by Joan Sales
“The blood of God!” said Picó, dropping the chalice and sending wine all over the flagstones. While I picked it up and put it in a safe place, he mumbled: “Cruells, if you think I don’t know what a chalice is . . . I also studied in a seminary.”
“Obviously,” commented Dr Puig.
Lluís was very surly; he said hardly a word during the meal. All the same he insisted I stay overnight with them in Santa Espina and Dr Puig raised no objection. At the time, we had almost no work in the battalion’s medical section.
That was the first time I had spent the night with Picó and Lluís; subsequently I’d often go to Santa Espina from Villar at the end of the day in the brougham the captain sent me so I could dine and sleep with them. In a ruined stable he’d found a brougham with huge wheels that could really speed along. One of its springs was broken but Picó soldered it one morning; he was quite a handyman. My first outings were a success and pulled by one of the machine gunners’ mules it covered the distance between the two villages, nearly all downhill, in three quarters of an hour.
The brougham also proved excellent for expeditions to the deserted valley, to no man’s land. Shortly after that first dinner in Santa Espina, an order came from the brigadier forbidding soldiers to visit the villages in that valley; only Picó and Lluís had permission to make forays there. The commander issued this order because he was shocked by our soldiers organising games of football with the enemy in the threshing areas of the villages. The hierarchy wanted to put a stop to such friendly get-togethers.
Picó, Lluís and I slept together in the same top-floor room, practically the attic, in Santa Espina. Picó had chosen it because the room had escaped fire damage and the first night Lluís and I spent there, Picó warned us: “It’s forbidden to do a 1902 out of the window.”
It was true that the window looked over the village high street, but the street was only a pile of rubble and rubbish.
“This village is one big heap of manure,” grunted Lluís. “You don’t mean we must go down to the yard in our pyjamas if we have an emergency?”
“Doing a 1902” was an expression we used in the brigade; in the course of the war each brigade created its own slang. The commander of the flat feet was a Josep, “something which in itself,” said Commander Rosich, “isn’t at all reprehensible.” For his saint’s day our commander had sent him a bottle of Sauternes, “Genuine Sauternes, vintage 1902”, with a card: “I’m sending you this gift, to which all the heads of battalion in my brigade have contributed.” I hardly need tell you what the collaboration consisted of. “We want you to see this as proof,” he added to the congratulations card of which he circulated numerous copies, “of the true spirit of fraternity that exists between our republican brigades. May this bottle bring to your mouth the best possible memories of us all!”
So Picó didn’t want us to do a 1902 out of the window and onto the high street; he felt he was the feudal lord of the Santa Espina manor and took his responsibilities seriously: “This isn’t like Villar,” he said. “I’m the one in charge here. I want hygiene and culture.”
After that he showed us “a hoard of cultural treasures” he’d been assembling: a huge suitcase full of books. They were slim, soft-covered volumes in bad condition and piled together without rhyme or reason. We didn’t need to dip into them to get a fairly exact idea of the literary genre.
“It’s my campaign against pornography,” he told us. “Our soldiers are too young and too uncultured to read works as fully fledged as these. I confiscate them. By ensuring that they don’t read anything unhealthy, I’ve found a way to dedicate my own evenings to literature, thus killing two birds with one stone! I’d not get any shut-eye without a touch of Romanticism.”
One rainy night the candles had been snuffed out for some time, but I couldn’t get to sleep. Picó was snoring: powerful, resonant, even snores that nurtured a feeling of peace and security. I slipped stealthily off my mattress – we each slept on our own on the floor; the straw mattress rustled with every movement I made. I was intending to do what Picó had forbidden: I felt an urgent need. Once I was out of bed, the cold made my teeth chatter and that reminded me of Picó’s: I remembered he’d left them on the only chair, in a glass of water. Careful you don’t bump into the chair! The small, low glassless window beckoned from the back of the bedroom; I tiptoed over, striving not to disturb the other obstacle, the suitcase of fully fledged works. I was soon level with the window: in the meantime the rain had turned to snow and thick flurries of flakes were falling softly and silently. The only light in the world was the hazy gleam from the snow; the sky seemed darker than the earth. Some flakes strayed into the bedrooms. Picó hadn’t heard me and was still snoring; Lluís was also asleep, I could hear his regular breathing. I was now groping my way back; I was following the wall round when, surprise! surprise! my hand came upon Lluís’ haversack on a hook. His haversack, Lluís’ haversack. My hand slipped inside quite spontaneously and emerged with the bundle of letters.
I’d been so intrigued by that bundle of letters! I’d often seen Lluís read and re-read them as if obsessed. Once I even asked him who they were from and he replied drily, with hatred in his eyes: “From my wife.” That was all I knew.
It had been too much for me: I’d taken the letters from the haversack and was now going downstairs. A cold wind from the North Pole was blowing up the stairs and my teeth were chattering: I sneezed loudly on the landing. I stood still for a few seconds. Silence. They hadn’t heard me.
With the tongs I stirred a mountain of embers in the hearth and the cinders suddenly sparkled, so welcoming on a night like that! I lit the oil lamp, sat on one of the fireside benches and started to read.
I now feel horribly ashamed; reading those letters is one of the most shameful acts I have ever committed. What small, delicate handwriting, what comforting embers; I read eagerly, became more and more passionately drawn into that secret life I was discovering, increasingly alarmed from letter to letter, anticipating an unhappy ending – unhappy for Lluís . . . I felt so relieved! Nothing was beyond repair, nothing was broken forever; it could be soldered. It only needed a third party with goodwill to take on the task, and I would be that third providential person.
I felt a wave of tenderness course through me: life was so lovely! There were good works to do, wounds to anoint with balsam, unhappy friends to restore to their lost bliss; at the time I thought the irresistible impulse to read those letters must have come from on high. Yes, that much was obvious: a voice had summoned me! I could do so much good now that I knew where the problem lay!
It was late, very late; I’d spent five hours reading letters and yet more letters. I had to go back to the bedroom before they woke up and return the letters to their rightful place.
Life is so lovely, I told myself as I crawled back to bed; if only I could consult Dr Gallifa . . . but where might he be? What if it were him? That most ordinary of apostles . . . I curled up under the four cotton blankets, shuddering delightfully like a cat; Picó was still snoring; Lluís had heard nothing; the snow was still falling. The snow! My mind felt suddenly inspired. That was a dead front; now with that snowfall . . . Just a few days earlier we’d found out that the officers of the flatfooted brigade – also stationed on the dead front like us – had smuggled their wives to the front with the idea of spending Christmas with them. Lluís couldn’t go to the rearguard to see her; no leave was being given, and the Ministry for War was being very strict about it. But she could come to Santa Espina. She had to come; it was vital for them to make peace with each other.
My bed had grown warmer and I curled up feeling tender and confident. Life was so lovely! Other people’s lives, I thought all of a sudden; then I wanted to cry. I was dead tired and full of self-pity, but the pity and sleepiness were also tender and lovely. It is so comforting to go to sleep feeling good, generous and better than everyone else; so comforting to curl up in a warm, dry bed while outside snowflakes fall endlessly . . .
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•
So that was how I came to be in Barcelona in December 1937.
But now my wallet, which contained my papers, had been stolen – the precious “official paperwork” we’d concocted between us: the report from medical lieutenant Puig to battalion commander Rosich informing him of the “urgent necessity to send medical adjutant Cruells to the rearguard to procure various indispensable medicines for the courageous soldiers engaged in the fight against fascism”, followed by the permission from the battalion commander to the brigadier – who’d promised to turn a blind eye and let us get on with it – and finally the latter’s order to medical adjutant Cruells to go immediately to Barcelona “using his own means to carry out urgent tasks on behalf of his unit”; all this red tape duly stamped at every control point, the inevitable controls at every crossroads. If only that underwater panther had left my documents alone! As soon as I had some money, thanks to Auntie, I sent an extremely urgent telegram to the battalion asking for another set of “official paperwork”. In the meantime if the military police in Barcelona asked me for my papers, how would I ever justify my presence in the city?
I first paid a visit to Dr Puig’s wife. She lived in a luridly luxurious flat, with a surfeit of mirrors, gilded frames and imitation crystal-glass chandeliers. A uniformed maid ushered me into the drawing room. I felt guilty at leaving footprints from my mud-spattered military boots on the waxed and polished parquet, marks that were as visible as those the rabbits left on the snow on our dead front. Sra Puig kept me waiting for half an hour; I’d foolishly arrived early and I expect she was still making herself presentable. Her toilette, as I later discovered, was a complex, arduous business. Finally she appeared, wrinkling her nose slightly as she looked down on me from a great height. She was most elegant, a tall, statuesque platinum blonde with deep aquamarine blue eyes – a lady fully conscious of her own splendour. Personally, I feel inhibited by this kind of woman; I tried to say my piece as naturally as I could, despite feeling so awkward. She listened intently but seemed taken aback, if not sarcastic, and looked at me askance, a touch suspiciously. She’d received a letter from her husband and knew the essentials; she agreed to travel “since my husband wants me to” and she had to obey him. I finished what I had to say, apologised, and dithered over superfluous detail, feeling as gauche as ever: “It’s a unique opportunity, perhaps there’ll never be another in this whole war, and God knows how long it will last. And as it’s a dead front, with such deep snow . . .”
“Why doesn’t he come to Barcelona? That would be much easier . . .”
“That’s impossible. They’re not granting leave. We’re lucky they’ve given the whole brigade leave, to be spent on a dead front. You can’t ask for more at the moment. It’s a completely dead front; we’re out of range of the firepower supporting the enemy infantry, just imagine . . . the 0.70 cannon, for example . . . the range of a cannon is usually a kilometre for every centimetre of calibre and we are more than seven kilometres from the enemy’s advanced positions.”
I’d wandered off into unnecessary explanations and she was looking at me as if to say “What the hell do I care?”
“I’m telling you all this because I can see that in Barcelona you don’t realise that a dead front is an oasis of peace. Women and children can spend the Christmas holidays there in holy peace and be much better fed than in Barcelona. We’re not short of anything!”
“You can forget the children,” she interrupted drily with the aplomb this kind of woman assumes when talking about her children. “I’m sure they would only see behaviour that would set a bad example.”
When she’d received the letters from her husband, she’d decided straightaway that the children would stay with her parents. I already knew from Dr Puig that his in-laws owned the biggest pork delicatessen in the Boqueria market and were filthy rich. Back in the street my mouth felt parched after so much talk; a new wallet now warmed my heart, stuffed with notes thanks to Auntie: a swollen wallet brings such peace of mind! There was a drone in the air and distant explosions; the streets were deserted as if the whole city was dead. Just then sirens began to wail and I realised what was happening; the explosions sounded much closer. I started walking; Picó’s flat wasn’t very far, perhaps half an hour away. On the way I went into a bar – the only one from which the bartender hadn’t run off to a shelter – to slake my thirst and deal with my other need while I was about it. “You soldiers,” said the bartender as I came out of the lavatories, “must think this bombing of Barcelona is child’s play. Even I have got used to . . .”
Sra Picó opened the door. I was ushered into a small, cheerful flat with white-wood chairs brightly painted by the lady of the house herself – she told me that: pale red, almond green, canary yellow, their knobs splashed with glitter. She must have been between twenty-five and thirty and was slight, slim and olive-skinned, and a nervous chatterbox: “My husband also studied for the priesthood,” she told me with a jolly laugh as if it were an idea that should amuse me. “You must imagine I have a weak spot for aspiring priests.”
“How do you know I’m one?”
“He says so in his letter. He’s written to me about everything. He writes incredibly well; his forte is his spelling. I know everything: who you are, why you have come to Barcelona, and I’m so happy! It’s a year and a half since I last saw him . . . he must have said all kinds of things about me! I also know that this wonderful idea of a Christmas get-together was yours However . . .”
Her eyes opened wide as if she’d had a sudden surprise, and looked me up and down and back again: “Quick, go into the bedroom and take a look in the mirror. You must be very absent-minded!”
After she’d mercifully shut the door, I stood in front of the mirror and understood what the mystery was all about. I’d not buttoned up properly in the lavatories and a piece of shirt tail was sticking out.
She was waiting for me in the dining room with the aperitifs on the table; it must have been midday. I felt downcast.
“Don’t worry, it could happen to anyone.”
She laughed out loud. Just as well something so stupid happened here, I thought, and not at Sra Puig’s! Sra Picó apologised: “You’ll have to drink it without olives, anchovies or crisps. You can’t find food these days! Though any amount of alcohol . . . !”
Afterwards she insisted on showing me various samples of her husband’s talents. I’d noticed that she only referred to him by his surname: “Picó is such a handyman!” She particularly wanted me to see how the electricity worked in the dining room: it was very complicated, with different-coloured bulbs you could combine in a number of ways. You could have red, green, blue and yellow lights or a mixture. She wanted to show me other tricks invented by her husband, the ex-beadle: “They admitted him into the Science faculty because of his talents.” I remembered the pedal fan that Picó had invented to frighten off flies during the good times we enjoyed in Olivel. He was in fact a tremendous “do-it-yourself man” and it was evident his wife worshipped him.
When I left there I headed off to see Commander Rosich’s wife, who lived in a large, gloomy flat on carrer de Cervelló, one of those narrow side streets that look over the Boqueria market. The furniture was very fin de siècle, tawdry and handed down; you couldn’t imagine anything more unfashionable and pretentious. Sra Rosich was small and dark like Sra Picó, but gone to fat, already grey-haired and well past her forties. She was polite and friendly and summoned Marieta, who seemed very tall for a nine-year-old, skinny too, sallow, with huge dark eyes. Her mother told her to greet me properly, which she did with a small curtsey; then she suddenly shot this question at me that she was to repeat several times: “They won’t kill my daddy, will they?”
“Of course they won’t!” I exclaimed, taken aback. “Why would they want to kill such a lovely person?”
The commander’s wife wanted to know how they would get through the army control points. The presence of women, except for locals, was strictly forbidd
en along the whole front; the Rosichs were professionals, unlike the rest of us, and she was the only one to ask such a question.
“We’ll go by train,” I explained, “as far as Puebla de Híjar, where the militarised zone, properly speaking, begins. Our Ford will be waiting for us outside the station; you will wear traditional rural dresses over your own and then it will be full steam ahead. The farmers’ wives in the area often ask us to let them ride in army cars and trucks to travel from one village to another, so you won’t attract any attention. We’ve found lots of traditional costumes in the villages in no man’s land and in all sizes. Everything’s been carefully thought through! Obviously once you’re in Villar you can take off the local costumes and make yourself comfortable once again; the only military authority there is your husband’s. We’ll be ‘in our own little fief,’ as Picó likes to say; you won’t have to worry about a thing.”
My “official paperwork” had still not arrived; in my telegram to the commander I’d asked for it to be sent to his wife’s address. The delay was beginning to irritate me: it could undermine a whole operation that had left nothing to chance. I told Sra Rosich I would be back that evening.
It was past two o’clock and I was starving. Walking in the labyrinth of side streets around the Boqueria I could feel that well-padded wallet pressing benevolently against my heart when the board in front of an inn caught my eye: Rosted see bass. Spelling must have been that innkeeper’s forte, as it was Picó’s, and this was remarkable on more than two levels, but the aroma of roast sea bass made my mouth water. I sat down at a round marble-topped table on the pavement; despite the time of year, I preferred to have lunch in the open air than venture into what looked a rather dubious dive. I felt the dampness rather than the cold from Barcelona’s tenements seeping through the soles of my shoes and climbing my legs. From my small table I could see the great covered market, appallingly empty: hardly anything had sold there for months. A down-at-heel woman who’d just picked up some thing or other from a small pile of rubbish insulted me as she walked by: “Stuff yourself, you chancer, and scoff while my men rot at the front!”