by Carlos Alba
I was struck by its remote sadness, the random desperation of the people who continued to mourn and who still held out hope of information about those they’d lost. Plaintive messages filled its pages, from mothers whose babies were taken at birth as retribution because their husbands were rojos; children whose birth records were destroyed and who were raised by strangers in loveless institutions; sisters who had lost brothers; wives who had lost husbands; grandchildren who’d grown up knowing only that their grandparents had ‘disappeared’. One of the entries was headed ‘Setenta años sin Miguel’ – ‘Seventy years without Miguel’; another sought information about a father who’d disappeared while fighting at the Battle of the Ebro; another who’d lost track of his brother, whose last known whereabouts was a hospital in El Escorial where he was being treated for a leg wound.
I stared at the screen with the possibilities racing through my mind. Did this have any relevance to me? Should it have any relevance? Papa had lost his parents and siblings in the war, but I had lost nothing. I had never known these people, so why should it be my responsibility, a generation removed, to get involved in seeking some kind of ill-defined justice on their behalf? Anyway, quite apart from the fact that I had other things on my mind, like saving my marriage, I didn’t know if I could trust Papa’s account of what had happened. It wasn’t just that the alleged events had taken place so long ago and that he had a child’s memory of them. More troubling was the question of his honesty, as much with himself as with others. He had a worrying ability to convince himself of the significance of partial truths. Moreover, if I did want to take this further, I would need his approval and co-operation, and I knew that would be my biggest challenge.
12
‘Bobby never told me you were Spanish.’ Cheryl’s height-of-summer smile lit up her gemstone eyes. It was the first time I could recall anyone referring to my nationality without it sounding like an accusation. If Max Miller hadn’t told her that I was Spanish, then who had? Had she been asking about me?
‘Eh, yes, that’s right, I am,’ I replied, resisting the urge to qualify my response.
‘Are you interested in the Civil War at all?’
I hesitated – I couldn’t tell her that all I knew about the Spanish Civil War was that there had been one. ‘Eh, yes, I am, in a way,’ I said.
In a way. What the hell did that mean?
I had first spotted Cheryl at the Freshers’ Week Fair, and I’d been admiring her from a consistently retreating distance ever since. She’d been over at the Socialist Workers’ Society stand, her head thrown back, laughing loudly, clothed simply in a pair of tight jeans and a baggy white t-shirt. Her skin was smooth, like polished new wood, and her long, cornfield-blonde hair was held in place at the back with a simple red ribbon. I had approached to talk to Max Miller, who was chatting to the people running the stand, and fleetingly my eyes had met hers. Then she’d returned to the conversation she’d been having with some friends. It was the briefest of glances, and yet it was enough to convince me I was in love.
I was now into my second term at university, and I continued to slope in the shadows, looking as though I didn’t belong. Mama’s constant refrain, that I’d be the first Noguera to have a university degree, only added to the pressure. Between lectures I wandered alone, trying to look purposeful and hide the fact that I felt friendless and out of place. Max Miller, in contrast, had adapted readily to student life, making friends effortlessly. By the third week he was on first-name terms with all of his tutors, he’d started playing football for the first eleven and had been elected treasurer of the Socialist Workers’ Society. He knew Cheryl, but he called her Dolores. It was some kind of SWS nickname, an in-joke that only the members shared, and I wasn’t going to reveal my ignorance of all things political by asking him about it. Recently I’d seen them together a lot, handing out fliers, drumming up support for society meetings and sitting together in the union bar. That had made me even less confident about ever speaking to her. But now here she was, sitting down right next to me in the lecture theatre, looking earnestly into my eyes.
‘Did any members of your family fight in the war?’ She pressed.
I had no idea if any of my family had fought in the war or not, and, what was more, it was the first time in eighteen years that it had even occurred to me that I didn’t know. I was barely aware of the names of my extended family, far less anything they had done. ‘Eh, I don’t know, it’s not something my parents speak about much,’ I mumbled.
‘Ah, el pacto de olvido,’ she said.
I looked at her blankly.
‘The pact of forgetting?’
‘Ah yes, that’s the one, the old pact of forgetting,’ I said, nodding as though I knew what she was talking about.
‘What side did they support?’
I felt the heat rising from my face as I sought frantically for the names of the opposing sides in the conflict. I was sitting next to the most beautiful girl I’d ever met, she was taking an active interest in my background and my family, and I was displaying all the erudition of a monkey.
I’d already let slip that I didn’t speak Spanish, and now I risked revealing that I didn’t know who had participated in the single most important event in my native country’s recent history. I racked my brains, remembering from the time of Franco’s death that he’d led one of the sides in the war, but what was it called? The Francoists sounded familiar, but was that too obvious? In any event, Papa hated Franco, so even knowing the name of the side he led was not much use.
Cheryl smiled with gentle curiosity as I continued to dither. I willed myself to speak, to say something – anything – to break the mounting silence. Then, suddenly, from a weed-strewn corner of my brain, I managed to dredge the contents of a long-forgotten argument between my parents.
‘My dad was an anarchist,’ I said hesitantly.
Her face broadened into a joyful, accepting smile. She edged back a few inches and scanned the length of my body as though she were reassessing me in light of this new information.
‘God, an anarchist,’ she said with unconcealed admiration. ‘He’ll have fought with the FAI militia, then?’
I grinned weakly.
‘La Federación Anarquista Ibérica?’ she said expectantly.
‘Yes, probably,’ I replied. ‘Like I say, he doesn’t really discuss it.’
Much to my surprise, Cheryl asked me to join her for the screening of a documentary film about the Spanish Civil War at the Glasgow Film Theatre the following week. I threw budgetary caution to the wind and bought some new clothes from Millets with the last of that term’s grant money – a pair of stonewashed drainpipe jeans and a red plaid lumberjack shirt, which I wore with a blue velvet jacket I’d picked up at Paddy’s Market for three quid.
I arrived at the union bar early and bought myself a pint of snakebite and blackcurrant, then sat in a booth and opened a copy of Socialist Worker I’d bought to impress Cheryl. By quarter past five, with no sign of her, I started to panic, convinced she’d stood me up. I waited another twenty minutes, then just as I was about to leave she walked in. My heart swam. She was laughing, chatting away with Max Miller, who followed close behind her. My heart sank.
‘You don’t mind if Max comes along, do you?’ she asked.
‘Course not,’ I replied, forcing a smile.
The bombing of Guernica, said the crackling, blunt-needle voice of the film’s narrator, was a landmark event, because it was the first air attack on a civilian population and a rehearsal by the Luftwaffe for subsequent bombing raids on London and Coventry. The market town in the north-east corner of Spain, he explained, was symbolically important as a centre of Basque ethnic nationalism and Republican resistance against Franco’s rebels. On the afternoon of Monday, April the 26th, 1937, a market day, it was attacked by fighter planes of the Luftwaffe Condor Legion and the Italian Fascist Aviazione Legionaria. It had no aerial defences, and until then it had been untouched by the war. With no warning, the
population was subjected to almost three hours of sustained bombing, during which time 1,654 people were killed and 889 injured.
Until then I had known little about Guernica, other than that it was the name of a Picasso painting, and I’d never felt compelled to find out any more about it or the bombing. It was part of a war anchored in a history that meant little to me and evoked no particularly strong emotional response. The Second World War, in contrast, had a central place in my world, and its primal, us-against-them, good-versus-evil dichotomy was embedded in my imagination and my culture. I learned about it at school, read about it in books and comics, devoured countless films about it, discussed it with my friends and played games with it as the backdrop. Its outcome defined my very existence.
I expected the film to be arcane and dryly academic, but instead it was gripping. A war correspondent who had covered the bombing described approaching the town as the German bombers flew low overhead, almost touching the tops of the trees, buzzing those on the ground, driving into them the fear of God. Women wandered unsuspecting and defenceless among the market stalls in the spring sunshine buying their weekly provisions. As the bombs dropped, they ran for cover. Machine-gun bullets whizzed past them, ricocheting off walls.
Some people stood transfixed as they were strafed by aircraft fire; others screamed, terrified, and soiled themselves. Amid the screaming and bloodshed, buildings crumbled and cars combusted, and soon flames lit up the sky for miles. Children lay in the streets dead, broken and charred, emitting a nauseating smell of scorched flesh. Survivors wandered from street to street or huddled together, crying and praying. At the end of four hours, all that remained standing was a church and a sacred tree, the symbol of the Basque people.
I stared at the floor and held back tears of pity for these long-dead people. Why, I wondered, had the Spanish war assumed such a low profile in my consciousness? The themes were similar to those played out in the wider European conflict that began just a few months after its conclusion. On the face of it, Franco was no different from Hitler – a Fascist dictator. Where were the British, the French and the Americans when this was happening? I wondered. Why, if Franco was Hitler’s friend, hadn’t he been our enemy?
After the film we went to the bar for a drink, and Cheryl bumped into a man she introduced as ‘Mike from Modern History’, who had the well-groomed, coiffed look of a newsreader. He stood over us, pronouncing on the merits of the film while Cheryl and Max hung on his every word. He was evidently an expert on the war, and he was enjoying the attention.
‘Although Guernica’s still a symbol of the one-sidedness of the power relations,’ he said, ‘other atrocities were just as horrific. Lots of people were shot by firing squad and dumped into pits or shallow graves. Some people were killed by neighbours and workmates who became their enemies after the coup.’
Old scores that had rankled in towns and villages for years were settled by people who acquired power suddenly, an accident of the side they had chosen, he told us. Their enemies were shot, clubbed, butchered or thrown to their deaths from buildings and cliffs. Others were worked to death in forced labour camps, for no other reason than that they had an association with people or organisations who supported the Republic.
‘Why didn’t Britain and France do something to prevent a Fascist uprising on their doorstep?’ Max asked.
‘I suppose it was because the elected government of the Republic included Communists and Anarchists, and Britain and France feared a Bolshevik-type uprising in Spain more than a Fascist government,’ Mike said. ‘Of course, there were atrocities on both sides. In fact, some of the worst violence was perpetrated by the Communists on other supporters of the Republic.’
He left to rejoin his friends, and Cheryl and I sat down at a table while Max got some drinks from the bar.
‘Listen, I’d really like to talk to your dad about the Civil War,’ she said. ‘I’m thinking of writing my honours thesis about it.’
I stilled a laugh, not because Cheryl was already thinking about the subject of her honours thesis three months into the start of her first year, but because it was the first time anyone I knew had wanted to meet my father, far less try to elicit from him anything remotely detailed about his or his country’s past.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said warily. ‘He’s not very forthcoming about that sort of thing.’
But as I considered the idea, it didn’t strike me as so preposterous after all. Why shouldn’t he be prepared to be questioned about the war? He didn’t need to be an intellectual – all he had to do was to talk about his life and how the war had affected him. It occurred to me that he might even be an interesting person, given where and when he grew up.
What was more, ever since Franco’s death, he’d taken far more interest in Spain. He’d watched with cautious optimism as political developments unfolded – the new king determinedly sweeping away the old guard, people voting in democratic elections, power being taken away from the previously unassailable Catholic church and the Guardia Civil, the politically-controlled police force under Franco.
He’d commented on how the pages of the glossy magazines Abuela sent us had changed. I could see what he meant. No longer were they the state-censored organs of Franco’s rule. Gone were the unquestioning line-ups of senior political and military figures; in their place stood the new Establishment of celebrities, entrepreneurs and minor royalty. They were younger, better-looking, more relaxed, and they smiled.
‘Oh, I’m sure I could get him talking. I’m very persuasive, you know,’ Cheryl said, holding my gaze.
My stomach fluttered. ‘I’ll give it a try,’ I said.
‘When could you take me to see him?’
‘Soon, maybe next week,’ I said.
‘Okay, let me know. And thanks for coming tonight. I hope you enjoyed it.’
She finished her drink quickly and announced that she would have to leave as she had a lecture first thing. She put her coat on, leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. I breathed in her sweet smell, and as she raised her head her soft hair brushed gently against my forehead. She beamed a smile that I knew would sustain me until our next meeting. I felt light-headed.
‘Are you coming, Bobby?’ she asked Max Miller.
And I was suddenly thrust back into reality.
‘Yeah,’ he said as he drained the remnants of his glass. He slapped me on the back. ‘See you later, Antonio.’
They drifted out of the bar together, hand in hand.
13
I flew back from Spain to Scotland, feeling more positive than usual about returning to my parents’ home. I was certain that the information I had would bring Papa and me closer together. But when I saw him, I felt a painful sadness. He looked different even since the last time I’d seen him, only a few weeks before. He was characteristically well dressed, in a tailored shirt, slacks and a pastel-blue cashmere pullover, but they draped loosely over his depleted frame. He was stooped and shaky, and what I might otherwise have dismissed as the inevitable blemishes of age now appeared unmistakably to be signs of terminal illness.
Mama had gone to evening Mass, leaving him to make his own dinner. He negotiated the kitchen at an infuriatingly slow pace, plucking the components of a rudimentary meal of bread, olives and Ibérico ham from worktops and cupboards, placing them carefully and deliberately on the table. I stood over him as he ate at the kitchen table.
When I told him about my conversation with the man from the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory and his offer, he stopped chewing and slammed his glass down, spilling water across the table. ‘Why you dae this?’ he demanded. His voice was harsh, almost tearful.
‘I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘You have nae right, I nae want these people tae dae nothing.’
‘That’s my grandparents were talking about, and I didn’t know anything about them until a few days ago,’ I protested.
‘You nae speak tae me like this,’ he said, waving his finger.<
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His response surprised me, and I thought he might not have understood properly what I’d told him. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Papa, these people are on your side,’ I said.
‘Wha people? I nae even know these people.’
‘The association. They’re volunteers, archaeologists, anthropologists, historians. They want to help people like you who had relatives who were killed by the Falangists.’
He looked at me sceptically and resumed eating his sandwich.
‘If we give them details of your mother and father, they will trace them through official papers. There may even be a record of their death that you don’t know about.’
His face grew redder and he shook his head disapprovingly.
‘They would also speak to people in Alguaire.’
‘Who they speak?’ he demanded.
‘Survivors, people who have lived in the village for a long time. People who may remember what happened and who would be able to corroborate your story.’
He exploded with anger. ‘I nae want this, you nae dae this. You tell this people nae, I nae want.’
A small bit of food caught in his throat and he began to cough. I had to pat him on the back to help him recover. He was red and breathless, and I felt guilty at having unsettled him.
‘Look, I was only trying to help. I thought that was what you wanted.’
‘I nae want. You leave alone. If I want, I dae myself.’
I was confused and disappointed. When I thought about the lengths to which he had gone in Alguaire, I found his refusal of help perplexing.
I told him I wanted to know about his brother, Paco, who had survived the bombing of Lerida but who, Papa believed, had later died. I wanted to know the circumstances. Was he killed during the war. If so, how? Or had he survived the war and died subsequently? And if he was still alive, what did he do? Did he have any family that I didn’t know about? I knew that if I didn’t push Papa now, I might never know. ‘If you don’t start to open up to me about this sort of thing, I’ll be left with no option but to find out for myself,’ I said.