The Watcher in the Pine

by Rebecca Pawel

  “If we could speak for a moment in private?”

  The woman’s eyes widened, but all she said was, “Why don’t you head up to the living room. I’ll be there in a moment.”

  Father Bernardo nodded and guided Elena out of the bar and up the stairs. He stopped at the first landing and turned into the Montalbáns’ apartment with a familiarity that Elena, who had never crossed the threshold, envied a little. The living room was directly over the bar, and warmed by the same chimney. A few chairs sat around the fireplace, and a table against the shuttered window held a photograph of a younger version of their hostess, against the background of the mountains, her arm linked with that of the man they had just pulled out of the river, two boys of perhaps twelve and fourteen grinning on either side of them.

  Elena, too tired to be courteous, sank into one of the chairs. She stood up again a few minutes later as the door opened and Anselmo Montalbán’s widow stepped toward them. “Now, Father, what—” She saw Elena and stopped, frowning.

  “I’m afraid I have bad news,” Father Bernardo said gently. “Señora de Tejada and I were coming back along the Deva this afternoon and we found your husband.”

  Bárbara Nuñez stared into the ashes of the fireplace for a long moment. Then she said tonelessly, “Anselmo’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “I’m so sorry.” Father Bernardo held out his hands to her but she avoided him and sat in one of the chairs, her expression still stony. “I’ll get the men downstairs to bring him home now. But I wanted to tell you.”

  “Thank you, Father.” The words were a whisper.

  “Señora Fernández will stay with you,” the priest said comfortingly, oblivious of the startled glares of both women.

  He let himself out, leaving a tense silence behind. Bárbara Montalbán sat in her chair and stared straight ahead, without moving or speaking. Elena took a few steps toward her, uncertain what to say. “I am so sorry for your loss, Señora Nuñez.” No response. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  Elena hesitated, and then sat down beside the widow and leaned toward her. “Would you like to know what happened?”

  The older woman laughed harshly, a sound more bitter than a sob. “A bullet to the head is what happened, isn’t it? That’s usually how you people operate.”

  Elena winced. “I don’t know if it was the Guardia,” she said, praying that it had not been. “But even if it was, I’m sorry. I don’t think the Guardia is always right. And I’d like to help if I can.”

  Bárbara Nuñez turned to face her unwelcome guest. “Conscience money?” she asked, her voice suddenly ferocious. “You think a few apologies make up for Anselmo? And Jesulín? Get out of here, Señora. I’m sure your husband will be wanting to speak to me soon, and I’d rather have a little rest before he shows up.”

  Elena left silently, knowing that anything she said would sound hypocritical or moralizing or both. She went upstairs to her apartment and lay down, fulling expecting to start crying. Instead, her eyes closed and she fell asleep. When she woke up, the room was dark, and someone was pounding on the outer door. “Coming!” Elena fumbled for her shoes and hurried to the door without turning on a light. She wondered what time it was, and then, with sudden unease, why Carlos had not returned.

  A uniformed guardia stood outside the door with a lantern in one hand. She blinked for a moment, and then recognized him as Corporal Battista. “The lieutenant asked me to give you a message, Señora,” he said. “Something’s come up in the mountains, and he’ll be out late this evening. He said not to wait up.”

  Elena’s eyes widened. “Does this have to do with Anselmo Montalbán?” she demanded, before she could stop herself.

  Corporal Battista hesitated. Then he said slowly, “May I ask how you know about that, Señora?”

  Elena quickly explained the afternoon’s events. Battista nodded slowly. “So his widow’s telling the truth.”

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Elena pointed out sharply.

  “I’m afraid the best I can do is, ‘Not directly,’” the corporal said apologetically. “We were all called out this evening in response to the run-in with Montalbán, and then we found some other interesting developments.”

  “Run-in?” Elena demanded, instantly worried by the corporal’s reassuring tone. “Then Montalbán was killed by the Guardia?”

  “In self-defense.” Battista looked reproachful.

  Elena’s eyes widened. “Is the lieutenant all right?”

  “Yes, yes, he’s fine.” The corporal was once more reassuring. “I’m afraid I can’t explain more at the moment. I’m in a hurry. But your husband should be back safe and sound within a few hours. Don’t worry.”

  He left and Elena was faced with the unpleasant prospect of eating dinner alone and wondering where Carlos was, or going back to bed. She opted for the latter, although it took her a long time to fall asleep again. The corporal said Carlos was fine, she reminded herself. He knows how to take care of himself, even if he did fall this morning getting milk. The reflection comforted her a little, and she smiled drowsily. I wonder why he fell. He’s not clumsy generally, even on slippery roads. Unless someone distracted him. I wonder if he knows about Anselmo. Anselmo couldn’t have fallen before he was shot, though. Maybe he tried to take cover under the bushes. The way we always told the kids in Madrid: If you hear gunfire, fall and take cover. The half-remembered injunction jolted her awake. Did he fall this morning to take cover? The maquis only shoot over the guardias’ heads here. Corporal Battista said Carlos was fine. He would have told me if he was hurt. Why isn’t he home? She wriggled in bed, telling herself it was only the weight of the baby that prevented her from finding a comfortable position. She finally dozed, and dreamed of a woman staring into the ashes of a dead fireplace, as Corporal Battista’s voice said, “He should be home in a few hours . . . we were coming back along the river . . . we wanted to tell you.” And Elena was not sure if the woman in the rocking chair was herself or Bárbara Nuñez, but she knew that the woman had a terrible ache in her rib cage and was holding back a wail of terror and grief.

  She was roused at an uncertain hour by soft footsteps in her room. Someone had turned on the hallway light, and yellow glowed under the edge of the door, giving her a dim view of a figure moving toward her. “Carlos?”

  “Sorry to wake you.” He sounded tired.

  “Are you all right? What happened? Why are you so late?”

  “I’m fine. It’s a long story.”

  “Father Bernardo and I found Anselmo Montalbán,” Elena said, anxious to hear his voice again.

  “I know. I heard.” Tejada sighed. “Why don’t we talk in the morning? I’m dead on my feet.”

  “You’re not on your feet,” Elena pointed out as he lay down.

  “I’m not awake either.”

  Elena lay still for a few moments and then sat up. “What is it?” Tejada demanded.

  “You left the light on.”

  “Oh. Damn. Stay there. I’ll get it.”

  There was a creak as Tejada swung himself out of bed. Then the glow under the door was extinguished, and he returned in total blackness. He stretched out with relief, glad to be home and safe and horizontal. Then he heard his wife’s voice again. “Carlos.”

  “Yes?” He heard the troubled note in her voice and rolled onto one side to put an arm around her. “What’s the matter?”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “Montalbán? No.”

  “Really?”

  “Word of honor. I never laid eyes on the wretched man.”

  “Anyone else, then?”

  Tejada laughed. “I haven’t so much as swatted a fly today Elena. Honestly.”

  “Good.” Elena hugged him as fiercely as she could, given the baby. “I’m glad.”

  “I’m glad you’re happy.”

  Elena heard the edge in his voice, and felt a sudden surge of pity for his exhaustion. “I’m sorry, dear,” s
he murmured soothingly. “Get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “Good idea.” Tejada smiled in the darkness. A proper wife, he knew, would have meekly gone to sleep without debate. A proper wife certainly would not have reproached him with questions. But her approbation would have been worth less than his Elena’s firm “I’m glad.” Tejada had heard the story of Anselmo Montalbán’s removal from the river thirdhand from Corporal Battista, who had heard it from Father Bernardo. Battista had been rather struck by the priest’s version of Señora Fernández’s role, and had repeated it a little dubiously to the lieutenant. That’s my Elena, Tejada thought, imagining the fragile figure in his arms leading the way down to the river. Wait until she hears how we got the dynamite back! He realized that the first thing she had said to him when he returned was “Are you all right?” and almost felt disinterested pity for the unknown Herrera as he remembered the concern in her voice. He fell asleep smiling.

  Chapter 11

  Lieutenant, I can’t thank you and your men enough.” Señor Rosas emerged from his office the following morning beaming with satisfaction even before Martin announced Tejada. “If there is anything Devastated Regions can do for the Guardia, you only have to give the word. Would you like to look at the plans for the new barracks and make any amendments?”

  “It’s our job,” Tejada said modestly, amused at the architect’s form of goodwill. “And it was mostly just luck.”

  “Well, your luck is our good fortune,” the director of Devastated Regions said. “We’ll be able to finish the highway on schedule now, and that means we can move on to the plaza before we lose our workforce.”

  “Maybe you could move on to the construction of new quarters for the Guardia?” Tejada suggested. “And a prison?”

  “Oh, yes, that too, of course,” Rosas agreed expansively. “You deserve a commendation, Lieutenant. And of course, poor Sergeant Márquez, too. How is he doing, by the way?”

  “He was a bit banged up by the fall, but the doctor says his wrist is only sprained. He should be fine in a few weeks,” Tejada said.

  Señor Rosas had been somewhat less gracious the night before, when an annoyed Corporal Battista had gotten him out of bed at one thirty in the morning and curtly told him that the Policía Armada’s officers were being uncooperative, and that if he wanted his missing dynamite back he should tell them to place themselves and one of the Devastated Regions trucks at the disposal of the Guardia. He had, however, finally submitted to the corporal’s urgent demand for men and materials, and had been rewarded a few hours later by the return of his crates of dynamite. Tejada, who had spent several tense hours waiting at the abandoned barn with Guardia Carvallo, wondering if Battista and Ortíz had made it back to Potes without being ambushed and if the guardias would return with reinforcements before the guerrillas did, accepted Señor Rosas’s compliments somewhat sardonically. But he was genuinely pleased that the operation had gone so smoothly.

  In fact, Tejada sailed through the next several days feeling satisfied with himself. Everything seemed to be going well. He received polite congratulations from the mayor, relieved ones from Colonel Suárez, and surly ones from his counterparts at the Policía Armada. The weather warmed slowly but steadily, and wildflowers began to bloom in the pastures. Guardia Torres’s fever went down and became a sniffly head cold that no longer prevented him from taking on his share of the post’s work. Sergeant Márquez’s sprained wrist prevented him from doing patrols but not from desk duty or errands, and the sergeant promptly made himself useful by locating the owner of the barn where the dynamite had been found. The property was registered to one Miguel Cruz, a dairy farmer in Cosgaya. Tejada sent two guardias to arrest Cruz, who stoutly denied any knowledge of the theft and maintained that since the barn was barred only from the outside to prevent livestock from escaping, it would have been possible for anyone to place the stolen goods there without his knowledge. The lieutenant did not believe a word of Cruz’s story, but he released the man and promptly put him under surveillance. Then he alerted the post office to forward all mail addressed to Miguel Cruz to the Guardia Civil for inspection. Tejada fully expected Cruz to be careful for a while but he was sure that the farmer would eventually let his guard down, and when he did, the Guardia would be waiting to capture him and his confederates. The lieutenant was content to wait.

  Tejada’s main worry over the next few days was his wife. Elena was nervous and irritable. When Tejada asked encouragingly about her plans for a school she only shrugged listlessly and said that Father Bernardo had everything in hand and that she was useless to everyone. When he told her what had happened with Cruz she snapped at him, and then, to his horror, nearly began to cry. He suspected that finding Anselmo Montalbán’s body had been more of a shock than she was willing to admit. But any mention of Montalbán made her so bitterly sarcastic that he avoided the subject. On Friday night she announced, a little defiantly, that she intended to attend the innkeeper’s funeral the next day. “It’s the right thing to do,” she finished, her eyes daring him to contradict her. “We were neighbors.”

  Tejada sighed. He knew Elena was still upset about Montalbán’s death, and he suspected the ritual would comfort her, but he was afraid she would be more upset by the reactions of the dead man’s family and friends and he did not want to leave her to face their hostility alone. “I wish you’d told me earlier,” he said. “I can’t go with you tomorrow morning. I have to work.”

  “I didn’t expect you to come,” she retorted.

  The lieutenant frowned. Elena was right that he would never have dreamed of attending Anselmo’s funeral under normal circumstances but her calm assumption that she had some sort of relationship with their neighbors that he was denied irked him. “You’ll give my respects to Señora Nuñez?” he said, staking his claim as a member of the community.

  “If she’ll take them,” Elena answered dryly.

  Tejada was forced to be content with that. He left for work the next morning with the uncomfortable feeling that he was leaving Elena vulnerable to an unpleasant task.

  Anselmo Montalbán had been well known in the Liébana Valley, and his funeral was widely attended. All of the mourners knew Guardia Ortíz, and if some of them thought his presence was hypocritical, none of them were startled by the fact that a Lebeño had turned out to bury one of his own. The presence of the new lieutenant’s wife, on the other hand, caused considerable surreptitious comment. Most of the town knew that she and Father Bernardo had found Anselmo’s body, and that she and her husband were living with Anselmo’s wife. Public opinion was divided as to whether her presence at the grave was an expression of goodwill or an intolerable intrusion. But everyone was curious to see whether Bárbara would invite her back to the fonda with the other mourners after the burial, and how she would manage to make her way back separately if she was not invited.

  Bárbara Nuñez had pointedly not invited Elena to the gathering, and that fact, along with her husband’s reaction, had made Elena wonder if attending the funeral at all was wise. But a useless sense of honor had driven her to the little cemetery, where patches of dirty snow still glistened in the spring sunshine. She had seen Anselmo’s body lying in the river and had seen his widow’s face when she received the news. To shut her eyes to his death now seemed like hypocrisy. She stood quietly at the back of the crowd as Father Bernardo gave the deceased a warm and unspecific eulogy. He did not say how Anselmo had died and Elena was grateful for his reticence. Telling the truth would have been impossible, and to label the death a cardiac arrest—the standard euphemism for cases like Montalbán’s— seemed obscene in light of the hole in the innkeeper’s chest.

  When the service was over, Elena silently moved out of the way as the mourners left the cemetery, talking in low voices. Ortíz saw her, and nodded amicably, but did not approach. Father Bernardo, who had been talking to Bárbara Nuñez, saw her as well and came over to speak to her. “It was good of you to come,” he said quietly, as they
shook hands.

  Elena shrugged. “The least I could do.”

  “You will come back to the fonda, of course, and give Bárbara your support.”

  “I don’t think I’m invited.”

  Father Bernardo smiled at her. “Bárbara is a good woman,” he said. “She is struggling now with bitterness. You might help her greatly.”

  Elena nodded, but was too polite to say that she thought the priest was mouthing platitudes. He turned and looked over at the widow, a little pleadingly. Her face was stony, and she did not move toward them. “You had better go and comfort her,” Elena said dryly. “I’ll be along in a little while. And if she needs anything this evening I’ll be there.”

  The priest accepted his dismissal, disappointed but not surprised. He escorted Bárbara from the cemetery while Elena watched from a distance. Elena waited until the last of the funeral procession had left, then went up to the grave. It was a family plot, a long flat slab, with the names of many Montalbáns engraved on it. The freshly chipped letters at the end of the list were still a powdery gray, paler than the rest of the slab:

  Anselmo Montalbán Soroll

  December 1, 1882–March 13, 1941

  Husband, Father, and Friend

  We will remember you.

  Rest in Peace

  Immediately above them, obviously recent but not new, were the words:

  Jesús Montalbán Nuñez

  January 4, 1913–September 15, 1937

  Beloved son of Bárbara and Anselmo

  “I cry to the Lord, that he may answer me. . . .”—Psalm 120

  Rest in Peace

  Elena looked at the names for a while, the birdsong and the bubbling music of the river loud in her ears. She wondered a little at the inscription for Jesulín. It was odd that a young man in sympathy with the maquis should have a Bible verse carved on his tomb. None of the other Montalbáns did. She wondered if Father Bernardo had insisted, and then decided against the idea. The priest of Potes was free from that sort of petty cruelty.