The Poet's Wife (15 page)

One day ticks interminably into the next and we mirthlessly welcome in a new year, 1935. Aurelia keeps the house impeccable; Mar hangs clothes out to dry, as distant as the clouds; Isabel reads books and dreams, I sense, of life beyond; Eduardo writes poetry; Pablo draws; Joaquín plays the guitar; María pouts; Fernando gazes; Beatriz blushes; Juan frets; Alejandro sits beneath trees staring at the mottled sky through a great canopy of leaves; and Inés and Graciana chase one another round the garden, becoming more restless by the day.

I observe all of this, attempting to create a semblance of normality and as warm a living atmosphere as is possible given the circumstances. I take on the task of tutoring all the children myself in two separate groups, divided up by age. Isabel helps me in this exhausting undertaking, both of us realising that we all need something more productive to occupy our days with than idling in the garden or thumping notes out on the piano. It is an extraordinary set-up, for none of Mar’s children are able to read or write, so alongside my own children extending their general knowledge through any book we can get our hands on, we help the new additions to the classroom with forming their letters and, after painstaking months and dozens of wads of blotting paper, they begin to make progress. Only Pablo is exempt from this; he is already seventeen years old and far more content left to his own devices in a corner of the garden working on his artistic creations.

Over a year after Aurelia’s family have moved in with us, a new coalition is formed by Azaña, the old Republican President. It is named the Popular Front, though it scarcely merits its self-given title of recognition. For we all know it is a final attempt by Azaña to unite the left-wing. Eduardo and I vote for the coalition the following month, yet we do so heavy-heartedly, for we have nothing else to vote for. The Popular Front’s policies are dubious and it has little clarity or vision and we feel like we are voting for a sinking ship rather than a beacon. A new government is hastily formed yet, shortly afterwards, our worst fears are realised.

I am in the kitchen one morning with Aurelia and Mar preparing
almuerzo
when the daily newspaper,
El Defensor
,
is delivered. As I hurry to collect it, I remind myself I ought to cancel our subscription.
El Defensor
is notoriously left-wing and its delivery each and every day is as good as hanging a Republican flag outside our home and calling out to the street ‘
Viva la Republica!
’ But this morning, as I take it back to the kitchen, I read the headlines aloud to my friends.

‘“
Under Azaña’s Popular Front leadership, many political prisoners will be released this week. A great many of these men are innocent of the crimes charged to them and the time has come for them to be acquitted and walk free.
”’

Aurelia grunts as she brings her knife down and halves a pumpkin in one swift motion.

‘Foolish man,’ she says, without looking up, dicing the pumpkin. ‘You can be certain that just as many of these so-called innocents are true criminals. It’s as good as inviting a fight because the right are certainly looking for any excuse. And now they’ll have it.
Qué tontería
,’ she mutters and shakes her head. Mar is standing at the sink drying dishes, half turned towards me. She is staring fixedly at the plate in her hand, turning it over and over again and rubbing it vigorously even though it is quite dry.

‘Soon,’ she murmurs quietly, ‘we will pass the point of no return.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Aurelia snaps.

‘What did your vote for the Popular Front count for, Luisa?’ She turns her lovely face towards me. ‘Anything at all?’

I frown and ease out the crease in the spine of the newspaper.
Remember to cancel the subscription
, I think again distractedly.

‘We always talk about staying positive,’ Mar continues, this time a little louder, ‘and hoping for the best. But nothing we ever hope for is played out on the streets. Isn’t it time to start preparing our children for the worst? At least in that case, if the worst never happens, it will be an improvement on that.’

I think it is the most I have ever heard Mar say at one time and both Aurelia and I stare at her. Perhaps she is right. Instinctively we want to protect our children, but circumstance has already dictated they have learnt something of the brutality of humankind and grown up faster than I should have liked.

Aurelia continues to dice the pumpkin with such speed that I fear for the fate of her fingers. When she has finished, she throws the window open further and spins round to face us, one hand on her hip.

‘Listen to that,’ she says, her mouth set in grim determination.

Mar and I strain to listen. At first I only hear birdsong but then the loud, shrieking laughter of Inés and Fernando calling instructions for a game.

‘That,’ Aurelia says fiercely, ‘is the sound of playing.
Our
children playing. Let’s allow them to play whilst they still can, shall we?’ She fixes us both with her black eyes for a few moments more and then resolutely turns her back to us. I glance at Mar and try to smile at her, but she looks away absently and continues to dry the dish.

Life continues in this frightening, agitated no-man’s land in which all the members of our household merely exist rather than live, and since the world outside the gates of Carmen de las Estrellas is one we are no longer permitted to freely inhabit, we must keep ourselves amused in any perceivable way. Our confinement seems to aggrieve Joaquín more than any other and at times he scarcely bothers to eat or sleep. Instead, he spends hours in the conservatory, furiously practising his guitar until he wears the skin away from the tops of his fingers and deep red droplets of blood sink into the velvet upholstery.

As trying as the situation is, and despite the horrors I hear each and every night on the wireless once the children are in bed, I always feel certain that our predicament can only improve, not worsen. And so it is to me that everyone comes with their eternal questions:
When will things go back to normal? When can we leave the house?
When will our school open again?
All I can do is offer a smile or a hug and tuck a strand of hair behind an ear, saying ‘Soon,
cariño
, soon.’
Nobody complains, not really, and though the last thing I wish is for my friends to leave, it pains me to notice that the clothes of my children hang more loosely on their bodies than before and that in the mornings I often see dark rings under their eyes from lack of sleep.

Even Eduardo asks the same questions as the children. It has become a game, for he knows how I shall answer, and he also knows that my reply is far from the truth. But perhaps just hearing me say it comforts everyone into believing, for a short while at least, that things shall soon improve.

Thankfully, we are also distracted to a certain extent by a new friendship that has blossomed between María, and a wealthy young American man.

‘I’ve met a boy, Mamá,’ María announces to me after lunch one day. I clap my hands together, delighted to be hearing some good news at last, but astonished, needless to say, that this has happened when the children are barely leaving the house.

‘What is his name? Where is he from?’

María smiles enigmatically. I am not surprised she has somehow attracted the attention of a male suitor; she looks very similar to my eldest sister, ‘
la rubia
’, with her fair hair, dark eyes and clear complexion and she often turns heads when we are out. I notice how she avoids my questions and responds with her own information.

‘He’s very kind. A real
caballero.
’ She beams and puffs up her shiny hair from underneath. ‘We met at Plaza San Nicolás some time ago, before the schools closed or anything—’

‘And you did not think to tell me?’

‘I’m telling you now. And we’ve met a few times since then.’ She enunciates her words carefully and I feel my brow knitting.

‘Would you care to tell me how?’

She laughs lightly. ‘It’s surprising the conversations one can have from the top of the garden wall.’

I raise an eyebrow. I must confess that I never would have supposed any of my children were forging friendships during those hours they spent perched on the wall.

‘Have any of the others met him?’

‘Joaquín,’ she replies, ‘but he doesn’t like him of course. And Fernando. He came along with me once or twice to meet him and Solomon bought us
limonada
.’

‘Solomon?’ I ask blankly. What kind of a peculiar name is that?

‘Yes, Mamá. He’s American. His Spanish is terrible, but he’s trying hard.’

‘I was not aware,
cariño
, that you had reached such a high standard with your English,’ I say coolly.

‘Oh. You know.’ María laughs delicately. ‘Languages never were my strong point.’

I frown; this is absurd and amusing in equal measure…and
American?
I am not entirely sure how I feel about this, but I sigh and alter my lips into a smile. I have no reason to believe that he is anything other than a good person, even if he has not won Joaquín over. But that is hardly surprising; Joaquín is and always has been fiercely protective of María and their bond as ‘twins’ has strengthened deeply over the years.

‘So when do we get to meet Sol-o-mon?’ I say his name slowly, testing it in my mouth but it sounds terribly strange.

Solomon comes the very next day and, rather than conducting their conversations from the unequal levels of street and wall, I insist he be invited into the house for a cold glass of
horchata
. Solomon visits many times in the coming weeks, in between going to the
universidad
where he is studying a course in the history of Spanish art. He appears to be blissfully ignorant and frankly unconcerned by the growing political tensions around him. Though I must confess that rather than being frustrated by his lack of awareness, we welcome his naivety. Because only Solomon has the capacity to allow us to pretend that life is running as smoothly as it ever has done. I rather like him from the first. He is full of jokes and mirth and flattery for María, which of course she adores; María always does love to be admired. I notice that Isabel does not appear taken with him – I think she finds his loud gaiety a little overbearing – but Joaquín and Isabel aside, he is welcomed into our house and we all enjoy the lightness his company provides.

Surprisingly, it is Aurelia who finds him the most entertaining of us all and she hoots and cackles at the terrible jokes Solomon tells in Spanish which, I must say, he takes very gracefully. I am pleased to see Aurelia laugh, for I fear that in these days of deprivation, she suffers terribly. I wonder if I am the only one to notice her spooning the very smallest portions of food onto her own plate and often barely even eating that, claiming she isn’t hungry and distributing it amongst other ravenous mouths.

Yet even the presence of Solomon in our lives can do nothing to fend off the painful but decisive turn matters take two years after Aurelia’s family first move in; two long years in which Aurelia hears from her network of
gitanos
in the city that few of the mountain caves have escaped the gangs of looters and many of Aurelia’s neighbours have been dragged from their homes and have evaporated into thin air like the fading dew. On countless occasions during these two years, I send out a silent blessing of gratitude that Aurelia came to ask for refuge in our home.

I
t is a hot
, heavy mid-summer day. The air is thick with condensation and I watch in lethargic disgust as fat, buzzing flies hurl themselves against the glass and congregate in dead piles around the windowpanes. It is one of these days on which we resent our inability to leave the grounds even more than normal, for despite the shady trees of the garden and the relative cool of the house’s high-ceilinged walls, we would derive a world of benefit to walk down to the city; to dip feet and fingers in the crisp freshness of the fountains and to sit under a wide parasol at a pavement café and sip freshly made
horchata
. There are no more chores to be done, no matter how hard anyone searches, and the heat is far too severe for anyone to feel like studying. Instead, everyone is scattered around the house and the garden, listening to Joaquín’s moody guitar chords and the whir of the wooden ceiling fans battling their way through the cloying air.

It has been a particularly tense week in which a prominent socialist lieutenant was murdered on his way home by a Falangist gang. As revenge, the following day a group of his colleagues killed one of the country’s most important right-wing political figures with two shots in the back of his neck. I don’t know if I feel more exhausted or shocked by the news. How can more widespread violence be avoided now? I sit in the conservatory with Aurelia and a few of the children, listlessly flicking through old newspapers as María unmusically hammers out the same few bars again and again on the piano. I am about to ask her to play something else when we all hear it, the whimpering that starts softly and gradually crescendos until everyone in the room looks up. It comes from upstairs and Aurelia ceases flicking her fan at the same moment María stops playing.

‘What’s that?’ Joaquín asks. I stand up from the chair beside the window and watch as everybody from outside, clearly having also heard the sound, starts drifting towards the house. I take the stairs in twos, and then threes. I race along the corridor and fling open our bedroom door to find Eduardo sitting on the bed sobbing, his head of curls in his hands. I realise with a start that in all the time I have known him I have only ever seen him cry for happiness. I glance back at the sea of concerned faces now congregated behind me in the doorway then approach the bed where I kneel at Eduardo’s feet and stretch a hand out to stroke his hair. When he realises that I am here, his sobbing calms a little as a few small, strangled chokes escape his mouth.

‘What is it?’ I ask quietly.

Eduardo slowly looks up at me, his eyes red and his face as white and starched as his shirt collar. He pulls out a handkerchief and blows his nose violently then, after taking a few more deep breaths, speaks in a calm voice.