by Joan Sales
“Four: a complete round from a 15.5,” announced Picó. “Please switch off all lights.”
But the man ignored Picó and went on talking to us in that posh voice as if he thought we were part of the spa’s usual wealthy clientele: “Well, you know, I have nothing to fear,” and he smiled ineffably. We quickly swung our haversacks on our backs before the second round of shells started to fall, which would more than likely make direct hits on the Swiss chalet.
“Come with us,” Picó told the owner, but he stood straight-backed in the fully lit entrance to the dining room, at the top of the three steps leading down to the garden. “Off you go, gentlemen. Please don’t stand on ceremony,” he repeated most affably. “Gentlemen, please don’t stand on ceremony.”
A perplexed Picó glanced at me as the second round exploded, this time on the other side of the spa. The soldiers were waiting in the pitch-black overgrown gardens for the captain to give them their orders. The column marched off; the gentleman in that brightly lit entrance waved us goodbye: “Good night, republicans. Never forget what I said: national crockery, republican menu . . .”
He didn’t finish his sentence; the third round fell right on the spa and blew up windows, tables, doorways in a shattering din, though the lights were still working as we rushed to leave the chalet far behind us. We could still hear the man’s voice cheerfully calling out to us after that racket, “Don’t you worry about me: I’m one of theirs, not one of yours. They don’t want to do me any harm!”
Four fresh explosions and all that had remained of the building collapsed. Then there was a sudden and absolute blackout followed by flashes and crackling flames. We put all that quickly behind us; we were back on the bare steppe. It was a cold refreshing night with no moonlight; the spa and its owner, probably blown up together, were soon forgotten. The following evening, after a day spent sleeping in a ravine, we came across a large farmhouse.
It looked abandoned, which was hardly surprising given the situation. We began to search for food. The pantry was a real joy: a ham, tripe and four huge sausages were hanging from the ceiling beams and in one corner was a pitcher of olive oil awash with pieces of preserved pork. Picó gave out orders and fair shares of the booty. I acted as his secretary. The apparition took place just as we were about to carry the pitcher of pork into the farmhouse entrance – it was huge and required four men – where we intended dividing up the contents among the hundred or so men.
Shocked to the core, we put the pitcher on the ground. It was only a girl, perhaps fourteen; she was tall, skinny and pale-faced, with dark eyes and hair, dressed in mourning black. She stood silently at the top of the steps into the house and stared reprovingly down, holding an oil lamp which lit up her face with its dim glow. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?”
Her voice seemed remote; she spoke in Catalan, like the gentleman in the spa: Aragonese Catalan. We stood stock still, listening to her, intrigued.
“You’re such cowards and hopeless fighters, and on top of that will you steal from us? What’s more, in land you should think of as your own? We waited for you as our brothers and you came; but what did you do? Where is our Virgin Mary? Where are our saints? Who can we turn to, you wretches? Everybody flees you like the plague; I’m alone in the house. You can steal everything – it’s you lot against me all alone . . .”
That night we marched on empty stomachs.
Just before daybreak we came to a river much bigger than any we’d crossed up to that point. We didn’t know then but it was the Cinca. Picó didn’t want to look for a bridge, “because now, more than ever, we must avoid bridges and roads. We’re getting close to the new front.” While we attempted to ford it, with the water up to our necks, we saw groups similar to ours drawing near from upstream and downstream; small contingents like ours, wandering at a loss, drawn to the few kilometres where the river wasn’t too deep to cross. After the solitariness of our long wanderings, we were encouraged by the sight of other Catalan forces: we no longer felt alone in the world! The strong flow of the river swept away a mule and a few men. The bank opposite was steep and high.
We finally found troops in trenches across the Cinca, on a high bank. They’d quickly established trenches, barbed wire fences and a few machine-gun nests to prevent the enemy from fording nearby; it was the first line of trenches we’d seen in three weeks of the rout. They said our army was beginning to rebuild behind that improvised line of fortified defences – rebuilding in preparation for the counteroffensive. In effect, scattered bands like ours were being re-formed and incorporated into new units that were being put together as they arrived.
We could see a large hamlet on a hill, about three kilometres behind the line, towards the east, overlooked by an ancient church, with a belfry that you could have mistaken for a castle tower. It was silhouetted in black against the eastern sky and was beginning to glow like the background to an altarpiece. There was a storks’ nest on the belfry; I could see it clearly, big as a cartwheel, through my telescope. Mother and father flew from nest to river and from river to nest; their beaks carried to their brood fish that glinted in the first rays of sun, waving tails their little ones greedily devoured.
“Spring is here,” said Picó, “spring has come. The storks are the first to go and the first to return. The good weather is back.”
I thought of the storks Lluís and I watched at the end of summer when they were preparing to migrate. So much had happened since then!
One afternoon, taking advantage of a lull at the front – the enemy offensive had finally stopped – I walked to the nearby hamlet. It was full of stray soldiers from the most diverse brigades and divisions as well as civilians, particularly country people who had fled from the area affected by the offensive. It was a very motley band that had gathered around the hamlet, sleeping in huts they’d thrown up, in caves or in the open air: old men, women and children, the sick and the wounded. Enemy aircraft had bombed and strafed them as they walked with their carts – poor people who knew nothing about the rules of camouflage. They had walked by day, taking no precautions, always along roads across treeless plains; they had left in their wake, so they told us, a string of blown-up carts, disembowelled nags, corpses and the sick that couldn’t go on.
My God, they were so wretched! They lived on the leftovers of food meant for the soldiers.
Picó never mentioned Lluís again; we did not speak of him in our conversations; we had no need to speak of him. An old woman from Castel de Olivo recognised me. She was queuing with many others outside the military kitchens begging for a bowl of soup.
“We saw lootenant Don Luisico the day before the trouble started,” she told me. “ ’e didn’t see us, ’e didn’t look at nobody; ’e were driving a woman in a cart, wrapped in a blanket and looking like the Virgin of Sorrows. They went through Castel, but didn’t stop. They took the track to Olivel de la Virgen.”
Olivel fell on the first day of the enemy offensive, a few hours after it had begun. It put up almost no resistance.