by Kerry Postle
‘He knows all the war heroes: Lister, El Campesino,’ Maria’s grandfather continued, displaying the extent of his influence and enjoying doing so. ‘But,’ he added, realising he was following the wrong tack, ‘you’re a doctor, and if it’s at the front you want to help out at, then leave it with me.’
A word in an ear was all it took for Juan Mendez to secure his son-in-law a position working with Bethune’s blood transfusion service. The Canadian had made a huge difference in the makeshift hospitals set up near the battlefields around Madrid, saving lives. Another of Juan Mendez’s many contacts, Norman Bethune was always on the lookout for doctors to assist him in his work. The war effort would always need doctors, especially on the frontline. Life, death and destruction. It was the nature of war. Yet it was the business of Bethune to patch up the injured as quickly as possible, and, wonder of wonders, to cheat death itself by bringing the wounded back to life. Blood. Miraculous stuff.
Doctor Alvaro would be a valuable asset. But placing Maria would not be so straightforward.
‘I’ve a friend who runs a workshop … makes uniforms. I could get you in there tomorrow.’ It wasn’t that Isabel hadn’t seen her granddaughter’s fire and determination, sensed her eagerness to be active, guessed at her anger, but she’d also seen the blood. There on the girl’s petticoat as she’d put the girl to bed on that very first day. The memory of it disturbed her. Her reason told her it was nothing; her instinct told her otherwise. She would talk to her granddaughter about it soon. But not yet. And so, for the moment, the workshop was where she wanted Maria to go.
But sewing didn’t cut it with her granddaughter. Other options were proposed. Feeding the poor, helping the refugees, wireless operator, laundress, cleaner. ‘You just say the word and I can fix you up with a job very soon.’
‘No.’
That wasn’t the word Isabel meant.
‘Let me think,’ said her grandfather, scratching his head. It was his turn to take on the mantle of responsibility to find his granddaughter worthwhile employment.
‘There’s a field hospital outside the city at Villa Paz. One of my friends …’ Huge storm clouds moved over Alvaro’s face. ‘There’s the Servicio Canadiense de transfusion de sangre,’ Mendez said, moving swiftly on. ‘Set up by the Canadians. Bethune and his mob. Linked to what your father will be doing. But you’d be working in Madrid.’ The storm clouds lifted. ‘Important work. Life-saving. And it’s in a lovely part of the city. Not too far away from here and so less susceptible to bombing. So you might have no training, but you’ll soon learn.’ Not if she didn’t want to do it in the first place though.
Her grandmother dug deep. She took Alvaro to one side. ‘I can’t believe I’m even suggesting this to you. But bombs are raining down on us. Turning living homes into skeletons. And the city is crying out for ambulance workers. So there is a job there for her if you think it suitable.’ Maria’s father closed his eyes for a moment. ‘I know it has to be her choice,’ he said. He imagined his daughter delving within the bare bones of once beautiful buildings, finding Madrileňos with shattered limbs. Or worse.
‘But no. Let me think,’ Isabel said, sharing Alvaro’s fears. ‘I know a place where they need people to help out with making bombs for our side. It would be a safer option.’
Alvaro looked at the floor. War. Always a desperate state of affairs. But civil war, knowing that their own bombs might be used against old neighbours, family, friends. An impossible position to be placed in. And the doctor felt that his own particular circumstances had been made even more impossible: even the Republican government had left Madrid and fled to Valencia. Madrid was a sinking ship and he’d wilfully jumped on it, pulling his daughter up alongside him.
But it was far safer than staying in Fuentes. And they could make a positive contribution from within the city.
For him the noble course of action was to help the injured out in the field. As for Maria, she would work in the Bethune blood unit in the city if he had any choice in the matter.
He did not.
‘What about miliciana?’ Maria wanted to fight.
Chapter 40
Madrid, during those early months, was an exciting – distracting – place to be for Maria. At least, during waking hours. For every night her sleep would be peopled with loved ones betrayed. Paloma. Luis. And every morning she would wake up, her head bruised, as she remembered it was she who had betrayed them. She struggled between two worlds. She imagined the torment would never release her. Then there were the changes that were occurring within her body that she didn’t acknowledge but couldn’t ignore.
But as the sounds of life made their way up from the street below, and as the love of her grandparents and the kindness of her father enveloped her as she joined them around the breakfast table, so many of Maria’s demons retreated to the shadows under her bed.
‘I’m so pleased you decided to work at the laboratory.’ She had been working for the Blood Transfusion Unit for over a month and her grandmother was relieved that all talk of becoming a miliciana had stopped. Maria had wanted to join the Women’s Battalion of the 5th Regiment: fit young women dressed in khaki, often dishevelled after several nights in the trenches, she’d seen them marching up and down the Gran Via in twos and threes. Loyal to the Republic. She’d not believed the rumours that they were only allowed to perform auxiliary duties, coerced into providing the three Cs, namely cooking, cleaning and caring, with a bit of special servicing of the male troops thrown in for good measure. She knew the already legendary feats of the likes of Lina Odena and Rosario Sanchez, both young girls like Maria herself; one who’d given her life, the other her right hand – quite literally – to fight for what they believed in. But the bombardment of photos in newspapers such as La Voz and ABC of women doing ‘women’s work’ on the frontline (placed around the apartment most strategically by her grandmother) was enough to make her stop and think. She had no wish to die at the front with a dish cloth in her hand. Battles were being waged on the outskirts of the city, the fighting more ferocious than ever, but the truth of it was that it was fast approaching home time for the women there. The government was starting to call them back. Even Maria had to accept there was no point joining up now.
‘Coffee, Maria?’
‘Yes. Thank you abuela.’
‘Listen to this, Juan.’ Maria’s father rattled the newspaper in his hand. ‘Varela says that if he can’t crush Madrid with four columns, then it will fall upon the shoulders of his fifth and most deadly unit to destroy the city. From the inside.’ Everyone in Madrid knew the name of General Varela: a Rebel and Franco’s dog. He’d failed to break Madrid with a powerful frontal attack from the west in November 1936. Street fighting and an entire city’s will to resist had pushed him to the south of the city before stones, sticks and brooms had seen him off completely. His master had called him to heel. In February and March he’d been let loose to try again, this time to the east along the Jarama river, and the town of Guadalajara with a pack of Italians hungry for blood. He’d failed again. He had no choice but to try stirring things up from within.
‘A fifth column. My, they’re clever!’ her grandfather exclaimed. And it was true. He knew that Franco’s general was well aware of the incendiary effects of his words on the people of Madrid. The very mention of a fifth column, Nationalist sympathisers working to crush the city from the inside, was enough to set the already anxious populace of the capital into overdrive. The idea of a secretive enemy force within would set citizen against citizen. But Maria understood nothing of this. Talk of manipulating the people bored her. The only detail that her hungry mind grasped was the undeniable truth that there were enemies walking amongst them, ready, at the given word, to strike Republican Madrid from within.
‘Oranges!’ The juice of the fruit trickled down Maria’s chin. She wiped it with the back of her hand. Her grandmother handed her a napkin, an indulgent smile on her face. ‘Propaganda,’ her grandfather snorted. He blew his nose
as if to rid himself of its taint. ‘Designed to set us against one another. I’d like to take a look at that article when you’ve finished with it, Alvaro’. But propaganda or not, Maria found it was entirely believable that hundreds, thousands of enemy forces were operating within the city. Indeed, in this war that was theirs, where both sides spoke the same language, came from the same family, how could you tell who was for you and who against? The Germans and Italians on the battlefield, they were easy to identify, but here in Madrid … Maria noticed that her father had thrown a scrunched up piece of paper in the fireplace. She thought little of it as he struck a match and set it alight.
‘We need to be on our guard against the increasing lawlessness that’s masquerading as justice in these most dangerous of times,’ Maria’s grandfather said, a cloud across his face. His wife tried to silence him with her eyes but he would not be contained. ‘Otherwise we will end up doing Varela’s work for him.’
Maria had no idea what lay behind his words. That the government had freed thousands of criminals at the outbreak of the war meant nothing to her. She was oblivious to the fact that they walked free, reinventing themselves as political warriors, the physical embodiment of the will of the people. She knew nothing of the good people, friends of her grandparents, who were being arrested and imprisoned on baseless charges, accused of being Nationalist sympathisers or agents. Until recently Juan Mendez had been able to get them released. The rule of law still existed after all. But for how much longer would reason be able to withstand the surging panic unleashed by the idea of a fifth column, he wondered? He looked at Maria. She was gathering her things ready to go to work. He prayed he hadn’t alarmed her.
By the time she was ready the dining room had cleared. Maria went over to the fireplace and, though she didn’t know why, something compelled her to reach down and pick up the half burned pieced of paper her father had thrown in there earlier. She looked at it carefully. She could just about make out an address and the name of Father Anselmo, but nothing else. She felt hurt that her father hadn’t shared the priest’s news. She didn’t know why but she scribbled down his address on a scrap of paper. She shoved it into her pocket, looked around to make sure her father hadn’t seen her (he’d burnt the letter for a reason, after all), then set off.
She walked along the city’s chaotic streets, snatches of her grandfather’s conversation soon supplanting all thoughts of Father Anselmo’s letter in her mind. Fifth columnists: the very idea of them excited her. She looked into the faces of passers by, trying to read them. Could he be a fifth columnist? Could she? But the morning was fresh and the sky was blue. And everybody out this morning seemed so purposeful. A fifth columnist, like her demons, would be better suited to lurking, if not under her bed, then definitely in the shadows. She gave her bag a little swing and allowed herself to be swept along by uplifting waves towards the blood transfusion unit. Towards her worthy job. Yet the stubborn need to do something more wouldn’t go away. If not a miliciana then what? Her mind searched hungrily for an outlet.
A group of young women caught her eye. All dressed in blue jumpsuits and wearing alpargatas, the rope-soled shoes so familiar to her. They were sitting on sandbags, blocking a street while passing a fashion magazine round, closely followed by a red lipstick. The sight made Maria’s heart race and her feet trip up. But she knew that wasn’t it.
A slogan-plastered car beeped at her. She quickly jumped out of its way. ‘I must watch where I’m walking’, she said to herself. Impossible. Her eyes were pulled in all directions. Here a ‘no pasaran’ banner, there a poster of a giant fist crushing a swastika’d plane. Promises of victory and the crushing of fascism were everywhere and they enthralled her. Now that was a cause she could warm to. She longed to be part of it.
Russians thundered past in armoured cars. Heroes, she thought, as she smiled at the sight of the numerous hammer and sickle symbols painted on the walls. ‘The city’s turning into a macabre stage for clashing ideologies.’ She rolled her eyes as her father’s words sprung to mind. Old people could be so cynical. It was true that Madrid was attracting some of communism’s finest actors, hungry to snatch their moment in the limelight. And Maria liked to watch these, her matinee idols, as they threw themselves into their roles. But she too wanted her moment of glory. And it was for a good cause. She sighed as she saw the building that housed the blood transfusion unit up ahead. She was tired of having to wait in the wings.
Paloma. Maria pushed the memory down. But it was too late. Her heart pounded, breathing quickened. Her demons had come into the light. Faceless images of the enemy tormented her once more. She wanted glory but she also wanted revenge and the closer she got to her place of work the heavier the chains became that prevented her from getting it. Anger and hatred surged up out of nowhere and whirred round and round in her head. It revved up, like a car, unable to move forward, turning over and over on itself.
She stood outside the main entrance and paused, her hand on the door handle. She remembered some of her grandfather’s words about the fifth column again. Forgot others. It seemed logical that there would be such a force. A shiny black car whose spokes dazzled in the sunlight sped past her, its tyres screeching over the cobbles. She turned to watch it. Heads protruded, hair swept back, black and yellow scarves billowing like sails, butts of rifles like masts. Voices yelped with excitement. Death to all fascists! In the passenger seat she caught sight of a boy with black hair, olive skin, and a scar on his cheek, waving a rifle and shouting out words of solidarity at people in the street. Her mind stuttered some more. ‘Manu! Manuel!’ Maria cried out. She was sure it was him. She watched the car as it sped away. In that moment she knew what she had to do. She released the door handle, stepped back and walked away.
Chapter 41
‘Have you been to the Hotel Florida yet? It’s full of foreign journalists!’ Federica squealed with delight as she opened the beautiful wooden chest allowing its old lid to drop back hard, denting the parquet floor. But before Maria could answer, a deep voice boomed ‘Careful!’ from the far side of the room. Federica shrugged and said ‘so what?’ with a flicker of her eyelids. She didn’t care much for being told what to do, nor how to do it. But as she recognised the man with the monstrous chin heading towards her, his smooth, black hair parted severely down the middle, she reeled in her defiance and cowered under a cloak of fear. The man with the monstrous chin had a monstrous body. He towered above her, eclipsing her completely. The girl held her breath. ‘Sandoval.’ A voice called him back. Federica rolled her eyes at her new friend. Still defiant – though she made sure her back was to him. And, Maria observed, a twitch now pulsed underneath the girl’s left eye.
Maria was fixated on overcoming the fifth column in Madrid before her epiphany outside the blood transfusion unit: she was doubly so now. She attended meetings, joined groups, discussed enemy plots, imagined conspiracies. Speakers denounced ‘bourgeois policing’. So did she. They rejected ‘old rules’ accusing them of being inherently flawed for having been established by a ‘bourgeois regime’. So did she. They argued for the need to ‘cleanse our society’. So did she. She had found a new group of like-minded comrades. They went along to the same talks to listen to ideas they already shared.
It was at a talk about the importance of looking out for the enemy within that Maria had met Federica. Federica exuded physical confidence and belonged to a Communist group. ‘Or possibly Socialist,’ the girl had said. ‘Either way we’re definitely on the left.’ This apparent ignorance Maria put down to self-consciousness and besides, any alarm she might have felt as a result evaporated when Federica invited her along to her group’s headquarters. ‘It’s like a palace’ she pronounced with a flourish of the hand. And that was because it was. The Condes de Rincon palace in calle Martinez de la Rosa.
When Federica had signed her new friend in, she led her into the building with pride and satisfaction towards the great hall. As Maria accompanied her, wings of excitement fluttering in her ch
est, so she imagined the acts of heroism she would soon be called upon to perform. ‘There’s a party tomorrow. You’ve got to come. You’ll meet so many people there … What do you want us to do?’ she asked a well-dressed young man sitting at a desk by the main door.
‘Outfits.’ He waggled his finger in the direction of some impressive old chests in the far corner. Maria’s face flushed with disappointment. Federica’s lit up with joy. She skipped past the walls decorated with standards and aristocratic coats of arms, pulling her new friend behind her. Maria cast an eye around the room. Suits of armour stood sentinel in the corners while an enormous fireplace dominated the vast space. A long dining table had been moved back against the far wall. ‘A band will be on there tomorrow,’ Federica said, squeezing on her friend’s fingers. There were outlines on the walls where paintings had once hung. As she looked around the room Maria noticed them carelessly propped up three deep near the main door.
‘It’s in the Plaza de Callao, the Hotel Florida, down the street from the Telefonica. You know. Not far from the Gran Via,’ she said to Maria, continuing the conversation that Sandoval had interrupted. Maria’s leg was feeling numb as if something was pressing down on a nerve. ‘If you’re interested I can take you along there some time. Full of Americans.’ Federica gave a dirty laugh as if sharing a private joke with herself. ‘Baths there too,’ she added as an after-thought. Maria shifted position. Whatever it was that was causing her legs to tingle had stopped. But this alleviation of the physical pain she was feeling did nothing to assuage her gnawing frustration. She picked up a white feather boa and looked at it, incredulous. Maria had hoped to be doing more important things in her defence of the Republic than looking for fancy dress clothes in some old (albeit very beautiful), wooden chest. Federica pulled out a crumpled dress and held it up against her. It perturbed Maria that her stomach swelled ever so slightly beneath the folds of material. She pushed it away and told Federica she was here in Madrid to ‘fight the fascists.’