Pedro takes the boy’s chin between thumb and forefinger and pulls his face towards him, “You are not in trouble. We need to know exactly what it was you heard the two women say.”
Juanico can see the eyes filled with threat in the bloated, shiny face of the captain of the guard over his father’s shoulder. He fears the worst. Pedro pulls the boy’s face back towards his, drawing his gaze with it. “Tell me exactly what was said,” he asks again.
Pedro looks into the black and brown of his father’s eyes. “The peasant from the field told our girl that the boys from the CEDA youth attacked some peasants last night.”
Pedro stares back at him. “And… ” he says.
Juanico continues, “The girl asked what the police would do about it and the woman said that her men would deal with it. She called the police an unholy name.” Pedro feels his own jaws clenching and his back teeth grinding. He stares into the boy’s eyes but his mind is entirely focused on the man standing behind him.
Pedro stands up straight and pulls the boy towards him. He puts one arm around the boy’s shoulder. “You are a good boy for telling me the truth.” Juanico can’t remember how few times he had felt his father this close to him and wished that his nerves would steady so he could consign this moment to memory. He feels his father’s chest rumbling against his ear as the words leave his mouth, “You have done well telling us the truth, son. Tell no one else of what you heard. Now go back to your grandmother.” He lets go of the boy and pushes him back towards the garden.
Pedro waits to hear the doorway to the garden close before turning to face Manolo. The guard smiles back at him; a smug arrogance exudes from a face stretching at the seams. Manolo takes a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of his jacket and offers one to Pedro. He recognises the blue packet and French name on the expensive imports, and shakes his head. Manolo lights one and puts the packet back into his pocket. He takes the cigarette from his mouth. “Unfortunately for me, it appears that I don’t need to speak to your house girl after all. However, I will be arresting your field workers.”
Manolo watches Pedro without blinking as he speaks. “It’s best you are not there when it happens. Keep the boy and the girl with you to make sure they don’t let anyone know that we have spoken. I’ll let them finish their day’s work, but I am picking them up this evening,” he tells him. Pedro doesn’t respond; he knows that it would be pointless.
Manolo leaves the storehouse by the door onto the street. Pedro closes the door behind him and stands for a few moments, his hands resting on the bar over the door. He closes his eyes and remembers the one night he spent with Marianela there, their young, flawless teenage skin clinging to one another. He hears the door to the garden far behind him opening and he opens his eyes. The memory disappears. His mother asks, “Is everything well? Do you need help with anything?”
He turns and walks back towards the garden, his right hand caressing the side of the lorry. “Everything is good, Mother. Is lunch ready yet?” he asks.
His mother stands back from the doorway and holds it open for him. “We can sit down, lunch is almost ready,” she answers.
The two women try to converse over lunch but the silence of the man and the boy stifles the room. By the time Marianela brings the coffee to the table the four of them are sitting in silence. As she places the cup and saucer in front of him, Pedro’s gaze is drawn to Marianela’s hand. The skin is harder and more drawn than he remembers it. As quick as the hand is there, it is gone again, and he finds himself staring at the place where it once was.
Marianela leaves the room. Pedro doesn’t look up from the table. His mother watches him. The unspoken tension in the room is overwhelming. She puts her hand towards where his is resting on the table. “Is everything —? ” She never finishes her sentence.
He pulls his hand away and without looking up says in a raised voice, “Will you leave me in peace? Just be quiet for a moment. Let me drink my coffee in peace.” Soledad’s hand stops in mid movement, her sentence ending as abruptly. Her sister looks down at her coffee. Her grandson shifts uncomfortably in his seat and stares down at the table.
Marianela stops washing the dishes, cocks her head to one side and listens. For what feels like an eternity for everyone except Pedro the house is silent. Soledad looks down at her coffee and pulls her hand back to her lap. Pedro drinks his coffee as everyone else without a sound remains motionless. Pedro feels at once both alone and surrounded. He drains the cup and stands up. Without looking at anyone he leaves the room saying, “The boy is not to leave the house this afternoon. He is to stay with the two of you.” The two women and the boy exchange glances across the table without saying a word.
Pedro stamps through the house to the kitchen. Marianela can hear the heavy strides of the rope soles against the tiles. He grabs her by the top of the arm and pulls her off her feet, dragging her out towards the back door. Stumbling, her calf crashes and scrapes over the stone step between the kitchen and the hall. The plate she had in her hand falls to the floor in one piece and bounces back into the air in many. She falls to her thigh and hip. He drags her across the garden and into the storehouse behind it. Terrified, she begs him, “Please, sir, I have done nothing. I am sorry; please, sir.” He can’t hear her over his own blood thumping in his ears. He drags her into the storehouse and flings her into the corner. He looms over her, drawing the belt from his trousers.
She cowers beneath his glare, the pupils of his eyes masking any colour that was once in his irises. She holds her hands across her face as he lifts the belt above his head and tears it down through the air towards her. The belt wraps around her arm and shoulders as the buckle crashes into her shoulder blade with a dull thud. She yelps like a scolded animal. He draws the belt back up above his head. His voice is shrill and out of control, “After all I have done for you, you treat me like this.” The belt comes slicing down towards her again, slamming the buckle into her back below the ribs.
She cries out, “Please forgive me.” The belt drags up into the air again, swinging through its arc high above his clenched fist as the tight leather cuts off the blood to his knuckles.
“I forgave you for whoring yourself around the village and still you show me no respect,” he spits at her. She pulls herself over onto her front to protect herself as the buckle crashes into her again. He grabs her by the back of the dress, hauls her up and pushes her over the crates. He starts lashing at her buttocks with the belt, the buckle repeatedly whipping around her and crashing into her hip. The explosions of pain being too much to bear, the cries turn to whimpers as each time the belt wraps around her, signalling the imminent crash of the metal buckle against the bone of her hip.
Seven times the belt makes its torturous contact, though neither of them are counting. The time passes under an ongoing barrage of pain and exertion, the individual moments seamlessly folding into the next. Eventually, out of breath, he stops. The belt buckle lies limp at his feet and his arm listlessly at his side. Between breaths, he whispers, quiet and angry, “Whatever it is you have planned, it is over. You will do exactly as I say and when I say or I will hand you over to the Civil Guard who will treat you like the insubordinate whore that you are.” He grabs a clump of her hair in his fist and pulls her head back so that she cannot turn her head away from his face. The tears roll through the dirt on her face in rivulets. He spits the words at her, “You treat me with respect or you and your bastard will be whoring for food in the streets. Do you understand me?”
With the hair tearing from her scalp she sobs, “Yes, always.” He opens his fist and with the flat of his hand on her face pushes her head back towards the crates. Her body falls loosely, moulding itself around them. He turns and walks back to the house, pushing the belt back through the loops of his trousers.
Pedro walks through the garden and the house. When he reaches the front door he glances momentarily towards the dining r
oom. His family are sitting in silence watching him. He takes his jacket from the hatstand and puts it on. Without looking at them he says, “I am going to Zaragoza. The girl is not to leave the house either. I will be back soon to deal with the situation.” The family remain silent as he walks out into the dry heat of the road outside. He slams the door behind him.
In the storehouse Marianela slowly slides down the crates to a kneeling position against them. The stinging pain throbs in waves and seemingly every nerve in her body pulses like a lighthouse. She tries to catch her breath while fighting to hold herself upright. With not enough strength left in her thighs she collapses back against the heels of her feet, the sandals painfully digging into her blue and purpling behind. Between sobs she repeatedly leans forward, retches and then vomits. Through the wet focus she sees the warm liquid splashing on the floor in front of her. Her tears fall and mix with the bile and stale bread.
With one hand she holds onto the crates to stop herself from falling forwards into the pile of warm, undigested broth. The tears continue rolling down her face, while the pain tightens and subsides across her back in waves. Her heart feels like it has shattered into a million pieces. She remembers how for the briefest of moments her heart was bursting with joy in this same building, then how quickly it had been fractured. Like the plate strewn across the kitchen floor she finally sees how easily her fragile dreams had been taken away from her.
Pedro lights a cigarette and walks to the train station trying hard to avoid catching anyone’s gaze. With each step the guilt twists in his stomach, the anger throbs through his veins and the loneliness pushes him further away from his loved ones. He tries to banish his melancholy by imagining his hips pounding violently against the thighs of one of the gypsy prostitutes in Zaragoza. It doesn’t work. The stinging in his hand from the belt and the sweat clinging to the cotton shirt on his shoulders are inescapable reminders.
Eventually, Marianela manages to pull herself up from the floor with the support of the crates. The pain shoots from her hip like bolts of lightning when she puts the slightest pressure on the leg. She walks back to the garden flinching with every step. The muscles in her back tighten as the skin pulls across them, the dress torturing the tender flesh as it rubs against it. She pumps water into a bucket and splashes it across her face and then rinses the bile from her mouth. Bending over, the pain clenches around her spine and pulses up to the back of her head. She feels dizzy and struggles to maintain her focus on the bucket. The solitary sun in the cloudless, blue sky reflects back at her in the mirror-like water.
She walks gingerly back to the kitchen where she resumes her position at the sink. She closes her eyes and tries to steady her balance by holding onto the side of the sink. In the dining room they hear the dishes in the sink clinking and clacking once again. Juanico, desperate to go to his nursemaid, looks pleadingly at his grandmother. She sees him, but her face hardens as she moves it from side to side.
The boy listens to the dishes in the sink as the guilt begins to take hold. He does not know what has happened but he knows that the course of events begun when he spoke to the priest. Unable to see the actions of the priest, the guard or his father as anything but the logical culmination of the choice he made, he feels like he has betrayed the only person that truly loved him. The guilt and betrayal invade every corner of his thoughts and for those moments the world around him becomes no more than a distant hum.
Marianela finishes the dishes. She waits for a few moments; holding onto the edge of the sink, she tries to steady her body and mind. She tries to fortify herself before facing the next inevitable cruelty that awaits her in the dining room. The seconds pass into minutes. The sharp jolts of pain are soon little more than a brief highlight in the persistent agonising throb in every inch of her body.
Standing there, hanging on, she concludes that there is little more they can now do to her. She makes her way slowly to the dining room. With every step the pain courses through her body. She enters the dining room and the three of them look up. Her washed out, colourless complexion, the unblinking stare of absolute concentration on her next step and the unnatural way her shoulders and back flinch and contort as she moves tell them all that she is in terrible pain. Their imaginations wander, some to the punishment of the just, while others see only the darkness of human misery.
She places the tray on the table, trying to stifle with every muscle the involuntary exhalation of breath as she moves. She lifts the cups and remnants of the meal onto the tray. Juanico watches her sympathetically. With every sharp, barely audible intake of breath he feels a dagger of guilt in his stomach. Slowly, she picks up the tray and turns to leave the room. The two older women watch in silence. As she turns she closes her eyes and struggles to maintain composure. She inches out of the dining room and back to the kitchen.
Unable to stop himself, Juanico feels his breathing speeding up. Seconds later the tears start cascading down his cheeks as he sobs through laboured breaths. His thoughts are clear; one question keeps repeating itself, How could he have done this to her after all she has done for him? He tries to vocalise his thoughts but the words come out garbled, “How could I, what… what… why?”
Soledad’s anger towards the maid is quickly replaced with sympathy for the boy. “Look what a sensitive grandson I have. A beautiful heart touched by the Lord,” she says as she rounds the table and presses her bosom into the back of his head. The smell of stale, unwashed sweat is almost overwhelming.
With her chest muffling one side of his head and her arm muffling the other, Juanico can barely hear what she is saying, just the low muffled bass of the words formulating deep in her chest. “A beautiful, sensitive soul, dear sister, no? Do not occupy yourself with such thoughts, trust that your father and the Lord know best,” she says as she strokes the top of his head.
*
Manolo steps up onto the platform and looks at Pedro sitting on the bench. Pedro doesn’t notice the green uniform in the periphery of his vision. Manolo speaks, “Don Pedro, are you going somewhere?”
Pedro looks up and responds, “What else do you need from me?”
Manolo sits his large body heavily onto the bench next to him, “You know that nothing happens in this village without me knowing about it.” Pedro draws on his cigarette. Manolo repeats his demand for information, “Are you going somewhere?”
Pedro keeps looking over the tracks and to the main road beyond it. “I’ve dealt with the maid. She will not trouble you and —”
Manolo interrupts, “You mean us.”
Pedro turns his head briefly to look at Manolo. He alters his statement, “Pardon me, I meant us. The boy and the maid will stay in the house. And I must go to Zaragoza.” He pauses before continuing, “For business. I shall be back tomorrow or the day after.”
With a smirk on his face Manolo stands up and slaps Pedro gently on the back. “Of course, Zaragoza for business. Well then. Enjoy your business… in Zaragoza,” he says knowingly.
*
Long after the sun has set Esteban and his brother Antonio relax into their watery coffee. Some distance away Maria Dolores kneels alongside the irrigation channel cleaning the pan and bowls from their lentil broth. Esteban throws another branch onto the fire from the pile beside the hut. The winter’s chill has already begun clawing its way across the valley, getting ever closer each night. The men pull the blankets wrapped around their shoulders tighter and edge closer to the fire. Esteban sits back down, watching the woman trudge back across the field towards them.
Antonio, with a creaking sigh, stands up, pours away the remains of his coffee into the mud and puts the cup alongside the cooking utensils. Esteban watches him. The clear, deep mauve sky blanketing the valley is awash with stars. “I am going to bed,” Antonio says.
Esteban looks up, smiles and replies, “Good night.” The brother pulls the blanket tight around his shoulders and goes in
to the hut.
Exhausted from a long and hard day’s work, Maria Dolores slowly clears the remaining belongings into the hut. She stops suddenly and looks towards the village. “Someone’s coming,” she says. Esteban opens his eyes and sees her standing a little way from him, her gaze firmly fixed on the village. He wrestles himself up from the ground to see what she is talking about.
Unable to make out the shapes in the distant half-light of the moon, he squints his eyes. The shapes are walking towards the hut with purpose. Esteban edges to the door of the hut and knocks. “Get up, brother, someone is coming,” he says.
The dark shapes get closer. Antonio opens the door and steps outside, hiding a pickaxe handle behind him. The three of them wait nervously for the approaching group. It doesn’t take long for the shapes to get close enough to make out who they are: two Civil Guards armed with rifles and four CEDA youth with sticks over their shoulders. Esteban puts his hand on his brother’s forearm. “Drop the stick,” he says. The brother steps sideways and drops the stick against the side of the building.
The group reaches them and one of the guards takes a few steps in front of his colleague. The second guard levels the barrel of the rifle towards Esteban and Antonio. The four teenagers spread out a few yards behind the second guard, holding the handles horizontally across their waists. The first guard takes out a piece of paper from his jacket pocket, opens it up and noisily shakes it flat. With the other hand he unclips the clasp on the holster and grips the handle of the revolver. “Esteban, I am arresting you and your family on charges of planning an insurrection.” His nervousness is only slightly masked by the contrived officious tone.
Esteban is taken aback and stumbles over his own words, “What are you talking about? Insurrection against what? I don’t understand.”
The four teenagers fan out into a semicircle with their weapons grasped firmly in their hands. Their knuckles whiten as their excitement crests. Antonio starts inching backwards towards the discarded axe handle. In one movement the Civil Guard draws his revolver and points it at him. “If you resist, you will be shot like the dog you are,” he says quietly. Antonio stops. The second guard starts walking towards them shouldering his rifle. Two of the teenagers close in around the three workers, the ends of their bats hovering at shoulder height ready to strike. The other two put the handles under their arms and make their way forwards, pulling lengths of rope from their jacket pockets.
A Most Uncivil War Page 18