by Dave Boling
“Justo, this isn’t about Miren and you know it; you’re worried about me being here,” she said. “I think we both need to be at Errotabarri—together.”
“I am worried about this, Mari.”
Justo finished half the soup and offered the rest to his wife, saying he was filled to bursting. Mariangeles pushed the dish of soup back to her husband, hugged him around his shoulders as he sat, and kissed his prickly cheek.
Wolfram von Richthofen’s intolerance of mistakes caused him to double-check the reconnaissance photos and intelligence information before entering the operations room.
An initial flyover by a single bomber would serve as bait to lure fire from antiaircraft defenses that could be spotted and eliminated. The vanguard plane would circle back and lead the bombers south through the valley. Fighter pilots were instructed that anything that moved on those roads could be assumed to be unfriendly and should be attacked.
Intelligence reports assured von Richthofen that Mount Oiz had been secured by General Mola’s forces and would offer the perfect “opera box” from which to view the bombing. The mountain rose to well above three thousand feet and was considered the bay window onto Biscaya. The locals claimed the mountain was the home of the most powerful divinity, Mari, who controlled the forces of thunder and wind. At times she assumed the shape of a white cloud or a rainbow, or she was said to ride upon fireballs between the mountain peaks or drive through the sky on a chariot pulled by a team of snorting rams.
With an aide beside him, von Richthofen motored his Mercedes up the steep and twisting road on the west side of the mountain at attack speed. He wore his heavy “watch” coat, collar peeled up at the back, and woolen gloves.
Once parked, von Richthofen lit a cigarette and admired the temperate afternoon. “We could not have asked for better weather,” he said, taking a deep pull on his cigarette. He flipped the butt into a clump of heather, exhaled a white pennant of smoke, and scanned the scenic hills to the north.
Miguel played with Catalina all morning, pulling her hobby-ram gently around the room, taking corners slowly to be certain she would not get bucked off. Miren gathered and packed the necessities for the trip, wrestling with indecisiveness, placing an item in the bag only to remove it as she reconsidered its utility. What does one take when setting out to become a refugee? Every decision seemed a referendum on her faith in their return. I must remember to clean and put everything away, she told herself before realizing the absurdity of making her home orderly for a possible invasion.
While Mirenfed and held Catalina, Miguel whittled down a forked oak branch he had cut a few days before. With a strip of rubber pared from the band of an old lathe turner, he created a slingshot. After having dropped the tasty grouse, he had his eye out for other small game.
“Oh, this should be good,” Miren cracked. “The mighty hunter.”
“I am ready if attacked by rebel squirrels or rabbits,” he announced, testing the draw of the sling and sighting in an imaginary target running past him.
“Why do I not believe you’ll be able to shoot a rabbit?”
“I will if one sits still long enough and has enough patience for me to fire and reload as many times as it would take to hit him,” Miguel said. “The squirrels are too fast, and they hide around the back side of trees and laugh at me. I will admit that I would have trouble killing doves. I like them too much.”
“So I shouldn’t bother trying to buy any meat at the market today, since we can assume you’ll be killing enough game up in the hills?”
“As if there’s any meat, or we could afford it—or we were brave enough to eat what they might be selling,” Miguel said.
“Meaning . . .”
“Mendiola told me a vendor gave him the new ‘translations’ at the market these days: Small dogs are now named ‘rabbit,’ and large dogs are ‘lamb.’ And seagulls—”
“No, don’t . . .” Miren squinted uneasily as she awaited the grim translation.
“Turkey.”
“Miguel, you’re starting to sound like my father,” Miren said.
“You watch, I’ll come down from the mountain with something to add to the stew pot at Errotabarri to night,” Miguel said. “And your father will have reason to tell us stories of his great experiences killing game when he was young.”
Miren finished nursing and readied the carriage.
“Don’t worry about food,” Miguel said. “I’m going to do fine, and I’m sure your mother is going to turn into a pest trying to take care of me. Has she considered going with you?”
“I haven’t asked because I don’t want her to think I need her,” Miren said. “I really wouldn’t mind her help and her company. I’ve never been to Bilbao. But if she’s with us she’ll feel guilty about being away from Papa. I know she believes she couldn’t leave him on his own; he’d be walking around barefoot in shredded clothing.”
“Well, don’t worry about me; I may have so much fresh game meat that I’ll be able to take something to them every day,” Miguel said, drawing and releasing the sling of his weapon, with one eye closed tightly to facilitate precise aiming.
With Catalina settled into the carriage, Miren approached Miguel for a quick kiss before they set off.
“Be careful up there, asto,” she said, reaching around to pinch him on the bottom. “Don’t let any squirrels get you.”
“Miren,” Miguel said seriously. “You be careful; there are a lot of strange people in town.”
They kissed again, and Miguel leaned in to nuzzle the sweet-smelling black hair on the crown of his daughter’s head.
“Have you been washing her hair with Alaia’s soap?”
“Of course, got to start her early, all the Navarro girls use it.”
Miren opened the door and maneuvered the carriage through.
The lead pilot checked his watch. As ordered, his wheels rolled at three forty-five P.M., and he eased the new Heinkel bomber off the runway. He headed northeast to a predetermined elevation above the village of Garay, where his squadron would rendezvous with the six Messerschmitt fighters that were to provide cover for his first wave of bombers. From Garay, they would fly north to the Bay of Biscay and the fishing village of Elantxobe, just up the coastline from Lekeitio. Over the bay, they would bank south and trace the path of the Mundaka Estuary and then the Oka River to Guernica. Von Richthofen had designed the circuitous route to avoid early detection.
As he adjusted his course to correct for a sidewind, the pi lot looked at the green hillsides and the transfiguring shadow of his plane, contracting into a tight cross as it climbed up the steep topography and broadening into a vague dark cloud as it reached the bottom of the valleys. There was a natural beauty in the countryside, the pilot thought, so like a mixture of the Alps and the Black Forest.
Trailing tightly meshed nets for anchovies off the shore of Elantxobe, the town that gave its name to the small fish, Josepe Ansotegui readied to finish an uneventful workday. He heard the planes first, grumbling angrily above the shore, and then watched them as they banked their wings directly above the Egun On and turned back inland.
Alaia Aldecoa considered going home. As she neared the edge of town, she grew uncomfortable with the dense traffic in the streets. The crowd gave off a harsh sound and created an unsettling vibration that caused her stomach to tighten. Even on normal market days in the spring, when farmers from the hills and neighboring towns joined the local shoppers, the crowds never generated such an ominous hum. The custom in the town, whenever one saw Alaia approaching on the walkway or street, was to ease away and make a greeting as she approached, which alerted her to their presence and helped her determine their position.
The walks and streets were too crowded for that now, and so many of those surging past did not know of Alaia or her disability. Many looked only at the ground in front of their feet, and she was jostled many times on her course to the market. She could smell the soldiers in the dirty wool uniforms that had absorbed their s
weat and blood. Many carried with them the more disturbing scents of phosphorus and fear. They did not bother to steer out of her path; in fact, some slid inside her radius of comfort, making the most of a chance to be near a shapely woman after months in the field. One knocked the bag off her shoulder as he passed, and as she tried to arrest its fall, her cane hit the soldier. Until the cane rose in his direction, he had not known she was blind. The victim’s compatriots needled him for having been so helpless as to be clubbed by a blind girl. How would he ever hope to avoid Fascist bullets if he could be so easily struck by the cane of a sightless woman?
“It is busy today; I’m not used to such crowds,” Alaia explained to Miren and Mariangeles when she arrived at her booth.
“How can we help, dear?” Mariangeles asked.
“I’m fine; I don’t really have much to sell, and I’m not sure how much people are interested in soaps today,” Alaia said, pulling out two bars separately wrapped for them. “Here, these are for you.”
“Thank you,” Mariangeles said. “Justo was asking me about the soap; he missed it.”
“I can’t believe Papa would notice such things,” Miren said.
“He notices Alaia’s soap.”
Alaia heard Catalina chatter in the carriage and felt the edge of the bedding, cautiously sliding her hand down toward the little one. Catalina clutched Alaia’s thumb and little finger and began pulling them as if milking a cow. She then pulled herself up and onto her feet at the edge of the carriage. She’d be too big for it soon. Miren had already told Miguel to start working on a stroller and asked him to please make it smaller than an oxcart.
“Oh, she’s getting strong,” Alaia said.
“She and I are leaving for Bilbao in the morning,” Miren said. “We’re going to the station to get our tickets.”
“Oh, Miren, when I walked past there, the line was so long,” Mariangeles said. “I don’t want you and Catalina standing in it. You go finish your shopping and I’ll get the tickets.”
“Thank you,” Miren said. “If you truly wouldn’t mind—”
“Of course I don’t mind,” Mariangeles said, kissing her daughter on both cheeks and petting Catalina’s head.
At the edge of the market, Miren held Catalina so she could touch the long, down-soft ears of the donkeys standing in their traces. She did it for Cat but also for herself, because she enjoyed being close to them again. Farmers used donkey carts to bring crates filled with chickens to market. Miren stroked the whiskered muzzles of the donkeys while Cat wobbled the ears back and forth. She showed Cat the chickens in their crates, remembering how many she had seen killed and plucked in the basement of Errotabarri, back before chickens were so precious. The caged birds were agitated, and their rustling against the wire caused a flurry of feathers to gather in white clusters beneath them on the ground.
Past the donkey carts were the corrals where stockmen brought the powerful but genial oxen and the frighteningly large bulls. Miren did not take her close to the bulls but always stopped at the next pen, which held the constantly chewing sheep and the inquisitive goats with their jaundiced eyes.
From the outer edge of the marketplace, Miren could see the extent of the jostling crowd; people eager to get somewhere were mixed with an equal number who had no apparent destination. Perhaps half the booths were closed early, but there were still more people in the square than she had seen. The man who sold the barquillo cookies she always bought for Cat was gone already. A handwritten sign on the fronton announced that the pelota games were canceled, and there would be no dance. No dance. People were leaving town.
Mariangeles had not exaggerated the size of the crowd in front of the station; she might be standing in line for hours. Although to call the milling mass a line was to assign it more order than actually existed. She had never seen such a collection of afflicted souls. Some had started fires with scavenged wood and were cooking unrecognizable mixtures of found leavings. The steady motion and shuffling of shapeless groups seemed to create a friction, and with it a charge of electricity that felt combustible. She was glad that Miren was not there with Catalina. As crowded and chaotic as the marketplace had been, this was worse, and it had the feeling of a mob.
The bedraggled woman in front of Mariangeles, perhaps a few years older, dropped a paper wrapping out of her sack. As she struggled with her things, Mariangeles retrieved it for her.
“Thank you,” the woman said, after determining that Mariangeles was not trying to steal it from her. Her red-rimmed eyes flashed the look of weary suspicion that many in the plaza shared. “It’s our family Bible.”
“You would not want to lose that,” Mariangeles said solemnly.
“It has all our family names in it.”
“Where are you from?” Mariangeles asked with as much cheer as possible, hoping to prove herself unthreatening.
“Durango,” the woman said.
Mariangeles knew what that meant: rebel bombing. She hadn’t the heart to probe further and waited for the woman to continue on her own. Now standing almost side by side, they both shuffled a few steps to remain in contact with the mass ahead.
“We had a dry goods shop in town, but we were hit during the first attack,” the woman volunteered. “My two daughters were grown and had moved to San Sebastián, so they were gone, thank heavens.”
Mariangeles nodded. “You lost the shop?”
“Yes . . . and my husband.”
She stated it as a bloodless fact, like the final enumeration of misplaced possessions. The cumulative losses had emptied her over these weeks. When she said “and my husband,” she could have been saying “and my chest of drawers.” All things lost had assumed secondary relevance to survival.
In that moment, this became Mariangeles’s war, too. This haggard, diminished woman could be her. She could be the one who was homeless, with her life reduced to that which she could carry and that which she could not forget. She could be trying to find a way to live without her husband. How unspeakable could life become that a marriage, with its de cades of shared moments, could be distilled into the dry comment, “Yes . . . and my husband”? Mariangeles’s shoulders shook. She sobbed with each harsh intake of breath. The woman put her hand on her sleeve, and Mariangeles clenched it desperately.
“I’m sorry; I’m so sorry,” she said, aware of the irony of her needing the woman’s comfort. She’d never broken down like this before. She’d always considered herself so strong.
When Mariangeles composed herself, the woman supplied answers to all the questions that Mariangeles was too shaken to ask. Her husband was killed in the first raid on Durango. Their home had been on the second floor, above the shop, and the building collapsed in on itself when a bomb landed in the street. She escaped by having the fortunate timing of being in the back room collecting supplies. The blast knocked her down, but when she was able to stand and take stock, the shop was in pieces around her and her husband was buried beneath their belongings, which had fallen in on him. She sat with his body a full day, as no one ever stopped to help her lift off the weighty debris. As the rebels neared town, she realized there was nothing to hold her in Durango, and she stepped into a line of people shuffling north as if trailing a bell cow.
She was staggering and weepy for many days, moving only because the tide of others sucked her along with a steady undertow. As she grew more hungry, she cried less frequently and dwelled less on her losses. She wore the same apron she had on the day of the bombing, with the same list of goods she needed to restock in her front pocket. That was nearly a month ago, she said.
On Sunday, she had sold her wedding ring to a young soldier she met who was considering marriage to his girlfriend. Although it sold for only a small amount, that ring brought enough for her to afford a ticket to Bilbao.
“Have you thought to go to San Sebastián to stay with your children?” Mariangeles asked.
“They have their own troubles.”
The line barely moved. Mariangeles felt
her emotions surfacing again. She would tell Justo of this woman, and she would tell him that she had reconsidered their plan to stay. Maybe it would be best for all of them to leave Guernica, to go to Bilbao, to go to Lekeitio, maybe to even get Josepe to sail them to somewhere in France. She knew Justo would never want to leave Errotabarri, but Errotabarri would be there when they got back.
CHAPTER 17
The nuns on the convent roof spotted them first, reflecting a flash of light like the wings of distant cranes. The nuns rang their handbells, as if the melodic tinkling could rouse the attention of a town dense with refugees. Santa María’s bells then amplified the alert but created more confusion. They had already chimed four P.M., and this was not a call to mass. Was it?
As the nuns followed it with their binoculars, the vanguard bomber slowed its airspeed to accommodate visual inspection by the bombardier. By the time most people grasped the meaning of the bells, their ringing was muted by screaming engines overhead. A few ran for the refugios; some raced toward Santa María because it was the house of God. Others stood frozen.
But the plane dropped no bombs; instead it climbed and banked away. Those in the marketplace cheered. The devil was just taking a peek.
Mariangeles Ansotegui responded to the bells and the sight of the plane and the spreading chaos by remaining dedicated to her task: standing in line. Around her, refugees sought cover and screamed curses new to Mariangeles. The woman in front of her was gone, her bag dropped where she had been standing. Mariangeles stooped to collect it; the family Bible was still there. She would hold it for safekeeping until the woman returned. Mariangeles began thinking that the sight of the plane had been beneficial. Many had abandoned their places in line, allowing her to move forward a considerable distance. The bells continued to call out. She thought they must be saying that it was safe.