“You didn’t come forward with this information before,” Ortíz said, a little reproachfully.
“The lieutenant wouldn’t have believed me,” Bárbara pointed out, turning to the other guardia. “Even you wouldn’t have believed me.”
There was a small silence while Tejada considered. Then he said quietly, “If I found out that Márquez had—for example— killed a member of the Guardia, a superior officer maybe, I could guarantee a firing squad.”
Bárbara dropped her eyes. “I don’t know anything about that sort of thing, Lieutenant.”
Tejada had a sudden vision of Elena cradling Toño and cooing to him. He imagined the woman in front of him cradling a child. “Your son, Jesulín,” he said. “He was your youngest, wasn’t he?” A tremor of emotion crossed her face, but she said nothing. “Your baby,” Tejada continued, relentless. “Would your husband have killed for him? I know that I would see any man dead who harmed my son.”
Bárbara put one hand to her mouth, and Ortíz made a protesting noise. “What did your husband know about the sergeant that was ‘as much as his life was worth’?” Tejada demanded.
Bárbara stood up rapidly, without speaking, and left the living room. Tejada took a few steps after her automatically, and then stopped as he realized that she had only gone toward her bedroom. “She won’t try to get away, sir,” Ortíz mumured. Abashed, Tejada took a seat on the sofa beside him and waited.
The innkeeper’s wife returned a moment later, carrying a much-creased envelope. She held it out to the lieutenant, but addressed herself to Ortíz. “Pepe, explain to the lieutenant about Laura.”
The guardia coughed and shifted uncomfortably as Bárbara resumed her seat. “Señorita Laura? I-I don’t really know what to say about her. I tried never to listen to gossip—”
Tejada cut him off. “Laura Román Márquez,” he said, reading the return address on the envelope. “The teacher’s sister. I already know.” He ignored Ortíz’s amazed embarrassment, and inspected the envelope. It had been mailed from the zone libre of France, the preceding summer. Someone had slit open the top. He pinched the ends between his fingers and slid out two sheets of paper, both covered with neat, tiny handwriting. He unfolded both, and read the larger one first.
23 August 1940
Sare (France)
Dear Bárbara and Anselmo,
I hope you and all our friends are well, and that you have had good news of Baldo. Please give my respects to everyone, especially Maya and Paco.
I hope things are well in Spain. Jesusa and I are both in good health, thank God. She is walking very well on her own now, and she can say “mama” and “hello.”
I am actually writing on her behalf. It has been a little difficult here, especially since June, and I am afraid of her going hungry. You and my other friends in Potes have already been too kind to me, and I would not dream of asking for more. So I have decided to ask you for something that I hoped I would not have to. Would you please take the enclosed letter to Sergeant Márquez? Forgive me a thousand times for the request.
Love,
Laura
Hardly knowing what to think, Tejada turned to the second sheet of paper. It, too, had been written from Sare at the end of August. It was brief but every word tasted bitter on the tongue:
Dear Uncle,
Forgive the imposition, but I have no one else to turn to, and no honest way left of making a living. Can you wire money to the post office in Sare? I hate to ask the favor, but I will do whatever I must to keep my daughter from starving, and the Guardia Civil owes me that much at least.
Your niece,
Laura Román Márquez
Tejada shut his eyes for a moment, and then handed the letters to Ortíz without speaking. He remembered Márquez’s shortwave radio again, and wondered if the sergeant had answered Laura Román’s plea. Ortíz read, and swore softly. “Did your husband show these letters to Sergeant Márquez?” Tejada asked.
Bárbara’s face was bitter. “He did. The sergeant threw the letter back in his face and told him that he wanted nothing to do with a niece who was Red. He said he’d kill Anselmo if he ever told anybody that there was a family connection. And then”—her laughter was a cruel sound—“then he asked Anselmo if Jesulín and Laura had ever been married, and asked what concern a Red whore’s bastard was of his!”
“But”—Ortíz looked up from the letters, hesitant—“Jesulín was tried in the fall of ’37. And Señorita Laura didn’t leave Potes until the following spring. And she wasn’t pregnant when she left, or not that anyone could see. So this little girl she talks about . . .”
“She knew she was expecting,” Bárbara said. “But she made the mistake of telling the lieutenant. He was pressuring her to have an abortion and she was scared. That was why she left. And that was what Anselmo told Márquez.” For a moment her voice was proud, and she smiled, remembering a moment of her husband’s strength. “He told the sergeant to his face that if anyone had made Laura a whore, it was the Guardia. That shut him up.”
“He hadn’t known about Calero,” Tejada suggested.
“No, not until Anselmo told him,” Bárbara agreed. “And then he thanked Anselmo, and told him he would take care of it.”
“And a few weeks later Calero was dead?”
“That’s right.” Bárbara nodded. “But he didn’t send a red cent to Laura. Anselmo knew the postmaster and he checked it. He waited two months, and then decided that if the sergeant wasn’t going to pay for his niece it was time to make him pay for the people who were trying to make it safe for her to come home.”
“And that’s when the thefts from Devastated Regions started?”
“That’s right, Lieutenant.”
Tejada considered. He could not condemn Márquez for his role in Calero’s death. Even Anselmo had not objected to that, initially. Of course, Bárbara Montalbán might well be lying about the purity of her husband’s motives. Perhaps he had decided to blackmail Márquez from the moment Laura had placed the two letters in his hands. Perhaps she had given him the letters with the knowledge that he would. But Márquez had left his niece to starve rather than acknowledge a family tie to a Red, and had kidnapped Elena to extricate himself from a compromising position. He was guilty of that. “Would you still be willing to swear to this in court?” Tejada asked.
Bárbara thought for a moment. Then she nodded. “Yes. If you want me to.”
“You’d implicate yourself,” Tejada reminded her, neutral.
She shrugged. “So what? Anselmo’s dead. Jesulín’s dead. Baldo’s in prison in Málaga and I can’t help him. What more can you do to me, Lieutenant?”
Some faint memory of Vargas and Elena held Tejada still for a moment. Then he said slowly, “And what if you implicated other people?”
“I could only name Anselmo and Luis Severino and Rafa Campos.”
“And we can’t ask any of them anything.” Tejada smiled briefly. “I suppose that takes care of Calero and the arms thefts. But—you have my word it won’t go past this room—do you know how Márquez was mixed up with Elena’s kidnapping?”
Bárbara hesitated. “I don’t know the ins and outs,” she said. “But Márquez stopped in here for a drink last week, with a few people I don’t really know. They had something to eat, and they looked like they were having a nice cozy conversation. Then, when he was leaving, he stopped off at the bar and told me I’d better stay closed up that afternoon and not be too nosy about who was coming and going. So I stayed in the apartment all afternoon. But I heard them come in and come upstairs yelling for you, and knocking on your door. Then a few minutes later they came downstairs again.” Bárbara closed her eyes, remembering. “They must have known the sergeant had fixed it with me. They weren’t trying to be quiet. One of them said something like, ‘Damn, she’s heavy. Why don’t we just dump her at your place like Márquez said?’ And then the other said, ‘And what if he double-crosses us? I’m not taking a chance on the Guardia finding her the
re. We’ll leave her where we agreed.’”
Tejada inhaled sharply. “You wouldn’t recognize their voices or their faces if you saw them again?”
Bárbara shook her head. “No, Lieutenant. Not a chance.” She saw his face working and added gently, “They’re good boys, Lieutenant. They wouldn’t harm Señora Fernández, no matter what the sergeant told them.”
Tejada frowned. Márquez meant for her to be found, he thought. He meant for her to be found right in town, and for us to get the maquis who took her. But they might still have panicked and killed her and Toño when the house-to-house started. Just as well they decided to leave her up at the Cueva Santa unguarded. He nodded, accepting Bárbara’s omission. “All right. You can come down to the post tomorrow and make a formal statement.”
She stood up. “Will I go to prison, Lieutenant?”
“Anselmo was the one involved in Calero’s murder, and in blackmailing Márquez,” Tejada said, standing also. “And I don’t see how a wife could have gone against her husband under the circumstances.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” She shook hands with him, and then closed the door behind them.
In the stairwell, Ortíz coughed nervously. “Do you believe her, sir?”
Tejada laughed. “Believe? She’s the answer to a prayer! I’d give a hundred pesetas to see Súarez’s face when he gets the news.”
The guardia bowed his head. “I went over to tell her that you were going up to see your wife,” he admitted. “I thought it might make your trip a little safer. She . . . she has a lot of contacts.”
“Obviously,” Tejada said, as they reached the crowded bar and stepped out into the night.
Ortíz looked embarrassed. “H-how did you know about Lieutenant Calero and Jesulín, sir?”
Tejada shrugged and quoted Antonio. “Just gossip.”
“You haven’t really seen the good side of the valley, Lieutenant.” Ortíz spoke apologetically. “But . . . well, we’re not all bad people. And it used to be very nice here. Very tranquil, before the war.”
They had strolled out of the ruined arcade, toward the footbridge. Tejada looked up at the stars. “It’s still tranquil here,” he said, thinking of the Sierra Nevada, where he had spent his summers as a child, fascinated by the stories of the bandits who haunted the peaks. He had wanted to play the outlaws as a child, but his older brother had always taken all the best parts, and made him be the guardia civil. He thought about his brother and the local peasant boys swooping down on him in a thousand intricate ambushes, and about his brother saying to him the last time he had visited home, in a voice half-joking, half-querulous, “Honestly, Carlos, when are you people going to do something about the bandits in the hills? They’re a bunch of ragtag peasants. It can’t be that difficult.” He spoke partly to Ortíz and partly to himself. “The mountains are beautiful. And I think people are pretty much the same all over.”
Chapter 24
Your attention, ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. The seven-fifteen express to Madrid from Zamora now arriving on track two.”
The crackling announcement broke the peace of the summer afternoon. Women furled their fans, calling to errant children, and men hastily folded their newspapers. Porters sprang into action as the train crawled to a halt. The crowd surged forward, eager to board as quickly as possible and to greet those arriving.
Their enthusiasm left little space for the elderly couple who had been sitting under the station clock. The lady walked with a stick. The white-haired man beside her was anxious to shield her from the hurrying passengers, and so did not have the arms and energy to devote to clearing a path to the train. They would have been pushed to the outskirts of the crowd had they not had the presence of mind to place themselves directly behind the pair of guardias civiles who had strolled through the station five times since seven o’clock, apparently on patrol, and were now hurrying toward the incoming train. The guardias had no difficulty making their way through the crowd, and they managed almost without effort to secure a place at the left side of the exit of the final coach.
The train stopped, and the conductor jumped down and pulled down the steps with a cry. “Salamanca! Station stop, Salamanca!”
Travelers poured down the steep steps to the platform, the men hopping down with the energy of schoolboys, and women in heels picking their way. Those waiting to greet the train began to wave and call to passengers. “Eulalia! Eulalia, hija, over here!” “Papa! Papa!” “Hey, Primo!” The steady flow of people bottlenecked as porters lugged trunks off the train, and disembarking passengers stopped abruptly in the middle of traffic to be embraced by friends and relatives.
The shape of a tricorn appeared in the door of the last car, and the crowd around the steps fell silent for a moment, apprehensive. Then the older of the guardias waiting by the side of the train raised a hand in greeting. “Lieutenant!”
The lieutenant turned his head rapidly at the hail, saw the pair of guardias, and grinned. He waved and then turned sideways on the steps, flattening himself against the narrow opening to help a young woman carrying an enormous bundle of blankets that presumably had a baby somewhere inside them. The white-haired man behind the guardias peered over their shoulders, and then touched his wife’s arm. “There she is! Elena! Elenita!”
Tejada saw his wife safely down the steps and into her parents’ arms and then turned to his colleagues with pleasure. “Hernández! Jiménez! How are you? I didn’t expect an honor guard! What’s happened?”
The younger guardia flushed. “Sergeant Hernández arranged the patrol schedules so we could meet you, Lieutenant.”
Tejada held out both his hands to Hernández, remembering a little wistfully what it had been like to work with men he trusted and who trusted him. “Thanks. Sorry the train was late.”
Hernández vigorously shook his former partner’s hand. “No problem. We’re always delayed on the Plaza de España route. Sorry I couldn’t bring a truck for your luggage.”
Tejada laughed. “We’ll manage. But you haven’t met the most important piece yet.” He put an arm around his wife, drawing her away from her parents. Elena’s father, uncomfortable in the presence of so many guardias, murmured something to his daughter and disappeared. Tejada indicated Elena’s bundle. “This is my son, Carlos Antonio.”
The two guardias leaned respectfully over the baby, and offered their congratulations to the lieutenant. Hernández, himself a father, had the presence of mind to congratulate Elena as well. She thanked him, and then turned to her husband. “Papa’s gone to get us a cab. Can you take care of the luggage?”
“Of course,” Tejada agreed. “Why don’t you take Toño and get away from the crush?”
“Jiménez, help the lieutenant with his bags,” the sergeant ordered. “I’ll take care of your ladies, sir.” He offered one arm to Elena’s mother, who looked at it rather dubiously before taking it.
Tejada felt as if an invisible weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He basked in the warmth of the May afternoon and the attentions of the men who had been his friends as well as his colleagues. Elena’s broad and incessant smile told him that she was as relieved as he was to be back in Salamanca, and even the slightly awkward politeness between her parents and Hernández and Jiménez did nothing to dim his euphoria. The taxi ride to his in-laws’ home was too quick for anything other than conventional questions about how the trip had been and explanations about timing. (“We arrived at seven on the dot even though I told Guillermo the Madrid express is never on time.” “We made the connection fine, it was just that there was a twenty-minute delay in Zamora, and then we stopped for no good reason somewhere, not even a crossing, for ten minutes. Who knows what they have on their minds?”) A few minutes before the end of the ride, Carlos Antonio, who had cooperatively slept for the last several hours, woke up and announced his displeasure at being hungry and jolted around. His grandparents admired his strong lungs, and his grandmother explained to Elena that she had set up Hipó
lito’s old room as a nursery.
When they arrived, Elena retired immediately to nurse the baby, and Tejada busied himself unpacking their trunks. The family assembled for dinner a few hours later, when Toño was fed, changed, and contented. Tejada, always a little uncomfortable around his in-laws, felt the beginnings of constraint, but Elena was blissful, and her voice and face as she sat down and said, “Oh, it’s good to be home” did much to make the meal a happy one.
Elena had written regularly to her parents since her arrival in Potes, so the Fernándezes knew most of what had happened since Tejada’s promotion. Most of dinner was taken up with telling the extra details of the last few weeks: the damning evidence of Bárbara Nuñez at Márquez’s trial, the way several neighbors had thawed toward Elena following Corporal Ortíz’s promotion, and the temporary lull in the maquis’ activities.
“So you think things will be easier now?” Guillermo Fernández asked his son-in-law when they had adjourned to the living room, and Elena and her mother had settled down to coo over Toño.
Tejada shifted, uncomfortable. Elena’s parents had not asked about her kidnapping, but behind Guillermo’s question Tejada heard the echo of the old man’s plea the night before his daughter’s wedding: “You’ll take care of her, Lieutenant? She’s all we have left.” Tejada had been certain of his ability to care for Elena better than an old leftist could in the new postwar Spain. “I hope so,” he said aloud. He looked over at Elena. She had handed Toño to her mother, and was leaning over him, smiling. “I’ll know to be careful now, at any rate.”
The Watcher in the Pine Page 29