The Phoenix of Montjuic

by Jeremy D. Rowe

  “Don’t let your mother hear you say that,” said Manel.

  “That’s what we all used to say at school. We had nicknames for all the saints. We used to say, ‘Oh God, it’s the zoo keeper next week!’ for Saint Francis, and there were lots more.”

  “Don’t tell me anymore,” laughed Manel. “That’s blasphemy.”

  “I know, we’ll all go to hell. But then we can all sit around with Herr Hitler, holding our toasting forks and waiting for El Generalissimo.”

  “Eduard, stop. You think it’s funny, and, I must admit, so do I. But you’ll get us all into trouble. And you’ll upset your mother. Now let’s get this procession over and done with.”

  The shop was usually open on Saturday mornings, but it was Anna’s special day, and at her request, they closed early so that all the staff could go to watch Saint Anne’s procession. With Ambros and Carlos, the family walked up to the Avenida del Generalissimo Francisco Franco. “What a mouthful of a name for a street,” said Manel. “It was much better when it was first built and they called it the Diagonal.”

  The usual fully-armed Civil Guards were in place at street corners, and the traffic, such as it was, was stopped. There was a long pause whilst nothing happened, and then at last the noise of the Mossos motorcycles was approaching, together with the usual raucous band. As they drew near, the family could hear the cheering of the crowd. After the motorcyclists and the band had passed, a group of priests, showering the crowds with holy water, smiled benevolently upon the people. They were secure and well-fed, with the protection of the patronage of the fascist state.

  The monstrous statue of Saint Anne, resplendent in gaudy costume, and garlanded with necklaces, came into view. The team of men carrying the hulking platform upon which the statue was mounted, staggered and strained under the enormous weight. The elaborate carved canopy over the effigy added to the weight; flags were flying from all corners.

  Suddenly there was a tremendous explosion, and a column of black smoke rose up before them. The crowd screamed. Shards of glass were falling from the buildings behind them. Anna grabbed Clara, and they turned away from the dreadful sight in the road, holding their hands over their heads to try to protect themselves from the falling debris. They pushed close under the balconies of the nearby building for protection. Manel and Eduard found them, and fearfully turned to see the carnage in the road.

  In all the noise and screaming, Anna shouted to Manel, “What was that? What’s happened?”

  “It must be some kind of bomb,” shouted Manel.

  “The float has collapsed,” said Eduardo. “There’s men trapped under it. Father, take Mother and Clara home. I’ll stay to help.”

  In the pandemonium, Civil Guards started firing their weapons at a high balcony over the heads of the family, adding to the fearful noise. Manel shepherded Anna and Clara towards Balmes. “Take care,” he shouted to Eduard as his son disappeared into the chaotic crowd.

  It was clear that several of the priests were dead. The bomb had exploded amongst them, and those who had not died instantly were groaning from ghastly wounds. The members of the band, shocked but unscathed, were clinging together for fear of further attacks. Many in the crowd, mainly the women and children, were fleeing as fast as they could, whilst men and boys were trying to lift the monumental mass of the religious float. With a prodigious effort, the float was moved away revealing a horrific tangle of bodies, crushed by the immense weight. Eduard glimpsed the carnage before him, but had to turn away, and was violently sick at the side of the road.

  Someone close by put his arm around Eduard. “Come home, Eduard,” he said. “None of us can do much here.”

  Eduard, his face convulsed and white, turned and looked into the face of Carlos. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said.

  “No, Eduard, and let’s hope you never will again. You’re not old enough to remember much about the war, are you? Those of us who fought saw many terrible things. I’ll come home with you. We can’t do anything here.”

  Eduard nodded, unable to speak, and walked unsteadily towards Balmes, Carlos trudging slowly by his side. After they had gone a short way, Eduard stopped. “Mother and Father and Clara have gone home,” he said, but where’s Ambros? He was standing near us. We must go back and look for him.”

  “He’ll be alright,” said Carlos. “We must get you home first. Who knows, Ambros might already be there.”

  They made their halting way down Balmes, and at last turned into Rossello. Carlos stood at the top of the steps and watched his friend go down to the door. It was flung open, and Anna cried, “Thank goodness you’re back. Are you hurt?” Carlos nodded as he turned and crutched down the steps to his own apartment, to reassure his mother, and tell her the whole gruesome story.

  “I was no help,” said Eduard as he fell into a chair. “They moved the float, and the men under it were all…” He hesitated. “They were all crushed.” He paused again, then looked at his mother. “I was no help,” he repeated. “I was sick, and I still feel sick.” Suddenly he was struck with violent shaking, and the tears started to flow.

  “It’s a shock,” said Manel. “Your sister feels the same. She’s lying on her bed. It’s said that a sweet drink will help, and then you must lie down.”

  “Carlos came back with me,” said Eduard, “but we didn’t see Ambros. Has anyone seen him?”

  “Not yet,” said Manel. “He’ll probably go home to see his father. I expect he’ll come to see us later.”

  Anna and Manel had vivid recent memories of life in Barcelona during the civil war, and had learned to cope with the casual atrocities associated with war. For Clara and Eduard, it was different. They’d been children during the war, and protected from many of the horrors, and their exposure to the catastrophe that morning had shocked them both. As growing adolescents, they usually were very independent of their parents, but for the rest of that day, they clung to them like small children.

  During the evening, Ambros arrived, with his arm in a sling.

  “What happened?” said Clara. “We’ve been worried about you.”

  “Big piece of glass, sharp as an arrow, fell onto me,” he said. The family gasped. “I was lucky really. A few centimetres to one side and it would have hit me on the head, would have killed me.”

  “You’re lucky to be alive,” said Anna, “and you were standing so close to us.”

  “We’re all very lucky to be alive. We were all very close to the bomb,” said Ambros. “There’s quite a lot dead and many, many injured. I was bleeding a lot, and some stranger tied a scarf round my arm. I suppose I was in a state of shock, as I don’t remember much. I just walked down to the Clinic Hospital, and went in. It was very busy with casualties arriving all the time, many of them hurt much worse than me. It wasn’t until they unwrapped my arm, that I felt faint. It’s a deep cut, and they’ve put a lot of stitches in it.”

  “They didn’t want to keep you in the hospital?” said Clara.

  “They said that in normal times, they would have done, but with so many serious casualties, they couldn’t give me a bed. I said I thought I was OK to walk, and I came straight here as you’re much nearer than going home. And now I feel faint again. Can I sit down?”

  “Oh, how awful we didn’t tell you to sit at once,” said Anna. “I’ll give you a drink, and you must stay for some supper with us.”

  “No,” said Ambros. “My father will be worrying about me. I’ve not been able to get a message to him.”

  “I’ll go,” said Eduard. “At least I can do something to make up for being such a weakling earlier.”

  An hour later, Eduard was back again, bringing Ambros’s father with him. With great reluctance he was persuaded to sit with the family for supper. The big kitchen table which had once been Anna’s great sewing table, was the focus of a rather sombre and chastened group.

  Manel put into words what they were all thinking. “You know, we’re enjoying our life, building the shop into a
great department store. We forget too easily that life is fragile and miserable for many people in Barcelona. Most people have lived through a lost decade of stagnation and hunger.”

  Ambros’s father looked up. “I suppose it was a republican bomb aimed at the government and the church that supports it. We were all good republicans during the war. Once we would have supported the opera house bomber. Once we would have supported terrorism like today. But we’ve had enough. More violence will get us nowhere. Inevitably we’ll see reprisals. Some poor souls will have a knock on their doors this night, and arrest and execution will follow.”

  The following day, a Sunday, was a sombre day for the family and many others in the Eixample. Anna went to mass, and remained behind in the queue to climb the stairs to the Virgin. Shuffling forward, she glanced at others in the queue, all subdued and sad. She felt as if they were all praying for sustenance in the aftermath of the bombing.

  On Monday, the shop opened as usual. Manel was determined that a terrorist atrocity, even if had been made in the name of a cause he believed in, should not be allowed to disrupt everyday life. The staff all appeared with various stories of where they had been when the bomb had been thrown. Thankfully everyone had survived, and Ambros, with his arm in a sling, got a great deal of sympathy and attention from the young women.

  The shop had been open for an hour or so, when Carlos appeared. “I need to speak to Manel,” he said. “I need some help.”

  To save Carlos climbing up all the stairs, Manel came down to meet him.

  “There’s no sign of Senor Sergio,” said Carlos. “I have a key, and have unlocked the shop, but he’s never been late before. I locked up again, and went to his apartment. There was no reply, and no sign of him. Something’s not right. I’ve just got a bad feeling after everything that happened at the weekend, and I’m not sure what to do.”

  “If he’s not at home or at the shop, perhaps we should go and see the Mossos,” said Manel.

  “I’m not over-reacting, am I?” said Carlos.

  “No,” said Manel. “I’ll come with you.”

  The Mossos office was nearby, and the two walked there. “We’ve come to report a missing person,” said Carlos. “My boss, Sergio, who owns the bicycle shop where I work. He’s not at home, and he’s not come to work.”

  “What’s his full name?” said the policeman.

  Carlos hesitated. Everyone had just called the man ‘Sergio’ and it was odd to think of him having a full name. “Sergio Ortega,” said Carlos. “I don’t know if he had any other name.”

  The policeman went into a back office, and then returned. “Please come with me to a private room,” he said, and led them into a tiny office. “Please wait here.”

  When he returned again, he sat down at the table. “What’s your relationship to Senor Ortega?”

  Carlos explained that Sergio was his boss, and that he’d worked with him for some years.

  “Do you know if he was a religious man?” said the policeman. “I think we have bad news for you. I’ve a list of the men killed under the float on Saturday when the bomb was thrown at the procession. We identified most of them from papers in their pockets, and it seems your Senor Ortega is one of them.”

  The policeman produced a small battered wallet and opened it. There was a little money and a crumpled paper with Sergio’s name and address. “We also have a bunch of keys,” he said, putting them on the table.

  Carlos picked up the keys. “Yes,” he said. “That’s the key to the shop.” He paused and looked at the policeman. “Is he dead?”

  “I’m afraid so. Most of the bodies were identified and claimed yesterday, but there’s just three left in the police morgue. It seems that Senor Ortega is one of them. We need someone to identify him. Do you think you can do that?”

  Carlos gulped. “I suppose so,” he said. “What do I have to do?”

  “I will take you to the police morgue. It’s here, in the basement of this building. I need you to tell me if the body we have downstairs is your Sergio. Have you seen a dead body before?”

  “Yes, of course,” Carlos said, smiling an ironic half-smile. “I saw many bodies in the war. I won’t be too shocked. Let’s get it over with.”

  Manel stood up to accompany him, but Carlos said, “It’s OK, I can do this. Wait here for me.”

  Later, after some papers had been signed, Carlos and Manel walked slowly back to the shop. “I thought I’d seen the last of violent deaths when the war ended,” said Carlos. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  When they got back to Anna, she was saddened by the story they told her. “He was our neighbour at the shop,” she said, “but we didn’t really get to know him. It seems he was a rather lonely old man.”

  “I was working for him, seeing him every day,” said Carlos, “and I realise I didn’t know much about him either. I knew he was religious, and went to mass every morning on the way to the bike shop, but I knew nothing else about him.”

  “Poor old man,” said Manel. “Did he not have any family?”

  “Presumably not,” said Carlos. “What happens next? Shall I open the shop? I think there’s quite a lot of money in the till. It’s his, of course, but what should I do with it?”

  “I suppose you should open the shop. If there’s a lot of money, we can put it in my office for safety. Then we’ll need some advice for what to do next.” said Manel. “This kind of thing happened a lot during the war, so there must be lawyers who know what to do.”

  Following the advice from a local lawyer, the shop was closed, and the cash handed to the lawyer. The stock of motor scooters was Carlos’s, so they wheeled them into the big room at the back of the grocery, and Carlos set up his workshop there. The lawyer told them that things would take a long time as they had to try and find if Sergio had any living relations. Carlos accompanied the lawyer to Sergio’s humble apartment, and took away the few papers they could find, but the lawyer was pessimistic that they’d find anyone. There was a small crinkled photograph of a woman who could have been his wife, but it was obviously taken many years ago.

  “So many killed and lost in the war,” said the lawyer. “Perhaps that’s some relation, but we’ll probably never know. We’ll give it time, and if we find nothing, I think the best thing would be for you to take over the shop and its stock; his apartment and possessions will go to the Generalitat.”

  It was winter before they heard from the lawyer again. He wrote formally to Carlos at his home, informing him that no living relations of Senor Ortega could be found, and that he could assume ownership of the bicycle shop. Carlos turned to Manel and Anna. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time,” he said. “Why don’t we make the bike shop part of your department store? We can make it into an extension on the street level, with a bicycle department on one of the higher floors, and I’ll start selling scooters properly – become a proper agent for Vespa. I could even try to sell cars!”

  Anna laughed. “We’d have a proper display window on the street if we did that, something I always wanted, but I don’t know if we’ll ever have space for cars.”

  During the same winter, Eduard received his call-up papers.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Eduard opened the envelope with trembling hands. It was just a few weeks to his eighteenth birthday, and he’d known for a long time that this moment would come. Holding the call-up papers and train tickets in his hand, his departure for the army was suddenly very real.

  The last few days before he went to the army were spent working upstairs, continuing renovating the old apartments on the upper floors into department store sales areas and store rooms. Since his accident at the float disaster, Ambros had been unable to do much, except work in the library, and he was frustrated that his project there was making very slow progress. Eventually the bandages came off the nasty cut in his arm, but he still felt a level of weakness doing anything physical. He was left with a big scar.

  When Eduard took a break from hammering
or sawing overhead, he would go down to Ambros in the embryonic library, and Ambros would talk about National Service.

  “I’ve got a suggestion for you,” Ambros said. “You play the trumpet really well, don’t you? Take it with you. They’re always looking for musicians in the army bands, and ordinary recruits like me were very envious of the musicians who often got to practise music, while the rest of us were marching aimlessly around the parade ground. You might even get to see a bit more of Spain, because the bands get to go and play in places ordinary soldiers only dream of.”

  “I don’t read music very well,” said Eduard.

  “Don’t tell them that!” laughed Ambros. “Just be ready to show off.”

  The envelope containing his call-up papers and train tickets gave brief instructions about what to take. Apart from one set of clothes to travel in, it seemed he did not need to take very much.

  “Is that it?” he said to his father.

  “You’ll be put into uniform very quickly,” replied Manel, “and you won’t wear your own clothes again until the day you come home. I expect you’ll put on lots of muscles and not fit into your clothes by the time you return!”

  The night before he departed, Eduard took his father to one side. “You remember that terrible time of the disaster with the statue of Saint Anne?” he said. “I wanted to help, but when it came to it, I was so sickened by the sight of the men who had been killed, that I was sick, and was no help to anyone. What if I’m like that in the army? Will I just be sick when I have to do something horrid?”

  “What happened that day last summer was terrible, far worse than anything National Service will throw at you. Anyway, a few days of marching practise and boot cleaning, and you’ll start to toughen up.”

  “I don’t know if I want to toughen up,” said Eduard. “I just hope that my trumpet helps me get through.”

  “And there’s one more thing,” said his father. “I know that you will regularly have to give the Fascist salute. When your mother and I are forced to salute, we always think ‘bastards, bastards, bastards’.”