We could hardly believe it at first when we were told that Juan was ‘wanted’ by the extremists. But during the first week after the rising, an attempt was made to arrest him and several other poor men of the village and put them in Malaga prison under ‘detentive arrest’. They were all middle-aged or elderly men in quite humble circumstances, and none of them I should imagine had had anything whatever to do with the risings. They were chiefly men who had been sergeants in the army or in the Civil Guard, and were supposed to have been cruel or repressive in their behaviour. Juan was much the most prosperous of them, and he was only the village baker with a few acres of land. It was not really for class reasons that people were murdered, in our village at any rate. It was for political hatreds or old venganzas. Juan had belonged to Gil Robles’ Accion Catolica party, and had acted as electioneering agent and I suppose bought votes for it. That was his death sentence.
The village protested vigorously over this attack upon its rights, and won the first struggle over the fate of her hijos. It was agreed that they were to be allowed to stay in their homes, and that the village committee was to be responsible for them and to see that they did not try to escape. This was before Don Carlos and his family came to us, and we had the idea of having Juan stay in our house with the consent of the Committee, as being somewhat safer for him if the Terrorists made one of their night raids. But he preferred staying at home, as he said he had done nothing wrong and had nothing to be ashamed of, he was a member of a Centre party and not an extremist of any kind, he would stay in his own house.
At that time things were not so bad as they became later, and we hoped that he would be all right as he was popular in the village and had so many guarantees and safe-conducts from various sources. Later when we had the C— family with us it would have been impossible for us to have him. We were only just able to save Don Carlos by trading on our prestige as British subjects almost beyond what it would bear. I do not think it would have been possible for us to have kept Don Carlos even a week longer than we did. To take in Juan as well would have been very dangerous for them all.
Juan had some other English friends, fellow horse-lovers, who had a farm in the sierra and had remained on it, but he decided not to go to them when the question arose, because he said it would not be a good place to hide if they should come. But I think his decision not to go was partly due to unwillingness to leave his village. I remember how poor Maria and Pilar used to say at that time: ‘Oh! Señora, if we were only all safe at home in Our Village!’
Don Carlos and Gerald and I were always inclined to think that Juan’s best plan would probably be simply to go to Malaga and stay at one of the larger hotels in the middle of the town for a while. Except during one week when the terror was at its height these hotels were particularly safe places. They were locked and guarded at night, and while they were sometimes searched by militia, etc., during the day, it was not such searchers that Juan had to fear; his various safe-conducts would have protected him from anyone with the shadow of a legal authority, it was only the secret night murderers he had to dread. – But I do not know why I go over and over this when it is too late – I have even thought that if Juan had been a man of the active courage of Don Carlos he might have got safely over to the other side, crossing the sierra towards Algeçiras. It cannot have been very well guarded, and once he got out of the immediate district he would not have been recognised, and might have passed as a countryman travelling on business. He could have got passes and safe-conducts of all sorts. But the horrible change in everyone around him paralysed his energies, as a rabbit becomes paralysed at the approach of a snake.
For the change must have been dreadful to him. One by one his friends fell away, only his family, and they fearfully, shared his isolation. No one came near him, everyone avoided him. He sat in a little yard behind his house alone or with his one faithful friend, an almost half-witted man he had been kind to. There he sat through the long days, or lay through the longer nights in his room above. What a burden of suffering men and women have borne during this war!
When I was a child and used to read books about the Indian Mutiny certain names came to have for me a curiously sorrowful ring, a sad undertone seemed to sound when they were spoken – Lucknow – Cawnpore. I have found since the Civil War began that certain names of Spanish cities have for me now this same sorrowful tone which sounds in my mind when I see them or hear them spoken – Badajos – Malaga – Toledo. Even Granada, whose charming name (which means pomegranate) used to call to my mind only the most delightful days spent among its bright squares and climbing streets, or hanging over the Alhambra wall gazing down fascinated on the city spread below while all the sounds of the south, the playing children, the calling women, the street cries, the cathedral bells, the crowing of the cocks floated up to us, sounds sadly now. It was our favourite city, and in the old days when we had been for months in the high wilds of the Sierra Nevada, and started off at last for an expedition to it, I used to understand Browning’s peasant who keeps saying ‘Oh! a day in the City Square is the greatest pleasure in life!’ But now what a melancholy ring it seems to have – Granada – how sadly the syllables fall. And it is the same with all the Andalucian cities I have loved. Cordoba – Antequera – Almeria – they all have the same sorrowful sound.
When Don Carlos first arrived Juan came to visit him one day. He came a back way across fields because he said he would not return the Left Front salute if it were made to him, as it was almost sure to be, on the road from some passing lorry. Don Carlos whose courage was of a gayer kind did not sympathise with this stubborn attitude. ‘I wish I had a duro for every time I’ve held up my arm,’ he said. He had been caught in the trouble in Malaga when it began and had spent the evening saluting. I wanted to find out how close the watch kept on Juan was, and reconnoitring around the house, I found under the front windows trying to pick up a bit of the conversation in the sala a sort of spy-guard, a haggard old man sitting on a wheelbarrow in most unconvincing idleness. So I went out and talked to him, about the weather, about the bombing, about anything that came into my head, until he finally gave it up and went away. But a little later when I looked out he had returned again, so I sent Enrique out who invited him to come in and sit down in the kitchen if he was tired, which drove him away. But though the old spy amused us, he made us feel that the situation was worse than we had thought, and Juan did not repeat his visit which he realised was probably not well looked upon at a gathering of suspected persons.
Juan hardly ever went out after that. He sat all day in his house or in his backyard under the trees alone or with his poor friend, whose heart was better than his head. I remember a visit we paid him. We were talking as usual about his situation, and he spoke with a kind of horror of how his friends had fallen away, ‘all except this one’ he added, smiling at the faithful creature who sat beside him.
It was clear to us that the horror he felt was not simply at his own position. It was a sort of horror at the baseness and cowardice quite ordinarily decent kindly people can show when they feel themselves in danger, at the change that civil war can produce in hearts and minds.
When we got up to go that afternoon Juan looked at me as we said goodbye, and something in his whole nature called out to me so clearly that I felt as if he had spoken and said, ‘What is it?’ He answered me with a look which expressed more than I would have thought it possible to so express – something of real horror at the nature of the world as it was revealed to him, of a passionate all-consuming wish to wake at last from this nightmare he lived in – and then the connection between us was broken, and he only said hopelessly, ‘Nada – nada –’ ‘Nothing – nothing –’
We all wanted Juan to go to Malaga, we were sure that he would be safer there, where the Guardias de Asalto and Militia were strong enough to give real protection to people with safe-conducts. But fear made him irresolute, he could not decide. And then one night we came back from Malaga and heard that he had gone sudde
nly no one knew where. He had wanted to see us before he left, and unluckily we had been away. I do not know whether he wanted to come to us in his desperation or whether it was only to say goodbye. For some weeks we heard that he was in hiding somewhere, and we hoped that he might manage to hide successfully until things became safe again, or until the Nationalists took the city (an event which we all realised from the beginning was only a matter of time), as he had so many relatives of all classes and conditions – one for instance was an aviator at the local airfield. Many people did so manage to hide. The priest of our village, a young man who was generally liked as a good priest who was kind to the poor, got away to Malaga at the outbreak of trouble and hid successfully until the city was taken. He dressed as a workman, and, Don Carlos wrote us after the taking when he had returned, was bold enough even to go about the streets with a red handkerchief tied around his neck! His friend spread a story that he had escaped to Almeria where some of his family were known to live, which made him the less likely to be looked for. We hoped for a time that something like that would happen with Juan.
But the Terrorists grew impatient and announced that if they could not find Juan they would take his brother-in-law. It shows what a primitive race the Spaniards are in some ways that they were not much surprised or even much shocked at the idea of killing a member of his family in Juan’s place. What did shock them was that they should talk of taking a brother-in-law – a brother, yes, they said, of course that would have been natural; but a brother-in-law is not really related. These were common tactics in the civil war, I am told, on both sides, for getting the man who was wanted. He almost always gave himself up to save someone else from suffering in his place: if he did not for some reason, at least they had a relative to kill or put in prison.
A few days later Maria came in and said angrily: ‘They have killed Juan!’
It seemed that he had been hiding in a cave near a village up the valley; and some of his family had been secretly bringing him food at night. And he might have hidden there safely for a long time, but a friend gave him away, a friend who owed him money. Juan was shot. I hope he was killed instantly. After the first shock of horror at Maria’s words I was conscious of a bitter relief. At least his long agony was over and Juan was safely dead.
Sometimes still in the night in those hours when there is nothing to distract us and the mind repeats its old troubles, I torment myself by going over and over the memories of that time – thinking that we might have saved Juan – that he might have saved himself – if he had acted differently.
Juan – Juan – my mind repeats, and the darkness answers Nada – Nada –
Chapter 14
THE SITUATION over Don Carlos became much worse after that fatal morning when he was seen on the roof. We had continual warnings about him. Finally the Village Committee told us that we would have to get rid of Don Carlos. They were being blamed for the situation, and could not protect him, nor be responsible for us with him in the house. They were very much worried. Gerald told them that he must keep Don Carlos a little longer whatever the consequences, but that he would try to make some other arrangements for him soon. Meanwhile he redoubled the efforts he was making to try to get them all safely out of the country.
Don Carlos had some very faint claim to be recognised as a Chilean citizen because he had once acted as Chilean Consul to the Argentine; but he had no papers whatever to show for it. The only thing which they fortunately did have were the children’s nationality papers which showed that all except the youngest had been born in Chile and were Chilean citizens. Gerald made the most of these and enlisted the help of the Argentine Consulate which was acting for Chile. One day I remember he decided that Doña Maria Louisa and I had better go there and explain about Don Carlos’s activities in Chile and the Argentine, and give them names of influential friends out there who might be able to vouch for them or help in some other way.
I remember it in a curious dreamlike way, for Gerald left us to wait there, as the Consul was out and he had other things to do. And we waited for a long, long time on a seat on a great stone stairway. All the time we sat there coffee and toast kept passing by on trays. And that odd procession of climbing meals, and the heat of the morning, and our anxiety have made a queer surrealist picture in my mind, so that I am not sure now what the place really was like. I do not think there can have been so many passing trays as I remember or that the steps can have been so huge and endless, like steps in Piranesi’s dream drawings.
Finally the Consul came. He was a most charming man with one of those English names that have become famous in the Argentine. But he could not help us; we had no papers to show. He said that he would cable to Chile; but he could not give us much hope. Maria Louisa accepted his decision without a word of urging or complaint – in fact with her beautiful manners and her graciousness she seemed to be chiefly anxious to reassure him and make it easy for him to deal her this blow.
Meanwhile Gerald was ‘multiplying himself’ as the Spaniards say on the C—s’ behalf. One day when he was in the Governor’s office he asked them what he should do if the ‘Uncontrollables’ came. ‘Shoot them!’ they replied simply. But we did not really feel that shooting Terrorists was going to make our position any better. And as a matter of fact we never had the slightest intention of trying to use force ourselves, and had no arms of any kind except a life-preserver which Gerald had carried, but never used, on trench raids during the War, and an ancient fowling piece belonging to Enrique, which even he had doubts of firing.
Don Carlos heard that an old friend or acquaintance of his, Don Francisco D—, was on one of the Committees in Malaga, and suggested that Gerald should go to see him as he might he able to help. Unfortunately he was a Republican and consequently had not much influence. But we did go to see him and found him a most charming intelligent man and most willing to help us in any way that he could. I remember his daughter because she must have been typical of so many women at that time. She was in an extreme state of nervous agitation which she could not control. She was afraid for herself – afraid for her father – afraid of the Anarchists – afraid of the Nationalists. It was distressing to be with her. And her father with his Spanish stoicism was both distressed and annoyed by her lack of it.
He was a most reasonable and intelligent man, and was of course appalled by the whole situation; but he intended to do his duty as he saw it as long as it was possible for him to do so. He was one of those admirable and typically Spanish characters, whom the Spaniards themselves call ‘noble’ – and that is the best word I know for them. He most willingly agreed to help us by speaking for Don Carlos to the Central Committee. I wish I knew what has happened to him now. But perhaps it is just as well not to know. For when we said to Don Carlos that we hoped that he in his turn would be able to help Don Francisco when Malaga was taken, Don Carlos said that the Nationalists were sure to shoot him anyway.
On our way back from Don Francisco’s house that day we met Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell on the tram. There was nothing unusual about meeting him anywhere on the streets or trams or buses as he went a great deal into town to appeal to various committees for the large family of refugees he was sheltering, and also almost daily to visit the man of the family who was in prison, to find out how he was, and to take him what small comforts he was allowed to receive. But what was remarkable that day was the company we found him in. He was with a remarkably tough-looking young woman, dressed in blue overalls and wearing a revolver strapped to her belt. The contrast between this rather sinister person and the tall attractive figure of Sir Peter dressed as usual in immaculate summer clothes with fresh flowers in his buttonhole amused us very much for a minute and then filled us with some doubts especially as the pair did not seem to be on very good terms. So we drew Sir Peter aside and questioned him about his odd companion. He explained that she had made a declaration that his refugees owed her mother large sums of money for washing done for them in the past (as far as I can remember it),
and had wanted to bring Doña Mercedes, the mother of the refugee family, before some tribunal about it. As Sir Peter was sure the accusation was false, but felt that it would be dangerous for Doña Mercedes to appear to deny it, he was going himself to try to argue the case before the tribunal (which he managed to do quite successfully, and even to get on fairly amicable terms with the denouncer, a poor creature from a miserable family, full of hate and spite against their former rich employers). We did not much like the sound of all this as it was explained to us over the rattling of the crowded tram, but as we could not do anything to help, we went on back to our own refugees.
An unexpected turn in our favour suddenly occurred when the Chilean Government asked the Madrid Government to allow the expatriation of whole families where some members of the family were of Chilean birth, as long as the Spanish members were not of military age. I do not know that the request was ever granted, but it allowed the Argentine Consul to give us a very dubious sounding paper, which described the C— family as having some Chilean members, and asked that they should be allowed to leave Spain and proceed to Chile where their affairs called them. We realised that this paper was neither passport, nationality papers, nor anything else with any legal authority; but the situation was getting so ominous that Don Carlos decided to try to get away with it. Gerald managed to get it stamped by the Governor’s office and the ‘Committee of Public Safety’. But would the paper prove sufficient when the time came for using it? And would we even get Don Carlos safely from our house to the boat?
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