A Long Petal of the Sea Page 5

  None of the combatants could understand why they had been sent to die on the banks of the River Ebro. It made no sense to push into territory Franco controlled, and the cost in lives of maintaining their position was absurd. But to voice any objection out loud was an act of cowardice or treason, paid for dearly. Guillem fought under a lionhearted American officer who had been a university student in California before joining the Lincoln Brigade. Despite having no military training, the American showed he was made for warfare, a born soldier who knew how to give orders: his men worshipped him.

  Guillem had been one of the first volunteers for the militias in Barcelona, at a time when the socialist ideal of equality reigned. The revolution had extended this to every sector of society, including the army, where no one was considered superior to anyone else, or entitled to have more. The officers lived alongside the rest of the troops without privileges; they ate the same food and wore the same uniforms. There was no hierarchy, no protocol, no standing at attention, no special tents, weapons, or vehicles for officers, no shiny boots, fawning adjutants, or cooks, as in conventional armies and definitely in Franco’s. All this changed over the first year of war, when the revolutionary enthusiasm died down to a great extent. A disgusted Guillem saw how in Barcelona there was a subtle return to bourgeois ways of living: social classes, the arrogance of some and the servility of others, bribes, prostitution, the privileges of the rich, who had plenty of everything—food, tobacco, fashionable attire—while the rest of the population suffered shortages and rationing. He also saw changes in the military. Made up of conscripts, the Popular Army absorbed the voluntary militias and reimposed traditional hierarchies and discipline.

  Despite this, the American officer still believed in the triumph of socialism. To him, equality was not only possible, but inevitable, and he practiced it like a religion. The men under his command called him comrade, but never questioned his orders. He had learned enough Spanish to be able to explain the Ebro campaign to his men. The aim was to protect Valencia and to restore contact with Catalonia, separated from the rest of Republican territory by a broad swath the Nationalists had conquered. Guillem respected the officer and would have followed him anywhere, with or without explanations.

  In mid-September, the American was machine-gunned from behind. He fell alongside Guillem without a single moan, continuing to encourage his men from the ground until he lost consciousness. Guillem and another soldier lifted him up and laid him behind a pile of rubble until nightfall, when the stretcher-bearers could come and take him to a first aid post. A few days later, Guillem heard that if the officer didn’t die, he would be an invalid for the rest of his life. He wished him a speedy death with all his heart.

  The American died a week before the Republican government announced the withdrawal of foreign fighters from Spain, in the hope that Franco, who relied on German and Italian troops, would follow suit. That didn’t happen. Buried in an unmarked grave, the Lincoln Brigade officer did not live to march with his comrades through the streets of Barcelona, cheered by a grateful population in a massive ceremony that every one of them would remember forever. The most memorable farewell speech was given by La Pasionaria, whose incandescent enthusiasm had kept Republican morale high throughout the war. She called them freedom crusaders, heroes and idealists who were both brave and disciplined, and who had left their homes and countries to give everything, only asking in return the honor of dying for Spain. Nine thousand of those crusaders stayed forever, buried on Spanish soil. La Pasionaria ended by telling the departing foreigners that after the victory they would return to Spain, where they would find a homeland and friends.

  Franco’s propaganda called on the Republican troops to surrender through loudspeakers and pamphlets dropped from planes, offering bread, justice, and freedom, but all the combatants knew that deserting meant they would end up in a prison or a mass grave that they themselves would be forced to dig. They had heard that in the towns and villages conquered by Franco, the widows and families of those executed were obliged to pay for the bullets used by the firing squads. And the number of the executed was in the tens of thousands. So much blood ran that the following year the peasants swore that when they pulled up their onions they were red, and that they found human teeth in their potatoes. Even so, the temptation to go over to the enemy for a loaf of bread led to many fighters deserting—usually the youngest recruits. On one occasion, Guillem had to grapple with a youngster from Valencia who was so terrified he lost his nerve; Guillem pushed his pistol against the boy’s temple and swore he would kill him if he left his post. It took two hours to calm the boy down, but Guillem succeeded in doing so without anybody else noticing. Thirty hours later, the youngster was dead.

  And in the midst of that hell, where they couldn’t rely on even the most essential supplies, every so often an ambulance appeared with a sack of mail. The driver was Aitor Ibarra, who had set himself this task to raise the combatants’ spirits. Personal correspondence was one of the lowest priorities on the Ebro front, and in fact most of the men did not receive letters: those in the International Brigades because they were so far from their loved ones, and many of the Spaniards, especially those from the south, because they came from families where no one could read or write. But Guillem Dalmau did have someone to write to him. Aitor would joke he was risking his life to bring letters to a single recipient. Sometimes he handed Guillem a thick packet of several letters tied up with a string. There were always one or two from Guillem’s mother and brother, but most came from Roser. She would write one or two paragraphs every day until she had filled a couple of pages, then put them in an envelope and take it to the military mail office, singing to herself the most popular militia song: If you want to write / you know where I’ll be / Third Mixed Brigade / in the first line of fire. She had no idea that Ibarra greeted Guillem with the same or a similar song when he handed him the letters. The Basque sang even when he was asleep to ward off fear and beguile his good luck fairy.

  * * *

  —

  AFTER CONQUERING MOST OF the country, Franco’s troops continued their inexorable advance; it was obvious that Catalonia would fall as well. Panic gripped Barcelona; many made preparations to leave, lots more had already done so. In mid-January 1939, Aitor Ibarra arrived at Manresa hospital in a battered truck with nineteen gravely wounded men. There had been twenty-one when they started out, but two had died on the journey, and their bodies had been left by the wayside. Some doctors had already fled the city, while those who remained were trying to avoid panic among their patients. The members of the Republican government had also chosen to go into exile, hoping to continue to govern from Paris. This finally undermined the spirit of the civilian population. By now, the Nationalists were less than twenty-five kilometers from Barcelona.

  Ibarra had gone fifty hours without sleeping. After delivering his pitiful cargo, he collapsed, exhausted, into Victor Dalmau’s arms when the doctor came out to receive the wounded. Victor installed Aitor in what he called his regal chamber—a camp bed, kerosene lamp, and chamber pot constituted his entire lodging ever since he had begun living in the hospital in order to save time. Some hours later, when there was a lull in the frenetic activity in the operating theater, Victor took his friend a bowl of lentil soup, the dried sausage his mother had sent him that week, and a pot of chicory coffee. He had difficulty waking up Aitor, but still dizzy with fatigue, the Basque ate voraciously and told him in detail about the battle of the Ebro, which Victor already knew about in outline from the accounts of all the injured he had treated in the previous months. The Republican Army had been decimated and, according to Ibarra, it only remained for them to prepare for the final defeat. “In the hundred and fifteen days of combat, more than ten thousand of our men died. I don’t know how many thousands more were taken prisoner, or how many civilian victims there were in the bombed towns and villages, and that’s not counting the losses among the enemy,” added th
e Basque. As Professor Marcel Lluis Dalmau had predicted before he died, the war was lost. There would be no negotiated peace, as the Republican high command was claiming; Franco would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender. “Don’t believe the Francoist propaganda: there’ll be no mercy or justice. There’ll be a bloodbath, just like there has been in the rest of the country. We’re done for.”

  To Victor, who had shared moments of tragedy with Ibarra without him ever losing his defiant smile, his songs and jokes, the gloomy expression on his friend’s face was even more eloquent than his words. Aitor took a small bottle of liquor out of his rucksack, poured it into the watery coffee, and offered it to Victor. “Here, you’re going to need it,” he told him. For a long while he had been searching for the best way to give Victor the sad news about his brother, but in the end could only blurt out that Guillem had died on the eighth of November.

  “How?” was all that Victor managed to ask.

  “A bomb in the trench. I’m sorry, Victor, I prefer to spare you the details.”

  “Tell me what happened,” Victor insisted.

  “The bomb blew several men to pieces. There was no time to reconstitute the bodies, so we buried the pieces.”

  “So then you weren’t able to identify them.”

  “We couldn’t identify them individually, Victor, but we knew who was in the trench. Guillem was one of them.”

  “But you can’t be sure, can you?”

  “I’m afraid I can,” said Aitor, taking a charred billfold from his rucksack.

  Victor carefully opened the billfold, which seemed to be about to fall to pieces. He took out Guillem’s army identity card, and a miraculously intact photograph. It was the image of a young girl standing next to a grand piano. Victor Dalmau remained seated for several minutes at the foot of the camp bed, unable to speak. Aitor didn’t have the heart to embrace him as he would have liked, but sat beside him without moving, also silent.

  “It’s his girlfriend, Roser Bruguera. They were going to get married after the war,” said Victor finally.

  “I’m so sorry, Victor, but you’ll have to tell her.”

  “She’s pregnant: six or seven months, I think. I can’t tell her without being sure that Guillem has died.”

  “What more certainty do you need, Victor? Nobody came out of that hellhole alive.”

  “But he might not have been there.”

  “If that were the case, he would still have his billfold in his pocket, he would be alive somewhere, and we would have news of him. Two months have gone by. Don’t you think the billfold is proof enough?”

  That weekend, Victor Dalmau went home to his mother’s house in Barcelona. She received him with arròs negre made with a cup of rice she had bought on the black market, a few cloves of garlic, and an octopus that she bartered for her husband’s watch down at the port. The fishing catch was reserved for the soldiers, and what little was distributed among the civilian population was meant to go to hospitals and children’s centers, although everyone knew there was no shortage on the tables of the politicians or in the hotels and restaurants frequented by the bourgeoisie.

  When he saw his mother so thin and shriveled, looking so aged with worry and concern, and a radiant Roser with a bulging stomach and the inner glow that pregnant women have, Victor couldn’t bear to tell them about Guillem’s death; they were still in mourning for Marcel Lluis. He tried to do so several times, but the words froze in his chest, and so he decided to wait until Roser gave birth, or the war came to an end. With a baby in their arms, Carme’s grief at losing her son, and Roser’s at losing her great love, would be more bearable. Or so he thought.

  CHAPTER 3

  1939

  The days of a century passed by

  And the hours followed your exile.

  —PABLO NERUDA

  “Artigas”

  CANTO GENERAL

  THE DAY NEAR THE END of January in Barcelona when the exodus that became known as the Retreat began, it dawned so cold that water froze in the pipes, vehicles and animals got stuck on the ice, and the sky, shrouded in dark clouds, seemed to be in deep mourning. It was one of the coldest winters in living memory. Franco’s Nationalist troops were advancing down from Tibidabo, and panic gripped the civilian population. Hundreds of Nationalist prisoners were dragged from their cells and shot. Soldiers, many of them wounded, began the trek toward the French border, following thousands upon thousands of civilians: entire families, grandparents, mothers, children, breastfeeding infants, everyone carrying whatever they could take with them. Some traveled in buses or trucks, others on bicycles, horse-drawn carts, horses, or mules, but the majority went on foot, hauling their belongings in sacks, a pitiful procession of the desperate. Behind them they left shuttered homes and treasured objects. Pets followed their owners for some of the way, but soon became lost in the chaos and were left behind.

  Victor Dalmau had spent the night evacuating those among the wounded who could be transferred in the few available ambulances, trucks, and trains. Around eight o’clock in the morning, he realized he ought to follow his father’s orders and save his mother and Roser, but he couldn’t abandon his patients. He managed to locate Aitor Ibarra and convince him he should leave with the two women. The Basque driver had an old German motorcycle with a sidecar. In peacetime it had been his pride and joy, but for the past three years he had kept it safe in a friend’s garage, unable to use it due to the shortage of fuel. Given the circumstances, Aitor thought extreme measures were justified, and he stole two jerry cans of gasoline from the hospital. The bike lived up to the reputation of Teutonic technological excellence and kicked into life at the third try, as if it had never spent a day buried in a garage. At half past ten, Aitor turned up outside the Dalmau house, engine roaring and in a cloud of exhaust fumes, having zigzagged with difficulty through the crowds thronging the streets. Carme and Roser were expecting him, because Victor had found a way to alert them. His instructions had been clear: they were to stay close to Ibarra, cross the frontier, and once over it, get in touch with the Red Cross to try to find a friend of his called Elisabeth Eidenbenz, a nurse who could be trusted. She would be their contact point when they were all in France.

  The two women had packed warm clothing, a few provisions, and some family photos. Roser was loath to go without Guillem, but reassured herself that she would be able to reunite with him in France. Until the last moment, Carme was also doubtful about whether or not she should leave. She felt incapable of starting a new life elsewhere: she said that nothing lasted forever, however bad, and perhaps they could wait to see how things turned out. Aitor provided her with vivid details of what would happen when the Fascists came. First, there would be flags everywhere, and a solemn Mass in the main square that everybody would be forced to attend. The conquerors would be received with cheers by a crowd of enemies of the Republic who had lain low in the city for three years, and by many more who, impelled by fear, would try to ingratiate themselves and pretend they had never participated in the revolution. We believe in God, we believe in Spain. We believe in Franco. We love God, we love Spain, we love the Generalisimo Francisco Franco. Then the purge would begin. First the Fascists would arrest any combatants they could lay their hands on, wounded or not, along with those denounced by others as collaborators or suspected of any activity considered anti-Spanish or anti-Catholic. This included members of trade unions, left-wing parties, followers of other religions, agnostics, freemasons, teachers at all levels, scientists, philosophers, students of Esperanto, foreigners, Jews, gypsies—and so on in an endless list.

  “The reprisals are ferocious, Doña Carme. Did you know they take children from their mothers and put them in orphanages run by nuns in order to indoctrinate them in the one true faith and the values of the fatherland?”

  “My children are too old for that to happen.”

  “That’s just an
example. What I’m trying to say is that your only course is to come with me, because otherwise you’ll be shot for teaching revolutionaries to read and write, and for not going to Mass.”

  “Listen, young man. I’m fifty-four years old and have a consumptive’s cough. I’m not going to live much longer. What kind of a life would I have in exile? I prefer to die in my own home, my own city, with or without Franco.”

  Aitor spent another fifteen minutes trying in vain to persuade her, until finally Roser intervened.

  “Come with us, Doña Carme, your grandchild and I need you. After a while, when we’ve settled and can see how things are in Spain, you can return if you wish.”

  “You’re stronger and more capable than I am, Roser. You’ll get along fine on your own. Don’t cry, now…”

  “How can I not cry? What will I do without you?”

  “All right, so long as it’s understood I’m doing this for you and the baby. If it were up to me, I’d stay and put a brave face on it.”

  “That’s enough, ladies, we need to leave right now,” insisted Aitor.

  “What about the hens?”

  “Set them loose, somebody will find them. Come on, it’s time to go.”

  Roser wanted to sit astride the motorbike behind Aitor, but he and Carme convinced her to use the sidecar, where there was less danger of damaging the child or causing a miscarriage. Carme, wrapped in several cardigans and a black woolen Castilian blanket that was rainproof and as heavy as a rug, clambered onto the pillion seat. She weighed so little that if it hadn’t been for the blanket she could have blown away. They made very slow progress, dodging around people, other vehicles, and draft animals, skidding on the icy surface and fighting off desperate individuals trying to force their way onto the bike.