The Return (53 page)
Authors: Victoria Hislop
Tags: #British - Spain, #Psychological Fiction, #Family, #British, #Spain - History - Civil War; 1936-1939 - Social Aspects, #General, #Granada (Spain), #Historical, #War & Military, #Families, #Fiction, #Spain
They were marshalled into rows on a piece of ground in front of the huts and addressed by an army captain, his mean mouth and sharp cheekbones all that they could see of his face. It angered Antonio that his eyes were obscured by the peak of his cap. The crowd was silent, expectant, for the first time optimistic, as they watched his thin lips move.
‘Owing to the generosity of our great General Franco, you have undeserved good fortune,’ he said. ‘On this day, you have been given another chance.’
There was a murmur of relief among the crowd. The tone of this speech disgusted Antonio, but the content of it excited him. The captain continued. He had a message to deliver and he was not going to be deterred.
‘You will no doubt have heard that a law has been passed to allow the Redemption of Penalties through labour. For every two days worked, your sentence will be reduced by one day. For scum like some of you, this is more than you deserve, but the Generalissimo has decreed it.’
He sounded like someone swallowing a bitter pill. Clearly he did not approve of this leniency, and would have preferred to see these men suffer the maximum punishment, but Franco’s word was supreme and he was obliged to carry out orders.
He continued: ‘More importantly, you have been selected for the most glorious of all tasks.’
Antonio began to feel apprehensive. He had heard of prisoners being used as forced labour on building projects, such as the reconstruction of towns like Belchite and Brunete, which had been devastated during the conflict. Perhaps this was his fate.
‘This is what El Caudillo said when he announced his plans for this project. I quote . . .’
The captain drew himself up to his full height and adopted an ever more pompous tone.The irony was that his voice was considerably deeper and more masculine than that of Franco, with whose reedy, strangulated tones they were all familiar. ‘“I want this place to have the grandness of the shrines of old . . . to be a restful place of meditation where future generations can pay homage to those who made Spain a better place . . .” ’ His singsong delivery of Franco’s words was almost worshipful, but his voice soon reverted to a harsher tone.
‘The place that you have been chosen to construct is The Valley of the Fallen. This monument will commemorate the thousands who died in this fight to save our country from the filthy Reds - the communists, the anarchists, the trade unionists . . .’
The captain’s voice had gradually risen. He had worked himself up into such a fury of revulsion that his cap shook and the veins stood out on his neck. His hysteria was barely repressed. Those closest to him felt the spray of furious spittle that flew from his lips on the utterance of those last words. He was almost screaming now, though there was little need, given the total silence of his audience.
Everyone had heard rumours of this plan. What it confirmed to them was that they were in Cualgamuros, not far from Madrid and close to El Escorial, the burial place of the kings. Franco had one clear purpose in this project. Although this place would commemorate the soldiers who had died for his cause, it would principally be a mausoleum for himself. The fanatical, power-intoxicated captain had finished speaking now. He left it to his inferiors to marshal the prisoners into the huts.
‘So now we know why they have brought us all this way . . .’ said the old man who had been by Antonio’s side all journey. ‘I suppose it makes a change from being locked up.’
To some people this old man’s resilience had been a tonic, while for others his relentlessly cheerful voice had begun to grate. After all these months, years even, of hardship, it seemed extraordinary that anyone’s voice could be so completely free of bitterness.
‘Yes, it looks as though we’ll see a bit more of the sky,’ Antonio responded, trying to sound positive.
The hut that was to be their new home was very different from the last prison they had been in, where for days on end they were shut away in a windowless cell, the only light source an electric bulb, which had illuminated them twenty-four hours a day. It was squalid here, but at least there were windows all down one side and two rows of around twenty beds with a decent space between each one.
‘This doesn’t look so bad, does it?’
Above the cacophony of a thousand other men gathering on the scrubby ground outside the huts, all waiting to receive their next instructions, the old man’s cheerful voice challenged Antonio. He wondered why some people were so richly endowed with a cheerful disposition when all around them the world seemed to be disintegrating.
Laid out on the straw mattresses were brown uniforms and orders were given to put these on.
‘You could get two of me in here,’ said the septuagenarian, rolling up the sleeves and trouser legs. He looked absurd. ‘Lucky there isn’t a mirror.’
The old man was right. He did look ridiculous, like a child in his father’s clothes. For the first time in perhaps months, Antonio smiled. It was an unfamiliar feeling. His laughter reflex had atrophied many months before.
‘How do you manage to be so cheerful all the time,’ he asked, struggling to do up his buttons. His fingers were stiff with cold.
‘What,’ said the old man ‘is the point of being any other way?’ Arthritic hands were not making it easy for the older man to fasten his jacket either. ‘What can we do? Nothing. We’re powerless.’
Antonio thought for a moment before responding. ‘Resist? Escape?’ he suggested.
‘You know as well as I do what happens to anyone who does. They are destroyed.
Completely.
’ He spoke the last word emphatically. His tone had changed altogether.‘For me it’s about protecting the human spirit,’ he continued.‘For others it will be about fighting until their dying breath. My resistance to these Fascists is to go along with them, to smile, to show them that they can’t crush my soul, the very core of me.’
Completely.
’ He spoke the last word emphatically. His tone had changed altogether.‘For me it’s about protecting the human spirit,’ he continued.‘For others it will be about fighting until their dying breath. My resistance to these Fascists is to go along with them, to smile, to show them that they can’t crush my soul, the very core of me.’
Antonio was surprised by the answer. He had not expected it. Like everyone who had been in that cattle cage, this man had looked like a destitute labourer. Materially, he had even less. He did not even own the clothes he stood up in. His accent and the way he phrased his words suggested something else, though.
‘Has it worked,’ enquired Antonio, ‘this approach of yours?’
‘So far, yes,’ the old man said. ‘I have no religious faith. You could say that I am an atheist and have been for many years. But a belief in protecting your own essence, believe me, gives you such strength to survive.’
Antonio looked over the man’s shoulder at the sea of two hundred other men now reduced to a shapeless blur of humanity by the dung-coloured uniform. It was an amorphous mass, where individuality had finally been annihilated, but in its midst were doctors, lawyers, university professors and writers. Perhaps this man was one of these.
‘So what did you do before . . . this?’ asked Antonio.
‘I am a professor of Philosophy at the University of Madrid,’ he answered unhesitatingly, with a deliberate use of the present tense.
He continued now, happy to have Antonio’s attention, ‘Look at how many people have been driven to suicide. Probably thousands of them. That’s the greatest victory for the Fascists, isn’t it? One more prisoner condemned to the fires of hell - and one less mouth to feed.’
The man was so pragmatic, so realistic about their situation that Antonio was almost convinced. He had seen several suicides himself. The worst of these had been only a few days ago in Figueres before they were moved here. A man jumped up to grab the light bulb that hung by a wire from the ceiling and in a swift movement, before he could be stopped by either friend or Fascist, he had struck the bulb on the edge of a chair and plunged the jagged shard into his vein.
Guards had eventually arrived to drag away his body.They had seen it all before. It was too much bother to shorten the flex.
‘Well,’ said the university professor, jamming on the round hat that had sat on top of the uniform. ‘I think we’re meant to get started.’
His cheerful enthusiasm was, for a moment, infectious.
‘You see this?’ he said, pointing up at his hat. The ‘T’ with which it was emblazoned stood for
Trabajos Forzados
- Forced Labour. It marked him out as a slave.
Trabajos Forzados
- Forced Labour. It marked him out as a slave.
‘Yes,’ responded Antonio. ‘I see it.’
‘They can enslave my body,’ the professor said, ‘but my mind is my own.’
For every individual there had to be a reason to survive and this man seemed to have found his.
By now the rest of the room had cleared. In spite of their empty stomachs, they were expected to work today. There were two hours until darkness and their enslavers were not going to allow them to be wasted.
Marching in single file through an area of dense forest, the new arrivals eventually reached the edge of the site. As they came into the immense clearing, the very scale of what they saw shocked them.
Thousands upon thousands of men worked in gangs.The motion was continuous, streamlined, ordered, and it was clear that they were engaged upon some relentless, gargantuan, never-ending task. As they moved in one direction they bore a load, and then returned empty-handed for another, like ants moving to and from their anthill.
Antonio’s group was taken towards the vast exposed face of the hillside. At first glance it looked as though they had been assigned to literally move a mountain. The noise was deafening. Occasionally from within they heard a rumble. It was obvious what they were expected to do. A gigantic hole was being made in this towering rock. Any orders would have been inaudible in the cacophony that greeted them. There were piles of stone in front of them. Some men worked at breaking them down with pickaxes. Shards flew everywhere. The rest picked up the fragments in their bare hands and began to carry them away. Frequently, there was the shout of an order, a castigation, a raised stick. It was a vision of hell.
Antonio’s hope that working in the open was going to give them a glimpse of the sky was soon dashed. The air was opaque with dust. Even the illusion of freedom that had been dangled in front of them that afternoon had evaporated. With one hand the Fascists had given, and with the other they had taken away.
Chapter Thirty-three
WHILE ANTONIO WAS building Franco’s tomb, Concha Ramírez was still running El Barril, determined to keep the family business going. Like anyone who had been on the wrong side during the conflict, she suffered from the stigma of having a husband and son in prison. Concha was continually harassed by the Civil Guard and her premises often subject to search and scrutiny. These were purely tactics of intimidation but there was nothing she could do to prevent them. Many of those in her position found that their children could get nothing but menial work, and some, whose children tried to return home after fighting for the Republic, were immediately incarcerated. One of Paquita’s brothers had been executed that month.
One Thursday afternoon, a few months after Franco declared his victory, Concha was in the kitchen and heard the sound of the café door being pushed open. It had been a busy lunchtime.
A late customer, she thought with irritation. Hope they aren’t expecting anything to eat.
She bustled into the bar to tell the latecomer that she had finished serving food, and stopped in her tracks. She tried to speak, to say a name, but nothing came out. Her mouth was dry.
In spite of his hollow eyes and the unfamiliar stoop of his body, she would have immediately recognised this man in a crowd of a hundred thousand others.
‘Pablo,’ she whispered inaudibly.
He stood there, one hand gripping the back of a chair. He could no more speak than move. Every last shred of energy and willpower had been spent on reaching home. Concha crossed the room and held him in her arms.
‘Pablo,’ she whispered. ‘It’s you. I can’t believe it’s you.’
And that was the truth. Suddenly Concha Ramírez did not trust her own senses. Was this pale shadow her husband? For a moment, she wondered whether this frail, insubstantial being that she held in her arms was even real, or just a figment of her imagination. Perhaps Pablo’s death sentence had finally been carried out and this was just a spectre that appeared to her. Nothing was beyond the realms of possibility in her imagination.
His silence did not reassure her.
‘Tell me if it’s you,’ she persisted.
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