by David Rees
‘It’s you two who’ll need the luck,’ José replied. ‘Remember Tomás Guzmán. He’s your best source of help if the worst comes to the worst.’
‘Will we see you at all?’ Cristina asked, her voice cracking slightly.
‘Yes! In Rojo probably … or in Paris.’ He smiled. ‘Or here, even. I’ve been talking as if we’ve already lost! I ought to be shot for defeatism! There’s no reason to think we can’t push the bastards out of the city!’
‘I wonder what happened to the troops from Jaén.’
‘No point in speculating about that now. Stephen … we must go.’
They hurried off in the direction of the Tristeria, where the battle was now at its height. The square was filled with smoke, and the noise was appalling. The defenders fired from upper windows and roof-tops; the enemy from doorways, the corners of alleys, from behind the bodies of the dead. It was difficult to see clearly, though some houses were burning ― people aimed in the direction of a sound, or where they thought there was movement. It went on all night. Stephen, for the first time in his life, was using a gun, something he never considered he would have to do. He didn’t know if he killed anybody or not. The fascists, despite the defenders’ superior positions, slowly, bit by bit, house by house, got the upper hand. Towards dawn it started to rain. In the wet and the pale grey light, Pedro and his men began to retreat. The Tristeria was lost.
It was the same in all the other battles that raged throughout the city. The defenders were pushed back into the centre, towards the cathedral. At breakfast-time Pedro and Stephen found themselves, for a brief while, shooting from the garden of the Casa Badajoz. There were two quinces on the tree: Stephen picked them and put them in his pocket. Pedro told him to go indoors and find something for them to eat. José and Cristina had gone, Stephen was glad to discover.
He took over as chief marksman while Pedro paused to drink coffee and eat some bread. He fired at an enemy soldier who was foolish enough to be standing on the other side of the street. And killed him. He stared for a moment at the corpse: its stillness was astonishing.
They shot their way through to the cathedral. Pedro, horrified to see how few of his men were left, ordered them to scatter ― each should look to himself, should escape or hide while he still could. ‘We’ll go to Tomás’s,’ he said to Stephen. They climbed into the garden of the palace ― no one saw them ― and broke into the house through a window. They crept up the stairs to Tomás’s study. He was sitting behind his desk in his ecclesiastical robes (for the benefit of the new regime, Stephen assumed), writing yet another card.
‘I expected you,’ he said. ‘Don José told me you would be here.’
Half an hour later all firing ceased. Zahara was now in Nationalist Spain.
Queipo de Llano paraded in triumph round the city, and the bourgeoisie, even those who had collaborated with the anarchists, welcomed him hysterically. They threw flowers at his troops from their balconies, or ran up to them in the streets, kissed them, embraced them, rode with them on their motor-bikes and trucks. At the Casa del Pueblo, where the committee had so recently been in permanent session, Queipo harangued the crowd in his usual buccaneering fashion, but he made no reference to his threat of last year to castrate every man in the city. Afterwards, he went inside the building, and began to organise Zahara’s new administration. The first job was reprisals. Within twenty-four hours nearly three hundred people ― journalists, teachers, even hospital workers dustmen, housewives, of anarchist or socialist persuasion ― had been rounded up and shot. The Japanese guitarist was one of them. His crimes: vagrancy, and assisting the Reds. Tomás Guzman found the body outside the cathedral. His hands were bound behind his back with wire. His guitar lay beside him, smashed to bits.
Some hours before the final defeat José and Cristina left, each carrying two suitcases ― these contained clothes and other essentials, and a few precious personal souvenirs. Their house and the greater part of their belongings they never saw again. But they were more fortunate than most; they had enough money to get out of Spain and a little to live on for a while after that.
Half the city seemed to be plodding down the steep hill to the Jaén road. The enemy had employed nearly all its troops in the assault on Zahara; this was their priority ― refugees escaping they were not, for the moment, concerned about. The barbed wire had been cut ― rolled away. José stopped. ‘You could drive a car through it,’ he said, in surprise.
‘Yes. Come on,’
But he did not move. I’m going back,’ he said. ‘To Pedro’s garage. There are several cars in there that the committee use ― I’ll take one.’
‘You’re mad! Let’s get out now! While it’s easy.’
It would be mad not to try. You wait here, with the cases. I won’t be long.’
Here? By the barbed wire? If a fascist soldier arrives, I’ll be shot! You have gone mad!’
‘Cristina … if we can get a car, life would be a great deal simpler!’
‘I’m coming with you.’ she said.
It was much more difficult trudging up the road into Zahara, a heavy case in each hand, than it was going down. Though it was dark, they could just about see: several buildings were in flames. The noise of the battle was intense. Cristina grumbled the whole time that they were virtually committing suicide, that the fascists were probably now in control and that José was stupid, obstinate, and idiotic.
‘If the fascists are in control,’ he said, ‘why is there so much firing? And to judge by where the firing’s coming from, they haven’t gained a lot of ground yet.’
She had no answer to that. ‘Do you have a key to this garage?’
‘No. I shall break a window.’
They were the only people walking up the hill. Those hurrying down stared at them, and made comments that ranged from a jovial ‘Forgotten something important?’ to a disgusted ‘Fascist capitalist pigs!’ José and Cristina ignored these remarks; there was no time to explain, to say ‘I’m José Badajoz, the democratically elected socialist mayor of Zahara!’ Cristina was struck by the possessions some of these people were taking with them: not things, in her opinion, that were useful except perhaps to sell somewhere, or, in a dire emergency, eat. On one handcart was a grandfather clock, on another six yowling cats. A girl carried an enormous jug, nearly as big as herself. Two women were pushing a brass bed (it had wheels); it was piled high with furniture, on top of which were three small, very frightened children.
They reached the garage without incident; the battle was elsewhere, and the streets they walked through were deserted and dark, though lit up occasionally by a flash from an explosion. José broke a window and climbed in, then unlocked a door for Cristina to enter. She felt such relief that she began to laugh hysterically. ‘Let’s take this one!’ she cried, pointing to a very elegant and expensive-looking Bugatti.
José laughed too. ‘It’s a wonderful idea! But can you imagine the reception we’d get driving through Republican Spain in that? We’d be lynched!’ It had belonged to the president of the Andalusian Cement Company; the committee had expropriated it. ‘Besides … it probably does gallons to the mile, not miles to the gallon.’
He looked at the smaller cars and chose the one with the most petrol. They had just got into it when a man walked through the door José had left open. A fascist soldier. ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded.
José‘s reactions were quick, the soldier’s slow. He was able to start the car and drive it straight at the man before he could pull out his gun. The man leaped clear; and José shot off at breakneck speed into the city’s winding narrow alleys. There were enemy soldiers in this district now, who made signs to them to stop and, when they didn’t, fired at them; José merely accelerated blasting the horn, and flashing the headlights. The stream of humanity flooding out of Zahara was slowing; the enemy was now turning people back at gun-point. But the barbed wire was still open; in ten minutes they reached the Jaén road and safety. Here their speed had to drop
to little more than walking pace ― there were so many refugees: carts blocked the way, and herds of goats, even a broken-down bus. People signalled frantically to be allowed to ride with them, and, when José did not stop, they kicked the car doors, spat, banged on the roof, and shouted obscenities. ‘I can’t,’ José muttered. ‘If I do, everyone will be fighting to get in! We’d be swamped with bodies.’ But he did stop a mile further on where the refugees were fewer, and let two old women climb into the back. They had very little luggage. They turned out to be the two aged great-aunts of Police Chief Cuenca, and their sole topic of conversation was their adored great-nephew, whom they’d last seen going off to direct an assault on the fascists in the Calle San Juan.
At Rojo, José took the aunts to the school, which was being used as a reception centre; then drove to Señora Rodriguez’s house.
They stayed there a week, hopes in the first days high that Pedro and Stephen would be with them by dawn, or noon tomorrow, or sunset tomorrow at the latest. The refugees flocking into Rojo, some to pause a while, others passing through, brought horror stories of the conquering fascists; people hunted down and shot, others tortured or who had killed themselves rather than surrender. Many were known to José and Cristina: they began to have once more the ashy, stricken look that had haunted them for months after Pablo’s murder. Police Chief Cuenca had been beaten to a pulp and horribly mutilated before being shot. ‘How can I tell his great-aunts that?’ José said. But they already knew.
There was no word of Pedro or Stephen, not even a hint as to what had happened to them; they seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. José tried to console himself ― and Cristina ― by saying the obvious answer was that they were in hiding; if Pedro ― the Lynx, el generalissimo ― was in prison, or dead, everyone would know about it. But Cristina was not reassured. The obvious answer is never the one that solves the problem.’ she said.
‘If he is dead … I would grieve … grieve sorely. But … he accomplished something. He’s only twenty-five years old, but he had a chance to show the world what he was made of. He had … has … a sort of genius. Military genius, administrative genius. He could lead men; he has … magnetism. I know we don’t always see eye to eye … anarchism, homosexuality … but if he’s dead, it wouldn’t be pointless, without reason. I wouldn’t feel the same numbed grief, that shock at the senselessness of it I felt about Pablo. The same heart-break.’
‘A life is a life,’ Cristina said. ‘No shortening of it can ever be justified. Pedro may be in his mid-twenties and Pablo was only seventeen … but both those ages are still very young. I can’t see the difference. They are, the two of them, our children.’
‘Yes. Pablo was the sweetest, nicest kid who saw the light of day.’
‘He wouldn’t have harmed a fly.’
‘I know. I know.’
‘Pedro … I couldn’t honestly think of such a ruthless killer as the sweetest, nicest man who saw the light of day. But I love him just as much. I wish…’
‘That he wasn’t queer?’ José said. ‘Yes. It’s odd … I’ve learned to regard Stephen as my son-in-law. He smiled. ‘Or daughter-in-law. I suppose that’s … which way round they are.’
‘What do you mean, which way round?’
‘In bed.’
‘Oh.’ Cristina shrugged her shoulders. ‘It really doesn’t matter. But you’re right… Stephen is part of the Badajoz family.’
‘If it hadn’t been for the war would we ever have accepted it?’
‘Mmmm. I would.’
‘I wonder sometimes,’ José went on? ‘about Goicoechea. Where he is, and what sort of a life … do you think he really was castrated? It’s difficult to believe.’
‘I once asked Pedro if the sentence had been carried out, and he said it had. But that he didn’t do it.’
‘He wouldn’t. He couldn’t!’
‘I’m not so sure. He might well have been lying.’
On the seventh day after the fall of Zahara the most recent refugees told Rojo de la Frontera to be on its guard: Queipo had ‘cleaned’ the city and was now pushing on into the countryside. He would be in Rojo in a few hours. This produced an immediate panic, and another exodus ― the road to Jaén was soon chock-a-block with people thinking only of escape. ‘We can’t leave yet.’ Cristina said.
‘We must.’ José replied. He packed the suitcases, and put them in the car. Then he went to the school to see the aunts, but they said they wouldn’t come any further. With their great-nephew dead, there wasn’t much point. They’d probably return to the city ― the fascists wouldn’t murder a pair of eighty-year-old spinsters … they wouldn’t, surely.
José did not argue. It was obvious that Señora Rodriguez was anxious for him and Cristina to leave; the presence in her house of the socialist mayor would undoubtedly be enough to get her shot. They had just said their farewells when a man José knew slightly, Félix Castilla, an electricity worker, arrived on a bicycle. He had news: Pedro and el Inglés were safe, somewhere in the city.
‘In the city! Where exactly?’ José was alarmed.
Félix didn’t know; ‘I wasn’t told,’ he said. The bishop was hiding them ― Tomás had sent him with the message. He had to return now to Zahara: he’d be perfectly all right; he had a letter from Tomás in his pocket to show to any soldier who stopped him. The letter said Félix Castilla was travelling to Rojo on official diocesan business. Bishop Guzmán had evidently been restored to his full authority, no questions asked.
‘Give Tomás our thanks,’ Cristina said. ‘Tell him we’ll meet again one day, when this is all over. And to get word to our son and his friend that we’re safe, that they’re constantly in our thoughts … that we’ll be in Paris, waiting for them. That we dearly love them both.’
‘Paris!’ Félix was surprised.
‘Pedro has the address.’
They drove off, not by the main road ― the refugees would hold them down to a snail’s pace ― but across country, by dirt tracks through the fields, reaching Jaén eventually by a very roundabout route. They hadn’t been there for two years, and were surprised after the turmoil of Zahara to find it the sleepy, provincial capital it always was. The war hadn’t affected Jaén a great deal, despite its relative nearness to the front; it had put down the army revolt on the first day, then more or less got on with its usual life. The peasants toiled in the fields, the market was busy, the cafés and streets were crowded. It was an odd anti-climax.
They didn’t stop. They drove on into Murcia, to Albacete, where they spent the night. Two days later they reached the French frontier at La Junquera. Albacete and Valencia, like Jaén, seemed quite normal, but Barcelona was not. Air-raids and a variety of peculiar left-wing revolutions had wrecked the Catalonian capital. But the journey was trouble-free; they didn’t even have any difficulty in buying petrol. ‘I’m the Mayor of Zahara de los Membrillos’ ― with documents to prove it ― was a magic passport, even in anarchic Barcelona.
They stopped for a while at the frontier. Cristina, staring into France, said, ‘What are we going to do in a strange country?’
‘Do?’ José queried. He was on his knees, filling a bag with earth, and looking back into Spain. ‘I suppose I shall try and find a job. My old trade … I wasn’t a bad printer.’
‘We’ll have to earn our living somehow; that’s for sure.’
‘There must be Spanish books, newspapers even, published in France. Anyway … this is only a temporary exile … we’ll return when the war’s over.’
‘And if we lose the war?’
He didn’t answer that.
‘And suppose there’s a European war?’ she said. ‘French cities would be no safer than Spanish cities.’
‘Let’s look on the bright side. In a couple of days we’ll be with Carlos and Isabella.’
‘What’s that bag of earth for?’
‘Luck.’ He breathed in, deeply. ‘The air is good here in the mountains.’
The reunion in
Paris with their children was as joyful as it could be in the circumstances. Some time later José found work ― in a restaurant. They settled down, uneasily, to a frugal life in a foreign city ― neither of them spoke much French ― and waited for news of Pedro and Stephen.
It was a long wait.
NINE
Tomás hid them in the cathedral. Most cathedrals make splendid hiding-places; there are always little rooms in the towers and turrets where lead-makers work or where unwanted objects are stored; and there is usually an immense space between the vault and the outside roof. Zahara was no exception, and Tomás knew its infrastructure better than anyone. Sanctuary for Pedro and Stephen was a small cubby-hole near the top of the central dome; it had an exit as well as an entrance ―both doors leading to cat-walks and spiral staircases — as in a rabbit warren, Stephen said to himself, where there was always an escape route in addition to the main opening. The cat-walks commanded dizzying views of the crossing and part of the choir. The cubby-hole itself was so minute that it had space only for a mattress, which Tomás, a man with foresight, had put there almost a year ago; it would possibly be needed, he thought, by himself. He had put blankets and sheets and warm sweaters up there too, for which Pedro and Stephen were grateful: it was November now, and very cold at night. Tomás brought food at dawn and dusk ― the best times, for the cathedral was deserted then ― and a bucket of water for drinking and washing. He took away on each occasion, to empty it, a second bucket which they used for defecation, and from time to time he also removed their dirty clothes to launder.
He brought newspapers and books, and told them what was happening in Zahara― he was their only link with the outside world. What he had to say was not encouraging ― oppression and persecution, people deprived of their jobs or their homes, or imprisoned, tortured, shot: many of them Pedro knew well or was acquainted with. Almost all the enthusiastic, bright-eyed young anarchists he had led in the assault on the city had disappeared or were dead. Queipo’s advance through the countryside had been halted, though not by Republican opposition ― Franco stopped him. Queipo could have taken the whole of Andalucía without difficulty and marched on into Murcia, to Cartagena; maybe he could even have reached Alicante. Franco stopped him before he could take Jaén. Why, it was asked; the suggested reasons were that Franco didn’t want him to get too big for his boots, and rapid advances meant that the conquered territory wasn’t properly subjected to limpieza― cleaning. Queipo was said to be furious.