Peeling Oranges

by James Lawless

  ***

  Franco failed to take Madrid partly due to the intervention of the International Brigade.

  One of the rifles aimed at Franco’s troops belonged to a Captain Gearóid MacSuibhne of the James Connolly Battalion of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

  Gearóid had been released from prison in Ireland, as it could not be proved that he was responsible for the June executions. He had Basque comrades (something which came as a shock to Patrick when he found out about it later from diplomatic sources). Attempts were being made to link the IRA to an international body of freedom fighters.

  In one of the letters I found in which Gearóid wrote to my mother, he told her of the strong communist strain which of necessity ran through the veins of Andalusian peasants who toiled as modern-day feudal serfs on vast estates (latifundios) owned by wealthy landlords. They in turn shared in a bond of common suffering with exploited Asturian mineworkers in the North. ‘They are our brothers,’ he wrote in Irish.

  On his release, Gearóid immediately proceeded to assist in the organisation of a group of men – four hundred in all, including some writers and intellectuals. These men saw a global threat to the freedom of the individual being acted out on a Spanish stage, and were prepared to play a part for their beliefs.

  Forty two Irish republicans were killed in Spain; over a hundred were wounded, and of the twelve who were captured, Gearóid MacSuibhne was one. He was put on Franco’s black list together with a number of other prisoners, mainly officers. They were taken to Burgos prison.

  In 1938 Gearóid MacSuibhne was sentenced to death.

  ***

  I dig up in the local library some stuff on O’Duffy and his Blueshirts in Spain. They were on a Catholic crusade against communism. They saw little action and the cruelties of the Nationalists and the frequency of peremptory executions began to diffuse an ideology which had been so clear in their heads when in Ireland. And, as Patrick points out, there was a tendency to heap all the blame for anti-Catholic atrocities on the communists, whereas most of them were committed by anarchists, ‘something which the Blueshirt battalion failed to see’.

  When Guernica was bombed from the air by the German Condor Legion in 1937, they realised that, instead of being part of a great crusade, they too were merely bit-actors in a tragic farce. As Patrick later recorded:

  Every hour more news of the devastation reaches our ears; I think of the howls and screeches of agony, of limbs flying in the air, of everything broken up; of all that was fertile rendered barren. No longer can it be claimed that the war is a Catholic crusade against communism as the clips from the Irish Independent, which M sends me, are so fond of reiterating: the bombing was sanctioned by F against the Basque people who are the most Catholic of all the Spaniards.

  ***

  O’Duffy’s Brigade marched home, as Patrick records, ‘disunited and in disarray, their blue shirts soiled by Spanish mud’.

  As regards the republicans, long days and nights spent in trenches, and cold and hunger, tended to diffuse some of their ideologies also. Divisions occurred between socialists and anarchists. There were squabbles and interpersonal differences. ‘Vision became blurred in the smokescreen of war.’

  In the meantime, Patrick and my mother had only one vision, and that was the road ahead as they motored with all haste towards the Pyrenees. (‘Pristine worlds faded into dream as the hysteria of war gripped the country.’).

  My mother, perhaps because of her training in Cumann na mBan, showed great courage and even found time to crack a joke about ‘a dwarf general with a toy gun coming out to play’.

  There are two passes on the Pyrenees known to shepherds and resistance fighters. Patrick followed his map carefully – he had a good directional sense (unlike me), but even then there were queues before him in the frenzy to escape.

  ***

  He worried about my mother:

  M is so beautiful, I cannot help noticing other men eyeing her. At a garage in O, a guardia civil lifted up her dress with his rifle, while two of his companions circled around her, leering and laughing. They have no shame. I have this dreadful fear that something will happen, and that I will not be able to defend her. In a world such as ours, beauty is a handicap.

  From France, my mother returned to Ireland where, as Patrick said, she would be safe ‘until the danger passed’.

  ***

  Perched on the French side of the Pyrenees, ‘like an eagle on a high cliff,’ Patrick Foley observed the progress of the war: he smelled the plume of smoke rising from burnt-out cities; he counted shots fired; he observed the gaunt, frozen faces of the refugees crossing the mountains; he saw the black circles around their sunken eyes; he watched, as stooped and hungry, they embraced themselves to keep out the cold; he saw people and animals struggling to move forward and upwards as mountain and snow allied together to oppose them; he saw them driving their beasts of burden, as if time or progress did not exist, as if there were no history, as if the world were returning to a nomadic state.

  News of the burning of churches and convents distressed him. He wrote:

  Such action is complicating ideology. It is having the effect of winning more converts back home for the fascist cause, as there are many Irish families with relations in religious orders here. And yet, that is what we want externally. I feel I am being rent in two.

  Although republican at heart, Patrick campaigned for an early recognition of Franco. The victory of the latter was seen as inevitable with his professionally trained troops and German and Italian assistance. Patrick paraphrased de Valera’s own words, which were to the effect that in the world of diplomacy one does not have to agree with the politics of a regime in order to recognise it.

  I learned from the diaries that in the early years of its independence, Ireland, as a distinct entity, simply did not exist in the eyes of British diplomats abroad. Patrick argued that if Ireland could give formal recognition to the Franco government before Britain did, it would distinguish her from Britain and thus give extra weight to her independent status. Besides, the Vatican still maintained diplomatic links with Spain, and Ireland did not wish to contravene the Pope.

  The Irish language was used as a diplomatic code, as nervous British envoys attempted to read Irish correspondences, particularly in German contexts.

  From 1937 onwards, Patrick continued to campaign for Franco’s recognition. He spent most of the days writing letters to interested parties. Every word he wrote contravened his own personal convictions:

  If lies are repeated often enough they can take on the semblance of truth. There was a danger of succumbing, of being swept away by all the jargon, of losing one’s self.

  ***

  De Valera refused to give early recognition to Franco. In a state of despondency, Patrick referred to himself as nothing more than a ‘marionette, whose strings are manipulated across oceans.’ The wiry politician played all his cards with other nations very carefully. ‘In the world of diplomacy,’ he maintained, ‘haste can prove fatal.’

  In his mountain quarters, Patrick Foley had plenty of time for reflection. He related to my mother:

  Spain is a country of extremes: snow-capped mountains, sunburnt earth; anarchist, fascist; chaperoned courtship, unbridled prostitution. In politics they all hold their opposing beliefs so passionately. They see no contradictions. No dark side. How does one rule people who are so passionate in diversity? The taking of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

  She replied that there was ‘no hurry to have children in a world like this, even if God were to bless us’.

  No hurry to have children! The phrase made him fret. His moroseness about mortality, now heightened by war, made him obsessive about having an offspring. ‘No hurry! No hurry!’ he repeated.

  But can words reveal total truths about a person? Are they not shackled by their own rules, thus limiting what they can convey? He confided to his diary of the many routes to unfaithfulness, and the clearest one was ‘through the tunnel of
loneliness’. Some Irish saint – Colmcille he thought – described exile as ‘a form of dismemberment, but the wound is unseen’.

  November 1937:

  A bitterly cold night. A snow storm outside my quarters. All sorts of strange howls and screeches – animal or human I don’t know – outside in the woods. A loud banging at my door. A terrified young girl appeared before me. She looked about twelve or thirteen. She pleaded with me to take her in, to give her refuge. Her uncle, she said, had fled over the mountains. The Guardia Civil were hot on her heels. Through the light of the oil lamp I saw her tremble. She had an old sack around her shoulders. I took her in. I stoked the fire. I put her to bed.

  At about one a.m. I heard banging once more. It was the guardias civiles – two of them – looking for rameras and other creatures of ill repute.

  I said that I had not seen anyone. I showed them my documents and claimed diplomatic immunity. They could not demand ingress. I had to shout. It affected my breathing. They looked at me suspiciously. A grin at my stoop. I told them that their positions could be in danger if they broke the laws of international diplomacy. I pointed out that they were in alien territory. They laughed, but when I demanded their identification numbers, they hesitated and eventually backed off. I heard shooting soon afterwards and wondered if it had been the girl’s uncle who had been shot.

  The girl, L, sleeps. She is very pretty; her hair is so soft in my hands. Her little breasts rise and fall carrying each breath so precariously.

  When she awoke, she stared at me for a moment with huge brown eyes. Then she wanted to thank me in a physical way for saving her. I thought of M. She said her uncle keeps her and other ‘nieces’ in an apartment in Barcelona. She repeated again and again that I was kind, and that she would have to go as soon as the weather cleared. My offer to assist her with transport was rejected. She would not tell me where she was bound. Fear was written all over the poor creature. She was a child made woman before her time.

  The following morning the weather cleared. I gave her some provisions and she went on her way. My quarters had acted as a house of shells and I was thankful I had preserved a life.

  ***

  When Gearóid MacSuibhne was sentenced to death by Franco in 1938, my mother wrote to Patrick and asked him if he could do anything on Gearóid’s behalf. Patrick had no happy memories of MacSuibhne, but he was an Irishman in danger abroad, and Foley was the diplomat. Besides, de Valera had also sent official instructions that every diplomatic effort should be made to intervene if the lives of any of his former IRA colleagues were in jeopardy.

  What is a diplomat? He is one who lies for his country. He is a weaver of words, a splitter of hairs, a surgeon of logic. Irish republicans argued he is a superfluity – Ireland has no colonies, so why does it need diplomats?

  Patrick, in a world of snow and ice and fresh mountain air, saw the duties of his profession clearly:

  We must not consider the actor or the role as pre-eminent. The sashes, the swallow-tail coats, the black silk hat, the appellation, the wining and dining, the chandeliers; the silver cutlery sometimes shine too brightly and blind us to our purposes, which must always be the ultimate interests of our country, especially her consolidation as an independent and sovereign nation. Perhaps M’s words about me are true when she sees me in such regalia: I am just a ‘stuffed shirt’.

  ***

  In 1939 Patrick Foley was instructed to return to Madrid to attend Franco’s victory march. This was taken to mean in diplomatic circles that Ireland recognised the dictatorship, something which Britain had not done. The outcome of such action was that Ireland was now seen as an autonomous state on the international stage.

  It was enough to make the embassy typist, señora Martínez, enquire why that rare phenomenon, a smile – albeit a wry one – registered on Patrick’s face.

  Some days after the victory march, Patrick Foley was seated with two German agents at an open-air café near the Prado. He was watched carefully by two British agents across the road. Patrick records the meeting, but does not record the content of their conversation.

  In an attempt to save MacSuibhne’s life, the Irish legation had proposed to de Valera that perhaps a trade deal could be made with Franco. As Spain was in danger of isolation from many countries, she would be glad of any help she could get from Ireland. In fact some Spanish diplomats had suggested an alliance of the Catholic countries, Spain, Italy and Ireland, to stand firm against the communist threat. Patrick Foley expressed his frustration when a trade deal was rejected by de Valera and Franco, both of whom he referred to as ‘stubborn mules’.

  MacSuibhne could not be granted a pardon. Was Franco afraid of losing face? Patrick argued that American prisoners and those of other nationalities had been released. The counter argument was that MacSuibhne was not merely a republican soldier, but was now perceived as an international terrorist linked to Basque and Catalan anarchists.

  However, there was the possibility of a break through German lines. Franco was dependent on Germany, and that country wanted to make use of IRA men in its planned onslaught on Britain. The compromise was that MacSuibhne would be allowed to ‘escape’, just as they had allowed the ‘escape’ of another Irish officer, Frank Ryan, some time previously.

  Gearóid was to be driven to the Spanish border, where he would ‘break free’. Patrick asked if there was a guarantee that he would not be shot in the back. The agents told him that no such guarantee could be given; the alternative was to leave him in prison where he would surely die. A car would be waiting for him at the border which would take him to Germany, where he would join other IRA men, including Frank Ryan. From there they would plan an invasion of Ireland (Operation Dove) which would synchronise with the Führer’s planned onslaught on Britain (Operation Sealion). Patrick’s role was to go to Burgos prison and brief MacSuibhne about the plan.

  Patrick knew that while de Valera (who was acting as both foreign minister and taoiseach) might go along with a simulated escape, he would not accept an invasion of Ireland, firstly because he had declared Ireland’s neutrality in the event of Britain’s war with Germany, and secondly because the IRA had already been proscribed in Ireland.

  I find a second letter which my mother wrote to Patrick, again pleading with him to attempt to save Gearóid’s life.

  On the journey to Burgos the embassy driver, Javier Jiménez, hardly spoke a word. Patrick records how he frequently went into sulks as a way of expressing disapproval of what they were trying to do. ‘He is a fascist at heart and dangerous in more ways than one.’

  Patrick describes the prison:

  As the prison door was pushed open by a guardia civil, a shaft of sunlight, like a search light, pierced the dark cell seeking signs of life. A cough was heard before anyone could be seen. I heard a rustling sound and looked down on the dirty straw floor to see two bodies crawling like reptiles towards me. The guard banged the door closed and brandished an oil lamp. There was no window or ventilation in the room. The smell was nauseating. G lay before me, bearded, unkempt with a wild look in his eyes. His left leg was in a splint. I wondered was F making a mockery of us by having a leg of the ‘escapee’ broken.

  He recognised me instantly. ‘I can’t run anymore,’ he said in Irish.

  The other man was small and thin and coughed frequently.

  ‘His name is Jesús,’ said MacSuibhne. ‘There is more than one Jesus in Spain, you know?’

  I looked closely at the Spaniard. At first I thought it was dirt, but as my eyes adjusted to the light, I realised it was congealed blood which clung to the wrists of Jesús.

  G, refusing to speak in English, started to ridicule me, alleging that I wasn’t a real man. I don’t think he realised how deeply those words plunged. He said that I was nothing more than a lackey dressed up like a peacock, that diplomats were traitors, that they failed to secure the thirty two counties. G hurls words like grenades; there can be no hiding, no nuances, no ambiguities with him. His sort of nati
onalism is transparent, but I’m at a loss to know what drives him. What holds up his part of the sky? Is he an anarchist or a patriot, or some sort of Utopian socialist or a Robin Hood? How can ideology be so strong in such conditions? Are such men as G fundamentally different from religious martyrs?

  The soul condemns the body.

  ***

  Diplomacy involves engagement with realpolitik, with subterfuge and secrecy. It is cold and subterranean. It shrivels beside the high flames of idealism.

  Nevertheless, Patrick Foley, diplomat, persevered in the weaving of words.

  I told G that I was merely a clerk who talked to other clerks. However, it was only when I explained how recognition of a country’s embassies played a vital role in managing to get international recognition for our fledgling state, that he began at last to converse seriously with me. He told me that, unlike him, I wasn’t putting myself in danger, and that he was here to gain recognition for an international republican brotherhood. I told him I was here because my wife (mo bhean) interceded on his behalf.

  ‘Do bhean?’ he said and grinned.

  For years I’ve listened in silence to the raucous ridiculing of the cuckold – the butt of many jokes here in Spain – and now my fears are being compounded in the presence of this man.

  ***

  Patrick Foley was puzzled, not by the courage, but by what he calls the ‘effrontery’ of MacSuibhne in the face of death:

  Why did he not cower down or pull at my sleeve and beg to be saved? Perhaps when one extinguishes other lives so easily, one places little value on one’s own. He stared at me knowingly. His confidence in relation to M made me feel that there was some secret between them to which I was not privy. Absence does not make the heart grow fonder, but rather more distrusting. I feel like a person who has arrived too late at an important event. Childhood bonds cannot be broken, not even by adult institutions, not even by marriage. I feel like Edgar to G’s Heathcliff.