Death of a Nationalist
Read Death of a Nationalist Online
Authors: Rebecca Pawel
Death of a Nationalist
Death of a Nationalist
Rebecca Pawel
Excerpt from “Cheek to Cheek” by Irving Berlin,
copyright © 1935 by Irving Berlin,
Copyright renewed, international copyright secured,
all rights reserved, reprinted by permission.
Copyright © 2003 by Rebecca Pawel
All rights reserved.
Published by
Soho Press, Inc.
853 Broadway
New York, N.Y. 10003
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pawel, Rebecca, 1977–
Death of a nationalist / Rebecca Pawel.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-56947-344-3 (alk. paper)
1. Spain—History—Civil War, 1936–1939—Fiction.
2. Nationalists—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3616.A957 D43 2003
813'.6—dc21 2002026921
1098765
For Persephone Braham,
who gave me the idea in the first place,
and then urged me to write the whole thing.
“From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”
—
William Shakespeare,
Romeo and Juliet
“Oh, city of gypsies, with all your flags flying,
extinguish your green lights, the Guardia’s coming.”
—Federico García Lorca,
“Romance de la Guardia Civil Española”
Contents
M
aria Alejandra was on her way home from school when she saw a man dressed as a guardia civil creep out of the bomb-blackened building that had been Señor Merello’s bakery before the shell hit it. The man glanced in both directions and then crossed the street quickly, looking over his shoulder, as if he were frightened of something. Then he headed down the Calle Amor de Dios. Maria Alejandra looked after him, surprised. The man had been dressed like an officer, and the officers of the guardia weren’t frightened anymore.
For a moment, Alejandra thought about going home from school a different way. But her books were heavy, and one man acting oddly didn’t seem like a reason to walk farther. She started down the Calle Amor de Dios after him. She was just passing another roofless building when she heard gunshots. To her practiced ear, the shots sounded like pistol, not machine-gun, fire and her mother had told her that there would be no more shelling now. But nearly half of Alejandra’s seven years had been spent in wartime, and she knew better than to take foolish chances. A little annoyed at the possible damage to her school clothes, she dropped her book bag and flung herself to the ground, covering her head automatically as she did so.
For a moment there was no sound. Cautiously, Alejandra raised her head. Ingrained habit made her glance upward. Everyone knew that the German planes didn’t pass over this part of town after four o’clock, and there had been no bombing at all in the last few days, but Alejandra was unable to stop herself from nervously checking the sky. She had always been scared of airplanes. Even the grownups were scared of airplanes. She rose and gathered her books, some of which had fallen onto the ground. Someone was coming down the street, from the opposite direction. Alejandra shrank into the doorway of the ruined apartment house, stepping over the threshold and behind the one standing wall. She heard footsteps and saw the legs of a guardia uniform pass by again. This time, they were not hurrying. The man was humming under his breath.
Alejandra waited until the sound of his footsteps had died away. She did not like the guardias civiles. Her uncle said they were traitors. Her mother said that there were some good guardias, who fought for the people, but that most of them supported the rebels who were fighting against the Republic. But the good guardias had probably been arrested now, like her friend Candela’s father. Or maybe even taken for a stroll. Alejandra was not quite sure what happened when you were taken for a stroll, but she knew that the grownups had sometimes laughed when they said that one day the Fascist generals who had started the rebellion would “go strolling.” And she knew that Maricarmen in the fourth grade had been absent for a week after her grandfather, who lived outside Madrid in country that had fallen to the rebels six months ago, had been “taken for a stroll.” Maricarmen’s school clothes had been dyed black when she came back to school.
Alejandra crouched behind the wall and tried to stuff her books back into her bag. But her teacher had helped to pack them tightly and she couldn’t fit them all in. She tucked her composition book under her arm, glad that the man had gone. At the intersection of Amor de Dios and Fray Luis de León she stopped again. The man she had seen before, the guardia civil who had looked afraid, was lying facedown on the pavement, in a puddle of blood. Maria Alejandra looked at him for a long moment. Then she dropped her composition book and began to run.
S
ir! There’s been a murder, sir!” Guardia Adolfo Jiménez stamped up to the flat surface that his commanding officer was pleased to call a desk and gave a stiff-armed salute.
Unfortunately, Jiménez’s last stamp shook loose the battered copy of
La España del Cid
that was holding up the fourth “ leg of the table, and several papers cascaded over the edge. Lieutenant Ramos steadied the remaining papers, and looked up at the young guardia with a glare. “Well, have you arrested someone for it?” he demanded impatiently.
“No, Lieutenant!” Jiménez saluted again, but was careful not to stamp.
The third man in the room unobtrusively stooped, and began to gather the fallen papers from the floor. He glanced at them as he rose, trying to figure out which pile each belonged in: a requisition for two hundred rounds of ammunition, a handwritten denunciation of someone named Mén-dez, a schedule of assignments to night patrol, and two typed memos from the division commander. After a moment, he carefully shuffled them into a stack, and placed them randomly on the table.
“Well, damn it, why are you coming to me then?” the lieutenant asked. “You’re supposed to be restoring public order. Go and restore it. Thanks, Tejada,” he added, as the papers were replaced.
“We think the murderer’s a Red, Lieutenant,” Jiménez explained.
Sergeant Tejada reflected that saying a Red was a murderer was rather like saying that the sun rose in the east. “Why do you think that, Guardia?” he asked.
Jiménez forgot himself and stamped again, causing both of his superiors to dive for papers. Then he looked chagrined. All of the recruits looked up to Sergeant Tejada Alonso y León. Not many men who started out as guardias were made officers, even with the rank of sergeant, before their thirtieth birthday. And Tejada had entered the Guardia late on top of that, coming from a university instead of from one of the military academies.
“The victim was a guardia civil, sir. Rank of corporal, sir.”
“Hell!” Lieutenant Ramos’s attention was caught. “One of our battalion?”
“Don’t think so, sir. He had no identification on him. Just the uniform.”
“Poor bastard.” The lieutenant was shuffling papers furiously. “I’ll send around a memo to the other posts, and ask them who’s gone missing. Goddamn it, where’s the carbon paper? Oh, thanks, Tejada.” He unearthed an ancient portable typewriter and began to insert the sheet that the sergeant had offered. “Go take a look, will you? And arrest anyone in the neighborhood who seems suspicious. If they’re Reds, put them up against a wall. Take Jiménez with you.”
Tejada saluted, somehow managed to stamp without shaking any papers, and left without speaking. Jiménez followed him, excited to have been assigned to accompany the sergeant. Outside the temporary barracks, really a dormitory abandoned by the university and commandeered a few months earlier, Tejada turned. “Where are we going?”
“It’s over near Atocha Station, sir. A little street called Amor de Dios.”
Tejada’s mouth curled briefly. “Not a very appropriate name. Lead the way, Jiménez.”
It was not a long walk, and they passed very few people. It was nearly eight o’clock, and those who had food were cooking dinner. Those who did not were preparing for bed. An evening stroll had become a dangerous custom, and in a city without fuel, darkness meant bedtime. The few people on the streets slid away from the two red-collared guardias, as the north pole of one magnet turns from the north pole of another.
Tejada liked the silence. It was almost like being in the country, with the shadows falling so naturally, and no glare of streetlights to block out the moon rising ahead of them over the city. A breeze was blowing at their backs . It’s peaceful, he thought, and then was surprised. It had been a long time since he had thought of peace in the present tense. The streetlights would come back, of course. But he hoped that the streets would stay like this at night: cool, silent, empty except for those on legitimate business. No demonstrations, he thought, as they passed through a deserted plaza with the gutted and flame-blackened ruins of a townhouse sitting silently on their left hand. No rabble-rousers. No rock throwing. No general strikes. No petty crime. Maybe now an honest man will be able to walk the streets without fear. His mouth tightened as he remembered their errand. The streets were not quite peaceful yet. But they would be. Tejada was under no illusions as to what Lieutenant Ramos had meant by “put them up against a wall.” Rough and efficient justice was still necessary in Madrid. Maybe in a few years it would be possible to prettify it with legal niceties again.
Jiménez broke in on his reverie. “It’s just at the end of this street, Sergeant.”
Tejada nodded, but did not reply. Jiménez was too much in awe of the sergeant to offer further comments. So there was no sound except the echo of their boots as they approached the intersection of Amor de Dios and Fray Luis de León.Tejada sometimes wondered afterward what would have happened if they had made more noise.
Maria Alejandra was already breathing in great gasps when she reached her home, and the climb to the third-floor apartment took away any breath she might have had left for crying. She fumbled with the key and tore through the darkened living room to the kitchen at the back.
The kitchen was empty except for Tía Viviana. Tía Viviana wasn’t really a relative, but as far as Alejandra was concerned, she was almost as good as her mama. She told jokes and knew good songs, and best of all, she was never afraid of anything. Alejandra loved the way Tía Viviana greeted her every afternoon with, “
Hola,
Aleja,” slurring the words together so that it sounded like the name of a princess in
The Arabian Nights
: “
La’leja
.” Tía Viviana looked up from her mending now.
“La’leja,” she said. Then, dropping the patched clothing on the kitchen table and kneeling quickly, “Aleja! What’s the matter?”
Maria Alejandra leaned against her shoulder and sobbed. She had seen dead people before. The year after the war started, her grandfather Palomino had died of pneumonia and she had gone to the wake. She and her mother had been on their way to the Merellos’ bakery when the bomb had hit it, and they had seen Señor Merello and Danilo, who had been three grades ahead of her, carried out of the rubble. But something about the dead man lying alone in the street terrified her. Perhaps she could only bear seeing a certain number of dead, and the guardia in the Calle Amor de Dios had been the corpse that had broken the camel’s back.
Viviana rocked the little girl back and forth, and crooned to her. “It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s all right.” As pieces of Aleja’s story emerged, the young woman’s voice gained strength. “It’s all right, precious. If he was a guardia then it’s all right. Let them fight among themselves. Don’t cry, sweetheart. He wasn’t a Republican, I’m sure. Don’t cry.” She kept up the flow of soothing words until Aleja was calm again, and then Viviana distracted her with chores and songs and fantastic stories about princesses and ghosts and imaginary kingdoms where all the children ate roast pork every night. After a few hours, when she could think of nothing else to amuse the girl, Viviana asked if she had homework.
Alejandra required only a little coaxing to begin her work but as she retrieved her book bag she gave a stricken cry. “My notebook! I dropped it. By the man I saw.”
Viviana frowned, once again concerned. “Are you sure, Aleja? You didn’t put it in your bag?”
A quick search and more tears confirmed that Aleja had indeed lost the notebook. Her aunt frowned in thought for a moment. Aleja’s homework for the night was a trivial thing, but Aleja’s mother placed great value on the child’s education. And Aleja’s notebook had been only half-filled. Paper was rationed, and God alone knew when they’d be allowed more now. At the beginning of the term—in another life—the teachers had emphasized that all students must take special care of their materials. Viviana bit back the impulse to snap at her almost-niece for carelessness. It wasn’t fair for a child to see so much of war. It wasn’t fair to ask her to go and retrieve a notebook from the place where she had practically seen a man die. It was neither fair nor safe. There was a curfew, and Aleja would not be able to return before it went into effect. But to lose the notebook. . . . Another loss, Viviana thought, and choked back tears. How much more can we lose now? Can we keep losing when there’s nothing left? She was brought back to herself by a warming flash of anger. There was no reason to lose it. She knelt by Aleja and gave her a quick hug. “Don’t cry. Tell me exactly where you left your notebook, and I’ll go and get it. It’s probably still there. When she comes in, tell your mother where I’ve gone.”
She left hurriedly, without bothering to change her clothes. The wind whipped her hair away from her face, and she wished that she had thought to tie it back. It was nearly long enough to braid now. I should cut it again, she thought automatically, smoothing flyaway strands behind her ears. She shivered slightly. It was too cold for spring. Too cold and too silent and too deserted. She tried to remember summer afternoons, when the streets were choked with people and it was impossible to find a table at cafés that had already turned on their colored lanterns. Before the cafés had closed. Before the shelling. Before the war.
She reached the spot Aleja had described. Yes, there was the man, his life’s blood clotted around him on the cobblestones. He had undoubtedly been a guardia civil. Viviana glanced at his uniform, saw the red collar of the Nationalists, and sighed with relief. Funny, with those collars, that they were called the Blues. So she had not lied to Aleja. He had been a Fascist. One of the victors, Viviana thought, though it still hurt to admit it. She was not ashamed of having lost: the army, the rich landowners, the church with all its wealth, the old aristocrats with all their power, had been behind the Nationalists. And their German and Italian friends had provided them with all the arms and soldiers that they could well have afforded to purchase anyway. It was amazing the Republicans had held out for so long, even with the help offered by the Soviets for the sake of the Communists who had supported the Republic. Viviana knew she had no reason to be ashamed of the fight she had put up. But it was grief and not pride that made her want to deny that the Republic was dead. She had fought for a new way of life: for a world where people shared things in common and no one starved so that rich men could become richer; a world where women were equal to men; where every new acquaintance was greeted with the familiar
“tú,”
like a friend, instead of the servile
“usted,”
like a servant to a master. Viviana had not fought purely to win. That was what made losing so hard. I’m damned if Aleja loses her notebook though, she thought. Whatever happens to us all now, she’s got to go to school. She’s
not
going to be a chambermaid or a factory girl all her life, at the mercy of some señorito’s busy hands! We can’t let them spit on
her
even if they do bring back the old ways! She scanned the ground. Yes, there, barely a foot from the dead man’s out-flung hands, was Aleja’s notebook. It had fallen open, facedown on the stones and one corner was slightly stained with blood. She knelt to pick it up, with a rush of relief, and quickly leafed through its pages. No harm done.
It was not the sound of footsteps that alerted her. It was the way they suddenly speeded up, as if someone had broken into a run. She looked up and saw two men approaching from the street opposite. They were silhouetted against the setting sun, but Viviana had seen this particular silhouette before, and the shape of their three-cornered hats and of the rifles sticking over their shoulders was all too clear. Viviana straightened rapidly and whirled, prepared to run.
She was too late. Behind her came a shout: “Guardia Civil! Hands above your head!”