Read The Guardian of Secrets: And Her Deathly Pact Online
Authors: Jana Petken
O
n 11 July, the fate of Spain was decided. Ernesto sat in his conservatory and played with the buttons on the radio that sat on a small table beside his armchair. He found the Valencia station and heard music, a Bach symphony. It soothed him, and as he drank his second cup of coffee, he felt his tense muscles relax. The music stopped, and as he reached over to retune the radio, he heard an unknown voice that sounded so close that it made him turn expectantly towards the door.
“We are the Phalanx Party,” the voice declared. “We have seized Valencia radio, and tomorrow the same will happen in all broadcasting stations throughout Spain.”
Ernesto slumped in his chair and stared at the radio in disbelief; it had begun. A few short words had set the ball rolling, a ball that would roll and roll until it knocked down Spain. He called for another coffee and fresh bread. He would not go to the groves as planned, he decided. His place was right where he was now, listening for more news and waiting for the telephone to ring with the voices of panicked neighbours.
In Ernesto’s opinion, it was at that moment that the republican government should have defended itself by arming the workers who’d elected it. But it didn’t. It merely proclaimed that it was the legally constituted government and saw no need for arms.
Later, Ernesto called for Celia and told her what was happening. They sat on the shaded patio together, eating a light lunch and talking about their children and what this would mean to all of them, but neither spoke the words that would signal the end of their worldErnesto gripped Celia’s hand and fought the terrible thoughts screaming in the back of his mind: to leave La Glorieta or watch it being burnt to the ground or confiscated in a battle that would possibly leave them all dead were the unthinkable words that he refused to speak. However, one day soon, the unthinkable would happen, and his duty now was to prepare his family for that moment.
P
edro arrived at Tetuán, Morocco, in the early hours of the morning and found an eerie air of readiness at the base. Rumours were almost tangible in the warm mist, and young soldiers paced nervously up and down inside the hangars and on the grassy verges of the runway. No specific orders had been issued, but there was plenty of speculation. Fear of the unknown was painted on every face, but with it was an undeniable excitement that only a soldier could embrace.
“Orders have arrived; briefing in an hour,” Captain Mora told Pedro out of earshot.
“Are we marching?” Pedro asked him outright.
“Yes, this is from the top: General Mola. Before sunrise tomorrow morning, we will be at war with our countrymen, and we’ll either go down with this ship or live to tell the tale of our country’s murder.”
“And the mainland?” Pedro asked.
“I’m not sure. I am not in the loop concerning the wider planning, but I can only presume that similar orders have been issued for all provinces. I am giving you a troop of Riffians under my command. They will show no mercy, Pedro, and there will be no retreat. They don’t understand that word, but you understand this: If you have any self-doubt, hide it. If you are not committed, don’t speak the words to anyone. Understand?”
Pedro left Captain Mora, the man he hoped to call father-in-law one day, and strode across the base on shaky legs. It was 17 July, a hot, sticky day, a day he would never forget. He was resigned to his fate, and his only thoughts were for those he had left at home. He had presumed that Spanish Morocco would have to be taken first in order for the troops there to get to the mainland in time for the main uprising, but he had no way of knowing this and no way of knowing if his family would be safe. He had no way of knowing if his father had been informed of what was to happen, if his sister Marta had the protection of the Church, or if his brother, Miguel, would not do anything stupid or engage himself in unnecessary heroics.
Pedro’s final orders came down just as dusk was falling. The forces were to move into the town, and he and the Moroccan soldiers under his command were to take a forward position.
Pedro swallowed water to ease his dry throat as he marched alongside his troop, a bunch of men that he hardly knew and whose names he couldn’t remember. He had a good idea about what he would have to face when they reached their designated position and tried unsuccessfully to blot it out of his mind with images of home and family. His gun would be fired in anger for the first time, he kept thinking on that walk between civilisation and total mayhem. He would kill and might be killed. He had joined the army, but like his father, he had never once thought that he would see a war in his lifetime.
Pedro heard the sound of gunfire before he’d even reached his destination, and he checked his own weapon with shaky hands. A line of Spanish working-class citizens faced them as they turned the last corner. They had very little in the way of weaponry, but Captain Mora gave the order to open fire on them nonetheless. The first men to fall were the prominent unionists at the front of their lines, and as they fell, Pedro heard their dying screams of “Long live the republic!”
He closed his eyes, shutting out the sight of blood, men falling, and pieces of broken flesh. He fired his gun, yelling incoherently, and tried to ignore the noises around him. He didn’t know who or what his bullets were hitting, and he squeezed his eyelids together even tighter than before. He refused to look, afraid to see death. They were real people, he kept thinking, just like him, with families and lovers. He pointed his gun, holding it in a vice-like grip, his fingers pushing down hard on the trigger, and all he could think about was what he might be shooting at: a wall; a window; a man’s chest, leg, or arm? Was it a man, woman or child he was killing?
“You’ve run out of bullets!” he heard one of his men shout. “Reload, sir!”
Pedro’s watery eyes opened wide as he looked around him. Dead bodies lay grotesquely, some on top of each other and others without arms or legs, which had been torn apart by mortar shells. The wounded writhed in pain, their arms flailing and mouths wide, screaming for help. The road was wet, running with hot summer rain and blood, making pink puddles at the edges of the embankment, and empty bullet shells covered the still-smoking ground. His weapon was ready but there was barely a person still alive to kill. He looked around him again and saw that some of his own men had been shot and killed, and he wondered at that moment why he wasn’t dead.
That night, Pedro sat with his men on the outskirts of Tetuán town, shell-shocked and amazed at the rapid way in which the uprising had begun. He knew nothing about what was happening in any part of the Spanish mainland, although rumours were rife. What he did find out was that while the fighting was going on, the republican commander in chief in Morocco had spent the entire time gambling in a casino, unaware of the chaos in his colony. Apparently, he’d been told, the commander had only found out about the rising when a telephone call was put through to him at one of the gambling tables. Pedro shuddered, imagining the moment of his execution. He had seen countless summary executions that day, even after the victims had surrendered peacefully, and then he remembered that he was a killer now too!
Pedro ate a sloppy oatmeal breakfast and was surprised at the jubilant atmosphere in the camp. Campfires dotted around the area yielded the aroma of hot coffee. Soldiers lay their heads on jackets, chatting about their families and lovers and how many reds they thought they’d managed to kill. Others bathed themselves using buckets and helmets and some listened to radios in silence but laughed scornfully when the government issued a communiqué: “The government states that the movement is confined to the protectorate and that no one, absolutely no one, on the mainland has joined this absurd venture. I urge you to trust in the military power of the state.”
Pedro spent the rest of the day in a blur of confusion. News of Franco’s arrival in the camp had spread, and the general’s displeasure quickly reached the ranks. There was talk of failure, that the rising was going to be crushed through lack of men and means of movement, and more importantly, that General Mola was losing his nerve and might surrender. Pedro could only bolster his men by telling them that transport was being organised and that they would be reaching the mainland in the next day or two, but part of him wished that some of the rumours were true.
On the morning of 20 of July, after a fitful night’s sleep, Pedro was ordered to mobilise his troop immediately for transport to the mainland. Once there, the military objective would be to march on Seville and then on to Granada. He was still groggy from the little sleep he’d had, and he wondered if at some point, somebody was going to ask him what he thought about it all. He was following the orders of men who were butchering working-class citizens, women, children, local officials, and army officers, all because they remained loyal to their government. He had probably killed more than a few of them himself, yet he had not been asked for his opinion.
He wondered if it now meant that he too was a rebel. And did it mean that the civilians he had fought yesterday were now his enemy, chosen for death but not by him? In his mind, he saw the image of two of his friends from the Valencia garrison being shot in the head at point-blank range just for questioning their leaders’ actions. He had gone over to their lifeless bodies and had prayed for them. Standing there, he felt a mixture of anger and sadness. Then he remembered his Aunt Marie’s words: “Don’t give an opinion—opinions are dangerous killers,” she had told him, and she’d been right.
By the time Pedro arrived in Andalucía, news had reached the troops of risings all over Spain. Pedro’s first instinct was to try to find a telephone to call his family, but he realised that the pattern of cutting all communication lines had probably spread to Valencia. He was soaking wet from the rain that hadn’t stopped since they had put their feet on land. He felt helpless and so far away from those he loved, especially Marta. She was safe behind the walls of her convent, but outside, the peasants would be itching for revenge against the Catholic Church. He allowed the warm rain to wash him and, at the same time, thought about his brother, Miguel, involved in the most fanatical end of the rebel movement. How many people had Miguel killed? Was he still alive? The rest of his family at La Glorieta were probably safe right at this moment, and that brought him some comfort. But for how long, he wondered. He smiled. No doubt Aunt Rosa would be praying in her room and singing ‘God is all-powerful’ and ‘Long live the rebels!’
When Pedro reached Seville, the famed General Queipo de Llano had already taken the city. Pedro sat amongst some of the rebel nationalist soldiers already there and gratefully accepted a mug of coffee and a cigarette from a sergeant who told him that the general in command had arrived, gun in hand.
“The first thing he did,” the sergeant went on to say, “was to tell us ‘The time has come to choose a side’ . . . as if we have choice. Those were his exact words. And he said to join our comrades or continue to support a government leading us to ruin.”
“Then what happened?” Pedro asked him.
“Then we surrounded the civil governor’s office with our artillery, shot the arse off the governor himself, and then went into the slums where the commies and gypsies live and machine-gunned the lot of them. They were like a bunch of apes jumping all over the place, hiding in trees and crouching behind rocks. You should have been there; best entertainment I’ve had in a long time!” He rubbed his hands like an excited boy.
Pedro later learned the truth of the matter. The lower part of the Triana district was shot to pieces by cannon fire on the opposite bank of the river. The Moors had gone into the houses and killed all the inhabitants with knives, including the women and children.
“They left no one alive.” The soldier telling him the story gulped from a bottle of red wine, spilling some drops of wine onto his already bloodied uniform, where they mingled unseen.
“We slaughtered the bastards. The place looked like an abattoir when we’d finished! I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, trying to find the wine stain.
That night, Pedro lay on the narrow mattress in the quarters allocated to him and tried unsuccessfully to get the picture of death out of his mind. That whole day he’d heard story after story of the bloody rampage. What he couldn’t understand was that whilst some of the men had thought the explicit descriptions of carnage and destruction to be sickening, others had laughed, wanting to hear more and wishing they’d been there. He tossed and turned for hours, and when the first light of dawn entered his room, the first seeds of self-disgust had already begun to grow inside him.
On 25 July, Pedro was given orders to proceed with all haste to the local prison on the outskirts of the town. He chose six men to accompany him for what Captain Mora had called ‘a special duty’. He sat with his back resting against the canopy framing the truck, averting his eyes from the soldiers he had brought with him. Why him? he thought. Why had he been chosen? Captain Mora knew him, knew he would be sickened, and knew it would probably be the hardest thing he would ever have to face.
He led his men through the arched entrance of the prison and was told to wait in the courtyard. After a short time in temperatures of over thirty-five degrees, enemy prisoners were led out in single file. They consisted of the leaders of the Seville labour movement and some of their union workers, officers, and soldiers who had refused to join the rebels, in addition to civil government officials with their wives and children. Pedro’s mouth felt dry, and bile rose in his throat. He felt as though he was going to throw up right there and then in front of his own men. He thought about dropping his rifle and running away. He didn’t even care at that moment if the guards shot him in the back as he ran. He couldn’t kill these people, and he couldn’t order his soldiers to aim and fire either.
A Moorish regular crossed the yard and casually saluted him. “How do you want to do this, sir?”
He asked the question in terms of practicality, Pedro noted, not because he had an ounce of morality or sympathy.
“Sir?” the Moor asked him again.
“Face the children against the far wall. Blindfold all the prisoners. Bring the adults out in groups of five and line them up as far away from the children as possible. How many are there altogether?”
“Forty-two, including seven children,” answered the Moor.
“Then we’d better begin, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir. It’s hot.”
Pedro looked at his men. Some had unreadable expressions on their faces. Others, he saw, felt as he did, but like him, they were powerless to stop the executions from going ahead. He faced them all, walking down the small line of six men. He explained that they would be killed too if they refused, and that it wouldn’t help the prisoners, for they would be shot by another squad later, but his argument was ignored. They were murderers. There was no other word to describe them, he thought. They would all go to hell with no excuses.
When the first batch of men and women stood in line against the wall, he was glad he couldn’t see their eyes. He was also glad that they couldn’t see the tears that were now blinding him. He steadied himself, stood in position, and tried to picture Lucia’s sweet smiling face, but nothing could replace the barbaric scene before him.
“Take aim… Fire!”
He repeated the same words after the dead were dragged away and a new batch of prisoners was brought before him. He felt as though he were stuck in a time loop, a nightmare that would never end. The word ‘fire’ came easier to him as time went on, but the self-hatred he felt made him want to point his rifle at his own head.
After all the adults were killed and had been thrown into waiting trucks, the Moors led the children to the spot where their parents had fallen. They carried a couple of the smaller ones and leaned them against the bloodied wall for support. Some cried, and others trembled, their teeth chattering against quivering lips. There was a teenager and, next to him, two small boys about six years old. A little girl about the same age grasped her doll in both hands while another small girl, no more than three years old, kicked out blindly at the invisible hands that held her captive against the wall. At the far end stood a boy who was much older than the rest, carrying a baby boy no more than six or seven months old in his arms. The baby was crying, and the boy tried desperately to sooth him.