Hunger Town

by Wendy Scarfe

  From where she sat she could observe him clearly. ‘No, I don’t think so. He doesn’t look threatening.’

  We drank the remainder of our coffee, making it last. He folded his paper, put on his hat and stood up, deliberately, it seemed. He made his way between the tables so that he might pass us. He doffed his hat and murmured, in English: ‘Good morning, ladies. A lovely day.’

  Marie narrowed her eyes slightly and assessed him. I saw a short, spare man with a square face and receding hair. His eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses were tired but sharply intelligent.

  ‘Artists, I believe.’ He smiled down at us.

  ‘Yes.’ Marie was cautious.

  He looked regretful. ‘But Spain is not a good place for artists these days.’

  Was he going to make the ubiquitous apology for our experience, just like the others? I felt disappointed.

  ‘I believe,’ he continued, ‘that you are fortunate in having a friend here to help you.’

  Marie took another sip of the dregs of her coffee and watched him over the rim of her cup. She was still suspicious and I was nervous. She didn’t hurry to reply and at last gave a brittle laugh: ‘Not really a friend. An old lover. Garcia was his name I think. It’s so long ago. But I’ve had second thoughts. Maybe it’s not good to dig up the past. His wife mightn’t welcome my sudden arrival.’

  He looked at her with amusement. Clearly, he didn’t believe her. But for some strange reason his disbelief seemed to please him.

  ‘Maybe you have other friends here … beside Garcia. The young make so many friends and so quickly.’

  There was something odd about this conversation that disturbed me. It wasn’t the words—they were innocuous enough—it was something I couldn’t quite define.

  His expression remained bland. ‘I’m sure you’ll enjoy catching up with … old friends.’

  ‘Up to now it’s been a futile search,’ Marie sounded resigned.

  ‘Futile, you say? That’s frustrating. And sad.’ He looked sympathetic. ‘I’m sure that need not be the case. Oh, excuse me, ladies, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m the local doctor.’ He offered his hand and we each shook it. Was I mistaken or did he press my hand a little too firmly? And look too keenly at the wedding ring on my other hand?

  He waited expectantly. I took the initiative: ‘I’m Judith,’ I said, ‘and this is my friend Marie. We’re Australians.’

  Briefly he looked taken aback. Then he said, ‘It’s a pleasure, ladies. My best wishes for all your endeavours. I hope you find your friend.’

  He moved away and out the door.

  ‘Judith,’ Marie was breathless with hope, ‘he knows something.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said and then was silent.

  My thoughts in turmoil tumbled over each other. I hardly dared to let myself hope. I had lived so long in doubt and fear about Harry that this abnormal state of suspended life had become my real world, everything else a mere dream. In my worst moments I had seen myself like the ghostly figures of my childhood flitting along the wharf doomed to endless futile searching.

  At last I managed to ask, ‘Can we trust him? There are eyes everywhere watching us. It could be a trap.’

  ‘Imagination, Judith!’ She was brisk. ‘There are no eyes, just a lot of people trying to go about their normal business. We’re peripheral to their struggles. Come, let’s post your letters. The sooner one of them leaves your handbag the better.’

  We paid the bill and walked out into the sunshine. We had been lucky with the weather. It would have been hard to justify hanging around pretending to draw if it had rained all day.

  ‘Do you think he’ll contact us again? It would be terrible if we had read too much into an innocent conversation.’

  ‘No.’ Marie was certain. ‘Not innocent, Judith. Not innocent at all.’

  When we returned to the hotel there was a message waiting for us. The proprietor said the doctor had called to say he would visit the un-well English woman in the evening.

  I started to deny that either of us was sick but Marie kicked me surreptitiously in the ankle. ‘Yes, you do look very pale, Judith,’ she said quickly.

  The overweight proprietor nodded wisely. He had little twinkling eyes embedded in folds of flesh and when he laughed his whole face quivered jovially. ‘English ladies,’ he pronounced, in perfect English, ‘always get sick in Spain. It is the food or the water or both. We’re not as clean as the English. The doctor will come at about eight o’clock after his rounds. He does many rounds at night. Often poor people in the villages need him. He’s a good man. He goes twice a week and stays there. He rides a mule.’

  This was another odd conversation and I wondered what secret assignations might be going on. ‘He’s not afraid of the bears?’ I asked innocently.

  For a second he looked blank. ‘Bears?’ He seemed puzzled. And then, ‘Oh, yes, bears. No, the village people come and protect him with lanterns and staves. He’s not afraid of bears. Our doctor’s a very brave man. He’s braver than the soldiers. They’re afraid of bears.’ He chuckled. ‘You look most un-well Mrs Grenville. So pale. And those purple rings under your eyes.’ He was overdoing it a little.

  ‘I’ll rest,’ I said.

  He beamed approvingly. ‘Yes. You should lie down in your room and wait for the doctor. I’ll send the maid with some coffee for you both.’

  For a time we lay on our beds and read. Marie ventured out for some rolls, cheese and fruit for lunch. The proprietor kept us supplied with plenty of coffee and, panting up and down the stairs, knocked on our door a couple of times to inquire about our welfare and my ‘sickness’. He suppressed his excitement and I felt sad for him. Was this small act of defiance in helping us his means of retaining self-respect? Did all suppressed and victimised people assert their power and dignity through little tricks, glorying in miniscule victories? He would have liked us to share more of our secret but we remained cautious and he had to be satisfied with being the liaison.

  In the afternoon Marie dozed but I lay awake visualising a new cartoon. In my mind’s eye I saw a football field and a team of soldiers with heavy leather boots and wolverine faces. I named them Mussolini, Lerroux, Franco and Dolfuss. In the centre with the football in his hand ran Adolph Hitler. He raced ahead of the rest in the act of kicking the football of the world through the goal posts labelled FASCISM. My fingers itched to draw it. I saw it all so clearly, so powerfully. But if it were discovered I would have ruined our chance of rescuing Harry. I would have blown our covers as innocent tourists, perhaps even thrown our own lives away. I had risked sending one cartoon to London. I must not dare to send a second. It could wait. There would be time later.

  The doctor knocked on our door at eight o’clock. He was accompanied by the proprietor who, hoping to be included, hovered expectantly. The doctor sent him away with thanks but a firm hand on his shoulder.

  We set the one chair in our room for him and perched on our beds. For a few minutes he gazed at us thoughtfully, cleaning his glasses and taking his time. When he began to speak his words were slow and careful as if he were measuring the weight of each of them. I fidgeted, struggling to control my impatience, and knew that he recognised my anxiety.

  He spoke more to me than to Marie, although he often glanced in her direction.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘of the terrible events that occurred here early in October?’

  I nodded.

  ‘They didn’t end then. They are still going on. You saw the boy shot.’

  My mouth was dry. I swallowed and nodded again.

  He didn’t need an answer. His questions were merely rhetorical. ‘There were many shot in those first days. Thousands. And the reprisals have gone on for weeks. Even the wounded in hospital were dragged out and murdered. You might say that we have descended into the abyss and still taste the sulphur of hell. If I hadn’t been away at that time … I tell you this, not to shock you further, but to explain to you that there have been a number of wounded or ill m
en secreted in the hill villages.’

  Marie interrupted: ‘And that is why you visit on a mule?’

  He gave her a slight smile. ‘And very uncomfortable they are, too. But sure-footed on mountain tracks that cling to the edge of steep gorges. But, yes, that is why I go.’

  ‘And my husband?’ I could no longer contain myself. ‘Did you tend to him?’

  He gave me all his attention. ‘So you are searching for your husband?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought it might be so.’ And he glanced again at my wedding ring. ‘I would like to tell you that the young Englishman I tended was your husband but there were a few foreigners caught up in it all and I can’t give you my complete assurance. He was wounded.’

  At my stricken look he hastened to add: ‘But not seriously. I treated him a couple of times and then at …’ He named a village we had not heard of. ‘Then he was moved and I needed to look after the more seriously wounded. Those who need care are moved to different places according to how well or ill they are. But …’ He looked at me with concern. ‘I may be mistaken, perhaps he’s not your husband. I asked about him and was told he carried a British passport and that’s all I know. There was no mention of him being Australian.’

  ‘Is there nothing more you can tell us?’ My voice was thick with despair.

  ‘A little,’ he said, ‘but it would be cruel to raise your hopes too much. He was a fair young man, in his twenties, I’d estimate, and of a slender build. He was barely conscious when I treated him and I had no time to question him. Of course, we all wondered how a perfect stranger came to be embroiled in our political affairs.’

  ‘If it’s my Harry, my husband, it’s a long story.’

  ‘And a complex one?’

  ‘Yes, a complex one.’ I felt a little more composed. The description fitted Harry. Hope was a reality I could cling to.

  ‘One more thing that might help,’ he added. ‘There is a man, José, who lives in a village at the foot of the mountains. You can reach there via the main road so long as you turn …’

  Now Marie had his attention as he detailed the route we must take into a remote and secluded valley.

  At last he put on his hat, preparing to leave. ‘Don’t be afraid. You’ll be safe there. The soldiers only rarely venture into the mountains.’

  ‘Because of the bears?’ I said.

  This time he smiled with genuine amusement. ‘The bears are a bit of help to us. And the wolves. All our friends.’

  I gave him my hand. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Whether it is or isn’t my husband I will never be able to thank you enough.’

  ‘Mrs Judith Grenville,’ he replied, his eyes penetrating, ‘or is it Miss Judith Larsen? Your cartoons are thanks enough.’

  I gaped at him, my hand still grasped in his. How could he be so discerning?

  ‘My cartoons?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I visit England. I keep in touch with the editor of the Daily Herald. We were at boarding school together there. There’ll be more cartoons I hope.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but not here.’

  ‘No, not here.’ For a moment he looked desolate. ‘But we’ll see them you know. Cartoons cross all barriers. Drawings speak everybody’s language. The world is a smaller place than you realise.’

  When he had departed we dissected every comment he had made, examined the nuances of every phrase and expression. On a roller-coaster of hope and doubt, one minute we convinced ourselves we had found Harry, but in the next feared failure. A British passport did not necessarily mean that the young man was English. Australians also carried British passports. The doctor had said that he had treated more than one foreigner, but his physical description matched Harry.

  I agonised over whether Harry might be lying ill in some mountain village accessible only by mule. We had heard of the two-storey wooden houses on stilts that crawled up the sides of gorges and clung there above creeping narrow tracks around escarpments. In the mountains there were even labyrinths of caves where people lived or could be hidden.

  Eventually, having exhausted ourselves with wild surmises, we stopped.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Marie said, ‘we’ll find this José and talk with him. Take heart. Each day we get nearer.’

  She spread her map of Spain on the bed and studied it. ‘Look, Judith, look here. When we leave with Harry we’ll not take the road back through Oviedo and along the coast. We’ll head for Pamplona and then north over the Pyrenees to a border post. We’ll take our chances with the weather.’

  ‘Better the weather than Franco’s soldiers,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yes. Far better. A small border post won’t be so officious. They won’t have heard of Harry or us, nor probably much about the Asturias.’

  ‘And if he shows signs of having been shot?’

  ‘Wounded, Judith, wounded. There are many ways of being wounded. We won’t mention shooting. I think he might have been silly enough to run with the bulls in Pamplona at their festival.’ Enthusiastically she warmed to her theme. ‘And, heavens above, the things wives have to endure from the stupidity of men. We’ve had to wait around in Spain for months while he recovered from his injuries and was fit enough to travel.’

  Suddenly her make-believe struck home and I felt a surge of anger at Harry. ‘Certainly the bit about him being impetuous and unthinking of consequences won’t be a deception,’ I said bitterly.

  She grinned. ‘Then you can be very convincing and rail at him all the way to the border.’

  ‘No.’ My voice was tight and desperate. ‘I’ll keep it for France. But after we get out of Spain I’ll let him have a few home truths. Oh, Marie,’ I pleaded, ‘do you really believe this Englishman is Harry? And that José knows where he is? I don’t think I can endure much more of this.’

  She hugged me. ‘I have a good feeling. All these things that have suddenly happened in our favour must mean something. Please have faith.’

  I had another rotten night, savagely turning this way and that, my body aching with my struggles to sleep, and praying that dawn would come soon. My brief anger at Harry had dissolved. His impetuosity might appear careless and thoughtless to those who did not know him but to me it was part of his sweet eagerness, his excitement at life, his snatching at new experiences. By comparison I was sober—even, as Jock would term it, dour. That Harry loved me was a strange and beautiful wonder for which I was deeply grateful.

  At last a few damp rays of sun struggled through the window. All night the sighing of quiet soft rain had accompanied my restless thoughts. Now the rain had stopped but probably only briefly because the sky was a low pallid grey. We made a point of carrying our easels and stools downstairs and then quite a show of our disappointment and indecision. Finally, in loud clear voices so everyone might hear, we announced that today painting would be impossible and we’d just have to be satisfied with a drive. It was a complete bore but the weather …

  Maybe it would improve tomorrow. We shrugged.

  We had taken a leisurely breakfast at our cafe because we needed to appear innocently unhurried and later, on the pavement, we expressed again our disgust and disappointment to two cafe patrons who sheltered under umbrellas.

  Eventually we climbed into the Citroën. The engine was cold and stammered and stuttered and worried Marie for a few moments before it burst into life.

  At the petrol station an attendant filled our tank and Marie bought an extra can for any emergency and he put it into the boot for her.

  We set off. I leaned back in my seat with a sigh of relief. ‘Pretending is so exhausting. I have no flair for it.’

  ‘No, Judith, not at all. Pretending is delightfully stimulating.’

  ‘I think you love playing a part, as much as I hate it.’

  She glanced at me whimsically. ‘You fear to expose yourself to strangers and hide behind your cartoons, dear Judith.’

  ‘You think I do that, Marie?’

  ‘Most certainly you do. Me, I hide behind whatever p
ersona I choose.’

  We crossed the bridge over the river, the water dark and stale without a bright sun.

  ‘Have we a long drive?’ I asked, changing the subject.

  ‘Longish. Further than we have ventured yet. I don’t know how extensive the foothills are or how far before we enter the high mountains.’

  ‘And the road?’ I always asked about the road, which was useless because Marie had no more knowledge than I did and she had to cope with it. But she always answered me patiently because my questions about the road hid my deeper anxieties.

  It was indeed a longish drive before we entered the troughs and crests of the foothills. The road twisted and turned as we climbed steadily around the first low mountain, then dipped into a fertile valley with a small stream. We climbed again, another hill, and then down into another valley.

  Then there were a series of hills each higher than the last. As the grade steepened the car occasionally growled in complaint and Marie grimaced. ‘Come on, old girl,’ she muttered. ‘Give her a pat, Judith, and tell her she’s doing well.’

  In the valleys below us I saw grey-stone villages with terracotta-tiled roofs. All looked similar and our directions for finding José and his particular village seemed dauntingly vague.

  As we ascended the slopes above and below us were thickly forested with deciduous trees. A thick carpet of dried brown leaves and acorns told me that many were oaks. A squirrel, alerted by our passing, skittered across the leaves and raced up a tree. The road narrowed. Now it seemed a mere ledge interrupting the slope. Marie reduced speed and we crawled over the dirt track keeping clear of the soft edges that fell into the valley too far below us.

  She looked worried. ‘I can’t turn on this road, Judith. We must go on but where to? If it narrows further I don‘t know …’ We were both apprehensive. She clung to the steering wheel for the road was wet and she didn’t need to warn me that the car might slide uncontrollably on the muddy surface. It grew colder. Marie’s rug had fallen off her lap. I leaned over and tucked it securely around her. Our breaths fogged up the windscreen and I tried to clear it with a handkerchief so she could see.