by Kerry Postle
The truck was slowing down, the brakes applied.
Outside there were voices. At last. They were getting louder, nearer. The canvas door was drawn back illuminating the gloom within.
‘Welcome to the Republic,’ a soldier’s voice said. Nine sets of surprised eyes squinted into the sunlight (thirteen if you counted the goats).
‘We’ve made it to the control post,’ the driver shouted back at them, a trace of jubilation in his tired voice. ‘We’ve made it. We’ve made it to Madrid.’
When Maria jumped off the back of the truck and into the morning sunshine she made a promise to herself – that she would do the right thing. That she might not be able to identify it when she saw it, she hadn’t yet considered.
She looked at her father and held his hand like a little girl because the first thing she noticed in this strange city was people. Tens, hundreds of them. So this is what it feels like to be a drop in the ocean, she said to herself as they tumbled into the bobbing throng. But, if Maria was but a drop, she was a very fortunate one as others, too many for her father to even think of helping, drifted by, with heavy legs and even heavier hearts, caught up in the never-ending waves, bodies beaten, eyes sunken, on their faces a landslide of despair. They must have escaped from the surrounding villages. Some dragged their belongings behind them, others pulled tired children by the hand.
An old woman went by, slow, weak. She asked those who passed her either side for food. They all ignored her. The desperate sight tugged at the doctor’s heart. He knew they hardly had the strength to turn their heads towards the hungry voice, let alone shake an answer. It made Maria angry. But sometimes those who don’t help, can’t help – a lesson she had yet to learn.
Before her father could stop her she had released his hand and was forcing her way through the relentless swarm of refugees to place a small package in the hungry woman’s hands. Her fingers, unlike Maria’s own, were frail, birdlike. ‘It’s not much but it’s all I have,’ she said. She thought she saw a look of gratitude flash across the old woman’s face, but, if that was the case, it was not for long. All finer feelings were rapidly trampled underfoot by a terrible hunger. The starving woman crammed the food into her mouth. Maria looked away. By the time she looked back the woman had been swept away.
As Maria was helping out one person in need so her father was helping out another. The old woman with the tooth, who’d travelled on the truck with them, was stranded. Alvaro held her by the arm and lead through the crowd. Maria held her by the other.
One hour later and the three of them had not gone very far. Felicia was her name and she had a bad hip. Both knees were weak. Her back wasn’t good. Maria was starting to feel restless. The newness of the city wasn’t coming quickly enough to excite her about the future. The slowness of the journey was doing nothing to take her mind off her past: she could still smell it and it was starting to make her feel sick.
As she looked behind, she spotted a peasant with a donkey and a cart coming their way. Round-shouldered, pot-bellied, he rolled his eyes in derision as he moved through the shuffling tide of people. An unlikely specimen to restore one’s faith in human nature. But, as the saying goes, you can’t judge a book by its cover (even though most of us do). And this was never more apt than when applied to this gruff, rough, unprepossessing man: he had a heart of gold. He noticed the pained expressed on Felicia’s face and took pity on her.
He wouldn’t have stopped for the doctor nor his daughter – they had the look of educated people who could take care of themselves; but his heart went out to the scrawny woman with the dodgy hip, defective knees and bad back. She didn’t look long for this world and he couldn’t have lived with himself if he’d not helped her. ‘Hop in,’ he’d barked, grudgingly accepting the other two as necessary baggage. Alvaro climbed up first. He pulled while Maria pushed and together they hoisted Felicia onto the back of the cart. While Alvaro went to express his thanks to the peasant Maria jumped aboard yanking up her clothes to do so. Felicia’s eyes fluttered around the hem of the girl’s petticoat as she flicked up her dress. There, deep red against the white cotton was the undeniable stain of blood. Maria released her dress immediately.
‘Rodrigo,’ the peasant said in reply to Alvaro’s many questions. And that was it. For a while.
You couldn’t force conversation. The doctor had learned that long ago.
Rodrigo’s human cargo settled for watching the city as it rolled by, its houses getting denser, its trees thinner and fewer. A cart with a white coffin – it was for a child – rolled its way past them. Churches punctuated the way. But Maria took in none. The blood-stained petticoat brought back her crime. The embers of self-hatred glimmered within.
‘Some’s been gutted by fire,’ Rodrigo said to Felicia. ‘Some’s been ransacked,’ he added, pointing his head in the direction of a derelict church on the left. As they turned to look, a group of excited young men appeared at the damaged church doors dragging a monumental Jesus behind them. They pulled it to a clearing and set about beating it with metal bars, over and over. Soon it was nothing more than a heap of painted splinters on the ground. When done, they shook their weapons above their heads, victorious.
Sparks of excitement flared up off the embers of self-loathing as Maria watched the boys destroy the statue. Their anger. So unbridled. It called to her own. An energy so infinite. But it was instantly quelled at the sight of Felicia as she rubbed her crucifix between her fingers. ‘Here, let’s hide that out of sight,’ Maria said, removing the scarf from around her own neck and tying it round the frightened old woman. ‘There’, she said, patting it flat. ‘No one can see it now.’ Her father gave his daughter the slightest of nods in gratitude.
‘God forgive them,’ Rodrigo muttered. ‘They know not what they do.’ He turned around and gave his passengers a heavy-hearted smile. They’d never witnessed a scene like this before, he imagined. Well, it wouldn’t be the last. ‘You needs to be careful,’ he said. ‘In war evil reveals its ugly face. No matter where you are. Madrid has its dangers too.’
The three passengers fell back into their own thoughts for a while. Felicia’s mind was full of horror, fear and confusion. She sat and shook her head. ‘Animals,’ she muttered.
Alvaro’s was full of pity and sadness. He recognised the symptom, understood the cause. These were young men, frustrated, furious. The church had abandoned them, left them to rot, selling out their future to the highest, most powerful bidder. But to think they could cure themselves, rid themselves of this rot, by wanton destruction, no. This might relieve the pain for a while, but as a doctor, Alvaro knew this was no long-term solution.
Maria did no such thing. She looked back at the young men, now behind them, with something akin to envy, her own anger rekindled by the sight of theirs. The desire to destroy raged in her soul. To smash things up would not bring her friend back, not change what she’d done last night, but the instinct to do so was stronger than reason. She watched the boys until they became agitated dots in the distance, the flame of fury dimming with each turn of Rodrigo’s large wooden cartwheels.
Rodrigo brought his cart to a juddering stop. By then the flame was dead.
‘Get out now,’ said Rodrigo, direct to the point of rudeness. He shooed Alvaro and his daughter off his cart. He nodded to the right. ‘I go this way with the old woman—’ at this Felicia pulled a face ‘—and you needs to go that way.’ He pointed straight on. ‘That’s all right. No need for thank yous. No need,’ he said and then he set off, not caring to look behind him for fear of seeing two people still expressing their gratitude with waves and smiles. He never did like fancy ways.
‘Are we nearly there?’ Maria was tiring. Her conscience had not allowed her to sleep all night.
‘Not far now,’ her father said.
It was seventeen years since he’d walked along these streets but he knew the road up ahead as if he’d been walking towards it only yesterday. ‘Come,’ he said as he rushed on with excitement as
if going to meet an old friend he’d never forgotten and couldn’t wait to see again.
A convoy of army trucks rolled by, their heavy wheels like thunder on the now cobbled roads. Alvaro looked on with pride, Maria with admiration. These weren’t Rebel soldiers but the ones who had remained loyal to the government, defending Madrid and fighting off its attackers. People filled the street, applauding the uniformed men as they rumbled past. ‘They’re off to the front,’ a young girl said to Maria. ‘No, must be Army HQ,’ said another. ‘This road ends up in the main square.’
Maria listened on in wonder.
Chapter 38
Maria’s grandparents, her father said, lived in a spacious apartment in the Marques de Casa Argudin Palace, situated in the affluent district of Salamanca in Madrid. Planes had dropped leaflets on the capital stating that that particular area wouldn’t be bombed (explaining why Alvaro found it to be far busier than he remembered). It also meant that it was safe. It wasn’t far now. ‘It’s very beautiful. You’ll see. And your grandfather … a good man. Caring. He’ll love you. Your grandmother too. Kind.’ That her father had never mentioned them before disinclined Maria to believe him.
They battled their way through the still growing throng. ‘Many have turned their backs on the city … fled … but not your mother’s family …’ Her father’s voice meandered like water down a stony hillside. He turned. Stopped. It was getting too busy. If they weren’t careful they would get separated. He looked at Maria. Her shoulders were hunched, eyes shadowed. Her copy of Cervantes pulled on her arm like a dead weight.
‘Here, let me carry that for you,’ he said holding out his hand. She shook her head. Though she hadn’t read it yet, a promise of hope was locked between its covers and she wasn’t going to relinquish it to anyone. Luis. She brought the book into her body. Her arm tensed. The thought that she’d betrayed him stabbed her in the heart. Her father only saw the pain of it in her face. He took it for fatigue. ‘Then take my hand,’ he said to her.
Their hands clasped, as strong as links, and so father and daughter forged a path ahead, over the cobbles, under the banners, past the soldiers speaking one language, and civilians speaking another. As hypnotising as the music from a snake charmer’s pungi, the sounds and voices captivated them both, rendering them spellbound. Accents from all over Spain converged in the capital. There were the clipped sounds of English to the left. And that must have been an American accent the man with the cigar and the camera had to the right. ‘It doesn’t madder’, he’d said to the mother of a child who’d run into him. Then, further along, came hissing shs and zhs and strings of long, round vowels.
‘What language is that?’ Maria called to her father.
‘Russian,’ he said. ‘Not far now.’ But she was no longer flagging. The shock of the new was beginning to ease the discomfort of her pierced heart and it was when she walked into the Puerta del Sol that she experienced its restorative powers to the full.
One moment in a dark, overcrowded channel, the next, spewed out into the light. The Puerta del Sol. It was as if she’d woken up to the city for the very first time. No amount of wandering around its outlying streets could have prepared her for this. She raised her eyes to gape at enormous posters displayed on high stone buildings. The paternal eyes of politicians looked down on livestock, people, cars, trucks and buses all moving round in the large open square below. There was a giant president Azaňa, his face as if carved in the rock, watching her from on high as more truckloads of Madrileňos rumbled by, all wearing dark blue boiler suits and cheerful red neckerchiefs. Crossing them were still more soldiers, leaning out of trucks and whooping with glee at her, their raised fists in salute at the magnified faces of Lenin and Stalin, whose eyes overlooked it all. She was dazzled and puzzled by the scale and the strangeness of it all, her spirits lifting her aching limbs.
‘Just down here.’ Doctor Alvaro pointed down a side street festooned with flags. Banners proclaiming ‘no pasaran’ ran from window to window. They shall not pass. Madrid was spirited and ready for the struggle ahead. Red Cross vans roared past. Maria’s mind buzzed with the noise, glamour, excitement. She found the mood … festive. Her heart had been pierced but her head was still game enough to be turned.
‘I feel a little dizzy,’ she said, still holding her father’s hand as he knocked at a big, wooden door. And then she fainted.
Juan Mendez had only ever seen his granddaughter when she was a baby and then once from the other side of a street in Fuentes when Maria was twelve years old. The years melted away as he looked at the child now collapsed in the doorway. Tears came to his eyes. ‘Isabel!’ he shouted back inside before turning to his son-in-law. ‘Let’s get Maria …’ He hesitated. Memories went off like fireworks at the mention of her name. ‘Yes,’ he tried again. ‘Let’s get her to a room … her mother’s old bedroom. Isabel! Isabel! You’ll never believe it. Yes, at once.’
He looked at the tired and dusty girl with the long, dark, untidy hair. Did she take after her mother? Or her father? Was she artistic? Musical? What did she like to do? Reading. The copy of Don Quixote clamped tightly across her chest told him that. What did she like to eat? Questions ran round his head, wild, impatient. ‘Is that her?’ his wife asked as she rushed into the hallway. ‘Alvaro!’ she said to the man holding her up. ‘Is that our granddaughter? Bring her in!’
Arms touched, backs were patted, embraces were snatched but really there would be time for all that later. Isabel led Maria to a pretty room with a metal framed bed. Maria took a glass of water from her grandmother’s outstretched hand and allowed her to remove her shoes. She’d forgotten all about her petticoat.
The apartment was a shrine. Photographs of Maria’s mother were everywhere recording every stage of her life. As a baby in her crib, as a child on a swing, in a restaurant, at a ball. Maria had never seen so many pictures of her mother. There she was with childish curls, here with beautifully coiffed dark hair. From a moon-faced baby she’d turned into a heart-shape faced young woman, fine-featured and delicate. Maria did not take after her. But she did, it struck her, look very like the woman holding her mother as a baby in an old photo on the console table in the hall.
And the resemblance, her father, knew, wasn’t only superficial.
Maria’s father was subdued. Now grown-up, he recoiled at the intransigence of his youthful self. It was time to make his peace with the authoritarian mother-in-law of the past and embrace the loving grandparent of the present. He hoped Isabel had mellowed as he went to join her in the sitting room.
‘I—’
She put up her hand to stop him. ‘Please. No words. Not about the past.’
‘But I …’ he started again.
‘No. Really,’ she insisted, tears in her eyes catching the light. ‘It’s over. You’re here now. And that’s more than I ever hoped for.’ Mistakes had been made on both sides. There was no point trawling over them now.
Her daughter had been Alvaro’s wife. He had no need to explain himself to Isabel. Neither had she to him. Although it had taken Alvaro years to realise it, experience had led him to understand, at last, that his wife had been Isabel’s daughter.
Ines. Isabel’s daughter. His wife. Maria’s mother. She’d suffered twelve miscarriages before she’d become pregnant with Maria. He had no idea at the time. Some mercifully quick, barely noticeable, apart from to Ines herself. Increasingly obsessed with having a baby, she’d started to analyse every tiny change in her own body.
‘What are you doing to yourself?’ her mother would say to her.
‘You have to stop this,’ her father would add.
‘Can’t you remember what the doctor said might happen to you if you were to become pregnant?’ Cruel words, Ines had thought at the time. Heartless. And it heralded the beginning of the end of the relationship between daughter and parents.
Alvaro said nothing at all. He didn’t know about the pain, loss, misery. Ines had kept everything from him, hid the signs. That he, a do
ctor, had not seen them had been a source of constant self-reproach.
The thirteenth pregnancy, against all the odds, did not turn into a miscarriage. Ines had conceived a fighter. And she subjected her mother to the agonies of hellfire as she battled her way to survive. Awash with vomit, headaches to break you in two, a bladder that needed emptying every five minutes and skin so bad her face felt as if it was alive, so affected was it by the changes in her body, Ines struggled. But she was having a baby. And she was ecstatic.
Isabel was not.
Alvaro’s heart ached as he remembered the arguments between his wife and her parents. The more Isabel and Juan told their daughter what to do, for the good of the baby, for your own health, you silly girl, the more dogged his wife became. And he was so blinded by her strength of will that he couldn’t see how fragile the woman he loved was becoming.
It wasn’t long after the baby was born that Ines turned her back on her parents forever. Alvaro had backed her up. He was sorry for it now.
Chapter 39
The good thing about returning to the fold of a rich and powerful family is that they can open doors for you, no matter how much you protest and say you want to get there on your own merit. And so it was for Maria’s father.
His father-in-law Juan Mendez even had contacts at the Ministry of War.
‘My old friend, Santiago Carrillo, can help us out I’m sure.’
Santiago Carrillo was made Councillor for Public Order when the government fled the city. Everyone knew his name. Juan Mendez and he had been friends for years. ‘Never was I happier than when the left-wing government released him when they got into power in February 1936!’ His voice had sunshine in it. Maria was drawn to wonder at him. And in that moment her mind made up a general truth: that any prisoner released from prison in Madrid by the government had deserved their freedom. It was experience that would show her this was not always the case.