A Most Uncivil War

by Nicolas Lalaguna

  Maria Dolores implores, “We have done nothing. I don’t understand.” The teenager closest to her swings the length of wood into the back and side of her knee like an axe. She collapses hard onto her knees and then flat onto her chest with a cry of pain. Antonio lunges for the handle on the floor behind him as the second handle crashes against the side of his head with a dull crack, spinning him to the ground. Esteban turns and reaches out towards Maria Dolores, halting almost immediately as he feels the barrel of the revolver push hard against the skin where his spine meets his skull.

  The guard’s voice is more assured as he shouts, “You will die like dogs.” Esteban freezes his body and slowly moves his open hands up to shoulder height. The guard forces the sole of his foot into the back of Esteban’s arthritic knee. His legs collapse under his weight and he sinks to his knees. At no point does the barrel of the gun leave the back of his head. Esteban’s brother slips in and out of consciousness. The deep cut to the side of his head pumps blood down his face and onto the earth beneath him, staining it black.

  By the time the flatbed truck reaches the police station Esteban and his family have been joined by six other workers, including two of the local CNT organisers and the one UGT organiser, all in similarly brutalised states. One by one they are dragged stumbling off the back of the truck and into the station by the Civil Guards. They are taken to the cells at the back of the station, their hands unbound and pushed stumbling into two cells. Of the nine people on the truck only one other woman shares the cell with Maria Dolores, a CNT women’s representative from the canning factory. In the other cell the men that can still stand tend to the men that cannot. Antonio swears under his breath as one of the other men ties sleeves torn from his shirt around his head to stem the bleeding.

  Outside the bars of the prison doors Manolo paces, smiling to himself. One by one his guards report on how the arrests went. He points to the other woman with his stick, “Take her to my office and secure her.” The two guards standing behind him immediately drag her from the cell to his office and close the door behind them. Manolo waits a few moments and then follows them in.

  Maria Dolores pulls herself surreptitiously along the floor until she reaches the bars separating the cells. Esteban is on the other side waiting for her. “How is my man?” she asks quietly.

  Esteban glances back towards him. “He should be all right. He is talking sense now, but he does need to see a doctor. The men are saying that his skull looks broken.” Unable to cry from shock, Maria Dolores just stares blankly at Antonio through the bars, her forehead resting against the damp, cold metal. She holds on tightly to Esteban’s hand through the bars for the little comfort it affords her.

  After an hour most of the guards have gone off duty, leaving only two guards in the main office and the captain in his private office. One of the guards drags the woman back to the cell. Her face is red, her lower lip speckled with blood, her skirt is twisted and her shirt is untucked. The guard pushes her into the cell. She stumbles across it before falling like a rag doll into the corner. Maria Dolores stays still, hoping not to draw attention to herself. She breathes a sigh of relief as the door is once again slid shut with the earpiercing sound of metal grinding against stone.

  The guards then take one of the men from the next cell into the captain’s office. When the door to the office closes Maria Dolores crawls quickly across the cell and pulls the woman into her arms, nestling her head against the crook of her neck. She is barely awake and murmuring incoherently. Maria Dolores strokes the short, brown hair whispering repeatedly, “Don’t worry. It is over now.” Esteban looks on powerless from the other side of the bars, swelling rage grinding his teeth.

  *

  Lying on the bedroll on the floor of the barn, Marianela silently weeps. The pain in her hip is a constant throbbing and her future looks ever more bleak with each passing moment. She holds her eyes tightly shut to stifle the pain. It doesn’t work.

  *

  In the brothel in Zaragoza Pedro sits naked on the side of the stained sheets, a half-empty bottle of brandy hanging loosely in one hand and a selfish tear rolling down his cheek. The naked fifteen-year-old gypsy girl, enjoying a moment’s respite, feigns sleep on the bed behind him. Her breathing is slow and deep.

  *

  In Pamplona Raul is climbing in to the back of a truck bound for Asturias. His thoughts go to Marianela, Salvador and his people in Barcelona.

  *

  Salvador and Cati stand wrapped in each other’s arms on the flat roof of a hotel on the Plaza Catalunya in Barcelona. They are looking out across the rooftops of La Rambla. The stars and moon overhead and the incessant din of the crowds far below sandwich them in their own world. They kiss each other.

  *

  In the upstairs room of the house Juan Nicolas finally falls asleep after hours of tormented tossing and turning. His waking thoughts racked by guilt and loneliness are finally quiet.

  Chapter 16

  As the October 1934 uprising was petering out across most of Spain, the opposite was happening in Asturias. Armed and well-organised, the miners quickly took control of villages, towns and large sections of the cities. The government responded by sending the full force of the military. The air force bombed villages, the navy shelled coastal towns and the foreign legion and the Moroccan divisions swept up whatever resistance was left. The entire region was recaptured within two weeks.

  In the months that followed, 30,000 people were imprisoned and political parties, trade union offices and left wing newspapers were closed down across the whole country. In two villages alone, hundreds of miners were found slaughtered at the bottom of pit shafts. Across the region reports of mass killings, rapes, robberies and systematic torture by the police and colonial forces were spreading.

  Throughout 1935 the violence increased. Eventually, a general election was called for the February of 1936. The left wing politicians unified together as the Popular Front and struck a deal with the two largest unions, promising amnesty to the tens of thousands of political prisoners if both supported them. After the counting had finished the Popular Front had won by the narrowest of margins. The politicians immediately started negotiating and planning but the peasants couldn’t wait, prisons were forced open and large tracts of fallow land were occupied and farmed. Many believed that the years of conflict and inequality were over; however, some refused to surrender their privileges quite so easily. Seeing control slipping, senior military officers, major landowners and fascist politicians began planning a coup to overthrow the government and install a military dictatorship.

  Following the uprising in 1934 the arrest warrants in the village for Miguel and Salvador were still open, forcing them to remain in Barcelona with Caterina. The three of them spent much of 1935 working with local CNT militias to expropriate resources and supplies. They mainly took supplies from warehouses, but they made a name for themselves breaking into a retired general’s home and taking his weapons collection. They then used those same weapons to rob two banks over the following week. They lived in the shanty towns to the south of the city, for months moving from one shack to the next every couple of days. The intimacy and exhilaration of their lives had bonded Salvador and Cati together. Standing in the middle of the makeshift town, the stench of human suffering all around them, they had pledged their futures to one another.

  Raul was being held without trial in a prison at the foothills of the Pyrenees after being arrested in Asturias in 1934 on charges of insurrection and murder under his false identity. In the village Esteban and his brother Antonio had been imprisoned alongside the union organisers in a prison outside Teruel. Antonio’s wife was forced to find any work in the town to be close to her husband. She shared a room with six other women; each night, quietly crying herself to sleep. Left alone in the village, Marianela grew more bitter and angry as each person she cared for was taken away. Alone in the house, she mourned h
er loved ones and her happiness. The messages from her son stopped in the summer of 1935 as the last union organiser in the village was arrested. It wasn’t long before all hope had left her and all she could do was imagine the worst.

  The balmy June evening in the Catalonian shanty town plays host to Caterina, Salvador, Miguel and several of the other CNT’istas in hiding. They pass the wineskin between them. Caterina and one of the other women are singing, accompanied by one of the men on a beaten-up old guitar. The dirt road that they are sitting in runs between precariously balanced wooden shacks and for most of the day is home to a constant throng of dishevelled and desperate people. Small children run down the roads and leap dangerously across the channels of flowing excrement and urine. Smog from the nearby factories lays across the top of the shacks and cascades down into the narrow passages between.

  Through the coughing and shuffling crowds a runner for the union makes his way towards the semicircle sitting outside the hut. When Salvador notices the man moving towards them, Caterina notices and follows his gaze. The messenger makes his way around the group to the opposite side where Salvador and Cati are leaning against each other. The man reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket. Before his hand reappears Miguel and Salvador both raise their hands from their sides. The hammers of both revolvers are cocked and the barrels aimed straight at the man. The messenger holds his hands up. In one is an envelope. Several of the other men sitting with them start laughing, withdrawing their hands back from the rifles and shotguns that they had just reached for.

  The messenger hands the envelope to Cati. Salvador watches her open and read it. She pauses for a moment and then looks up at him, disbelief and confusion fighting to take control of her face. She reads it again. He notices her eyes filling with tears, and he turns himself around on the crate to face her. He puts one hand on her knee and feels the sinewy flesh of her thigh through the blue overalls. “What it is it?” he asks.

  She hands him the piece of paper. “My father is home. He is with my mother now. He is unwell. I must go to him.”

  Salvador takes the paper and without reading it put his arms around her and whispers into her ear, “We’ll go immediately.” He feels her chest expanding and decreasing in his arms. Miguel stands up and hands the messenger a coin from his pocket. Salvador stands up, half lifting Cati to her feet. Miguel picks up the rifle and shotgun that are resting against the wall where they are sitting. The men and the woman continue singing and talking as the three make their way into the hut.

  They stand in the middle of the damp room. The mould on the rotting wood struggles to rise above the stench of the open sewers outside. Cati speaks first, “I must go now.”

  Salvador turns to Miguel, “I will go with her, but you must stay. It is too dangerous for us all to go.” Cati ties her hair back into a ponytail and covers it with a headscarf. Miguel nods his head almost imperceptibly and kisses Cati on both cheeks, “I am so happy for you. Send word if you need anything and I will bring it.”

  Cati holds his cheeks in both hands and kisses him on the lips. “Thank you, brother. We will return soon,” she says. Cati turns back to Salvador. “Are you ready?” she asks.

  “Yes,” he answers, as he places the revolver into the hip pocket of his overalls. He pulls the black flat cap onto his head and the brim of the peak down over his eyebrows. He embraces Miguel, “I will send word if we are staying for any time.” Miguel pats him on the back from within the embrace.

  The journey through the shanty town is easy as the police rarely, if ever, enter the area. As the two of them reach the outskirts of the ever-expanding fragile suburb and make their way across the wasteland towards the line of factories, Salvador takes Cati’s hand in his. The lights of the city and the buildings reaching high into the night sky before him have now become commonplace in his vision. The feeling of overwhelming awe he felt the first time he set eyes on it has become no more than an anecdote. They reach the factories, circle around them and make their way to the service roads. They keep walking along the banks of the roads. The distant hum of the city is growing.

  The smell of pine rolls down from the cemetery clinging to the side of Mountjuic. The fresh, pine-infused breeze swirls around them and continues out to sea. The lorries rattle past them. They reach the roundabout and, keeping close to the shadows, hurry up the wide tree-lined road towards Poble Sec.

  The gentle tapping of hooves warns them of riders nearing. They fall into each other’s arms and edge back into the shadows kissing. Whoever is facing out towards the street watches over the other’s shoulder through half-open eyes. Uninterested, the mounted police barely look up. Once the police have passed, the two continue on. When they reach the theatre they turn right into the narrow, cholera-clouded streets.

  Once in the labyrinthine pathways cutting through the buildings they allow themselves to blend into the shuffling crowds; emaciated children begging on street corners, women exhaustedly laden with rags, coughing up phlegm and blood into the open sewers and men marinated in cheap wine professing pyrrhic victories as they stumble from one bar to another. This was what had become of Caterina’s home in the years she had known it; desperation had grown and hope had ebbed.

  She holds Salvador’s hand tightly as they weave through the narrow streets towards the small square a short distance from the building she had grown up in. Even though their bandanas and flags had long since been hidden, what was left of the CNT in this area were still organising. The two of them walk across the square to the bar in the far corner. At the tables outside men and women sit together in the only clothes many of them own: simple and work-weary dresses and overalls.

  Salvador sits down at one of the tables, letting Cati continue into the bar without him. The man already sitting at the table doesn’t look up from his journal. Sal takes out his tin of tobacco and puts it on the table in front of him. The two guitarists inside the bar change their tune. Salvador looks back over his shoulder to get the barman’s attention. Cati appears behind him. She leans against his shoulder and puts one hand on the nape of his neck. She lets the tips of her fingers gently caress the short hair. The barman comes to the table. “What do you want?” he croaks deeply.

  Cati speaks for both of them, “Two red wines please.”

  Salvador rolls a cigarette while looking at the man sitting beside him at the table. “Have you come to go home?” the man asks Cati, without looking up.

  “Yes. The messenger reached us. Thank you,” she replies. Salvador watches the man as he speaks.

  “You’re welcome. Your father is with your mother. I will come in the morning to see what he needs.” The man turns back to Salvador. “Will you be staying with them?” he asks.

  “Yes, as long as it is safe for both of us to be there,” Sal replies.

  When the waiter returns with the wine, the man tells him “Get two days’ food and water for Caterina’s family.” The waiter nods and goes back into the bar. The man sips from his coffee.

  The waiter returns to the table with a large sack and two wineskins. He places them by Salvador’s foot. The man pulls a small revolver from his belt and under the table hands it to Salvador. Salvador looks at the .22 calibre and thinks that it looks like a toy gun in his hand. The man hands him a small cardboard box that rattles as it moves. “Give this to Juan Antonio. He will not be happy unless he has a gun,” the man says. Salvador leans down and puts the gun and ammunition into the sack. When he sits back up he feels Caterina’s hand around the back of his neck; the warm gentle grip squeezes twice. Recognising the sign, Salvador stands up, empties his glass and then lifts the sack and one of the wineskins over his shoulder.

  “Thank you for doing this,” he says to the man at the table.

  The man sips from his coffee and then places the cup gently down in the saucer. Without looking up, he replies, his gaze scanning the people in the square, “Juan Antonio is a go
od comrade. A lot of us owe him more than we could ever repay.” He looks up at Salvador. “When he speaks you are to listen. He has seen more and done more than you ever will. Do you understand?”

  Salvador nods, picks up his cigarette out from the ashtray and turns to leave. Caterina kisses the man on both cheeks and says into his ear, “Thank you. You have always been good to us.”

  The man pats her hand where it rests on the arm of his chair. “You don’t have to say thank you. I will come in the morning to see how your father is.” Salvador waits for Caterina a little way from the table. She pulls the other wineskin over her shoulder and joins him. They walk out of the square and back into the thronging desperation of the claustrophobic streets.

  Carrying the provisions to the flat and up the four flights of stairs to the second floor makes both their clothes damp with sweat. Caterina knocks on the door. A few moments pass before her mother opens it. The smell of rancid sweat and sickness wafts out of the open door. Caterina drops the wineskin to the floor and wraps her arms around her mother. Salvador picks it up and looks back over the bannister down the shaft of the staircase and then up to the floors above. Assuring himself that there is no one else on the stairs, he follows the two women into the room.