As soon as Mom left, winter fell hard like a bad omen. We weren’t used to being so cold, and despite the good coats and shoes Mom had found for us, we came home from school chilled to the bone every day. Plus, we struggled to fit in with the other kids in the village. The school was small, and boys and girls were separated. My teacher was named Germinal, and my sisters had a young woman named Teresa. Both teachers worked hard to educate us, but the local boys missed a lot of school. The farms needed them to work since most young men were fighting on the front.
The morning of November 25, we arrived early at school before the sun even came out. The classrooms were freezing. The teachers had no wood to start a fire in the stove, and we kept our coats and gloves on all day. Yet when Germinal began to speak, I forgot about the cold and listened with rapt attention.
“The great philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, the brightest mind to come out of our country, taught us we cannot live as islands. He said, ‘I am myself plus my circumstance, and if I do not save it, I cannot save myself.’ We are part of the world, dear students. Everything that happens around us affects us. We live in times of opposing factions, of brothers fighting brothers. Some say that the important thing is morality, something perverted by revolutionary ideals. Others talk about proletariat love and the brotherhood of all people, but the truth is that with morality we restrain the errors of our primal instincts. However, love is capable of tempering the errors of morality. The left and the right are diametrically opposite realities—but, as the philosopher said, they are two ways for humans to be imbeciles. Surely some will declare that their ideologies are what make the world go ’round, when actually ideologies are what destroy it.”
I raised my hand timidly, and the teacher motioned for me to speak. His gray beard and white hair gave him the friendly look of one of the three wise men.
“I disagree. The fascists started this war, and you’re making them equal to those who are saving the Republic,” I said, both confused and angry. I admired Germinal a great deal but thought he was wrong and that maybe somewhere in his mind he remained unaware of the magnitude of what was happening.
“I think you’ve misunderstood me,” he said patiently. “The biggest crime, as always, does not lie with the executioners, in those who kill for fanaticism or disdain for life, but in those who allow them to kill. Right here in our little town several good people have been shot. When I say ‘good,’ I don’t mean they’re saints. I mean that they were as good as those who killed them.”
“But it’s them or us,” I answered. I knew that innocence was always relative and that those who seemed incapable of doing us harm were often the most dangerous.
Germinal walked up to my desk. His hands were large and thick, and the frayed edges of his shirt peeked out from the sleeves of his corduroy jacket. His tie was off-kilter, and his round glasses looked as though they might fall apart at any moment.
“You think I’m just a poor teacher from a small-minded little town, right? People from the big city believe they alone have figured out how the world really works, but that’s not always the case. It’s true that I was born in this town and that I’m a child of its dry, fertile lands. Just like the fields, I need the freezing snow of winter and the spring rains to draw out the life in me that is about to crumble and die. But I was once young and ambitious. I studied education at Central University and worked at the ministry of education. I fell in love with a young woman from a good family, and we were going to get married, but I was drafted by the army and went to fight in Africa. That’s where my idealism disappeared.
“Humans are the worst predators on earth. Those poor, uneducated people defended themselves with teeth and fingernails, but we used civilization to massacre them. One day we went into a village we’d gassed a few hours before. The women, children, and elders—all that was left of the population—ran out of their huts screaming in pain. The gas was burning their eyes away, and their lips were oozing pus and blood. Limp children whimpered as their mothers wiped their eyes with contaminated water. Old people dragged themselves through the mud. And we, the civilized men, finished them off with bayonets so as not to waste bullets. I had thought that the most important thing in war was to stay alive, but the only thing that truly matters is maintaining your humanity. When I got back to Spain, I walked away from everything and came back to this town. I hoped that if I could at least teach a few children and share what I had learned, then my life would have some meaning. I learned a long time ago that to see what’s right in front of us requires enormous effort, because there’s no man so blind as the one who doesn’t want to see.”
Germinal’s words floated through the freezing air of the classroom and fell upon all of us, the absent, indifferent faces of the rest of the class. The other boys seemed immune to his words. I didn’t know if it was because they’d heard it all before or because their difficult lives did not afford them enough margin for thought. But I was not unaffected by his story.
The mood changed when it was time for recess, and we scrambled outside with commotion. It was the only time of day when the other students seemed happy. My sisters were sitting off to one side of the schoolyard while the other girls laughed and played. Meanwhile the boys had invented a game with a partially deflated ball.
“Can I play?” I asked, my hands stuffed deep in my pockets. I hoped to look like I didn’t much care what the answer was.
“No, sir, little gent,” said the head boy, Óscar. I always tried to avoid him, though a few times I’d been tempted to wring his neck.
I threw out a defiant question. “Is the ball yours?”
“We don’t like foreigners here! City people are nothing but trouble,” the bully shouted before shoving me.
I lost my balance and fell into the mud. The boy jumped me, and I tried to get up, but he clobbered my face until he gave a sudden cry and covered his head with his hands.
My sister Ana, the younger one, was yanking his hair from behind. Isabel seized Óscar’s momentary distraction to help me get up, at which point I socked him hard in the face until blood dripped from his nose. Just then the teacher showed up and pulled us apart. “Have you learned nothing? Isn’t it enough that half the country is killing the other half?”
“He started it,” Óscar lied, and all his friends agreed.
“You’ll have detention after school,” Germinal told me.
My sisters led me to the side of the yard and tried to calm me down. “Don’t worry about it. Mom will come get us soon, and then we can go home,” Isabel said.
“Don’t count on it,” I said, wiping off my wounds.
The next two hours of class seemed eternal. When the other boys finally left the classroom, Germinal motioned for me to follow him. Then he put on his coat and started walking up a path toward a house that looked abandoned. He unlocked a great padlock and lit an oil lamp. To my surprise, the light revealed a huge library. Germinal hung up his coat and began to organize books that were on top of the table.
“Do you want to know what all this is?” he asked. When I nodded, he smiled. “They’re books from the town hall and from the school. We’ve brought them here to protect them. The mailman, who’s been in occupied territory several times, has helped me hide them. When the fascists get to a town, they ransack the libraries and burn all the books they consider dangerous. It doesn’t matter if they’re poetry, fiction, or essays—they don’t care. These people want a return to the Dark Ages and the Holy Inquisition.”
“But weren’t you saying in class that the left and the right are all the same?” I asked, thinking he was contradicting himself.
“Yes, but I was referring to fascism and Stalinist communism. Totalitarianism always acts the same way; it enslaves the people and leaves them in ignorance.”
“This is a lot of books,” I said, looking around.
“This includes the books from Morata de Tajuña and Chinchón. We need to save all the books we can. If the fascists win, we must protect the books t
hrough the regime change.”
His passion to rescue the books lit a spark in me, though I doubted that once fascism was established it would be easy to drive it out of power. My father had told me how the traitor Mussolini, who used to be a communist, had been ruling Italy since 1922.
“Don’t tell anyone about this place,” Germinal warned as he led me to one of the shelves and took out a book. It was The Quest, by Pío Baroja. He held it out. “Take it if you’d like.”
I held the book in my hands and flipped through the pages.
“My dear student,” Germinal continued, “don’t ever stop reading. The fascists seek to base their power on fear, cruelty, and hate, but that can never last long. Humans always seek out love, truth, and compassion. Don’t ever forget that.”
I walked out of the secret book repository heavy with the weight of a secret. This old, abandoned shack was the refuge of reason, so hotly pursued and despised. I walked along the banks of the Jarama River until noticing the buildings of the town brought me back to the brutal reality of war, which my mother worked so hard to keep us away from.
Chapter 8
Words Rain Down
San Martín de la Vega
February 11, 1937
Christmas came and went, and my mother did not come get us. Grandma and Grandpa tried hard to make us happy and even gave us a present on Three Kings Day, knowing full well that my parents didn’t celebrate religious holidays. Ana and Isabel cried their way through Christmas break, but the hardest part was yet to come. The war had been lying in wait for months, and it finally pounced in the early days of February 1937, in the middle of winter.
That morning seemed like any ordinary day. We went to school like normal, and by then I was really enjoying classes with Germinal. Since the day he showed me the hidden books, we spent many afternoons together in the repository. My sisters didn’t know what I was doing, though I had let them read a few stories. They assumed the teacher was taking me to a library of some sort.
We were all trying not to think about the border of occupied territory, which was now just on the other side of the river. Gunfire rang out and the missiles roared, but after each explosion Germinal resumed his lectures as if nothing were amiss.
“Many believe that fear is bad, but they’re wrong, my students. Fear is very useful; cowardice is not. If we didn’t have a certain degree of fear, we’d be capable of the most imprudent actions. In contrast, cowardice is the attitude we take toward fear. Do you hear the bombs? You do, right? It’s normal for you to be scared. I am too. But I hope this doesn’t fill you with cowardice. The fascists are very close to us. As soon as they cross the river, nothing will be able to stop them. They need only occupy the bridge and secure their position, as most of the soldiers defending us have died or fled.”
Just then the explosions sounded much louder, along with the sound of a big machine being dragged. My classmates couldn’t hold out any longer and ran to the windows. I joined them with reluctance.
“Look at that,” Óscar said, pointing to what looked like an armored German car. The Republican soldiers were trying to stop it, but it was relentless in its advance. The fascists crouched behind it and shot continuously at the defenders.
“Get away from the windows!” Germinal warned. But we paid no attention, hypnotized by the crossfire. Eventually we watched our men fall back and retreat up the road that led to Morata.
“Please don’t leave the school building,” the teacher said.
By noon we were ravenous, but the teachers were too scared to send us home. Then some soldiers approached. They stood in front of the school and yelled for everyone to file out. A colonel stood at the door and ordered us to make a line of boys and a line of girls, so our teachers led us out to each side.
“I am Colonel Asensio,” said the man in charge. “You have nothing to fear. We have driven the reds out of the town. Peace will soon come, and the communists will harm you no more. Viva Spain!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, and we all echoed in chorus. He turned to the teachers.
“You are Professor Germinal Fonseca?”
“Yes, colonel.”
“And you are Miss Teresa Agudo?”
“Yes.” Her voice trembled. She was hugging the youngest girls to her, including my sister Ana.
I’d never seen fascists up close this way, except on the day of the Montaña Barracks siege the year before. On the one hand, they looked like normal soldiers. Yet their cold, mocking air did not foreshadow anything good.
“We were told by members of the town that you two belong to the teachers’ union and that you defend the reds. Is this true?”
Germinal, showing no fear, answered, “All teachers belong to the teachers’ union.” Here, his lesson on the difference between fear and cowardice continued.
The colonel turned toward the students and looked us each up and down. “You, his pupils, you’ll know better than anyone whether this old fop is lying. Has your teacher spoken out against the Nationalists and our caudillo, Francisco Franco?”
At first there was a deafening silence. Then Óscar stepped forward, wagged his finger at Germinal, and said, “He’s a red. They both are.”
Germinal looked at him with more pity than hurt. After so many years, his students betrayed him the first opportunity.
“And what do the rest of you say?” the colonel asked.
All the bigger boys started talking bad about the teachers, but the littler ones began to cry, confused by all that was happening.
I didn’t know how to respond. I was afraid the soldiers would do something bad to me or my sisters, so I mumbled along with the chorus of accusations. Germinal looked at me with tenderness, his look saying he was proud of me despite my betrayal. Eventually he managed to make his voice heard over the shouting.
“Love is the strongest force that exists. You may have the power of weapons, but I serve a stronger god: the truth,” he said.
The colonel frowned, took out his gun, and hit Germinal on the head. Blood gushed out, and Germinal lifted his hand to his forehead. “I forgive you. Weak men cannot forgive, but—” The colonel didn’t let him finish. He hit him and threw him on the ground. Germinal’s glasses were broken, and blood flowed from his split lips.
“Grab some rocks!” the colonel ordered us.
The boys picked up a few rocks without complaining, but the rest of us were terrified. I held a couple loose in my hand and stood behind the rest of the boys.
“Make a circle around him! Now you’ll see the power of death,” the colonel said, stepping aside. “Aim well! Today you’ll kill your first red.”
Óscar went first. His rock hit Germinal in one eye. Then rocks rained down on him from all sides. Germinal groaned a few times, then curled up in a fetal position.
“Throw!” the colonel growled from behind me.
With tears in my eyes, I threw a rock and missed; then a second, which hit his arm. Germinal was covered in blood. Finally the colonel went up and shot him in the head, and we all screamed in fright.
“Today you’ve learned the most important lesson of your lives. The strongest always have the right to do what they want. Viva Spain!” he shouted, beaming.
We all answered in kind, though all we wanted was to run away.
The soldiers led Teresa away brusquely but left Germinal’s bloodied body in the schoolyard. I took my sisters’ hands and led them as fast as possible back to our grandparents’ house. We shook the entire walk home, and I thought about how being an adult meant feeling tremendously alone.
“What’s going on?” my grandmother asked when she saw us.
My sisters began to wail, and it took Grandma a long time to calm them down. Grandpa came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder. My grandfather was a man of few words, but that day he broke his habitual silence.
“There are some things a child shouldn’t see. But this war is doing away with innocence.”
* * *
My grandmother managed to get
in touch with my mother. They had to get us to Rivas, and then she’d take charge of us.
School was henceforth cancelled, and no one dared leave home. That was the last afternoon we would spend in that town. Then I remembered the secret library. What would become of it? When my grandparents were busy with something, I took a little backpack and headed for the abandoned house. I hadn’t gone far when I sensed someone was following me. I hid behind a tree and jumped out at my pursuer. I was surprised to find it was Ana.
“Why are you following me?” I asked. “Don’t you see how dangerous it is?”
“Grandma told us to stay home. I don’t want to lose you too,” she said, her eyes full of tears.
“I’m never going to leave you and Isabel,” I said, taking her hand.
We walked along the river through the thicket and reached the old house. The padlock was locked, but I slipped in through a window. I lit the lamp and looked at all the books. Who could say what would become of those cheap, poorly bound volumes? Yet here they were, nearly all the books from the surrounding towns.
We both flipped through some volumes, and before we knew it, night had begun to fall. The next day we would set out to try to rejoin our mother. I was starting to put a few books in the backpack when we heard voices outside. I snuffed out the light, and we slipped back out the window.
“This is where the books are. I’ve seen Marco and the professor come here a lot. I’m sure they’re communist books,” said a voice I recognized all too easily: Óscar, the bully from school.
“Break down the door!” the colonel barked. The soldiers kicked the door in, then shined their flashlights inside. The colonel passed his white gloves down a few spines and began throwing them to the floor. “Communist garbage. Burn the whole lot!” he ordered, piling the books up in the center of the room.
Remember Me Page 5
