A Forbidden Love

by Kerry Postle

  ‘So what are you doing?’ she asked the young woman, with a twitch of her nose, suspicion dripping from its tip. She looked radiant with clear eyes the colour of sherry, shiny brown hair shot through with strands of red and gold that dazzled in the sunlight, and skin so smooth and fresh as to make her look much younger than her thirty five years. Nature had endowed her with many gifts. Yet even though her skin smelled of almonds and peaches she couldn’t hide the rot festering within from the villagers who knew her. And after the dinner Maria knew her. She knew her very well. Her hand tightened protectively around the note inside her pocket, given to her by her father, as Seňora Gonzalez’s hand reached out to take the girl by the arm. Solicitously.

  ‘How is your poor, poor father?’ she said, with such forced concern that Maria had to do all she could to stop herself from shuddering and answering flippantly. ‘Well, thank you.’ She nodded, attempting to break free from Seňora Gonzalez’s clutches.

  ‘What are you doing? Where are you going? Who are you seeing? Didn’t your parents ever tell you how rude it was to walk along the streets with your hands in your pockets?’ she asked Maria, curtly.

  Maria dutifully stopped doing so and with the rise and fall of her arm so she succeeded in freeing herself from the older woman’s grasp. Yet she would not be shaken off. She walked alongside Maria. Bombarded her with questions and more questions. Seňora Gonzalez. After what Maria had seen pass between her and the Captain last week, remembered how she’d waved around her list like a flag at him, Maria knew better than to see her as the harmless gossip she’d once taken her for. Though she greeted the woman most respectfully she would not be answering any of her questions. Maria knew that Seňora Gonzalez could pick out the most punishable of intents within the most innocent of words.

  ‘Your father …’ She paused. ‘Such a caring man. Who is he looking after today I wonder?’

  She turned to look at Maria and sighed with disappointment. ‘Oh, you poor, poor girl,’ she simpered. Maria’s chest lifted with relief. She thought for one moment that Seňora Gonzalez, insufferable leech of a woman that she was, had given up on her, no doubt in search of a victim with richer veins and looser lips than Maria’s. But she couldn’t bear to let the doctor’s daughter off that easily. Seňora Gonzalez was an important woman in this village, now that the soldiers were here. And she would have the last word.

  She placed her soft fingertips on Maria’s arm once more, this time to make sure the girl was listening, and manoeuvred her beautiful figure so that she blocked the younger woman’s way. ‘Oh, I think there are going to be a few changes around here after last week. Soon. Very soon,’ she squealed, putting her delicate little fingers over her lovely little mouth. She smiled at Maria then looked into the distance with longing. ‘Oh, but what am I babbling on about? Forget I ever mentioned anything. It’s nothing. Nothing,’ she added. She fluttered her eyelashes like weapons then closed them in faux-coyness as her hand reached into her bag and pulled out her little black book. Maria had heard and seen enough. This woman unnerved her, made her feel unsafe. She placed a hand firmly over the piece of paper her father had given her once more and clenched her fist around it for luck. She turned and walked away. ‘Thank you and have a good day, Seňora Gonzalez,’ she called back as she went.

  Chapter 24

  Maria was growing accustomed to seeing Luis de los Rios walk past her window several times a day. Then one day he stopped. That was the day she came out of the shadows. That was the day when she knew something wasn’t right. Her body leant out over the balcony, her eyes strained for a glimpse of him. But he was nowhere to be seen. Her young man with the unusual eyes seemed to have disappeared off the face of Fuentes. Gone in a puff of smoke.

  It was the Captain who was to blame for that.

  The evening of the dinner the landowners’ son had not made a good impression on his military superior. He’d shown himself to be soft and privileged. Anyone other than Don Felipe’s son would have got a savage beating for having let some red peasant make off with a military motorcycle. If the Captain had not been eating at his father’s table Luis de los Rios would have been subjected to immediate justice. Instead, the Captain had to think of a more palatable punishment.

  It hadn’t taken him long to come up with one. He’d leant over to Don Felipe while still at the table and whispered in his generous host’s ear, ‘I’m going to make a soldier out of your boy. Trust me.’

  Luis de los Rios needed toughening up, and the other two useless guards too. The Captain had just the remedy for three such lily-livered milksops. New recruits. Boys from old families, not battle ready. Soft hands, soft ways. He would take them out with him on a ‘hunt’ the following week, a very special sort of hunt, where the prey would be bigger than any the spoilt brats had ever seen before. ‘I’ll sort him out.’ At that very moment Maria had happened to look over at Captain Garcia. She’d seen the look of amused cruelty on the Captain’s face. It had made her shudder.

  ‘Thank you, Captain,’ Don Felipe had said.

  The ‘hunt’ was a staged killing. What Captain Garcia hadn’t anticipated was that it would be the setting for a curse. Its location was about an hour out of the village. Captain Garcia had rounded up his three novices, and no more than eight men besides, and they all made their way in the dead of night along gravel roads, weaved their way up winding hills, thrown around in the back of a military truck.

  ‘Out, men!’ Captain Garcia shouted when they’d reached their destination. He shouted some orders to his more seasoned troops, who’d followed on in another truck, before returning to inspect his green recruits. He laughed as he did so. He did not expect them to laugh back.

  His gnarled fingers wrapped tighter round the pistol he was holding at his side as he gestured to the young men to follow him. Still laughing, he led them to a disused quarry that opened up before them like a stage.

  In the centre was a small bundle.

  The Captain arranged his eleven young soldiers so that they formed an audience. He indicated to one of his old hands that he should come forward with a lit torch.

  The small, dark bundle slowly unfurled. It was a young gypsy boy. Noise welled up at the back of the young boy’s throat, its bile-tinged mucus gurgling, spitting, waiting to erupt; tears clouded the frightened child’s already swollen eyes, slapping, breaking like waves, ready to sweep away the floodgates. They would come. But the boy still hoped. Prayed.

  Luis de los Rios could not believe what he was witnessing. He’d expected to be punished in some way for his staged incompetence. But not like this.

  ‘Watch this!’ the Captain said, turning to the boys he’d brought with him. Though he’d seen it all before, it still gave Captain Garcia a cruel satisfaction to share the spectacle of fear and weakness with these would-be men. Young. From wealthy families. They needed toughening up. And what better way?

  Peels of nervous laughter rang out in the dark as Garcia saw their faces. He cast his eye down the line, luxuriating in their discomfort. Each one avoided his gaze. All except one. Luis de los Rios. He stared at the Captain, unafraid.

  Garcia stared back at him, but a distant gunshot reverberated in the warm, still night air reminding him to crack on with the matter in hand.

  He swung round to face the snivelling gypsy boy, eyeing the wall of light-coloured stone behind the child’s small dark frame with appreciation. A perfect backcloth for what the Captain had in mind for tonight. He raised his arm, pointed the pistol.

  Pee ran down the child’s leg, the torch and moonlight catching its glistening trajectory as it traced its way down bare skin, running like rivulets round trembling knees, trickling to pools that formed at his feet. The Captain yelped with delight, excited in the knowledge that the best was yet to come.

  The boy cried. Tears drenched and stung his wretched face; mucus trailed from his nose, an excess of saliva-soaked bubbles. Anguish gushed from his mouth. The Captain snorted with delicious disgust at this vision of despai
r. He whooped at his stunned audience, inviting them to share in his delight.

  But that was not it. No, that was still not it. It wasn’t over yet.

  ‘Listen to this,’ the Captain shouted, knowing it wouldn’t be long now. Because he’d seen it all before. Then it came.

  Words rose up above the whimpering.

  ‘Mother. Mother. I want my mother.’

  The Captain never tired of hearing those heart-wrenching words. For in the moment the performance is at its peak. His actors have no more to give, nowhere else to go.

  The Captain looked into the darkness of his young recruits before pointing the pistol at the child’s stomach. He pulled the trigger. The gypsy boy jumped into the air then doubled over, just as Captain Garcia knew he would, the light wall behind him red with blood. But before he could say, ‘he folds like a puppet,’ a bellow filled the night air.

  A bellow. Low. Powerful. The sound of the abyss. Every ear knew it. Every soul felt it.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Garcia cried.

  An older man was prodded quickly into view with the end of a soldier’s rifle. Until now kept captive in the wings, waiting to take his turn to die, his animal cry catapulted him to the front of the queue. No more waiting. Plucked out of obscurity, he was thrust against the red splattered wall. He fell to his knees, cradled the dead child in his arms, shaking, sobbing, moaning.

  It was his son.

  ‘Stand up,’ the Captain ordered. But the father carried on holding his poor child in his arms.

  And then he cursed.

  ‘Ha! Don’t say you’ve put a gypsy curse on me, gypsy?’ roared the Captain with mocking hatred. ‘Gypsy!’ Each time he found the word, the more it dripped with his distaste. ‘Don’t you hate them? Gypsies?’ he turned to ask his troops, chewing the word over in his mouth like a piece of gristle.

  The father started mumbling his curse once more.

  ‘Speak up. It may as well give us something to laugh about as it’s clearly of no use to you,’ the Captain boomed loudly. ‘Spit it out.’

  He was about to give up on the old gypsy and pull the trigger when the man stood tall, the body of his dead son held up to the dark heavens above. He looked at the Captain. Disarmed him. ‘My name is Diego Flores. May your own foul deeds turn themselves upon you.’

  Silence followed. Then the curse once more. This time loud, deep, clear.

  ‘May your own foul deeds turn themselves upon you, pull your flesh in pieces from your body. May your death be long and cruel.’ It possessed the darkness all around.

  There was a pause. A shuffling of feet. Then a single, forced, laugh.

  This time the Captain did pull the trigger.

  Diego Flores was no more. And gone with him was the hope and faith of the young men Garcia had brought along to watch. The Captain struck a match and in the flame Luis de los Rios saw the evil in his face. He was sickened. He looked at Captain Garcia with loathing. If he’d been in any doubt that he’d done the right thing in allowing Manuel to escape, all doubt had well and truly vanished now.

  The young soldier next to Luis started to tremble. Luis nudged him but it was too late. He had already attracted the Captain’s malign attention.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered in the frightened young man’s ear. ‘Soon it will be your turn. To pull the trigger.’

  The boy’s breath became shallow, his teeth began to chatter. ‘I’ll make a man of you yet,’ Garcia continued. ‘Oh, the fun we’ll have.’ And with that the poor boy’s knees buckled.

  Captain Garcia stamped his foot, exasperated. With one quick movement he raised his pistol above his head, ready to bring it down with force across that of the soldier’s.

  ‘Leave him be.’ The calm, strong voice of Luis de los Rios cut through the night air, holding the Captain’s arm back. Surprised, he turned, his arm still raised, poised to attack now this new victim.

  The small band of young soldiers looked on with dread.

  Luis de los Rios looked at the Captain, unrepentant, unafraid.

  Whack. Before he could stop himself, the Captain had brought the pistol down with force across the boy’s flawless face, bruising the cheekbone, breaking the skin.

  ‘Consider yourself lucky that I did not pull the trigger,’ he hissed. Because if the boy who’d dared to speak out hadn’t been the landowners’ son, the Captain thought to himself, he certainly would have.

  The second the Captain walked away, annoyed and nursing his knuckles, Luis de los Rios placed his hand on the trembling arm of the soldier, now distraught, standing next to him. ‘Stay strong, Virgilio,’ he said as he looked at the two dead bodies lying not so very far away.

  Chapter 25

  It was a Wednesday morning and Maria pulled herself up to sitting in bed. She pushed her dark, sleep-curled locks behind her ears. From the coolness of the still shaded bedroom she watched the searing shafts of bright light as they broke in through tiny slits in and around the shutters, illuminating the dust motes so that they resembled swirling sandstorms. She watched them from the coolness of her still shaded bed, fascinated, and commended herself on her skills of observation. She walked carefully over to the shutters and pushed them open just a little, bathing a slice of her room in sunlight and warmth. She squinted for a moment, put her hand to her forehead, shading her eyes. Then she saw it. The narrow rectangle of big blue sky. Still full of endless possibilities. She’d not seen Luis – looking up at her window from the street below, on patrol – for some days, but today she felt hopeful that she would.

  She looked down through the narrow opening between the shutters and marvelled at the spectacle. The street below was full of women chatting and peasants leading their donkeys to market, their baskets heavily laden with fruit and vegetables, uniforms dotting the scene. Her eyes searched hopefully for Luis but made do with a pile of juicy red tomatoes when they failed to seek him out. Cages of chickens paraded by below rattling round on the back of a cart and the strong smell of cheese made its way up, filling her nostrils. Maria felt hungry, for food and for life.

  She washed, pulled her clothes on and went down to fetch her basket which she’d left on the kitchen table. As she picked it up she looked at a bowl beside it, full of burnt paper, black and light as a feather. She touched it with the tip of her finger: it dissolved into a million insubstantial pieces. If she could not remember all the names of those she could trust and to whose homes she could run to if needs be then it was too late now.

  ‘I’ve a fancy for tomatoes,’ she declared as she opened the door onto the world, and with that she launched herself towards the market. Today would not be a day to run and hide. Today was a good day. She could feel it as the sun caressed her skin and as the sky went on forever. She would buy food, cook her father a good meal; for a doctor the poor man didn’t look after himself very well at all. And, if fate was on her side, she would find Luis. But before doing that she walked along the street and turned the corner. She was on her way to Paloma’s. War. It would surely soon be over. Her head filled up with thoughts of Luis, her heart swelled with hope that she would see him soon.

  Minutes can feel like hours, hours like minutes, and in the time it took Maria to get within striking distance of her friend’s home so much had happened, so much had changed. The sounds and sights of children playing, women chatting, cartwheels crunching over dry ground, all of them had gone. Vanished into thin air. She looked around, saw a dark-haired man in uniform disappear down a side street. She had no space in her head to notice the emptiness, the heaviness that had fallen down like a cloak upon Fuentes. Her mind was fixed on getting to see Paloma and looking for Luis and all she could think at that particular moment was that the soldier she’d been watching wasn’t him.

  Yet that did not dismay her. Her heart was in such a mood as to wrestle every drop of joy out of even the most inauspicious of signs. To think that he was not there was still to think of him.

  Maria skipped excitedly down the shady side of the street,
rolling, splashing and carried high, delighting in her feelings for Luis de los Rios that sprang from her like a fountain. The sky was blue, the village peaceful, and Maria was happy. She started to sing.

  A distant sound made her start. All skipping and singing ceased and for a second the list of names her father had urged her to memorise came abruptly to mind. She cursed her father: first for keeping her in, then for alarming her so. Her own fears buoyed to the surface of her consciousness, rapidly evaporating into the heat of the day as she raised her eyes to the cloudless sky. It reassured her, dismissed Maria’s anxieties as a creeping contagion.

  Next stop, Paloma’s. She had to come out. Maria had so much to tell her.

  Chapter 26

  Knock, knock. ‘What’s that?’ Doctor Alvaro asked.

  ‘I can’t hear anything,’ Father Anselmo replied. ‘If it’s anything it’s probably the birds again. They’re forever getting trapped inside the nave.’ The doctor’s ears listened out for them. Their wings flapped furiously, they called out to each other.

  Knock, knock, knock. The doctor jumped. ‘It’s not the birds. Outside. At the door. There’s somebody there.’ He’d bring some olive oil next time and take a good look in old Anselmo’s ears. ‘What are you doing?’ he said as his friend went to the sacristy door.

  ‘God opens his house up to all,’ Father Anselmo said, pulling back the heavy, wooden door.

  He fell back, a hand to his brow. There, standing before him was a young man, a soldier, his uniform shabby and tattered, caked with something dark. ‘Help me, Father!’ Anselmo led the terrified boy in. Fear was in his voice and his eyes.

  The older men looked at one another. Even soiled, they recognised the uniform as Nationalist. Even injured, they knew the boy to be one of the guards posted up on Don Felipe’s estate the week before. Both men recoiled, just for a moment, wary of the danger involved in taking this lad in. Yet the feeling quickly passed, swept away by the strength of their humanity. The doctor pulled the boy in, his gentle hands eager to heal the soldier’s body, while the priest shone a light in his path with words to lift his spirit and nourish his soul. Alvaro bolted the door. Anselmo went to stop him but then saw the anguish in the young soldier’s eyes. He had been drenched in evil, it would not do to welcome any more in.