Guernica

by Dave Boling

  From a dresser drawer, Annie produced a folder. It held the names of the hundreds still at camps and homes across Britain, with sketchy biographies and descriptions of each. That night, over tea, they searched through the lists.

  They worked through the youngest first, some as small as five and six.

  “This is harder than I could imagine,” Charley said.

  “I think we’ll just know,” Annie said.

  They put small check marks beside a few of the names as they read through the lists from all the camps. In the register of those at Stoneham, Charley found her.

  “Angelina”

  Real name unknown.

  Brought to Bilbao from Guernica by a refugee after bombing.

  Parents killed.

  Identifying marks: Missing part of right ear. Silver lauburu earring in left ear.

  “Annie, my God, Annie!” Charley shouted before falling silent.

  “Pleased to meet you,” the little girl said in English, extending her hand for a shake.

  She hesitated a moment, then dropped her bag and skipped a few steps toward the grinning man they said was her father. She raised her arms, warning him that she was coming in for a hug. She was tall and leggy, with pale bony knees peeking out between her skirt and white roll-down stockings.

  The man with one arm closed in on them.

  “I’m your aitxitxia, Justo,” he said. She did not remember him either. Miguel put her down, but the little girl continued to hold his hand, not questioning how it came to be damaged so.

  If the party at Errotabarri overwhelmed her, she didn’t show it. She had dealt with the entire process with less anxiety than anyone else from the start. When the couple with the red hair arrived at Stoneham, she was not in the least shocked to hear that she had a family in Spain that would be eager to have her back. She had always felt that somebody was there for her and they’d someday get around to finding her. In the meantime, she had bounced between camps and shelters and homes enough times to be comfortable with the process. She had adapted to new friends and new “family” for as long as she could remember and accepted it as the norm.

  She had never been told she was an orphan, not directly. She’d been labeled a “displaced person” all along. She interpreted that as meaning a “misplaced” person, picturing herself as having been temporarily put in the wrong spot, and assumed she would at some point be discovered and returned. When the red-haired couple arrived, she first thought they must be her parents. She rushed them with hugs, which they accepted without complaint.

  After Charley and Annie confirmed her identity, they cabled the British consulate in Bilbao. Father Xabier was informed by his friends there, and he drove to Guernica to tell Miguel and Justo in person.

  Miguel had been back from France for little more than a month, and he and Justo were coexisting more easily. There still was no serious talk between them, nothing that would cause them to voice the heaviest thoughts they continued to carry. But the passing conversations flowed without strain. Neither realized how much he’d missed the other until Miguel returned. He gave Justo no specifics about the drama at the border, and Justo told him nothing about his own diversions. Justo told him he smelled of fish and Miguel volleyed that Justo smelled like women’s soap. They both laughed, but Justo did not tell him that he had invited the soap maker to live with them at Errotabarri. He would mention that in time. This was a time for the two of them to settle into the partnership of running the baserri.

  Until Xabier arrived.

  Xabier shoved through the door one evening, breathless, face pink, and ordered them to sit, saying he had “important and wonderful news.”

  “Catalina is alive,” he said. “One of Miguel’s new friends from the border found her in England and matched her to the description Miguel gave him. She’s safe and she’s healthy and she wants to come home.”

  Justo assaulted him with questions through tears, and Miguel sat speechless, dizzy, wondering how such a thing could be possible, fearful that it was a mistake. It had to be a mistake . . . how had she survived? How could she have ended up in England? How could a flier he’d known for only a few days find his daughter? He had said he knew of children from Biscaya, true, and he’d seen her picture. But that was—what?—four years old.

  “Did they check her ear?” Justo asked. “They could tell by the ear.”

  “Yes, there’s a notch in her right ear and there was a silver lauburu in her left,” Xabier said. “And she was found in Guernica that day, and she was the right age . . . it’s her . . . it is her . . . there’s no doubt. She’s on a ship already.”

  Xabier relayed all that he’d been told, everything they’d been able to re-create of her path. A frightened refugee had picked her off a rubble pile and taken her to Bilbao on the night train. Somebody else dropped her at an orphanage. Since no one knew her name, the anglais eventually called her Angelina.

  Angelina. Somehow the name caused Miguel to connect and to believe it was her after all. He had never once pictured her dead, he’d never imagined what had happened. His mind couldn’t shape it. He thought of her every day, but only that she was gone, disappeared, suspended somewhere at the age when he’d last seen her. But now . . . Angelina. It was a name they should have given her from the start; it would have been a better tribute to her amuma, Mariangeles, and to Justo’s mother, Angeles. Angelina. Little angel. It was perfect.

  “We should call her that,” Miguel said. “If that’s what she’s used to. There’ll be enough other changes for her.”

  “We should . . . Angelina,” Justo said, trying it out. “An-gel-EEE-na.”

  Shaken, dazed, the two readied Miren’s old room. The following day, word was sent to the rest of the family, and all were invited to a party at Errotabarri on the day of her arrival.

  All the Navarros from Lekeitio came. Father Xabier brought Sister Incarnation with him from Bilbao, along with the little guest of honor, whom they collected at the Santurce docks. Justo invited Alaia and escorted her to Errotabarri that morning. She brought a gift for Angelina—the rag doll that Miren had given her. José María brought fish, and Xabier supplied several bottles of wine, making the sign of the cross in self-absolution for diverting spirits intended for future communions.

  “God understands,” he announced.

  The baker’s wife, who had lost both legs to the bombing but had her life saved by Justo, sent up a double-layer cake that read ONGI ETORRI.

  Welcome.

  Justo and Miguel kept her between them, not wanting to miss a word. They provided lengthy introductions to everyone there, filling in the details of their relationship to her. By the afternoon, she was greeting everyone with “kaixo” rather than “hello” or “pleased to meet you.”

  She had sailed on a British ship through waters thick with German U-boats, spent a night at the Basilica de Begoña rectory, and taken the train to Guernica. She had greeted dozens of new friends, and she hadn’t slowed, enjoying, more than anything, being the focus of attention.

  “What do you think of it here so far?” José María asked her.

  “I like it very much,” she said. “I like not having to worry about the Germans bombing us here. Germans bomb people all the time in England. We were always afraid of that. It feels safer here.”

  Miguel and Justo looked at each other, and then at Xabier.

  Angelina was placed at the head of the table they’d set up under the fruit trees. The seat was too low, and she had to raise her elbows to rest them on the surface.

  “I’ll make you a new chair your size,” Miguel told her.

  “A chair for me?” she asked. “I’d like that, eskerrik asko.”

  By sunset, after everyone had a chance to visit separately with her and she finally tired, guests made their good-byes; she hugged and kissed them all, sure to use as many of their names as she could remember. Justo and Miguel did not leave her side until they put her to bed in her mother’s old room, clutching her mother’s doll
around its threadbare neck.

  A half bottle of Xabier’s wine remained on the kitchen table. Justo poured two full cups.

  “Osasuna.” They touched glasses.

  “What will she need first?” Miguel asked.

  “We have to get some little dresses for her.”

  “We’ll take her to Mrs. Arana.”

  “First thing.”

  “School?”

  “Is she old enough?”

  “I don’t think she needs to start school yet, but I’ll check with somebody,” Miguel said. “I think we should wait anyway. I don’t want her gone yet.”

  Justo agreed.

  “She’s so smart,” Miguel said.

  “Of course she is,” Justo announced.

  “We need to find some other little girls she can play with.”

  “We’ll have a party for them here.”

  Justo poured the last of the wine and they drank in silence. They both were busy planning for the next day, and the day after that.

  Verbal skirmishes broke out a thousand times in a hundred cafés each day. The German soldiers who occupied Paris acted as if they were on a grand holiday. Small acts of resistance sustained some of the Parisians—overcharging the occupiers for weak café aulait or spitting in the soufflé. More often, the outrage over their defenselessness against the superior forces was merely displayed through nasty looks and the occasional smart remark in a language that the invaders could not understand.

  “Vous êtes un cochon,” said with a smile, might sound like a pleasant greeting to a German, if it was accompanied by a bow of mock obeisance. The German soldiers were under orders to not provoke or incite the citizens, so little damage ever came from sparks of spoken conflict.

  Pablo Picasso, the most famous painter in the world, with a distinctive and recognizable appearance in Paris, was often identified and approached in the Left Bank cafés that he frequented near his studio.

  The natives were accustomed to Picasso and his artist friends, who had gathered for de cades in these cafés. But for the German soldiers who had any concept of contemporary celebrity, to see or sit next to Picasso was a development that would warrant mention in the next note home to the relatives or girlfriend.

  As with many young men of military mien, the German soldiers might have understood little of painting, but they had no doubt heard of Picasso. It was the fame of his art, not his art, that impressed them. Some took pride in the way that the noted painter sneered in their direction; it would make a good story at the bier-garten. “Liebchen, the old man Picasso made nasty glances at me today at the café Les Deux Magots. He had a thin dog and a young woman.”

  One officer who considered himself culturally advanced approached the artist as he sipped his coffee at a table beneath the green sidewalk awning. The officer held a reproduction of the mural Guernica, barely larger than postcard size.

  “Pardon me,” he said, holding the card out. “You did this, didn’t you?”

  Picasso put his cup delicately onto its saucer, turned to the picture and then to the officer, and responded, “No. You did.”

  EPILOGUE

  (Guernica, 1940)

  Children play in the square near the new market. So many have been born after the bombing that it feels to Justo Ansotegui as if the town is being reseeded by God. At some point, thankfully, they will outnumber those who were here before.

  With each trip to town comes reminders of it all. The new buildings and streets are the least of it. They probably would have come in time anyway, and their presence obscures the civic scars. But the people left in town are more difficult to repair than buildings.

  Justo sees them, the old women who try to shop while leaning on wooden crutches; the old friend who appears to wear a harlequin’s mask, with one side of his face as it was and the other scarred and hairless from burns; another whose skin sloughs off, leaving his arms looking like the fraying bark of the plane tree.

  Do they see him that same way, as a fraction of what he was? Is he too defined by what he lost? It doesn’t matter what they see now. There is now much he wishes to accomplish.

  The mus players continue to harass each other vigorously, and the amumak gather to sort through the limited foodstuffs, most of which they cannot afford anyway. It is simply a reason to gather themselves to talk.

  Justo Ansotegui does not bother to announce himself to Alaia Aldecoa anymore when he approaches her booth. She lives at Er-rotabarri now, along with Justo and Miguel and Angelina, and makes all the soap they could ever need, so much so that the house smells of little else, so much so that Justo no longer hoards precious bars in his pocket during the day.

  Miguel and Justo convinced Alaia that it made no sense for her to live at her cottage when all would benefit from her company. She was not Miren and she was not Mariangeles, but she was braided into their family nonetheless. She helped them heal, like a bandage on a wound. She is important to Angelina, too. The two sleep in Miren’s old room now and talk every night before they fall asleep.

  They are as complete as this group can be. Justo learned from Miguel that if you lose someone you love, you need to redistribute your feelings rather than surrender them. You give them to whoever is left, and the rest you turn toward something that will keep you moving forward.

  The political oppression is worse than ever. Having won his bloody mandate, Franco has further outlawed all things Basque. There are no dances on Sundays, no Basque flags allowed, and the language is aggressively forbidden, although they often get together in quiet places and exchange the words like smugglers trading contraband in the mountains.

  Though, in the right surroundings, some of the old activities are possible. The four wander into the mountains; Justo and Miguel fish for trout, and Angelina plays and helps Alaia gather her meadow flowers and herbs. Alaia allows Angelina to guide her by the hand as she chatters in a language that melds the three she knows as well as any little girl could.

  Angelina walks between Justo and Miguel to the market now, holding a hand of each. She stops to let them get ahead of her, and then she runs forward and swings in the air as they lift her. It makes her feel as if she’s flying. They buy her an apple if she wants, or a barquillo cookie. She enjoys standing behind the booth with Alaia, greeting the people who come to buy soaps, talking to them, asking them about their day, getting to know them.

  They work together at home with their few sheep and the small garden. The best times are in the evenings. After dinner at Errota-barri, Miguel teaches Angelina to dance. He is trying to pass along what he learned from Miren and Mariangeles. He stumbles and it makes everyone laugh, especially Angelina, who already is moving with an easy rhythm. At times, she tells Miguel what he is doing wrong, and he tries to correct it.

  Someday this will change, Justo tells them. They don’t speak of politics much anymore. But Justo contends that Franco can’t stay in power forever. He had lied to the world, and the world believed him because it was convenient to do so. Franco will afflict their lives for a while, but the Basques have always endured, Justo brags.

  If nothing else, they will outlast him, as they had the Romans and the others who had come to their lands over the centuries. Franco had promised to use whatever means necessary, but the oak tree on the hill still stands. Errotabarri went unharmed. And Franco cannot see them dancing at night, laughing by the light of the hearth.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Readers of historical fiction face the challenge of separating the fiction from the history, especially when the two are often melded. Most of the historical “characters” in this book are obvious. Picasso, Franco, Manfred and Wolfram von Richthofen, and President José Antonio Aguirre are real figures whose actions in this book have been fictionalized based on historical accounts.

  Some actions by the fictional Father Xabier Ansotegui parallel those of Alberto de Onaindía, canon of Valladolid. Onaindía was an adviser to Aguirre who witnessed the bombing and was sent to Paris afterward to tell the wo
rld about it.

  British educator and politician Leah Manning spearheaded the evacuation of Basque children from Bilbao to camps and colonies in Great Britain, as was depicted in this novel. Brave re sistance fighters in Belgium, France, and Spain helped lead Allied fliers to safety through what was known as “the Comet Line.” Basque smugglers, most notably Florentino Goikoetxea, risked their lives to get these fliers to safety across the Pyrenees early in World War II.

  The Spanish Civil War was one of the world’s great tragedies, with savageries on all sides and a casualty total that may never be known. I tried not to tax the reader with elaborations on the complex and volatile politics at work at the time—especially the strange and sometimes shifting alliances, parties, and labels—but rather to establish a general context of the poverty, oppression, instability, and disenfranchisement that common citizens would have felt.

  There are many faces to any tragedy, and this was told from the perspective of the Basques, who were famously staunch in the defense of their land. Historians have disputed the death toll from the bombing of Guernica, but the act nonetheless remains at the taproot of the assaults against civilian populations that the world still grieves on an all too regular basis.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I owe the deepest appreciation to the entire Murelaga family for introducing me to the Basque culture, from Justo and Angeles down through the generations to Josephine and then to Kathy Boling. They taught me about the Basques’ fierce dedication to their families and heritage. And from them I first heard of the horrors of Guernica. Kathy, particularly, lived much of this book, which I will forever remember with gratitude.

  Credit and much appreciation goes to InkWell Management’s Kim Witherspoon, Susan Hobson, and Julie Schilder, who was the first person in the world of publishing to embrace this lengthy manuscript from a first-time novelist. Thank you as well to those at Bloomsbury USA, particularly Karen Rinaldi, Lindsay Sagnette, Kathy Belden, Michael O’Connor, Laura Keefe, copy editor Aja Pollock, and proofreader Nancy Inglis. Charlotte (Charlie) Greig at Picador UK served as an unwavering editor and friend throughout.