That Glimpse of Truth

by David Miller

  She realized that he had noticed her. Once, he nodded to her. It could have been a casual gesture, except that it was not. She knew that it was not.

  After a while, when one of her friends left, she left, too. She did not go there the following night. The next time she went, he was there as before, apart from the others, watching, amused by it all. He did not stir, merely made it clear that he knew she was there; once again, he took no part in the dancing or the showing off around the fire.

  He let her know by looking at her that he wanted her and that the rest – the drinking, the dancing, the boyish antics – did not interest him. He was shy, almost retiring, but seemed also entirely sure of himself. She didn’t believe that anything would happen between them. She didn’t think that he would move toward her or do anything to damage his self-contained observation of the scene around him.

  Yet he kept his eye on her, and she returned his glances, careful that none of her friends were looking.

  One night, there was a full moon and a clear sky. When the crowd moved to the edge of the water and let the fire die down, neither he nor she moved with them. When he spoke to her, she could not hear him, so he moved closer. She realized that no one had noticed that she had not joined the others by the water. Some of the soldiers there had stripped down and were swimming and splashing. Away from them, close to the dying embers, he touched the back of her hand and then turned it and traced his fingers on the palm.

  There was an old ruined building nearby. They walked slowly toward it and when they leaned against the wall she was relieved that all he wanted to do was kiss her and smile at her in between the kisses. In all the years since, she had never forgotten the sweet smell of his breath, his eagerness and good humor.

  The next night, he found them a place where they could lie together undisturbed, and that was what they did every night until September came.

  Every day that summer she waited for the evening. Her friends knew that she was with Rudolfo, but most of the girls who went to the makeshift bar had found boyfriends among the soldiers. No one ever talked about it. When her mother asked her if she had been to the soldiers’ parties, she shrugged and said that she had passed by once or twice, but had walked on with her friends. When her mother asked her a second time, a few nights later, she was careful to come home early for once, so that no one at home would have an idea what she was doing.

  She wondered now if she remembered correctly that the weather had changed as soon as the bombardment of the villages on the other side of the river began. Perhaps the man from the electric company would know. The bombardment began, in any case, toward the end of summer. The sound came in the night but often in the day, too, the sound of heavy artillery from up the valley. The villages that had remained with the Loyalists were being attacked.

  She remembered her father saying that the soldiers had spent the summer preparing for this assault, that they had been building dugouts and finding the best positions and carrying the heavy guns there. They had left nothing to chance, once they secured the dam. He added that there was no hospital on the other side and no medicine, and the soldiers were letting no one cross the footbridge at Llavorsí or the bridge in Sort. People were trapped, he said, and the injured were dying of their wounds.

  It struck her that the parties by the water were where the troops who’d been working all day preparing the guns came to relax. But she did not feel guilty. Instead, she hoped that those who had noticed her presence at the soldiers’ bonfires would have their own reasons to keep silent about it. In the years afterward, everyone – even those who had been there every night – pretended that none of it had happened.

  It was the change in the weather that changed everything – she was almost sure of that. It was a gray day, with the mist that came over the valley in September, when she realized that she knew only Rudolfo’s name and that he came from Badajoz. By that time he was gone, and it struck her that he would, in all likelihood, not be returning. The realization broke the spell that had been cast on her, by the war itself as much as by Rudolfo.

  It was not until then that she began to worry that she was pregnant. It was not only that she had missed her period; something in her body had changed. She waited and hoped that she was wrong. She woke in terror some nights, but in the day she tried to behave normally. In the meantime, the war went on up the valley, and jeeps and trucks full of soldiers and supplies drove through the town, and the town was often desolate, the main square empty, even though the bars and most of the shops remained open.

  When she was sure that she was pregnant she decided that she would marry Paco Vendrell. For years at the town festivals he had followed her around, offering to buy her drinks, asking her to dance and, when she refused, standing on his own and observing her with a single-mindedness that made her shiver. He was ten years her senior, but had seemed middle-aged even when he was younger. Since he had begun working in the control room of the dam, when he was fourteen or fifteen, he had spoken of little else: the levels of water in the two rivers, or in the lake itself, or the flow of water that could be expected soon, or the difference between this year and last year. Montse’s father laughed at him, and for her mother and her sisters the idea that he had been pursuing her since she was sixteen or seventeen was a source of regular jokes. She did her best to avoid him, and if she could not avoid him then she openly rebuffed his efforts to speak to her.

  Now she urgently wanted to meet him. For a few days, she watched to see if she could run into him on his way to work. Since she did not see him walking to the dam, she supposed that he was taken there by military jeep now, and brought home in the same way in the evening. No one, she knew, was allowed to approach the road that led to the control tower overlooking the dam. The only time she could be sure that she would encounter Paco, she thought, was at Sunday Mass. She would have to be brave and move fast and not worry about other people watching and commenting. The opportunity to meet him might not come every Sunday.

  Fortunately, there was only one Mass on Sunday these days, and the church was more crowded than it had ever been, as the people of the town, even those who had no interest in religion, or who were known to have been with the Loyalists, set out to show the troops whose side they were on now. By the beginning of that winter, it had become clear to all of them who was going to win the war, and it was clear, too, that as soon as the war ended there would be many more accusations and arrests. She understood that there would be little pity for someone in her situation, no matter who the father of the child was.

  That Sunday, she went to the church early, walking quietly and demurely in the street with a mantilla on her head and a prayer book in her hand. She was sure that Paco would go to Mass if he wasn’t working; he was not the sort of man who stayed away. But she could not remember actually seeing him in the church and did not know if he stood at the back, as many of the men did, or if he walked right up and found a place close to the altar. She would need to find a good vantage point from which she could see everyone, but she could not, she thought, sit at the back of the church, as she had never done so before and might be spotted by neighbors or by her family, who would wonder what she was doing there.

  She sat in one of the side pews and was early enough to witness the two priests arriving, the older one, whom she knew, and the younger one, whom she had never met. What she noticed, as they walked up the aisle to go to the vestry, was their bearing, how proud they seemed and severe. They could easily, she imagined, have approached the vestry from outside, but approaching it like this gave them more dignity and more importance.

  Soon, they were followed by a group of soldiers in full uniform. For a second, she was startled by the idea that Rudolfo could be among them. She looked at them carefully, however, and did not see him. Even if he did appear, she thought, whatever had happened in the atmosphere between the summer and now would mean that he would not come near her or acknowledge her. She was sure that, even were she to approach him and try to talk, he would
avoid her.

  She shivered for a moment and then watched warily as the pews began to fill up with people who kept their eyes averted. She wondered when the war would be over and wondered also, as the panic that often came to her in the night returned, what would happen to her if she could not persuade Paco to marry her. It occurred to her that she would be sent away, that her father and mother would not be able to protect her, even if they wanted to.

  But how would she marry Paco? How could it be done? She had been so rude to him in the past, so dismissive. How could she make it clear to him that she had changed her mind? What reason would she give? In this uncertain atmosphere, with the chance that many more people were going to be killed or locked up, no one was thinking of romance or marriage, least of all someone like Paco, who was cautious and whose daily work at the dam was likely more and more difficult. But there was no one else she could think of who might marry her.

  In the reaches of the night, one other option had come to her, and it appeared to her again now. There was a secluded place above the river, about a kilometre up the valley, where the current was strong and the water deep. Over the years, two or three people had used this place to kill themselves and their bodies had not been found for days. She thought that maybe soon she should go and look at that spot, check if it was guarded by the troops. She closed her eyes at the thought of it and bowed her head.

  When Communion was almost over, she saw Paco walking up the aisle. She knew then that he must have been standing at the back. She studied him carefully as he returned. His lips were moving in prayer; his hands were joined. He seemed even odder and more isolated than usual. She almost smiled at the courage, or the self-delusion, it must have taken for him to pursue her the way he had; she wondered what thoughts he must have had before going out on those evenings and how disappointed he must have been to go home alone, knowing that he had no chance with her. It struck her, too, that, since he worked at the dam with the soldiers, he would have known about the parties at the water’s edge and might have heard that she was among the girls who had gone there. He might even have heard about her and Rudolfo. It occurred to her as she waited for Mass to end that he might want to have nothing to do with her now. And if he, who had been so enthusiastic, did not want her, then she was sure, absolutely sure, that no one else would want her, either.

  She moved quickly as the ceremony came to an end. Paco was not the sort of man who stood at the church gates after Mass with a group of friends. In any case, no one would want to be seen standing around now. When she walked out of the church grounds she saw that he was already a block away. She followed him as quickly as she could, hoping that no one would see her. She had prepared what she would say to him. It was important to make it seem plausible, natural.

  When he turned, he gave her a look that was anxious and withdrawn, and then almost hostile, as if to say that he had enough problems without her chasing him down to let him know yet again that she had no interest in him. He turned his back to her before she had a chance to smile. As he walked faster, she grew more determined. If he had wanted her before, she figured, he would still want her now. All she had to do was be careful and hide all signs of panic as she spoke to him.

  Eventually, when he looked back again and saw her, he stopped.

  “I have to go home to change my clothes,” he said, “and then they’ll collect me. They are very busy at the dam. Everything has to be noted and written down.”

  She smiled. “Well, I’ll walk along with you so I won’t delay you,” she said. “We are all worried at home. You know, I have no brothers. And my father says that we cannot go out alone now, not even just to the shops. So I am locked in the house or that’s what it seems like.”

  They continued walking. She feared that if she stopped talking for one second he would tell her something about the dam and everything she had already said would be forgotten.

  “If you were free some time, it would be great if you could call at the house and maybe we could go for a walk, if only through the town and then home again. But maybe you are too busy.”

  “There’s a new captain from Madrid and he’s a stickler for notes, and they all watch me in case I decide to pull one of the levers when they are not looking. You know, I’m the only one who fully understands the switching system, though the new fellow from Madrid is beginning to get the hang of it.”

  She wondered whether, if she concentrated hard enough, she might get through to him. But she said nothing as they came to the town center and then it was too late.

  “Anyway,” he said, “I’d better get going. I can’t use this suit in the control room. It’s the only good suit I have.”

  When Paco called two days later, one of her sisters answered the door and did not disguise her amusement or keep her voice down. Montse found her coat and left with him. During the weeks that followed he called every few days. Her sisters and her mother made jokes about him, at first, then expressed puzzlement, and finally grew silent. Not one of them asked her what she was doing walking around the town with Paco Vendrell and having hot chocolate with him in one of the granjas.

  He talked to her about the dam, explaining its strategic importance and how old some of the systems were, which meant that only someone experienced could deal with the levers, someone who knew that a few of them would not respond if pulled too fast, and also that if one of them was pulled halfway it would have the same effect as pulling it the whole way.

  She already knew that he lived with his mother but found out now that his father had died when he was young. She discovered that he liked routines, liked going to work at the same time every day, and disliked the soldiers’ efforts to vary his timetable. Within a week, she, too, was part of his routine. Chatting to her, he seemed comfortable. She realized that he would be content to meet this way for months, maybe even years. He was not someone who would make a quick decision or want a sudden change in his life. And, like everyone, he knew that things would be very different when the war was over. He had a way of addressing the matters that interested him slowly and deliberately. Her efforts to speed things up, to ask him, for example, if he was happy living with his mother, failed completely. He did not register anything that interfered with the current of his own conversation.

  When Christmas came, there were more and more rumors. Whole families disappeared, and houses became vacant. Her father said that anyone who had the slightest reason to leave should go now. She continued seeing Paco, although he was more cautious as they walked around the town, hoping not to be noticed by the troops.

  One evening as she stood up from the table she saw her mother’s eyes resting on her belly. She waited until they were alone in the kitchen.

  “How soon?” her mother asked.

  “Five months, maybe a bit less.”

  “Is Paco the father?’

  “No.”

  “Does he know?’

  “No.”

  “Is that why you are seeing him – so that he will marry you?”

  “Yes, but he’s in no hurry.”

  “Was it one of the soldiers?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he has disappeared?”

  “Yes.”

  Her mother looked at her.

  “Let me deal with Paco,” she said.

  For the next two weeks Paco did not come around. The weather grew cold and there was snow. Sometimes they could hear rifle fire in the distance, even during the day. Feigning sickness, Montse stayed in bed, joining the others only for meals. She waited for her mother to come into the bedroom and tell her that it could not be done, that Paco would not marry her. She imagined then how she would have to brave the cold and avoid the soldiers, find a quiet time and move as though invisible. She tried to imagine what it would be like to jump into a deep and fast-moving river, wondered how quickly she would sink, how long it would take her to drown. As she lay in bed, another scenario came to her: she would be sent to a convent or an orphanage somewhere and the baby would be ta
ken from her as soon as it was born. She would not be allowed to come home. Maybe that would be preferable.

  Eventually, when the house was silent one day, her mother came to tell her that the wedding was arranged. It would happen in a few days in a side chapel and Paco would take full responsibility for the child.

  “His mother seemed surprised and almost proud,” her mother said. “She thinks the baby is his. Paco said that he has always wanted to marry you, that you are the girl for him, so at least someone is happy. There is a small flat at the top of the building where his mother lives. He is moving furniture in there right now. It would be lovely, Montse, if we didn’t have to see too much of him. He has a way of wearing me down with his talk.”

  When her mother had finished speaking, Montse turned away from her and did not move again until she was sure that her mother had left the room.

  As soon as Rosa was born, Paco wanted to hold her. In the days that followed, Montse watched him to see if he was holding the baby merely for her sake. She saw no sign of that, however. When Paco came home from work he wanted to know what the baby had been doing. Even being told that she had been sleeping was enough for him.

  As they walked through the town with the baby, Montse was aware that other men were laughing at Paco because of his devotion to the baby. She knew that her family laughed at him, too. But Paco remained impervious to the laughter. When he was at home, he tried to amuse the baby; he soothed her if she cried. And, once Rosa learned to walk, Paco loved taking her out, moving as slowly as she wanted and holding her hand with pride.

  Being married to him was strange. He never once asked about the father of the child. He seemed grateful and content with everything. Montse was grateful to him in return, but that did not keep her from feeling relieved when he left for work each day or when he fell asleep beside her in the bed. She was careful to disguise this, though. And slowly, as they had two more daughters and moved to a bigger apartment, she found that being polite to him took on a force of its own. She tolerated him, and then grew fond of him. Slowly, too, as she realized that her parents and her sisters were still laughing at him, she saw less of them. She began to feel a loyalty toward Paco, a loyalty that lasted for all the years of their marriage.