by Jana Petken
“I’m going to wait and see what happens. I’m not going to do anything I might regret at a later date,” he finally said. “When the situation becomes clearer, I’ll make a decision. I can’t imagine what Valencia will do at the moment, should there be a rising, but one thing is certain: I won’t put our family in danger. So don’t worry about us, son. You’ve got enough to deal with.”
Hours passed. They spoke about Miguel and about what the Phalanx was doing. They both worried for his safety, but he had already chosen his side; his allegiance was clear. They discussed at length the political and military situation, and although nothing was said directly, they both knew that soon a decision would have to be made regarding where their own allegiance lay. Finally, they spoke about Marta, about how much they missed her and how they would both like to go and get her out of the convent before anything happened.
They said goodnight at the bottom of the stairs. Pedro shook his father’s hand and then drew away. “Father, I’ve never told you this before, but I want to thank you.”
“Thank me?”
“Yes, I want to thank you for adopting me and for giving me your name. Maybe I’ve had too many brandies, but I just want you to know that I’m proud to be your son. I love you, Papa, and whatever you decide to do, I’ll be behind you every step of the way.”
Chapter 45
María parked the car on the grassy verge at the side of the road that ran past the Martinéz estate. She switched off the lights and then waited for the signal – three quick flashes of torchlight. She opened the window and looked up at the starlit night. The moon was full, and the air was silent and breathless. The orange groves were to the right, and every now and again, she heard the sound of foxes crying into the pale Blue Mountains behind her. She heard a rustle of leaves within the thick density of the groves and pointed the torchlight in that direction. It was not Carlos arriving – just some small animal that dominated the darkness.
María went there often to wait for Carlos in the dead of night. The only time they could be together was when all around them slept, and their only witnesses were the animals that dominated the dark. It had not been an easy night, and she had thought about giving up on the idea of meeting Carlos altogether. Dinner had gone on longer than usual, and because of her mother’s mood, it had been impossible to slip away unnoticed. She sighed, opening the car door in an attempt to find a tiny breath of air that might cool her down. Her mother was looking tired, and Pedro’s news had only managed to lower her spirits further. She’d felt compelled to escort her to the bedroom and give her what comfort she could. First Marta and Miguel had gone, and now Pedro would be leaving too. She could only imagine the pain that her mother must be feeling. She felt it too. Every day she felt the terrible void that Marta’s departure had left in her life. It was almost as though her right arm had been severed and part of her would never be able to function properly ever again. Carlos understood. He was the only one she could talk to about it, and because of that, he would also understand her need to see him tonight.
Three flashes. María opened the car door and flashed back with her own torch. Carlos walked briskly out of the shadows of the trees and took her in his arms without saying a word. They kissed greedily for a long time and then pulled away reluctantly to sit side by side on top of a small stone wall.
“Was it very bad tonight?” Carlos asked María.
“It was terrible. I had to pretend that I didn’t know a thing about it. Mother was a wreck, and father, God bless him, tried to talk about everything and anything that might take mother’s mind off things. It was really awful to see Mama like that, but I’m glad Pedro came. It would have been even worse if he’d told her on the telephone.”
Carlos nodded his head in agreement. “You have to be strong for them, María. You’re all they have left now. None of the others will be home anytime soon. In fact, if this all kicks off like we believe, your brothers could be gone for a long, long time.”
María thought about this and agreed with him. There would be a conflict soon. Her mother refused to believe what she read and what she heard on the radio, but her father was already preparing the hacienda for the disaster that was going to befall them.
“How long until it all starts?” she asked Carlos.
“I don’t know. All we hear are rumours and opinions, but I think—”
“What will you do?” she interrupted, deciding she didn’t want to hear the answer. She dreaded the moment he’d tell her that he was leaving too. Carlos was a peasant, the horrible term landowners called anyone who didn’t own anything, although it was not a term she deemed appropriate for him. He was proud and probably the most dignified man, apart from her father, that she’d ever known. He was everything that the aristocratic, pompous, arrogant young bullies that owned half the country were not. But he was a peasant all the same, and between them was a deep chasm that could not easily be crossed. She waited for his answer, knowing that he didn’t want to give it.
“I’ll fight … I know that’s not what you want to hear, but that’s what I’m going to do.”
He looked into her eyes. She knew what he was thinking. There was no need for him to say more. Very soon, they would be enemies on opposite sides of a conflict that would no doubt witness the death of thousands and cause even more resentment and hate between the rich and poor.
“I don’t care who you fight for. I will be with you by your side,” María blurted out.
Carlos smiled. “Darling, if only it were that simple. If only you knew the half of it. María, your family are the masters of this land. We can’t be on the same side. We shouldn’t even be in love with each other. That’s why we sneak around in the darkness and sit on a stone wall at the side of a road.”
María protested. “But we are in love! And I don’t care when or where we meet, so long as I can see you. You still love me, don’t you?” She closed her eyes and snuggled into his chest. Carlos caressed María’s face with his fingers. She raised her slightly opened mouth to meet his, and he kissed her tenderly.
“Of course I do. I’ll always love you,” he told her as one would a child.
“Then why can’t we just tell everyone?”
Carlos sighed, jumped down from the wall, and led María into the groves. He leaned against a tree and pulled her against him.
“We can’t make this public because we’re so different – not you and I but our backgrounds, our families, our statuses in life,” he told her.
“But why does that matter so much? Just because you’re poor and I’m rich … Don’t be such a snob.”
Carlos laughed at the irony and kissed her again. “Do you remember when you used to ride with your father and you always waved to me, high on your horse, looking down at me whilst I picked the oranges from your father’s trees until my fingers bled?”
María nodded.
“You sat there on a horse that I always thought was far too big for you, and you looked like a princess. I remember that you sometimes brought me bread and cheese because you thought I was starving.”
She nodded again, remembering.
“And since your father allowed me to come to your schoolroom to read and write with Pedro and Miguel, I’m the only person in my family who can read, write, and speak English. Thousands of others have not been so lucky. Men just like me have been killed for raising their voices in protest against the inhumane treatment by landowners and the Church. Peasants have worked the land and died in the process, leaving children with no chance of survival and wives who have starved to death trying to keep their young alive. My own family have never been to Valencia, and our house is a tin shack! This is why we are so different, María, and I assure you that it has nothing to do with snobbery.”
“But you’re my equal in every way!” María protested.
“No, María, I’m not. Not in the eyes of Spain. I’m beneath you by birth, and that is why we will not be able to fight this war side by side.”
“But I d
on’t understand. We love each other, and I’m sure my parents would accept you into the family with open arms. I just don’t understand.”
“Then understand this: my kind hates your kind. My people will take revenge for all the cruel and unjust laws that your kind have made us live by for years. I do love you, I adore the ground you walk on, but very soon we will have to sacrifice everything for Spain. You will have to distance yourself from me because it is you who will not be accepted. Not in my world.”
María turned her back on him, close to tears. He was being deliberately cruel, she thought just for an instant, but she knew him better than that; he didn’t have a cruel bone in his body. He was trying to push her away for her own good, but it wouldn’t be good. It would be a disaster.
“Carlos, I don’t care what happens or who hates whom. I love you, and I will not lose you. I won’t. Do you understand me? I can’t lose you! Tell me what to do … please?”
“Go home, María, and be with your family.”
Carlos saw María to her car, gave her a hurried kiss, and then made his own way home, taking the shortest route through the dense orange grove in the lower fields. He ran some of the way and tried to banish María from his mind. There was no air tonight, and he stopped every now and again to catch his breath. María … He’d said goodbye to her tonight. She knew nothing about his life any more, about the work he had to do for his country, and he would not put her in danger by telling her, for he loved her too much.
He sat on a rock a short distance from his home, a small two-roomed stone walled shack with a corrugated iron roof that years ago housed nine people. He’d been born, there and he’d watched his family grow in number until the four walls, bursting at the seams, could hold no more bodies. He had four brothers and two sisters. Three of his brothers had died young of influenza, and his sisters were married. At least now he had a bed to sleep in.
His old grandmother, who always sat in the corner of the living space in a straw chair that permanently rocked back and forth, was his father’s mother. She had outlived so many in the village and had lived on this land when peasants’ homes were nothing more than caves and rough sheeting. He had been taught from a young age to make do with what little the family had, and he’d learned that in order to eat, he had to do the master’s bidding just like everyone else. He hated even thinking about the word master. Master was what everyone called Ernesto Martinéz, because that’s exactly what he was.
His father, Ramón, had always been a favourite of the master. He had gone many times to the big house that sat on top of the hill and had eaten at the master’s table. He remembered that his father would often return from these outings carrying meat and potatoes, sponge cakes, and freshly cooked vegetables. He’d been lucky as a child to have Ramón as a father.
He began to walk again, and as he grew closer to the house, his thoughts turned once again to María. She wouldn’t understand why he had to leave. She would be outraged and hurt, for he had not told her tonight that he was going to join the very people who would try to take everything from her.
Chapter 46
On 11 July, the fate of Spain was decided. Ernesto sat in his conservatory and played with the buttons on the radio that sat on a small table beside his armchair. He found the Valencia station and heard music, a Bach symphony. It soothed him, and as he drank his second cup of coffee, he felt his tense muscles relax. The music stopped, and as he reached over to retune the radio, he heard an unknown voice that sounded so close that it made him turn expectantly towards the door.
“We are the Phalanx Party,” the voice declared. “We have seized Valencia radio, and tomorrow the same will happen in all broadcasting stations throughout Spain.”
Ernesto slumped in his chair and stared at the radio in disbelief; it had begun. A few short words had set the ball rolling, a ball that would roll and roll until it knocked down Spain. He called for another coffee and fresh bread. He would not go to the groves as planned, he decided. His place was right where he was now, listening for more news and waiting for the telephone to ring with the voices of panicked neighbours.
In Ernesto’s opinion, it was at that moment that the republican government should have defended itself by arming the workers who’d elected it. But it didn’t. It merely proclaimed that it was the legally constituted government and saw no need for arms.
Later, Ernesto called for Celia and told her what was happening. They sat on the shaded patio together, eating a light lunch and talking about their children and what this would mean to all of them, but neither spoke the words that would signal the end of their world. Ernesto gripped Celia’s hand and fought the terrible thoughts screaming in the back of his mind: to leave La Glorieta or watch it being burnt to the ground or confiscated in a battle that would possibly leave them all dead were the unthinkable words that he refused to speak. However, one day soon, the unthinkable would happen, and his duty now was to prepare his family for that moment.
Chapter 47
Pedro arrived at Tetuán, Morocco, in the early hours of the morning and found an eerie air of readiness at the base. Rumours were almost tangible in the warm mist, and young soldiers paced nervously up and down inside the hangars and on the grassy verges of the runway. No specific orders had been issued, but there was plenty of speculation. Fear of the unknown was painted on every face, but with it was an undeniable excitement that only a soldier could embrace.
“Orders have arrived; briefing in an hour,” Captain Mora told Pedro out of earshot.
“Are we marching?” Pedro asked him outright.
“Yes, this is from the top: General Mola. Before sunrise tomorrow morning, we will be at war with our countrymen, and we’ll either go down with this ship or live to tell the tale of our country’s murder.”
“And the mainland?” Pedro asked.
“I’m not sure. I am not in the loop concerning the wider planning, but I can only presume that similar orders have been issued for all provinces. I am giving you a troop of Riffians under my command. They will show no mercy, Pedro, and there will be no retreat. They don’t understand that word, but you understand this: If you have any self-doubt, hide it. If you are not committed, don’t speak the words to anyone. Understand?”
Pedro left Captain Mora, the man he hoped to call father-in-law one day, and strode across the base on shaky legs. It was 17 July, a hot, sticky day, a day he would never forget. He was resigned to his fate, and his only thoughts were for those he had left at home. He had presumed that Spanish Morocco would have to be taken first in order for the troops there to get to the mainland in time for the main uprising, but he had no way of knowing this and no way of knowing if his family would be safe. He had no way of knowing if his father had been informed of what was to happen, if his sister Marta had the protection of the Church, or if his brother, Miguel, would not do anything stupid or engage himself in unnecessary heroics.
Pedro’s final orders came down just as dusk was falling. The forces were to move into the town, and he and the Moroccan soldiers under his command were to take a forward position.
Pedro swallowed water to ease his dry throat as he marched alongside his troop, a bunch of men that he hardly knew and whose names he couldn’t remember. He had a good idea about what he would have to face when they reached their designated position and tried unsuccessfully to blot it out of his mind with images of home and family. His gun would be fired in anger for the first time, he kept thinking on that walk between civilisation and total mayhem. He would kill and might be killed. He had joined the army, but like his father, he had never once thought that he would see a war in his lifetime.
Pedro heard the sound of gunfire before he’d even reached his destination, and he checked his own weapon with shaky hands. A line of Spanish working-class citizens faced them as they turned the last corner. They had very little in the way of weaponry, but Captain Mora gave the order to open fire on them nonetheless. The first men to fall were the prominent unionists at the front of th
eir lines, and as they fell, Pedro heard their dying screams of “Long live the republic!”
He closed his eyes, shutting out the sight of blood, men falling, and pieces of broken flesh. He fired his gun, yelling incoherently, and tried to ignore the noises around him. He didn’t know who or what his bullets were hitting, and he squeezed his eyelids together even tighter than before. He refused to look, afraid to see death. They were real people, he kept thinking, just like him, with families and lovers. He pointed his gun, holding it in a vice-like grip, his fingers pushing down hard on the trigger, and all he could think about was what he might be shooting at: a wall; a window; a man’s chest, leg, or arm? Was it a man, woman or child he was killing?
“You’ve run out of bullets!” he heard one of his men shout. “Reload, sir!”
Pedro’s watery eyes opened wide as he looked around him. Dead bodies lay grotesquely, some on top of each other and others without arms or legs, which had been torn apart by mortar shells. The wounded writhed in pain, their arms flailing and mouths wide, screaming for help. The road was wet, running with hot summer rain and blood, making pink puddles at the edges of the embankment, and empty bullet shells covered the still-smoking ground. His weapon was ready but there was barely a person still alive to kill. He looked around him again and saw that some of his own men had been shot and killed, and he wondered at that moment why he wasn’t dead.
That night, Pedro sat with his men on the outskirts of Tetuán town, shell-shocked and amazed at the rapid way in which the uprising had begun. He knew nothing about what was happening in any part of the Spanish mainland, although rumours were rife. What he did find out was that while the fighting was going on, the republican commander in chief in Morocco had spent the entire time gambling in a casino, unaware of the chaos in his colony. Apparently, he’d been told, the commander had only found out about the rising when a telephone call was put through to him at one of the gambling tables. Pedro shuddered, imagining the moment of his execution. He had seen countless summary executions that day, even after the victims had surrendered peacefully, and then he remembered that he was a killer now too!