‘I passed the entry exam for teacher training college in Tetuan.’
‘So you’ll be staying with us during your training period?’
‘Yes.’
Batati said:
‘You’re the lucky one out of our gang.’
‘How’s that?’
‘It’s a privilege to be allowed to study.’
Then he added:
‘Even the best of us is never going to be anything more than a labourer, or a small trader, or going abroad to find work. You’ve got a guaranteed future now, with the state, and before too long you’ll be a teacher.’
‘I hear that Tafersiti’s a rich man these days.’
‘Tafersiti’s another matter. You know him better than us. You’re two of a kind. He’s the sort of person who eats and still worries that he’s going to be hungry. The man’s a miser. He’d have sold his mother’s milk while he was at her breast …’
‘But he’s happy enough to spend money on himself.’
‘Oh, shut up. You don’t know the kind of person he is nowadays.’
‘I know he spends money on people he thinks are important.’
‘See, now you’re beginning to understand … Do you realize, he left his father to die in poverty in a shack, while he was living in a smart flat in town? The day he dies, there’ll still be hunger on his face.’
Comero said:
‘He didn’t stay on the dungheap like us, but we haven’t sunk as low as he has.’
He added:
‘Do you remember Batikha, the one we used to give centimes to, and cinema tickets …? He’s got rich too. He lives off exploiting young boys. He’s married now, with a family.’
By the fourth glass my head was beginning to spin. I had an alarming thought: maybe Comero was taking his revenge by getting me drunk. The mark of the scar I’d given him was still visible on his left cheek. I made my excuses, saying I had to leave. Comero was perfectly friendly, not seeming to harbour a grudge because of our fight.
‘When do we see you next?’ he asked.
‘I’ll be around for the whole year. You’ll find me at the café.’
I left them while I could still stand. Another couple of glasses and I’d have been out of my head. It was 7 in the evening. The hut of ill omen would not be asleep for another few hours yet. Trancats was bustling with movement, just as I remembered it from the late 1940s and early 1950s. Probably even busier today. Old faces had disappeared from the shops and new faces had taken their place. Some of the faces were still there, but had grown old. My mother told me which of them weren’t there any more, either because they were sick or because they’d died.
Habiba was my saviour that night. I went round to her place again. She welcomed me warmly. She probably understood that I was the best she’d get. Her gentle smile and friendly handshake told me she wasn’t angry with me. She probably needed companionship in the same way that I did.
‘I hope we can still stay friends,’ she said, and smiled.
I nodded in agreement. She was the stronger of the two of us. There was no point in me thinking I was anything better than her. I got the message that she didn’t want there to be anything physical between us. The glasses of Mahiya eau de vie that I’d drunk were having the same effect on me as Del Mono anis or Terry cognac. They knocked me out. I relaxed to the sound of a female singer on the radio and dozed off. I felt someone put a cover over me. This was just what I needed.
I slept for about two hours. When I woke up, she’d prepared supper and bought us a bottle of white wine. I was feeling a bit dopey, so I splashed my head and face with cold water. Farid el Atrache was singing on the radio: ‘O vision of beauty’.
17
Rosario liked to boast that she was born in Avilés in Asturias; that she spoke Bable (the local Asturian dialect); that she had a mortal hatred of Franco; and that she’d been married to a republican militant from Gijón who had given his life in the cause of democracy.
Most of the time we – Fermin Vito and myself – sat on our own at one of the four tables in the small restaurant’s forecourt area. Sometimes María Rosario would join us, either at his table or at mine, smoking, and sipping a coffee or brandy (or sometimes both together). Fermin Vito was in the habit of boasting about his birthplace too. He was from El Ferrol (which happened to be where Franco was born). By common consent we avoided sharing a table. Once I suggested he might come and sit with me, but he made an elaborate apology and stayed where he was. When I was on my own, Rosario would come and join me. The fact of our sitting together was a kind of secret understanding against Fermin Vito, because Rosario always used to say that he was too smug and selfsatisfied for his own good. When he was about, she’d stay at her table on her own, or stay in the kitchen, or bustle about the premises. He was very touchy too, and not at all the friendly sort. She told me as much when she saw him refusing to sit with me.
On this particular night we didn’t hear Rosario and her brother Carrion arguing over their card-playing. Despite the fact that Vito was always getting upset about their shouting, it was as if something was missing in our lives. We could never tell who was cheating whom – Carrion generally protested a lot, but Rosario would shout him down – to cover up her cheating, or so Vito claimed.
When Vito left, I discovered that Rosario had been furious with her granddaughter Cándida. She smoked her cheap cigarettes and drank her vile brandy, and kept popping in and out, with a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Cándida had run away from boarding school at the convent of the Sisters of Charity, in Tangier, three days previously. They were pretty sure that she hadn’t left Morocco and they knew she hadn’t gone to her mother’s in Meknes. In fact, she’d been at her friend Marisa’s house in Tangier. Her grandmother had hidden her passport from her:
‘She always had a hard time at the hands of her mother and now it’s the daughter’s turn.’
That’s what she’d say to Carrion, but he preferred not to get involved in his sister’s arguments. Rosario was getting on a bit.
The previous April she’d celebrated her 62nd birthday.
Carrion smoked his cigarettes, which he rolled himself, drank carajol and amused himself reading children’s comics. When he spoke he had a tendency to mumble, but his sister understood him clearly enough. His nose was broken and scarred, and I wondered whether it had happened in a fall or if someone had hit him. He confined himself to the kitchen, preferring to avoid conversation with the customers.
Rosario had an Andalusian temperament, even though she was from Avilés, and she used all kinds of expressions whose meaning escaped me. She spent a lot of time with Andalusians in Morocco, but most of them had left the country after Independence. One day her granddaughter had come to visit and Rosario found her looking down from the balcony into the street. I heard her shout:
‘Close the window, child, or the bull wind will whisk you away …!’
But then came the day when the bull wind really did whisk her away, becaused she escaped over the walls of the Sisters of Charity convent school and her grandmother didn’t have the first idea where she’d gone.
I loved it when Rosario got all worked up with Vito, when they argued about the Civil War, or about priests and the Church. She’d argue him into the ground and quote all kinds of things that she’d read. She was lucky, because most of the poor girls of her generation had never been given the chance to study. I always backed her up against Fermin Vito, even when she was wrong.
He was in the habit of saying rude things about her behind her back. One evening he was talking about her and he said, in a quiet malicious voice:
‘The old witch, her saints have escaped her and gone to heaven.’ (By this he meant that she no longer knew anything about anything.) ‘At least she’s giving us a rest from her usual yelling when she’s cheating at cards. I pity that poor devil Carrion – fancy having to spend his whole life in her shadow! She’s a heathen and a hypocrite!’
But Rosario ha
d a more evil temper than Fermin, and when she talked about him he really went for the jugular.
‘Miser … Opportunist … Hypocrite … He goes to mass on Sunday just to keep in with the Spanish diplomatic corps. He’s preparing proper credentials for himself as an insurance for when he goes back to Spain. He needs to look like an upright citizen, so’s he can get a better job there. Do you know why he’s so keen on Franco? Because he’s from the same town, and he thinks he’s the best ruler Spain’s had since the days of the Catholic kings and queens – Isabella and Ferdinando, and Carlos III. Isn’t he stupid …!’
In a sadder tone of voice she told me about her husband, a communist, who’d been executed by the fascists in Tetuan.
‘They say that Franco used to order those executions while he was eating his breakfast. Ten per day, so they say. And my husband was one of those bloodstained breakfasts. Do you know how it was that Franco ended up taking over the government? They say it was all the fault of his brother Nicolás. He was to blame for the disaster. Apparently the military law which his colleagues created at the moment of their victory stipulated that Franco was to be provisional head of state, but his brother had sent the text to the printers on a top priority military order and he’d crossed out the word “provisional”. So that’s how Franco ended up staying in power for so long. At the start he’d said jokingly that it was a temporary dictatorship to restore the rule of law in the country, and afterwards he’d retire to the countryside to live in peace. But when things started to go well for him in power, he began saying: “My government will be for life. Spain is a kingdom without a king, but we are monarchists.” And in order to cement it in perpetuity, he inevitably had to associate the church in this “god-given” venture, with a view to creating a kind of crusade against the communists. He also had to distance himself from most of the people who’d helped him in his victory or drive them into exile in France, Mexico, Argentina and Russia. He got rid of José Antonio Primo de Rivera,1 abandoning him to die in Alicante prison so that he’d have no competition in his project to establish fascism in Spain. It was in his power to do an exchange for the socialist leader Largo Caballero, but he preferred to kill him so that he could get rid of both of them. He didn’t even trust his own shadow. He wasn’t prepared to take risks if a prisoner wasn’t any use to him in perpetuating his own power. This hunter of rabbits and boar saw Spain as a kind of military barracks. Do you know why he used to insist on appearing in naval uniform decorated with the insignia of admiral of the fleet? Because he failed the exams for the naval academy in Toledo, that’s why. And he attacked the freemasons – that was because they wouldn’t let him join. His officer friends used to call him “The Three M’s”.2
So that was how Franco carved out his path to power. And for all that, Vito was not embarrassed to say that the Caudillo was the person responsible for restoring the glory that Spain had lost in 1898.
And in order to restore to Spain some of the glories she once enjoyed in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, he set his eyes on Morocco and began drafting simple-minded Moroccans into his army, telling them that it was their mission to make war on those who didn’t believe in Allah.’
Rosario continued:
‘The ambitions of tyrants have no limits, as everyone knows. I think that Franco was more cunning than his mentor in the dictatorship, Miguel Primo de Rivera. Franco always maintained that he was a monarchist at heart, but royalist Spain had been stuck with the burden of defeat for a whole century, and he believed he’d been sent by heaven to resolve its disunity. Spain wasn’t the only country labouring under this delusion. Right after his military coup against the Second Republic, he announced: “We have the honour of being the first state to defend Western civilization from the malign influences of the East.” But the worth of this so-called “defence” became clear ten years later, when world opinion had him thrown out of the United Nations Assembly. His government was left totally isolated internationally. A further ten years passed before the United States3 and the Vatican interceded on his behalf (each for reasons of its own self-interest) and Spain was readmitted to the UN in 1955. So he finally won the war and was able to spend the rest of his time painting sunken ships.4
In his opinion, treason was the best that could be expected from the Popular National Front, which didn’t support the army. The PNF frightened him and it didn’t trust him either (it was right in this, because he was advancing his own interests on the back of the PNF’s sacrifices.) Was it wise, for example, to sentence to death a legionnaire in Morocco on the grounds that he had insulted a superior officer by refusing to eat lentils because he didn’t like them? Military victory can only be achieved by discipline and blind obedience from soldiers, even when their generals are mistaken. This was Franco’s justification for these kinds of actions. In his opinion political parties were divisive and detracted from patriotism, and from serving one’s country. As for the Germans, they saw him as a clerical reactionary, not a real fascist, because he only really believed in running an efficient regime, and in the legitimacy of the revolution of 18 July.’
I wasn’t particularly worried about having failed the graduation exam. I realized that I’d knowingly neglected my studies in favour of reading literature, but I did have the consolation of a posting in Tangier. Our neighbour was employed in the education department. He was sure to have notified my father, and my father would have been happy because my failure would have confirmed his opinion that I was basically stupid. Up to the present day I have never felt any particular shame or regret about it.
Abdelaziz and Arhimo soon got better. He went back to school and his little shop, and she returned to her sewing and to looking after the shack. My father never stopped hanging out with his circle of war-veteran friends in Plaza de Feddane even during his illness, but his asthma attacks were beginning to confine him to bed. He suffered from asthma right up to his death in 1979.
I visited my mother in the Souq Bab et Toute. I gave her my monthly housekeeping money and I also gave her a small amount for my father. I knew that he’d spit on such a modest sum, and would curse me as usual, but he wouldn’t turn it down or give it away to beggars in the street. It was enough to keep him in snuff and glasses of tea for several weeks in the Feddane. I was more concerned about my mother, not about pleasing him. I kissed her hand. When I said goodbye to her she was crying. She wasn’t the sort of person to press me to make family visits. She obviously knew that I’d failed the exam – I could tell by the way she was looking at me – but she didn’t say anything. She knew what made me tick – either I’d turn up or I wouldn’t, depending on whether the opportunity presented itself. I bought some small presents, for my sister and for Habiba our hunchbacked neighbour.
I saw this brunette in the street. I followed her until she noticed me and stopped in front of a shop window and began eyeing me up and down. She smiled. I resisted the temptation and went to the Bar Rebertito. I thought: crass stupidity. Love’s a dirty game. I didn’t want a repeat of what had happened to me with Kunza. I remembered the story of Qasem with his Jewish girlfriend Natalie, before he finally went crazy.
It was 3 in the morning. The rain was soaking me as I stood in front of her house. I felt like a dead tree. Her fat, evil dog was barking at me from behind the grille of the garden gate. I raised my eyes to the heavens, feeling dejected, then I closed them. Drops of rain trickled from my eyes. A kind of fever was spurring me on. My mouth was open and my eyes were closed. A failed love. In my memory I recall mostly the darkness and the rain. The dream of her was shattered on that rainy night. All my anger was somehow concentrated in my hands. I found myself pummelling the wall with my bare hands. The rain washed the blood away. At that very moment she was probably at her toilet, and there was I watering the flowers of my thoughts of her in the drenching darkness. Was this the wonder of love? What a load of nonsense! So I raised my voice to the skies. I knew that shadows are a guide for those who lose their way. I became a shadow of myself an
d I consigned her to eternal oblivion.
I had a few glasses of wine. Then I went to Anita’s house in Bab et Toute. She was a prostitute, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t friendly and welcoming. Her sweet-scented tidiness reminded me of Christo Valina in Tangier. This was the third time I’d been to her place since I’d first met her at the start of the month. I drank two glasses of Del Mono anis at her house.
Cándida arrived from Meknes a short while later with her mother. She refused to return to her Catholic convent. This was the first time I’d had an opportunity to sit with her. We talked about literature and about writing. She struck me as more intelligent than her grandmother had suggested. Rosario blamed her failure at school on the fact that she’d fallen in love with a young man who had emigrated with his family to Cordoba. Her father had also emigrated, fleeing to Canada to escape the fascists, a couple of months before she was born. He wrote a novel about the Spanish Republican fighters in Morocco. We heard about it, but never saw a copy. For us his story had ended ten years previously.
Cándida read a lot. She wrote too – romantic ideas about failure in love, her weariness with life and the bad luck in her family. She was in her early twenties by that time, and life’s worries were beginning to give her an air of maturity, but she still had no idea what she was going to do in life. I had bought two bottles of Rioja wine, and a big goose, which Carrion prepared himself because he reckoned he was better than his sister Rosario when it came to cooking poultry. As usual, Carrion withdrew to the kitchen to have supper on his own. This was my last evening with Rosario’s family. Fermin Vito didn’t come on Sundays, but if he had come he would have gone on strike and stayed in the kitchen, even if we’d all been eating the same meal.
1. The founder of the fascist Blue shirts.
2. Sin miedo, sin misa, sin mujeres (or sin maricones, as some would have it) – ‘No fear, No mass and No women/queers’.
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