The Watcher in the Pine

by Rebecca Pawel

  María de Fernández looked up and beckoned to her husband. “Guillermo, you haven’t even seen Toño properly. Look, doesn’t he look just like Hipólito at that age? The same smile, and the same long-fingered hands.”

  Guillermo Fernández got up and considered the baby. “Yes. But he looks like Elena, too. You had black hair just like that when you were a baby,” he added to his daughter.

  Tejada suppressed the urge to stand also. He could not quarrel with his in-laws’ admiration, but he had hoped that someone would notice how much his son resembled him. He watched Elena and sought for the thousandth time the words to convey how much he would have missed her if she had been harmed by her kidnappers. He could not say to her in her parents’ presence, You’re half my life, and Toño has become another quarter of it, and it scares me how little the things that I used to think were worth killing and dying for mean to me now. He lacked the courage to say, I should leave you here in Salamanca, because I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you in Potes, but I don’t know if I could bear leaving you behind, even when they were alone. “Let me hold him again,” he said aloud abruptly.

  Elena frowned. “You held him on the train.”

  “Only so you could get some sleep.” The lieutenant defended himself. “Besides, he wanted to play peek-a-boo with me.”

  María de Fernández raised her eyebrows. “He wanted to?” She smiled wickedly, and Tejada thought that she looked like her daughter, and wished a little wistfully that she would be less rigidly formal when she spoke to him.

  “Yes,” he said. And then, stung by the skeptical silence, “Watch.” He retrieved his son and passed a hand in front of the baby’s face. “Peek-a-boo. Peek-a-boo.”

  “Aaah,” said Carlos Antonio sociably.

  “See,” said Tejada triumphantly. “It works better with a tri-corn. That covers his whole face, and you should hear him laugh when it’s taken away.”

  Elena exchanged an amused glance with her mother, and took the baby back. “He’s very clever for his age,” she explained, returning him to María’s arms. “And he’s grown amazingly, too.”

  “He’s, what, five weeks now?” Guillermo Fernández asked.

  “He’ll be six weeks on Tuesday,” Elena said. “And he’s already on a regular feeding schedule.”

  “Well, you look very well,” her mother said. “Nighttime feedings aren’t bothering you?”

  Elena laughed and shook her head, blithely denying that she was disturbed at all. Tejada’s definition of torture was beginning to include being startled awake at three-hour intervals, but he said nothing and tried to take comfort in his wife’s happiness. He excused himself a little later and went to sleep, while Elena stayed up, talking to her parents.

  Although he was a little resentful of the way they monopolized his son over the next several days, Tejada had to admit that Elena’s parents were useful babysitters. The lieutenant had envisioned the ten-day leave as a chance to introduce the baby to the Fernándezes, and to see Sergeant Hernández again, but he discovered that it was also an opportunity to spend time with Elena, without the omnipresent infant. The Tejadas spent much of their vacation wandering through the old city together, or strolling through the park down by the river Tormes. Sometimes María de Fernández persuaded them to leave a sleeping Toño behind in her care. Sometimes they took along the ancient baby carriage that Guillermo Fernández had dug out of the attic.

  The uninterrupted time together was a mixed blessing. It was easy to talk about Toño: about his intelligence, his charm, the clever things he had recently learned how to do, and his undoubtedly brilliant future. But Tejada felt there was a constraint between them when they talked of other things. Elena was so happy to be back in Salamanca that any reference to Potes seemed cruel, and he was nagged by the worry that he had never properly apologized to her for his threat to take Toño away. Besides, staying with her parents made him feel like an outsider, and reminded him again of what she had said about Vargas: talking to him had been “like being at home again.”

  Elena also felt the constraint, although she was not sure of the reason for it. She knew that Carlos had started to take long walks by himself when she stayed home to nurse Toño. She had expected him to spend more time with former colleagues, especially Hernández, who had been kind to her just after her marriage, and Corporal Jiménez, who had worked with Tejada for years, even in Madrid. But although he paid them a few duty calls he was in a bad mood afterward, and he seemed to be almost avoiding their company. She knew that Carlos loved the baby, and was glad to be a father. But sometimes she wondered with a little pang if he wished that Toño’s mother was more respectably conservative, or simply more beautiful and less haggard with worry and childbirth and lack of sleep.

  All of this was in her thoughts on the warm evening when she and the lieutenant strolled down to the river to watch the sunset, pushing the baby carriage with them. They had only two more days left in Salamanca, and a desultory conversation about packing had carried them past the cathedral and university, as far as the Roman bridge. Tejada lugged the carriage down the steps to the path by the river, without asking if Elena wished to go that way. She followed him, content to take a familiar path one more time. They walked in silence for a little while, passing under the arches of the ancient bridge, until they reached a grassy space, surrounded by trees and leading to the sandy shores of the Tormes. It was a favorite spot for both of them. “Do you want to rest a little?” Tejada asked.

  Elena nodded, and lifted Toño from the carriage. Then she sat down, her back propped against a tree, cradling him in her arms. Toño woke up as he was lifted, and gurgled. The lieutenant sat beside his wife, and leaned over the baby to gurgle back. He straightened, and Elena smiled. “I think he’s going to be a linguist when he grows up,” she said. “He likes to communicate so much.”

  The lieutenant nodded. “Like your father.”

  Elena heard the suppressed bitterness in his tone, and took his arm. “What do you think he should be?”

  “I don’t know. Anything but a guardia, I suppose.”

  Tejada sounded tired, and defeated. Elena squeezed his hand, longing to say something comforting without committing Toño to a career that she emphatically hoped he would not follow. “Listen to us! We’re crazy to be worrying about careers already.”

  “Maybe.” Tejada heard both her peace offering and her unspoken acquiescence that Toño should not be a guardia. He squeezed her hand back, and then looked up at the towers silhouetted against the twilight sky. After a few minutes he said with an effort, “It’s really very beautiful here.”

  “Yes,” Elena agreed softly, accepting the tribute to her home.

  “And there are good schools,” Tejada continued. “That’s something to think about, for Toño’s sake. He’ll need a decent education.”

  “We have a few years before we have to think about that yet,” Elena said, unconsciously echoing Bárbara Nuñez.

  “Yes. But it’s good to be settled in a place first.” Tejada took a deep breath. “Would you like to live here? So we could be close to your parents?”

  For a heart-stopping moment Elena thought that Carlos was exiling her again. Then she realized that he had said “we” and she was merely confused. “But you’re settled in Potes. And even if you could transfer, I thought you didn’t want to work with Captain Rodríguez.”

  Tejada kept his eyes on Toño. “I’m petitioning for discharge from the Guardia,” he said quietly.

  “What?” Elena stared at him. “Why?”

  Tejada shrugged and snorted. “Isn’t it obvious?” he asked, still avoiding her eyes. “It’s only a matter of time before the maquis start up again. And when they do, what sort of man would I be if I put my family in danger a second time?”

  Elena had always hated it that Carlos was a guardia, but now she discovered that she was unable to think of him as anything else. “But what would you do?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know.
I could find a job as a clerk somewhere, I suppose. Or maybe be taken on as an associate at some firm. I don’t remember much contract law, but it would come back to me.” Tejada turned his head away from his wife’s open-mouthed scrutiny, and stared at the darkening waters.

  “But,” Elena hesitated, “but you love being a guardia.”

  Tejada shook his head. “No, I don’t,” he said honestly. “I actually dislike a lot of parts of it. It would be nice to have a job that ends when you come home from the office.”

  “What about not wanting peace of mind?” Elena asked softly.

  The lieutenant took a long breath that was almost a sob. The Tormes was broad and sluggish here, not like the bubbling streams of the Deva and Quiviesa, and the still waters did nothing to disguise the harsh sound. “I used to do my job because I thought it was important,” he said slowly. “Because I thought it had some meaning. Some necessity. But I’m only a man. And now I don’t care how important it is if it means that I might lose you.”

  “I don’t think the maquis would—” Elena began.

  Tejada gestured her to silence, one hand over his face. “I don’t mean the kidnapping,” he interrupted. “I meant . . . you agree with them, don’t you? With the maquis. And if we stay in Potes you’ll meet them again, and sooner or later you’ll fall in love with one of them.”

  Elena gasped, uncertain whether to be amused or touched. “You’re insane!”

  Tejada finally met her eyes. He looked longingly at her. “Elena, being a guardia—especially in a place like Potes, where we’re still at war—means violence, cruelty, all sorts of ugly things. You know that. If we go back, sooner or later I’ll do something that will make you hate me. And you might easily decide one of them was a better man, like Vargas. And from there—”

  “For the last time, I am not in love with Vargas!” Elena cried so vehemently that Toño whimpered in her arms.

  Tejada felt a knot in his chest loosen. “You never said that before,” he whispered.

  “You never asked!”

  The lieutenant touched her cheek. “Because I was afraid to,” he said softly. “But if you really mean it . . .”

  “You won’t retire from the Guardia?” Elena asked, identifying the emotion that colored her tone as hope.

  Tejada frowned. “Yes, I will. You still don’t like it that I’m a guardia.”

  “If you do that you’ll regret it within six months,” Elena said flatly. “And probably hate me within a year.”

  “No,” Tejada protested.

  “Yes.” Elena was firm, and suddenly very sure of herself. “You won’t mean to, Carlos. But listen, I love you, and I don’t mind being your wife, but there isn’t a week since I’ve met you that I haven’t thought of teaching, or missed being a teacher. That’s part of who I am—who I was—and the Guardia is like that for you, only more so.”

  Tejada frowned, struck not so much by her argument as by her example. “That’s not how most women feel. Not according to everything you hear and read.”

  “Most women lie,” Elena said. “Probably because they’re not as happy as I am. Honestly, I don’t regret marrying you, and God knows I don’t regret Toño, but you’re so lucky, Carlos—” Her voice caught. “You’re so lucky. You don’t have to give anything up, not me or Toño or the Guardia. And you’ll hate yourself if you do.”

  The misery of his long solitary walks through Salamanca, summoning courage to write a letter to Colonel Súarez, came back to Tejada, proving the truth of his wife’s words. “It seems like a lack of imagination,” he said slowly, but his voice was meditative now, and he spoke to Elena as he had spoken to her before Toño’s birth, like a colleague whose judgment he trusted. “It’s not even that I enjoy being a guardia. I just can’t imagine myself as anything else anymore.”

  “You haven’t actually asked for discharge yet, have you?” Elena demanded.

  He shook his head and noted for the first time that the evening breeze smelled of sweet grass. Elena was a profile in the twilight, and Toño was a white mummy in her arms. “I was going to ask Torres to meet us at Santander instead of Unquera on Friday and drop the letter with Colonel Súarez when we got off the train.”

  “Ask him for a transfer instead,” Elena urged. “Didn’t he say that capturing Márquez was a good mark in your file? Surely he’d agree to move you?”

  “I suppose. Although so much moving around in so short a period of time starts to look suspicious. But I could ask him to move me back to Salamanca, so Toño could be near his grandparents.”

  “I thought the corps didn’t like to have officers serving in their home regions,” Elena said heroically.

  Tejada laughed, not because Elena had said something funny, but because the evening stars were beginning to twinkle over the dome of the cathedral, and the breeze smelled good, and he was happy. “I don’t know if in-laws’ homes count,” he said wryly. “But I don’t mind working in Salamanca. Or I could just request a transfer to a place where the maquis are less active, because of you and Toño. Somewhere with good schools for Toño and other children he could play with.”

  “And a pediatrician,” Elena agreed. She sounded happy as well.

  Tejada put his arms around her and the baby, and squeezed gently, unable to articulate his relief. “I’ll tell the colonel that if he doesn’t move us to civilization, I’ll leave the corps.”

  Elena laughed, and kissed him. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “If we have to stay in Potes for a little while, we’ll stay. Ortíz isn’t experienced enough to command the post yet, remember? And Father Bernardo was going to help me get a school set up.”

  “That’s true.” Tejada took a deep breath and all of the things he had been trying to avoid thinking about over the last week poured happily out. “I’ve been wondering if maybe we should do something about the way we buy provisions. The system we have is fine if the entire force lives and works in the barracks, but with so many men spread out it’s inefficient. I thought maybe I’d talk to Fermín about some way of having him handle the distribution and letting the ration coupons go through him. Or maybe I’ll leave it to Ortíz, since they know each other, and Ortíz could use some practice dealing with administrative issues.”

  “What about letting guardias use coupons in the Monday markets?” Elena asked.

  “Hard to regulate,” the lieutenant said thoughtfully, shifting position. “But we could talk to the mayor and see what could be done.” It was full dark by the time the Tejadas left the riverside, still discussing the mundane details of the lieutenant’s command.

  Their last days in Salamanca flew by, speeded by Tejada’s sudden desire to talk to Hernández and Jiménez as much as possible, and by Elena’s hour-devouring browses through the bookstores of her childhood, searching both for entertainment for herself and instruction for Simón Álvarez. She ended up taking one of her parents’ old trunks for the books and stationery she had bought, and the extra space in the trunk inspired Tejada to buy a small radio he hoped would lessen her sense of isolation in Potes.

  They left early on Friday morning, and the flurry of last-minute preparations and crises combined to make the whistle that signaled the train’s departure a sign that brought intense relief. Elena leaned out the window as the train pulled out of the station, holding up Toño and making him wave good-bye to his grandparents with one hand. Impelled by the instinct of all rail travelers, Tejada forgot his reservations about his in-laws and leaned out the window to wave also. As Salamanca finally dropped from sight behind them Elena sank back into her seat and relaxed. Tejada sat back opposite her and smiled. “At least there’s nothing more to remember for a few hours,” he said.

  “Thank goodness!” Elena agreed. “What time is Torres supposed to meet us in Unquera?”

  “I told him five o’clock. So we should have time to have lunch and walk around a little.”

  “That will be nice.”

  Tejada grimaced. “Assuming the train is reasonably on time.�
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  The train was not even close to on time, due to mysterious mechanical delays outside Zamora that made the lieutenant grind his teeth and mutter that things were better managed in various other parts of Europe. In fact, it was well after six when they finally reached Unquera. Tejada saw that their luggage was all off the train, and then began to wonder with a sinking heart whether he could leave Elena and Toño with the bags and find the Guardia post to call Potes and explain their delay. Elena agreed to this plan, and he stepped out of the dingy waiting room into the summer afternoon with a slight sense of guilt. The air smelled of lindens, and the distant sea. The loud honk of a horn made him look to the left. He was both startled and pleased to see a guardia vehicle sitting patiently at an intersection some twenty meters up the street. As he moved toward it, the truck purred to life and rolled up to him. It stopped as he drew level with it, and he saw that Guardia Torres was at the wheel. “Good to see you, sir,” Torres said as he swung himself out of the truck. “Where’s your lady? And the little one?”

  In less time than Tejada would have believed possible, his family and luggage were safely settled in the truck and rolling away from the coast into the narrow gorge that led to Potes. It was a warm evening, and Torres drove with the windows rolled down. The roar of the rapids in the gorge was audible even above the hum of the motor, so the guardia had to raise his voice as he said, “I’m glad you’re back. A lot has happened.”

  “Oh?” Tejada spoke sharply. “Have the maquis been active?”

  “Oh, no, sir.” Torres was apologetic. “I didn’t mean anything like that. Just that Fermín had a shipment of soap, and Carvallo thinks that Araceli Caro is throwing herself at Ortíz now that he’s a corporal, and Father Bernardo is talking about setting up a checkers tournament for the whole valley.”

  “The mayor’s daughter, Araceli?” Elena said, startled. “Doesn’t her father have something to say about that?”

  “Real soap?” Tejada asked at the same moment. “Is there any left?”

  “I told Fermín to save some for you. And it’s not as if Ortíz has done anything. They’ve just talked during the evening paseo a couple of times. Father Bernardo asked if you’d be interested in the tournament, Lieutenant.”