortunate in having a famous name, though he had not inherited much besides, except this strip of land along the sea on which he had built a small house and a part share in the family house which we had bought from him and other members of the family. But a famous name at that period brought death to a great many harmless and innocent people. One of Don Carlos’s nephews, a boy of eighteen, was taken away and shot because he had this too well-known name and because only a few weeks before he had got a small place as clerk in Malaga’s principal industry which was managed and partly owned by a distant cousin. The cousin was shot as a matter of course after spending a few weeks in prison. He deserves to be remembered for he was a brave man. He was safe in hiding but gave himself up when some of the men under him were put in prison, and tried to take upon himself the entire responsibility for the conduct of the firm, which had been having trouble with strikers. But I’m afraid they were all shot anyway. I liked his last words, they were: ‘Do you mind if I light a cigarette?’ He lit it and took a few puffs and then gave the signal to fire, himself. Having a feeling even then that famous names were going to be a fatal possession in Malaga we were worried about the C— family (on both sides they had a great deal of English blood and used English names) even apart from their living so unfortunately close to the airfield.

  ‘Come and stay with us,’ we urged them.

  ‘Seven of us!’ said Maria Louisa, ‘and we can’t leave the chickens – but how good you are!’

  ‘Do you really think you’re safe?’ we asked bluntly. ‘What about your name?’

  ‘Oh! but I’ve never done anything; I’ve been in South America half my life, and I’ve never taken any part in politics. Why should they do anything to me?’ said Don Carlos. ‘I’m a poor man too; the boys work as hard as peons, and we always get on well with the country people.’ We knew that that was true, but we were not thinking of the country people but of the gangs in Malaga.

  ‘Well, come any time,’ we said. ‘We’ll always be expecting you. And bring as much as you can in the car. Why not bring the best chickens (they had prize Rhode Island Reds). You could bring a lot of them, you know we’ve got that huge fowl-house with only a few old hens in it. Do come! Fill up the car and come on over this very morning.’

  ‘The car!’ Don Carlos began to laugh. ‘Did you see the burnt remains of something along the road: that was the poor old Buick! The Anarchists came to get it. Well, you know what the poor old car was – Pepe and Carlete and I could just start it all working together. You had to know its ways. Of course the Anarchists couldn’t start it at all. They cranked it and cranked it and pushed it down the road, and finally they got so angry they put a match to the petrol and Poof! there it is! Poor old thing, it was a pity.

  ‘But they gave poor Maria Louisa and the children a dreadful fright when they came for it – two lorries full of pistoleros bristling with rifles and revolvers. All of them got out and came up to the door, poor Maria Louisa was sure that they had come for me. I was in Malaga. But no, everything was politeness, they only wanted the car, they were requisitioning all private cars. The children warned them what a dreadful old crock it was, but they would drag it off.’

  As we stood in the garden saying goodbye, a constant stream of lorries and commandeered cars kept passing by. The house was only fifty yards from the main road: we did not like it at all.

  ‘Do come to us,’ we urged again as we went away. Doña Maria Louisa stood smiling and waving goodbye with the girls and little Emilio while Don Carlos and the boys walked to the road with us. What admirable things courage and self-control are, I thought, especially when combined with cheerfulness and good manners. For that smiling family we left behind must have realised even more clearly than we did, and felt – how much more poignantly – the loneliness and danger of their situation in that isolated house, too far for any help to reach them even if there were any help for them in those days, with the armed lorries rushing by and bombs falling out of the air above them.

  Chapter 9

  I THINK IT WAS ON THE DAY when we tried to rescue the C—s that I first noticed a new presence in the garden. I had been vaguely aware once or twice before of a tall young man rather good-looking in a mild ineffective way, who seemed to be always sitting about in the kitchen with an aged rifle which was generally stood in the corner like an old umbrella. And one day I asked Pilar who he was.

  ‘Oh! he is one of the village guards on this part of the road. He is a foreigner, he comes from Guachas, that poor mountain village. He came down trying to get work but of course there isn’t any work, so they’ve given him an old rifle and put him to guard our street.’

  ‘Is he any use as a guard?’ I asked sceptically.

  ‘Claro que no!’ replied Pilar smiling. ‘He’s a good young man. He knows nothing about shooting people; it’s as much as he’s ever done if he’s shot a rabbit in the sierra.’

  ‘Does he get paid for guarding us?’

  ‘No, I don’t think he gets anything.’

  ‘Well, give him a meal sometimes,’ I said. Here Maria gave a disapproving snort. Good Spanish servants defend their master’s property almost to the death from shopkeepers who charge too much or weigh out too little, hucksters who charge a farthing a pound more than the lowest price possible to buy at, beggars who want food or money, and even, we think, guests, when possible to do so without injuring the honour of the house. Maria, I know, disapproved of our having so many visitors to stay and threw up her eyes to heaven when she talked of our housekeeping expenses. So I thought it quite natural and even proper that she should snort at the very idea of giving food to a strange young man from Guachas.

  Later that
evening I was walking in the garden. Standing on the little mirador, a small landing cut in the thick garden wall, with steps up to it, from which to admire the view, I saw Pilar silhouetted against the evening light. But who was that with her? I strained my eyes and saw, more by the light of sudden comprehension than by the fading twilight that it was the young man from Guachas.

  Maria had plenty of excuse for snorting in the days that followed for the young man, whose name like that of almost every other male Malagueñan, was Antonio, proved to be a fixture. At all hours he was to be found either in the kitchen with the old gun standing against the wall while he sat watching Pilar cooking and washing up, or walking about with her in the more distant parts of the garden. I tried to talk to him and make friends with him, and he was friendly enough, but he seemed dull, soso as the Spaniards say, saltless, flat. It didn’t seem to me that Pilar was really much taken with him either; she said frankly that he was dull and had nothing to say, but that he was ‘very good’. But she was so pleased, poor Pilar, at having an admirer. She looked younger, happier, fresher; she wore her nicest clothes every day, my old castoffs, carefully washed and mended, and combed and sleeked her straight black hair more and more smoothly and stuck flowers over her ear like a young girl. My poor Pilar, it was your ‘one fair day’. There was something so touching about this late, thin blooming, and about all their timid, humble courtship – for they both belonged to the ‘despised and rejected of men’, ‘the insulted and injured’, and they were both like all the Spanish poor more acquainted with grief and hunger than with pleasure or plenty.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll marry Antonio,’ I said one day.

  ‘No,’ said Pilar. ‘We would have children and nothing to feed them. To be a poor mother is a misery. To listen and hear your children crying for bread. I have one child to keep already, and I will not take her to the house of hunger. She shall be brought up in your shadow, and never know the hunger and want I have known.’

  But even this quiet gentle courtship which seemed unlikely ever to turn into anything stronger was made a source of torment to Pilar by her mother. Maria disapproved intensely. I do not think she said anything to the young man: he was a guest of the house, I suppose. But she scolded Pilar continually. There were several reasons for her disapproval. The young man was extremely poor and came of a very poor family, and for Pilar to marry him would be a going back from the life of plenty and respectability they had won at last, to poverty and uncertainty again. Then Maria was jealous – jealous, I think, in several ways, but chiefly of her ascendancy over Pilar and possession of her and the little girl which was threatened – why Pilar might even take Mariquilla off to Guachas and starve her there for all she could tell. Then there was a most curious objection peculiar to the Spaniards of the Alpujarras and of other very remote and out of the way districts, and that is that they disapprove of a widow or widower ever marrying again. There is, as far as I can make out, a feeling that it is improper and also a feeling that it offends the Universe and brings misfortune to the community. But it is only legal marriage which has this unlucky effect: a widow or widower can live with any one they like and no one pays any attention.

  Anyway there was more than a trace in Maria of this odd prejudice. But I think that if the marriage had been an advantageous one Maria would have got over all her objections. After all grandchildren to an elderly Spaniard are the most desirable thing in life.

  It was the second day after we had been to rescue the C—s: the evening had closed in and we were sitting in the big sala waiting for the lights to come on so that we could try to get some news on the radio, when we heard strange voices and a stir outside. Maria appeared in the doorway looking mysterious.

  ‘They have come!’ she declaimed in low intense tones like an old-fashioned Lady Macbeth.

  ‘Who have come?’ we asked startled. Could it be the Moors after all?

  ‘Don Carlos and all of them, even the dog.’ We hurried out and found all of them, ‘even the dog’ as Maria had said, a charming black-faced mastiff called Bull.

  ‘We were afraid to stay tonight,’ Maria Louisa said as we embraced. ‘They say there will be a bad raid tomorrow, and there were so many bombs near us today. And there are so many armed lorries on the road and they keep stopping. I wouldn’t mind for myself – but it’s the girls. Could we just spend tonight with you?’

  ‘Tonight and every other night,’ we said. They had come secretly across the fields in the dusk, and they had the anxious excited look of people escaping from danger. We were glad to get them under our roof; for their situation had been very much on our minds ever since the rising.

  They had brought two of their big red chickens for our supper, and the two girls and the younger boy sat down to pluck them while Maria prepared the rest of the meal, and Pilar and I searched the house for enough linen to go round and tried to make the beds stretch to hold seven additional people; with one borrowed one and a pallet on the floor for Emilio we finally managed it.

  I went out to the kitchen once or twice in spare moments, and found the C— children talking to Maria and the usual crowd of kitchen guests as if they were all old friends. The Spaniards really believe and really practise their belief that our common humanity is enough to make friends and associates (or enemies and associates as sometimes happens) of us all. They can always talk to one another about something, even if they have never met before and come from different social worlds. Our all being human beings, they feel, gives us plenty of subjects for conversation. And the poor but aristocratic C—s and the poor labourers in the kitchen chattered away to each other with the greatest interest and animation. Fortunately the villagers did not seem to regard the children, at any rate, as Fascistas but as fellow sufferers under a rain of bombs.

  The household at Churriana in 1936: Rosario, Antonio, Miranda, Isobel (sitting) and Maria

  In a surprisingly short time supper was ready: a grand chicken supper of a nature quite unusual in our quiet kitchen where our standard of life was kept low by Maria, who rather disapproved of people eating at all, and thought eating chicken was certainly a venial sin, if nothing worse. It was an exquisite night, and we sat in the patio after supper listening to the cool falling of the fountain and smelling the lovely fragrance which seemed to be opening and spreading like a gigantic flower in the dark. We could distinguish the scents of the jasmine on the wall, and of the magnolia-like datura, and the incredible sweetness of the dama-de-noche.

  The relief of being safe in the peace of the old garden where the house shut out almost all the sounds of the rushing traffic in the street, made the C—s very gay, and we spent a delightful evening. They went at last to their rather inadequate beds; and we wandered round the garden as we almost always did before we could tear ourselves away, going from flower to flower like two perfume-drugged moths.

  The next morning after breakfast our guests began making polite attempts to leave. No, they could not think of staying, so many of them – it was an imposition – indeed they could not! And there were the chickens which must be looked after. But we would not hear of their leaving, we were only too glad to have them safe under our roof. There had been no raid that morning, but there was sure to be another soon. And all our instincts (and in time of danger the instincts begin to work in quite a new way) told us that Don Carlos was not safe. There was something in the way the villagers looked at him and spoke of him that warned us: he was ceasing to be a man like other men, as an ox in the hands of the butcher ceases to be an ox for the herd. So the C—s stayed on though protesting every day, and the two boys went back every morning to feed the chickens. We did not much like their going, but we hoped they were safe, for they were hardly more than children and had been born in Chile and had Chilean papers. But the rest of the family never went out except into the garden, and after the first few days Don Carlos never left the house at all.

  Then began a very strange period of our lives. Gradually we entered into a sort of region of nightmare; but it
was a nightmare from which it was impossible to awake. We entered into it gradually, as I say, for though we were always apprehensive about Don Carlos, our anxiety at first was not very acute; and we genuinely enjoyed having them in the house; they were so attractive and pleasant to be with, and their devoted family life was a pleasure to watch. I never saw so happily attached a family. We were fortunate in being able to assume at first that Don Carlos and his family were with us only because of the danger of bombs falling on their house; that was a great advantage to us in the village because it was something everyone sympathised with. But as time went on and they did not go to their relations in Malaga, or move into some other house (a cousin, the Duquesa de —had a large empty house in the village where they had lived while their own house was being built the year before and where they could now have stayed most comfortably with all their chickens) – it became more and more difficult to pretend that they were only staying with us because of the air raids. The Village Committee had made it known to us through Enrique that they had nothing against Don Carlos. But not very long after that, a carpenter who had worked for us came in one evening and asked to see Gerald: what he had to tell him was that Don Carlos was ‘wanted’ by the Terrorists, and that they were looking for him in Malaga. After that we kept Don Carlos hidden, we did not say in so many words that he had gone, but if anyone asked about him on any particular day he was always said to be in Malaga then. He stayed upstairs where no one could see him; and we had a real hiding place, a very good one, a sort of priest’s hole in which to hide him if the worst happened – uncertainty about the world in these modern days prevents me from telling where it was: we might want to use it again! As Doña Maria Louisa’s mother, a charming old lady of seventy-six remarked to me one day, ‘This reminds me so much of my youth, you know, when the Carlist Wars were going on.’