Winter in Madrid (10 page)

‘Christ, Harry, they’ve had centuries of oppression,’ Bernie said. ‘Not least from the church. Most of those burned-out churches were full of gold and silver. It’s going to take a long time.’

They got a room on the second floor of a crumbling
hostal
in a narrow street off the Puerta del Sol. On the balcony opposite theirs a couple of prostitutes often sat resting. They would call bawdy remarks across the street, laughing. Harry would redden and turn away, but Bernie shouted back at them, saying they’d no money for such luxuries.

The heat continued; during the hottest part of the day they stayed in the
hostal
, lying on their beds with their shirts open, reading or
dozing, savouring every tiny breeze that wafted through the window. Then in the late afternoon they would walk in the city before spending the evenings in the bars.

One evening they went to a bar in La Latina called El Toro where flamenco dancing was advertised. Bernie had seen it in
El Socialista
, the socialist newspaper, full of optimism and hope, which he got Harry to translate for him. When they got there the bulls’ heads round the walls startled them. The other customers were working men and eyed Harry and Bernie curiously, giving one another amused nudges. The boys ordered a greasy
cocido
and sat at a bench under a banner advertising a strike meeting, next to a burly brown-faced man with a drooping moustache. The buzz of conversation died as two men in narrow jackets and round black hats walked into the centre of the room, carrying guitars. They were followed by a woman in wide red and black skirts and a low bodice, a black mantilla covering her head. All had narrow faces and skin so dark they reminded Harry of Singh, Rookwood’s Indian boy. The men began to play and the woman sang, with a fierce intensity that kept his attention even though he couldn’t follow the words. They performed three songs, each one greeted with applause, then one of the men came round with a hat.
‘Muy bien,’
Harry said,
‘muchas gracias.’
He put a peseta in the cap.

The big man next to them said something to them in Spanish. ‘What was that?’ Bernie whispered to Harry.

‘He says they’re singing about oppression by the landlords.’

The workman was studying them with amused interest. ‘That is good,’ Bernie said in halting Spanish.

The big man nodded approvingly. He extended a hand to Bernie and Harry. It was hard and callused.

‘Pedro Mera García,’ the man said. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Inglaterra.’
Bernie pulled his party card from his pocket.
‘Partido Laborista Inglés.’
Pedro smiled broadly.
‘Bienvenidos, compadres.’

S
O
B
ERNIE
’
S FRIENDSHIP
with the Mera family began. They regarded him as a comrade, and the apolitical Harry as his slightly retarded cousin. There was an evening in early September, shortly before they were due to return to England, that Harry particularly
remembered. It was cooler in the evenings now and Bernie sat on the balcony with Pedro, his wife Inés and their elder son Antonio, who was Harry and Bernie’s age and like his father a union activist in the brickworks. Inside the
salón
Harry had been teaching three-year-old Carmela some English words. Her ten-year-old brother, Francisco, thin and tubercular, sat watching with large, tired eyes as Carmela sat on the arm of Harry’s chair, repeating the strange words with fascinated solemnity.

At last she got bored and went to play with her dolls. Harry went onto the tiny balcony and looked out across the square, where a welcome breeze stirred up the dust. The sound of voices came up from below. A beer seller called his trade in a high sharp voice. Doves circled in the darkening sky, flashes of white against the red-tiled roofs.

‘Help me, Harry,’ Bernie said. ‘I want to ask Pedro if the government will win the vote of confidence tomorrow.’

Harry asked and Pedro nodded. ‘He should. But the President’s looking for any excuse to get Azaña out. He agrees with the Monarchists that even the miserable reforms the government’s trying to put through are an attack on their rights.’

Antonio laughed bitterly. ‘What will they do if we ever really challenge them?’ He shook his head. ‘This proposal for an agrarian reform act has no funds to back it because Azaña won’t raise taxes. People feel let down and angry.’

‘Now that you’ve got the Republic,’ Bernie said, ‘Spain must never go back.’

Pedro nodded. ‘I think the Socialists should leave the government, have an election, win a proper majority. Then we’ll see.’

‘But would the ruling classes let you govern? Won’t they bring out the army?’

Pedro passed Bernie a cigarette. Bernie had started smoking since he came to Spain. ‘Let them try that,’ Pedro said. ‘Let them try and see what we will give them.’

Next day Harry and Bernie went to see the vote of confidence in the Cortes. There were crowds round the parliament building but they had managed to get passes through Pedro. An attendant led them up echoing marble stairs to a gallery above the chamber. The
blue benches were packed with deputies in suits and frock coats. The left-liberal leader Azaña was speaking in a strong, impassioned voice, one short arm beating at the air. Depending on their politics the newspapers portrayed him either as a frog-faced monster or as the father of the Republic, but Harry thought how ordinary he looked. He spoke fiercely, passionately. He made a point and turned to the deputies behind him, who clapped and shouted their approval. Azaña ran a hand through his wispy white hair and went on, listing the Republic’s achievements. Harry scanned the faces below, recognizing the socialist politicians whose faces he had seen in newspapers: round fat Prieto; Largo Caballero, surprisingly bourgeois-looking with his square face and white moustache. For once Harry felt caught up in the excitement.

‘Lively lot, aren’t they?’ he whispered to Bernie. But Bernie’s face when he turned was angry, contemptuous.

‘It’s a bloody theatre,’ Bernie said angrily. ‘Look at them. Millions of Spaniards want a decent life and they get this – circus. He surveyed the rustling sea of heads below him. ‘Something stronger than this is needed if we’re to have socialism. Come on, let’s get out of here.’

That night they went to a bar in the Centro. Bernie was in an angry, cynical mood.

‘Democracy,’ he said angrily. ‘It just swallows people up into a corrupt bourgeois system. It’s the same in England.’

‘But it’ll take years to make Spain a modern country,’ Harry said. ‘And what’s the alternative? Revolution and bloodshed, like in Russia?’

‘The workers have to take things into their own hands.’ He looked at Harry, then sighed. ‘Oh come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go back to the
hostal
. It’s late.’

They stumbled up the road in silence, both a little drunk. Their room was stuffy and Bernie pulled off his shirt and went onto the balcony. The two whores sat drinking opposite, wearing colourful dressing gowns. They called across.

‘¡Oye, inglés! ¿Porque no vienes a divertirte con nosotras?’

‘I can’t come and play!’ Bernie called back cheerfully. ‘I’ve no money!’

‘We don’t want money! We keep saying, if only the handsome
blond would come and play!’ The women laughed. Bernie laughed too and turned to Harry. Harry felt uneasy, a little shocked.

‘Fancy it?’ Bernie asked. They had joked about going with a Spanish prostitute for weeks but it had been bravado, they had done nothing about it.

‘No. God, Bernie, you could catch something.’

Bernie grinned at him. ‘Scared?’ He ran a hand through his thick blond hair, his big bicep flexing.

Harry blushed. ‘I don’t want to do it with a couple of drunk whores. Besides, it’s you they want, not me.’ Jealousy flickered inside him as it sometimes did. Bernie had something he lacked: an energy, a daring, a lust for life. It wasn’t just his looks.

‘They’d’ve asked you too if you’d been at the balcony.’

‘Don’t go,’ Harry said. ‘You could catch something.’

Bernie’s eyes were alive with excitement. ‘I’m going. Come on. Last chance.’ Bernie chuckled, then smiled at him. ‘You’ve got to learn to live, Harry, boy. Learn to live.’

T
WO DAYS LATER
they left Madrid. Antonio Mera helped them carry their bags to the station.

They changed trams at the Puerta de Toledo. It was mid-afternoon, siesta time, the sunny streets empty. A lorry rolled slowly by, its canvas cover gaily painted, the words ‘La Barraca’ on its side.

‘Lorca’s new theatre for the people,’ Antonio said. He was a tall dark youth, broad like his father. His lip curled slightly. ‘Off to bring Calderón to the peasants.’

‘That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’ Harry said. ‘I thought education was one thing the Republic had reformed.’

Antonio shrugged. ‘They’ve closed the Jesuit schools, but there aren’t enough new ones. The old story, the bourgeois parties won’t tax the rich to pay for them.’

A little way off there was a crack, like a car backfiring. The sound was repeated twice, closer. A youth no older than Bernie and Harry ran out of a side street. He wore flannels and a dark shirt, expensive clothes for Carabanchel. His face was terrified, wide-eyed, gleaming with sweat. He tore away down the street, disappearing into an alley.

‘Who’s that?’ Harry asked.

Antonio took a deep breath. ‘I wonder. That could be one of Redondo’s fascists.’

Two more young men appeared, in vests and workmen’s trousers. One held something small and dark in his hand. Harry stared open-mouthed as he realized it was a gun.

‘Down there!’ Antonio called, pointing to where the youth had fled. ‘He went down there!’

‘¡Gracias, compadre!’
The boy raised his gun in salute and the two sped away. Harry waited breathlessly for more shots but none came.

‘They were going to kill him,’ he said in a shocked whisper.

Antonio looked guilty for a moment, then frowned. ‘He was from the JONS. We have to stop the Fascists taking root.’

‘Who were the others?’

‘Communists. They’ve sworn to stop them. Good luck to them, I say.’

‘They’re right,’ Bernie agreed. ‘Fascists are vermin, the lowest of the low.’

‘He was just a boy running,’ Harry protested. ‘He didn’t have a gun.’

Antonio laughed bitterly. ‘They’ve got guns all right. But the Spanish workers won’t go down like the Italians.’

The tram arrived, the ordinary everyday jingling tram, and they got aboard. Harry studied Antonio. He looked tired; he had another shift at the brickworks tonight. He thought sadly, Bernie’s got more in common with him than with me.

H
ARRY LAY ON
the bed, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. He remembered how, on the train back, Bernie said he wasn’t going back to Cambridge. He’d had enough of living cut off from the real world and was going back to London, where the class struggle was. Harry thought he would change his mind, but he didn’t; he didn’t return to Cambridge in the autumn. They exchanged letters for a while but Bernie’s letters talking about strikes and anti-fascist demonstrations were as alien in their way as Sandy Forsyth’s about the dogtracks had been, and after a while that correspondence too petered out.

Harry got up. He felt restless now. He needed to get out of the flat, the silence was getting on his nerves. He washed, changed his shirt, then descended the dank staircase.

The square was still quiet. There was a faint smell he remembered, urine from malfunctioning drains. He thought of the picture on his wall, the romantic veneer it gave to poverty and want. He had been young and naive in 1931, but his attachment to the picture had stayed over the years, the young girl smiling at the gipsy. In 1931 he had thought the scene in the picture would soon be in the past; like Bernie, he had hoped Spain would progress. Yet the Republic had collapsed into chaos, then civil war, and now fascism. Harry circled, pausing at a baker’s shop. There was little on display, only a few
barras de pan
, none of the little sticky cakes the Spaniards loved. Bernie had eaten five one afternoon then had a
paella
in the evening and been spectacularly sick.

A couple of workmen passed Harry, giving him quick hostile glances. He was conscious of his well-cut jacket, his tie. He noticed a church at the corner of the square; it had been burned out, probably in 1936. The ornate facade still stood but there was no roof; the sky was visible through weed-encrusted windows. A big notice in bright crayon declared that Mass was said at the priest’s house next door, and confessions heard.
¡Arriba España!
, the notice concluded.

Harry had his bearings now. If he headed uphill he should reach the Plaza Mayor. On the way was El Toro, the bar where he and Bernie had met Pedro. A Socialist haunt once. He walked on, his footsteps echoing in the narrow street, a welcome evening breeze cooling him. He was glad he had come out.

El Toro was still there, the sign of a bull’s head swinging outside. Harry hesitated a moment then walked in. It had not changed in nine years: bulls’ heads mounted on the walls, old black-and-white posters yellow with nicotine and age advertising ancient bullfights. The Socialists had disapproved of bullfighting but the landlord’s wine was good and he was a supporter so they had indulged him.

There were only a few patrons, old men in berets. They gave Harry unfriendly stares. The young, energetic landlord Harry remembered, darting to and fro behind his crowded bar, was gone. In his place stood a stocky middle-aged man with a heavy square face. He tipped his head interrogatively. ‘
¿Señor.?
’

Harry ordered a glass of red wine, fishing in his pockets for the
unfamiliar coins embossed, like everything else, with the Falangist yoke and arrows. The barman set his drink before him.

‘¿Alemán?’
he asked. German?

‘
No
.
Inglés
.’

The barman raised his eyebrows and turned away. Harry went and sat at a bench. He picked up a discarded copy of
Arriba
, the Falange newspaper, the thin paper crinkling. On the front page a Spanish border guard shook hands with a German officer on a Pyrenean road. The article spoke of eternal friendship, how the Führer and the Caudillo would decide the future of the Western Mediterranean together. Harry took a sip of the wine; it was harsh as vinegar.