A Long Petal of the Sea Read online

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  THE NEXT DAY THE mountain guide they were expecting arrived early on an old horse, riding at walking pace. He introduced himself as “Angel, at your service,” and boasted that the name suited him, because he was an angel to fugitives and deserters. He brought much- needed provisions, cartridges for their shotguns, and a bottle of spirits that would help relieve their boredom and treat the Asturian’s injury. When they changed the youth’s bandage, Aitor saw he had a deep wound and a hollow in his skull. He thought the intense cold must have prevented it from becoming infected; the youngster must have had an iron constitution to still be alive.

  The mountain guide confirmed the news that France had closed the border two days earlier, and that thousands of refugees were blocked there, half-dead from cold and hunger. Armed guards were preventing them from crossing. Angel claimed he was a shepherd, but Aitor wasn’t fooled: just like his own father, Angel had the look of a smuggler, a much more lucrative profession than tending goats. Once this was clarified, it turned out the guide knew the elder Ibarra: in this region everyone in the profession knew one another, he said. There were only a few passes through the mountains, there were many difficulties, and the weather was as fierce as the authorities on both sides of the frontier. In such circumstances, solidarity was unavoidable. “We’re not criminals. We provide an essential service, as I’m sure your father explained to you. It’s the law of supply and demand,” he added.

  He insisted it was impossible to reach France without a guide, because the French had reinforced the passes, so they would have to take a secret route that was dangerous at any time, but even more so in winter. He knew it well, because at the onset of war he had taken it to lead International brigadiers into Spain. “Those foreigners were good lads, but lots of them were city boys, and some of them didn’t make it. Anyone who fell behind or fell down a ravine was left where they fell.” He offered to take the two of them across himself, and accepted payment in French money. “Your wife can ride my horse, and we’ll walk,” he told Aitor.

  Midmorning, after sharing a drink that purported to be coffee, Aitor and Roser said goodbye to the four men and continued on their way. Their guide warned them they would have to keep going while there was daylight, and if they managed to walk without stopping, they could spend the night in a shepherds’ hut. Aitor was keeping a close eye on him. In this lonely spot, in a region he didn’t know, the man could easily cut their throats, not so much for their money but for his Luger, his penknife, his boots, and the Castilian blanket. They walked for hours on end, frozen stiff, exhausted, their feet sinking into the snow. For long periods Roser walked as well, to spare the horse, which its owner looked after like an elderly relative. They stopped only briefly to rest, drink melted snow, and eat the remains of the mule meat and bread. When it began to grow dark and the temperature dropped so much they could barely see for the frost on their eyelashes, Angel pointed to a promontory in the distance.

  It was the promised shelter. It turned out to be a round domed hut with slates used as bricks and a narrow doorless opening that they had to force the horse through to prevent it from freezing to death outside. Inside, the single round low-roofed room was much bigger and warmer than it seemed from outside. There was a pile of firewood, bales of straw, a big bucket full of water, a couple of axes, and some cooking pots. Aitor made a fire to cook one of Angel’s rabbits, and from his saddlebags the guide brought out some sausage, hard cheese, and a dark, dry bread that was better than the one Roser had baked with wartime rations back in Barcelona.

  After eating and feeding the horse, they lay down on the straw, wrapped in their blankets, warmed by the fire. “Before we go tomorrow we have to leave this just as we found it. We’ll have to chop wood and fill the bucket with snow. And another thing, gudari, you don’t need your weapon, you can sleep peacefully. I’m a smuggler, not a murderer. Besides, your father, old man Ibarra, was my friend,” said Angel.

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  THE CROSSING TO FRANCE took them three long days and nights, but thanks to Angel they didn’t once get lost or have to sleep out in the open. Each day’s march ended somewhere where they could spend the night. They passed the second one in the hut of two charcoal burners who had a dog resembling a wolf. The men, who made a living collecting hawthorn wood to make charcoal, were rough and unwelcoming, but agreed to put them up if they paid. “Keep your eye on these fellows, gudari, they’re Italian,” Angel warned Aitor in a whisper. This gave the Basque the idea to make things more friendly by singing the half dozen Italian songs he knew. Once the first mutual suspicion had been dispelled, they all ate and drank, then settled down to play cards with a very greasy pack. Roser was unbeatable: she had learned to play tute and cheat at the nuns’ school. Their hosts found this hilarious, and willingly accepted the loss of the piece of dried salami they had bet.

  Roser fell asleep on some sacks on the floor, her nose buried in the dog’s rough coat as it snuggled up to her for warmth. When they said farewell the next morning, she followed the charcoal-burners’ custom by kissing them three times on the cheeks, and told them she couldn’t have been more comfortable in a feather bed. The dog followed them for a good while, trotting along at Roser’s heels.

  On the afternoon of the third day, Angel announced that from then on they were on their own. They were safe now; they only needed to descend into France. “Follow the mountain edge and you’ll come to a ruined farmhouse. You can shelter there.” He gave them bread and cheese, took his money, and said goodbye with a brief embrace. “Your woman is worth her weight in gold, gudari, look after her. I’ve been the guide for hundreds of men, from battle-hardened soldiers to criminals, but I’ve never known anyone who put up with everything without a single complaint the way she has. And with that belly of hers, on top of everything.”

  An hour later, as they were approaching the farmhouse, a man armed with a rifle strode out toward them. They came to a halt, holding their breath. Aitor had the pistol ready behind his back. For what seemed like an eternity, they stood staring at one another from fifty meters, then Roser took a step forward and shouted that they were refugees. When the man realized she was a woman and that the new arrivals appeared more frightened than he was, he lowered his weapon and called out to them in Catalan: Veniu, veniu, no else faré res. He told them they weren’t the first refugees to pass through there, and they wouldn’t be the last. He added that his own son had fled to France that morning, scared that Franco’s troops would pick him up. He led them to a hovel with a beaten earth floor and half the roof missing, gave them some leftovers from his stove, and let them lie down in a simple but clean bed where his son used to sleep. A few hours later, three more Spaniards arrived and were also given lodging by this good man. At dawn the next day he offered them a salty broth with bits of potato and herbs in it, which he said would help them bear the cold. Before showing them the path they had to take, he gave Roser his last five sugar lumps, to sweeten the baby’s journey.

  Led by Roser and Aitor, the group set off for the frontier. It took them the whole day, but just as the Catalan had said, at nightfall they came to a rise and suddenly saw houses with lights. They knew this must mean they were in France, because in Spain nobody switched on lights for fear of bombardment. They continued the descent toward the houses until they came to a main road. Soon afterward, a van full of gardes mobiles, the French rural police, pulled up alongside them. They gave themselves up cheerfully: they were in the France of solidarity, of liberty, equality, and fraternity, the France with a left-wing government presided over by a socialist. The gendarmes searched them roughly and took Aitor’s pistol, penknife, and what little money he had left. The other Spaniards were unarmed.

  The gendarmes led them to a large stone building, the granary for a mill that had been adapted to receive the refugees arriving by the hundreds. It was packed with people: terrified men, women, and ch
ildren crammed together, all of them hungry and desperately trying to breathe because of the lack of ventilation and the clouds of dust from the grain floating in the air. All they had for their thirst were some drums filled with dubiously clean water. There were no latrines, only a few holes outside the building, where they had to crouch under guard. Humiliated, the women wept while the guards laughed.

  Aitor insisted on staying with Roser, and when they saw her bulging belly, the guards made no objection. Curled up in a corner, the two shared the last piece of bread and the Italians’ dried salami, while Aitor tried to protect her from the crush and sudden ripples of despair that ran through the detained refugees. Word went around that this was a transit point and that they would soon be taken to a centre de rétention administrative. No one knew what that meant.

  The next day, the women and children were taken away in army trucks. This was agony for the families; the gendarmes had to use their batons to force them apart. Roser hugged Aitor, thanked him for all he had done for her, assured him she would be fine, and walked off calmly to the waiting truck. “I’ll come and look for you, Roser, I promise!” he managed to shout, before he fell to his knees, cursing furiously.

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  WHILE MUCH OF THE civilian population was escaping to the French border by any means possible, followed by what was left of the defeated army, Victor Dalmau, together with the doctors still at their posts and a few volunteers, transported the wounded from the hospital in trains, ambulances, and trucks. The situation was so dire that the director, who was still in charge, had to make the harrowing decision to leave the most seriously wounded behind, since they were bound to die on the journey anyway, and fill the vehicles with those who had a chance of surviving. Crammed into cattle trucks or battered vehicles, lying on the floor, freezing cold, constantly jolted, with no food, combatants who had just been operated on, or were wounded, blind, had amputated limbs, or were delirious from fever, typhus, dysentery, or gangrene, made their way out of Barcelona. The medical staff had nothing with which to relieve their suffering, and could offer only water, words of comfort, and sometimes, if a dying man asked for it, a final prayer.

  For more than two years, Victor had been working alongside the most expert doctors. He had learned a great deal at the battlefront and later at the hospital, where nobody asked what qualifications he had: there, only dedication counted. He himself often forgot that he needed several more years’ study to graduate, and pretended to his patients he was a qualified doctor, in order to reassure them. He had seen dreadful wounds, assisted at amputations without anesthetics, helped more than one unfortunate youngster die, and thought he had developed the hide of a crocodile; and yet that tragic journey in the wagons he was in charge of destroyed his spirit. The trains reached as far as Gerona, then stopped to wait for other means of transport.

  After thirty-eight hours without eating or sleeping, trying to give water to an adolescent dying in his arms, something gave way in Victor’s chest. My heart is broken, he told himself. It was at that moment he understood the profound meaning of that common phrase: he thought he heard the sound of glass breaking and felt that the essence of his being was pouring out until he was empty, with no memory of the past, no awareness of the present, no hope for the future. He concluded this must be what it was like to bleed to death, like so many men he had been unable to help. There was too much pain, too much that was despicable in this war between brothers; defeat had to be better than to continue killing and dying.

  France was watching in horror as the border became jammed with a crush of people that the authorities managed to keep barely in check by employing armed soldiers and the fearsome colonial troops from Senegal and Algeria, with their turbans, rifles, and whips. The whole country was overwhelmed by this massive influx of undesirables, as they were officially called. In the face of international protests, on the third day the French government allowed in women, children, and the elderly. Then came the turn of the remaining civilians and finally the defeated combatants, who marched across the border exhausted from hunger and fatigue, but singing and with their fists raised. They left mountainous piles of weapons on both sides of the border, before they were marched to hastily improvised concentration camps. Allez! Allez-y! the mounted guards goaded them on with threats and insults, lashing them with their whips.

  After they had more or less been forgotten, the wounded who had survived were also brought into France. With them were Victor and the few remaining doctors and nurses accompanying them. They were allowed in more easily than the first waves of refugees, but didn’t receive any warmer a welcome. The wounded were tended in a rough and ready way in schools, railway stations, and even in the street, because the local hospitals couldn’t cope and nobody wanted them, even though they were the most needy among the hordes of “undesirables.” There were not enough resources or medical staff for so many patients. Victor was allowed to stay with the men in his care, and so could enjoy relative freedom.

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  AFTER SHE WAS SEPARATED from Aitor Ibarra, Roser was taken with other women and children to the camp at Argeles-sur-Mer, thirty-five kilometers from the border, where tens of thousands of Spanish refugees were already interned. The camp was fenced off on the beach, guarded by gendarmes and Senegalese soldiers. Sand, sea, and barbed wire. Roser soon realized that as prisoners they had to fend for themselves, and swore she would survive, come what may; if she had been strong enough to cross the Pyrenees, she could deal with whatever was thrown at her, for the sake of the child she was bearing, for herself, and for the possibility of meeting Guillem again.

  The refugees were left out in the open day and night, exposed to the cold and rain. Hygiene was nonexistent: they had no latrines or drinkable water. The water that came from the wells they dug was salty, cloudy, and polluted with excrement, urine, and the corpses that were not carried away quickly enough. The women gathered in tight groups to defend themselves against the sexual aggression of the guards and some of the male detainees, who, having lost everything, no longer had even a sense of decency. Roser dug a pit with her hands to sleep in, protected from the tramontana, the icy wind that whipped up the sand. The stinging grains of sand cracked skin, blinded eyes, filtered in everywhere, producing wounds that grew infected. Once a day there was a distribution of watery lentils, and occasionally cold coffee or loaves of bread thrown from passing trucks. The men fought savagely to pick them up; the women and children got the crumbs if and when someone took pity and shared their ration. Between thirty and forty people died every day, first the children from dysentery, then the elderly from pneumonia, and later on the others, one by one.

  At night somebody would stay awake to prod others every ten or fifteen minutes so that they could move and avoid freezing to death. One woman, who had dug her own nest next to Roser, woke up one morning embracing her dead five-month-old daughter, after the temperature had fallen below freezing in the night. Other refugees took the little girl’s body away and buried it farther down the beach. Roser spent the day with the mother, who said nothing and didn’t weep, but simply stared at the horizon. That night she went to the water’s edge and waded out into the sea until she disappeared. She was not the only one. Many years later, the exact statistics became known to Roser: almost fifteen thousand people died in those French camps, from hunger, starvation, mistreatment, and illnesses. Nine out of every ten children perished.

  Eventually the authorities installed the women and children on another part of the beach, separated from the men by a double row of barbed wire. Material began to arrive to build huts. The refugees constructed them with their bare hands, and some of the men were sent to complete the roofs for the women. Roser asked to speak to the officer in charge of the camp and convinced him to organize the distribution of what little food there was so that the women would not have to fight for a few crusts of bread for their children.

&
nbsp; Soon afterward, two Red Cross nurses arrived to give vaccinations and dole out powdered milk. They advised the mothers to filter water through cloths and boil it for several minutes before using it in their feeding bottles. They also brought blankets and warm clothing for the children, as well as the names of French families willing to employ some of the Spanish women as maids or in home industries. They usually specified: no children.

  Through the Red Cross nurses, Roser sent a message to Elisabeth Eidenbenz, as Victor had instructed her to do. “Tell her I’m Victor Dalmau’s sister-in-law and that I’m pregnant.”

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  ELISABETH HAD BEEN WORKING first with the combatants on the Spanish battlefront and then, when defeat was imminent, with the flood of fugitives on their journey into exile. She had crossed the border into France wearing her white apron and blue cape without anyone being able to stop her. Roser’s message was among hundreds of pleas for aid she received, and perhaps she would not have given it priority had it not been for the name of Victor Dalmau. She remembered him fondly as the shy man who played the guitar and wanted to marry her.

  The day after she got the message, she traveled to Argeles-sur-Mer to look for Roser Bruguera. Even though she knew how dreadful conditions in the camp were, she was shocked when she saw this disheveled, filthy young woman, ashen-faced and with purple lines under eyes inflamed by sand. She was so thin that her belly seemed to stick out directly from her skeleton. Despite her appearance, Roser met her standing erect, with a firm voice and the dignity she had always shown. Nothing in what she said revealed anguish or resignation, as if she were in complete control of her situation.

  “Victor gave us your name, señorita. He said you could serve as a contact point for us to meet up again.”