Winter in Madrid

by C. J. Sansom

  As always Father Jaime’s face was supercilious, angry, his hawklike nose with the stiff little hairs on top lifted as though offended by more than the men’s rank smell. Aranda called the prisoners into shivering lines then stood on the platform, tapping his crop against his leg.

  ‘Today is Epiphany,’ he called out, his breath making grey clouds in the freezing air. ‘Today we honour the baby Jesus, who came to Earth to save us. You will offer up homage and perhaps the Lord will take pity on you and shine a light into your souls. You will each kiss the image of the Christ child Father Jaime holds. Do not worry if the person before you has tuberculosis, the Lord will not allow you to be contaminated.’

  Father Jaime frowned at the levity in the comandante’s tone. Father Eduardo looked at his feet. Father Jaime held the doll up, threateningly, like a weapon.

  One by one the men shuffled past and kissed it. A few failed to bring their lips quite to the wood and the priest called them back sharply. ‘Again! Kiss the baby Jesus properly!’

  It was one of the Anarchists who refused, Tomás the shipbuilder from Barcelona. He stood in front of the priest, looking him in the eyes. He was a big man and Father Jaime shrank back a little.

  ‘I will not kiss your symbol of superstition,’ he said. ‘I spit on it!’ And he did, leaving a trail of white spittle on the baby’s wooden brow. Father Jaime cried out as though the baby were real. One of the guards landed a blow on Tomás’s head that felled him to the ground. Father Eduardo looked about to step forward but a glare from Father Jaime stopped him. The older priest wiped the doll’s brow with a white handkerchief.

  Aranda jumped off the platform and marched over to where the big man lay. ‘You insult Our Lord!’ he cried. ‘The Virgin in Heaven weeps as you spit on her child!’

  The words were outraged but his tone was still mocking. Aranda took his crop and began methodically beating the Anarchist, starting with his legs and ending with a blow to Tomás’s head that drew blood. He called a couple of guards to carry him off, then turned to Father Jaime. The priest had shrunk back, clasping the doll to his breast as though sheltering it from the scene.

  Aranda bowed. ‘I am sorry for that insult, sir. Please continue. We shall bring these men to religion if the effort kills us, shall we not?’ Aranda nodded to the next man in line. Bernie was pleased to see a little fear as well as anger in Father Jaime’s eyes as the prisoner shuffled forward and bent his head to the doll. No one else resisted.

  ‘I REMEMBER how that doll smelled,’ Bernie said to Vicente. ‘Paint and saliva.’

  ‘Those black beetles, they are all the same. Father Jaime is a brute, but that Eduardo is more cunning. He will be in the sick Pole’s hut now, sniffing out whether he is about to die, whether he is weak enough to be browbeaten into taking absolution.’

  Bernie shook his head. ‘Eduardo’s not so bad. Remember he tried to get a doctor for the camp? And the crosses for the graveyard?’ He thought of the hillside, just outside the camp, where those who died were buried in unmarked graves. When Father Eduardo came in the summer he had asked for crosses to mark the dead. The comandante had forbidden it; those inside the camp had been sentenced to decades of imprisonment by military courts; in practice they were already dead. One day the camp would close and the huts and barbed wire would be removed, leaving no sign on the bare windswept hill that it had ever been there.

  ‘What do crosses matter?’ Vicente replied. ‘More symbols of superstition. Father Eduardo’s kindness is fake, it is all to an end. They’re all the same, the black beetles, they’ll try to get you when you’re dying, at your weakest.’

  It was dark outside now. Some in the hut played cards or sewed their tattered uniforms by the light of weak tallow candles. Bernie closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He thought about Tomás’s beating; the Anarchist had died a few days later. He himself had trod on thin ice with the psychiatrist this afternoon. It was lucky the man seemed to see him only as a specimen. Part of Bernie wanted to make some fierce gesture like Tomás’s, but he wanted to live. If they killed him that would be their final, irrevocable victory.

  Eventually he slept. He had a strange dream. He came into the hut with a whole crowd of schoolboys from Rookwood, led by Mr Taylor. The boys examined the wooden pallets then stood around the table made of old packing cases in the middle. They said if this was their new dorm it was jolly rough, they didn’t think much of it. ‘Don’t be downhearted,’ Taylor said reprovingly. ‘That’s not the Rookwood way.’

  Bernie woke with a start. The hut was completely dark, he could see nothing. He was cold; he moved the thin blanket down to cover his feet. It was the first really cold night. September and October were the easiest months: the frying heat of summer fading by a few blessed degrees each week, the temperature at night comfortable enough to allow you to sleep easily. But now winter was here.

  He lay awake in the darkness, listening to the coughs and mutterings of the other men. There were creaks as some tossed uneasily on their pallets, perhaps feeling the cold too. Before long there would be frosts each morning; by Christmas people would be dying.

  There was a whisper from the next bunk. ‘Bernardo, are you awake?’ Vicente coughed again.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Listen,’ His voice was urgent. Bernie turned but he couldn’t see him in the thick darkness.

  ‘I do not think I will last through the cold weather,’ Vicente said.

  ‘Of course you will.’

  ‘If I don’t, I want you to promise me something. The black beetles will come at the end; they will try to give me absolution. Stop them. I might weaken you see, I know people weaken. It would betray everything I have lived for. Please stop them somehow.’

  Bernie felt tears pricking at his eyes. ‘All right,’ he whispered back. ‘If it ever comes to it, I promise.’ Vicente reached across, found Bernie’s arm and clutched it with his thin hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You are a good friend. You will help me make my last defiance.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  IN MADRID November the first dawned cold and damp. Harry’s flat was gloomy, despite the watercolours of English landscapes he had borrowed from the embassy to cover the blank walls.

  Sometimes he thought of the vanished commissar. He wondered what sort of a commissar Bernie would have made if he had lived and his side had won. Harry’s job had been to encourage Barbara to talk about Sandy when they met, and they had hardly mentioned Bernie’s name; he felt oddly ashamed, as though they had written him out of their pasts. Bernie might have made an efficient commissar, he thought, he had had a hard angry streak along with the social compassion. But he couldn’t see him becoming one of those he had heard about, who during the Civil War sentenced soldiers to be shot for grumbling.

  He took his tea, Liptons supplied by the embassy, over to the window. He had lit the brasero and a welcome warmth stole from the little stove under the table. Rain dripped slowly from the balconies opposite. He had hated asking Barbara questions about Sandy, ferreting for information, and had been relieved when she didn’t seem to know anything. He supposed that didn’t make him much of a spy.

  Harry had a session translating at an Interior Ministry function that morning, then another appointment with Sandy at the Café Rocinante. He had telephoned Sandy the day after his walk with Barbara. He said things were quiet at the embassy, did Sandy fancy meeting up again? He had accepted eagerly.

  Harry went down to the street and set off for the cafe. He looked around him carefully, as usual, but there was no sign that Enrique had been replaced by another, more efficient spy.

  SANDY WAS already at the Rocinante when Harry arrived, sitting at a table with his foot on a wooden block as a ragged ten-year-old boy cleaned his shoes. He waved an arm at Harry.

  ‘Over here! Excuse me if I don’t get up.’

  Harry sat down. The cafe was quiet this afternoon; perhaps the rain and fog were keeping people indoors.

  ‘Filthy weather, eh?’
Sandy said cheerfully. ‘Like being back home.’

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  ‘It’s all right, I’ve only been here a few minutes myself. Winter’s coming, I’m afraid.’ The boy sat back on his haunches and Sandy inspected his shoes.

  ‘OK, niño.’ He passed a coin to the boy, who turned big sad eyes to Harry. ‘I clean your shoes, señor?’

  ‘No, gracias.’

  ‘Oh go on, Harry, it’s only ten centimos.’

  Harry nodded and the boy placed the wooden block under his foot and began polishing the black shoes Harry himself had cleaned an hour before. Sandy beckoned the waiter and they ordered coffee. The boy finished with Harry’s shoes; Harry passed him a coin and he moved on to other customers, whispering, ‘¿Limpiabotas?’ in a sad wheedling tone.

  ‘Poor little bastard,’ Harry said.

  ‘He tried to sell me some dirty postcards last week. Awful things, middle-aged whores lifting their knickers. He’d better watch out if the civiles catch him.’

  The waiter brought their coffees. Sandy studied Harry thoughtfully. ‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘how did Barbara seem when you saw her?’

  ‘Fine. We went for a walk in the Casa de Campo.’ She hadn’t seemed fine at all; there was something closed and reserved about her he’d never seen before but he wasn’t going to talk to Sandy about that. It was one loyalty he could avoid betraying.

  ‘She didn’t seem preoccupied, worried?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Sandy lit a cigar. ‘There’s something up with her, has been for a few weeks. She says it’s nothing but I’m not so sure.’ He smiled. ‘Oh well, maybe this voluntary work will take her out of herself. Did she tell you about that?’

  ‘Yes. It sounded like a good thing.’

  ‘And you had an encounter with the Falange in the restaurant.’ Sandy raised his eyebrows.

  Harry nodded. ‘Just a bit of rudeness.’

  Sandy laughed. ‘Hitler said once that Fascism can turn a worm into a dragon. It’s done that to a good few worms here. Oh well, you just have to let them breathe their fire and smoke. It gets a bit wearing though.’ He smiled with sudden affection. ‘It’s good to see a sober English face sometimes.’

  ‘It must be odd, working with these people. The Ministry of Mines you work with mainly, isn’t it? You were saying the other night.’

  Sandy nodded, running a hand over his moustache. ‘That’s right. All my dinosaur hunting came in useful in the end, you know. More useful than that Latin they used to fill our heads with. I know a bit about geology – I met this mining engineer at a function a while back and we ended up going into business.’

  ‘Really?’ That’s Otero, Harry thought. He tried to hide his interest.

  ‘Franco’s economic policy is to make Spain as self-sufficient as possible,’ Sandy went on, ‘relying on its own resources instead of being at the mercy of foreign powers. Classic fascist stuff. So if you’re in mining exploration, the opportunities are limitless. They’ll even subsidize exploration costs if you can supply the expertise.’ He paused, studying Harry so keenly that for a moment Harry was afraid he knew.

  ‘You remember the other night, when I said I could give you a few business tips?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can make a lot of money here if you know where to invest.’

  Harry nodded encouragingly. ‘I’ve saved quite a bit from my allowance over the years. Sometimes I’ve thought I’d like to do something with it rather than just have it sitting in the bank.’

  Sandy leaned forward and clapped him on the arm. ‘Then I’m your man. I’d enjoy helping you make some money. Especially in mining, as a reward for coming with me on all those fossil-hunting expeditions.’ He inclined his head. ‘They didn’t bore you, did they?’

  ‘No. I enjoyed them.’

  ‘Still fascinates me. The things hidden in the earth.’ He nodded judicially. ‘Let me see what I can do. I’ll have to be a bit careful; the Falangists at the ministry make an exception for me but they don’t like Brits.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll think of something. I’d like to show you I’ve made a success.’ He paused, gave Harry one of his keen looks. ‘You’ve been a bit dubious about that, haven’t you?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘I’ve seen it in your face, Harry. You’ve wondered what I’m doing mixing with these people. Barbara still wonders the same, I’ve seen it in her face too. But you can’t be choosy in business.’

  ‘It takes time to realize how – complicated everything is here.’

  Sandy gave a quick ironic smile. ‘It’s complicated all right. Did you go to that party at General Maestre’s?’

  ‘Yes. I’m supposed to be taking his daughter to the Prado.’ He would have to ring her tonight; he had been putting it off.

  ‘Nice girl?’

  ‘Very young. They were all Monarchists at the party. Didn’t like the Falange at all.’

  ‘They want an authoritarian monarchy, the aristocrats in charge like fifty years ago. But everything would just fall apart again.’

  ‘They’re pro-Allied.’

  ‘Don’t get them wrong, Harry. They’re hard as stone. They all fought for Franco in the war; the Monarchists’ pal Juan March financed the original army rebellion.’

  ‘I’ve been hearing that name a lot lately.’

  ‘The Falange reckon he’s conspiring with the Monarchists and has links with the Allies. They say he’s bribing the generals, buying their support for keeping Spain out of the war.’

  And then Harry saw, it was like a light going on in his head. Bribery. That was what Hillgarth and Maestre had been talking about that day. The Knights of St George was a code for sovereigns, George slaying the dragon on the obverse. They would pay them in sovereigns. He took a deep breath.

  ‘You all right?’ Sandy asked him.

  ‘Yes. I just – remembered something.’ He took a drink of coffee and forced himself back to the present. ‘Tell me,’ he said for something to say, ‘do you hear anything of your brother now?’

  ‘Haven’t heard from Peter in nine years. After I was sacked from Rookwood Dad didn’t want me near him. He said I belonged to the lost, he couldn’t understand how anyone could do anything so wicked as what I did.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Putting spiders in a master’s room. God, if he could see some of the things that have gone on here. Anyway, after I left home I never heard any more from Dad, nor from Peter the perfect son either.’ A bitter note came into his voice. ‘I’m sure Pete’s being heroic as an army padre somewhere.’ He lit a cigar.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to—’

  ‘It’s all right. Look, about that other business, let me talk to one or two people, see what I can arrange.’

  ‘That’d be good.’ He hesitated. ‘Can you tell me any more about it?’

  Sandy smiled and shook his head. ‘Not yet. Matter of business confidentiality. He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better be going, I’ve a meeting of my Jewish Committee.’

  ‘Barbara said you were doing some work with refugees.’

  ‘Yes, they keep coming across the Pyrenees. They try and get to Portugal, in case Franco enters the war and hands them back to Hitler. Some of them are in a bad way when they arrive – we try to clean them up and help them with papers.’ He gave a little smile, as though embarrassed at his charity. ‘I like to help them; I suppose I’ve always felt a bit of a wandering Jew myself.’ He sat up. ‘Well, I must go. My treat. But we must do this again. I’m nearly always here at this time.’

  HARRY BEGAN walking home. It was still cold and dank. The conversation between Maestre and Hillgarth kept coming back to him, Hillgarth’s terse order to forget Juan March and the Knights of St George. Could the embassy be involved in bribing ministers too? It seemed far-fetched once he thought about it; dangerous, too, if Franco found out.

  He shook his head, there was a feeling of pressure in his bad ear, that faint annoying buzzing again. Perhaps it was the damp weather. He thought a
gain about Miss Maxse saying they couldn’t win this war by playing a straight bat. What else was it she had said – about people who got involved with extremist politics? ‘Sometimes it’s the excitement as much as the politics.’ Sandy had always enjoyed taking risks – was that why he had ended up here? He wondered again about the Jews. Sandy had a good side. He would help people, if he was in charge: like educating him about fossils; like running Barbara’s life, which is what he seemed to be doing.

  He ought to go back to the embassy and report his progress. They would be delighted with the offer to involve him in one of Sandy’s schemes. Of course it might be something else, nothing to do with the gold. But he kept thinking of the Knights of St George, what it all might mean. And what if they failed, if the Falangists won the struggle for Franco’s ear and Spain entered the war? People like Maestre could be in danger; perhaps he wanted to get his daughter out of the country, if he could.

  He realized he had wandered almost as far as the Puerta de Toledo. He stopped and stood momentarily, watching the carts and beat-up old cars passing by. Some of them looked as though they had been on the road for twenty years, as they probably had. A gasogene spluttered past. He had heard nothing from Sofia about a doctor for Enrique, it had been over a week now. What if Enrique developed rabies? Harry had heard the Chinese believed that if you saved someone’s life you were bound to them for ever, but he knew it was Sofia that kept the family in his mind. He hesitated, then crossed the road and headed down towards Carabanchel.

  Sofia’s street, like all the others in the barrio, was silent and deserted. Dusk was starting to fall as he stopped in front of the tenement. Two children rolling an old cartwheel up and down like a hoop stopped and stared at him. Their bare feet were red with cold. Harry was conscious of his thick coat and wide-brimmed hat.

  He went into the dank entrance, hesitated a moment, then mounted the damp stairs and knocked at their door. As he did so, the door of the neighbouring flat opened and an elderly woman came out. She had a round wrinkled face and cold sharp eyes. Harry raised his hat. ‘Buenas tardes.’