Treasure of the Spanish Civil War

by Serge Pey

  At school we stayed at the bottom of the class. We never did go back to the picture show.

  The Piece of Wood

  IT WAS AT first light that the grownups would get rid of the corpses by throwing them in the river.

  But you had a chance to escape by hiding in one of the oil drums. After the evening soup I gathered leaves and slipped them under my blanket and placed stones on top to anchor things down and prevent the wind from revealing that I was gone. My head I replaced with the body of my dead dog. I had called him Dog because in that place nobody had a name.

  I spread my scarf over Dog as though I were burying my own face. I felt that, from now on, the face I wore would be his. I kissed him and whistled gently into his ear as if I was calling him to come with me.

  Goodbye dead Doggie. Goodbye dead Doggie.

  Groping my way along the walls and scuttling from one hut to the next I taught myself to see with Dog’s eyes, because I thought I was dead too. I was Dog’s walking tomb, and I knew that on the other side of the world he was guarding the part of me that had died with him and would be waiting for me one day.

  I melted into the shadows until I reached the monstrous line of trees swaying slowly like pendulums. I circled the dangling oil drums marked with a white cross – which was the grownups’ way of indicating the ones containing dead bodies. Then, after lifting a lid, I slid into one of them alongside someone from Section 3 of the camp. His forehead was pressed against the metal side of the container as if he were asleep, but it was only his hands, clasped in a desperate prayer, that really gave the impression that he was alive.

  I stayed next to him for several hours without looking at him. I fell asleep against his back. When I woke I thought it was Dog who had suddenly grown bigger since he had died and come back to me. But it was only the body of a dead boy that I as hugging.

  The morning breeze had got up and the trees were creaking in the woods as their branches twisted this way and that. Gradually rain set up a relentless and regular tattoo on the oil drum. Its beat split my head in two. Then I heard footsteps on the gravel outside. It was the grownups come for the drums. I shifted the body of my dead companion and slid underneath him to avoid discovery. The grownups began to swear.

  “Today there are a bunch of fucking rats in those barrels. With this rain we better make sure the truck doesn’t get stuck in the mud.”

  I knew they called us rats when we were dead. I felt the grownups picking up my drum, placing it upright on the bed of their truck. I was afraid the lid might come off, but a grownup punched it firmly shut.

  During the short journey to the river my companion’s body moved and I wrapped my arms tightly around his belly. I was afraid that if ever his corpse slipped out of the drum they would spot me at the bottom.

  “The river’s going to burst its banks if this shit doesn’t let up!” said one of the grownups who had stayed in the back to keep the drums upright.

  The truck pulled up. I knew from the sound of the rapids that we had come to the end of the road. We were about to be tossed from the truck into the water. A perfect rat’s funeral.

  That night there were three oil drums.

  Mine was the last.

  The water flooded in straight away through the breathing holes and the drum rolled over. I had to use the boy’s body for support as I popped the lid open. All of a sudden I was free of him and starting to swim for the far bank with the help of the current.

  * * *

  —

  The drums I had noticed out of the corner of my eye when I first entered the camp, with a grownup pushing me on with his baton and my thumbs bound together with wire behind my back. They were lined up on either side of the road, hanging on chains, about a meter and a half from the ground. They were old oil barrels, and despite the rust you could still make out the name of the company that used to exploit the coastal fields: the five blue letters T O T A L were visible about a meter above the ground.

  Hoarse moans emerged from these metal rib cages full of holes. The guards, recruited from the grownups, would pour soup in from the top, standing on their trucks and opening the drum lids, obliging the prisoners to lick the food off the insides of their jail.

  Twice a day a guard would spray the captives with a garden hose, and they would drink directly from the jet. Punishment drums were changed only once a week, so that those confined there lived crouched in their own excrement.

  Often these drums became coffins. When a prisoner died, grownups would close the lid tight and toss the drum into the river or into a nearby bog.

  The drums were jack o’lanterns of death, monstrous low-hanging metal fruit. Occasionally a drum would emit a groan. But it was especially when one fell silent that a dull anxiety spread through the camp. That was when death was inscribed on the children’s faces. “Death” was the collective term under which the names of those who had been punished were grouped and disappeared forever.

  Every morning the camp warden held a roll call by striking the bottom of each drum with his club. At that moment some drums responded with a strangled cry. Sometimes in the course of a day a boy driven mad would begin to scream.

  * * *

  —

  “Here he is. We brought him back alive. We caught up with him on the other side of the hill.”

  The grownup stayed by the door, his rifle pointed at the middle of my back.

  “Untie him,” commanded the Director. “You want a cigarette, boy?”

  I wanted that cigarette desperately, but I told him no, not wishing to accept the slightest favor from the man.

  The Director was short. His black glasses made his lips the focus of his face, lips tightly clamped to a cigarette holder that he chewed on all the time. His olive-green shirt was buttoned up to his throat. He carried no weapon. His voice, hampered by a speech defect, was high-pitched and seemingly not fully broken.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twelve, sir.”

  “If you know how, write your name in this notebook,” he said, turning towards the window.

  * * *

  —

  The hut to which I was escorted had no door. It had a clean cement floor with a blanket spread out in a corner.

  “If you want to come out or ask for anything, stand to attention in the doorway with your hands behind your back and wait for a guard to notice you.”

  I used to sit inside on the blanket all day long. A little before nightfall, a loudspeaker would summon us to eat. We got soup just once a day, composed chiefly of sweetcorn and potatoes. The guards led us with our hands on our heads to a large stockpot where other children were already queueing up. We had to eat standing, quickly, and in silence.

  Ahead of me on my first day was a village boy who must have been my age. We caught each other’s eye right away. When the head guard whistled to indicate that mealtime was over, the boy slipped a piece of bread under my shirt.

  * * *

  —

  What became of my brother and sister after I lost them in the turmoil? Did they make it to the caves behind the white cliffs?

  Our house was in the riverside district two kilometers from the railroad. On that day, because we forgot to put the bread on the table, my uncle, as usual, said, “Be careful, the table might collapse.” The table was the center of the house: it was for playing dominoes, for eating, for learning to read and write, for listening to the radio, and sometimes we even slept on it. In fact the table was our house within the house.

  When they blocked off the street, my father was making the coffee and had just put his cigarette out in the watering can. My sister was crouched on the floor reading the newspaper.

  I was thinking now of my sister, and of my mother who had left clutching her sewing box and hiding the house key under a rock as she always did.

  We all lost sight of one another after the soldiers
opened fire down the street.

  * * *

  —

  The day after my arrival in the camp, a grownup tossed me a puppy taken from its mother in the police kennels.

  I have always loved dogs.

  His reddish coat was silky and warm. He licked me with his little tongue then started nibbling my hand. I held him close and felt his heart beating. I could see that he was shivering with cold and fear, so I opened my shirt and put him directly in contact with my skin. He stopped trembling then. He poked his head out of my shirt and looked up at me. Something infinitely timeless and sweet invaded me. I hugged him even more tightly and got the feeling that I was his mother now.

  This was the first moment of joy I had shared with another living being since entering the camp. I had become Dog’s mother and I would softly sing him a lullaby whenever I returned to my hut. Dog was soon my sole companion and at all hours he would be entangled with my legs as though I had grown a second pair of feet.

  With others I had been assigned the job of cleaning up the northern part of the camp. This gave me an odd freedom and I circulated at will among the barracks to which other children with different chores were confined.

  I felt the hate-filled and threatening gaze of the grownups – to whom I was not allowed to speak – as it bore into my back after I passed by. The grownups had fully mature dogs and were responsible for keeping discipline in the entire camp.

  There were two kinds of soldiers: those who remained in a watchtower next to the Director’s office and those who patrolled on the far side of the barbed-wire fence and occasionally threw us cigarettes.

  * * *

  —

  Dog was especially fond of fetching. I had taught him to play without making a sound, as per regulations. Whenever a grownup was approaching, Dog warned me with a growl and came and nuzzled my feet. I would always keep some sweetcorn for him to eat, for dog owners were entitled to a little extra soup.

  I slept with him. We kept each other warm.

  * * *

  —

  One morning, about two months after I entered the camp, the Director sent a grownup to get me. In his office he asked me right away how my charge was. Dog gamboled between our legs, then lay down on my shoes, trembling.

  The Director stroked him a little, then suddenly rose, picked up a folder from the table, and opened it briskly.

  “Tell me if you recognize anyone in these photographs,” he said, leaning down to pet my dog once more.

  He showed me one set of black-and-white identification photos – faces battered by beatings and torture – and another set of pictures taken in the street. Some of the faces were those of the dead. I turned the pages of the folder slowly, and on the third page I recognized Sando and a cripple from my neighborhood, then I came upon my father and my sister, whom I had lost sight of after the raid.

  “If you recognize someone, please tell me,” said the Director, chewing on his empty cigarette holder.

  Dog licked the Director’s hand and whined as he nipped at the heavy rings on the man’s fingers. I kept on turning pages, until in one column I recognized my big brother who had disappeared up into the mountains much earlier.

  “No one you know?” the Director asked me again.

  “No, sir, I don’t recognize anyone.”

  “Take a good look, you have plenty of time.”

  I also recognized Santiago and Roberto, and all my friends from the neighborhood, as well as participants at a meeting we had held in aid of prisoners’ families. I wondered how they had managed to get a picture taken inside our house. The Director was still playing with Dog, patting him and holding his paws and having him dance.

  “You still don’t recognize anyone?”

  “No, sir, I don’t recognize anyone.”

  It was at that moment that I heard Dog moan. A prolonged and pain-filled wail as if he was being strangled. I turned quickly and saw that the Director had grabbed Dog by one of his paws. He had wrapped his leash around his muzzle and, keeping him bound in this way, was methodically thumping him against the wall. Everything around me began to swirl. I felt the saliva dry in my mouth but managed to croak:

  “Leave my dog alone, sir.”

  “Do you recognize anyone in the folder?”

  I did not reply. Dog’s body was now making resounding thuds against the table. Nothing around me was stable.

  The Director dropped Dog like a sack of potatoes. Blood was still flowing from his muzzle and making puddles on the floor.

  “Here,” the Director told me, holding out a basin and a rag, “you can clean him up afterwards, but first show me who you recognize in the folder.”

  Trembling, I pointed out my brother and my sister and then my father.

  “You know where we can find them?”

  I gave him the address of our house in the country, telling myself that after all by this time they must surely have left there and gone to join the others up the mountain.

  “Good. Now go and take care of your dog and take the folder with you. Tomorrow you’ll tell me who else you recognized tonight.”

  I left with Dog in my arms. The battering against the wall had crushed his ear and his muzzle was still bleeding. I washed him with water, then went back to my hut behind the latrines and fell asleep with him on the floor.

  That night I had a dream. A bird came down from the sky and was trying to get into a house through the roof. Then the bird took on the face of my mother and human hands grew at the end of its wings to take hold of me. Had Mama died?

  Also that night I heard scratching just outside. At first I thought it was a dog. But then I recognized Pablo, from the hut next to mine. Breaking the standing curfew, he had come over for news of Dog. He had brought him a lump of sugar that the soldiers had given him. I was happy to have Pablo there.

  Pablo told me that the grownups who policed us had been arrested like us in town. It was they who beat and tortured the boys in the camp cellars. Although I had never been tortured myself, while cleaning up the camp I had frequently seen grownups forcing other children to go down into the basement of a cabin at the edge of an old quarry. Once I had heard screams coming from a ventilator there.

  Because there were a good many dogs, there was a rule against dog fights, and every boy with a dog had to keep it from barking. It was odd to see those trained animals walking noiselessly alongside the boys down the paths of the camp.

  * * *

  —

  The Director had perfected his method. To each boy whom he selected as a future guard, he entrusted a puppy. The child was supposed to feed it and have it sleep with him. Then, after a month or two, he forced the child to torture the animal, and later to kill it. This was how he prepared future grownups to torture children to make them talk.

  The next day, as I was sweeping my cell, a grownup wearing a baseball cap came to find me. In the night the wind had blown very hard and I had woken up covered with leaves.

  “Stop sweeping. The Director wants to see you.”

  When he saw me attaching Dog by his leash to the window bars, the grownup pointed to him and added, “The Director says to bring him with you, along with the folder.”

  I unfastened Dog and followed the grownup. When we got near the Director’s office, Dog began to whimper and tried to get away.

  “Don’t let your dog run off,” the grownup told me.

  I grabbed Dog, who was wriggling, and gathered him gently into my arms. When I entered the Director’s office, Dog, recognizing the man, tried once more to flee.

  “Control your dog,” the Director told me, “and sit down.”

  At a sign from the Director, the grownup opened the door to the toilet, which was behind me.

  “Turn around. Look and see who’s here and what you are in for!”

  I turned around. Suppressing a cry, I recog
nized Pablo. His face had been beaten to a bloody pulp.

  “Why don’t you kiss again like you did last night?” said the Director with a laugh. “That’s what you get for stealing sugar.”

  In a split second, as in the moment before death, every detail of my encounter with Pablo the night before passed before my eyes. As if a waterfall were cascading down from a cliff and I had the power to photograph every individual drop of water. I saw his hands on my head and the kiss that we had exchanged. Pablo was chained to the window bars and bleeding from his mouth.

  “You see, we were forced to deal with your friend. You both knew full well that it was forbidden for prisoners to talk and communicate with one another. We know everything that goes on here.”

  Then the Director asked the grownup to hit Pablo as hard as he could across his back. The grownup hit him with his baton for long minutes without letting up until he was too tired to continue. A smile briefly curled the corner of the Director’s mouth, slightly stretching a scar discernible behind his eyeglasses.

  “If you want him to stop, hit your dog. Show that you are a man. You have to choose. It’s your pal or the dog.”

  I was rooted to the spot by the table, clutching Dog close against me.

  “Look,” the Director went on, “we’re going to break one of this fairy’s arms. Go on, do it,” he said to the grownup, who was laughing.

  Pablo began to scream as his arm was twisted.

  “If you don’t want him to break your sweetheart’s arm, you must break your dog’s leg.”

  Pablo started screaming again.

  A terrible cry turned into silence in my throat. I realized that I had no choice, that I had to do what I was told to save Pablo’s arm. I felt that I did not exist and that Dog was just a piece of wood.

  The pain a dog feels is just like that felt by a human being. Sometimes both cry out in the same way. But I did not hear the shriek of my dog. A piece of wood does not cry out.