The Summer Snow

by Rebecca Pawel

  “Again,” his son demanded.

  “I don’t think we have time tonight, Toño.”

  “A-gain,” Toño repeated, with a little rhythmic bounce to emphasize his request.

  “It will be past your bedtime by the time we finish,” his father protested.

  “Only by five minutes.”

  “But you know the book already. Maybe we could read something else.”

  “Read this one again.” Toño craned his neck backward to stare soulfully up into his father’s face. “Please? Only one more time? Please.”

  “Maybe Mama could read it,” his father began cravenly.

  “Mama read Trains, Planes, and Automobiles eight times this morning.” Toño’s mother spoke from the rocking chair in the corner of the room, with a slight edge to her voice.

  Carlos Tejada sighed again, relaxed onto the pillows piled at the head of his son’s bed, and then opened A Child’s History of the Spanish Railway for the third time that evening. “After this you’ll go right to bed,” he said.

  “Promise,” Toño agreed.

  “Trains are a common sight today.” Tejada’s voice was quiet and even. “And you’re probably used to seeing them and riding them. It’s hard to believe that there were no trains at all in Spain less than a century ago. . . .”

  A few paragraphs later a knock on the apartment door broke the peace of the moment. Unconsciously, Toño cast an appealing glance at his mother, which (though he did not know it) was made more effective by being identical in timing and expression to his father’s more conscious look. She pushed herself to her feet. “I’ll get it. You finish reading.”

  “Thanks, Elena.” The elder of the readers felt it necessary to express his gratitude. The younger simply assumed that this was what mothers were for. “Where were we?”

  They had read only a few sentences when the bedroom door opened again. “I’m sorry, Carlos.” His wife stood in the doorway. “There’s a long distance call for you.”

  Toño felt his father’s body tense. “I’m sorry, Toño. Mama will finish reading the story.” Tejada left the little room reluctantly.

  He could still hear his wife’s voice, muffled by the door, in the foyer where his jacket was hanging. Extensive experience with the book made him fairly sure of what she was reading as he shrugged his coat on. “The first Spanish rail line opened in 1849. ” He glanced at his tricorn, the hat that proclaimed his profession, then left it on its hook. Spain’s special narrow-gauge track was built to prevent easy access in case of a French invasion, he repeated silently as he headed down the stairs, hoping devoutly that this phone call would not be like the last long distance call he had received.

  That one had come nearly six months earlier, on a balmy May evening. He had gone outside at sunset to kick a ball around with Toño, who was just learning to dribble. He was crouched in front of an imaginary goal as the little boy prepared for a penalty kick when a voice from across the square in front of the Guardia Civil post startled him. “Lieutenant!”

  He looked up and allowed Toño to score a goal. Guardia Torres advanced and saluted. “I beg your pardon for interrupting, sir, but Colonel Suárez is on the phone. He says it’s urgent.”

  Tejada sighed. “All right. You’d better get home, Toño.”

  “Talk fast,” Toño urged. “So you’ll be done before it gets dark.”

  The boy sighed and picked up his ball with such a woebegone expression that Guardia Torres was moved to add, “I can stay with you for a little while, Toño, if your father doesn’t object.”

  Tejada briefly thanked his subordinate and moved toward the post. The last thing he heard as the door closed behind him was Guardia Torres saying good-naturedly, “Can’t have you out of training for the Oviedo selection, kid.”

  The lieutenant picked up the phone, smiling. “Guardia Civil, Tejada.”

  The clipped voice of his commanding officer banished his good mood. “We’re pulling twenty men, Lieutenant. Transports should arrive in a few hours.” There were only twenty-four men under his command and all were fully occupied.

  “But, sir,” he exclaimed. “With all due respect—”

  “If you’re going to tell me that there’s guerrilla activity in the mountains around Potes, I already know,” Suárez snapped. “It’s the only reason you’re not going, along with all your men.” The connection was static-riddled as always, but it sounded as if the colonel in Santander was raising his voice against slammed doors and shouted commands.

  “Yes, sir,” Tejada said, recognizing that it would be futile to argue. Yet he was stunned enough to add, “But why?”

  Stress was starting to tell on the colonel. He broke protocol and gave his subordinate unnecessary information. “All avail- able men are needed at the border,” he explained. “The army and the Policía Armada are being sent up as well, as fast as possible, just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  The colonel’s voice was ragged with strain. “Invasion. The Germans are finished. The Reds are in Berlin. And if the Allies decide to push south . . . we’ll need to be on high alert.”

  “I’ll make sure the men are ready for the transports,” Tejada said, shaken. A good deal more than “high alert” would be needed if the awesome wealth and manpower of the Allied war machine turned toward Spain next.

  The transports arrived late that evening. That night, after Toño went to bed, Elena turned on the radio. She had listened to the BBC with increasing defiance and frequency as the war progressed, and for the first time Tejada sat beside her and listened to the hysterical joy in London as intently as she.

  Then had come tense months of waiting and wondering. The Allies had turned toward Asia. Guerrillas poured south over the French border, but they were still only the once-defeated remnants of the Spanish Communists, weakened now by years of resistance fighting in France. They were not joined by the French, or the English, or Americans. Some of the men under Tejada’s command were returned to Potes, and the lieutenant had allowed himself to relax a little and to hope that the Japanese would provide the Allies with a lengthy distraction.

  And then, one breathlessly hot August afternoon, word had come: Japan had surrendered, completely and unconditionally. The world was at peace, and the world’s rulers had declared their hostility to the Spanish government. Tejada braced himself for the worst. He had bet too much of his life on General Franco’s government to retreat from his country or his ideals. But he swallowed his pride and wrote secretly to his brother-in-law in Mexico, asking if Elena and Toño would be welcome there if war broke out. “Come and trade places with me, if you like,” his brother-in-law had written back maliciously. “At any rate, you’ll eat well here. But I think Elena will be happier in Spain once we get things properly settled there.” Tejada received the letter a few days after the proclamation of a limited pardon for political prisoners of the Civil War that had ended six years earlier. The knowledge that his brother-in-law was now absolutely free to return to Spain did not provide him with much comfort. Still no invasion came.

  The BBC was reassuringly anti-Communist. Tejada took his family on vacation to Santander for a week at the end of August, where they met Elena’s parents. The newspapers in Santander were encouraging, and he became calmer as he watched Toño alternate between the beach and the train station like a blissful little metronome. And still there was no invasion. The leaves turned and the nights grew cool, and no more urgent phone calls came from Colonel Suárez. Until now, the lieutenant thought, as he reached his office.

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir,” said the guardia on duty. “But one of the posts in Granada just put through an emergency call, and the maniac at the other end refuses to speak to anyone but you.”

  Tejada relaxed. A call from Granada meant some kind of family business: messy and unpleasant, certainly but no threat to the established order of things. He picked up the phone, hoping that he would be able to end the call quickly enough to get back before Toño went to sleep
.

  Toño was drowsy enough at the end of the third reading to agree to turn out the lights without further protest. He made a determined effort to stay awake, but it had been a long and productive day. He was warm and bathed and fed and the familiar noises of the Guardia Civil post next door were as soothing as a lullaby. He was fast asleep when his bedroom door finally creaked open and a triangle of yellow light fell across the carpet. He did not stir as a tall figure stepped silently through the room, bent to give him a hug, and withdrew without a sound.

  His mother was also in bed, but considerably more alert. “You were a long time. What was the phone call?”

  Tejada hesitated. His wife recognized the quality of the pause. He only weighed his words like this when what she had asked about was Guardia business and he was considering how much to tell her, if anything. So she was surprised when he said slowly, “It was from Granada. My great-aunt Rosalia’s dead.”

  “Oh.” It was Elena’s turn to be silent. She had met Rosalia de Ordoñez only once, shortly after her marriage. Tejada had felt it necessary to introduce Elena to his family and had taken her south to spend two weeks at his parents’ estate outside Granada on what served as an abbreviated honeymoon. The Tejadas had treated Elena with a painful and condescending politeness. During a rather stilted dinner party, Doña Rosalia had broken the ice with a vengeance, by stating (loudly enough to drown out any other halfhearted attempts at conversation) that it was no wonder Carlos had disgraced the family and married a Red given the way his parents were fool enough to treat him. The memory was not one of Elena’s happier ones, and she felt that the conventional condolences on the death of a loved one would ring false. On the other hand, “Thank God, it’s about time,” was hardly the proper response.

  “Shortly before her death, she claimed someone was trying to kill her.”

  Elena raised her eyebrows. “She claimed? You don’t believe her.”

  “Apparently she’d claimed intermittently that people were trying to kill her ever since her husband died.” The lieutenant’s voice was dry. “And I’ll wager that my parents had thought about it years before that. But it’s still a little embarrassing.”

  “And what does your family want you to do about it?” Elena asked.

  Tejada sighed and shook his head. “It’s not my family. The call was from the post in Granada where she lodged the complaint. From one Guardia Medina.”

  “The Guardia in Granada called you? Why didn’t they call her family?” Elena knew that of course Carlos was family, but he understood what she meant. Why the long distance call?

  “Guardia Medina called me,” Tejada explained. “His superiors knew that it might be Guardia business, and that it was sure to involve my family, and Medina suggested that I be brought in on the investigation. We’ve known each other for quite a while. Since childhood, actually. His sergant thought it was an inspiration.”

  Elena raised her eyebrows. Her husband had kept in contact with few companions of his childhood; the majority of them would never have dreamed of entering the Guardia Civil. She was somewhat surprised she had not heard of Medina before. “A school friend?” she asked.

  Tejada’s mouth twisted. “Hardly. His family are tenants of ours.” He frowned, remembering the overloud, nearly hysterical voice that had said as he picked up the phone, “I need to speak to Lieutenant Carlos Tejada Alonso y León. Urgent Guardia business.” And then, in response to his curt identification, the barely controlled relief in Medina’s voice as he said, “Señorito Carlos? Is that you? Oh, thank God.”

  Elena did her best not to let her reaction show. She had (more than once) expressed the opinion that her husband’s family was disgustingly feudal, but she knew that he was thoroughly caught up in their web of privilege and obligation, however much he deplored it. “Someone you were close to?” she asked neutrally, reframing the question.

  He shook his head. “Not by choice. Medina’s always been an obnoxious little bully. The sort who hangs around the sidelines giving advice during the game and then takes a lot of credit at the victory celebrations.”

  “Or explains how if his advice had been followed his team would have won?” suggested Elena.

  The lieutenant snorted. “Usually he manages to end up on the winning side.”

  Elena winced. “Sometimes by denouncing old comrades?”

  Tejada shrugged. “I hate people who call me señorito.”

  His wife correctly read this non sequitur as an acknowledgment that Medina probably had been responsible for some of the denunciations that had cost thousands of lives in Granada at the outbreak of the Civil War. She knew that her husband would be unwilling to condemn a fellow Falangist outright, even if he found the individual personally distasteful. She shuddered, remembering the executions that had shaken Salamanca and Madrid. Tejada, who had sunk onto the bed to pull off his shoes, gave her a quick affectionate glance. “What does he want you to do about your aunt?” she asked, dropping the subject of the unpleasant Medina with relief.

  “Make sure he doesn’t get into trouble over it,” Tejada said, beginning to undress. “Unfortunately, the way he thinks he’s least likely to get into trouble is if the Guardia conduct a full investigation to show their diligence, and if I’m involved in it, to show their respect for my family.”

  “He doesn’t seriously think the Guardia will transfer you at your own request to investigate your aunt’s death?” Elena protested.

  “No, but his sergeant asked me if I’d be willing to put in for a leave.”

  “Are you willing?”

  Tejada leaned back and wriggled his shoulders into the pillow in a gesture so reminiscent of Toño’s that his wife smiled involuntarily. “I don’t think Colonel Suárez would approve a request anyway,” he said. “That’s what I told this Sergeant Rivas.”

  Elena nodded, grateful for once for the state of perpetual crisis that existed here in the Picos de Europa. “If he thought you wouldn’t enjoy it, he’d be happy to,” she predicted.

  The lieutenant laughed. “Obviously, I’ll have to feign great enthusiasm for seeing my family again.”

  Elena smiled also, but her voice was cautious as she said, “Seriously. Will you ask for leave?”

  Tejada stared at the pattern of lamplight on the ceiling. “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. Why don’t we sleep on it?”

  “It’s probably all a mare’s nest anyway,” Elena comforted, as she reached over to turn out the light.

  “I know,” the lieutenant agreed. He sighed in the darkness. “I might have known Aunt Rosalia would still be making trouble even after she was dead!”

  Chapter 3

  “I’m sorry, Señor Tejada.” Pablo Almeida had shared a carefree childhood and a wild youth with Andrés Tejada León and had remained a close friend in the intervening fifty years, but Almeida was naturally a formal man, and he had found that a little formality never hurt when breaking bad news. “But Señora de Ordoñez’s will appears to be missing.”

  Andrés Tejada saw no similar need to stand on ceremony. He made an annoyed noise that was at odds with his sixty-five years and dignified appearance. “I might have known the old cat would die intestate! I suppose now we’ll have the entire family squabbling over what they can get.” He leaned back in his desk chair and closed his eyes with a shudder.

  The lawyer coughed apologetically. “Not exactly intestate.” Almeida risked a smile at his friend. “That is to say, I know that there is a will. I’m just not exactly sure where it is.”

  Andrés Tejada sat up. “If that’s a joke, Pablo, it’s in poor taste.”

  “When do I ever make tasteless jokes about money, Andrés?” Now that the worst was over, Almeida allowed himself to relax slightly. “You know Doña Rosalia changed her will every three months after her husband died. And she came to my office trying to change it an average of every six weeks. She was always very particular about there being an extra copy. One always had to stay in my office, and one went with her, to be pu
t in her safe at home. At least that was where I assume she put it. She always just said that she wanted it in ‘a safe place.’ You know she never felt secure after what happened to poor Javier and Ramón.”

  Señor Tejada winced. The deaths of his cousins at the hands of enraged mobs of their own cane cutters, at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, still triggered unpleasant memories of fear and fury, even after nearly ten years. The Tejadas, like the Ordoñez family, had been surprised at the outbreak of the war, not in orderly Granada, but at their country house, in territory that had quickly aligned itself with the Communists. He remembered standing guard over the manor house with his oldest son, the two of them armed only with hunting rifles, his wife on her knees before the Virgin in the bedroom upstairs. He remembered his uncle’s frantic telephone call, and then the drive through the summer night to Granada, his foot glued to the accelerator in spite of the darkness and the treacherous curves of the mountain passes, determined not to stop, no matter what got in his way. He remembered the long wait for news in Granada and Doña Rosalia’s hysterical screams when the Guardia had finally brought her official notice of the deaths of two of her sons. It was the one time his wife had forgotten her dislike of his aunt, and the two women had prayed together, at least until his wife had been insulted by the old lady’s monopoly on grief and had tried to argue that her maternal feelings for her younger son (whose whereabouts were still unknown) were as acute as Doña Rosalia’s anguish.

  “I suppose you can’t blame her for that,” Señor Tejada said shortly.

  “Of course not,” Almeida agreed. “That was why I put up with all the nonsense about doing everything in duplicate. The thing is, the last time she changed her will was just a few days before she died. She was very urgent about it, peremptory even. It was a Saturday morning, and since she hadn’t formally made an appointment we were rather busy. We typed out a fair copy, but—” Almeida shifted uncomfortably.—“well, I’d promised Asunción I’d be home in time to meet our guests, and my secretary had specifically asked for the afternoon off as he’s getting married in a few weeks, and since I didn’t know Doña Rosalia was coming I’d promised him and—well, the long and the short of it is that after we’d done one copy I told Doña Rosalia that we didn’t have time to prepare the duplicate original and that she could come back on Monday morning and we’d have it finished.”