Summer Snow (34 page)
“I don’t want your charity.” Her words were choked.
“It’s not charity,” the lieutenant denied.
“What is it then?”
“Keeping a promise I made when you were a child,” Tejada said shortly. He had no intention of discussing the circumstances of his promise with an insolent adolescent. “I said I’d take care of you, and I’m going to. You’re going back to school in the autumn, and that’s final.”
Alejandra raised her chin. “You’re not my father. You can’t tell me what to do!”
“You think if you were working you’d be able to talk that way to your boss?” Tejada snapped.
Alejandra lowered her eyes. “Sorry,” she muttered. “But I remember my father a little, you know.” Her voice was trembling, but it still held a hint of belligerence. “He was a Red.”
“I know.”
“They say . . .
things
about the Reds in school.”
“I know.”
“When I was little I told the sisters that what they were saying was wrong. They’ve hated me ever since.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Tejada replied, although he thought it was more than plausible. If she showed her teachers the same attitude she was showing him it was a miracle she was passing any of her classes.
“I don’t care if he was a Red.” Alejandra was crying silently. “He was my
father
.”
Tejada was embarrassed by her emotion. He looked for something to say and came up with a platitude. “It’s to your credit you feel that way.”
“That’s not what they say in school!” Alejandra’s voice was choked, but she impatiently waved away the handkerchief the lieutenant offered her. “They say the Reds were pigs. And that they d-did terrible things. And th-that we’re
lucky
General Franco led the National Movement to s-save S-Spain and th-they
talk
about the girls who have relatives in prison.”
“Are there many?” Tejada asked, surprised.
“No.” Alejandra shook her head and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “Just two others. And they’re friends but everybody whispers and points at them behind their backs and the sisters give them the lowest marks even though one of them is smart, and anyway they’re not like me either and I hate them. I
won’t
go back there after June! I
won’t!
”
“Be reasonable,” Tejada said, angrily because he found himself feeling sorry for her. “What other choice do you have?”
“I’ll get a job!”
“As what?” The lieutenant was contemptuous. “A maid? A nanny? With no experience and no references? Girls ten years older than you are
with
experience are looking for positions. You don’t have a hope!”
“I’ll find something.” Alejandra was dogged. “I don’t care if it isn’t anything grand. I just don’t want to keep going to school.”
“It’s not a question of what you want.” Tejada was once more in control of himself. “It’s a question of what your elders decide is best for you.”
Alejandra stood up and faced Tejada. “Then I’ll refuse to go to mass so the sisters won’t take me back.”
“You’ll be taken to mass, whether you wish to go or not.” Tejada spoke with deadly calm.
Alejandra’s eyes narrowed. “They can’t make me go to confession.” She hissed, “I’ll just sit there and won’t say a word. And . . . and I’ll
gag
if they make me take communion.”
“You do that and I’ll take a strap to you!” Tejada threatened, forgetting that he was only planning to be in Granada for another week.
“That’s what you people do, isn’t it?” she shot back.
“You ungrateful brat!” Tejada sought words and found that he had raised his voice without being aware of it. His wife and son had heard him and were heading back to the sunny bench, looking concerned. He took a deep breath as they approached. They drew up and stood for a moment in a frozen tableau, Elena frowning at her husband and Toño staring at his father, his eyes enormous. Then Toño moved to put his arms around the girl’s waist.
“Don’t cry,” he said, with a little catch in his own voice. “Please don’t cry, Alejandra.”
“Oh, Aleja.” Elena put one arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry.”
Surrounded on all sides, Alejandra was unable to pull away. She settled for hunching her shoulders and shrinking inward away from Elena’s embrace. “I’m not crying.” She patted Toño’s head, her voice shaking. “I’m all right, Toño.” She turned to Elena. “I’ll be all right.”
“Let’s go home,” Tejada said. “We can talk about this later.”
“W
hy not find the girl a decent apprenticeship with a seamstress or something?” Felipe Ordoñez suggested.
“Because I want her to stay in school,” Tejada replied with a scowl that even he knew was sulky.
The two men were sitting in a café in the Plaza San Miguel Bajo, watching the afternoon sunlight play across the facade of the church of San Miguel. Tejada had sent a message to his cousin the preceding evening, suggesting that they meet at a restaurant for lunch after mass on Sunday. Felipe, recognizing that the lieutenant was attempting to compromise, had agreed and suggested that Tejada bring his family to San Miguel.
Tejada had been unsure of the wisdom of taking his wife and son to the Albaicín to meet Lili and her children, but to his somewhat rueful surprise, an instant sympathy had sprung up between Elena and Lili. Maya and Pepín had apparently been briefed in advance, and they were immediately kind to “our cousin Toño.” Now that the meal was over, the children were racing around the square playing hide-and-seek. Lili, holding a sleeping Mariana on her lap, was carrying on a low-voiced conversation with Elena. Tejada and his cousin were chatting, and the lieutenant, in an effort to avoid discussing Doña Rosalia’s death, had confided his difficulties with Alejandra. “It’s not what her mother wants either,” he added, defensive.
“I’m not saying you’re wrong.” Felipe was soothing. “But if the girl wants to get expelled she’ll manage it. And you ought to have something for her to do. She doesn’t have a father, you say?”
“War orphan,” Tejada replied briefly.
“Well, then, with no money and no father, she’s not likely to marry soon,” Felipe said. “So you’ll have to figure out what to do with her eventually.”
“You’d want that for Maya?”
“Maya’s parents can support her until she marries. And Maya will have a dowry,” Felipe pointed out. He frowned. “At least, she will if I can manage it. You’re sure there’s no word about Mother’s will, Carlito? I talked to Nando yesterday and he was downright cagey with me.”
“I thought you said she’d disinherited you.” Tejada avoided the question.
“I thought you said that.” Felipe gave his cousin a shrewd look. “Is this something I’m not supposed to talk about?”
Tejada hesitated. Then he said, “I haven’t seen her will. I’d talk to Pablo Almeida if I were you. He knows what’s in it, but he’s not telling the Guardia.”
“And you think he’d tell me?” Felipe laughed. “Pablo doesn’t approve of me, Carlito. Too much of a stuffed shirt.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” Tejada said, feeling guilty although his response has been absolutely truthful. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
The two men sat in companionable silence for a little while. Then Tejada said, “I went to see Don Pablo when I first came. And I ran into old Nilo.”
“Who?” Felipe leaned back in his chair, his eyes on Pepín and Toño, who were chasing each other around the fountain by the side of the church.
“You must remember him—the porter, an ex-guardia, walks with a cane.” It had not occurred to Tejada that other people might value Nilo less than he did. He summarized his meeting with the ex-guardia to Felipe and ended up describing their evening together. “We both liked him, didn’t we?” he finished, with an appeal to his wife.
Elena looked across the table. “Who? Nilo? Yes, a nice man. A sad story about his wound.”
“What happened to him?” Lili asked, and Elena recovered much of the ground Tejada had already gone over. She explained the circumstances of Nilo’s injury and present employment a little more fully, and Lili clicked her tongue in sympathy.
“He’s lucky Pablo bought that building before the city seized all the Rioseco properties,” Felipe commented. “Any connection of the Riosecos would have been out on his ear if the government had confiscated it after that business with Miguel.”
The lieutenant made an annoyed noise. “You can’t fault him for his loyalty. And it’s not as if he’s responsible for the family. He was just one of their peasants.”
“
I
know that. I’m not faulting him,” Felipe said. “But you know what politics are like.”
“
Their
peasants?” said Elena pointedly, at the same moment.
“Don’t argue.” Lili shook her head at Elena with a faint smile. “It isn’t worth it.”
Tejada was exasperated. “This city is impossible! You can’t do business that way, stigmatizing everybody because they might be related to somebody who was a Red once upon a time!”
Felipe was still mild. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t do business that way. I bought some of the Rioseco lands that adjoined mine, and I haven’t dispossessed anyone. But I know of people who
were
dispossessed, because some of them ended up asking my foreman for work. And Nando’s, too, come to that.”
Tejada exchanged glances with his wife, half ashamed that he suspected he agreed with her and half relieved that someone at the table understood his feelings. Life in Potes would have been impossible if everyone with blood relatives among the Reds was excluded from civil affairs, much less everyone who had at one point or another come into contact with them. Besides, he had the odd feeling that Felipe had never actually
met
any of the people he had been too kind or too sensible to throw out of their jobs and homes. “I suppose Nilo is lucky then,” he said.
“Weren’t the Riosecos the ones who had that cottage on the coast we stayed at when Pepín was teething?” Lili asked, tactfully turning the conversation.
“No, Ramiro just recommended the place, he didn’t own it,” Felipe corrected, and the discussion moved on to other things.
To Tejada’s surprise, the subject of the Riosecos recurred the next day in a different context at the post. The lieutenant arranged for Alberto Cordero’s transfer to the Málaga Guardia Monday morning and sent Rivas back to Doña Rosalia’s house to continue searching for possible sources of poison. When the sergeant did not return by lunchtime, Tejada went home for another joyless meal with his parents. His father was present, and Tejada could not help wondering if anyone else noticed that he addressed no comments to his younger son.
Tejada ate silently and rapidly. When he was finished, he pushed back his chair, muttered an excuse, and fled back to the post, leaving his plate lying abandoned on the dining-room table. Sergeant Rivas had not yet returned. Tejada settled himself in the office to wait and spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about what to do about Alejandra. The sergeant finally arrived a little before five, looking relaxed, and greeted his superior officer with the utmost good humor.
“I’m glad you had a good day, Rivas,” Tejada said. “Would you like to share your progress?”
Rivas sensed that the lieutenant was in a bad mood and added apologetically, “I’m sorry I took so long, sir. But I ended up staying at the Casa Ordoñez until lunchtime, what with one thing and another, and then Luisa—Luisa Cabrera, the cook’s assistant—offered me lunch, and Fulgencio’s always been a good cook, so I stayed, and I think I found out something interesting, sir.”
“Oh, yes?” Tejada was neutral. The sergeant might have found something interesting, or he might be covering for his own laziness.
“I had a bit of a chat with Luisa,” Rivas explained. “And it seems Doña Rosalia bought some land in the Alpujarra a few years back.”
“I know,” Tejada nodded, and then two pieces of information connected in his brain and he added, “It’s not anywhere near Suspiro del Moro, where the bandits took over, is it?”
“No, sir. It’s just outside Órgiva. It’s a little place called Tíjalo. The point is, she bought it from Ramiro Rioseco, when the family went abroad.”
“I’m not following you,” Tejada said, skeptical.
“I remember the Rioseco case a bit,” Rivas explained. “It got some publicity and, of course, we went carefully, because they were a prominent family. The original denunciation against Miguel Rioseco was lodged by Doña Rosalia’s husband.”
Tejada went still. “Had he wanted to buy the land earlier?”
“We have no record of that. But the fact is he denounced the Rioseco boy, and his widow—your aunt—bought a parcel of their land.”
And Felipe bought another parcel
, Tejada thought but did not say aloud.
And Fernando is trying to merge with Rioseco’s old partner
. “Did any of the family stay in Granada?” he asked.
“A couple of the married daughters, I think. It might be worth checking out, sir. Especially in light of Doña Rosalia’s . . . worries about Reds.”
Tejada snorted. “You think she worried because she had a guilty conscience?”