Death of a Nationalist (13 page)

“It’s nothing,” Tejada said dryly. He shook her hand because she would suspect that something was wrong if he did not, and then watched her cross the street and head east.

Then, as silently as possible, he followed her. He did not know what had pulled Paco into the sordid world of the black market but he knew that only that world could have produced the coffee that Doña Clara had given him in Toledo. If Paco could lie to him, then there was no reason why a Red schoolteacher would not. And if Señorita Fernández had gone to the risk and trouble of trying to throw him off the trail of a killer, then he was very anxious to see where she was going, and who—if anyone—she was going to meet.

Chapter 12

G
onzalo sketched his meeting with the smuggler for Car-men as she cleaned the potatoes. She, in turn, described Tejada’s visit as best she could while she cooked. There was no oil for the potatoes, but the meat was some unidentifiable ground mixture and Carmen happily dumped it into the frying pan, trusting the fat to provide grease. Scalding a pan was a small price to pay for food, in any case. Aleja, who had returned home only a few minutes after Tejada’s departure, was lured to the kitchen by the smell, and danced up and down with impatience until Carmen finally gave her a small slice of raw potato. The surviving members of the Llorente-Palomino family sniffed the air with a mixture of desire and fear. It was impossible not to fall in love with the aroma, even saltless and dry as it was. But their joy in the rapidly blackening meat and potatoes was tempered by jealousy. If the fragrance penetrated too far it would bring the neighbors down on them.

Gonzalo realized, as he told his story, that he had just robbed a man at gunpoint, and was ready to laugh with joy at the results. Some feeble prewar self hammered at the ice crystal that imprisoned it, and tried to protest this immoral behavior but its cries and gesticulations remained safely locked away. Carmen, as she listened to the story, feared for Gonzalo’s safety, but not his scruples. Food was food. “We can’t eat it all,” she said firmly, as she set the lid over the frying pan to imprison the treacherous smell. “We’ll just each take a little, and save some for tomorrow. And don’t eat too fast, Aleja. You don’t want to get sick.”

This praiseworthy restraint proved impossible. Aleja obediently savored her portion, as did Carmen and Gonzalo. But the mass of fried meat and potatoes seemed hardly smaller when they had finished, and surely a
little
more could not hurt. The second helpings disappeared more quickly, and then there was so little left that it seemed silly to try to keep it, when it could be appreciated right away.

After dinner, Aleja went over to Gonzalo and put her arms around his waist. “Thank you, Tío.” She hugged him. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Gonzalo stroked her hair. It was, he found, easier now to forgive his niece for the carelessness that had cost Viviana her life. Perhaps it was being almost able to identify Viviana’s real murderer. Perhaps it was only being less hungry. “You’re welcome, sweetie.”

Aleja raised her head. “I haven’t told
anyone
you’re here,” she said seriously. “Not even Señorita Fernández.”

“That’s good, sweetheart.”

“I had to tell Señorita Fernández I lost my notebook, though.”

Carmen, watching her brother intently, could not see any change in his expression as he said quietly, “Of course.”

“Aleja,” Carmen broke into the little silence that followed. “You know there was a guardia civil here before you got home from school. He’s going to come back tomorrow. What will you tell
him
if he asks about Tío Gonzalo?”

“That I haven’t seen him since he went into the hospital,” Aleja said stoutly.

“What if he says that good little girls tell the truth?”

“That I haven’t seen him,” the child repeated.

“What if he threatens to take you to prison?”

Aleja clung to Gonzalo a little more tightly. “Candela’s father went to the stadium in Chamartín, like they told all the carbineros to, when you were in the hospital,” she said in a small voice. “Candela says her mother won’t take her to the prison, because they don’t allow children there. So I’ll say I haven’t seen you.”

“What if he asks about your notebook, Aleja?” Carmen suggested.

Aleja paused. “Can I tell him I lost it?” she asked doubtfully. “He might ask Señorita Fernández.”

“He may already have the notebook,” Gonzalo interjected. He looked at his sister with sudden hope. “Did you find out his rank? What post he’s from?”

Carmen reviewed the interview in her head. “I don’t think so.” She saw the direction her brother’s thoughts were headed, and added quickly, “It’s time for you to be in bed, Aleja.”

“I’m not sleepy,” the child said automatically.

Carmen began her nightly argument with her daughter. It was briefer than usual tonight, because the unaccustomed feeling of a warm, full stomach had made the child drowsy. When Aleja was safely asleep, Carmen returned to her brother. He was still sitting at the kitchen table, looking contemplative. “I don’t know what you’re planning,” she said quietly. “But you can’t do it. It’s too dangerous.”

“For God’s sake, Carmen, you said that this guardia came to the house alone.” Gonzalo’s voice was low but intense. “And that he asked for
Aleja.
How would he even know she exists if he didn’t have her notebook? And how would he have that unless he found it? He may be the one who killed Viviana. And if he
is,
then what better time to catch him alone and off guard?”

“And kill my daughter in the crossfire?” Carmen hissed back. “And then what? Shall we wait until the Guardia miss him and come here to find him dead on our floor?”

“I’ll be gone by then,” Gonzalo promised.

“Wonderful!” Carmen blew out the lamp, leaving them in darkness. Her whisper could have cut diamonds. “And what do
I
tell them then? ‘Yes, the officer came to ask my daughter some questions and then was mysteriously shot by a stranger who climbed out through the window?’ I’m sure they’ll believe that!”

The meal had sharpened Gonzalo’s senses and his satisfaction at a task successfully carried out had dulled his paralyzing grief. He realized, as his sister spoke, that she was leaving a good deal unsaid. She had tacitly accepted that he did not particularly care if he lived or died after carrying out his vengeance, and that acceptance alone showed some generosity. But she had done more than that: His plan placed little value on his own survival, but none at all on hers. She had not openly reproached him for that, and had spoken only of Aleja’s safety. It occurred to Gonzalo that Carmen was already risking prison for his sake and that to kill a guardia in her home would be almost to insure her death. He felt a twinge of horrified compunction from his amputated conscience, as if it were a phantom limb. “I won’t do anything to hurt you or Aleja,” he said quietly. “I won’t do anything in the house. But if I can hide, and then follow him somehow. . . .”

For a moment, his voice reminded Carmen of the little brother who had plunged into fistfights with boys twice his size for insulting her. Tears started to her eyes as she realized how infrequently she thought of him that way anymore. Loving him had become a habit, and a duty, but the man who had come home to her house after Viviana’s death had been a stranger. “What will you do after that?” she whispered.

He shrugged, a useless gesture in the darkness.

“No.” Carmen’s voice was choked. “No, Gonzalo. You can’t just commit suicide. If you follow him afterward, try to slip away. You can flee.”

“To where?” he asked, and his voice was still gentle.

“Out of the city. If you could get away for a time . . .” Carmen knew that she was speaking nonsense. There was no safe place in Spain for Gonzalo now. If he killed a guardia, the unsafe places would become even more dangerous. “France,” she whispered.

“Might as well be the moon.” He was speaking the simple truth.

“What about that English boy, Miguel, who was Pedro’s friend?” She was clutching at straws. “He left us his address. I’ve been thinking since you came home that if I could write to him . . .”

Gonzalo, who knew that it cost her something to say Pedro’s name, made the useless effort of recalling the young volunteer she had mentioned: red-haired, snub-nosed, friendly as a puppy, a boy who had taken the trouble to learn some Spanish before coming to Madrid, but spoke with a bizarre and barely comprehensible accent and idiom. “He was American, I think,” Gonzalo said absently, recalling the accent. “Remember, he said his teacher was from Cuba, or Santo Domingo, or somewhere.”

“Yes, of course,” Carmen agreed eagerly, hoping against hope. “If I could send him a letter, I’m sure he’d help. You would just need to lie low until the papers came through.”

“A letter would never get through,” Gonzalo reminded his sister, as gently as possible. “It would only put them onto
your
trail. You can’t risk that, for Aleja’s sake. Besides . . . I don’t want to run.”

“But . . .”

“I don’t want to run,” Gonzalo repeated softly.

Carmen was still for a moment. Then she put her arms around him and wept silently in the darkness. “It was always a risk,” Gonzalo said, although he knew that was cold comfort. “You knew, ever since the war started. . . .”

“Not like a rat in a trap.”

“At least I’ll bite the rat catcher one last time,” Gonzalo said.

Carmen went to bed soon after that. Gonzalo curled up on the couch and reviewed the day’s events. He felt strangely emotionless, not with the numbness of his by-now familiar grief for Viviana, but with a dreamlike calm. Suspicious of his serenity, he stuck a cautious toe into the sea of memory. Freezing turbulent waves did not sweep him off his feet. The best parts of the past lapped gently around him, like ripples on a summer lake: the park on summer Sundays; his first paycheck; the reading room at the union headquarters, where he had discovered Marx and Dickens and Freud and Galdós, whom he had secretly loved best of all; nights in the plaza, when he and Pedro had flirted with the passing girls; the night he had realized that Pedro no longer flirted and the evening his best friend had come to him and said, “Carmen and I wanted you to know . . . it’s serious . . . you don’t object?” and it had not occurred to him to object, because he was not jealous of his sister’s honor, only—a little—of her happiness. Gonzalo took a deep breath, and immersed himself in more recent memories. They, too, lacked sting: the way the bells had rung the day the Second Republic was proclaimed, and it had seemed as if the April flowers would bloom forever. Aleja’s birth, the May Day parades, and a thousand fists raised together. The tense first days of the militias and the shock of having women training beside them. The shock of one woman, who had always been the loudest and most beautiful of the group: “Why should you pay the streetcar fare for me, Gonzalo? We’re comrades. Equals.” And he had been surprised into the truth: “Because I love you.” By all logic, the memories of Viviana, and the unmoving front, and the slow, bitter losses should have hurt. But Gonzalo found himself dwelling on moments of calm: on the incomprehensible songs and battle cries the foreign volunteers had taught them and the impromptu language classes (frequently devoted to swear words) they had given the volunteers; on the days when he and Viviana had planned out impossible futures; on the jokes that had made the milicianos roar with laughter not because they were funny but because it was so good to still be alive. Good memories, Gonzalo thought. A good life. I can’t complain.

It felt late, but Gonzalo was still not sleepy. He had no way of telling the time. The church bells were silenced for Good Friday. They would not ring again until Easter. The city was dark and still, with the stillness that usually only came in the hour before dawn. After a while, he rose and walked softly to the window. The usual ragged black curtains covered it. He pulled one of them back and looked out. It was a small risk. An observer was unlikely to see him in a darkened window. He could make out the bulk of the opposite buildings, their lights all extinguished for the night. The sky was cloud-streaked, and the moon hung like a gigantic streetlight, pale and full, just above the buildings. It extinguished the stars around it as effectively as real streetlights would have. Gonzalo stared upward for a while. He had never particularly enjoyed watching the night sky. He was a city dweller and he believed in watching the lighted streets. But when he had gone to the front he had learned to be grateful for moonlight and starlight. The moon was a comrade from the front. He was glad of the opportunity to say good-bye to her.

Chapter 13

T
ejada damned the full moon to seven kinds of hell as he slid past the gates of the post. The streets were deserted, but without the flood of moonlight it would have been easy to follow Señorita Fernández without her knowledge. Relatively easy, at least. Most of the streetlights were still out, and she was not expecting pursuit. On the other hand, she knew both the city and her destination and he did not. And she’s an intelligent woman, he thought, with a bitterness that seemed disproportionate to the offense.

He kept well behind her, so that she would not be alerted by the click of his boots on the cobblestones. She was walking quickly and showed no tendency to glance back. Tejada allowed her to draw ahead at first, fairly certain that she would head toward the center of the city. It would, he knew, be more difficult to follow her once she reached the heart of Madrid. As he had expected, she hurried east, but he was unprepared for her sharp turn to the north immediately afterward, and he almost lost her. Fortunately, there were streetlights up ahead and the lone female figure was readily visible. As he drew nearer to the lights, he heard the sound of the anthem being sung loudly, and not very tunefully, by a couple of voices. They were, he realized, near a barracks. That explained the light, and the unusual noise. Tejada felt himself relax slightly. He was quite competent to handle Señorita Fernández and anyone she might be meeting, but it was still comforting to know that he would have support, if he required it. He kept to the shadows, aware that his khaki uniform would be conspicuous among the dark uniforms of the soldiers. He was not, he saw, the only loiterer in the darkness. The spaces outside the puddles of light were populated with both men and women— usually in pairs. They were generally anxious to be ignored and perfectly willing to be politely blind to him.

He passed the main gate of the barracks. Señorita Fernán-dez had pulled ahead of him again, and he did not want to lose her in the darkness. The sound of the anthem got louder, covering his footsteps, as a pair of young soldiers stumbled out of a side street ahead of him and his quarry, and made toward the barracks. They were singing with the slurred enthusiasm of the moderately drunk. Tejada cast a glance at them and decided that they would be wiser and sadder men at the next reveille. Boys, rather. Neither of them looked much older than Jiménez or Moscoso.

One of them attempted a whistle as Señorita Fernández approached. “Hey, beautiful!” She kept walking. “I said
hello
.” He weaved away from his companion, nearly blocking the sidewalk in front of her. It was difficult to tell if the maneuver was deliberate or if he was simply unsteady on his feet.

“Hey, Little Red,” the other boy spoke. “Why’re you in such a hurry?”

“Little Red!” The first one roared with laughter. “Li’l Red without a hood!” They were walking along on either side of her now, giggling at their own wit. The sergeant felt a twinge of irritation. If she was in fact heading for a place where Reds were in hiding, she was unlikely to lead two drunken Falangists to it.

One of them grabbed at her arm. “How ’bout a kiss, Little Red?”

They were well up the street and away from the lights by now. By moonlight, Tejada saw Señorita Fernández shake the soldier’s hand off her arm. She said something, too softly for him to catch, and attempted to go forward. The other man caught her around the waist and propelled her toward him. “Don’t be shy, sweetheart!” He inclined his face toward hers, and then suddenly recoiled, thrusting her backward at his companion. “You bitch!” The echoes of the oath drowned out the sound of his knuckles as he backhanded her. His companion caught her as she stumbled, and threw her to the ground.

Without thinking, Tejada broke into a run. “Guardia Civil! Hands up!”

The two soldiers heard the cry but ignored it, assuming that it was addressed to some criminal. Tejada realized that they would not respond to threats, even at gunpoint, and grabbed the nearer boy, dragging his arms behind him more by force than by finesse.

“That was an order, soldier!” he snapped, twisting one arm until he heard the boy whimper in pain. “I don’t like repeating myself. You!” He addressed his captive’s colleague. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The second soldier straightened and tripped over Elena as he stepped clear of her, looking somewhat befuddled. “I-I don’t know, sir.” His gaze took in Tejada’s uniform. “Hey, you’re one of the Guardia.”

“We hold military rank,” Tejada snarled, obscurely annoyed that his prisoner was not struggling. It would have given him great satisfaction to smash the boy’s head into the cobblestones. “Do you want to be court-martialed for insubordination?”

“N-no, sir.” The soldier managed a sloppy salute.

“Good. We’ll settle for drunk and disorderly conduct then.” He released the boy he had been holding with some reluctance. “Unless you care to beg the lady’s pardon, in which case it’s her choice.”

“But she’s just a Red wh—,” one of them began, and then stopped, as he felt the guardia civil’s pistol make contact with his forehead. “She
spat
at me,” he finished, with some petulance and considerably more courage than he knew.

“She had ample provocation. Now, are you going to apologize?”

One of the boys turned (still cradling one arm, Tejada noticed with vicious satisfaction) and looked down at Elena. She was sprawled on the cobblestones, her face turned away from the three men, her shoulders hunched, shivering. “Sorry, Señorita,” he muttered.

“Sorry,” the other one added. And then, to Tejada, “Can we go now?”

Tejada would have liked to make good his threat of arrest and court-martial, but the fact that Elena had not risen from the pavement worried him. “Get out of here,” he said. “And don’t go attacking decent women. The whole damn city is full of whores, if you need them.”

The soldiers might have argued, but Tejada had not holstered his weapon, and something in the casual way he held it suggested even to their slightly muddled brains that he would not be averse to using it. They stumbled off, muttering together. Tejada turned his attention to Señorita Fernández. She was, he realized with relief, not actually lying but sitting, propped on her hands, and curled forward. “Are you—,” he began, kneeling, and putting his hands on her shoulders.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” The force of the words threw him backward a pace.

He dropped to one knee again and allowed one hand to hover over her back, carefully not touching her. “Are you hurt?” Her hair had come down during her struggles. The dark braid lay like a gash across the light fabric of her blouse. She remained hunched over and twisted away from him, but did not reply. “Can you stand up?” he asked, with the cold con- sciousness that if she was injured it was his fault for not intervening sooner.

“Get me my coat, please.” Her voice was shaking.

Grateful for any reply, he searched for her coat, glad of the moon for the first time. He found it in a crumpled heap in the gutter and shook it out as best he could. She had not moved. He hesitated a moment beside her. “It’s filthy.”

“So am I.”

She pushed herself unsteadily to her feet, and Tejada reached for her elbow. “Let me help—”

“Keep away.” He froze.

On her feet, she crossed her arms over her chest, head bent, in the attitude of a penitent. Tejada realized that her blouse was torn. “Your coat.” He held it out, staring at the ground. She snatched it with one hand and draped it around her clumsily.

“I’m sorry,” Tejada said to the ground. “They’re . . . just kids.”

Her silence could have drowned out a marching band.

“Drunk, stupid kids, who don’t know any better,” Tejada said, wondering why he felt compelled to defend the boys whom he would have cheerfully murdered five minutes earlier. “They thought you were a Re . . . publican,” he finished carefully, unwilling to add unnecessary insult to injury.

“So I am, Sergeant. Hadn’t you guessed?” He could not know that the loathing and mockery in her voice were mostly self-directed.

“No, I mean they thought you were—” Tejada stopped, realizing that there was no way to finish the sentence without offending a lady.

Elena was past suffering from excessive sensibility. “A Red whore. Most of us are, nowadays, for food.”

The edge in her voice suddenly explained to Tejada why she had refused his escort. “I . . .,” he stumbled. “That wasn’t why I wanted to see you home.”

She was quiet long enough for a treacherous voice in the sergeant’s head to say, Wasn’t it? Would you have refused, if she had offered? He felt himself flushing, and was glad that the darkness obscured his face.

“Why did you follow me?” she asked finally.

Circumstances suggested a convenient lie. “I was worried about you,” Tejada said. “A young woman alone . . . at night . . . in a city.”

“This is the first time I’ve had trouble.” Elena realized that she was trying to provoke the sergeant. Had she been calmer, she would have realized why. She trusted him, and trusting one of the Guardia Civil was dangerous. He should
act
like a guardia civil.

Tejada recognized her implication but was more grieved than angered by it. “I’ll see you home,” he said quietly. “To the doorstep. Understood?”

Elena fought an impulse to burst into tears. “Understood,” she whispered. She licked her upper lip, tasted salt, and then fumbled in her pockets. “Do you have a handkerchief? I think my nose is bleeding.”

“Here.” Tejada held one out. “It looks like it’s stopped, actually.” He inspected her critically. “You’ll probably have quite a black eye tomorrow, though.”

“Thank you.” She turned and started up the street.

Tejada followed her. She was walking more slowly now, and he wondered if she had been hurrying from fear before or if she was simply exhausted now. “Is it far?” he asked, for the sake of saying something.

“No. Near Cuatro Caminos.”

They walked in silence for a little while. The moon was setting and the buildings blotted it out, casting the streets into total darkness. Here and there, a streetlamp glowed at an intersection, like a train’s headlight in a tunnel. Tejada saw that she was shivering as they passed under one. He won- dered if she was in shock or simply cold. “You’re sure you’re all right?” He risked putting an arm around her. She flinched, but did not actually pull away.

“Yes.” Elena spoke automatically. I stink, she thought, marveling that the sergeant was not revolted by the smell. She wanted to be at home, to peel off her clothes and bathe, and to vomit the dinner that she had eaten so gratefully, and purge herself inside and out of everything that had happened this evening.

If Elena had relaxed into the curve of his arm, Tejada would have been happy to share the quiet with her. Words would have marred the peaceful notes of the whistling breeze and muffled footsteps. But she remained rigid with tension, trembling slightly. He sought for something comforting to say. “You mustn’t think, because there are a few bad apples, that . . . things like tonight . . . happen often,” he said at last. She did not noticeably relax. “I mean . . . the army is disciplined. If those boys had been Reds, they would never have listened to a commanding officer.”

If they were loyalists, their comrades wouldn’t have let them attack me. Elena was tempted to say the words aloud. Instead she said stiffly, “Perhaps.”

“Well”—Tejada abandoned his attempt to defend the regular army—“the Guardia Civil would never—our mission is to protect people and property. To keep the streets safe. We—”

Elena pulled away from him. “Spare me a recital of your charter, Sergeant.”

Tejada had seen a few women who had been raped but they had all been dead or unconscious. He had never before dealt with a victim of attempted rape. He had the vague idea that women were supposed to cry, or faint, or have hysterics in such a situation. He had not expected this brittle hostility. By rights, it should have irritated him. But he had the illogical feeling that Señorita Fernández was clinging to her composure the way a man clings to the edge of a cliff with his fingernails, and he wanted to throw her a rope. “You know that I would never hurt you,” he said, and it was half a statement and half a question.

Elena felt her eyes starting to tear, and ducked her head, hoping he would not notice in the darkness. He was a guardia civil. The son of a Carlist landowner. The friend of Falangists. A symbol of everything that was wrong with Spain. But she had trusted him enough to tell him something she thought would protect Alejandra, and now she found herself biting her lip to keep from saying, “Yes. I know. I believe you.” To her profound relief, they reached a familiar dark intersection. “This way,” she pointed and began to walk as quickly as possible. “Here.” She stopped in the arch of an unlit entrance that looked exactly like every other unlit entrance to Tejada. “Good night. And . . . thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” Tejada said absently. “When will I see you again?”

“You know where I live,” Elena pointed out. “You can send for me at any time.”

Tejada shook his head, annoyed. “No. I meant . . . socially. What parish is this? When does the Easter service end? If you are still in Madrid, I could pick you up afterward.”

“No, you can’t.” Elena’s voice was shaking.

“But why?” Tejada spoke before he could stop himself.

Elena’s self-control snapped. “Because I won’t be in church.”

“What?”

“I won’t be there,” Elena repeated more loudly. “I’m a Socialist, Sergeant. A dirty Red.” Her voice rose steadily, gaining an edge of hysteria. “I was
glad
when they burned the churches and executed the priests! Glad!”

“Shut up,” Tejada said quietly, wondering who might be listening behind the darkened windows.

“Why? Go ahead and arrest me!”

Tejada knew some of the basics of how to elicit a confession but he had never tried to stop one before. Señorita Fernández’s clear voice rang through the empty street. “You don’t believe me, Sergeant?
Viva la República!
I’m a member of—”

Tejada grabbed her arms and kissed her. He waited until her lips stopped frantically moving and then reluctantly pulled away. “You’re hysterical,” he said hoarsely. “And I didn’t hear any of that.”