James R. Thomas glanced up from his notes to the wizened Armenian peasant, who simply sat
and watched him, his face closed and empty. His face was riven with laugh lines and crinkles,
and he looked like a man who might normally be full of cheer and spirit, telling stories and
giving gifts to grandchildren, carving objects in front of the fire, talking and chattering, a man
who had lived a full life and now was content to rest. There was none of that happiness in his
eyes, which were flat and still, neither hard with anger and intent, nor soft with kindness and
companionship. There was something terrible in that face.
James wondered again how he had ended up in Armenia. Oh, he knew well the obvious causes. He
spoke Armenian, courtesy of growing up near a little Armenia in the United States, although
sometimes his Armenian and the Armenian that the peasants of Armenia spoke seemed like
languages more different than the difference between English and Armenian itself. When he had
become a reporter for the New York Times, it had just been an interesting fact, something
nobody cared about. Nobody cared about Armenia after all, nobody except the Armenians.
Nobody cared until the Turks had started massacring them, and the Allies of the last war had
done their best to get every newspaper in the world to carry the stories about it. Now, the war
was over, but Armenia was in the eye of the world, and the New York Times wanted to get every
scrap of information they could. They had plenty of native-Armenian reporters out here, but they
had wanted to avoid an impression that they were biased with just Armenians, so he was here.
But how, how had the world gone so mad, so crazy, so foul and wicked and terrible and full of
pain and suffering that evil could exist to such level to call the attention of the world to this land?
The pay was good, by the standards of a journalist, the country was beautiful, it was exciting
work, there was enough danger to make it interesting but not enough to make it frightening, and
he had come to love these simple rural peasant folk, who despite their poverty would let one into
their homes and share everything they had with you, who spoke plainly and simply, willing to
share their stories to someone, anyone, who might tell what happened to them.
It was times like this, as the feeling of helplessness and sorrow confronted him, that he regretted
it. "So Mr. Yeranos Nerguizian, how old are you?" James cursed the dreadful meaninglessness of
the question, it was like asking a mountain what its age was. Only Americans like him would
need that sort of information.
"I have 67 years of age, as of this spring." The voice of the Armenian was flat and lifeless, as devoid of life as one of the zones rouges in France, shattered by guns and left barren and dead.
"Where you were born, and where is it that you have lived during your life?"
"I was born in a village named Norashen, near Lake Van. I did not leave until three years ago."
"You were a small farmer, a peasant, then? Was life good there?" He wanted to curse himself
again, at these insane questions.
"We farmed the land, as peasants do." A flicker of something more like happiness flickered across
the Armenians face, although it was so small that James wasn't quite certain if it was really there. "You are American, from your land where buildings are said to be higher than the sky, so I am sure that you would think that it was poor. But for us, it was all we knew. We were happy, most of the time."
"Who was your family?"
"I had my grandmothers, grandfathers, my mother, father, two sisters, three brothers and... I
think three or four cousins, some nieces, my uncles, my aunt, There were probably around 15 of us." Yeranos looked like he might continue, then stopped. James was unsurprised. Armenian
families could be large compared to the little circles he was used to back home.
"What about yourself, when you grew up and started your own family?"
"You never truly leave your own family behind, American. But when I became a man, I married
Maritsa Mesropian. I remember when I first set eyes on her." A note of warmth definitely had to
be in his voice now, like a rose petal falling upon the frigid snow. "She was not beautiful, she was homely and plain. But she had a good face, one that smiled easily. She was a bit old, 16, I was 19. The matchmaker did his work well, we married a year later. I was happy at the wedding, the entire village there. At first we didn't know each other, but as the years passed we did, especially after my first child had been born. Njteh was so handsome, his face so red as he squealed the cries of an infant. Those were the happiest years of my life, I had three sons and two daughters who lived past childhood, Varak, Yeranos,
Noubar, and Goumach and Marmar. Those were the happiest years of all my life."
James had to shake himself out of the silence that followed, Yeranos staring off into the distance,
lost in memories of his past. He waited as the minutes ticked by, until finally the Armenian
looked up."I am sorry for my silence."
The reporter cleared his throat. "Don't be. It speaks in its own way, without words. I had to write
down what you said too," He added.
"Did you", he said continuing, "have any problems with the Turks or the Ottomans during those
years?"
"The Turks hated us. One of my neighbors, Mangasar was his name, had two of his daughters
kidnapped by Turks and stolen away. We never heard of what happened to them. There was
another, Haygag, whose son they tried to convert to Islam. In villages where the Russians and the
Turks did their worst. There was a group that fled, and the women violated, but they survived at least. We thought that we were safe, safe with each other."
There was once again the flat sound in his voice, without either pain or hate, but something
worse, an absence of anything at all.
"Is it too painful for you to go on?"
The Armenian shook his head. "No. I want to tell my story. I only wish that I did not have to."
He looked around. "Do you have a pot of tea?"
"Yes. What type do you want? I have herbal, apple, cinnamon, green, pomegranate, earl grey,
ceylonese, Nepalese, and a few Japanese."
"You have so many types of tea?" A note of whimsy entered Yeranos' voice. "We had a few in
my village at most, not most of a dozen from around the world. I thought that you Americans
liked your coffee?"
"We do", admitted James. "But I grew up in New York, near little Armenia. I learned to like the
taste, and I brought it with me when I came hear."
"You did not tell me that you grew up alongside Armenians", remarked Yeranos.
"In New York, you can find any people you could imagine existing in the world, and a thousand
more you never had heard of."
"Were there many Armenians there?" The Armenian man sounded interested. James liked the
sound. Yeranos had been willing to share his story, but otherwise he was painfully uninterested
in the world. It was only occasionally that flashes of the man who he had once been - or at least
who James thought he had been - showed through. Probably reserved, stern, but once he knew
and cared for you as one of his own capable of loyalty and friendship that would put any
American to shame, who would laugh and cry and feel joy and happiness as with any man. It was
something he had noticed, for many people who weren't his own countrymen; they were not as
prone to pleasantries and informality, and they could seem cold and uninterested to Americans
used to people who always smiled, but when one came to know them they would never abandon
you, never let you down, and always be there in your time of need.
"Yes, there were thousands of them. Did you know any Armenians who went abroad?"
"Many of us left after the Sultan started to attack us. Meghri Yeterian went to America, but we
did not hear from him again. More went to Paris. They sent back money and encouraged us to
leave to come live with them, but we did not want to leave our village. I wish we had."
Another lingering silence filled the air, until Yeranos looked up from his hands. "If you don't
mind, I would look some of your herbal tea. It is traditional Armenian tea?"
"Yes, it is, I purchased it here." James rose, and set a pot of kettle on the little fireplace he had,
waiting for the water to boil. The fire flickered and twisted, heat radiating from it, until the kettle
started to shriek and cry, the high pitched sound of the steam escaping. James poured the tea into
a cup, and put in the herbal tea mixture. Yeranos watched. Despite the silence, it was a
companionable atmosphere, the sound of the fire crackling and the occasional sigh of the wind
outside. They could hear little of the sound of life in the city beyond, although occasionally there
were the cries of neighbors and children who played in the courtyard where James had the home
where he was staying.
Yeranos took the cup of tea with his old hands, veined and marked by the passage of years, but
still steady and strong, drinking the tea with delicate sips. "Not quite like that in my childhood,
but close enough", he said with a sigh. "I have never found tea that matches it, it is always
somehow off."
"My apologies."
"You Americans are always apologizing for something. It is good that we try find new things.
None can return fully to his youth." Yeranos took another sip of tea, then put down the cup. "I
suppose you want to continue the interview now."
"If you do not mind, yes. What happened to you in the 1890s, in the Hamidian massacres?"
Yeranos looked off into the distance again, then started to speak. "We were lucky. It was hard to
see that at the time, hard to see that when the Kurds came and stole away our fields and our
animals. It was hard to see that when my youngest daughter, Marmar, saw her household
attacked and her husband killed and herself violated, then she was taken from us never to be seen
again. It was hard to see it when our house was burned down and we had to start anew. It was
hard to see it when taxes crushed us, and when grew hungry and frail, living in terror and horror
that we would be the ones to die next. It was hard to see that we were the fortunate ones, for we
survived, batter and bruised, but alive. My son Yeranos almost died, he was left for dead by a
Ottoman gendarme, but he survived, even if he could never use his right arm again."
The silence came again, and James let him wait to collect his thoughts.
"I was a man in my 40s. I was the patriarch of my family by then, my own father had passed
away. For me, the worst was the powerlessness, that I could do nothing, nothing but hope and
pray. Perhaps my prayers were answered, for we lived, but it was hard to see. There were many
in our village who suffered far more than us, far more than just a daughter lost and a son crippled
and a house burned down and fields stolen."
"Did you hate the Turks for it?"
"How could I not? I hated them, them and the Kurds who attacked us, I prayed that they would
die, that they would go to hell. Now, I am still sure they will go to hell, but I can no longer feel
hatred. Too much is gone to feel that."
"What did you do when the massacres ended?"
"What everybody else did." Yeranos had a bitter voice now. "We tried to rebuild. We rebuilt our
house, we raised our flocks anew, we lived life, we tried to patch up the pain of the past. It
seemed like perhaps we would be allowed to live our lives. It is funny how humans can be such
optimists with time."
"Did you know about the Committee of Union and Progress' coup?"
"Yes, but we didn't care. Who governed the Empire didn't matter to us. There were some who
were young who were convinced that it would mean an end to our oppression, but most of us
didn't know or care."
"But surely you knew about the pogroms during the counter-coup?"
"We heard about those", admitted Yeranos. "But there had been so many pogroms, so much
death, it was hard to know who or from why it came. The refugees from the Balkans were more
important to us, so many people in a land without enough space. All we wanted was to be left
alone."
"But you weren't, of course?" The answers from Yeranos were flowing more freely now.
Somehow despite it James didn't feel any elation.
The Armenian shrugged. "We were for a few years. Life went back to normal, as normal as it
could be. I'm told that the war happened because a man died in a place called Bosnia. How could
the world be so mad as to fight over the death of a single man?"
James shrugged. "The world is a mad place. I would not be talking to you if it was not."
Yeranos nodded in response. 'I suppose you want to know what happened in the slaughter." It
was not a question.
James simply nodded.
The same flat eyes and dead voice came over Yeranos. "We knew little about the war. When it
began, we hoped it would be short and brief. There were a few who hoped the Russians would
win, and that we would be freed from the Turks. Most of us just wanted to tend our fields."
"First they came for our sons, for work in so-called labor battalions. My sons were in their 40s
by then, their sons in their 20s. They were all drafted. We thought perhaps we if we complied we
would be left alone, but once the men were gone, we were without protection.
"I was lucky again." When the Turks had come, much of the family had gone on a picnic, and
changed our destination in route. We were far enough away that it the Turks and the Kurds didn't
come after us, they only burned down the village. Two of my sons, and my daughter, many of
my grandchildren, died. But me, my wife, my song Yeranos, a few others, survived. It was a
pitiful remainder, but we were alive." His voice cracked.
"When was this?" asked James, hating that he had to ask the question.
"Four years ago I think. Probably 1916."
"They came for you late." observed James.
"Our village was large enough to be difficult to take, small enough not to be important, and far
enough away from the cities and isolated enough enough not to be a target. And, we were lucky."
"What did you do next?"
Yeranos shrugged. "There was nothing keeping us at Norashen now. Everything was gone, and
we were sure that the Turks would come back and kill us all. So we left. Apparently the Turks
stole Armenians and forced them to march across the desert to die. We marched too, but we tried
to make it to the Russians."
"You must have made it, or else you wouldn't be here" said James.
"It was not an easy march. Goumach died first. She had always been a delicate thing, sweet and
pretty. The children started to follow, then the babes, and Yeranos died too, the poor cripple. We
were so thin, so tired, and yet still we marched. We could not bury the dead along our route, and
every day, every night, we lived in terror that we would be found. The vultures and the hawks
circled over head, waiting for us to die. And yet, I made it, and so did Maritsa. I don't know how
she did it, but she was always strong. A few of my grandchildren too. I don't know how. I don't
know how." He shook his head in amazement.
"I still remember running into the Russian patrol. We were terrified they would be Turks, that
they would kill us all. Starving and weak as we were, all they would have to do is tap us. Yet
they shared with us their coarse black bread, and they spoke to us in their stumbling Armenian.
We made it to their camp somehow, and there were other Armenians there, soldiers and others
who had fled. We thanked god that we were safe."
The words were pouring out of Yeranos now, faster and faster. James scribbled them onto his
paper, unable to stop, trying to keep up. The pause was a welcome relief.
Yeranos started to speak again, slowly and with a slight shake to his voice. "We were terrified
when the Russians collapsed, and we were convinced that god had put his hand over us when the
battalions held in 1918, when the Turks came again. We had a little farm by then, that we settled
with others who had escaped. We had hope for the future, and once again the salve of time
settled over us."
The voice broke at last, and tears came. Through the choking sobs, he continued speaking.
"It started again at the spring. We had planted our crops, let our flocks out into the country after
the winter. And yet then we heard that the Turks were coming again. We prayed that the troops
would hold them back like before, or that there would come help from abroad but we were
wrong. They broke them, and nobody came to help. Maritsa wanted to flee to Yerevan, and
maybe she was right. By the time we were to leave, the Turks had overrun us again.
I was, for the last time, lucky." He spit out the word like a curse. "I was in the cellar, that we had
built carefully so that the entrance was hard to find, when the Turkish cavalry rode in. Nobody
had heard or seen them, and they caught us all by surprise. I could hear outside the shots and the
screams from men and women, the cries of the daughters and wives as they were violated, the
wailing of infants and babes. And I could do nothing, nothing at all." The voice dripped with
despair blacker than coal, hope and happiness eviscerated from it.
"They burned the house, but I was safe. When I emerged, after the flames had died down, it was
night. I searched among the bodies without light, the blood staining my hands, but the Turks had
done their job all too well. At last I found Maritsa, among them. She was dead, and I couldn't see
her in the light, but I could feel the shape of her face. I cried then, I sobbed, I know not how
long, that the world would do this to me, to leave me the last alive of a kin of blood that was
once score, the last few of a people who had once stretched in their millions across a land."
The tears flowed freely now as he remembered it. It was almost sacrilegious to James to write it,
and yet the swift and terrible pen moved across the page, recording the words as fast as he could.
It was the least that he owed to the man. He felt an urge to try to take his hand and hold it, and
yet he could not summon up the power to reach out. He was transfixed, transfixed except as his
hand continued to scrawl across he page, as the story continued to flow.
"I don't know when I arose from the field of death and blood. The sun was up, and it was high in
the sky. I must have slept there, slept among the corpses as the crows and the ravens descended
among them, slept among the dead of my family and people. And then I walked, walked again,
to Yerevan. I don't know why I walked. I died in that field, and there is nothing that life holds for
me any more. But walk I did, among the other streams of a shattered people as we fled the
Turkish Army that they sent East."
"I arrived here a few weeks ago. There were all too many like me. They've spoken about
numbers that were killed by the Turks, numbers I cannot know, millions during the war, and
more than a hundred thousand in the last few months. My family is part of those numbers, but I
cannot imagine how those cold, those hard, alien terms, those figures, somehow apply to Maritsa
with her laugh, to my young Yeranos who had been so clever, to Goumach who was so delicate
and pure, to my grandson Aghasi who was so kind and innocent. I'm told now that the Turks are
marching now to Pontus, and I'm sure there will be more there who are like me, except they'll
speak Greek instead of Armenian. I find it hard to care any more, hard to feel anything. The
Turks could kill me now, and I think I would utter not a word against them."
At last, exhausted, he lay back in his chair, his eyes closing. He was so perfectly still that James
felt afraid that he was dead. Then, his eyes still closed, he spoke. "Thank you. Thank you for
hearing my story."
dimanche 12 mai 2019
mercredi 2 janvier 2019
Franco arrives at Barcelona
The transport ship's motor rumbled with a low, growling sound, like some sort of beast, as it pushed against the tide into the port of Barcelona. The sky overhead was a brilliant blue, different only from the sea by the lightness of its color, unsullied by clouds. Chutes of spray towered up into the air as the ship plowed itself through the crashing waves, the foamy white briefly flashing against the city, before it returned to the waves, and once more the ship rose and fell, rose and fell, a pendulum swaying through the waves. The heat of the day suffocated, like a great vast oven, with only the wind which swept in from the great blue expanse behind as a reminder of green and cool.
On the bridge of the leading ship, pulling ever closer to the harbor, a man stood apart from the rest of the activity of the buzzing work to bring the ship into port. He puffed on the cigar, on the bridge of the ship, watching the city draw closer, while naval officers scattered themselves around the bridge, at their tasks as ordered were shouted in the harsh language of seamen, their occasional gaze of fear at the man in their midst in the uniform of the army, with an obedient and watchful staff watching him from behind, as if looking for the slightest sway in the erect figure, standing pillar-esque against the movement of the sea. An expression of hunger, like something out of some creature of the deepest depths of the sea, of of a wolf, lined the faces of men who had seen and known war, men who had even come to enjoy it, for men whom blood spilled all too easily, for men who did their job and did it well, for men who searched for a challenge and knew to find it here.
A long line of ships followed behind them, the hulking metal masses and the otherwise clean decks covered with the panoply of war - guns with their blueish grey steel barrels glinting in the sunlight, trucks with the roundels of Spain on their side, rifles stacked in their serried rangs, sabers for cavalry brilliant like silver, anti-aircraft guns with their long and graceful muzzles pointed up at the sky as if waiting for some plane to arrive, or just the more modest but infinite array of tents, of uniforms, of great stacked piles of food, of boxes of ammunition with the wooden slats hiding inside the round after round of heavy ammunition, the bronze kept cool from the sun, those terrible, inhumane, bullets and shells. Horses whinnied from some ships, down in the holds most often, unsure of themselves in this strange and new environment, knowing themselves surrounded by water somewhere in their innocent and simple souls, unaware that they arrived at their destination at last.
It was not this which filled the people of the city with terror as they watched the long lines of ships crossing the foam-specked waves, watching from the elegant apartments built in the great famous courtyards of Barcelona, from the mountains outside the city flung up like a rampart around the second greatest of the metropolises of Spain, from the poor worker quarters where families were crammed into tiny apartments, choking in the heat of summer while their stomachs growled with hunger. It was the men, those men of Morocco, those men with their hard bodies, those men used to violence and bloodshed and death, their faces tanned by the sun, hardened by a callous disregard for life - it was these men they feared, not the guns they carried upon their shoulders.
Morocco! They had heard the news a few days ago, those inhabitants of the city, heard it as the troops of the government patrolled the city, as fighting passed intermittently between the anarchists and the communists and the soldiers, the petty war of ambushes, of knives, of execution. Heard it announced on the radios, heard it in the newspapers, those that still published, their stories tamed by the government censors, heard it in the whispering that crossed a city that seemed besieged, besieged from without, the sound which leaps from lip to lip, which grows with every recounting - but even just the initial word was enough to send a shiver up one's spine.
Morocco, the land of butchery, of barbarism, of the war to the knife. Fathers had fought there, fought against the Rif, and now they and their sons looked to the sea, looked at the bitter fruit their work had borne, as the hard man of a hard land crossed the sea to deal with the forces of rebellion. Some of the mothers of the city had already begun to tell it to their children, to be good, to be polite, to behave well - to do so, or the Moroccans would get yet! But most did not, for to talk about monsters under the bed or some mythical creature had the comfort of knowing that it wasn't really real, that when the boy broke down in tears, crying, that one could hold him to one's breast, hold the heaving child as his eyes ran red with tears and whisper, cradle him, tell him that it wasn't real, that it wasn't true, that he was good - that good children would never be punished, that the monsters would stay away.
But the Moroccans were coming, and that they knew, was real.
The first ship, with tugs maneuvering it into its berth, stopped in the port, the engines falling silent and the sounds of the seagulls and the lapping waters of the wave suddenly seeming so loud as to be deafening, against a silent and quiet city, the busy metropolis, the second city of Spain, the city of science and industry and learning, that city which now simply waited, waited in fear and agony, the maiden of the Mediterranean, the pearl of its Western reaches, so elegant and beautiful, as she fell silent and watched upon her wave-lapped shores the ships move like toys into her harbor, as hardened men talked and laughed from the gunwhales of the ship, watched a city the likes they had never before seen as it grew first from a dot on the horizon, and then become real, elegant, beautiful - but they were here, the ones to patrol it, the ones who would have power. Perhaps the waves that washed against the shore, perhaps the sound of the water, perhaps that was the city as she wept, the city which had for nearly a thousand years not known the footsteps of the men of Africa, of the men of the crescent, as they arrived in the name of the Cross to defend against the enemies of European civilization.
It was him of course, to come ashore first, as soon as the sailors had tied the ropes and put down the gangplank, the oak wood rich and dark against the gentle tossing of the waves, connecting the ship of steel to the land of stone. He stepped ashore onto the land, swaying slightly as he adjusted back to the firmness of the soil, while the strains of the Marcha Real - not the Spanish anthem - played out into the sweltering air. The musicians hands' shook as they played it, shook as they gazed upon the man who had come, this commissar of this supposed Republic based from Madrid, sent by distant men to bring order to their city, to restore peace - this man who came from the sands of a desert, and called it too peace. They watched, and they wondered, wondered what the future held, wondered what fate destiny intended for their city.
For General Francisco Franco, at the head of the Army of Morocco had arrived to Barcelona, and their orders were to exterminate the enemies of Spain, of Catholicism, and of Civilization. And in that, as they had done in a thousand villages, a thousand points of resistance across the distant land of Morocco, where they had by the sword and by the gun destroyed the fierce men of the sands of the Rif and brought their warriors into the service of Spain, to them themselves return in hand to crush in turn the enemies of Spain - in that, they would succeed. In that, there could be no doubt. The price of defeat was too great.
In the battle between civilization and barbarism, between Christianity and atheism, between loyalty and treason, between Spain and separatism, there could be no compromise, there could be no retreat, there could be only victory.
Franco would triumph, of that there could be no doubt.
On the bridge of the leading ship, pulling ever closer to the harbor, a man stood apart from the rest of the activity of the buzzing work to bring the ship into port. He puffed on the cigar, on the bridge of the ship, watching the city draw closer, while naval officers scattered themselves around the bridge, at their tasks as ordered were shouted in the harsh language of seamen, their occasional gaze of fear at the man in their midst in the uniform of the army, with an obedient and watchful staff watching him from behind, as if looking for the slightest sway in the erect figure, standing pillar-esque against the movement of the sea. An expression of hunger, like something out of some creature of the deepest depths of the sea, of of a wolf, lined the faces of men who had seen and known war, men who had even come to enjoy it, for men whom blood spilled all too easily, for men who did their job and did it well, for men who searched for a challenge and knew to find it here.
A long line of ships followed behind them, the hulking metal masses and the otherwise clean decks covered with the panoply of war - guns with their blueish grey steel barrels glinting in the sunlight, trucks with the roundels of Spain on their side, rifles stacked in their serried rangs, sabers for cavalry brilliant like silver, anti-aircraft guns with their long and graceful muzzles pointed up at the sky as if waiting for some plane to arrive, or just the more modest but infinite array of tents, of uniforms, of great stacked piles of food, of boxes of ammunition with the wooden slats hiding inside the round after round of heavy ammunition, the bronze kept cool from the sun, those terrible, inhumane, bullets and shells. Horses whinnied from some ships, down in the holds most often, unsure of themselves in this strange and new environment, knowing themselves surrounded by water somewhere in their innocent and simple souls, unaware that they arrived at their destination at last.
It was not this which filled the people of the city with terror as they watched the long lines of ships crossing the foam-specked waves, watching from the elegant apartments built in the great famous courtyards of Barcelona, from the mountains outside the city flung up like a rampart around the second greatest of the metropolises of Spain, from the poor worker quarters where families were crammed into tiny apartments, choking in the heat of summer while their stomachs growled with hunger. It was the men, those men of Morocco, those men with their hard bodies, those men used to violence and bloodshed and death, their faces tanned by the sun, hardened by a callous disregard for life - it was these men they feared, not the guns they carried upon their shoulders.
Morocco! They had heard the news a few days ago, those inhabitants of the city, heard it as the troops of the government patrolled the city, as fighting passed intermittently between the anarchists and the communists and the soldiers, the petty war of ambushes, of knives, of execution. Heard it announced on the radios, heard it in the newspapers, those that still published, their stories tamed by the government censors, heard it in the whispering that crossed a city that seemed besieged, besieged from without, the sound which leaps from lip to lip, which grows with every recounting - but even just the initial word was enough to send a shiver up one's spine.
Morocco, the land of butchery, of barbarism, of the war to the knife. Fathers had fought there, fought against the Rif, and now they and their sons looked to the sea, looked at the bitter fruit their work had borne, as the hard man of a hard land crossed the sea to deal with the forces of rebellion. Some of the mothers of the city had already begun to tell it to their children, to be good, to be polite, to behave well - to do so, or the Moroccans would get yet! But most did not, for to talk about monsters under the bed or some mythical creature had the comfort of knowing that it wasn't really real, that when the boy broke down in tears, crying, that one could hold him to one's breast, hold the heaving child as his eyes ran red with tears and whisper, cradle him, tell him that it wasn't real, that it wasn't true, that he was good - that good children would never be punished, that the monsters would stay away.
But the Moroccans were coming, and that they knew, was real.
The first ship, with tugs maneuvering it into its berth, stopped in the port, the engines falling silent and the sounds of the seagulls and the lapping waters of the wave suddenly seeming so loud as to be deafening, against a silent and quiet city, the busy metropolis, the second city of Spain, the city of science and industry and learning, that city which now simply waited, waited in fear and agony, the maiden of the Mediterranean, the pearl of its Western reaches, so elegant and beautiful, as she fell silent and watched upon her wave-lapped shores the ships move like toys into her harbor, as hardened men talked and laughed from the gunwhales of the ship, watched a city the likes they had never before seen as it grew first from a dot on the horizon, and then become real, elegant, beautiful - but they were here, the ones to patrol it, the ones who would have power. Perhaps the waves that washed against the shore, perhaps the sound of the water, perhaps that was the city as she wept, the city which had for nearly a thousand years not known the footsteps of the men of Africa, of the men of the crescent, as they arrived in the name of the Cross to defend against the enemies of European civilization.
It was him of course, to come ashore first, as soon as the sailors had tied the ropes and put down the gangplank, the oak wood rich and dark against the gentle tossing of the waves, connecting the ship of steel to the land of stone. He stepped ashore onto the land, swaying slightly as he adjusted back to the firmness of the soil, while the strains of the Marcha Real - not the Spanish anthem - played out into the sweltering air. The musicians hands' shook as they played it, shook as they gazed upon the man who had come, this commissar of this supposed Republic based from Madrid, sent by distant men to bring order to their city, to restore peace - this man who came from the sands of a desert, and called it too peace. They watched, and they wondered, wondered what the future held, wondered what fate destiny intended for their city.
For General Francisco Franco, at the head of the Army of Morocco had arrived to Barcelona, and their orders were to exterminate the enemies of Spain, of Catholicism, and of Civilization. And in that, as they had done in a thousand villages, a thousand points of resistance across the distant land of Morocco, where they had by the sword and by the gun destroyed the fierce men of the sands of the Rif and brought their warriors into the service of Spain, to them themselves return in hand to crush in turn the enemies of Spain - in that, they would succeed. In that, there could be no doubt. The price of defeat was too great.
In the battle between civilization and barbarism, between Christianity and atheism, between loyalty and treason, between Spain and separatism, there could be no compromise, there could be no retreat, there could be only victory.
Franco would triumph, of that there could be no doubt.
Blood Mixes with Ink on the Parched Land of Andulasia
Fedro Nuzzi's pen scratched on the paper, his neat and precise hand-writing a stark contrast to the alabaster white of the fine notebook, bought in far off Rome. Scritch-scratch, and another line emerged on the paper, as the man across from him watched him with weary eyes, the eyes of an old man whose soul had grown older still. Scritch-scratch. There was no clock, no ticking of time in this little hovel somewhere in Andalusia, nothing to mark the passage of the day beyond the sun and the moon.
"Estaban. Can you start from the beginning and tell me about yourself? Even if it seems unneeded, anything you can say is useful to me, useful for your people."
The old man did not respond at first, as he stared at the earthenware cup with a dark red wine in it, as dark as the night, with only the faintest traces of ruby coloration in it. He watched the wine rock in the cup, in little spirals as he swirled it, waves pushing up the side of the cup almost to its lip, then returning once more to their native milieu. He took a sip, his cracked lips, thin and creased, parting as he sipped the red liquid, then set down the goblet in front of himself. Old hands reached up to his face and brushed aside a droplet of the wine left on his upper lip, the gnarled hands with leathery old skin, covered with callouses and cracked with a lifetime of labor in the hot sun, in dryness, in hard labor. Peasant hands. They touched against the white beard, long and wavy, and his bristly mustache, white too, felt them briefly. His hands fell back to his lap, and his hazel eyes returned to Nuzzi's own, staring at him from old and haunted orbits, recessed and shrunken in on themselves. One of the eyes was traced with the white lines of cataracts, blind and unseeing.
"My name is Estaban Molina. I have seen 67 summers, and 66 winters. I have seen them all here, here in Benamahoma, where I have lived all my years. I have lived in this same house, at the end of the crooked road, next to the oaken tree, and I have tilled forever the same fields of olive and grain. What more do you want? My life is my life, I am not from your city of Rome, from your big cities with your cars and planes. Why do you interest yourself about my own life?"
The pen scratched constantly, and Nuzzi did not reply. Estaban stared at Nuzzi. "Do you understand me? You Italians don't always understand us, from what my son told me, when he met them in Barcelona."
Nuzzi nodded. "It is a hard accent for me, but I understand you. I hope you can say the same for me."
The peasant fell silent a few seconds, then nodded. "You are the first Italian I have ever met, and you have a strange sound in your voice." He stared off into space. "A trill, like a bird, something that I don't have. But I understand you". He shook his head once more. "Why do you care about my life? You care about death, not life."
The Italian journalist winced. What could he say, that he cared about the life of an Andulasian peasant, somebody who had done nothing more than farm the fields for the better part of a century? The man was right, he was here for death, not life. But he squared his shoulders, and looked into his eyes.
"Because I am here to learn a story. You are right, in that I came here for death, but no story is complete without both death and life, and to tell only why death has come to you would be to..." his mound blanked on the words in this Spanish language that he still struggled with sometime, so close to his own Italian but with the occasional word that caused him to stumble and fall, before the rest of the phrase came to his mind "abandon my duty as a journalist, to find truth wherever it may be".
Estaban stared back into his eyes. He shook his head, his white hair, curly and unkempt in loose locks, budging slightly against his scalp. "You Italians truly are a strange people".
A brief second of silence. A bird called somewhere, its cry coming through the open windows, these windows of greased paper that allowed light to enter while not allowing one to see through it like glass. A hawk perhaps? The cry was fierce, but distant, peaking into a screech. Perhaps it was circling somewhere above, as the cry came to them from the realm of the sky, perhaps it had already dove upon a creature upon the ground, to lift into the air a struggling rabbit or a quail, to bring it to the nest for its young.
Nuzzi cleared his throat. "Tell me about your wife."
Another wave of pain traversed the face of the old peasant, his eyes squinting, and his wrinkled face crinkling once again, like the expression of a man who had been physically burned. "It was the soldiers. She had gone into the town, to sell the textiles she had woven. The soldiers showed up, and that evening, they got drunk. Somebody had killed one of them out in the countryside, in an ambush, nobody knows how, for they didn't say." He drew a ragged breath. "Nobody knows why."
Pain traversed the eyes of the Spanish man. "Her name was Susana Navarro". His voice creaked with pain and suffering, some sort of horrible loss that nobody except one who had felt it could understand. "She was from the village of course. I still remember the wedding, her in her best clothes, myself in mine, as we had smiled at each other shyly, while they had danced and sang around us, after we had said our vows in the church. I'm told she wasn't beautiful, when some runt from the university had shown up for some sort of project, no idea what it was, and he had called her ugly. We had beat him up right proper after that, the brat. But she was always beautiful to me, beautiful since I had first set eyes on her when I was a child, beautiful at our wedding, beautiful the day she died."
A tear trickled down his face, from his eyes that seemed so dry, to wet the parchment of his skin.
Nuzzi was silent briefly, then spoke again. "What happened to her?" He felt internal turmoil, regret, to have to bring up such memories, to dredge them from this man's roiling interior, but he had a job, and he steeled himself - for the cause, for truth.
Another wave of pain traversed the man’s face, his eyes crinkling once more with lines appearing around them, lines in that already wrinkled face, and he turned in on himself, his mouth creasing and hunching over, as if he had been punched, or as if a burning rod had been applied to him. A few seconds more of silence, these interminable pauses that were the constant companions of this conversation, and then he opened once more his lips. “She wove”. The voice was flat and lifeless. “And would bring the clothes to town to sell them. It was some money, something. And she chose the wrong day. She chose when the militia were there, those animals that the government had let loose on us.”
A ragged sigh, ragged and pained. “And they were drunk that day, drunk as I said, drunk, on stolen wine. And they accused us, our village, of harboring the rebels. They said that they would select five people at random for one of their men who had been killed in the countryside, in that ambush”
Nuzzi stared in horror. “And your wife… she was one of them?”
Another heavy breath. “She was one of them, pulled from the crowd. They laughed, said that it was better to kill an old woman than a girl, at least young girls were useful to soldiers like them to warm their beds but that she was too old, too old, that she didn’t mean anything to them. And then they had shot her, shot her and the others.”
“Who had told you this, if you didn't see yourself?” Nuzzi couldn’t contain his morbid fascination, despite the creeping sense of guilt, as he violated this man’s peace to sell it to a newspaper in distant Italy. He reminded himself that he was doing it for him, doing it so the world would come to know about what had happened, so that they would realize the crimes of the Rep-, no the Kingdom - in distant Madrid, its butchery and barbarism to the population.
Sightless eyes, both the cataract-riven orb and the normal hazel, stared at him. “It was Maria. She sold clothes too. She had come running back, stoic and grim, and then she had told me. She told me what happened. I didn’t believe her, didn’t believe them when they showed me the grave, didn’t believe them when man after man had come up to me and tried to comfort me, when they had told me what happened. When they told me”.
He stared into the cup of black wine. “I still don’t believe, I still expect that every day she will walk in, that every day she will return.”
Nuzzi felt himself cowering in his seat. He tried to say something, but words didn’t come to his throat. A pained croak emerged, staring at the man in his agony. He reached out his hand, the young and pale flesh of a writer, laying it atop the old man’s hand, his soft palm on top of the leathery flesh. Silence returned, the deafening sound of silence, interrupted only by the whooshing of the wind, humming her eternal song. The sunlight streamed in through the windows, diffused into the house as it reflected on the surfaces, upon this poor dwelling with its rough table, with the low lying bed, with the storage places and the fireplace, this hovel that served as the center of this man’s existence.
Estaban shook himself. “Would you like a cup of wine?”
The word no was coming to his throat, but it caught there. He nodded his head. “Yes, if you please.”
The old man stood up, and busied himself at the counter, with a wineskin - a wineskin, Nuzzi marveled at this country sometime - and another earthenware cup. Nuzzi’s pen skimmed the paper, line after line, the sketches of his ideas and what the man had recounted to him. Estaban placed the cup in front of him, and sat down at his seat once more. The pen scratched once more. Nuzzi swirled the wine in its cup, watching the black liquid in its waves as it climbed nearly to the lip then settled back down, the little grains of sediment in it, then took a sip. Strong, without lightness or the hints of perfumes the the Italians gave to their wine, that they served in the fancy restaurants back in Rome where [i]I Tempi[/i] writers and executives had discussed their stories over the fine dishes of Roman chefs, swilling their delicate crystal glasses, amid the haze of blue-grey smoke that drifted aimlessly throughout the rooms. It was nothing like that that, this wine of the countryside, with its almost harsh taste, without the pretensions of the urban wines, this wine for peasants and not for writers.
He liked the taste. He put it down and started to write again.
“You will want to know about my children now.” It wasn’t a question, just a declaration, a statement, a fact, from the Spanish peasant, his eyes, the sightless one as well, resting on the paper as the pen continued to meander along its surface.
“Can you talk about them?” Nuzzi looked up from the paper to meet Estaban’s eyes.
“I must. For them.” He readied himself, like a man before he plunged into battle, drawing up his shoulders, steeling himself as his hands grasped the earthen container in front of him. A drink of wine, more than sip, as he perched it in his lips and downed it with a backward jet of his head.
“We never had much land. And we never had much in the way of children. There were only 5 that have been the product of my loins. One of them died at birth, a boy. Another one was a girl, and she died of the flu, when she was 4. Eliana.” He drew back into himself, remembering a distant time. “She was so young, with her giggle, learning how to speak, so full of energy. And then she died”. He shook himself. “Two boys, and one girl for the rest. Xavier, Miguel, and Susana.”
“Xavier was a strong boy, tall and handsome.” He gave a laugh, the first genuine one that Nuzzi had heard so far, with a trace of what once must have been a man whose face was wrinkled with laugh lines rather than wetted with tears. “He married Antonia, and he was here. There were strong hands on the farm, and children who were born. We laughed, we sang, we watched the seasons pass, and we never imagined that it would be different. I would die one day, and the farm would go to him, as it always has been and always should be.”
“And then the mobilization papers arrived, to fight the rebels. He told us he would be back soon. They sent the telegram a few weeks later, that the village priest read aloud to me. I still have it.” The peasant man stood up, and pulled a scrap of heavy, thick, official paper from their pantry, and handed it to Nuzzi.
[i]“I inform that your son, the private Xavier Martínez, from the 11th Andulasian Infantry Regiment, was killed in combat, on the morning of the 15th of November of The Year of Our Lord 1939. He died valiantly in action in the defense of Zaragoza, in action against rebel attacks. Your son died a hero’s death, may this be a consolation for your irreparable loss. His belongings will be returned to you at the soonest possible date, save for that equipment which belongs to the regiment.”
Second Captain Montreal,
Commander of the 3rd company
From the front, 18th November, 1939.[/i]
Nuzzi raised his eyes from the text, and looked at Estaban once more. “My condolences.” He felt an unforgivable shame well up inside himself, that he could not do more. “My condolences.” The words ran out of his mouth like a mantra.
There was no response. Estaban gazed at the table as he continued to speak. “And then there was Miguel. He was different. He saw that there wasn’t enough land for him, he dreamed, he wanted to go somewhere else. And then he did, he left, and went to Barcelona. He liked it there, he liked the factories and the work, according to the priest when he read the letters that he sent back. He was married too, and he had come home with her once - a pretty girl, tall and slim, with a ready smile. She didn’t like the farm, a city girl, and I had fought with my son about it. But he was right. He had a woman and they raised children together, there in Barcelona. I never visited the city, just saw the photos he had of it, or heard of the descriptions that the priest read.”
The face crumpled. “He sent letters once a month, always, without fail. When they didn’t come, we worried. Maybe it was the disruption of the war, maybe he was busy. When it finally came we were so happy, so happy to receive from him that he was alive. And then we read it, we read about how the government bombers had destroyed the factory he worked at, and how his widow hadn’t been able to recognize the body when they found it. But she had written to us to tell what had happened, and for that, I will always be thankful that at least we knew.”
“I always thought that the city would be the death of Miguel, and I was right”. A final, harsh, brutal laugh.
Nuzzi’s pen scribbled across the page, as he turned over the journal and filled another page of it with notes, little blocky black letters. Another letter, like those two which had destroyed the life of this man.
The tone of Estaban was flat. “Susana is all that is left, and she married a Eduardo. He’s a good man, and they have had their children. They invited me to return to live with them, when my wife was killed, when Xavier left for war. Antonia and the children took him up on the offer. But me and my wife wanted to stay, to tend the farm until Xavier came back. We wouldn’t be able to do it all, but it was our farm, and we would never let it go. We were planning to go to live with Susana. And then my wife died. They told me to leave, they told me to go. Go! But this is all I have left.” He gestured around him with a gaunt and aged hand, the flesh hanging off old bones. “All I have. All I have. She still brings food times, she still checks in on me. But I am alone, and that is how I wish to be, alone until I die.”
What do you say to a man who has lost everything? Nuzzi felt a terrible feeling of powerlessness inside him, as his pen continued to scratch over the surface of the paper, trying to commit something to the written word, something which would enable him to avoid looking Estaban in the eyes. During long silent minutes, only broken by the cry of a bird and the rushing of the wind, he said nothing, until he could avoid it no longer, and looked up.
“I am sorry. I am sorry to hear that which has befallen you, and I am sorry to have asked. There is nothing that I can do for you that will help you, but all I can say is that I seek justice for you, for what happened to you.”
Estaban nodded.
Nuzzi continued. “Can I reimburse you for your information?”
A grimace. “I don’t want money for having told the truth. Do they demand money in Italy for simply telling what happened?”
“For reporters, sometimes, yes.”
“You are a strange people, you Italians.” A softer note entered the man’s voice. “But thank you, thank you for listening. I hope that it does something. I will never have my wife, I will never have my sons, returned to me. But I hope for justice. You Italians, you are a powerful nation aren’t you?”
Nuzzi shrugged. “We are, I think, Enough to do something about something like this, if there are enough that learn about it”.
“Then I hope that they will. You may be a strange people, but if you bring me justice, then you will be my brothers.”
He left soon thereafter, shaking the hand of the peasant, who watched him as he left from the frame of the door, the silent eyes drilling into his back with the patience of the old. The farm was an old building itself, built in stone and weathered by the years, and the eye of a farmer could see that something was amiss with it - fields not sown, vines overrunning it, buildings left unpainted. This was no farm, it was a tomb, a tomb for a man whose time had come before he himself was dead.
Nuzzi kicked open the stand on his bicycle, placing his journal carefully into the little basket on the front, hopping onto it and peddling back through the afternoon air, warm in high autumn, refreshed by the breeze and the shade of trees along the route. It was hard going, even going downhill as a whole, for the path wavered, was narrow, thin, covered with little rocks and the gnarled branches of old trees, olive trees with their silvery-green leaves that sighed in the wind, sad to see a man pass by and to leave them so early, or larger trees - the great oak that Estaban had spoken of, or almond trees still in blossom with their beautiful pink leaves, richer than any cherry blossom, occasionally more humble willows, swaying in the breeze. He had to get off his bike several times, walk it through the rougher section of the trail, his boots sending up little puffs of dust every time he displaced his feet on the ground. Birds squawked above him, and he saw a kite circling in the sky, the little hawk, after a mouse or rabbit or some other prey.
He saw the village hove into view, Benamahoma, one of the famous white villages of Spain, with its limestone construction, looking like something from North Africa rather than a European city. Red roofs surmounted white buildings, with little windows jutting out into the air, open to the breeze that cooled the village, and doubtless when he got closer he would be able to hear it, to hear the cries of children who ran throughout, getting under the feet of women who went to do their washing or stood in the shade and gossiped, while men sat in chairs in the central square under the shade of trees, smoking and drinking their little cups of black wine, this tiny little village undisturbed by the sound of automobiles, with its babble of voices and only mechanical sound being the ringing of church be -
“Halt!” The voice echoed through the air, a loud and harsh command, as a squad of men - 8 - revealed themselves from the side of the road. Nuzzi stopped pedaling and put his hands up in the air, the bike underneath him as he put his feet on the ground.
“Who are you?”
Nuzzi gulped. “I am Alfredo Murillo” He prayed that his Italian accent wouldn’t give him away, that they would think he was Spanish.
His interrogator dashed his hopes, looking at him suspiciously. A thin, tall man, with glasses on a hooked nose, black hair peeking out from under a rounded military helmet, tanned from the sun, a rifle in his hands, pointed at Nuzzi. He scowled. “That isn’t a Spanish accent. I have visited enough of this country to know that. Tell me your real name.”
“Nuzzi gave up. “Fedro Nuzzi”.
“Italian?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you here?”
“Tourism, I wanted to see southern Andalusia.”
The soldier cursed and spit. “Nobody visits fucking Southern Andulasia for tourism, you bastard. Stop lying and tell us the truth.
Another gulp. Why did he have to get a hard-ass officer like this to interrogate him? Why? “I am a reporter, here to take note of the war.”
“A reporter, eh? More of the filth of your kind, here to spread lies about Spain. Tell me, what did you learn today?”
“I had talked to a peasant.”
The soldier looked at him, then grimaced. “Let me guess, Estaban?”
The color drained from Nuzzi’s face. “No, it was Leonardo.”
“You think I’m some stupid fucker from Madrid who doesn’t know this village? I hate this place, but I’ve been assigned here to deal with it, to make sure it is in order. You think I don’t know the names of the peasants, who has grievances? And I know Estaban, who lives ‘bout thatway”, he said with a gesture of the rifle, “and there sure as hell isn’t any goddamn Leonardo in this village.” He shook his head. “I know what Estabana told you, and I know that my superiors aren’t going to like hearing about that, because I do know how to read a newspaper, unlike half the stupid hicks here, and I don’t want the Social Research Department asking any questions about why there is an article in an Italian newspaper about some peasant whose senile old wife we dealt with to solve the partisan problem, or some sob story about his idiot sons who managed to get themselves killed. It was a mistake to led Estabana live, but I don’t like killing old men, but maybe I’ll have to reconsider if your kind are sniffing about him for a tale.”
Nuzzi was growing increasingly nervous to hear the rapid staccato of the dialogue, some words escaping him, but he understood enough to get what the man was saying. He started to back up nervously, looking over his shoulder.
The Spanish soldier pointed the rifle at him, and screamed “Stop moving!” in a drill sergeant’s voice. Then more softly. “And for what it is worth, I am sorry I have to do this, you are the first Italian I’ve met and I am sorry it has to end this way.”
Crack! A cloud of smoke emerged from the rifle, and Nuzzi felt a sense of disbelief, of horror, and looked own at his chest to see a dot of glistening red blood appear on it. He felt like a mannequin, disconnected from the world, without control over himself, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, as his body fell forwards, fell upon the front of the bike on the journal, and as his vision fell black forever. Nuzzi was dead before he ever hit the ground, a bullet through the heart.
The blood mixed with the ink, red and black, upon the white pages, until one of the soldiers picked it up, as the group of Spanish soldiers walked over to examine the body. He started to open it and flip through it idly, then grimaced. "Italian scribbling" he said with a laugh and look of disgust. His comrade laughed too. "Well, we all need something for the fire, don't we? I'd say it would be a damn lot more useful than whatever this guy wanted to do with it!" Another soldier picked off his watch, setting it on his wrist and admiring it in the sun, and another rifled through his pockets for money. They laughed at the death, the laughter of men who had seen too much death, who thought nothing of blood and death, who waited not even for the body to cool as it lay upon the dry soil of Andulasia before they took their share from it.
Their raucous laughs joined together in the quiet village air, and the sound of their conversation dimmed as they parted once more into the early evening, as the sun begin to fall from the sky and the shadows began to lengthen. Behind them, blood mixed with soil, and another soul joined the serried legions of those who had already left behind their life in the parched land of Spain, watered in those terrible years of 1940 more by the red blood of a dying and suffering humanity than by the blue life of rain. The furrows nurtured by a foreign blood: what was the crop that it was to bear? What fruit would the parched soil of Andulasia bear in the years to come, bear from this mixture of blood, of tears, of ink, unmixed with the life of water - what would it bear from these liquids of death that trickled over its fields?
The world would never hear of the tale of Estaban Martínez. Benamahoma guarded her secrets well.
"Estaban. Can you start from the beginning and tell me about yourself? Even if it seems unneeded, anything you can say is useful to me, useful for your people."
The old man did not respond at first, as he stared at the earthenware cup with a dark red wine in it, as dark as the night, with only the faintest traces of ruby coloration in it. He watched the wine rock in the cup, in little spirals as he swirled it, waves pushing up the side of the cup almost to its lip, then returning once more to their native milieu. He took a sip, his cracked lips, thin and creased, parting as he sipped the red liquid, then set down the goblet in front of himself. Old hands reached up to his face and brushed aside a droplet of the wine left on his upper lip, the gnarled hands with leathery old skin, covered with callouses and cracked with a lifetime of labor in the hot sun, in dryness, in hard labor. Peasant hands. They touched against the white beard, long and wavy, and his bristly mustache, white too, felt them briefly. His hands fell back to his lap, and his hazel eyes returned to Nuzzi's own, staring at him from old and haunted orbits, recessed and shrunken in on themselves. One of the eyes was traced with the white lines of cataracts, blind and unseeing.
"My name is Estaban Molina. I have seen 67 summers, and 66 winters. I have seen them all here, here in Benamahoma, where I have lived all my years. I have lived in this same house, at the end of the crooked road, next to the oaken tree, and I have tilled forever the same fields of olive and grain. What more do you want? My life is my life, I am not from your city of Rome, from your big cities with your cars and planes. Why do you interest yourself about my own life?"
The pen scratched constantly, and Nuzzi did not reply. Estaban stared at Nuzzi. "Do you understand me? You Italians don't always understand us, from what my son told me, when he met them in Barcelona."
Nuzzi nodded. "It is a hard accent for me, but I understand you. I hope you can say the same for me."
The peasant fell silent a few seconds, then nodded. "You are the first Italian I have ever met, and you have a strange sound in your voice." He stared off into space. "A trill, like a bird, something that I don't have. But I understand you". He shook his head once more. "Why do you care about my life? You care about death, not life."
The Italian journalist winced. What could he say, that he cared about the life of an Andulasian peasant, somebody who had done nothing more than farm the fields for the better part of a century? The man was right, he was here for death, not life. But he squared his shoulders, and looked into his eyes.
"Because I am here to learn a story. You are right, in that I came here for death, but no story is complete without both death and life, and to tell only why death has come to you would be to..." his mound blanked on the words in this Spanish language that he still struggled with sometime, so close to his own Italian but with the occasional word that caused him to stumble and fall, before the rest of the phrase came to his mind "abandon my duty as a journalist, to find truth wherever it may be".
Estaban stared back into his eyes. He shook his head, his white hair, curly and unkempt in loose locks, budging slightly against his scalp. "You Italians truly are a strange people".
A brief second of silence. A bird called somewhere, its cry coming through the open windows, these windows of greased paper that allowed light to enter while not allowing one to see through it like glass. A hawk perhaps? The cry was fierce, but distant, peaking into a screech. Perhaps it was circling somewhere above, as the cry came to them from the realm of the sky, perhaps it had already dove upon a creature upon the ground, to lift into the air a struggling rabbit or a quail, to bring it to the nest for its young.
Nuzzi cleared his throat. "Tell me about your wife."
Another wave of pain traversed the face of the old peasant, his eyes squinting, and his wrinkled face crinkling once again, like the expression of a man who had been physically burned. "It was the soldiers. She had gone into the town, to sell the textiles she had woven. The soldiers showed up, and that evening, they got drunk. Somebody had killed one of them out in the countryside, in an ambush, nobody knows how, for they didn't say." He drew a ragged breath. "Nobody knows why."
Pain traversed the eyes of the Spanish man. "Her name was Susana Navarro". His voice creaked with pain and suffering, some sort of horrible loss that nobody except one who had felt it could understand. "She was from the village of course. I still remember the wedding, her in her best clothes, myself in mine, as we had smiled at each other shyly, while they had danced and sang around us, after we had said our vows in the church. I'm told she wasn't beautiful, when some runt from the university had shown up for some sort of project, no idea what it was, and he had called her ugly. We had beat him up right proper after that, the brat. But she was always beautiful to me, beautiful since I had first set eyes on her when I was a child, beautiful at our wedding, beautiful the day she died."
A tear trickled down his face, from his eyes that seemed so dry, to wet the parchment of his skin.
Nuzzi was silent briefly, then spoke again. "What happened to her?" He felt internal turmoil, regret, to have to bring up such memories, to dredge them from this man's roiling interior, but he had a job, and he steeled himself - for the cause, for truth.
Another wave of pain traversed the man’s face, his eyes crinkling once more with lines appearing around them, lines in that already wrinkled face, and he turned in on himself, his mouth creasing and hunching over, as if he had been punched, or as if a burning rod had been applied to him. A few seconds more of silence, these interminable pauses that were the constant companions of this conversation, and then he opened once more his lips. “She wove”. The voice was flat and lifeless. “And would bring the clothes to town to sell them. It was some money, something. And she chose the wrong day. She chose when the militia were there, those animals that the government had let loose on us.”
A ragged sigh, ragged and pained. “And they were drunk that day, drunk as I said, drunk, on stolen wine. And they accused us, our village, of harboring the rebels. They said that they would select five people at random for one of their men who had been killed in the countryside, in that ambush”
Nuzzi stared in horror. “And your wife… she was one of them?”
Another heavy breath. “She was one of them, pulled from the crowd. They laughed, said that it was better to kill an old woman than a girl, at least young girls were useful to soldiers like them to warm their beds but that she was too old, too old, that she didn’t mean anything to them. And then they had shot her, shot her and the others.”
“Who had told you this, if you didn't see yourself?” Nuzzi couldn’t contain his morbid fascination, despite the creeping sense of guilt, as he violated this man’s peace to sell it to a newspaper in distant Italy. He reminded himself that he was doing it for him, doing it so the world would come to know about what had happened, so that they would realize the crimes of the Rep-, no the Kingdom - in distant Madrid, its butchery and barbarism to the population.
Sightless eyes, both the cataract-riven orb and the normal hazel, stared at him. “It was Maria. She sold clothes too. She had come running back, stoic and grim, and then she had told me. She told me what happened. I didn’t believe her, didn’t believe them when they showed me the grave, didn’t believe them when man after man had come up to me and tried to comfort me, when they had told me what happened. When they told me”.
He stared into the cup of black wine. “I still don’t believe, I still expect that every day she will walk in, that every day she will return.”
Nuzzi felt himself cowering in his seat. He tried to say something, but words didn’t come to his throat. A pained croak emerged, staring at the man in his agony. He reached out his hand, the young and pale flesh of a writer, laying it atop the old man’s hand, his soft palm on top of the leathery flesh. Silence returned, the deafening sound of silence, interrupted only by the whooshing of the wind, humming her eternal song. The sunlight streamed in through the windows, diffused into the house as it reflected on the surfaces, upon this poor dwelling with its rough table, with the low lying bed, with the storage places and the fireplace, this hovel that served as the center of this man’s existence.
Estaban shook himself. “Would you like a cup of wine?”
The word no was coming to his throat, but it caught there. He nodded his head. “Yes, if you please.”
The old man stood up, and busied himself at the counter, with a wineskin - a wineskin, Nuzzi marveled at this country sometime - and another earthenware cup. Nuzzi’s pen skimmed the paper, line after line, the sketches of his ideas and what the man had recounted to him. Estaban placed the cup in front of him, and sat down at his seat once more. The pen scratched once more. Nuzzi swirled the wine in its cup, watching the black liquid in its waves as it climbed nearly to the lip then settled back down, the little grains of sediment in it, then took a sip. Strong, without lightness or the hints of perfumes the the Italians gave to their wine, that they served in the fancy restaurants back in Rome where [i]I Tempi[/i] writers and executives had discussed their stories over the fine dishes of Roman chefs, swilling their delicate crystal glasses, amid the haze of blue-grey smoke that drifted aimlessly throughout the rooms. It was nothing like that that, this wine of the countryside, with its almost harsh taste, without the pretensions of the urban wines, this wine for peasants and not for writers.
He liked the taste. He put it down and started to write again.
“You will want to know about my children now.” It wasn’t a question, just a declaration, a statement, a fact, from the Spanish peasant, his eyes, the sightless one as well, resting on the paper as the pen continued to meander along its surface.
“Can you talk about them?” Nuzzi looked up from the paper to meet Estaban’s eyes.
“I must. For them.” He readied himself, like a man before he plunged into battle, drawing up his shoulders, steeling himself as his hands grasped the earthen container in front of him. A drink of wine, more than sip, as he perched it in his lips and downed it with a backward jet of his head.
“We never had much land. And we never had much in the way of children. There were only 5 that have been the product of my loins. One of them died at birth, a boy. Another one was a girl, and she died of the flu, when she was 4. Eliana.” He drew back into himself, remembering a distant time. “She was so young, with her giggle, learning how to speak, so full of energy. And then she died”. He shook himself. “Two boys, and one girl for the rest. Xavier, Miguel, and Susana.”
“Xavier was a strong boy, tall and handsome.” He gave a laugh, the first genuine one that Nuzzi had heard so far, with a trace of what once must have been a man whose face was wrinkled with laugh lines rather than wetted with tears. “He married Antonia, and he was here. There were strong hands on the farm, and children who were born. We laughed, we sang, we watched the seasons pass, and we never imagined that it would be different. I would die one day, and the farm would go to him, as it always has been and always should be.”
“And then the mobilization papers arrived, to fight the rebels. He told us he would be back soon. They sent the telegram a few weeks later, that the village priest read aloud to me. I still have it.” The peasant man stood up, and pulled a scrap of heavy, thick, official paper from their pantry, and handed it to Nuzzi.
[i]“I inform that your son, the private Xavier Martínez, from the 11th Andulasian Infantry Regiment, was killed in combat, on the morning of the 15th of November of The Year of Our Lord 1939. He died valiantly in action in the defense of Zaragoza, in action against rebel attacks. Your son died a hero’s death, may this be a consolation for your irreparable loss. His belongings will be returned to you at the soonest possible date, save for that equipment which belongs to the regiment.”
Second Captain Montreal,
Commander of the 3rd company
From the front, 18th November, 1939.[/i]
Nuzzi raised his eyes from the text, and looked at Estaban once more. “My condolences.” He felt an unforgivable shame well up inside himself, that he could not do more. “My condolences.” The words ran out of his mouth like a mantra.
There was no response. Estaban gazed at the table as he continued to speak. “And then there was Miguel. He was different. He saw that there wasn’t enough land for him, he dreamed, he wanted to go somewhere else. And then he did, he left, and went to Barcelona. He liked it there, he liked the factories and the work, according to the priest when he read the letters that he sent back. He was married too, and he had come home with her once - a pretty girl, tall and slim, with a ready smile. She didn’t like the farm, a city girl, and I had fought with my son about it. But he was right. He had a woman and they raised children together, there in Barcelona. I never visited the city, just saw the photos he had of it, or heard of the descriptions that the priest read.”
The face crumpled. “He sent letters once a month, always, without fail. When they didn’t come, we worried. Maybe it was the disruption of the war, maybe he was busy. When it finally came we were so happy, so happy to receive from him that he was alive. And then we read it, we read about how the government bombers had destroyed the factory he worked at, and how his widow hadn’t been able to recognize the body when they found it. But she had written to us to tell what had happened, and for that, I will always be thankful that at least we knew.”
“I always thought that the city would be the death of Miguel, and I was right”. A final, harsh, brutal laugh.
Nuzzi’s pen scribbled across the page, as he turned over the journal and filled another page of it with notes, little blocky black letters. Another letter, like those two which had destroyed the life of this man.
The tone of Estaban was flat. “Susana is all that is left, and she married a Eduardo. He’s a good man, and they have had their children. They invited me to return to live with them, when my wife was killed, when Xavier left for war. Antonia and the children took him up on the offer. But me and my wife wanted to stay, to tend the farm until Xavier came back. We wouldn’t be able to do it all, but it was our farm, and we would never let it go. We were planning to go to live with Susana. And then my wife died. They told me to leave, they told me to go. Go! But this is all I have left.” He gestured around him with a gaunt and aged hand, the flesh hanging off old bones. “All I have. All I have. She still brings food times, she still checks in on me. But I am alone, and that is how I wish to be, alone until I die.”
What do you say to a man who has lost everything? Nuzzi felt a terrible feeling of powerlessness inside him, as his pen continued to scratch over the surface of the paper, trying to commit something to the written word, something which would enable him to avoid looking Estaban in the eyes. During long silent minutes, only broken by the cry of a bird and the rushing of the wind, he said nothing, until he could avoid it no longer, and looked up.
“I am sorry. I am sorry to hear that which has befallen you, and I am sorry to have asked. There is nothing that I can do for you that will help you, but all I can say is that I seek justice for you, for what happened to you.”
Estaban nodded.
Nuzzi continued. “Can I reimburse you for your information?”
A grimace. “I don’t want money for having told the truth. Do they demand money in Italy for simply telling what happened?”
“For reporters, sometimes, yes.”
“You are a strange people, you Italians.” A softer note entered the man’s voice. “But thank you, thank you for listening. I hope that it does something. I will never have my wife, I will never have my sons, returned to me. But I hope for justice. You Italians, you are a powerful nation aren’t you?”
Nuzzi shrugged. “We are, I think, Enough to do something about something like this, if there are enough that learn about it”.
“Then I hope that they will. You may be a strange people, but if you bring me justice, then you will be my brothers.”
He left soon thereafter, shaking the hand of the peasant, who watched him as he left from the frame of the door, the silent eyes drilling into his back with the patience of the old. The farm was an old building itself, built in stone and weathered by the years, and the eye of a farmer could see that something was amiss with it - fields not sown, vines overrunning it, buildings left unpainted. This was no farm, it was a tomb, a tomb for a man whose time had come before he himself was dead.
Nuzzi kicked open the stand on his bicycle, placing his journal carefully into the little basket on the front, hopping onto it and peddling back through the afternoon air, warm in high autumn, refreshed by the breeze and the shade of trees along the route. It was hard going, even going downhill as a whole, for the path wavered, was narrow, thin, covered with little rocks and the gnarled branches of old trees, olive trees with their silvery-green leaves that sighed in the wind, sad to see a man pass by and to leave them so early, or larger trees - the great oak that Estaban had spoken of, or almond trees still in blossom with their beautiful pink leaves, richer than any cherry blossom, occasionally more humble willows, swaying in the breeze. He had to get off his bike several times, walk it through the rougher section of the trail, his boots sending up little puffs of dust every time he displaced his feet on the ground. Birds squawked above him, and he saw a kite circling in the sky, the little hawk, after a mouse or rabbit or some other prey.
He saw the village hove into view, Benamahoma, one of the famous white villages of Spain, with its limestone construction, looking like something from North Africa rather than a European city. Red roofs surmounted white buildings, with little windows jutting out into the air, open to the breeze that cooled the village, and doubtless when he got closer he would be able to hear it, to hear the cries of children who ran throughout, getting under the feet of women who went to do their washing or stood in the shade and gossiped, while men sat in chairs in the central square under the shade of trees, smoking and drinking their little cups of black wine, this tiny little village undisturbed by the sound of automobiles, with its babble of voices and only mechanical sound being the ringing of church be -
“Halt!” The voice echoed through the air, a loud and harsh command, as a squad of men - 8 - revealed themselves from the side of the road. Nuzzi stopped pedaling and put his hands up in the air, the bike underneath him as he put his feet on the ground.
“Who are you?”
Nuzzi gulped. “I am Alfredo Murillo” He prayed that his Italian accent wouldn’t give him away, that they would think he was Spanish.
His interrogator dashed his hopes, looking at him suspiciously. A thin, tall man, with glasses on a hooked nose, black hair peeking out from under a rounded military helmet, tanned from the sun, a rifle in his hands, pointed at Nuzzi. He scowled. “That isn’t a Spanish accent. I have visited enough of this country to know that. Tell me your real name.”
“Nuzzi gave up. “Fedro Nuzzi”.
“Italian?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you here?”
“Tourism, I wanted to see southern Andalusia.”
The soldier cursed and spit. “Nobody visits fucking Southern Andulasia for tourism, you bastard. Stop lying and tell us the truth.
Another gulp. Why did he have to get a hard-ass officer like this to interrogate him? Why? “I am a reporter, here to take note of the war.”
“A reporter, eh? More of the filth of your kind, here to spread lies about Spain. Tell me, what did you learn today?”
“I had talked to a peasant.”
The soldier looked at him, then grimaced. “Let me guess, Estaban?”
The color drained from Nuzzi’s face. “No, it was Leonardo.”
“You think I’m some stupid fucker from Madrid who doesn’t know this village? I hate this place, but I’ve been assigned here to deal with it, to make sure it is in order. You think I don’t know the names of the peasants, who has grievances? And I know Estaban, who lives ‘bout thatway”, he said with a gesture of the rifle, “and there sure as hell isn’t any goddamn Leonardo in this village.” He shook his head. “I know what Estabana told you, and I know that my superiors aren’t going to like hearing about that, because I do know how to read a newspaper, unlike half the stupid hicks here, and I don’t want the Social Research Department asking any questions about why there is an article in an Italian newspaper about some peasant whose senile old wife we dealt with to solve the partisan problem, or some sob story about his idiot sons who managed to get themselves killed. It was a mistake to led Estabana live, but I don’t like killing old men, but maybe I’ll have to reconsider if your kind are sniffing about him for a tale.”
Nuzzi was growing increasingly nervous to hear the rapid staccato of the dialogue, some words escaping him, but he understood enough to get what the man was saying. He started to back up nervously, looking over his shoulder.
The Spanish soldier pointed the rifle at him, and screamed “Stop moving!” in a drill sergeant’s voice. Then more softly. “And for what it is worth, I am sorry I have to do this, you are the first Italian I’ve met and I am sorry it has to end this way.”
Crack! A cloud of smoke emerged from the rifle, and Nuzzi felt a sense of disbelief, of horror, and looked own at his chest to see a dot of glistening red blood appear on it. He felt like a mannequin, disconnected from the world, without control over himself, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, as his body fell forwards, fell upon the front of the bike on the journal, and as his vision fell black forever. Nuzzi was dead before he ever hit the ground, a bullet through the heart.
The blood mixed with the ink, red and black, upon the white pages, until one of the soldiers picked it up, as the group of Spanish soldiers walked over to examine the body. He started to open it and flip through it idly, then grimaced. "Italian scribbling" he said with a laugh and look of disgust. His comrade laughed too. "Well, we all need something for the fire, don't we? I'd say it would be a damn lot more useful than whatever this guy wanted to do with it!" Another soldier picked off his watch, setting it on his wrist and admiring it in the sun, and another rifled through his pockets for money. They laughed at the death, the laughter of men who had seen too much death, who thought nothing of blood and death, who waited not even for the body to cool as it lay upon the dry soil of Andulasia before they took their share from it.
Their raucous laughs joined together in the quiet village air, and the sound of their conversation dimmed as they parted once more into the early evening, as the sun begin to fall from the sky and the shadows began to lengthen. Behind them, blood mixed with soil, and another soul joined the serried legions of those who had already left behind their life in the parched land of Spain, watered in those terrible years of 1940 more by the red blood of a dying and suffering humanity than by the blue life of rain. The furrows nurtured by a foreign blood: what was the crop that it was to bear? What fruit would the parched soil of Andulasia bear in the years to come, bear from this mixture of blood, of tears, of ink, unmixed with the life of water - what would it bear from these liquids of death that trickled over its fields?
The world would never hear of the tale of Estaban Martínez. Benamahoma guarded her secrets well.
mardi 1 janvier 2019
Death flies over Spain
The thrum of the engines beginning to roar into action, the petrol motors coughing and then catching with their propellers spinning in their concentric circles with a growing whine that reached into a shrill roar, was just entering the air as the flaming disk of the sun peeked shyly over the mountains. Cool air of dawn welcomed it, and pale clouds drifted through the air, far above in a vault which was still purple and dark, pierced still by the brightest stars to the west. A light wind ruffled them, causing them to float gently along, towards some unknown destination, these clouds that man on the ground knows not their origin, nor where they shall one day find their place of rest.
Antonio Cicerono stared up at the arch of the heavens, trying to lose himself in its peace and solitude. A falcon swooped high above in the morning glow, although as the engines whined to life it flew away, flew away from this place. Liberty, liberty - a bird had that, but a man didn't. He thought back to when the police had arrested him, arrested him for being part of the rebels. It was true, he had supported them, he had run information, messages, he had served in one of the units protecting a factory from the government when they tried to obliterate them, he wasn't innocent, if fighting in the defense of his liberty was guilt - but why? Why? It coursed through his mind, the thought, why they had chosen for him to die, why. He thought of the fat priest who had leered at him, who had hated him ever since he had refused his advance as a young boy. The government took their word seriously, took what these men of god said to heart - but why did a man of god have to do this to him? He didn't believe in god, but if there was one, surely He would save him from this plight? Did not His son himself die upon the cross, a victim of tyranny too, when he had fought for the poor and for the oppressed? And yet clearly if there was a god, He was silent up there in he-
His vision exploded into white stars, as felt a blinding pain strike the back of his head, and was knocked to his knees, returning to this world from the path that his thoughts had wandered. Dazed and bruised, he looked behind him, as a guard, dressed in a military uniform and carrying a rifle, smashed the butt of the gun into his back once more. Another blinding flash of pain exploded across his bruised and battered body, as he bent over in agony.
"Get moving you traitor!" screamed the guard, a harsh and raucous voice, as cruel and unfeeling hands gripped his head and pulled him back to his feet. The man pushed him forwards, a hard and heavy shove that nearly toppled him again, but he stayed on his feet. It was a miracle that he did so, with his eyes tied behind his back with rope, the harsh hemp fiber granting on his skin, already feeling chafed and raw. His legs obeyed without thought, as he stumbled along, stumbled forwards.
There was a line of them. Men, of all ages, clad in rags, gaunt and bruised. Blood spilled down from the cut of one man, a jagged slash across a cheek that still showed the red-drenched flesh underneath the skin, a stocky figure perhaps in his 40s, a muscular figure, his arms toned by labor. Some of them shivered, shivered in the chill dawn air, but for most of them it was a trembling, a quaking, as they gazed upon the gaping door of the plane, into its cavernous interior, with insufficient light from the windows casting it into dim shadows. The livery of the plane still included the gold and red of Iberia airlines, bright, too bright, in the early morning sun.
He was the youngest of the file of prisoners. A thin mustache was on his upper lip, but he hadn't even celebrated his 18th year yet, he was still 17. It hurt, it hurt to know that life ended so young, for so little reason, before he had ever had a child, before he had ever known love, to die young instead of old in a warm bed surrounded by his children and grandchildren. There was still a part of him, young, that saw death in a glorious cause as well - glorious - but now, as he ached from the cuts, from the bruises, from hunger and pain, he felt nothing, nothing at all, save for a feeling of incomprehension and dreadful, gaping, sadness.
Antonio had always liked planes. He had had a little model, a little wooden thing, that his father had carved for him. Whittled it around the fire, in winter, out of some piece of balta wood that he had found thrown away next to a carpentry factory. Long nights, whittling away with the knife, crafting it piece by piece. The wings, the monoplane emerging from the grainy wood, then the cockpit, an open affair with the carefully sculpted faux-glass protection, the tail and the rudder, the long and graceful body, even the little propellers on the front and the tiny outlets for air and for cooling, his patient and skilled hands working constantly, scanning it with his eyes, comparing it to a depiction in a newspaper. And then he had set to painting it, with red and gold, with black and grey, drawing the depiction of canvas and the flaps and the Spanish roundel, until there it was - the fairy-like light little plane of Antonio, which his father had given to him with his unassuming honesty, a smile as he put it in his child's hands. Antonio had run outside and run around and around with the plane, holding it up into the air, swooping up and down with it, imaging that someday he would fly up in the sky, like a bird. The other boys had been jealous, and they had played with it, as a bomber in games of cowboys and Indians - the absurdity of using it a war from the last century where no airplanes yet flew had never occurred tho them - or in adventures and explorations, travelling through the great jungles of Africa, finding tribes in Brazil or New Guinea, crossing over the vast gulf of the Atlantic, each time the light little plane guided by a child's hands against the sky.
He had always kept the aircraft, and it was somewhere back at home, with his father still. As he had grown older he had played with it less and less, but he still had always loved to watch planes, he had hoped that one day he could be a pilot. He had bought books, with his precious little money, about aircraft, about how to train to become a pilot, and had asked and wondered, started to plan, to dream of amassing his little cash and savings to one day go to some school that would send him soaring into the air. The knights of the air, that would take him away from this cruel and callous lair of misery, to something greater and more beautiful.
And now it would kill him. The first time he had ever been in an airplane, and it would be his death.
They shuffled into the hold, into an interior free from seats, being pushed up against the wall in their rows. Antonio had been nearly the last in the line, so he was far away from the door, being led through the interior past the rows of kneeling men or men pushed up against the walls, like passing through the mass of a crowded cathedral. Guards on the inside stood with guns, checking the ropes to make sure they were secured as they tied them once again, this time to rails in the plane, occasionally hitting one of them with a rifle butt or the blow of their booted feet. Then one of them closed the door, as it shut with a metallic clang, coming back in on its rollers, and it being locked and secured.
It was silent inside, as silent as it could be with the continuing rumble of the engines, even the guards silent for once. The prisoners simply sat, sat as the plane's engine reached their crescendo and it moved forwards, and halted on the runway. The man next to Antonio stirred, and turned to him. "Your first time on a plane?"
"Yes", worded back Antonio.
"Myself as well". It was such a strangely calm voice, in this time.
"I always loved aircraft. I loved their freedom, to go anywhere they wanted."
"I've always been afraid of them. I thought if I got on one I would die." He laughed, a bitter, harsh laugh. "And I was right".
Antonio did not reply.
The engines thrummed once more, and they felt the sense of acceleration as it bounced down the runway, and into the air. It was strange, to be pushed sideways like that. Despite himself he looked out the porthole in front of him, seeing the sky behind it. Then the aircraft banked, and the ground hove into view, and a brief moment of happiness crossed his mind, that he had finally seen it, like a bird from above, seen the earth so far below, its emerald and auburn plants, its rising and falling hills, the little homes of peasants and the towns of workers, where people were ants at most, where the troubles of the world were left behind.
And then the aircraft steadied out once more, and it flew through the sky like an arrow, the slight winds leaving its progress untrammeled. All he could see was the vaguely greenish color of the metal, not quite living even like moss, not quite dead, just.... there, set against the blue portal of the sky from the porthole. The sound of the engines filled the cabin, making conversation impossible. The door to the pilot's cabin opened, and one of the guards filed inside.
A few seconds later he re-emerged, and signaled to the guard by the door, who gripped its locking wheel and wheeled it in a circle, then pulled it open. The sound of the airstream and the engines filled the aircraft, a deafening roar, louder than even before. The guard grabbed the prisoner crouched the closest to the door, untied his rope to the plane, pulled him upright, and pushed him towards the opening into infinity. The man began to resist frantically, struggling, attempting to push and break free, and for a second the guard lost him and he tried to throw himself back into the plane - and then another one caught him, and they wrenched him in front of the door. With a great heave, he was thrown out the airplane - thrown into the sky.
It had only taken seconds, only seconds, such a brief span of time to bring the life of a man to an end. The other prisoners sat stunned, stunned despite it all, then tried to struggle, to stand up, to go somewhere in this closed cylinder of aluminum so far above the earth - but they were tied, and there was nothing they could do. The next man tried to bite the guard, but he dodged the canines, and hit him with a twack of a rifle barrel into his head. The prisoner felt dazed, faint, perhaps unconscious. Antonio felt sympathy for him, sympathy that at least he would die without knowledge that death awaited him, that he would die in inky blackness rather than in the horror of the light.
It repeated itself with its cruel and dreadful methodical nature, time and again. Antonio felt sick to his stomach as he watched, pained, horrified, and the terror in his soul grew as the guards approached closer and closer to him. And then it was his turn, as the ropes were untied, as his legs kicked desperately, as a faint trickle of urine ran down his legs from the terror and the horror, as the guards held him and dragged him towards the door, as he cried and even as he knew not god, prayed - prayed and hoped, hoped that this world that he he had seen so little of, this world that he would say goodbye to in horror and those terrifying final seconds of terror, was but the prelude to the next as the priests had always promised.
And then he was pushed out the door, and into the air, to fly like he had always dreamed of, to fly like a bird, to fly upon the flight of man through the great vaulting arch of the heavens, to fly for the first and the last time. But even birds must in the end return to the ground, and the human bird shall be no different, as Icarus falls from the sky to the distant soil.
Antonio would never see his 18th birthday.
And thus continued the rain of death over the lands of Spain, to purge the enemies of king, faith, and fatherland.
Antonio Cicerono stared up at the arch of the heavens, trying to lose himself in its peace and solitude. A falcon swooped high above in the morning glow, although as the engines whined to life it flew away, flew away from this place. Liberty, liberty - a bird had that, but a man didn't. He thought back to when the police had arrested him, arrested him for being part of the rebels. It was true, he had supported them, he had run information, messages, he had served in one of the units protecting a factory from the government when they tried to obliterate them, he wasn't innocent, if fighting in the defense of his liberty was guilt - but why? Why? It coursed through his mind, the thought, why they had chosen for him to die, why. He thought of the fat priest who had leered at him, who had hated him ever since he had refused his advance as a young boy. The government took their word seriously, took what these men of god said to heart - but why did a man of god have to do this to him? He didn't believe in god, but if there was one, surely He would save him from this plight? Did not His son himself die upon the cross, a victim of tyranny too, when he had fought for the poor and for the oppressed? And yet clearly if there was a god, He was silent up there in he-
His vision exploded into white stars, as felt a blinding pain strike the back of his head, and was knocked to his knees, returning to this world from the path that his thoughts had wandered. Dazed and bruised, he looked behind him, as a guard, dressed in a military uniform and carrying a rifle, smashed the butt of the gun into his back once more. Another blinding flash of pain exploded across his bruised and battered body, as he bent over in agony.
"Get moving you traitor!" screamed the guard, a harsh and raucous voice, as cruel and unfeeling hands gripped his head and pulled him back to his feet. The man pushed him forwards, a hard and heavy shove that nearly toppled him again, but he stayed on his feet. It was a miracle that he did so, with his eyes tied behind his back with rope, the harsh hemp fiber granting on his skin, already feeling chafed and raw. His legs obeyed without thought, as he stumbled along, stumbled forwards.
There was a line of them. Men, of all ages, clad in rags, gaunt and bruised. Blood spilled down from the cut of one man, a jagged slash across a cheek that still showed the red-drenched flesh underneath the skin, a stocky figure perhaps in his 40s, a muscular figure, his arms toned by labor. Some of them shivered, shivered in the chill dawn air, but for most of them it was a trembling, a quaking, as they gazed upon the gaping door of the plane, into its cavernous interior, with insufficient light from the windows casting it into dim shadows. The livery of the plane still included the gold and red of Iberia airlines, bright, too bright, in the early morning sun.
He was the youngest of the file of prisoners. A thin mustache was on his upper lip, but he hadn't even celebrated his 18th year yet, he was still 17. It hurt, it hurt to know that life ended so young, for so little reason, before he had ever had a child, before he had ever known love, to die young instead of old in a warm bed surrounded by his children and grandchildren. There was still a part of him, young, that saw death in a glorious cause as well - glorious - but now, as he ached from the cuts, from the bruises, from hunger and pain, he felt nothing, nothing at all, save for a feeling of incomprehension and dreadful, gaping, sadness.
Antonio had always liked planes. He had had a little model, a little wooden thing, that his father had carved for him. Whittled it around the fire, in winter, out of some piece of balta wood that he had found thrown away next to a carpentry factory. Long nights, whittling away with the knife, crafting it piece by piece. The wings, the monoplane emerging from the grainy wood, then the cockpit, an open affair with the carefully sculpted faux-glass protection, the tail and the rudder, the long and graceful body, even the little propellers on the front and the tiny outlets for air and for cooling, his patient and skilled hands working constantly, scanning it with his eyes, comparing it to a depiction in a newspaper. And then he had set to painting it, with red and gold, with black and grey, drawing the depiction of canvas and the flaps and the Spanish roundel, until there it was - the fairy-like light little plane of Antonio, which his father had given to him with his unassuming honesty, a smile as he put it in his child's hands. Antonio had run outside and run around and around with the plane, holding it up into the air, swooping up and down with it, imaging that someday he would fly up in the sky, like a bird. The other boys had been jealous, and they had played with it, as a bomber in games of cowboys and Indians - the absurdity of using it a war from the last century where no airplanes yet flew had never occurred tho them - or in adventures and explorations, travelling through the great jungles of Africa, finding tribes in Brazil or New Guinea, crossing over the vast gulf of the Atlantic, each time the light little plane guided by a child's hands against the sky.
He had always kept the aircraft, and it was somewhere back at home, with his father still. As he had grown older he had played with it less and less, but he still had always loved to watch planes, he had hoped that one day he could be a pilot. He had bought books, with his precious little money, about aircraft, about how to train to become a pilot, and had asked and wondered, started to plan, to dream of amassing his little cash and savings to one day go to some school that would send him soaring into the air. The knights of the air, that would take him away from this cruel and callous lair of misery, to something greater and more beautiful.
And now it would kill him. The first time he had ever been in an airplane, and it would be his death.
They shuffled into the hold, into an interior free from seats, being pushed up against the wall in their rows. Antonio had been nearly the last in the line, so he was far away from the door, being led through the interior past the rows of kneeling men or men pushed up against the walls, like passing through the mass of a crowded cathedral. Guards on the inside stood with guns, checking the ropes to make sure they were secured as they tied them once again, this time to rails in the plane, occasionally hitting one of them with a rifle butt or the blow of their booted feet. Then one of them closed the door, as it shut with a metallic clang, coming back in on its rollers, and it being locked and secured.
It was silent inside, as silent as it could be with the continuing rumble of the engines, even the guards silent for once. The prisoners simply sat, sat as the plane's engine reached their crescendo and it moved forwards, and halted on the runway. The man next to Antonio stirred, and turned to him. "Your first time on a plane?"
"Yes", worded back Antonio.
"Myself as well". It was such a strangely calm voice, in this time.
"I always loved aircraft. I loved their freedom, to go anywhere they wanted."
"I've always been afraid of them. I thought if I got on one I would die." He laughed, a bitter, harsh laugh. "And I was right".
Antonio did not reply.
The engines thrummed once more, and they felt the sense of acceleration as it bounced down the runway, and into the air. It was strange, to be pushed sideways like that. Despite himself he looked out the porthole in front of him, seeing the sky behind it. Then the aircraft banked, and the ground hove into view, and a brief moment of happiness crossed his mind, that he had finally seen it, like a bird from above, seen the earth so far below, its emerald and auburn plants, its rising and falling hills, the little homes of peasants and the towns of workers, where people were ants at most, where the troubles of the world were left behind.
And then the aircraft steadied out once more, and it flew through the sky like an arrow, the slight winds leaving its progress untrammeled. All he could see was the vaguely greenish color of the metal, not quite living even like moss, not quite dead, just.... there, set against the blue portal of the sky from the porthole. The sound of the engines filled the cabin, making conversation impossible. The door to the pilot's cabin opened, and one of the guards filed inside.
A few seconds later he re-emerged, and signaled to the guard by the door, who gripped its locking wheel and wheeled it in a circle, then pulled it open. The sound of the airstream and the engines filled the aircraft, a deafening roar, louder than even before. The guard grabbed the prisoner crouched the closest to the door, untied his rope to the plane, pulled him upright, and pushed him towards the opening into infinity. The man began to resist frantically, struggling, attempting to push and break free, and for a second the guard lost him and he tried to throw himself back into the plane - and then another one caught him, and they wrenched him in front of the door. With a great heave, he was thrown out the airplane - thrown into the sky.
It had only taken seconds, only seconds, such a brief span of time to bring the life of a man to an end. The other prisoners sat stunned, stunned despite it all, then tried to struggle, to stand up, to go somewhere in this closed cylinder of aluminum so far above the earth - but they were tied, and there was nothing they could do. The next man tried to bite the guard, but he dodged the canines, and hit him with a twack of a rifle barrel into his head. The prisoner felt dazed, faint, perhaps unconscious. Antonio felt sympathy for him, sympathy that at least he would die without knowledge that death awaited him, that he would die in inky blackness rather than in the horror of the light.
It repeated itself with its cruel and dreadful methodical nature, time and again. Antonio felt sick to his stomach as he watched, pained, horrified, and the terror in his soul grew as the guards approached closer and closer to him. And then it was his turn, as the ropes were untied, as his legs kicked desperately, as a faint trickle of urine ran down his legs from the terror and the horror, as the guards held him and dragged him towards the door, as he cried and even as he knew not god, prayed - prayed and hoped, hoped that this world that he he had seen so little of, this world that he would say goodbye to in horror and those terrifying final seconds of terror, was but the prelude to the next as the priests had always promised.
And then he was pushed out the door, and into the air, to fly like he had always dreamed of, to fly like a bird, to fly upon the flight of man through the great vaulting arch of the heavens, to fly for the first and the last time. But even birds must in the end return to the ground, and the human bird shall be no different, as Icarus falls from the sky to the distant soil.
Antonio would never see his 18th birthday.
And thus continued the rain of death over the lands of Spain, to purge the enemies of king, faith, and fatherland.
Crossing the Ebro
Pillars of grey-blue smoke rose into the deep blue sky of autumn, dotted with its clouds that wandered hazily to the sea, joining into a thin screen of smoke that shifted with the wind along the river Ebro. Quiet flowed the river, quiet after the long summer, where the burning heat had extirpated water from its banks and reduced it to a thin trickle of what was once a raging stream. Along its banks, in the dry grasslands, in the scrub and the plains of golden wheat, burned fires, while the occasional dull thumping of a canon dissipated in the sullen air, the sound daring not to leave the steel muzzle. Sharper crackles of rifle fire joined the air, ragged percussions, an orchestra that marched along to the tune of the machine guns as their buzzing and sawing rent the air, the streams of hot brass pushing into the soil to leave behind cindering bushes, grass, and shrubs. Occasional sounds of explosions, booms shaking the air, could be heard - a few seconds after the firing sound of a heavy gun with its deep bass roar, or after the screeching dive of an aircraft, as it sortied from the deep blue sky into a descent to unleash its chain of deadly steel eggs onto some position, troops waving their helmets and cheering every time one appeared. A steady stream filled the sky... steadier than the river. But quiet it did not flow, and one day the river would flow towards the sea when the aircraft had long since themselves fallen silent.
José Sanjurjo's headquarters bustled with the sound of radio transmissions, the scratch of pens and pencils on paper, the coming and going of courriers, the barked orders of commands by officers. The sound of modern war, of this war where everything was marked on charts and papers, where reports came in at the speed of lightning from the front, where war had become bureaucrat and professionalized to the extent that one could almost feel like one was in one of the new offices so distant in Madrid. But one could hear the sounds of war even here. It wasn't the same with every general, but José Sanjurjo liked to keep close to the front, close to the action, not in some château so far from the front line that it would take a day on the road for an automobile to traverse the winding paths to where the soldiers fought. Far enough away to be out of the range of the regular fighting, close enough to be in contact, daring the enemy bombers to find the camouflaged tents and to try to launch their bombs.
He was a heavy set man, plain of face, with a shock of a mustache, bristly and a dark black. His short hair sat close to his head, brushed back, showing grey at the edges but still healthy and full, without a trace of balding. Around his eyes were creased lines, from too long of squinting into the sun, and his skin had the paperish and olive complex of a man who had worked for long years in the desert, in the hot wastelands of North Africa. The eyes attested to it too - cold eyes, cold despite the warmth. His voice had the steel of it from a man used to shouting commands - a man used to being obeyed. A group of the officers were gathered around the table, over a map, laying out lines for the advance, charting the progress made, when a messenger entered the room and stood to attention.
Sanjurjo raised his head, his eyebrows rising. "Yes, soldier,?"
"General, we have reports from the front that a car has appeared under a white flag of truce, and asked to meet with the nearest general, which is you sir. Our skirmish lines let them through, and they are provisionally on the way here."
"I see soldier". Sanjurjo's brow furrowed for a second, creased with thought. Then he laughed. "Gentlemen, what a story it would be if they were about to surrender already!" An obligatory chorus of merriment rose from the assembled soldiers. He turned back to the messenger. "Soldier, report to the sentries to let the vehicle pass, and that they are to be welcomed under the rules of war to our encampment."
The messenger saluted smartly. "Yes sir!" An about-face, and he was gone, and the men returned to looking over the map, over the drawn isometric lines of geometry, as the plains gave into the mountain, as the river Ebro, this stream in this time of heat which divided northern Spain, promised to fall behind them, on their march in the Basque country.
The messenger arrived again, saluting once more, half an hour later. "General, the staff car has arrived."
"Thank you soldier." Sanjurjo rose, brushing out the creases in his uniform, and donning the visored military hat. The envoy held open the door for him as he passed, once more into the brilliant sunlight. The staff car was just rolling up, leaving a small plume of dust that puffed into the hot air to land behind it, its engine purring with the sound of a well-oiled machine or a pleased cat. It was painted in brilliant gold and red, open-topped, two flags on the front - each one the same, a white field with two diagonal crossing scarlet red lines, jagged stripes of blood against the purity behind them. A larger pure white flag, dirtied slightly by the dust but still luminous in the air, flapped as the car rolled from its flagpole next to the driver's seat, and then fell to a halt in the limpid air when the car ceased to roll. The driver jumped out of the car as it came to a halt, and a man got out, crossed to the other side, and opened the other door, holding out his hand as a woman stepped down. And then he turned to the assembled Spanish soldiers, walking forwards with an almost jaunty pace.
A thin man, of regular height, slightly taller than the woman. His face was eagle like, with a thin mustache, and piercing black eyes. Carefully combed hair, slick and brushed back, had a sheen to it in the bright sun - but most of it was covered by a beret, set off almost playfully on his head, a tassle running down its side. A dark blue jacket, doubtless hot in the burning heat, fitted over his slight frame, golden buttons running down the front in their two rows. Dark white trousers, and black boots on his feet, with only the faintest dusting of dirt upon them. An interesting uniform - perhaps some would recognize from when it came, from the trenches of the First World War, from distant Belgium, but most would know not its providence. A sword hung at his waist, in a scabbard, swaying as he walked forwards. The woman - his wife? wore a modest dress, fashioned about her waist with a thick leather belt, blue and light, a white bonnet perched upon her head while the black hair ran down her neck behind her, a fleur-de-lis perched upon her breast and a simple golden necklace around her neck, her hands clad in black gloves. The driver unloaded the staff car of a small box, standing respectfully there as a sentry bustled over to examine it.
Silence filled the camp as the two advanced, until almost right in front of Sanjurjo. Then a smile crept onto the face of the man, and his voice burst out.
"Well dear General Sanjurjo, I must say it is quite the pleasure to see you here! How has the front been treating you? Different than the deserts in North Africa?"
Sanjurjo's face lit up with a beaming smile. "Don Javier, it has been too long; I haven't seen you for far too many years! What gifts the good Lord gives us to bring you and the Duchess once more into our company!" The woman smiled and curtsied slightly in reference to her name. "The war, it is war, it is something which us Spaniards are used to."
"Ahh but indeed, we have all grown too used to it all too well." A trace of steel entered the tone of Javier, before the lightness once more stirred. "Please, if I may present some gifts to you as a token of your generosity in letting us through your soldiers?" He turned behind him, and called "Jean". The chauffer walked over, carrying a small box.
"You're damn lucky that you didn't get shot",cautioned Sanjuro. "If you needed to contact me, you should have simple radioed."
"Ahh, not nearly as dramatic, a prince does not simply request an appointment". A silvery laugh accompanied his off-handed remark, and a grimmer tone emerged. "And there are all too many who listen at the air waves".
The chauffer laid the box next to Javier, and opened the top. Javier reached down and pulled out a bottle of golden liquid; like amber in the sunlight, the rays of the sun refracting through it onto the ground, through the crystal glass. "You always did enjoy some cognac Sanjurjo, and I am sure you need a drink in this war! Would you, me wife, and those officers that you would like" - a slight stress on the last part - "be interested in some private conversation?"
Sanjurjo studied the rich bottle of liquor, from the distant town of Cognac in Charentes-Maritime, France, and then smiled once more. "Why yes Francisco", calling him by the first name for the first time during this meeting. "I think I would very much enjoy that indeed".
---
"José, this is the best chance for Spain and for our movement, and you know it".
The light was slanting in in an evening glow, the gold of its light becoming as pronounced as the cognac, as it was magnified once again more as it passed through the jewel-like glasses arrayed on the table. Flickering fireflies of light danced around the table every time a bottle moved, like as if one had thrown upon it a collection of beads to jostle around, golden beads that reflected the light of the sun in shining intensity. The bottles of cognac were mostly empty, and the glasses surrounding were in various states of being drained. A tone of ease had entered the conversation, of things being laid back, calmed, tranquil, despite the seriousness of the topic.
There were 5 of them. Sanjuro, Prince Javier, the legitimate heir of the Carlist movement, his wife Madeleine de Bourbon-Busset, and Sanjuro's chief of staff and his intelligence officer, Emel Guerra and Salvador Seco respectively. Sanjuro, Xavier, and Madeleine had known each for a long time, but Guerra and Seco were new to meet the royalty, but their grizzled and refrained comportement had changed as they drank the delightful cognac. But then, while their knowledge and their understanding of the affair was vital, their loyalty, their absolute and utter loyalty to Sanjurjo, was without question, without doubt. Men who if told to conquer hell, would ask only only if there was some extra ammunition for the pistols they would use to make their foray into that land.
"Yes I do, I know it well." Sanjurjo"s speech was slightly slurred by the alcohol, but his eyes were clear and unwavering."But it does not mean it is easy, or that it will go unchallenged. I stand as a proud Carlist, in the defense of the ancient traditions of Spain, but in the capital, the situation is confused and difficult to control."
Javier leaned forward. "The sake of the nation is in doubt. You know it as well as me. The Americans will ship through their arms, the French have gone insane and are opposed to your regime, the Italians lap around your shores like dogs. You may win, because there are generals like you and these wretched socialists never know how to fight like real men, but it will be a hard struggle, one which will leave our nation ruined. We must act, act not only to cut out the disease as has been tried before, but act as well to preserve the body."
Madeleine de Bourbon-Busset, who had been silent most of the evening, spoke up. "General, you know what is happening in Catalonia. You know about the atrocities that the "Union", this band of heretics; atheists, and tyrants are committing even as we now speak, against god-fearing priests and men. When we ask you to take up the sword in the defense of His faith, it is not as an idle plea for power, but in the name of His defense on earth, in a crusade, a struggle between the forces of light and justice, greater than any which the world has ever seen since the fall of Grenada in 1492. I implore you, I beg you", and here her voice broke, coming down to nearly a whisper, "to choose the side of justice and truth, and to excoriate from this country which I have grown to love these bands of marauders and terrorists."
The general was silent, silent as the seconds ticked on, with barely a sound to be heard save for the rustling of the wind. And then he stood. "Gentleman, gentlewoman. When the future of our nation is at stake, we must do what we must to act. I will write immediately to my comrades in arms, and tomorrow, I shall leave to make our message clear to the government. They have dawdled, tarried, too long about this, have preferred to wallow in their bureaucratic squabbles and to put aside the needed regeneration of Spain that will restore Her traditional glories and power. The path forwards is clear, and let us follow it with unbent shoulders and sturdy hearts, for the salvation of the fatherland. "Long live the king ! " He raised his glass and gestured to Javier.
They raised the glasses, the cognac sweeping around the little glass figurines in its trembling waves, and to the clink of the jewels upon each other, the cry came as if one voice. "Long live the king!"
"Long live Spain!" The cry came from Emel Guerra, the chief of staff.
The echo resounded once more, once more into the cooling air of the evening.
And a final glass was raised, and Javier's lips parted. "And long live, the one true faith"!
"Long live!"
King.
Fatherland.
And God.
The traditional devise of Carlism, which for a century had promised to bring back a fallen people to the light.
For in a nation foundered upon the rocks of misfortune, only the wise shepherd, a wise king, shall lead it through the valley of death to the sunny upland meadows. Under the red cross, under the name of the one true king, would Spain thus be saved from the red flag and the horror of anarchism.
The next morning, the general's plane left for Madrid, escorted by fighters who swept through the cool morning air like swallows, while the guns thundered behind them, while soldiers in their barracks in distant Madrid began to stir, unaware of the reports that their officers had received in the night, unaware of the day to come while politicians remained ignorant of the events to follow. The hand of fate and the sword of destiny held aloft would extricate from the Gordian knot of chaos into which Spain had fallen their sacred fatherland, and would save the nation in danger. Providence had placed in the hands of the one true king the chance that he needed, and now it would be up to Him and Him alone to determine what was to come.
And behind them, quiet flowed the Ebro. Quiet it flowed from the mountains to the sea, unchanging throughout the course of time, as it rose and fell in the seasons, as it made its way, unabashed, unbowed, to the oceans.
José Sanjurjo's headquarters bustled with the sound of radio transmissions, the scratch of pens and pencils on paper, the coming and going of courriers, the barked orders of commands by officers. The sound of modern war, of this war where everything was marked on charts and papers, where reports came in at the speed of lightning from the front, where war had become bureaucrat and professionalized to the extent that one could almost feel like one was in one of the new offices so distant in Madrid. But one could hear the sounds of war even here. It wasn't the same with every general, but José Sanjurjo liked to keep close to the front, close to the action, not in some château so far from the front line that it would take a day on the road for an automobile to traverse the winding paths to where the soldiers fought. Far enough away to be out of the range of the regular fighting, close enough to be in contact, daring the enemy bombers to find the camouflaged tents and to try to launch their bombs.
He was a heavy set man, plain of face, with a shock of a mustache, bristly and a dark black. His short hair sat close to his head, brushed back, showing grey at the edges but still healthy and full, without a trace of balding. Around his eyes were creased lines, from too long of squinting into the sun, and his skin had the paperish and olive complex of a man who had worked for long years in the desert, in the hot wastelands of North Africa. The eyes attested to it too - cold eyes, cold despite the warmth. His voice had the steel of it from a man used to shouting commands - a man used to being obeyed. A group of the officers were gathered around the table, over a map, laying out lines for the advance, charting the progress made, when a messenger entered the room and stood to attention.
Sanjurjo raised his head, his eyebrows rising. "Yes, soldier,?"
"General, we have reports from the front that a car has appeared under a white flag of truce, and asked to meet with the nearest general, which is you sir. Our skirmish lines let them through, and they are provisionally on the way here."
"I see soldier". Sanjurjo's brow furrowed for a second, creased with thought. Then he laughed. "Gentlemen, what a story it would be if they were about to surrender already!" An obligatory chorus of merriment rose from the assembled soldiers. He turned back to the messenger. "Soldier, report to the sentries to let the vehicle pass, and that they are to be welcomed under the rules of war to our encampment."
The messenger saluted smartly. "Yes sir!" An about-face, and he was gone, and the men returned to looking over the map, over the drawn isometric lines of geometry, as the plains gave into the mountain, as the river Ebro, this stream in this time of heat which divided northern Spain, promised to fall behind them, on their march in the Basque country.
The messenger arrived again, saluting once more, half an hour later. "General, the staff car has arrived."
"Thank you soldier." Sanjurjo rose, brushing out the creases in his uniform, and donning the visored military hat. The envoy held open the door for him as he passed, once more into the brilliant sunlight. The staff car was just rolling up, leaving a small plume of dust that puffed into the hot air to land behind it, its engine purring with the sound of a well-oiled machine or a pleased cat. It was painted in brilliant gold and red, open-topped, two flags on the front - each one the same, a white field with two diagonal crossing scarlet red lines, jagged stripes of blood against the purity behind them. A larger pure white flag, dirtied slightly by the dust but still luminous in the air, flapped as the car rolled from its flagpole next to the driver's seat, and then fell to a halt in the limpid air when the car ceased to roll. The driver jumped out of the car as it came to a halt, and a man got out, crossed to the other side, and opened the other door, holding out his hand as a woman stepped down. And then he turned to the assembled Spanish soldiers, walking forwards with an almost jaunty pace.
A thin man, of regular height, slightly taller than the woman. His face was eagle like, with a thin mustache, and piercing black eyes. Carefully combed hair, slick and brushed back, had a sheen to it in the bright sun - but most of it was covered by a beret, set off almost playfully on his head, a tassle running down its side. A dark blue jacket, doubtless hot in the burning heat, fitted over his slight frame, golden buttons running down the front in their two rows. Dark white trousers, and black boots on his feet, with only the faintest dusting of dirt upon them. An interesting uniform - perhaps some would recognize from when it came, from the trenches of the First World War, from distant Belgium, but most would know not its providence. A sword hung at his waist, in a scabbard, swaying as he walked forwards. The woman - his wife? wore a modest dress, fashioned about her waist with a thick leather belt, blue and light, a white bonnet perched upon her head while the black hair ran down her neck behind her, a fleur-de-lis perched upon her breast and a simple golden necklace around her neck, her hands clad in black gloves. The driver unloaded the staff car of a small box, standing respectfully there as a sentry bustled over to examine it.
Silence filled the camp as the two advanced, until almost right in front of Sanjurjo. Then a smile crept onto the face of the man, and his voice burst out.
"Well dear General Sanjurjo, I must say it is quite the pleasure to see you here! How has the front been treating you? Different than the deserts in North Africa?"
Sanjurjo's face lit up with a beaming smile. "Don Javier, it has been too long; I haven't seen you for far too many years! What gifts the good Lord gives us to bring you and the Duchess once more into our company!" The woman smiled and curtsied slightly in reference to her name. "The war, it is war, it is something which us Spaniards are used to."
"Ahh but indeed, we have all grown too used to it all too well." A trace of steel entered the tone of Javier, before the lightness once more stirred. "Please, if I may present some gifts to you as a token of your generosity in letting us through your soldiers?" He turned behind him, and called "Jean". The chauffer walked over, carrying a small box.
"You're damn lucky that you didn't get shot",cautioned Sanjuro. "If you needed to contact me, you should have simple radioed."
"Ahh, not nearly as dramatic, a prince does not simply request an appointment". A silvery laugh accompanied his off-handed remark, and a grimmer tone emerged. "And there are all too many who listen at the air waves".
The chauffer laid the box next to Javier, and opened the top. Javier reached down and pulled out a bottle of golden liquid; like amber in the sunlight, the rays of the sun refracting through it onto the ground, through the crystal glass. "You always did enjoy some cognac Sanjurjo, and I am sure you need a drink in this war! Would you, me wife, and those officers that you would like" - a slight stress on the last part - "be interested in some private conversation?"
Sanjurjo studied the rich bottle of liquor, from the distant town of Cognac in Charentes-Maritime, France, and then smiled once more. "Why yes Francisco", calling him by the first name for the first time during this meeting. "I think I would very much enjoy that indeed".
---
"José, this is the best chance for Spain and for our movement, and you know it".
The light was slanting in in an evening glow, the gold of its light becoming as pronounced as the cognac, as it was magnified once again more as it passed through the jewel-like glasses arrayed on the table. Flickering fireflies of light danced around the table every time a bottle moved, like as if one had thrown upon it a collection of beads to jostle around, golden beads that reflected the light of the sun in shining intensity. The bottles of cognac were mostly empty, and the glasses surrounding were in various states of being drained. A tone of ease had entered the conversation, of things being laid back, calmed, tranquil, despite the seriousness of the topic.
There were 5 of them. Sanjuro, Prince Javier, the legitimate heir of the Carlist movement, his wife Madeleine de Bourbon-Busset, and Sanjuro's chief of staff and his intelligence officer, Emel Guerra and Salvador Seco respectively. Sanjuro, Xavier, and Madeleine had known each for a long time, but Guerra and Seco were new to meet the royalty, but their grizzled and refrained comportement had changed as they drank the delightful cognac. But then, while their knowledge and their understanding of the affair was vital, their loyalty, their absolute and utter loyalty to Sanjurjo, was without question, without doubt. Men who if told to conquer hell, would ask only only if there was some extra ammunition for the pistols they would use to make their foray into that land.
"Yes I do, I know it well." Sanjurjo"s speech was slightly slurred by the alcohol, but his eyes were clear and unwavering."But it does not mean it is easy, or that it will go unchallenged. I stand as a proud Carlist, in the defense of the ancient traditions of Spain, but in the capital, the situation is confused and difficult to control."
Javier leaned forward. "The sake of the nation is in doubt. You know it as well as me. The Americans will ship through their arms, the French have gone insane and are opposed to your regime, the Italians lap around your shores like dogs. You may win, because there are generals like you and these wretched socialists never know how to fight like real men, but it will be a hard struggle, one which will leave our nation ruined. We must act, act not only to cut out the disease as has been tried before, but act as well to preserve the body."
Madeleine de Bourbon-Busset, who had been silent most of the evening, spoke up. "General, you know what is happening in Catalonia. You know about the atrocities that the "Union", this band of heretics; atheists, and tyrants are committing even as we now speak, against god-fearing priests and men. When we ask you to take up the sword in the defense of His faith, it is not as an idle plea for power, but in the name of His defense on earth, in a crusade, a struggle between the forces of light and justice, greater than any which the world has ever seen since the fall of Grenada in 1492. I implore you, I beg you", and here her voice broke, coming down to nearly a whisper, "to choose the side of justice and truth, and to excoriate from this country which I have grown to love these bands of marauders and terrorists."
The general was silent, silent as the seconds ticked on, with barely a sound to be heard save for the rustling of the wind. And then he stood. "Gentleman, gentlewoman. When the future of our nation is at stake, we must do what we must to act. I will write immediately to my comrades in arms, and tomorrow, I shall leave to make our message clear to the government. They have dawdled, tarried, too long about this, have preferred to wallow in their bureaucratic squabbles and to put aside the needed regeneration of Spain that will restore Her traditional glories and power. The path forwards is clear, and let us follow it with unbent shoulders and sturdy hearts, for the salvation of the fatherland. "Long live the king ! " He raised his glass and gestured to Javier.
They raised the glasses, the cognac sweeping around the little glass figurines in its trembling waves, and to the clink of the jewels upon each other, the cry came as if one voice. "Long live the king!"
"Long live Spain!" The cry came from Emel Guerra, the chief of staff.
The echo resounded once more, once more into the cooling air of the evening.
And a final glass was raised, and Javier's lips parted. "And long live, the one true faith"!
"Long live!"
King.
Fatherland.
And God.
The traditional devise of Carlism, which for a century had promised to bring back a fallen people to the light.
For in a nation foundered upon the rocks of misfortune, only the wise shepherd, a wise king, shall lead it through the valley of death to the sunny upland meadows. Under the red cross, under the name of the one true king, would Spain thus be saved from the red flag and the horror of anarchism.
The next morning, the general's plane left for Madrid, escorted by fighters who swept through the cool morning air like swallows, while the guns thundered behind them, while soldiers in their barracks in distant Madrid began to stir, unaware of the reports that their officers had received in the night, unaware of the day to come while politicians remained ignorant of the events to follow. The hand of fate and the sword of destiny held aloft would extricate from the Gordian knot of chaos into which Spain had fallen their sacred fatherland, and would save the nation in danger. Providence had placed in the hands of the one true king the chance that he needed, and now it would be up to Him and Him alone to determine what was to come.
And behind them, quiet flowed the Ebro. Quiet it flowed from the mountains to the sea, unchanging throughout the course of time, as it rose and fell in the seasons, as it made its way, unabashed, unbowed, to the oceans.
lundi 23 juillet 2018
The Red Cavalry has liberated Laos!
Red flowers grew from a fecond soil
When the hooves of our horses clattered in the streets
Of beautiful Luang Prabang, this city encircled by verdant mountains
This beautiful city that we have given liberty!
Hey comrade, do you remember, when we rode from Yen Bai to Lubang Prebang
And only the wind flew faster than our squadrons
We were invincible under the spirit of Buddha
And the French fled from our lively attack
Like a wave we swept away everything before us
Imperialists, priests, French, all trampled underneath!
She was beautiful, so innocent and young
This beauty in her mountains
My heart was broken to leave her
And we embraced under the moonlight
And she made me promise to return to her
Her eyes shining like the dew!
We ride towards Cambodia
A hurricane of rifles and sabers
But I will never forget my beautiful Laos
And I will return there in victory!
Forward despite the bombs and the blows
For the Red Cavalry will only know triumph!
La Cavalerie Rouge a libéré le Laos !
Des fleurs rouges poussaient d'un sol fécond
Quand les sabots de nos chevaux cliquetaient dans les rues
De beau Luang Prabang, cette ville encerclée par des montagnes verdoyantes
Cette belle ville que nous avons donnée la liberté !
Hé camarade, te souviens-tu, quand nous montions de Yen Bai à Lubang Prebang
Et seulement le vent volait plus vite que nos escadrons ?
Nous étions invincibles sous l'esprit de Bouddha
Et les français se sont fuis de notre attaque vive !
Comme une vague nous enlevions tous devant nous
Des impérialistes, des prêtres, des français, tous plétinés dessous !
Elle était belle, si innocente et jeune
Cette beauté dans ses montagnes
Mon coeur était serré de la laisser
Et nous nous sommes embrassés sous la claire de la lune
Elle m'a fait promettre de lui revenir
Ses yeux scintillants comme la rosée !
Nous montons vers le Cambodge
Un ouragan d'acier des fusils et sabres
Mais je n'oublierai jamais mon beau Laos
Et j'y reviendrai en victoire !
En avant malgré les bombes et les coups
Pour la cavalerie rouge ne connaître que la triomphe !
Quand les sabots de nos chevaux cliquetaient dans les rues
De beau Luang Prabang, cette ville encerclée par des montagnes verdoyantes
Cette belle ville que nous avons donnée la liberté !
Hé camarade, te souviens-tu, quand nous montions de Yen Bai à Lubang Prebang
Et seulement le vent volait plus vite que nos escadrons ?
Nous étions invincibles sous l'esprit de Bouddha
Et les français se sont fuis de notre attaque vive !
Comme une vague nous enlevions tous devant nous
Des impérialistes, des prêtres, des français, tous plétinés dessous !
Elle était belle, si innocente et jeune
Cette beauté dans ses montagnes
Mon coeur était serré de la laisser
Et nous nous sommes embrassés sous la claire de la lune
Elle m'a fait promettre de lui revenir
Ses yeux scintillants comme la rosée !
Nous montons vers le Cambodge
Un ouragan d'acier des fusils et sabres
Mais je n'oublierai jamais mon beau Laos
Et j'y reviendrai en victoire !
En avant malgré les bombes et les coups
Pour la cavalerie rouge ne connaître que la triomphe !
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