The Phoenix of Montjuic

by Jeremy D. Rowe

  “And a little manual work will be good preparation for army life!” chuckled Manel.

  “You know,” said Clara, “people seem to like the way we have the shop, with tables and chests, rugs on the floor, and chairs to sit on. We should keep this image, make the new parts of the shop as homely as what we’ve got now.”

  Manel invited the carpenter who had installed the second-hand staircase, to come and look at the spaces on the upper floors. The carpenter again arrived with his son, who he introduced as Ambros. Manel remembered the solemn young man who had assisted his father with the tricky job of installing the stairs to the first floor. The group explored all the upper floors, opening dusty cupboards and discovering unexpected small rooms. Here and there were odd items of abandoned furniture, which could be cleaned up and used for displays in the shop. Their tour ended on the top floor, and they found some old chairs, dusted them off and sat down.

  The carpenter spoke first. “It’s a good project, Senor Bonet, and I think we can make a good shop out of these rooms. We’ll have to investigate very carefully where we can take walls away and open up the spaces, but there’s one big challenge.”

  “Go on,” said Manel.

  “The stairs,” said the carpenter. “The old narrow stairs we’ve used today will be hopeless for a department store. We’d have to find a way of widening them, or putting in a new staircase altogether, all the way from the first floor, up to here.”

  “We’ve also go to think about the water and electricity,” said Ambros seriously. “I don’t think you want a sink in the middle of a clothes store! I can do the simple plumbing, but I don’t know about electrics.”

  “How old are you?” said Manel.

  “Nineteen,” said Ambros. “Since helping dad put in the grand staircase downstairs, I’ve done my national service. It was bloody awful. Uniform didn’t fit me properly, food was grim, and they gave me a terrible haircut. Thank goodness it was only three months, but that’s because I can read. Most of the illiterate buggers have to do six months.”

  “Is it true, you just get train tickets and don’t know where you’re going?” asked Eduard.

  “That’s what happened to me, although I didn’t leave Spain. Some of the other chaps got sent to Africa.” Ambros grinned suddenly, and his mood changed. For the first time, Eduard saw him smile. “Now it’s all behind me. I’m back and ready to work. The only trouble is, the army only taught me how to take a gun to pieces and put it back together, and I’m even quite a good shot, but that doesn’t help in the building trade. I suppose fiddling about with guns was a bit like plumbing.”

  “So you could do the manual work, and the plumbing,” said Manel, “and we could see if Carlos could do the electrics.”

  “Here’s my suggestion,” said Ambros’s father. “I’ll help with planning this project, then leave Ambros to get on and do the work. You can have him fulltime here. I’ll come and help him if he needs help, and your young man here, Eduard, can learn from him.”

  “Eduard’s always been good with his hands, and is a quick learner when he puts his mind to it,” said Manel. “It’s a big risk and a gamble; and we must be prudent and careful with the costs. As long as we move forward slowly, we’ll do well; and I think we are creating a good team to achieve this exciting project.”

  “I hope so,” said Ambros.

  Barcelona was a strange place in the years after the civil war. The majority of the population had been republicans, and had been bitterly opposed to Franco’s Nationalist forces. Living under the boots of the conquerors was distasteful in the extreme, but to survive most people co-operated with the brutal administration. It was especially significant to work with, and not against, the government’s rationing scheme, both for shopkeepers like Manel to get wholesale supplies, and for ordinary people to avoid hunger. Some areas of the city remained untouched bombsites, whilst in other places big efforts were being made to rebuild the shattered barrios. Whilst some parts showed growing affluence, many remained in abject poverty.

  A casual passer-by, wandering down Balmes, would have passed tenements teeming with impoverished families, burned-out shops and apartment buildings, and here and there businesses busy rebuilding and refurbishing. The contrast within a few steps was striking, and especially exciting was the hammering and banging at Manel’s expanding department store.

  Ambros and Eduard made a good team, and with occasional help from Carlos, made great progress. Ambros’s father and Manel were brought in to help with building the new staircase which soared up through all five floors, and which would be the key to the way the new store worked. Clara was anxious to assist with the construction work, but Anna reminded her that they must stay busy with the existing work, sewing and selling, to make sure that their business continued to thrive.

  Meanwhile Ferran Perella seemed to be working very hard in the grocery department. He was keen to expand the ground-floor shop into the big space at the back, encroaching on the old garden behind the buildings. He was very efficient with the rationing system, and had a growing reputation for his contacts in the black market. The grocery shop was constantly busy, and with Eduard spending most of his time hammering and sawing upstairs, Senor Perella recruited another ‘boy’ to help him.

  Manel and Anna had to decide what to do with the extra space. At the same time Eduard and Ambros were busily working on the upper floors, Father Matias asked Anna to stay behind after the Sunday morning mass, to talk to him. Since the conversation about the surplus items in the pawn shop, Anna had rarely spoken to the priest except in confession, and wondered what he wanted.

  “Please give a message to your husband,” stated the priest. “I am grateful for the way he has purchased the things from the pawn shop, and it appears to have been beneficial to his business.”

  Anna sighed inwardly. The man would never understand that she was part of the business, and that Manel respected her opinion in all matters. “Go on,” she said.

  “There’s something for your husband to consider. Over the years, I have received many bundles of books in the pawn shop. I give very little for them, and they are never reclaimed. There are many, many boxes. I have noticed that your husband is expanding his premises. Please ask him if he wants to try selling books.”

  “I’ll speak to him,” said Anna with tight lips.

  When she got home, Clara was already preparing Sunday lunch. There was a good smell of roasting meat in the kitchen. “Senor Perella got hold of some pork,” said Manel. “Smell it cooking!”

  Clara turned. “I’d like to know where he got it from,” she said. “He still gives me the creeps.” She paused and smiled. “But that won’t stop us enjoying the meat!”

  “Here’s something else to think about,” said Anna. “After mass, Father Matias spoke to me. I hate the way he defers always to you, Manel, but nothing will change that. He says he’s got lots of boxes of books. Do we want to open a book department in our bigger shop?”

  Eduard jumped up excitedly. “Yes!” he shouted. “Do you remember, years ago, when I was still at school, I got the cane for asking about that German Friar, Martin Luther. I’ve never forgotten his name. We said then that people should have more books, but at that time we had no solution. Bloody Father Matias has given us the answer.”

  Anna was shocked. “Don’t speak about the Father like that,” she said.

  “I’m sorry mother, but he is horrible.”

  “He’s our priest. I’ve told you before we must respect him.”

  Clara spoke up. “Don’t argue you two. Let’s talk about the books.”

  “Can we really sell books?” asked Manel. “They’ll be mostly second-hand. I’m not sure.”~

  “No, but we can have a lending library. Then people who can’t afford books can come and borrow them, and bring them back when they’ve finished.” Clara was getting very enthusiastic. “They pay just a small coin to borrow the book.”

  “Yes,” said Eduard. “We could charge fifty cent
imos, you know that funny new silver coin with a hole in the middle.”

  “And Franco’s face,” added Manel. “Let’s go and see these books before we get too carried away. They may be rubbish.”

  “I bet they’re not,” said Eduard. “When people pawn stuff, they pawn good stuff to get the most money.”

  “The pork!” exclaimed Clara. “With all this excitement, we’ve nearly forgotten the meat. Let’s sit and eat before it burns.”

  Over lunch the chatter about the library continued.

  “Yes, at fifty centimos, most people could afford to borrow a book,” said Anna. “But how would we keep track of who had borrowed which book? It could become a big muddle.”

  “We’d put a sticker on each book, saying it’s from the Bonet library,” said Eduard.

  “And labels in the books, where we’d write the date they took the book,” said Clara.

  “No,” said Manel, “the date would be when they had to return the book. Bring it back late, and we’ll make a charge.”

  “There are lots of libraries in Barcelona,” said Manel, “but they’re mostly in convents and churches. We should be different, offering people ordinary everyday books, mostly ordinary stories, that they’ll enjoy reading.”

  “And we must have some easier books, for people who can’t read very well,” added Clara, “like some of the girls in the shop.”

  “There’s a snag,” said Manel. “To work the system, we need someone who can read and write really well. You both can, but we can’t spare Clara from what you do now, and Eduard, you’ll be off to National Service soon.”

  “Ambros!” exclaimed Eduard. “He reads, and writes, and we know him like a friend. He can go on with the building work, and at the same time become the librarian.”

  “First, he’ll have to build some bookshelves,” smiled Manel, “and it sounds like we’re asking him to do two jobs at the same time. It might be quite a good idea at first. We’ll have to see how popular the library is. We’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

  When they dragged the boxes of books from the pawn shop, they discovered a terrible muddle. Father Matias had grudgingly given small cash loans for the books, knowing they’d never be redeemed, and had simply filled one box after another in any order. Ambros was very pleased to start sorting them out, but said there was little chance of the library opening quickly, as the organising of the books would take a long time. Clara shyly offered to help him when she could. With the gentlemen’s clothing moved to an upper floor, a modest room above the grocery was designated for the library, and Ambros started to build shelves and sort out the books.

  Eduard was very excited to find a complete set of encyclopaedias, and asked if he could take them home. “I think you’ve earned them,” said Manel. Turning to Clara, he said, “Have you seen anything you’d like to keep?”

  “Not yet,” said Clara, “but I’m watching for history books, so that I can see fashions from times gone by.”

  “I’ll watch for them,” said Ambros smiling. Slowly the bookshelves were filled, and whilst he was doing it, Ambros designed the loan system. He realised that he would have to start some kind of register of the customers so he knew where the books were going when they were borrowed, and before the library opened he had become aware that it would soon be a fulltime job.

  When Manel and Senor Perella were ready to expand the grocery department, they expected Ambros to be available to refurbish the old warehouse in the garden, but he was fully occupied with opening the library.

  “Perhaps we’re trying to expand too fast,” said Manel to Anna.

  “We said we’d not get anywhere if we didn’t take risks,” said Anna. “Ambros is doing an excellent job preparing the library, so we should leave him to do that. We’ll ask his father to come and work for us again, and Eduard can assist. In fact our son is becoming very strong and capable. Have you noticed that he’s taller than you?”

  The original buildings of the Exiample were built in large square blocks, with the straight roads all around. The elegant boulevards were much admired, and when they were built, the buildings became very desirable for shops, offices and apartments. During the war, a number of the buildings had been destroyed by bombs, leaving gaps like missing teeth from a smile. Others received minor damage, and became rather dilapidated. Many of the large inner gardens were commandeered as storage and warehouses, which had been very busy before the war, but gradually emptied and left idle during the war. Behind the Bonet grocery shop was one such warehouse, and it was into this large space that Manel proposed to expand the grocery department.

  It was Anna who talked to Ambros about the challenge of doing the building work and the library.

  “I’m not sure if it’s possible to combine the two jobs,” he told her. “I think the library is going to be a fulltime job; and I really like doing it.”

  Anna looked at the young man, who was often rather serious. There was a sadness about him, and she realised she knew very little about him.

  “Ambros: you’re a clever young man,” she said. “You worked well with your father doing the practical stuff, and you’re equally good with the books and organising them for the library. Tell me some more. You must have been to school to be able to read and write so well. I noticed you did all the measuring for your father as well.”

  “You noticed,” smiled Ambros, looking Anna in the eyes. “Not everyone notices. My father can’t read or write, but manages in the carpentry work. I did go to school until I was twelve, a catholic school like the one Eduard used to go to, up in Gracia where we live.”

  “And what about your mother? Has she been here, to see where you work?”

  “No, my mother’s not with us. She died in the Coliseum bomb. I was ten years old at the time.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Anna. “I didn’t know.”

  “It’s alright. Lots of people died. My little brother was with her, and was killed by the bomb. He was only six. I’m sad they’ve gone, and I’m worried that I will start to forget them. We just have to cope, father and I.”

  “I’ve always noticed you were rather solemn, sometimes sad. I had no idea why.”

  Ambros gave a slight smile. “I think I was a happy little boy, but after mother and Juan died, there was only father and me, and he was very sad, and I suppose I started to be sad.” He paused for a long time, clearly thinking about what he would say next. He looked at Anna. “You know, I’ve really liked working here with your family. It’s becoming quite like a family for me.”

  “So that’s settled,” said Anna. “You’ll be our librarian. It may not make much money, but it will bring people into the shop and perhaps they’ll buy other things.”

  Ambros smiled. “And we will be helping people by giving them things to read. There’s lots of fiction, but also some good pre-war non-fiction. I wouldn’t mind helping people who can’t read very well.”

  Manel and Anna met with Ambros’s father. “Senor Sanchez, we’re offering your son a full-time job,” they told him. “He’s been here for a long time working in our shop doing the building work, but now we’d like to steal him from you permanently, and make him our librarian.”

  Senor Sanchez smiled. “I know about the books,” he said. “Ambros has been very excited opening up all those boxes you got from the priest. I’m pleased he’s got a job which uses his intelligence.”

  “Won’t you miss him working with you?” said Anna.

  “Yes, of course, but I can find other boys to do the labouring for me. You know Ambros thinks of you as a kind of family, the family he hasn’t had since his mother died.”

  “He told me that,” said Anna.

  “I’m older than you,” said Senor Sanchez, “and it’s not long until I retire. I’m pleased to see Ambros happier now than he’s ever been since he lost his mother. I can go on with odd jobs and keep myself going. I was never sure he was very keen on continuing my business. He’s a bright lad, and when I retire, it will be good to know he’
s working in a way he enjoys, and which brings some joy back into his life.”

  Manel shook hands with Senor Sanchez. “So that’s settled. A most satisfactory arrangement,” he said. “Now, let’s go and look at this extension for the grocery shop!”

  During the dull years after the war, the Bonet family were unusual. Most people in employment saw little change in the daily grind of their work, and the large number of unemployed, especially those left disabled by the war, faced the daily challenge of poverty and hunger. Manel and Anna believed in giving employment to as many as they could afford, to make a difference in the lives of at least a few neighbours, and the staff of the Bonet department store worked harmoniously, and grew together as an extended family.

  For most people, however, the only breaks from their tedious daily routine were the extravagant religious processions organised by the Catholic Church, given enthusiastic support by the Fascist government. Manel was not the only one who thought the liaison between church and state was unholy, but he kept such thoughts to himself. Too many people were disappearing, arrested and executed, for expressing such ideas.

  For all the major saints in the Catholic calendar, there was a grand procession, and despite her husband’s misgivings, Anna particularly enjoyed the parade organised on her own saint’s day. When he was still at school, Eduard had mixed feelings about the saints’ days. If a major saint’s feast day was on a school day, the boys had time away from the classroom to either walk in the procession, or to watch it pass by the school. If this meant missing one of Father Matias’s interminable scripture lessons, the boys were pleased, but Eduard remained bored by the whole business of celebrating the saints. Once he had left school, Eduard made a point of ignoring everything to do with saints, the clergy, and the church.

  In 1947, the feast of Saint Anne, 26th July, fell on a Saturday. Despite their protestations, Anna persuaded her family to join her to watch the procession for her saint. Eduard looked at his father, with his eyebrows raised. “Christ’s Grannie,” he said, “as if!”