Winter in Madrid (41 page)

He sat down again. The old woman served the
civiles
, remarking how cold the weather was.

‘Too cold to go straight home after duty,
señora
.’ They took their coffees and sat down. One looked curiously at Barbara, then muttered something to his colleague. They laughed.

‘Come on,
señora
, let us go now.’ Luis was twitching with anxiety.

‘All right. But slowly.’ They rose and went out. Both exhaled with relief as the door shut behind them.

‘I am disappointed about the money,
señora
,’ Luis said sulkily. ‘Some things are outside my control.’

Has he moved lodgings on the strength of the money, she wondered. Too bad. ‘When I have a date, you’ll have the money.’

Luis shrugged angrily. ‘I will go to Cuenca again this weekend, see Agustín before he goes to Sevilla. We can meet again a week today.’ Then to her surprise he shook her hand again with that stiff formality of his before turning and disappearing into the grey afternoon. Weeks more, Barbara thought, weeks more of this. She clenched her hands. As she walked away she avoided looking at the
civiles
through the window, but she saw the old couple looking down at their coffee cups, giving the
civiles
frightened glances. They were afraid of them, too; they weren’t watchers.

A
LREADY THE FIRST SNOW
had fallen on the peaks of the Sierra Valdemeca far to the north-east. That morning for the first time there was a white crust of frost in the camp yard, a skin of ice on the little puddles. The early sun turned the snow on the distant mountains a gentle pink and Bernie thought it was beautiful even as he shivered in his thin boiler suit on the parade ground, waiting for Aranda to take the morning roll.

Beside him Vicente blew his nose on his sleeve, wincing as he looked at a streak of bright yellow snot. There was something wrong with his nose now; he had agonizing pains in his head and this ugly discharge that would not stop.

Aranda appeared from his hut in greatcoat and gloves. He strode towards the platform. He removed his gloves and blew on his hands, glaring at the prisoners. An icy breeze blew down from the sierras, ruffling the prisoners’ hair with harsh fingers as Aranda called out the names in his ringing voice. There were half a dozen new men: Republicans who had fled to France when Franco won and been sent back by the Nazis. They surveyed their new prison without interest. One of them had said the Catalan leader, Companys, had been sent back to Madrid and shot.

At breakfast in the dining hut Bernie took a seat with some of the Communists. Pablo the ex-miner from Asturias moved along the bench for him.
‘Buenos días, compañero. ¿Hoy hace frío, no?’

‘Very cold. It’s come early this winter.’

Bernie spooned up the thin chickpea gruel. Down the table, Establo glanced at him. His scabies was getting worse, his face pitted with red streaks where he had been scratching. A patch of hard red skin on his wrist showed the disease was reaching the crusted stage, alive with eggs and mites underneath.

‘
Compadre
Piper, you have decided to join us today.’

‘You know I like to move around,
compadre
, you get more news that way.’

Establo fixed him with keen, hard grey eyes. ‘And what news have you been gathering?’

‘One of the guards told Guillermo the stone from the quarry is for a monument Franco’s started in the Guadarrama. Apparently it’s going to be his tomb; it’ll take twenty years to build.’

‘If it’s in the Guadarrama,’ Establo grunted, ‘why do they want limestone from here?’

‘Suitable for the monumental fittings, Guillermo said.’

Establo grunted. ‘Sounds like propaganda to me. The guards sow these stories to make us believe Franco will be there for ever. You should analyse what you hear,
compadre
.’

‘I always do,
compadre
Establo.’ Bernie looked back at him steadily. With his domed bald head and the thin wattles on his neck, Establo reminded him of the lizards you saw in summer, scuttling over the rocks. Establo smiled coldly.

‘I hope you analyse particularly what the bourgeois Vicente tells you.’

‘I do. And he analyses what I tell him.’

‘Still on the quarry detail?’ Pablo asked, changing the subject.

‘All this week. I’d rather be on the cookhouse with you.’

The guard blew his whistle. ‘Come on, finish up. Time for work!’

Bernie spooned down a last mouthful and rose. Establo was scratching the crusted skin on his wrist, his mouth twisted with pain.

T
HE PRISONERS
assembled in long lines in the yard. The sun was above the bare brown hills now and it was a little warmer, the ice in the puddles starting to melt. The gates were opened and Bernie’s party stepped out, standing in a long file as guards with rifles took up positions every few yards. Sergeant Ramirez walked slowly down the length of the crocodile, his face sullen, staring at the prisoners. He was a fat man in his fifties with a straggling grey moustache, a red face and a drunk’s bulbous nose. He looked decrepit but he was dangerous, a churning volcano of hatreds. He was an old professional soldier and they tended to be the cruel ones, the conscripts generally
preferring a quiet life. Under his greatcoat the bulge where his whip was tucked into his belt was visible. He reached the head of the queue, blew his whistle, and the prisoners set off into the hills.

It was a three-mile walk. The Tierra Muerta was well named; it was bare and stony, a few fields sheltered by dwarf oaks scraped into hollows between the hills. They passed a peasant family labouring with an ox-plough at the stony soil. They did not look up as the crocodile passed; it was a convention that the prisoners were invisible.

A little further on they crested a hill and Ramirez blew his whistle for a five-minute rest. Vicente lowered himself on to a boulder. His face was pale and his breath came in jagged rasps. Bernie glanced at the nearest guard and was surprised to see it was Agustín, the man who had made that strange remark after his visit to the psychiatrist the week before.

‘I am bad today, Bernardo,’ Vicente said. ‘My head feels as if it will explode.’

‘Molina will be back next week – he’ll let you have it easy.’ He leaned closer. ‘We’ll work together, you can rest.’

‘You’re good to an old bourgeois,’ the lawyer said with an effort at humour. He was sweating, moisture standing out on his wrinkled brow. ‘I begin to wonder, what’s the point of battling on? The Fascists will kill us all in the end. That’s what they want, to work us to death.’

‘They’ll be beaten yet. We have to hold on.’

‘They’ve won everywhere. Here, Poland, France. England will be next. And Stalin has made his non-aggression pact with Hitler because he is so afraid.’

‘Comrade Stalin made his pact with Hitler to buy time.’ It was what Establo had said when the guards told them of the Nazi–Soviet pact. Bernie couldn’t swallow the idea that this war against fascism had now to be called a war between imperialist powers. That was when he had doubted the party line for the first time.

‘Comrade Stalin.’ Vicente laughed, a hollow laugh that turned into a cough.

Far away, where the Tierra Muerta sloped down into the hazy distance, Bernie saw an extraordinary thing. Above a layer of white mist was a cliff and set into its side were houses, sunlight sparkling on their windows. They seemed close, floating on the mist itself. It was a
trick the light played here sometimes, like a mirage in the desert. Bernie nudged Vicente. ‘Look there,
amigo
, is that not a sight worth staying alive for? You don’t often get such a view as that.’

Vicente peered into the distance. ‘I can’t see, I haven’t my glasses. Can you see Cuenca today?’

‘You can see the hanging houses themselves; they look as if they’re riding on the mist from the gorge.’ Bernie sighed. ‘It’s like looking into another world.’

Ahead, Ramirez blew his whistle. ‘Move it!’ Agustín called. Bernie helped Vicente to his feet. As they moved on Agustín fell into step with them. Bernie saw the man was studying him, though pretending not to. He wondered if he was after his arse; such things happened in the camp.

The quarry was a great round gash carved into the side of the hill. For the last few weeks they had worked here every day, hacking out lumps of limestone and breaking them into smaller chunks that were taken away in lorries. Bernie wondered if the story about Franco’s monument was true; sometimes, like Vicente, he wondered whether the quarrying was just an excuse to have them worked slowly to death in this wilderness.

Agustín and another guard built a fire outside the lean-to hut that had been erected at the front of the quarry but Ramirez didn’t head for the warmth as Molina would have done. He went and stood on a pile of stones, watching with his hands behind his back as one of the guards set up the sub-machine gun. Other guards distributed picks and spades from the lean-to. There was no chance of the prisoners using the tools as weapons and charging them – the machine gun would have cut them down in a minute.

Bernie and Vicente found a heap of limestone blocks to work on, partly hidden by a projecting rock buttress. Bernie set to work with his pick, letting Vicente sort the broken rocks into smaller pieces at a snail’s pace. They would work here, with only a short midday break for food and water, till sunset. At least now the days were getting shorter; in summer a work day lasted thirteen hours. The clang and crack of stone against metal sounded all around.

An hour later Vicente stumbled and sat down heavily. He blew his nose again, smearing his sleeve with a thin trail of the pus-like
discharge, and groaned with pain. ‘I can’t go on,’ he said. ‘Call the guard.’

‘Just rest for a bit.’

‘It’s too dangerous, Bernardo. You’re supposed to call the guards if someone’s ill.’

‘Shut your bourgeois mouth.’

Vicente sat, his breath coming in gasps. Bernie worked on, listening for a footfall behind the buttress. His feet hurt in his cracked old boots and he had reached the first stage of the day’s thirst, his tongue ceaselessly moving round his mouth in search of moisture.

The soldier appeared without warning, coming round the stone buttress too quickly for Bernie to call Vicente to his feet. It was Rodolfo, a grizzled veteran of the Moroccan wars.

‘What are you doing?’ he yelled. ‘You! Get up!’

Vicente hauled himself shakily to his feet. Rodolfo rounded on Bernie.

‘Why are you allowing this man to shirk? This is sabotage!’

‘He was taken ill,
señor cabo
. I was about to call for you.’

Rodolfo pulled his whistle from his pocket and blew it fiercely. Vicente’s shoulders slumped in despair.

There was a crunch of booted feet and Ramirez appeared. A moment later Agustín ran up behind him. Ramirez glowered at Vicente and Bernie.

‘What the fuck is happening?’

Rodolfo’s arm snapped out in the Fascist salute. ‘I caught the
abogado
sitting doing nothing,’ he said. ‘The
inglés
stood by watching.’

‘Please,
señor sargento
,’ Vicente said. ‘I felt unwell. Piper was about to call the guard.’

‘You felt
unwell
, did you?’ Ramirez’s eyes bulged with anger. He slapped Vicente hard across the face with his gloved hand. The sound echoed across the quarry like a rifle shot, and the lawyer went down in a heap. Ramirez turned to Bernie.

‘You were letting him slack, weren’t you? Communist English bastard.’ He stepped closer. ‘You’re one of those who’s not beaten inside your head, aren’t you? I think you need a day on the cross.’ He turned to Rodolfo, who smiled and nodded grimly. Bernie set his lips. He thought of what a stretching would do to his old shoulder wound
– it ached badly enough after a day out here. He looked into Ramirez’s eyes. Something in his look must have angered the captain. Faster than the eye could follow he pulled out his whip and lashed Bernie across the neck. Bernie cried out and staggered, blood welling up between his fingers.

Agustín stepped forward and nervously touched Ramirez’s arm. ‘
Señor sargento
.’ Ramirez looked round impatiently.

‘What?’

Agustín swallowed. ‘
Señor
, the psychiatrist is studying this man. I – I do not think the
comandante
would want him harmed.’

Ramirez frowned. ‘Are you sure? This one?’

‘Por cierto, sargento
.’

Ramirez pursed his lips like a child deprived of a treat. He nodded reluctantly.

‘Very well.’ He leaned over Bernie, hot breath rancid with garlic blasting into his face. ‘Take that as a warning. And you –’ he gestured to Vicente – ‘get back to work.’

He marched away, Rodolfo following. Agustín scurried after them; he did not look at Bernie.

T
HAT EVENING
, as the men lay on their bunks waiting for lights out, Vicente turned to Bernie. The lawyer had slept most of the evening.

‘Better?’ Bernie asked.

Vicente sighed. ‘I have rested at least.’ His face was drawn and seamed in the dim candlelight. ‘You?’

Bernie lightly touched the long cut on his neck. He had bathed it, he hoped it would not become infected. ‘I’ll be all right.’

‘What happened this morning?’ Vicente whispered. ‘Why did they let you go?’

‘I don’t know, I’ve been trying to work it out all day.’ Ramirez’s leniency was the talk of the camp; at supper Establo had asked him about it suspiciously. ‘Agustín said I was under the psychiatrist, but the psychiatrist wouldn’t care what state I was in.’

‘Maybe Agustín wants you in his bed.’

‘I wondered that but I don’t think so. He doesn’t look at me in that way.’

‘Someone looked at me as we came in,’ Vicente said quietly. ‘I saw him.’

‘Father Eduardo? Yes, I saw too.’

Bernie had had to help the lawyer on the last part of the evening journey back from the quarry, supporting him as he walked. As they crossed the yard he had seen the young priest come out of the classroom hut. He had paused and followed them with his eyes as they hobbled to their hut.