ELEVEN
Celestina
The first religious building we saw set alight was the Royal Monastery of Sant Mateu, which housed an order of cloistered Hieronymite nuns. Although numerous churches, monasteries, convents and religious schools were scheduled to be burned that afternoon, Teresa and the women from Damas Rojas were keen to attend the torching of Sant Mateu because the laundries they owned had put many of the local women out of work.
The workers agreed that attacks were to be on the clergy’s property only; no lives were to be taken. It was therefore necessary to clear the buildings before setting them alight. Although the nuns of Sant Mateu had been warned in advance that their building was on the list to be destroyed, they refused to leave.
The crowd cheered and chanted when groups of youths brought ladders to scale the building while men and women worked together to force open the doors. A man in a well-cut suit and sporting a cane instructed the rest of us to build a bonfire from the materials that the youths, who had now entered the convent, were throwing down to us. We worked quickly to build a stack from the chairs, books and bedding. We had no idea that the papers being thrown down to us were stocks worth over a million pesetas.
‘The convents have enjoyed their wealth at your expense,’ the stranger said. ‘We are to burn everything — jewels, cash, statues. All of it. There is to be no looting.’
No sooner had he spoken than a gold chain with a large medallion dropped near my feet. I threw it on the unlit pile, but another woman, who obviously understood its worth better than I did, grabbed it when she thought no one was looking and slipped it into her pocket.
‘They are escaping out the back,’ a cry from a window alerted us.
Teresa called to Ramón and grabbed my arm and we ran together with the others to a street at the rear of the convent. The nuns were fleeing through the laundries at the back of the building, but their escape was blocked by the neighbourhood women, who were throwing stones and jeering at them.
‘Now you will be as poor as we are,’ screamed one of the women. ‘May you know what it is like to have no food in your belly!’
One of the nuns screamed back, ‘You are fools! That wealth is the dowries of nuns for over four hundred years, and all those stocks you are throwing on the bonfire are the property of private citizens!’
The women paid no attention and continued to jeer.
One nun saw a gap in the crowd and made a break for it. Some of the others raced after her, with the local women on their heels. The nuns banged on the door of a house of a leading factory owner. A servant opened the door, but Teresa shouted, ‘Let them in and we will torch your building too!’ The door slammed shut.
For a moment, the nuns were confused that their neighbours should turn on them this way. Then they began to scatter in all directions. The women were about to pursue them when a young girl cried out that smoke was beginning to rise from the convent.
Teresa called to the women. ‘Let them go. We’ve scared them enough. Long live the Revolution!’
The atmosphere that evening was eerie. From the roof of Teresa’s building, we saw fires burning all over the city and we could hear the blasts of cannons and shooting as the guards and police attacked barricades. It was a still, hot night and the smell from the drains was rank. I rested my head against Ramón’s shoulder, resisting falling asleep in case we suddenly had to flee the building. I had participated in the burning of a convent that afternoon and yet I still prayed to God to keep Papá, who we had heard was fighting in the Clot-Sant Martí area, safe.
Paquita arrived with some bean stew for us. Ramón and I were so famished that we wolfed down the hearty mix. Paquita leaned against Teresa, exhausted.
‘A Franciscan father was killed in Sant Gervasi today,’ she said. ‘He was trying to run away with cash and someone shot him.’
Teresa shrugged. ‘Barcelona will be better off without those hypocrites.’
Paquita lifted her eyebrow. ‘I am against the clergy because their manner of education perpetuates ignorance and misery. But you, Teresa, you seem to truly hate them.’
Teresa stared at her hands. ‘They’ve given me good reason,’ she said. ‘My father died when I was five years old, and my mother had to place me and my sister in an orphanage so she could work. I think she believed the nuns were good women and would take care of us.’
Paquita and Teresa exchanged a glance. ‘I’m guessing that they didn’t,’ said Paquita.
‘Good women!’ cried Teresa. ‘They spoke of God’s divine love and at the same time forced sick children to eat their own vomit. I saw a boy beaten near to death for using his left hand.’
Despite the heat, I shivered and snuggled closer to Ramón, who put his arm around me.
‘I can’t bear to hear those stories,’ said Paquita, shaking her head. ‘There are far too many of them. But there are decent nuns and priests too. That’s why they spared the hospital for incurably ill children at Les Corts.’
We sat on the roof for another hour before Teresa decided it was time for us to go to sleep. She tucked us into her bed before accompanying Paquita to the door.
‘Decent nuns? Decent priests? I’ve never seen such a thing!’ I heard her tell Paquita. Teresa always spoke in a passionate manner, but the sound of her voice shocked me: it was the howl of a wounded animal.
Paquita, also taken aback, put her hand on Teresa’s shoulder. ‘What happened to you?’
There was a long silence before Teresa found the courage to speak. ‘My sister always stood up for me. “We will break that will of yours,” the nuns used to tell her …’ Teresa’s voice faltered. ‘And they did … They used to make her sleep in the damp cellar and turned a blind eye to the priest who went there to molest her.’
‘Oh God!’ said Paquita, putting her arm around Teresa’s shoulders.
‘She died as a result of one of his sick beatings,’ said Teresa, turning her face to Paquita. ‘She was seven years old!’
I pressed closer to Ramón. Molested? I didn’t understand the word. But I could see from the way Teresa’s shoulders shook as she gave way to tears that something terrible had happened. Perhaps that was why Anastasio had refused to desert. If Papá had been put in gaol, maybe Ramón and I would have been sent to an orphanage too. We had been poor and hungry all our lives, but our parents were always kind. We had never been mistreated by them.
Teresa’s story stayed with me the next day when we went with her to meet some of the women from Damas Rojas at the plaça del Pedró. Housewives and factory workers had gathered there to exchange news of the rebellion. Suddenly an excited woman started screaming that her sister, a nun at a nearby convent, had been tortured by her fellow nuns for being attractive. The crowd followed the woman to the convent in question. Some of them entered it and a while later reappeared dragging caskets with mummified remains in them. I reeled back in horror at the sight of the desiccated faces and sunken torsos. The corpses’ mouths were stretched wide open, as if they were screaming.
‘They were buried alive,’ whispered Ramón.
‘Look, their feet and hands are tied,’ observed one woman. ‘They’ve been martyred.’
The women took the caskets to plaça del Pedró and put them on display. Juana made a sign for them: ‘Martyred Nuns’.
‘Why are they permitted to bury their dead inside the convents when the city’s health laws forbid it?’ Juana asked the gathered spectators. ‘It’s due to their unhygienic practices that the rest of us suffer typhoid and cholera.’
Typhoid? I thought of my mother, buried in a pauper’s grave. Had she died because of these nuns? Rage boiled in my blood. My reaction was reflected in the crowd as several women cried out that they had lost children to those diseases.
‘We’ll take these corpses to City Hall,’ said Juana. ‘And demand they stop the practice of cloistered orders burying their dead in their walls.’
Her announcement brought enthusiastic shouts from the spectators. Some yo
uths picked up the caskets and headed for City Hall, most of the crowd following to make their demands. A few women, however, dragged some corpses to the barricades on the corner of carrer del Carme and carrer d’en Roig. We later learned that men from the barricades had dumped the cadavers on the doorsteps of the houses of the Güell, Comillas and Montella families. One of the bodies had ended up propped up in front of a church with a cigarette in its mouth, like a prostitute; while a simple-minded coalman danced with another. He was later arrested and executed for his profane act.
The following evening, my father returned for us. He looked weary and exhausted.
‘General Santiago has only been biding his time,’ he told Teresa. ‘He knows the troops here in Barcelona can’t be trusted. He’s brought in new troops — a lot of them — from Valencia and Zaragoza. These soldiers will not shoot above our heads.’
‘Yes, they will,’ said Teresa. ‘Whether the troops are from Barcelona or Zaragoza, we are fighting for them all.’
Papá shook his head grimly. ‘The reports we heard about the rest of the country striking along with us … they weren’t true. They were lies perpetrated by the Strike Committee to keep us fighting. Nobody else has stopped work in protest, not even in Madrid.’
Teresa flinched. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
‘While communications with Barcelona have been cut off, the Minister for the Interior has been doing a good propaganda job in convincing the rest of the country that we are not waging an anti-war movement but a Catalan separatist uprising. They are against us, not for us!’
‘So there will be no Revolution?’ asked Teresa, her voice cracking. ‘Because we are outnumbered?’
‘It is futile to continue,’ said Papá.
Teresa was as pale as a ghost. ‘So what now?’
Papá clenched his fists. ‘What there will be now are arrests and executions.’
Our meal together that evening was grim. There wasn’t much fresh food available in the barri Xinès, so Teresa made us chickpeas and rice. We ate together in silence. Afterwards, Ramón and I returned with Papá to our own apartment. It seemed strange to be there without Anastasio. Papá lay down on the bed and Ramón and I nestled on either side of him. Ramón fell asleep immediately, but Papá remained awake and listened to my story about the dead nuns with bound feet.
‘We don’t know that they were tortured,’ said Papá, trying to comfort me. ‘It might be some sort of Hieronymite ritual. Maybe the nuns bind the feet and hands of the dead so they fit in the coffins.’
‘Nobody thought of that,’ I said.
Papá stroked my hair. After a while, he sat up and slipped out of the bed. He took a knife from the cupboard and kneeled to loosen a floorboard. After lifting it, he placed his hand into the space and pulled out a box. When he opened the lid, I caught a glimpse of something shiny inside. He took out two golden hooped earrings and lifted them for me to see.
‘Do you remember these?’ he asked. ‘They were your mother’s.’
‘Yes, I remember them,’ I said. I saw my mother before me, as she had been when she was well: her dark skin and flashing eyes; her mane of rich black hair. She was dancing, her feet connecting with the ground as if she and the earth were one.
‘She didn’t want to take them to the grave,’ Papá said. ‘She insisted that they be left for you. Do you remember the legend she told you about them?’
I nodded. ‘They must never be sold,’ I said, repeating the exact words my mother had said. ‘If they are stolen, the thief will die a terrible death.’
Father put the earrings back in the box and returned them to their hiding place. ‘Now you know where they are,’ he whispered, fixing the floorboard back. ‘You mustn’t tell anybody.’
I gave him my promise.
Truthfully, the powers my mother had told me that the earrings possessed frightened me and I didn’t like to think too much about them. But what was more upsetting was the pinch of sadness in my heart. Why was my father showing me where the earrings were now? Did he have some premonition that something would happen to him?
The following morning, we rose at five o’clock as usual. It could have been any ordinary morning, except that Anastasio wasn’t with us and the defeat we had always felt in our hearts now lay heavily upon us. The last of our hopes that anything might change for the better left us when we saw officers of the Civil Guard holding workers at gunpoint, ordering them to dismantle the barricades. In some of the outer suburbs, the fighting continued, but without the support of the rest of the country the hope of a revolution was futile. The number of troops being brought in far outweighed the strikers. All the workers could do now was go back to their daily lives and wait for the repercussions that would surely follow their acts of protest.
When we arrived at the market, Teresa was putting on display the few carnations and geraniums that she had on hand.
‘Paquita’s been arrested,’ she told my father.
‘You’d better lie low,’ Papá warned her. ‘Although it might be because she worked at the Ferrer School. You know the government and clergy have been dying to get their hands on them for years.’
‘And you?’ Teresa asked, looking at my father with a worried expression on her face. ‘You are going back to the factory?’
Papá nodded. He was about to leave when Juana arrived. Her complexion was wan. She turned even greener when she saw Papá.
‘What is it?’ Teresa asked her. ‘Has someone else been arrested?’
Juana shook her head. ‘I’ve heard the most terrible rumour,’ she said. ‘When the troops arrived in Morocco after that incident at the port, they took ten men off the ship who had thrown their religious medals into the water and shot them as a warning to the others.’
Papá reeled back. His fingers gripped Teresa’s stand, as if he were trying to steady himself. A sick feeling rose in my stomach. Juana’s husband had thrown his medal into the water, but so had a lot of the men. It was Anastasio who did it first: the other men had followed his example. Was it possible that Anastasio had been executed?
‘If those hypocritical bitches hadn’t been at the port that day, none of this would have happened!’ sobbed Juana. ‘They were the ones that set everyone off with their two-faced blessings.’
A look that frightened me fell over Papá’s face. His pupils dilated like those of a crazy man.
Teresa grabbed his shoulders. ‘José, it’s only a rumour! And we’ve heard nothing but lies all week. We risked our lives believing the whole country was behind us. Estupideces! This is probably another trick to get us back onto the streets! Why would they be shooting soldiers they have just transported over to Morocco? It sounds like they need everyone they can get!’
Teresa’s logic calmed Papá. He stood up and straightened his clothes. If no other blow had come to my father that day, then perhaps he would have gone quietly to his work at the factory and normal life would have resumed. But then Laieta arrived with more bad news.
‘That bloody Santiago,’ she said. ‘He is thumbing his nose at us. He’s going to march the Saboya Infantry to the wharf today and ship them off to Morocco, as he did Anastasio’s battalion.’
Papá didn’t go back to the factory that day. Instead, we joined the crowd of spectators who watched in silence as the Saboya Infantry was marched down las Ramblas with a guard of troops and mounted policemen. We had risked our lives and gone hungry to show our opposition to the war. Who would take up our cause now? Did we have anyone to represent us in the Cortes? The Radical leaders and Republicans had not been prepared to lead us to revolution; they had been more concerned with protecting their own political ambitions. The only action available to us — to strike and to rebel — had failed. The footsteps of the marching soldiers stamped out the obvious: we were the downtrodden and always would be.
Ramón hoisted me onto a parked cart so I could see better. I turned to my father, and cringed when I noticed that the mad look had returned to his eyes.
&nb
sp; Despite the overwhelming numbers of the police escort, he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted out to the soldiers: ‘You are allowing yourselves to be led off to the slaughterhouse!’
No one in the crowd said anything. No one seconded his cry. But Papá wasn’t to be stopped. He shoved his way past the spectators and into the midst of the battalion.
‘Refuse!’ he shouted. ‘You are going to your deaths!’
The soldiers marched on, impervious to my father’s entreaties. He grabbed one man’s shoulder. ‘Young man, is your life not as precious as anybody else’s?’
The soldier’s face remained blank as he shoved Papá away with the butt of his rifle. I had the sense that the soldier’s action was not so much out of anger but for Papá’s own safety. The guards had been ordered to arrest any dissenters.
Teresa pushed through the crowd, trying to reach Papá. ‘José! José!’ she called.
Ramón tried to get through too, but the crowd was packed together. I knew that I had to reach Papá. I had to bring him back.
I jumped off the cart and struggled between the sea of legs, my size to my advantage, and out into the parade. A soldier bumped into me and I fell backwards.
‘Papá!’
I saw him running ahead of me. ‘Don’t go! Don’t go!’ he was shouting to the soldiers.
A policeman grabbed him and flung him into a crowd of women spectators. The women tried to hold on to him but he wrestled himself free.
I struggled to my feet. ‘Papá! Papá!’ My legs were trembling beneath me although I had gained some ground.
But before I could reach him, Papá grabbed the reins of a horse carrying a guard. The horse whinnied and pranced backwards with fear. The guard pulled out his revolver and pointed it at Papá.
‘Vete, cerdo! Let go, scumbag!’
‘Papá!’ I tried to scream, but there was no air left in my lungs.
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