“I don’t know, Mama, I don’t know.”
Sebastiana opened her short, thick arms, and Sara, who was much taller, shrank into them.They stayed like that for a long time, belatedly learning to communicate without words. Meanwhile, the stew caught on the bottom of the pan.That day they had to have fried eggs and potatoes for lunch. When Arcadio arrived home at two that afternoon he didn’t ask any questions, but realized that something had changed.
If Sara Gómez Morales was ever cruel and merciless, it was then, when she decided to tear off her old skin with her own fingernails.This was the moment when she actively chose—or thought she was choosing—the only life left to her, and fed her anger until she had suppressed any temptation to look back. Sometimes, at night, she found herself thinking of Juan Mari, Maruchi, and the Beatles, amiable inhabitants of a distant shore, but she quickly tried to forget them, to bury them beneath other memories. Even in her worst moments, when she felt utterly miserable, Sara remained cool-headed enough to understand that anything—hate, bitterness, revenge—would do her less harm than the soft, rosy nostalgia of a string of broken dreams.
And, for a time, she succeeded, especially during the day. Sara threw herself into a frenzied schedule of activities that kept her busier than she’d ever been before. She made sure to keep herself occupied inwardly too, rigorously controlling the flow and nature of her thoughts as she concentrated on the new tasks she tackled each morning. Sometimes she ended up with a headache as she forced herself to be perpetually cheerful. At others, she resorted to the same childish fantasizing that she had indulged in only a few months earlier, when she daydreamed about married life with Juan Mari—their honeymoon in Venice, a spacious, elegant home, summers by a quiet beach in the north, a couple of beautiful blond children in due course—but now she planned a very different future, limited to the confines of a poky, old third-floor flat. She imagined doing up the bathroom and kitchen, enlarging the windows, laying wooden floors, knocking down half the walls and erecting others—mad schemes that would have seemed less so if she had ever learned to plane floorboards or mix cement herself.
Her parents listened to her, their shoulders hunched, exchanging alarmed looks as they watched her going about the house, never stopping, moving furniture and then moving it back again, tying back the curtains and then letting them go, tidying things that were already tidy, battling against dust that wasn’t there.
“I don’t know, Arcadio, she’s behaving very oddly,” whispered Sebastiana occasionally.“She’s like a nun.”
He nodded without a word, playing the part his daughter had assigned him in a belated, painful and unlikely rebirth.
“Well . . .”
Sometimes, after supper, Sara would take out a cardboard box from the chest of drawers where her mother kept the linen. She sat on the sofa beside Arcadio, and made him look at the dog-eared, yellowed old photographs it contained. He would have preferred never to set eyes on them again, but he gathered his patience and answered the questions of this willful, confused girl whose curiosity seemed never to be satisfied.
“This is you, isn’t it?”
Arcadio in his militiaman’s uniform, holding a rifle, with a cartridge belt slung across his body, standing beside a large granite rock.
“Where was it taken?”
“In the sierra, near Guadarrama.”
“When was that?”
“I’m not sure, dear, I don’t remember. It must have been at the start of the war.”
“And who took the photo?”
“A German photographer who was a friend of Don Mario.”
“Who was Don Mario?”
“Somebody I knew.”
But Sara wouldn’t accept this, wouldn’t accept only scraps of information from a remote past that was beginning to seem desperately important to her. She forced her father to talk, to search his memory for names, dates, details as trivial as breadcrumbs that she ground down with her teeth until she had absorbed them completely.
“And here?”
A group of trade unionists photographed outside the headquarters of the Workers’ Party in Madrid, dressed in their Sunday best and holding their hats, the younger ones smiling. Some had raised their fists—Arcadio among them—and they were gathered round a man dressed in black, who wore a tie and a hat, and had pale eyes and an aquiline nose. He was smiling at the camera confidently, seductively.
“And this gentleman?”
“Largo Caballero.”
“Was he on your side?”
“Yes, of course. He was a leader. One of most important ones.”
“He looks very elegant.”
“Does he? There were much more elegant men than him, believe me. But he was my leader.”
“And what was he doing there?”
“Well, I don’t know. He must have come for a meeting, or a conference. I don’t remember, it was a long time ago.”
“And this person here is Don Mario, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” said Arcadio, smiling despite himself. “This is Don Mario.”
Sara knew all the features of the rough, sunburned faces by heart, the names, and the stories hidden behind each picture. But still she went on looking at each photograph over and over again, pointing to it, interpreting its edges and curves, presences and absences, shadows and symbols, as if the images were some new kind of alphabet.
“Mama, could you come here for a moment, please?”
Her parents’ wedding photo, large, oblong, the faces foreshortened, the bodies cut off at the chest; she wearing a dark dress with a white flower pinned to the lapel, he with a dazzling white shirt buttoned all the way up but without a tie.
“You made your own dress, didn’t you?” asked Sara. Sebastiana nodded. “Why didn’t you wear white?”
“Because it wasn’t the fashion then.”
“But Doña Sara got married in white.”
“Doña Sara was a lady. She could afford to have a dress made specially for her and wear it only once.”
“And you, Papa?”
“What about me?”
“You were wearing a new suit.”
“Yes.”
“But you weren’t wearing a tie.”
“What would I want with a tie?”
“Largo Caballero wore one.”
“Largo Caballero was a politician. I was just a plumber.”
“I suppose so.And afterwards you all went to have hot chocolate and churros.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t have a wedding reception.”
“No.”
They both answered in unison but Sebastiana slipped away, inventing some excuse, before the more difficult photos appeared: And these people? Why are they here? They’re not members of our family, are they? They look like a couple of saints in an engraving.The heroes of Jaca? What heroes? A mutiny? In Jaca? I had no idea, I never studied that at school.What were their names? Galán and who? García Hernández, Galán and García Hernández, right. And this, where did you get this? They were handing them out in the street? And when was that? And what rank were they? So what happened? They were shot? Sebastiana had already answered quite enough questions during the day and knew her role. She was the one who went shopping with Sara, did errands together and Sara always made sure she kept Sebastiana close by whenever she began to take on the heavier chores. It was her mother who had to devise answers to Sara’s more intimate questions, to explain other kinds of conflict and defeat. Like her husband, Sebastiana answered even though she didn’t really want to, and sometimes thought her daughter was wrong to push her. But Sebastiana talked to Sara because it was her duty, because she owed it to her, and she gradually told her the whole story—when she had met Doña Sara, what her life was like in the Calle Velázquez, what it was that made her first notice Arcadio, how long they were engaged, what she felt when the war broke out, when she realized their side was going to lose, when her husband was taken prisoner, when she went to plead for his life, and
what she felt when, in the end, after so many years, she had finally to pay the price. She did enjoy the walks Sara took her on every afternoon. Sebastiana went with her daughter to the old district, walked with her around the Calle Espíritu Santo, the Plaza de San Ildefonso, the Corredera Alta and the Corredera Baja, remembering aloud the name of every shop and bar, every neighbor, every friend of her father’s, every customer of her mother’s, gradually filling in details from her memory— the fairs, the Republic, the war, prison, the post-war years—until she had completed the map of a city that her daughter did not know at all.
Sara’s passion for the past lasted all summer. By the time the days started to draw in and the leaves began to fall, Sara was almost sure she’d succeeded: the memory of another life crouched at her feet like a tame animal, a tired old dog, and her small daily achievements stood up well to the loss of novelty’s shine. But summer was coming to an end, and reality began to reassert itself, calling her out of the refuge she had built so carefully. One evening in September the phone rang. Her mother went to answer and, when she returned, she announced that Doña Sara was back from Cercedilla.
“She’d like you to go and visit her tomorrow, Sari,” she said, her voice becoming a whisper when she saw her daughter’s frown.“She’d like you to go for lunch.”
“I’m not going,” Sara answered flatly, firmly, clearly, as a thick, dangerous silence invaded the room, an echo of the icy climate of her early days back in her parents’ home.
“She won’t understand,” countered Sebastiana timidly after a long pause.“She says she misses you and she’s dying to see you. I don’t think it would be too much effort for you to go.”
“If she wants to see me, let her come here,” said Sara, cutting her mother off curtly.“I’m not going there.”
“But . . .”
“Leave the child alone, Sebastiana,” Arcadio intervened suddenly, emerging from the cocoon of his own private grief. “She’s told you twice. Do you want her to have to tell you three times?”
“But I think, well,” continued his wife, as if she hadn’t heard him, “she’s been like a mother to you all these years. She’s done a lot for you.”
“For me?” Sara screamed, as if her mother’s last few words had hurt her ears. More pained than incredulous she repeated:“For me?”
“What do I know?” said Sebastiana, wiping her face with her apron, her eyes clouded and her hands trembling. “I might not be the most intelligent person, dear, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned—it’s what my mother taught me, and I’ve said it to your father many times, although he never takes any notice—it’s that pride is something we can’t afford, Sari. Pride doesn’t put food on the table.”
“But it’s all I’ve got, Mama!” Sara said, shouting over Arcadio, who was telling his wife to be quiet. Sara stood up, head held high.“It’s all I’ve got,” she repeated, more quietly now, before running to her room and locking herself in. She flung herself on the bed and burst into tears, crying in a way she had forbidden herself to ever again.
Sara Gómez Morales was sixteen years old and had little experience of the world.This was why, that night, she tossed and turned without finding any relief, any way out from the anger that consumed her but she couldn’t quite understand. It would be many years before she realized the irony implicit in her situation: that it was, in fact, Doña Sara who had equipped her with the tools to stand up for herself and to resist her godmother’s affection.Toying with a little girl’s mind and heart without even being conscious of it, without ever stopping to consider the consequences, Doña Sara had given her god-daughter the inner strength that would keep her firmly rooted, like a enormous oak tree with ancient, twisted, dry roots.When she left the house in the Calle Velázquez, Sara was a scale model of the woman who had brought her up, who had taught her to peel prawns with a fish knife and fork and to be horrified by the outfits of civil servants’ wives, who had forbidden her to swim in public swimming pools or to go out in slippers, who had encouraged her to choose her friends carefully and to be polite to servants, the woman who had sat and chatted to Sara for a little while in French every afternoon. But this realization, which would change her life as an adult, was way beyond the understanding of a wounded, confused teenager whose only wish was to be left in peace.And it had not yet occurred to her that pride, a dangerous luxury, was the only privilege that her godmother, the source of all her privileges, could not take away.
Sebastiana wasn’t as clever or as strong as her youngest daughter, but she’d had much more experience of life and she knew that some things were as certain as the sun rising in the east each day. She knew, for instance, that if the word “humble” seemed ambiguous it was only because reality almost never was, that if the poor were meek, it was because the meek were almost always poor. But as she and Sara sat having breakfast the following morning, she chose other words to stop her daughter brooding over the scene from the evening before.
“Look, love, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not fond of your godmother—quite the opposite—but I don’t think she’s a bad person. She’s . . . she’s just the way she thinks she ought to be, just like everyone else in her class, like her parents and her grandparents before them.They’re the masters, and that makes them think they’re good people, because they go to Mass, and confession, and they sleep peacefully in their beds at night. This doesn’t mean I’m defending her, that I’m on her side, because I’m not. I’m on your side, dear, that’s the main thing.Your father doesn’t see that. He’s very clever, that’s for sure, but he can also be very blind when he wants to be. I’m not saying he isn’t right, because he is, but you don’t get anywhere from being right and I can’t believe that he doesn’t realize that with everything he’s been through.The fact is, life is hard, and I think it would be best if you didn’t fall out with your godmother, because she has money and we don’t, and being right is neither here nor there.You have been in my thoughts all these years, Sari, and you still are—I worry about what’s going to happen to you, what you’re going to do, how you’re going to earn your living.You can’t spend the rest of your life like this, shut up at home, learning to cook. It might seem OK for now, because it’s new to you, but this is a wretched way to live.You can do so much more, Sari—find a good job, earn money, marry and live well, and not end up like me.You’re clever and you’ve had too good an education to end up like this.You can’t,You’ve got to do something. I wish I didn’t have to say any of this to you, I dearly wish I could just tell you to go out and have fun. But I can’t lie to you, love, I can’t, because that’s how things are.That’s why I suck up to your godmother. So now you know.”
Sara learned no new skills that morning. She didn’t prepare lunch, she didn’t dust, she didn’t clean the bathroom or jot down ideas for making the most of the living room or covering up scratches on the furniture. At first, she couldn’t even bring herself to move at all. For a long time, over two hours, she sat in the same Formica chair where she’d had her morning coffee, feeling neither hungry nor thirsty, cold or hot, happy or sad. Her fate was already sealed, it seemed. She tried to think, but didn’t get very far. She understood all her mother’s arguments but she also understood that agreeing with her meant that all her efforts were in vain, that there was no point in resisting the divided self she had dragged through the tunnels of the metro every Sunday of her life.The only thing on the other side of the scales was her pride—a delicate, unstable, nebulous substance that was a comfort to her but didn’t put food on the table.
Sara thought things over for a long time, from every angle, in the hours and days that followed. She thought about her father, the cheerful arrogance of his young, uniformed self, his strength, his faith, the treacherous delusion of the rifle he held as if it were a symbol of truth. For her, there would be no rifles, no lies.“Things are the way they are,” her mother had said. “There’s nothing you can do about it.” Certainly Sebastiana’s other children thought so. Sara considered them to
o, her equals, her brothers and sisters, vaguely familiar shadows that roamed the house only in her parents’ memories and who phoned every Sunday. They were all far away: Arcadio working in Germany, freezing to death but happy and earning plenty of money, according to his letters; the young Sebastiana in Avilés, where she’d gone with her husband, a metalworker from Asturias. The two younger ones were still in Madrid, but because the city was now so big, it didn’t seem like it. Pablo lived in San Fernando de Henares, worked for ITT and was married to a woman who was a cleaner for the Mahou beer company.They had two young children and were so exhausted by the weekend that they preferred to go to the trouble of cooking a meal at home rather than to come all the way into town. Socorrito had been married less than a year and was already pregnant. She and her husband lived in Puente de Vallecas with his mother, an ailing, bad-tempered old lady whom Socorrito would never be rid of because her husband, a welder, was an only child. Socorrito visited more often than the others, usually in the evening and always in a hurry, as if she had to steal away from home to visit her own mother. Sara was always pleased to see her because she had fond memories of the precarious intimacy that had united them around the Mariquita Pérez doll, and she made use of the only practical thing the nuns at school had taught her by spending the evenings knitting a white jumper for the baby. For her part, Socorro behaved like an older sister from the start, complicit and protective, and confided in Sara about her husband, her home, her life inVallecas. Sara grew very fond of her, but she also knew she didn’t want to become like her. Or like the maids at Doña Sara’s. So she went on thinking, dreaming of rifles, of any solution that would enable her to square her pride with a future that seemed bearable. It seemed as if she would never find a solution and for several days she fell into despair, until one evening her father said something that encouraged her to start thinking again, in a direction that would be unreservedly right.
The Wind From the East Page 22