Daughter of Catalonia

by Jane MacKenzie

  After one such exclamation Philippe had suggested that she might like to come and stay with him, but reviewing his jumbled home in her mind, and the little room she had once occupied, which was now used as a store, Madeleine was not keen. She no more wanted the memories than she did the constant company, and was rather enjoying the independence of hotel life. She looked up at the placid young man walking beside her, and suddenly asked him.

  ‘Do you think I have made a mistake in coming to Vermeilla, Daniel? I don’t mean in wanting to meet you all, but in the way I’ve done it? I seem to have shocked some people in Vermeilla, being here as a girl on my own.’

  They were nearly in front of the Hotel Bon Repos by now, nothing in Vermeilla being far away, and Daniel therefore stopped. He looked across at the sea wall and gestured, a question in his eyes. She nodded, and they went to sit on it, feet resting on the cobbles. Daniel took an inevitable look along to where the boats were again preparing to go to sea, and his crew mates would soon be waiting for him. Then he turned and gave her his usual smile.

  ‘It’s a funny place, Vermeilla,’ he answered at last. ‘It’s just a village, set in its ways like other villages around here, but yet at the same time we get some tourists, and so people are more used to seeing different types here. And we always seem to have had people moving in from outside, like Tonton Philippe, and my father, of course. If you were a local girl, then you might be more fiercely judged, but since you are not, they just show some surprise, but then they’ll get used to the situation. They just like to comment, that’s all. You’re the one-day wonder. There’s not much new in this village most days. And you are pretty remarkable, after all.’

  He smiled again as he finished, and his eyes flashed in the dimming daylight.

  ‘Remarkable?’ questioned Madeleine. ‘Do you know, I’ve never known anyone more ordinary than me. I find this whole trip more testing than you could know. My mind’s really overwhelmed at the moment, and I am unsure how to take things, so I don’t want to get anything wrong. And I feel how alone I am, a lot of the time, but I am finding it liberating. I wish you knew how hemmed in I’ve been all my life.’

  ‘Well, you’re certainly not ordinary, Madeleine.’ Daniel’s voice was even more than usually gentle. ‘I’m lost in admiration. I can’t think of any girl I know who would travel outside this region on her own, let alone to Paris or London, not knowing what she would find, or whether there would be anyone to receive her. I’m not sure I would do it myself! I’ve never been much further than Perpignan in my life, which shows how adventurous I am.’ There was a note of self-derision to his voice, but his smile returned, and he stood up from the wall a little self-consciously.

  ‘You must be so tired, after all the travelling and then everything that’s happening here. I hope you didn’t find it too tiring walking out to the vineyard today. No? I’m glad. We can maybe do it again one day.’

  He leant down and kissed her on each cheek. ‘Sleep well, Madeleine. Is it not tomorrow that you are going with Tonton Philippe to see your father’s grave? At Amélie-les-Bains? I hope that will not be too hard for you. But you’ll have Philippe with you.’

  He hesitated a moment, and reached out a hand half towards her, then withdrew it abruptly. His voice was less smooth than usual as he spoke, but the words were quite straightforward. ‘We will see you tomorrow, Madeleine. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, Daniel’ she replied, strangely lost for other words. She watched him move off down the quay, calling to the other fishermen, pulling his packet of Gitanes from his pocket as he went, and then she herself slowly moved, towards the hotel and her little room with its old-fashioned bed and its patterned tiles, her tiny, private place of solitude and peace.

  From this little haven she watched later as Daniel and all the fishermen put to sea for the night, and she began a letter to Robert, with so much to tell since leaving Paris only three days before that she hardly knew where to start. She would wait to send it until she had seen their father’s grave, but for now she wanted to capture the treasured welcome and sense of roots, the daytime noise and the night-time peace, and the discoveries, the learning about Luis Garriga and his young bride, who had come to Vermeilla and made a life which was cut short but not forgotten.

  ‘I think you should try to come here,’ she wrote. ‘It is almost impossible to describe to you all the people and the colours, and the Mediterranean, and the amazing landscape, and Colette’s bar, and all the little streets around. And it was the strangest experience to be back in our old apartment. I remembered it so exactly, and Philippe had changed nothing – really nothing at all. There are some things here which are uncanny, and I don’t fully understand why Philippe has chosen to live in the past in this way. He seems to hero-worship Papa, but I’m not sure that would be enough reason for me. He says he just found it easy to move in, and perhaps that explains things, since I don’t think he has much interest in his material environment.

  ‘I get hints from the Curelées, who run my hotel, that Philippe is thought to be perhaps a little too involved in the lives of Colette and her boys: quickly hushed little remarks that could mean a lot or nothing at all, a bit like Tante Louise’s bit of gossip she’d heard. But basically Philippe is a darling, a genuinely lovely man who, I think, just wants simplicity and his close people. You need to meet him, Robert, and also to meet Colette and her family, except maybe her strange husband. Philippe and Colette would be so stunned to meet you too – the living Luis Garriga!’

  It was hard to continue after this. Madeleine had such an image of her brother in her mind that she felt desperately adrift all of a sudden. She laid the letter aside to finish tomorrow, after the visit to Amélie-les-Bains. There was still so much to learn about her father and what had happened to him, and yet she was already so tired and saturated with information. She stood at the window and watched the couples walking along the quayside below her, laughing and together, and felt even more alone. As the fishing boats left the harbour the feeling intensified, and the quayside looked oddly deserted in spite of the people still strolling along it.

  Melancholy is dangerous nonsense, she thought, and pushed her window open wider to the evening air. The world came closer, and as she breathed deeply her solitude receded and the safe sound of beaching waves reached out to touch her. I didn’t ever think this was going to be easy, she thought. And yet it has already been easier and more fruitful than I could have hoped for.

  Just as she turned back from the window to put away her half-finished letter, a knock came to the door. It was Madame Curelée, offering coffee, and a snack should she need it. She gratefully accepted the coffee and went downstairs to take it with them and a new young couple who had arrived that day from Toulouse, and who planned to walk in the Pyrenees but who were first seeking the grave of Antonio Machado, the most famous of all Spanish poets, who was buried in nearby Collioure. The young man was a researcher at the University of Toulouse, he explained, specialising in the literature of the Spanish Civil War. Madeleine vaguely remembered her mother talking about Machado, although she didn’t remember ever seeing any of his work. It seemed that in this area, however, he was famous, and the young man was passionate about him.

  ‘We’re building him a proper vault for his grave now, and that’s why we came at this time. I’m a member of the Friends of Machado, and we’ve got permission and money to build a fitting memorial for him. You wouldn’t believe the people who are involved: Pablo Casals, who is still here in exile, you know, from Franco’s Spain, and André Malraux – you know of Malraux, of course? So many senior figures of literature, music, art and even politics. And all giving freely and campaigning for this grave. They’re building it now in Collioure, and we are going along tomorrow to be part of it.’

  His passion struck Madeleine as odd for a Frenchman on behalf of a Spanish poet whose name was not exactly an international household name. She asked him why Machado was so important. His reply was both political and emotive. Macha
do had stood for Republicanism, had fled north ahead of Franco’s troops to stay in free Spain, had left his country finally only when Barcelona was within hours of falling, and he himself exhausted and in poor health. He had loved France, had lived in Paris during his life, but for him to end up in France in exile and defeat, to die just weeks later, was a part of the whole tragedy of Spain.

  ‘He was their greatest poet, you have to understand that, and he suffered so much personal loss that it comes through in his poetry. His brother became a fervent supporter of Franco, which was such a bitter blow, and he lost his wife, and his mistress, and everything he owned. When you read his poems they speak about every war and every separation and every destroyed life. Someone who has meant so much to his country is always worth studying.’

  Madame Curelée seemed to be very proud to have the young intellectuals in her little hotel. Like all the Catalans Madeleine had met, she could be reserved but quickly caught the mood when passions were inflamed. Not only, she said, did she have the daughter of Luis Garriga staying with her, whom the whole village was now talking about, but also she had a scholar who had come to work with Pablo Casals. As they sat together, she scurried about them, bringing a second cup of coffee, and then some tiny glasses of a local brandy. The mood in the room mellowed from passionate to relaxed, and Madeleine felt her own mood lifting as well.

  An hour later, as they headed for bed, the young man lent her a volume of Machado’s poems translated into French, and as she lay in bed waiting for sleep to come, reading the rather lyrical and often elaborate verse, her eyes lit on a line she remembered her mother quoting to her.

  De mer en mer entre nous deux la guerre, plus profonde que la guerre – From sea to sea between us two is war, deeper than war.

  Her mother’s unhappiness, her father’s death, their separation; it was all there in Machado’s verse. His life and theirs were all part of the same history, which had been bigger than them all. She found the thought strangely comforting, and as Machado’s verse revolved slowly round her tired brain she finally fell asleep, with her window open to the sound of the waves.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The road to Amélie-les-Bains took them inland through the Roussillon plains to the foothills of the Pyrenees. Avenues of plane trees bordered the road between the villages on the way, and as they drove slowly along in Philippe’s battered 2CV, he joked that the trees were there to show his old car where to go.

  ‘Citroën began making these ten years ago,’ he told Madeleine, ‘to bring motorised transport to the peasants. I was one of the first to buy. But the old thing is showing her years a little now, and she creaks when we go round corners. She likes this straight bit, and hates those hills up ahead!’

  He pointed out Canigou, French Catalonia’s own little mountain standing distinct on the horizon from wherever you looked, its peak still tipped with snow.

  ‘They say no man is a real Catalan who hasn’t climbed Canigou. So I’ve climbed it once a year for the last thirty years, and still no one thinks I’m a Catalan!’

  They had set off early. Philippe had told her he wanted to pick someone up by eight o’clock in Céret, but he wouldn’t tell her who it was. The sky above them was blue and clear, but the air was still fresh, and the early May sunshine had not yet touched the land, which was a dark, deep green all around them. An intense sense of expectation stilled Madeleine’s tongue. She felt alert, aware, watchful almost, and was content to let Philippe chatter on as she sat beside him and watched the flat, cultivated fields and vineyards slip by.

  Céret was a surprise after the narrow streets of Vermeilla and its brightly painted houses. Céret was a dream of yellow stone, with gently elegant streets leading into a centre of little squares and cool fountains. They passed the new Museum of Modern Art, which had been created just a few years before in the old town prison buildings. Picasso was a patron, and had gifted them numerous pieces of his work. Just five years earlier, she knew, he had given them a major series of painted pottery pieces. Paris might have its amazing art collections, but this place had a personal connection to Picasso, Matisse, Chagall and others, and she longed to visit the museum.

  Now was not the moment, however. Philippe passed by the museum and turned into a narrower street. He stopped almost immediately in front of a shuttered shop front, with the legend Objets d’Art Catalans above it.

  ‘We’re here.’ announced Philippe, and leapt out of his side of the car. Madeleine followed more slowly, and by the time she had waited for a car to squeeze past her, Philippe had already disappeared down a side passage. She hurried after him, and arrived to see the side door open, and a young man shaking hands with Philippe. Philippe waved to her impatiently.

  ‘Come, come, Madeleine, and meet Jordi. Jordi, this is Luis Garriga’s daughter, the girl I spoke to you about. Are you ready, Jordi? We should be on our way, no point in us coming inside. I can explain everything to Madeleine as we drive.’

  Jordi held out his hand perfunctorily to Madeleine. He was a big, strongly built man of about thirty who might have been a rugby player, and the hand he extended was broad, with cracked, slightly discoloured nails. He was dressed in loose cotton trousers and a shirt which needed ironing, and his longish hair looked as though he only ever ran a finger or two through it, scorning scissors and hairbrush.

  He seemed to find her evident bewilderment amusing, but didn’t bother explaining. His tone was curt as he greeted her.

  ‘Good morning, Mademoiselle. It seems we’re in Philippe’s hands. And yes, Philippe, we should go now. I can afford to keep the gallery closed on a quiet Monday morning, but I’ll need to open this afternoon, and I don’t have any help this week.’

  Back in the 2CV, this time squashed into the rear seat, Madeleine craned her neck to hear as Philippe shot information at her over his shoulder.

  ‘Jordi’s father was shot alongside your father,’ he yelled, looking briefly back at her and then at the road, narrowly avoiding an oncoming car. ‘There were only the two of them in the camp at the time, so the Germans didn’t time their raid very well. Your father was killed outright, and Jordi’s father was shot and captured, but survived. I wanted you to meet Jordi. I think it may help you.’

  Madeleine’s heart leapt. It hadn’t occurred to her that she might meet the son of one of her father’s comrades; that she might be able to talk to him. And his father had survived the war. Had he shared his experiences with Jordi, she wondered?

  The back of his head gave her no clues. Jordi looked fixedly at the road ahead as though to make up for Philippe’s inattention, and a long silence followed Philippe’s words. Then Jordi spoke, still without turning his head, and his voice came back to Madeleine like a cold shower. The words were correct, but the tone was crushing.

  ‘I gather my job this morning is to show you where your father died. I am prepared to do so. I am not sure whether it will help you, as Philippe thinks, but I can understand that you may think it important to go there.’

  His whole demeanour was stony and unwelcoming, and Madeleine shrank further back in the rear seat. She sat in total silence as they continued their journey. She had come this morning with Philippe to visit her father’s grave. That was one thing. But the idea of actually visiting the resistance camp with this man set her nerves on edge. She hadn’t come prepared for the next step, and to go there with someone so overtly hostile made it a still harder step to take. And yet she wanted to learn: she had come here for that sole purpose.

  Stomach knotted, she sat out the rest of the journey, half listening to Philippe and Jordi as they talked about some bullfight due to take place in Céret, and almost oblivious to the striking landscape emerging around them as they made their slow progress up to Amélie-les-Bains.

  Amélie-les-Bains itself was a beautiful place, set in the hillside, a medieval spa town with dramatic views over the valley below. The River Tech ran beside the town, its shallow waters broad under a gracious bridge, preparing to drop into the valle
y of trees, and from wherever you looked you could see Canigou, standing guard on the horizon. To Madeleine’s relief Jordi chose not to accompany her and Philippe to her father’s grave. She and Philippe left him sitting at a café table next to the marketplace, where stalls were doing brisk trade, even on a Monday morning. He hadn’t had breakfast, he told them, and would wait for them here.

  As they left Jordi, and walked away through the bustle of the market, the tension which had constricted Madeleine’s throat eased a little. Philippe walked at his usual brisk pace, his long, gangly legs ahead of Madeleine’s by several yards. At a corner he turned, and seeing her set, pale face he stopped, and took her arm.

  ‘This is all a bit too much for you all in one go, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘I should have told you that I had telephoned to Jordi. I’m not quite sure why I didn’t; perhaps because I know that last step is going to be difficult for you, and yet I really think you should make it. If you don’t want to go, just tell me, and we can cancel the whole thing.’

  ‘No, no. I don’t want to cancel. I want to see the place.’ Madeleine put her hand over Philippe’s as it lay on her sleeve. ‘You don’t know the way there yourself, no?’

  ‘No, I never knew. Luis didn’t want to compromise me in any way. There were schoolteachers during the occupation whose pupils were threatened at gunpoint to make them divulge information. I lived too close, and too many people knew he visited me, he used to say. Why do you ask? Did you want me to go with you?’ He paused, and studied Madeleine’s face. ‘Is it Jordi who worries you, then?’

  She nodded, saying nothing.

  ‘Yes, I see. He can be a bit intimidating, although not normally as much so as this morning. You know, Jordi’s father was shot three times by the Germans that day. But more importantly, he was captured and taken to their cells in Perpignan, where he was tortured for three days to make him talk about his fellow Maquis and their operations. I don’t know what he told them, but there were no arrests made as a result, so he must have put on a very good act. Once they had finished with him he was sent to the concentration camp at Rivesaltes, and if the occupation hadn’t ended so soon afterwards I am sure he would have been shot.