Authors: Victoria Hislop
Tags: #British - Spain, #Psychological Fiction, #Family, #British, #Spain - History - Civil War; 1936-1939 - Social Aspects, #General, #Granada (Spain), #Historical, #War & Military, #Families, #Fiction, #Spain
The Return (38 page)
Francisco coughed incessantly in his sleep, but disturbed no one. At four thirty, Antonio rolled a cigarette and lay in the dark, watching the smoke curl away into the damp air. It was the clank of tin mugs and the faint whiff of something that resembled coffee that stirred them. Their necks stiff, their stomachs hollow with hunger, rested in neither body nor mind, they stretched their limbs. Some got up and wandered off to urinate in the nearby bushes. This was the low point of the day: the colourless dawn, a bitter chill that might not lift until midday, and the prospect of another day of discomfort and hunger. Only later on, as their bodies were warmed by the proximity of one another, did their spirits rise and the songs begin again.
Antonio and his friends were well on their way northwards when Mercedes began her second day’s trek with the refugees from Málaga. Though people mostly walked in silence, there was the occasional frantic cry of a mother looking for a child. In this great crowd it was easy for people to become separated, and there were several children to be seen aimlessly wandering, their faces shiny with snot and tears and panic.Their distress always upset Mercedes and her grip on Javi’s hand would tighten. No one wanted this unnecessary grief and great efforts were made to reunite those who were separated.
Though most continued to walk at night, exhaustion and hunger forced some to stop for an hour or so, and there were always small mounds at the side of the road. Families huddled together, a blanket pulled over them for warmth and protection, now making use of the mattress that they had dragged from their home to create a small private tent for themselves, a miniature home.
The chill of the night contrasted with the sudden intense flashes of sunshine that would beat down on them at midday.The warmth never lingered but for a brief while children would be bare-armed as though for a summer picnic.
In the vanguard of this procession, there were mostly women, children and the elderly, and these were the ones that Mercedes walked with. They had been the first to leave Málaga, desperate to escape from the city’s captors. Further towards the back of the procession trudged the surviving men and exhausted, defeated militia who had stayed in the city to put up a final show of resistance. Even if they walked night and day, the journey to Almería could take five days. For the old, sick and injured it might be many more.
A few cars and trucks had set out at the beginning of this exodus, but almost all of them had now been abandoned by the wayside. Along with these was the scattered debris of domestic life. Household chattels hastily taken from kitchen cupboards to form the basis for a new life now lay by the roadside.There were other, more surprising objects: a sewing machine, an ornate but chipped dining plate, an heirloom clock, all now discarded and worthless, along with the optimism with which they had been carried out of their homes.
For the first half of the route, there were many donkeys piled high with bedding, buckets and even furniture, but most of these were eventually to buckle under the weight of their burden and their corpses became a common sight in the gutter. At first a few flies gathered round their eyes, but once their bodies began to decompose they arrived in swarms.
Though generally they walked in a silence punctuated only by the sound of their own footsteps and the gentle rattle of their belongings, from time to time Mercedes told Javi a story. Much of the day, she carried him and they both sucked on sugar cane pulled from the fields. It was all that remained to give them energy now that their food was gone, and when exhaustion overcame them, they would take a fitful nap by the roadside.
Mercedes noticed a trunk that lay open in the middle of the road, its contents spilling out. A few garments had blown into a nearby bush and were now caught on its thorns: a bright white communion dress, an embroidered baby’s nightgown, a wedding mantilla.They were spread out on the bush like advertising posters, almost taunting those who saw them with reminders of when those items had last been worn, of a time when life had been peaceful and when baptism and marriage could take place. Everyone filing past had the same thought. Those rituals now seemed long-ago luxuries.
From time to time they passed through a small town or village that had been evacuated. Nothing remained. A few people ransacked empty homes - not for valuables, but for something useful, like a bag of rice that might sustain them for a few more days.
Though Mercedes and Manuela occasionally spoke, there was generally little conversation among the one hundred and fifty thousand that walked. The only sounds were the scrunch of a shoe on the loose surface of the road and the occasional whimper of a baby, some of them newly born by the roadside.
When they were close to Motril, the halfway point of their journey, the two women heard a low grumble. It was late in the afternoon. Mercedes mistook it for the sound of trucks, but Manuela immediately recognised it as aircraft noise and stopped to look up. Nationalist planes were passing low overhead, cumbersome, noisy and graceless.
People watched them and wondered. No one spoke. Then the bombardment began.
During the months since this conflict had begun, Mercedes had never experienced the feelings of absolute terror that gripped her now. Her mouth filled with the metallic taste of fear, and for a moment the sound of her heart pounding drowned out the cries of alarm that went up around her. Her instinct was to run as hard and fast as she could, but there was nowhere to hide - no cellars or bridges or underground train stations. Nowhere. There was Javi to worry about, in any case, and his mother. She stood rooted to the spot as the planes passed directly overhead, her hands over her ears against the deafening roar.
Mercedes grabbed Manuela, who clasped Javi.They stood locked in this embrace, eyes closed against the world and the horrifying scene unfolding around them. Mercedes could feel the woman’s sharp bones through her clothes. It was as though she might snap. They had nothing to protect them and, like most of the inhabitants of Málaga, so recently traumatised by the horrors of shelling and machine-gun fire in their own city, Manuela was briefly paralysed by the fresh onslaught of fascist aggression.
‘Let’s get off the road,’ shouted Mercedes. ‘It’s our only hope.’
The irony was that the only places to hide along this unwelcoming stretch of road were the craters left in the fields by bombs that had exploded earlier. Many people cowered in them, petrified. At least the bombers had supplied some shelter for their terrorised victims.
Soon bodies lay everywhere like broken dolls.
To the horror and disbelief of everyone on the road that day, there was an even more terrifying method of attack to come. When the bombers had finished their work, fighter planes appeared to claim their next wave of victims. In order to instil more terror, they strafed the roads and then the people themselves.There were blinding flashes all around as bullets drew two lines of flaming dots among the screaming crowd. It was not a challenge for the pilots of those planes; they could have blown their targets apart with their eyes shut.
Mothers whimpered like babies when they saw their own children toppled like skittles. Some were mothers of four or five, and there was no protection that they could offer. In any case, a careful aim could wipe out several people in a single burst.
On one occasion, a two-seater plane came so low that Mercedes caught a glimpse of the pilot and behind him the gunner. People scattered, thinking that they might outrun his bullets but their action was futile.The gunner could easily manoeuvre his machine gun to maximum devastation.The pilot’s face dimpled into a smile as he mowed them down.
Then everything went quiet. The minutes went by and the aeroplanes did not return.
‘I think they’ve gone now,’ Mercedes said, trying to reassure Manuela. ‘We need to be on our way. We don’t know when they might come back.’
The air was filled with the moans of the injured and bereaved. The problem for many now was whether to make an attempt to bury their dead or to continue towards the sanctuary of Almería.The ground was hard and burial was not easy, but some made the attempt. Others just covered the bodies with the only blankets they had, and moved on, taking the guilt and the grieving with them. If it was a mother who had been killed, their children were immediately adopted by others and shepherded onwards and away from the gruesome sight of a parental corpse.
In the previous forty-eight hours, Mercedes had been preoccupied by thoughts of Javier.There had not been a moment when the man she loved did not occupy the central-most place in her mind. It was only when the bombs came crashing around her that she was jolted out of this reverie. Then, for the first time, he had been far from her mind. Even the possibility that the man she loved might be somewhere in this diminishing crowd temporarily seemed of no importance to her. Getting this fragile creature, Manuela, and her son to safety now became her main concern.
Many were maimed, not killed, and a fresh wave of walking wounded was added to those who had limped from Málaga. The journey had to continue and the direction remained the same. There was no turning back and they could not stand still.
Manuela did not speak. For a moment she seemed paralysed by fear, but Mercedes’ firm arm and the feel of her son’s hand pulling on hers brought her to her senses. They resumed their journey.
Where the route turned towards the sea, the waves could be heard bashing against the rocks. The rhythm of nature was oblivious, and once or twice Mercedes saw people lying on a beach and was uncertain whether they were dead or alive. Either way, the sea would sweep them away sooner or later if they did not move. Donkeys lay beside humans, also dying. Swollen tongues protruded from their mouths.
On the fifth day that she had been walking, there was a moment when the sun briefly blazed and the water sparkled. Mercedes found Javi tugging at her skirt and pulling her towards the sea. It seemed to him as though it must be time for play, to toss pebbles into the waves, to dabble his toes into the water.
His childhood would eventually resume, but not yet. It would be too macabre to play among corpses.
‘No, Javi, not now,’ Manuela snapped, picking him up.
‘We’ll go and play in the sea another day,’ said Mercedes, ‘I promise.’
On a day when even the distant sight of a bird aroused terror in her, evoking memories of the planes that had massacred so many of them, she had only one aim: to reach her destination. Her mind was once again turned towards Javier. The thought of him sustained her as they walked these last kilometres, but she needed a new plan to find him.
Some people never made it to Almería. There were the wounded who fell by the way, but also some who took their own lives. Those such as Mercedes, who had gradually slipped towards the back of the exhausted human flow, saw the bodies of those who had shot themselves, and others who had hanged themselves from the trees. They had come this far, but desperation had finally overcome them. Many times Manuela had to hide Javi’s eyes.
On reaching Almería, at the sight of the buildings and the promise of refuge Mercedes was almost overwhelmed with tears of relief. They had all walked far enough to deserve a feast, and her first thoughts were of something to eat. She had daydreamed of fresh bread.
For many people, exhaustion now swept over them. The streets of Almería seemed such a safe place to sleep after the exposed unsheltered road, and the pavements were like mattresses after the rough terrain of the week before. Most people sank down gratefully with whatever family they had left, and some dozed in broad daylight, the buildings around cocooning them like the walls of a room.
As soon as they arrived, Mercedes and Manuela began queuing for bread.
‘Why don’t you go back to Granada to find your family?’ asked Manuela as they were standing together in a queue. ‘Javi and I don’t want to lose you but if we had somewhere else to go, we would.You don’t have to be here.’
Mercedes did not want to return to Granada. It was the least safe option of all. Her family was a marked one. And Javier was not in Granada. It was this single fact that determined her decision. Her only real chance of survival was to stay away, and the only possibility of happiness was to find the man she loved.There was every chance that he would have survived. Javier was younger and stronger than most of the people that she saw around her. If they had escaped from Málaga, would he not have done so too?
‘Half of my family aren’t even in Granada any longer,’ Mercedes reminded Manuela, ‘and I need to carry on looking for Javier. If I don’t keep searching, I’ll never find him, will I?’
Javi was scratching at the ground with a stick, making a zigzag pattern in the dust, oblivious to the conversation going on between them. Mercedes looked down at the top of his dark head and stroked his hair. All she could see from above were his long lashes and the little splayed cushion of his nose. She picked him up from the ground and stroked his soft cheek. Even after all these days without bathing, the child’s skin had a sweetness about it. Holding him was an extraordinary comfort.
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