by Kerry Postle
The doctor and the priest set to doing what each of them did best while the soldier wept in silence, his chest heaving with pain and confusion.
‘Hello! Is anybody here? Father? Father Anselmo? Doctor? You must be in here somewhere!’ The click, click, click of tiny heels on the stone floor of the church reverberated all around, ricocheting off the sacristy door.
All three men froze. They waited for the banging. And it came.
‘Father? Father Anselmo? I know you’re in there! I have something to tell you. I have a message from the Captain, you know.’ The priest held the soldier’s arm firmly and kept his gaze. He shook his head. She did not know he was there. She could not know. His eyes told the soldier he had no reason to be afraid. The boy’s heartbeat deafened him and drowned out the sound of the knocking and calling, his eyes revealed the struggle within. Doctor Alvaro smoothed the boy’s matted hair to reassure him. ‘Bother,’ her thin, shrill voice said. ‘Oh, how I hate those birds,’ she muttered as they threw themselves against the ceiling, their frustration sounding out in their screams. ‘Well, Father Anselmo can’t say I didn’t try to warn him. Ah well, I have to go now. I haven’t come here to put myself at risk!’ and with that, the click, click, click of tiny heels receded, Seňora Gonzalez’s voice said ‘Ugh! Those disgusting birds!’ as the heavy main door opened and closed. Then the click, click, click clicked on out and into the distance until it disappeared into thin air. All three men sat and listened, deafened by the silence.
They waited and waited, satisfied yet disturbed that they could hear nothing. Nothing at all. Seňora Gonzalez had gone. Even the birds had gone, though it struck Anselmo as strange that this should be the case.
The priest was the first one to move, standing up to push to one side the heavy, wooden vesting table. He then pulled back the heavy curtain suspended against the wall behind it, revealing a hidden door, that looked more like the entrance to a cupboard.
‘What’s your name, boy?’
‘Virgilio. Virgilio Lorenzana Macarro.’
‘Well come, Virgilio Lorenzana Macarro,’ Anselmo said to the boy, opening the door. ‘We need to get you ready.’ All three men crouched down to pass through the low doorway.
The doctor and the priest had listened to many wretched survivors telling their stories in this windowless room since the troubles had started. It was here that they, along with the teacher (before he’d needed to flee himself), had planned the escape of many to Madrid and other Republican held areas, and if some, like Manuel and the Espinozas, were fired up to join the guerrillas camped out in the countryside, forests and mountains, then so much the better. These were the only four walls in all of Fuentes that both men could trust not to have spying eyes and ears.
The priest lit some candles to provide light in the windowless room. Chairs lined two walls, a table with clean clothes and wash things sat up against another, and along the fourth, on the same wall as the tiny door, lay a bed with clean sheets and a Bible upon it. A statue of Mary looked down from above.
The doctor carried on cleaning the boy and checking him over. ‘How old are you?’ he asked.
‘Seventeen,’ the boy replied, his voice as broken as his identity. Seventeen. He looked more like seventy in the candlelight. The doctor sighed to himself, trying to keep at bay thoughts of his own daughter. He cleaned around the boy’s bruised eyes as carefully as he could and picked out a mixture of what he knew to be blood, excrement and vomit from behind his split nails.
The boy started to sob. ‘It is true about Baena … so many massacred there … and the killings … the Captain … death … I can’t rid myself of the smell of it. And it’s coming, it’s coming,’ he cried, the stench of war clinging to the insides of his nostrils, coating the back of his throat.
‘We know, my son, we know. God knows, God forgives,’ the priest said to him while looking up at Mary, wondering if He would.
‘I have to go, we all have to go … before it’s too late.’ Though these words of a damaged human being disturbed Anselmo and Alvaro, they put them to one side. It was their duty to repair the damage. Besides, the soldier was too weak to stand let alone leave. The poor soul had no choice other than to sob himself to sleep.
Alvaro took out his pouch of tobacco and, sitting back in his chair, he rolled up two cigarettes. He threw one to Father Anselmo, putting the other between his own lips. Both men lit up, inhaling on the roll-up to draw the flame in. The two men sat without talking, the ends of their cigarettes glowing red with every inhalation. An unusual scene. Yet these were unusual times. Alvaro looked at the bottle of alcohol unopened on the table. It was intended for the people they were helping but today the doctor had need of it himself. Father Anselmo poured him a glass, then one for himself. He had need of it too.
‘You’ll be safe soon,’ the doctor whispered to the sleeping soldier. ‘Poor child,’ he said as he looked at him. He was someone’s child, someone’s sweetheart, a fellow countryman, Spanish. His future, which must have looked so certain not so very long ago, now seemed completely lost. Alvaro thought of Maria again.
The candles flickered, went out. The doctor and the priest sat in the darkened room listening to the sleeping breath of the young boy, smoking and drinking. The church beyond was silent. And all around was too. The two men sat. Waited.
The doctor sat bolt upright. ‘I heard somebody scream,’ he said. ‘No, it’s just the birds again,’ his holy friend assured him. ‘They always scream when they’re trapped.’
Though convinced it was the birds, Father Anselmo was also slightly perturbed. Both men left the wounded soldier to rest while they sought out the reassurance of the world of light.
Father Anselmo re-emerged into the sacristy. Something had changed, was making him feel unsettled. He leant behind the vestment table to straighten up the curtain that concealed the low doorway, thinking to himself that it had to be the meeting with the young rebel deserter that was disturbing him so. He and the doctor had helped many men to safety but none from the other side. But that wasn’t it. There was something about the atmosphere. The silence. Eerie. Foreboding. He looked at Alvaro. He was standing nearer the main door, his neck slightly craned, a frown on his forehead. He too could hear nothing and it unnerved him.
Though the church was usually a place of quiet and calm the sounds of life still permeated the walls. Yet now, no sounds came in from the world outside, no buzzing of voices, no shouts from vendors making their way around the streets as children pawed the fruit. No occasional soldier stamping past in heavy boots making you feel jumpy. Nothing. It had all stopped. Like the calm before the storm, a pregnant sense of nothingness lay heavy in the air signalling the arrival of chaos.
And then it came. Both men heard it. At first it sounded like distant thunder, rumbling, getting louder, and louder. Doctor Alvaro looked at his watch. It was three o’clock. He had read the newspapers, heard de Llano’s little radio chats, known about the lists where if villagers were on them they were at risk, heard the fear in the rebel soldier’s voice … but that would all seem like a dress rehearsal compared to what he was about to experience. At three o’clock, on this very day, war – his war – was about to begin.
Tramp, tramp, tramp. At three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, soldiers’ boots trailed their relentless way into the consciousness of the people of Fuentes, getting louder and louder. Nearly everyone still foolish enough to be out ran home so that very soon the world outside was full of nothing but marching. And as the boots like drums beat their monolithic message of destruction, so the sound of blood flooded ears as if to drown all those who heard it, while their pulses throbbed as if to break the skin and burst the banks of vein and artery.
Doctor Alvaro and Father Anselmo opened the heavy church door and stood as if petrified. Both breathed in deeply, slowly, to quell the insurrection within. Alvaro’s thoughts turned to his daughter. Father Anselmo’s did too. The priest regretted having given his friend advice. His friend regretted h
aving taken it. It seemed madness that either of them should have thought it was safe for Maria to go out. A poor decision, rashly taken. It was coming back to haunt both of them now. Doctor Alvaro’s usually reasonable head was awash with conflicting emotions. He’d been caring for a deserter when he didn’t know if his own flesh and blood was okay. He felt ashamed for resenting the young boy, but in that moment he didn’t care. There, standing in the entrance to the church, the doctor turned around to look back inside. He begged Mary for mercy, prayed to a God in whom he didn’t believe. ‘Hurry home,’ Father Anselmo said to him.
At three o’clock, when the storm started up, Maria was only a few streets away from her father. She was with Paloma. She’d had to see her. That had always been the plan and although her instincts had told her something didn’t feel right as she’d got closer to her friend’s home, she’d ignored them. She’d gone to buy some food but Paloma lived so close. Besides, what harm could it do?
When she’d got there, Paloma’s mother had categorically refused to let her daughter outside. ‘There’s too many soldiers around!’ Cecilia had mumbled, shooing Maria away. ‘Now get yourself home!’
She was always going to be a hard nut to crack.
‘Can I just speak to her for a minute?’ Maria had pleaded.
‘Paloma? A minute? No. Get yourself inside, for pity’s sake.’
And with that Cecilia slammed the door shut. Maria walked off alone.
But the rock that was Paloma’s mother had developed a fault line that had been getting bigger by the day. She’d succeeded in helping Manu, but where was he now? Then her Lola, usually so robust, had come over all weak, off her food, sick. Worry was pushing the usually strict Cecilia to new heights of strictness, new levels of unreason. And it was this that would push obedient Paloma to sedition.
Two minutes after her mother had said no, Paloma was breathless, at the end of the street.
‘She changed her mind?’ Maria asked.
Paloma shook her head, a look of relief on her face just to be out. And the last thing she wanted to do was to talk to Maria about her mother.
The two girls walked arm in arm along the eerie streets, their laughter filling the space, ricocheting between the vast expanses of whitewashed walls that lined the now cavernous walkways. A voice called down to them from an open upstairs window, heavy words raining down on them. ‘Be quiet!’ it said, low, warning. ‘Get yourselves home, for pity’s sake girls!’ echoing the words of Cecilia, spoken only minutes before. The memory of it made the girls snigger.
They were untouchable. Maria was in high spirits. Happy. Blissfully so. And Maria’s blissful happiness infected her friend, rampaging through her body like a disease, rendering her nearly as blind to her surroundings as Maria was herself.
It would prove to be fatal.
A sound of gunfire rang out in the distance. Both girls jumped out of their skins. They’d only heard it at night before. But though alarmed they still laughed, their giddiness at being together painting all around with an air of wonder. Maria scooped up gravel in the palms of her hands and threw it up into the air. Fountain shapes sprayed in arcs down to the ground, dust falling like droplets. She didn’t think that she’d heard a bomb before but she knew enough about them to pretend she had one in her hand.
Paloma laughed, but this time lower, flatter than before. Her capacity for mirth had developed a slow puncture that speeded up as another booming sound filled the empty streets. Paloma opened her eyes wide and looked around. She could see nothing, no one.
For the first time she noticed that they were the only two people walking along the street. It wasn’t lunchtime. There was no reason for people’s shutters to be closed. Nor their wooden front doors. Yet there was not a single one left open. There was not a tiled courtyard to be glimpsed anywhere.
Paloma’s hand squeezed Maria’s arm tightly. Maria laughed. Paloma laughed back half-heartedly. ‘I want to go home,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Please not yet. I’ve got something to tell you,’ Maria said. But as she walked on she didn’t feel like it anymore.
Their high spirits disappeared into the blue sky above leaving not a trace below as the friends progressed on their journey. The air escaped from their deflating lungs and the sound of their supposed merriment, once fulsome, now dwindled to a tinny, tiny dot. It shrank as quickly as the silence all around them grew, a silence that threatened to overwhelm, engulf, and eventually obliterate them completely.
Silence. Even their own.
And then one-two, one-two. Louder and louder. The sound of heavy boots marched into the void. Hobnail boots – stamping, pounding, crushing, all vestiges of happiness squashed beneath relentless steps. Soldiers. Maria could hear soldiers. Getting louder. Closer. Her blood pumped violently. Her heart kept one-two time. Aggressively. If it could break out of its physical cage it surely would. Soldiers. That she had ever thought it acceptable to attract their attention when they first marched into town now appalled her. Soldiers. Interesting curiosities but a few days ago. She thought of Luis, her soldier. To think she was going to tell Paloma all about him. ‘He is the enemy, Maria, remember that.’ Her father’s words tortured her. And the ineluctable, relentless beat of soles getting closer and closer told her that soon, very soon, those marching would all be her mortal enemies. She looked at Paloma. Fear was on her face with eyes full of liquid despair, nose running, bottom lip quivering. Maria was awash with guilt. It was she who had pulled Paloma into this.
She would do all that she could to save her friend.
‘Mother’s going to kill me,’ Paloma said. Maria prayed that Cecilia would get the chance.
The soldiers were getting nearer. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Feet stamping. Drums drumming. Hearts pounding. Panic rising. Louder. Louder still. They were nearly upon the girls. It was time to run.
‘Come Paloma! Come with me!’ Maria called to her friend, her head turned back as she propelled herself forward as fast as she could, not watching, not seeing what, or who, was in front of her. Maria remembered the list of names given to her by her father, she searched for the nearest addresses. ‘We can make it to Calle Rimono. My father says there’s a house there we can …’ As she turned a corner, running as fast as her young legs would carry her, Maria ran straight into a soldier. She looked up with terror into his face. The soldier with one blue eye and one brown. It was him. It was Luis. With recognition all terror and anger slipped away.
Her beating heart stopped. Time stood still. Events unfurled around them. They were locked together, in one eternal, golden moment. When she looked into his eyes she did not see an enemy. When he looked into hers he saw her tender heart.
‘Paloma!’ she said, bringing herself back to the world. ‘You have to help Paloma.’
But Paloma was not to be helped. She gave a scream. All she saw when she looked at Luis was the enemy. ‘Stop!’ Maria cried, reaching out for her. But it was too late. Her friend had gone and Maria had fallen to the ground. Luis helped her up. Her head swung back. She looked him in the face once more. It was the best of meetings at the worst of times. His eyes, warm and sympathetic, fixed on her, wishing her nothing but good.
‘My friend,’ she said, ‘help her, please.’ Luis went to the end of the road but something made him run back urgently. It was no use. Paloma had gone and there was nothing he could do for her now. He rushed down the road and grabbed Maria brusquely by the arm. She saw the look of horror in his face. He had seen something and Maria had to know what it was. ‘I must look for Paloma,’ she gasped as she wriggled away from him and ran towards the scene he’d run back from.
As Maria turned the corner Luis’ hand reached out and caught her. He pulled her back into him and covered her mouth as she screamed at the sight that presented itself to her. The worst of nightmares.
Troops were herding women from the village onto trucks. Some were beaten, blood running down faces, arms and legs, clothes torn, faces bewildered, unable to move, a mind-forged rope having tied
itself around their necks joining one to the other. The only one who dared to pull on it was Paloma. She bit and fought as two soldiers pushed her up onto the back of the truck.
Maria kicked to break free from Luis but he would not let her go. That he should let her see this vision of hell was something that he told himself he shouldn’t do. But it was as much for himself that he couldn’t move away. It appalled him but he had to see it. He would not pretend it didn’t happen. Luis kissed Maria’s head and soaked her hair with tears as he watched the Captain climb up next to Paloma and raise his hand above the head of the girl he hadn’t been able to save.
Paloma stood up and fought fiercely, but she was savagely felled. Luis stared at the Captain. He’d seen him in glorious action before. It sickened him to the core to see a grown man get so much pleasure by inflicting pain on such an innocent young girl. The Captain held his hand poised before bringing it down violently and striking her violently across the face. With a hand to her cheek to stem the blood, Paloma sat back, dazed. The Captain pulled his fingers across her face, trailing them in the blood. He turned his hands round as if examining them. Then he laughed as he plunged red fingers in his mouth. ‘I have a taste for this!’ he cried. Those at their windows who watched fell back, deeper into the shadows. Those who sat on the truck trembled. And Paloma with the bleeding face felt the heat and wetness of fear burning between her thighs and running down her legs until it formed hot puddles around her feet.
Luis felt Maria go limp in his arms. ‘I must take you home,’ he whispered as he felt the lump in the back of his throat get bigger and the tears angrier. ‘And I have to do it now.’