Summer Snow (6 page)
He smiled back, remembering their last trip south as well. They had taken a night train then also and had enjoyed proving that although the bunks in the sleeping cars were narrow they definitely could accommodate two people. He had a sudden memory, almost physical in its intensity, of how amazing it had been to travel with a woman on his arm and to refer to “my wife” when he spoke to porters or conductors. How odd it would seem
not
to travel with her now! “A lot has happened,” he said, savoring the aftertaste of the memory even as it receded.
She looked skeptical. “I don’t know how much will have changed from your parents’ point of view.”
“A lot’s happened in the world,” Tejada pointed out. “People felt more strongly about the Reds in 1940.”
Elena raised her eyebrows. “I haven’t noticed any great resurgence of the Communists.”
“Your father was never actually a Communist,” Tejada protested, scrupulously censoring the knowledge that Elena herself had been a Socialist during and before the war. It was not a piece of information he planned to share with any of his family. “He supported the Republic, but so did lots of people.”
“And the important thing now is to be anti-Communist?” Elena said dryly.
Tejada winced. It had always been important to be anti- Communist. And in Potes, perhaps, little had changed in the last five years. The peasants of the town were—he did not delude himself—mostly Reds and always had been. They would continue exactly as before regardless of the world outside the valley of Liébana. The Guardia would continue to maintain order, suppressing the peasants’ guerrilla activities as necessary. But he suspected that in his family’s world—the world of businessmen and landholders—the black and white that had defined the two sides in the Civil War were beginning to blur into shades of gray. In the summer of 1940 the Axis had looked invincible, and the Old Blue Shirts of Spain’s own Fascist Party had been an important part of the government. Now things were changing. He did not know how much. He was almost afraid to think how much. But they might change just enough to make his parents courteous to the daughter of an old-fashioned liberal. He edged away from the thought, ashamed that he was capable of believing his own parents would be guilty of trimming their political beliefs to the prevailing winds and ashamed of hoping that their hypocrisy would make them kinder to Elena. “Well, I’m afraid nothing can clear you of being from Salamanca,” he said aloud, trying to speak lightly.
Elena shook her head in mock disapproval. “And you could have married a hot-blooded Andalusian,” she teased.
Tejada laughed, and put one arm around her. “I think I remember having this discussion five years ago,” he said.
Elena kissed him. “Some things haven’t changed,” she said smugly, and the conversation turned to other things.
Toño was returned promptly at ten, with thanks from his hosts. He was tired and well fed enough to fall asleep shortly afterward. Tejada and his wife put out the lights in the compartment and watched the dusk deepen to royal blue and then to the star-pierced black of night in rural Andalusia. A little before four in the morning the night was banished by the lights of a city. Elena roused a sleepy Toño, who was inclined to be cranky, and made him put his shoes on just as the train creaked to a stop and the cry “Granada! Station stop, Granada!” echoed through the train.
Toño was too sleepy to have a clear impression of the train station. He had a confused memory of trying to lie down on one of the trunks and of his parents conferring rapidly above him, and then his mother picked him up and he was carried out of the station past a line of horse-drawn taxis to a large car that gleamed black under the streetlights. A man with a mustache who looked like his father said, “So this is Carlos Antonio!” and then he was curled in his mother’s lap, too tired to keep his eyes open even though he was moving again. He was tired of being always in motion. Finally, his mother stood up and carried him what seemed like a long distance, and he started to cry a little because he wanted to stay where he was and he didn’t
want
to be carried anymore, but then she put him down and kissed him good night in what was unmistakably a real bed that wasn’t moving. His true memories of Granada started the next morning.
S
ergeant Rivas had gratefully put the awkward case of Rosalia de Ordoñez to one side to focus on other work. Now that Doña Rosalia was not interrupting him so frequently he could accomplish more, and he was almost ashamed that his primary feeling about the old lady’s death was relief that she was no longer wasting his time. Doña Rosalia’s nephew, Andrés Tejada, had been annoyingly insistent about the need to “pursue an investigation” but after his initial point had been gained he had allowed the Guardia to proceed at their own pace, without further interference or demands for speed. Sergeant Rivas, himself a devout man, thought that putting off an old lady’s funeral for an unnecessary autopsy was scandalously irreverent, if not actually sinful, but he was paid to maintain the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the Spanish state, and if the great ones of the land chose to twine themselves in its coils when they could go free, it was no business of his.
The sergeant was somewhat annoyed when Captain Vega, the commander of the post, summoned him as he was about to go on patrol. When he entered the captain’s office he saw that Vega was accompanied by a tall man in a lieutenant’s uniform, with the dark aquiline features of the Tejada family. Señor Tejada León’s attitude toward his aunt’s death had won him no respect from Sergeant Rivas, and the sergeant had low expectations of his son, despite—or perhaps because of—Guardia Medina’s recommendation of him. But when the captain presented Lieutenant Tejada and added meaningfully that the Guardia were
very grateful for his help
, Rivas did the only thing possible under the circumstances. “Sir,” he said, saluting, “thank you for coming.”
“It’s nothing.” The lieutenant inspected Rivas narrowly and then added, “Forgive me for not making an appointment, Sergeant. I only have two weeks, and I don’t want to waste time. But if you show me the file you’ve assembled so far, I can go over it, and you can finish your patrol.”
Rivas blinked, uncertain whether to be relieved or unnerved by the lieutenant’s perspicacity. “At your orders, Lieutenant.” He hesitated. “How did you know I was going on patrol?”
Tejada smiled. “It’s nine o’clock on a Tuesday morning. Your partner is standing in the hallway looking impatient, and the guardia who let me in is obviously on desk duty for the day. Hurry up, Sergeant. I don’t want to throw off your patrol schedules.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Rivas took the lieutenant back to his office. “Here’s everything on your lady aunt, sir. If you have questions, or need to interview anyone, don’t hesitate to call on my men.”
“Has one been assigned to me?” Tejada demanded.
Rivas looked embarrassed. “I made up the duty roster last week, Lieutenant. And I only heard that you were coming yesterday.”
“Then I won’t need anyone today,” Tejada said. The sergeant began to express his gratitude, but the lieutenant cut him off, a little sharply. “Don’t look so dumbfounded, Rivas. I was sergeant at a metropolitan post. I know what the job’s like. I’m here to smooth things over, not to make waves. Get going.”
The sergeant left, relieved and cautiously optimistic about Señor Tejada León’s younger son. Rivas was a second-generation member of the Guardia, as proud of his professionalism as he was of having escaped the drudgery of the Ordoñez cane fields that had claimed his mother’s family. He could not imag- ine why a member of the great landowning families would join the Guardia, and had mentally dismissed the lieutenant as “a señorito who’s probably as dotty as his aunt.” Rivas had assumed that Lieutenant Tejada had joined the Guardia as an officer, perhaps coming from the amateur militias formed during the war or after some hushed-up scandal had ended an army career. But if the lieutenant had served as a sergeant, and understood clearly what the job entailed, perhaps he would be easy to work with. On the other hand, a señorito who was so unexpectedly competent could prove disturbing.
The first thing Lieutenant Tejada did was settle himself in Sergeant Rivas’s chair and read everything in the file about the late Rosalia Tejada de Ordoñez. He skipped hastily over her family connections and focused on her contacts with the Guardia. According to Sergeant Rivas’s records, she had first approached the Guardia in the spring of 1943, a few months after her husband’s death. The report’s tone was carefully neutral:
According to Señora de Ordoñez, agents of the Russian government have bugged her telephone and are keeping her house under constant surveillance. She has suggested that they plan to revenge themselves on her for the part her late grandson played in the Blue Division in Russia in 1941. She says that her servants are either in league with the Reds or terrified by them and afford her no protection. Her fear and concern are unquestionably genuine.
Tejada smiled. Sergeant Rivas had managed to suggest that Doña Rosalia’s fears were as groundless as they were genuine with exceptional eloquence and restraint. Anyone reading the report would have correctly wondered why Russian agents would have concerned themselves with the elderly grandmother of one of the many young men who had volunteered to fight Communism and had already given his life doing so.
The next report, dated six months later, was substantially the same, although Doña Rosalia had claimed that the Reds trying to kill her had not only bugged her telephone but planted spies in the house who were watching her every move and reporting to unnamed superiors. “
No new servants have been hired at the Casa
Ordoñez
,” the report noted dryly. “
Censors’ reports (see attached)
show no evidence of unusual correspondence.
” Four months after the second report, the roof of the Casa Ordoñez had suffered damage in a windstorm, and Doña Rosalia had gone to the Guardia demanding the instant arrest of the repairman, who, she insisted, was building a secret compartment in the attic to hide revolutionaries. No secret compartment had been found. The following summer, when new wallpaper was hung in the bedroom, Doña Rosalia had called not only the Guardia but an eminent physician to test the paste and paper, which she was convinced were soaked in a slow-acting poison that would seep into the air and smother her in her sleep. “According to Dr. Navarro, the paste used would only be poisonous if ingested in large quantities,” read Sergeant Rivas’s report. “I was able to reassure Doña Rosalia that reasonable precautions about what she eats would protect her from being poisoned by the wallpaper.” Three months after the wallpaper incident, a chance visit by begging Gypsies had convinced Doña Rosalia that her house had been the subject of a reconnaissance party and was slated to be taken over as a command center by the invading Red army, which was poised to cross the straits from Morocco. There were more reports. Doña Rosalia had possessed a morbid streak of creativity, and none of the plots were exactly the same.
By the time Tejada finished reading, he was torn between amusement at his great-aunt’s eccentricities and disgust that she had wasted so much of his colleagues’ time. He also had a high opinion of Sergeant Rivas’s narrative skills. Anyone who had known Rosalia de Ordoñez would be able to recognize her from the pages of Rivas’s reports, in all her querulous and self- absorbed glory.
At least
, the lieutenant thought,
her terror of death
had gained her a sort of earthly immortality. She would live on in the
Guardia’s archives, if anyone ever cared to read them after the case was
closed
.
Sergeant Rivas found the lieutenant still occupying his office when he returned from patrol that afternoon. “Well, sir?” he asked. “Did you find anything interesting?”
Tejada stood up, with the trace of a smile. “Your records are very complete, Sergeant. A shame that an elderly lady felt so vulnerable.”
Rivas gulped. “We did everything we could—” he began.
“You can’t fight phantoms,” Tejada interrupted him. “I don’t see any credible evidence for a murder plot here. We should get the results of the autopsy by the end of the week, and then we can bury her and be done with it.”
“Yes, sir,” Rivas said, with relief.
“You dealt with all those complaints personally?” Tejada asked, curious.
“Yes, sir.”
The lieutenant whistled. “Congratulations. I don’t know if it’ll be any good for promotion, but you ought to get years remitted from purgatory for it.”
Rivas smiled, a little uncertainly. “I try to do my job.”
“So I gather.” Tejada frowned. “Off the record, Rivas, why did you open this dossier in the first place? You don’t think she was murdered, do you?”
The sergeant made a quick decision. Against all expectations, Lieutenant Tejada struck him as trustworthy. “No, sir. But your father was very anxious . . . to see justice done.”
“I thought that was it.” Tejada smiled briefly. “I’ll get out of your way for now, Sergeant. I’ll stop by Thursday or Friday to check on the autopsy report, and then we can both get back to real work.”
“Yes, sir.” To his own astonishment, Rivas found himself adding, “But you’re certainly welcome at any time, sir. If there’s anything we can do for you . . .”
“No, thanks.” The lieutenant was definite. He did not add that he had already decided to spend the afternoon showing his son the playground by the Río Genil.