The Poet's Wife (28 page)

One time, the film stopped in the middle. Just like that. A large notice flashed across the screen saying there were two people in row J who were indulging in immoral behaviour. I knew that we were sitting in that row and I prodded Mamá.

‘Is it us?’ I whispered.

She frowned and shook her head and, as I looked to the right of me, I saw a couple blushing as red as the screen curtains, staring ahead with stony faces. Their hands were planted firmly in their laps and they looked the same kind of age as my parents. What could they possibly be doing that was so terrible? Another message flashed up, this time telling us that if these people continued, their seat numbers would be pointed out and they’d be ejected from the cinema. I stared at the woman beside me who blushed an even deeper shade of red and shifted in her seat. And then back at Mamá, who gave nothing away. It wasn’t till much later, when we were back home, that I asked her what she thought they were doing.

‘They were probably just holding hands,’ Mamá replied, shrugging her shoulders.

‘Holding hands,’ I repeated blankly. Surely not. ‘But what’s wrong with holding hands, Mamá?’ I pushed her.

She sighed and shook her head. ‘
Nada.
There’s nothing wrong with holding hands. Nothing at all. This is just the way we must live.’

This is just the way we must live. I was only eight years old at that time, but I knew very well that this wasn’t how Mamá wanted to live. Nor Papá. And I certainly didn’t want to live in a world in which a husband and wife can’t go to the cinema and hold hands. Every bone of my eight-year-old body tightened in indignation and at that very moment I thought to myself: this isn’t how it will be. This is
not
how it will be when I am a grown-up.

Am I spoilt growing up? A little, perhaps: being the only daughter, I’m looked up to by my younger brother Eduardo, indulged by my middle brother Dani and watched over lovingly by both my parents. But I need this kind of cushioning from within my family, because growing up in 1950s Granada is oppressive to say the very least. My family has to conform, just like everybody else’s. As soon as I can talk I implicitly understand that the things we discuss at home stay at home. There are eyes and ears everywhere and in many ways I don’t trust anybody outside my own family. Not even the girls at school I call my friends.

But the truth is I don’t have many friends. I enjoy my own company more than anyone else’s. I love cinema and books above all else and the friends I do have are those who don’t expect me to make conversation or tell jokes or entertain them. In other words, people who expect nothing from me because that way they won’t feel let down. I’ve always preferred quieter people, because it’s what’s left unsaid that’s fascinating to me.

Mamá and Papá do just about everything they can think of to remain outside the scrutiny of those hovering in the wings, waiting for them to slip up. Papá has converted to Catholicism and each and every Sunday we troop to duller-than-dull mass, backs straight as rods as we shift about on the hard wooden pews. Oh, and you couldn’t find a stricter Catholic school in Granada if you tried. It’s run by monks and nuns and each morning, we have to sing a hideous song at the top of our lungs: ‘
Franco, Franco, que cara más simpatico!
’ I sing this hymn to our dictator with mock force, imagining myself to be acting in a play. Honestly, it’s the only way I can get through it, because as a little girl, I even take
myself
by surprise, so strong is my loathing for the general. All I really want to do is shout out above the throng of voices, ‘Franco, Franco, how I hate your face!’ and one time, the desire to do this is so strong that I have to bite on my hand so hard I draw blood. Does Franco know that our entire city is often plunged into darkness for hours on end? Does he know that his people sit huddled around one of their few rationed candles, waiting for light to return? Probably not, and even if he did, I can guarantee he wouldn’t have cared less.

No, the Granada of my childhood isn’t a happy place. It’s decaying and poverty-stricken and even when the sun shines, everything somehow seems grey. Mamá buys wheat and olive oil on the black market, there is little music and even less dancing. I long to learn how to dance. But dancing, of course, is ungodly. I am often cold, even more often hungry. Thick layers of dust cover everything, there are peeling notices on unpainted walls and the street lamps rarely shine. Winter’s the hardest time, and our only source of heating is the
brasero
, a metal pan which my brothers and I take out to the street and heap with the powdery dried pulp of olives after the oil has been extracted, bought at great expense. We pile kindling wood on top, set it alight and fan it till the powder smoulders, then rush inside and slide it under the dining room table into a special fitting. A woollen cover is draped over the table and round our legs so that at least our legs are toasty warm while we eat our meals, even though the rest of our bodies are freezing.

As I get older, I see how much my poor papá hates how we have to live with such double standards. He is an ex-International Brigader, after all. Yet the face he presents to the world, or to our corner of Granada at least, is that of respectable, middle-class
caballero
. It’s important he has a well-tailored suit; that he parades down the street before lunch on Sundays wearing his well-shined shoes and smoking a foreign cigar. It’s a grotesque charade for Papá, but I dread to think what might happen to him should he act otherwise and, God forbid, people find out what brought him to Spain in the first place. What it must cost my father, the socialist, to maintain this culture of
fachada
– keeping up appearances – makes me realise just how deep his love for my mother runs.

What with the light problems and the hot water problems, Granada’s barbers run a roaring trade and once a week Papá takes Dani, Eduardo and I down to the city where we watch him being shaved by a thick-set man with a cleft in his chin, black hair sprouting from his ears and only four fingers on each hand. Despite this, he’s a wizard with the shaving knife and Papá will go to no other. We all long to ask what happened to his fingers, but Papá strictly forbids it.

After Papá’s been shaved, we walk back through Plaza Nueva, passing the water sellers who lead their donkeys through the streets, covered in bright woollen blankets and little brass bells. I always feel sorry for the poor beasts, struggling under the weight of the metal canisters filled with water, but any time they slow down, their owners slap them on the rump and call out to passers-by ‘
¡Agua! ¡Agua! ¡Fresca como la nieve!
’

Occasionally we buy water from them on summer days, or hot potatoes that are sold in used jam tins in the winter. Holes are punched round the tin with a nail and we wrap handkerchiefs round them, discovering that this way the tins make fabulous hand-warmers all the way home before we then devour the potatoes. More often than the water or potatoes though, Papá buys us
chumbo
from the
gitanos
, sweet cacti fruit which we suck noisily through our teeth. I love stopping to buy from the gypsies, and it always makes me wish we could see more of Mar and her family. Whenever we do get the chance to visit them in their
pueblo
in the suburbs, I’m always amazed that they once lived at Carmen de las Estrellas; that my grandmother was brave enough to take such a risk, even with her own family to consider and at a time when food shortages were even more severe than they are now.

Sometimes, to escape from the heavy heat of the summer days, my family take the train out of the city to the beach, though I must say I never enjoy these excursions. Because of the strict segregation at the beaches, Mamá and I have to sit on the other side of a high barrier from Papá and my brothers. Despite this separation, we must still bathe with all our clothes on and I loathe that sensation of my dress growing heavier and heavier and winding round my ankles as I flap uselessly about in the water. The only part of this trip I look forward to is buying a
granizada
de limón
– a tall glass with crushed ice, lemon and lashings of sugar –
from the station café before boarding the train back to Granada where Abuela waits for us at the station.

My wonderful abuela. When I’m growing up, we often sit together in the kitchen listening to soap operas on the radio, awful though they are with their thinly veiled trumpeting of traditional values and pathetic tales of love and longing. Of course my abuela is intelligent enough to recognise this too, but it’s a harmless pleasure and they sometimes make her laugh. Watching Abuela’s face crease in amusement is like seeing Granada’s
salida del sol
, the sunrise that spreads its gentle glow over the valley. But just as I only occasionally witness the sunrise, so too is the smile of my abuela a gift. I learnt from a young age that, infuriating though these soap operas may be, I’d have a better chance of basking in the ripples of her happiness there in the kitchen than anywhere else. Sometimes we just sit at the table together, listening to the dramas unwind and other times we make cookies. Mamá tells me that when she was young, Abuela would write fortunes and place them inside the shells. When I was very small, I asked her on one of her far-away days if we could do that and she looked at me strangely, almost as though she couldn’t quite place me.
One day
, she told me. And then I wished I’d never asked her, because the last thing I wanted was to make my abuela sad. But then, many weeks later, she suddenly brought it up again with no prompting from me. She had tied an apron around her waist, plaited her hair and coiled it onto her head and beckoned me from the doorway of the kitchen. ‘Paloma,’ she said with her sunrise smile, ‘shall we make fortune cookies?’

I know, of course, that my abuelo died and that he shouldn’t have. There is a single photograph of him in Carmen de las Estrellas,
on the mantelpiece in the conservatory, taken on the day of his marriage to Abuela.
He is handsome with thick curly hair and shining eyes and looks like an older version of my middle brother, Dani. But strangely, more than the photograph, faded with time, I like to look at the framed drawings of him that Pablo made many years ago. There are several dotted about the house and many times when I’ve looked closely at them over the years, I’ve found the clouded imprint of fingertips against glass and don’t doubt for a minute it is Abuela’s hand pressing against her husband, willing him back to life.

As for Antonio, the boy from Semana Santa, I see him a few more times before he vanishes from my life completely. That first night that he comes to my house, before he leaves, he wordlessly stuffs a scrunched-up piece of paper into my hand before slipping through the heavy wooden doors. When I open it, I read a single line: the name of his school and the street it’s on. I am well aware of what is at stake here; that the reputation of my family and my own name for that matter could be stained forever should I be found out. But I have that reckless confidence of a fifteen-year-old girl and, despite the risks, I’m willing to see how far I can push the boundaries of the system.

I always walk straight home after school, but one day, head low, I hurry to Antonio’s school. I know exactly where it is because my parents considered that school for my brothers. I linger at a distance, ignoring the surprised looks of the boys who flood from the gates. Antonio spots me first and moves towards me slowly but stealthily, with the hint of a smile on his face to suggest he’s been expecting me. We don’t say a word but, glancing around to check that nobody is watching, I raise the palm of one hand towards him on which I have inked the words
donde
and
cuando
. Where and when. I watch as Antonio’s black eyebrows knit in fierce concentration before he murmurs, in a barely audible voice,
same place, tonight
, before walking past me into the throng of boys.

This time he brings a condom with him, a thick, rubbery thing that is agonising to put on. I have no idea where he’s managed to get it from and don’t ask, but it’s a huge relief that I don’t have to worry about getting pregnant. Though we say so little to one another, I feel that I know this person; that in many ways, he is just like me – my male shadow. As we cling to one another beneath the canopy of the fig tree, we’re both smiling, emboldened by our bravery. Nothing else matters apart from that moment, that tingling pleasure of feeling his body against mine and the knowledge that, yet again, we have got away with it.

And so the pattern is set in motion: I go to his school and with a signal or whisper our plan is made. But then comes the long summer vacation and I have no idea how to find him. When Antonio doesn’t come to my house, I assume that his family must have left Granada for the season. But when term starts again and I arrive once more at his school gates, he isn’t there. I go another two or three times before acknowledging that he’s not coming back. I’m surprised how unemotional I feel about this. After all, I’ve been closer to Antonio than anyone else before and risked so much to be with him. But instead, I feel a deep sense of acceptance that this is the end of our story and that what we achieved together would only have worked with him and no other. I do still think about him now and again – wonder where he is and if he’s happy, and if we’d talked more, what we’d have talked about. But then rather than being left with a sense of regret, I feel only gratitude that his hand met mine on that candlelit evening from within the stifling folds of the Semana Santa crowd.

A
t the age
of sixty-four, to me Mother is still the most beautiful woman in the world. She wears her hair, now streaked liberally with silver, with a thin plait as a top layer and her dark eyes are wide and shrewd. In the years following Father’s death, I found myself in a perpetual state of something close to mourning for the confidante Mother had been. But as the years went on and the rawness of the pain slowly lessened, the Mother of old would increasingly appear once more. There are certain people in her life who manage to rekindle that old spark in such a way that I can almost believe she is the same person. Paloma’s presence, for example, instantly draws her out of a trough of memories into which she sometimes retreats and I see so much of them in one another. And then there is Mar, who continues to play a significant role in her life – the beautiful, unfathomable Mar who at the age of thirty-three declared to my mother that she never wanted to involve herself with another man for the rest of her life. Up until now she has, as far as I know, been true to her word.

Every so often Mar turns up at the house unannounced. She’s never been a talkative person herself and she and Mother slip back into that easy camaraderie that never fails to move or surprise me as they wordlessly take up a task together which can last for hours. Mar tells us little about her apartment on the outskirts of Granada and she has only invited us to visit them two or three times over the years. I think she is ashamed of her home; ashamed of this suburb where fields and orchards have been bulldozed to make way for low-cost housing that sprouts up from gaps in the pavement like grey weeds. This apartment is as far from her
roots as it is possible to travel with its cardboard-flimsy walls and filthy streets with children scavenging for scraps of food in the gutter like animals.

Sometimes I think it’s better that Abuela Aurelia didn’t live to see the day that her family left Carmen de las Estrellas. She was so fiercely proud of her
gitana
traditions that to have returned anywhere other than her cave dwelling would have been unbearable for her. It was hard enough to change their lifestyle so dramatically from living far from the city in a rural community to a comparatively luxurious house in the Albaicín. But when the war ended and Mar insisted it was time for her family to leave, she was wise enough to realise that, no matter how much she longed for it, to have returned to the cave would have been nothing short of suicide. By then, they had all been burnt out by a terrifying group known as the Black Squad. After destroying the dwellings beyond recognition, they hunted down any
gitanos
that still lurked in the city and murdered them. We heard stories about gypsies on the run in the early days of the conflict coming face to face with men in uniform and then, after looking at their badge to see which side they were on, saluting and declaring either ‘Franco is my father!’ or ‘Stalin is my father!’ whilst of course, they couldn’t have cared less about either man. One particular story runs of a poor short-sighted
gitano
who thought he saw the opposite emblem declaring allegiance to Stalin and being shot on the spot. It was, of course, just a story, but true or not, Mar was wise to not attempt to return to her old life.

To this day, I realise how lucky we were that Abuela Aurelia swallowed her pride sufficiently to ask my mother for protection. Vast numbers of their friends and kin didn’t survive the war. But there were even more who perished in the following years. I think that there are two main reasons why Mar’s family has managed to escape a similar fate. First of all, ever since the military rising against the Republic, Granadinos have been afraid not to be thought of as good Catholics and wear badges on their lapels known as ‘
santos
’. These represent their loyalty to the faith and, whilst they aren’t an absolute guarantee of safety, they certainly help. It must cost Mar, a confirmed atheist, a great deal to sport a
santo
on her clothes and insist that her children do the same. Particularly Pablo, after everything he’s been through. But she can be very persuasive when she wants and every time they come to visit us, they look every bit the devout yet impoverished Catholic family.

The other reason they aren’t sniffed out by informers, I’m certain, is due to my Tío Miguel. I have no proof of this, but I feel sure that for all my uncle’s faults, he continues to act as something of a guardian angel over both our family and Mar’s. We never see him, but we know that he’s risen to prominent heights in the Falange and that he holds great authority. When he came to our house that time to warn us of what was on the horizon, he said that he could ensure our protection up to a point. Whilst it was through no love of any of us, I think he felt some convoluted sense of duty that the child he fathered was now living at Carmen de las Estrellas. I honestly believe that, for all his unpleasantness, Miguel has a conscience. Perhaps I’m naïve, but I believe that if he could have stopped Father’s murder, he would have done.

I know that he never loved Mar – what he felt for her, I’m sure, was far closer to lust. But he certainly never wanted her dead either, and my uncle exercises a great deal of control on the goings on in Granada. We are living in frightening times in which the end of the war was certainly not the end of fear. If anything, it just began in a far more sinister form. As well as the Black Squad, both the civil government and the military are responsible for compiling lists of citizens whom, in their eyes, have strayed from the straight and narrow or are known to have left-wing leanings. These unfortunate people are arrested, often tortured and then shot without trial. Our family hardly has a clear record: it would be easy enough to do some digging and discover two Republican parents, a daughter who nursed on the Republican side and her husband the former International Brigader, not to mention what my brother Fernando has been involved in, and I maintain that both our family and Mar’s have escaped reprisals largely due to Tío Miguel.

When he died of a heart attack last year, I went to the funeral with Mar. Mother refused to go, I suppose out of loyalty to Father. It was incredible, for despite the years that had passed and the way he had treated Mar, I couldn’t help noticing the tears that silently streamed down her cheeks beneath her black veil as she sat beside me. I also watched his wife sitting in the front row of the church and I’m almost certain she had a very small yet perceptible smile on her face.

It breaks my heart to see Mar and her family living in such poverty. We save as much food for them as we can muster together, yet we barely have enough for ourselves. But in these dark days, a gentle ray of optimism filters through to us, infecting us all. Fernando and Alejandro are the only two amongst my siblings who have remained living with us at Carmen de las Estrellas and we all watched the blossoming friendship between Fernando and Beatriz and chuckled at my brother’s tongue-tied stammering around this lovely young girl whilst they lived with us. But we didn’t imagine for a single moment that his feelings for her might be reciprocated.

The day that Mar’s family left our home and we waved sadly goodbye to them, I must admit that I noticed the look that passed between Beatriz and my brother. It was a long, mournful gaze that lasted longer than was necessary. I forgot about it instantly, but when the two of them announced just a few months later that they were passionately in love, that look suddenly came back to me. Fernando was only a boy when he’d first fallen for Beatriz but a man when she left. We never did find out at exactly what stage she started to return his affection, but it’s clear now that it was going on for a long time, right under our noses.

I believe that if it weren’t for the sweet persuasiveness of Beatriz that my brother might not be alive today. In his late teens and early twenties, partly in memory of Father but also through his own genuine conviction, Fernando became far more politically motivated. He was furious about the way that the victors of the civil war were treating the defeated. ‘The fascists have won, haven’t they?’ I heard him say bitterly on more than one occasion. ‘What more do they want?’

Fernando heard about a guerrilla band in Granada led by four revolutionary brothers, the sons of our one-time local butcher. He knew that they’d succeeded in kidnapping a prominent fascist Granadino as well as carrying out various robberies and gunfights with the civil guard. Word had it that they were so fierce that even the police were frightened to go near them. Fernando started to spend more and more time with the brothers and was evasive when we questioned him on his return. He wouldn’t listen to any of us if we begged him to be more cautious; he was far too stubborn. Yet Beatriz managed to convince him that the activities of the brothers were doomed and that if he continued to work alongside them, he’d end up like his father. I’m certain that she was right, for after the brothers’ period of keeping the civil guard at arm’s length, eventually their hiding place was dynamited, killing two of them. Over the next couple of years the remaining two as well as many of their followers were either shot or took their own lives.

It’s always very touching to watch Beatriz and Fernando together, for my brother has never lost his mischievous air. But you only have to take one look at him when he’s talking to Beatriz to notice the calm in his normally forceful voice and also Beatriz’s coy smile when he speaks to her. Over the years, they’ve discussed marriage many times, but always come to the same conclusion that until the day arrives in which they can marry freely in the traditional
gitano
fashion, they will simply live together.

Pablo has moved to the suburbs close to his family but in a different apartment. I remember that Abuela Aurelia always said that Pablo didn’t talk not because he couldn’t, but rather that he wouldn’t
.
I was never sure about her theory, but I suppose she knew her grandson better than I. I was always very fond of Pablo, right from those early days when Mother took us to the cave and my brothers and sister ran around with Mar’s children playing tag. I loved watching him transform a blank sheet of paper into such a real and touching representation of the scene before us. Drawing was, for him, everything. Or even more than everything; the sole thing to keep him sane after he was tortured and finally returned to us.

As for Joaquín, I often questioned whether I was biased with regards to his talent. But it came as no surprise to any of us when he moved away from Carmen de las Estrellas and started to play with more and more prestigious musicians, though how he managed to do this whilst keeping a low profile remains a mystery because music in those days, particularly flamenco music, was frowned upon in the extreme. As for Joaquín’s relationship with Mar, as the years have passed they have become very close and he often visits them in their
pueblo
. At the same time, he has remained loyal to Mother as her eldest son, something that Mar has never seemed concerned by.

The house of Sara Rodriguez, my dear friend I shared so much with, was boarded up when I returned to Granada to discover the fate of Father. For months I made enquiries as to the whereabouts of her family, but nobody could help me. It wasn’t until five years later that I received a letter from her. Her family had fled from Granada and headed northwards, making the gruelling journey over the Pyrenees into France. They remained in a makeshift camp on the coast in appalling conditions alongside thousands of others, being treated more like criminals than refugees. Sara lost two of her grandparents, a nephew and her youngest sister in that camp. Eventually, her remaining family were amongst the lucky ones who escaped from that living hell on a boat bound for Mexico City where the socialist government received them warmly.

L
iving
in fascist-controlled Spain has become less stifling as the years have passed, but it is never, ever easy. We have to keep our heads down and lie through our teeth to prevent attracting unwanted attention. Despite being the most patient man I’ve ever known, life for Henry is particularly hard for many reasons. Every ninety days, he has to traipse to the
Comisaría
to renew his visa because no matter how long he’s lived in Spain, he remains a foreigner and people are extremely suspicious of
extranjeros
. He is known as ‘
el inglés
’, many people uttering it with contempt. I think I feel more offended than my husband, who accepts his name with his typical good-humoured grace. But besides our hushed conversations at home, Henry has little outlet for what is really going through his mind. He is rarely able to visit his parents in England and because we know that letters are often intercepted and read, he can’t even use these as a means to talk about his true feelings.

Work is hard to come by but Henry managed to find a job several years after the end of the civil war. One of the regime’s myths is that Spanish is such a rich language that it is completely impossible for
extranjeros
to master it, particularly if their native tongue is English. Henry finds this amusing and whilst it is obvious to all that he is a
guiri
with his fair hair and blue eyes, over the years his talent at speaking Spanish, even the intricacies of thick Andaluz, is undeniable. The steady trickle of tourists visiting Spain is slowly increasing and the fact that he can also speak fairly good French enables him to work as a tour guide at the Alhambra Palace. He comes home one day telling me that a stony-faced British colonel asked Henry if, now that he has made Spain his home, he supports Spain’s attempt to regain control of British-occupied Gibraltar. For things are heating up in this department.

A year after Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in England, a visit to Gibraltar is planned and the Spanish press goes wild during this time, requesting the British government to cancel the visit as it is supposedly an insult to the people of Spain. But no cancellation comes, and just ahead of the event, poor Henry gets caught up in some of the demonstrations on his way back from work. One day, when he returns home, two hours late, he looks shocked and unsettled and Mother and I gasp as we notice that his shirt is torn near the collar.