Authors: C. J. Sansom
As the dust subsided they saw the collapse had revealed a cave, four or five feet high, behind the rockface. The crevice evidently broadened out behind, running into the hillside. The sappers walked up to the cave. They produced torches and, crouching down, cautiously stepped in. There was a moment’s silence, then a sudden yell and the two men reappeared, running back down to the truck with terrified expressions on their faces. Prisoners and guards alike watched astonished.
The sappers spoke to Molina in low urgent tones. The fat sergeant laughed.
‘¿Qué dices? ¡No es posible! ¡Estás loco!’
‘It’s true! It’s true! Go and see!’
Molina frowned, evidently nonplussed, then led the sappers over to where Bernie and the others stood. The sergeant nodded at Vicente and he stood up groggily.
‘
Oye, abogado
, you are a man of learning, no? Perhaps you can make sense of this fool.’ He gestured to the nearest sapper, a thin young man with acne. ‘Tell him what you saw.’
The man swallowed. ‘In that cave, there are
paintings
. Men chasing animals, deer and even elephants. It is mad but we saw it!’
A flicker of interest came into Vicente’s face. ‘Where?’
‘On the wall, on the wall!’
‘Something similar was found in France a few years ago. Cave paintings by prehistoric men.’
The young soldier crossed himself. ‘It was like looking at the walls of Hell.’
Molina’s eyes lit up. ‘Could they be valuable?’
‘Only to scientists I think,
sargento
.’
‘May we see?’ Bernie asked. ‘I have a degree from Cambridge University,’ he added untruthfully. Molina considered a moment, then nodded. Bernie and Vicente followed him back to the cave. The sappers hung back. Molina gestured brusquely to the man who had spoken. ‘Show them.’ The man swallowed, then took his colleague’s torch and passed it to Bernie before reluctantly leading the way back to the entrance. The prisoners watched with interest.
The cave was narrow and thick with dust, making Vicente cough painfully. Ten feet in it broadened into a wide, circular cavern. Ahead, in the beams of the torches, they saw figures on the wall, stick-like men chasing huge animals, elephants with thick fur and high domed heads, rhinos, deer. Painted in bright reds and blacks, they seemed to leap and dance in the torchlight. One whole side of the cave wall was covered with them.
‘Wow,’ Bernie breathed.
‘It’s like in France,’ Vicente said quietly. ‘I saw pictures in a magazine. I had no idea the paintings could seem so – alive. You have made an important find,
señor
.’
‘Who painted them?’ the soldier asked nervously. ‘Why paint pictures here in the darkness?’
‘No one knows,
soldado
. Perhaps it was for their religious ceremonies.’
The sapper cast his torch uneasily round the cave, lighting stalagmites and bare rock. ‘But there is no way in here,’ he said uneasily.
Bernie gestured to a jumbled pile of rocks in a corner of the cave. ‘See, perhaps there was an entrance there once, and it became blocked.’
‘And these have been in darkness for thousands of years,’ Vicente whispered. ‘Older than the Catholic Church, older than Christ.’
Bernie studied the paintings. ‘They’re wonderful,’ he said. ‘It’s as though they were painted yesterday. Look, a woolly mammoth. They’re hunting mammoths.’ He laughed at the wonder of it.
‘I would like to go now.’ The sapper turned, clattering back to the entrance. Bernie cast a last beam of light over a group of sticklike men running after an immense stag, then turned away.
Outside the sapper and Vicente went to talk to Molina. A guard gestured with his rifle for Bernie to return to the prisoners, still standing in ragged lines, many shivering now in the cold damp air.
‘¿Qué pasa?’
Pablo asked Bernie.
‘Cave paintings,’ he said. ‘By prehistoric men.’
‘
¿De verdad?
What are they like?’
‘Amazing. Thousands of years old.’
‘The time of primitive communism,’ Pablo said. ‘Before social classes formed. They should be studied.’
Vicente rejoined them, his breath rasping like sandpaper as he crossed the uneven ground.
‘What did Molina say?’ Bernie asked.
‘He’s going to report to the
comandante
. They’re moving us round the hill, they’re going to blast somewhere else.’ He coughed and more sweat stood out on his brow. ‘Agh, I feel as if I’m on fire. If only I had some water.’
A soldier climbed to the cave mouth. He crossed himself, then stood at the entrance, guarding it.
T
HAT NIGHT
at supper Vicente was worse. In the dim light of the oil lamps Bernie could see he was sweating heavily, shivering. He winced at every swallow of the chickpea gruel.
‘Are you all right?’
Vicente didn’t answer. He laid down his spoon and put his head in his hands.
The door of the mess hut opened. Aranda appeared, followed by Molina. The sergeant had a hangdog look. After them came Father Jaime, tall and stern in his
sotana
, thick iron-grey hair swept back from his high forehead. The men at the trestle tables shifted uneasily as Aranda faced them, his expression stern.
‘Today at the quarry,’ he said in a ringing voice, ‘a discovery was made by Sergeant Molina’s detail. Father Jaime wishes to address you about it.’
The priest nodded. ‘These scribblings by cavemen on rock walls are pagan things, made before Christ’s light shone on the world. They are to be shunned and avoided. Tomorrow fresh charges will be laid in that cave and the pictures destroyed. Anyone who even
mentions them will be punished. That is all.’ He nodded to Aranda, gave Molina a look of disfavour, and swept out again, followed by the officers.
Pablo leaned across to Bernie. ‘The bastard. They’re part of Spain’s heritage.’
‘These people are like the Goths and Vandals, eh, Vicente?’ Bernie nudged the lawyer.
Vicente gave a groan then slid forward, his head striking the table. His tin plate crashed to the floor, bringing a guard rushing over. It was Arias, a carelessly brutal young conscript.
‘¿Que pasa aquí?’
He shook Vicente’s shoulder. The lawyer groaned.
‘He passed out,’ Bernie said. ‘He’s ill, he needs attention.’
Arias grunted. ‘Take him to his hut. Come on, bring him. I’ll have to go out in the cold now.’ He pulled his poncho over his head as he complained.
Bernie lifted Vicente. He was light, a bag of bones. The lawyer tried to stand but his legs were shaking too much. Bernie supported him out of the mess hut, the guard following. They went across the yard, stumbling through puddles where ice was forming, glinting in the spotlights from the watchtowers.
In the hut Bernie laid Vicente on his pallet. He lay semiconscious, covered with sweat, breathing heavily. Arias studied the lawyer’s face.
‘I think it is time to call the priest for this one.’
‘No. He’s not that bad,’ Bernie said. ‘He’s been like this before.’
‘I have to call the priest if a man looks as though he is dying.’
‘He’s just ill. Call Father Jaime if you like, but you saw what mood he’s in.’
Arias hesitated. ‘All right. Leave him, come on. Back to the canteen.’
When they trooped back to the hut after the meal Vicente was awake again, though he looked worse than ever.
‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘Did I faint?’
‘Yes. You should rest now.’
‘My head is on fire. It is full of poison.’
In the opposite bunk Establo lay watching them, his yellow
scabbed face monstrous in the light of a tallow candle. He called across. ‘
¡Oye, compadre!
You saw the paintings, the prehistoric men. What were they like? Fine men, eh? Primitive communists.’
‘Yes, Establo, they were fine men. They were hunting furry elephants.’
Establo looked at him sharply. ‘How could elephants be furry? Do not mock me, Piper.’
N
EXT DAY
was Sunday. There was a compulsory service in the hut that served as a church, a white cloth placed over a trestle table for an altar. The prisoners sat through it as usual, many dozing off. Father Jaime would have told the guard to jab them awake but Father Eduardo was taking the service and he let them sleep. Jaime’s sermons were usually full of hell fire and vengeance but Eduardo spoke of Christ’s light and the joys repentance could bring, with something almost pleading in his tone. Bernie studied him carefully.
After the services the priest was available for anyone who wanted to talk. Few ever did. Bernie hung back as the prisoners filed out, then muttered to the guard. The soldier looked at him in surprise, then led him to a little room at the back of the hut.
Bernie felt embarrassed going into the priest’s room. Father Eduardo had removed his robes and was dressed once again in his black
sotana
. His plump face looked young, a scrubbed child’s. He smiled nervously at Bernie, gesturing to a chair before his desk.
‘
Buenos días
. Please sit. What is your name?’
‘Bernie Piper. Hut eight.’
The priest consulted a list. ‘Ah, yes, the Englishman. How can I help you, my son?’
‘I have a friend in my hut who is very ill. Vicente Medina.’
‘Yes, I know the man.’
‘If he could have a doctor, something might be done for him.’
The priest shook his head sadly. ‘The authorities will not allow a doctor here. I have tried, I am sorry.’
Bernie nodded. He had expected that. He went over the words he had rehearsed during the service.
‘Sir, do you believe forced conversions are wrong?’
The priest hesitated a moment. ‘Yes. The Church teaches that a
conversion to Christianity that is not genuine, a form of words, has no validity.’
‘Vicente is an old Left Republican. You know they are strong atheists.’
Father Eduardo’s face set. ‘I do. My church was burned by the mob in 1931. The police were ordered to do nothing; the Left Republican Azaña said all the churches in Spain were not worth one Republican life.’
‘Vicente can do you no harm now.’ Bernie took a deep breath. ‘I want you to let him die in peace when the time comes. Don’t try and give him the last rites. With his beliefs that could only be a mockery.’
Father Eduardo sighed. ‘You think we press dying men into forced conversions?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘How bad we must seem to you.’ Father Eduardo looked at Bernie intently. His thick glasses enlarged his eyes so they seemed to be swimming behind the lenses. ‘You were not brought up a Catholic, Piper?’
‘No.’
‘You are a Communist, I see.’
‘Yes.’ Bernie paused. ‘Christians believe in forgiveness, don’t they?’
‘That is central to our faith.’
‘Then why can’t you forgive Vicente what his party may have done and leave him in peace?’
Father Eduardo raised a hand. ‘You don’t understand at all.’ His voice had that pleading note again. ‘Please try to understand. If a man dies having denied the Church he will go to Hell. But if he repents and asks forgiveness, even at the very end, after the worst life, God will forgive him. When a man is on his deathbed it is our last chance to save his soul. A man then is on the brink of eternity. Sometimes he can see his life and his sins truly for the first time, and reach out to God.’
‘A man then is at his weakest point, terrified. And you know how to use that. What if a man takes the sacrament then through sheer fear?’
‘Only God could know if he was truly contrite.’
Bernie realized he had lost. He had underestimated how deeply the priest was buried in his superstition. His natural compassion was just a flicker on the surface.
‘You’ve an answer for everything, haven’t you?’ he asked heavily. ‘Endless twisted logic?’
Father Eduardo smiled sadly. ‘I could say the same of your faith. The edifice Karl Marx built.’
‘My beliefs are scientific.’
‘Are they? I heard about the cave that was discovered in the hills, the prehistoric paintings. Figures of men chasing extinct animals, was it not?’
‘Yes. They’re probably priceless and you’re going to destroy them.’
‘That wasn’t my decision. But you believe these people lived as Communists, don’t you? Primitive communism, the first stage of the historical dialectic. You see, I know my Marx. But that is a
belief
, you cannot
know
how such people lived. You too live by faith; a false faith.’
It was like the psychiatrist again. Bernie wanted to hurt the priest, make him angry, as he had the doctor.
‘This is not some intellectual game. We’re in a place where sick men are denied doctors and worked to death by the government your church supports.’
The priest sighed. ‘You are not a Spaniard, Piper, how can you really understand the Civil War? I had friends, priests, who were caught in the Republican zone. They were shot, thrown from precipices, tortured.’
‘And so you take revenge on us. I thought Christians were supposed to be better than most men.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘What does the Bible say – by their fruits shall we know them.’
Father Eduardo didn’t get angry, his face was sad and burdened. ‘What do you think it is like for Father Jaime and me,’ he asked quietly, ‘working here among people who killed our friends? Why do you think we do it? For charity, to try and save those who hate us.’
‘You know if it is Father Jaime who comes to Vicente he will enjoy what he does. His revenge.’ He stood up. ‘May I go now, please?’
Father Eduardo raised a hand, then dropped it wearily to the desk. ‘Yes. Go.’
Bernie got up.
‘I shall pray for your friend,’ Father Eduardo said. ‘For his recovery.’
T
HAT EVENING
Establo ordered a cell meeting. The ten Communists gathered around Pablo’s bed, at the farthest end of the hut.
‘We need to strengthen our Marxist faith,’ Establo said. Bernie looked into his face as he used that word. It was stern, severe. ‘The discovery of these paintings has made me think. We should have classes on the Marxist understanding of history, the development of the class struggle through the ages. Something to bond us closer together again; we need that with another winter upon us.’