“Sit down, children. I can assure you this will be the bright spot of my day. I have some good news and some bad news.”
We sat on the edges of our seats. My heart raced. I took Ana’s hand, and we waited impatiently for the ambassador to go on.
“You already know that Spain is in a very, very bad state. Rampant hunger, chaos, poverty, and killings. What can I say? Thousands of Spaniards are prisoners in concentration camps. International public opinion isn’t speaking out about these things, as it’s more focused on the outrages of the Nazis.”
“Yes, yes,” I said as quickly as possible so he’d get to the point.
“Well, the situation of the Republicans in France isn’t much better. Some fought in the Foreign Legion, others were used as cannon fodder by the French army, and many others were forced to dig trenches along the front. The Nazis are deporting most Spaniards to Germany and Austria, to concentration camps to do forced labor. All of this is in blatant disregard for international treaties, and the despicable dictator Franco does nothing to stop it. In fact, he encourages the deaths of his countrymen.”
“Are our parents among the prisoners sent to Germany?” I asked, worried.
“No—well, sort of. It seems they were taken in a convoy destined for Mauthausen, a camp in Austria. When the convoy arrived, the men and boys older than fourteen were taken off the train. The rest were sent back to Spain.”
“Was our father . . .” Ana began, her voice trembling.
“We’re not sure why, but it seems your father returned to Spain on the train. We managed to get the list of names thanks to a resistance worker. Both of your parents are in Spain. Everyone who returned on that convoy was sent to concentration camps run by Franco’s army.”
Isabel squeezed my other hand while Ana jumped up and said, “So they’re alive!” Her happiness was painful to observe.
“Yes, but they’re in a very dangerous situation. Life in the camps is incredibly harsh. The food is bad, prisoners are mistreated, and they are forced to do hard labor. Countless prisoners end up sentenced to execution by the military courts.”
Ana seemed to understand then that, though they were alive, our parents were in desperate straits.
“We wanted to ask you for something,” I said.
Argüelles propped his chin in his hands and looked at us with sad eyes. “What is it?”
“We want to go back to Spain. We heard there’s a boat leaving Veracruz next week.”
He didn’t seem surprised, just sad for us. “If your parents are in a concentration camp, you won’t be able to see them. How will you survive there? We know the Francoists are locking up thousands of orphans—or children whose parents have been imprisoned—in the orphanages, and they’re giving the younger children up for adoption. It’s a terrible scene.”
“We know, but we want to be there when our parents get out.”
Argüelles raised his eyes in surprise. He must have mistaken my desperation for bravery. Life made no sense without our parents.
He picked up his pen and signed permission for exit so we would have no issues boarding the ship as minors. He also gave us money for the tickets.
“Deep inside I’m jealous,” he said, bidding us farewell from the door. “I’d rather be locked up in my beloved country than in a palace far away from Spain. But someone’s got to pick up the pieces of what remains of the dream we used to call the Spanish Republic.”
Chapter 36
Paths Crossing
Mexico City
November 30, 1940
My mother had not gotten to see the port outside of Bordeaux from which we embarked to the Americas. Her boat was to set sail from one of the few ports still beyond Nazi control. That morning in Marseille, beside my father, she sensed she should’ve gotten on the boat much sooner. For her, being separated from her children was like walking around with her internal organs on the outside. Empty, sad, and at the frayed edges of her strength, she had managed to drag herself through the horrendous years of the civil war, the flight to France, and the train ride north and then back again—an experience she still could not allow herself to actually remember in detail. She was haunted by the images of women bereft of their husbands, mothers whose sons had been wrenched from their arms by the Nazis. She and my father had barely survived the trip back. After eight days in a disease-ridden cattle car with barely any food or water, they were on the brink of death. Yet even worse was the grief of the women who had lost husbands and sons. Mothers are always the rawest victims of war. What they love most in this world—their children—is ripped away from them. Their children starve to death, are tortured, or are simply killed outright, and sometimes the mothers receive the broken, beloved bodies back again in a shroud, wrapped in a flag incapable of drying all the tears. Other mothers never again see the bodies of their precious ones, disappeared forever in mass graves or cast off into ditches like dogs run over on the highway of fate.
When that train from Mauthausen reached Perpignan, one of the French gendarmes who spoke Spanish announced from outside the train car that they were being sent back to Spain. My mother told my father and a small group of friends who had traveled with them on the train, and they discussed what to do. That night they started to pull out the nails in a corner of the train car. It took several hours, but by five o’clock in the morning they had managed to loosen two strips of wood. Nazi soldiers were guarding the train station, so they decided to wait until seven o’clock when the train began to move. As soon as it was leaving the station, but before it was going too fast, they would let themselves fall down onto the tracks and wait for the rest of the cars to pass.
My father was the first to jump. He was still weak and feverish, but the desire to escape was greater than his lingering illness. My mother was next, and she didn’t bat an eye at the danger. Yet the other four people who were to follow lost their nerve. They pinned their hopes on the notion that the Spanish authorities wouldn’t be overly harsh with them once they returned.
My parents made it to a forest and then walked until they came upon a village, where some shepherds led them to an abandoned house halfway up a mountain. A few days later, they got in contact with French Resistance workers who took them to Marseille. There, a Mexican consulate issued them a visa and passage to Veracruz.
* * *
While Isabel, Ana, and I were packing our scant luggage for Spain, our parents were a few hours outside of Mexico. That afternoon, our comrades at the refuge house had prepared a going-away party for us before our trip the next day. The train to Veracruz left early the next morning, and we wanted to get to bed early.
Our last dinner in Mexico City was really special. Though we were eager to leave, the place had become a semblance of home over the recent months. We would miss our friends and teachers. We were also pained to leave the land that had welcomed us at a very difficult time in our lives.
Alfonso Sánchez and his wife had worked hard to prepare special dishes, including a delicious chocolate cake. When the party was over, we all had full stomachs. A few of our housemates played songs on their guitars, and we had the strange sensation of feeling just a little bit closer to our homeland.
Juan, whose room was right beside ours, left the gathering earlier than most. With the sad smile of someone who’s lost a reason to keep living, he said, “I hope you find your parents and that you can be really happy.” Then he went upstairs while the rest of us remained at the party awhile longer.
“Well, dear children,” said Dr. Alfonso, “you’re headed back to Europe at a dismal time. Fascism is perilous, so please be careful. Once you’re in Spain, don’t trust anyone. In Madrid, you should go to the offices of the Service of Militarized Penitentiary Colonies, the organization that oversees the concentration camps. There are over a hundred camps throughout Spain. Some say that Franco rules the country like a military machine, but actually he rules as if it were one big prison. Do not, I repeat, do not tell people you are the children of prisoners.
If you do, they’ll stick you in an orphanage. Say that you’re looking for your aunt or some other relative. Do you have anywhere to stay in Madrid?”
“Our grandparents live in a town outside Madrid, but first we could try to get in touch with some of my mom’s theater friends.”
“Well, give me a hug,” our professor said, his eyes cloudy with tears. His wife came up and kissed us gently, wishing us a safe and successful journey. The rest of our comrades bid us farewell with a mixture of envy and grief. Most had already lost their parents in the war.
We went up to our room. My sisters changed their clothes, and I read for a while. I was too nervous to rest, and I didn’t want to oversleep and risk missing the train and then the boat. Nor was I particularly looking forward to crossing the ocean again after our last experience. But what truly worried me was what we would do once we got to Spain. The boat would take us to Lisbon, in Portugal. Then we’d have to take a train to Madrid. We’d need to cross the border without raising suspicions, using falsified passports the Republican ambassador had given us, and then we’d have to hide out in the city until we could determine our parents’ whereabouts.
I was starting to nod off when I heard a loud thump in the room beside ours. I jumped out of bed and ran to Juan’s door. I knocked. There was no answer. On a premonition, I opened the door. Juan was dangling from a necktie tied to the ceiling lamp. I grabbed his legs as he swayed. He was very heavy, and I could hear his fatigued breathing, but I didn’t want to look at his face.
“Help!” I cried, hoping that one of our housemates would hear me. It was Isabel who showed up. Between the two of us, we managed to lift his body some. Then Pedro showed up, half dressed. A chair lay on its side on the floor, and he stood it upright and climbed up to cut the tie down with his knife. Juan’s body fell upon us, and we all tumbled to the floor. I looked at my friend’s blue face and realized the knot was still compressing his throat. I loosened it as quickly as I could. His eyes bulged in a terrible expression, but he was still breathing.
“You’re going to be okay,” I said, blinded by my own tears. Juan looked at me weakly, and then his eyes closed. He had no desire to stay here on earth. In the grip of harsh loneliness, he lacked strength and hope.
“Juan, please don’t die,” Pedro said, embracing him. They were good friends who had escaped together on one of the last boats out of Alicante, right before the Francoists took control.
Alfonso and his wife ran into the room in their bathrobes and tried to revive Juan, but it was no use. The breath of life was leaving him even as the comrades surrounding him could not accept what was occurring. Ana was the last to come into the room. She took one look at Juan and ran out crying.
“Help me get him onto the bed, boys,” said Dr. Alfonso. “Tomorrow we’ll call the authorities. Now you should all go back to your rooms.”
Almost everyone left, but Isabel, Pedro, and I stayed behind. “You really should go,” Dr. Alfonso said.
“I’ll watch over him tonight,” Pedro said.
“Pedro, Juan is dead. You can’t do anything more for him.”
“I know, professor, but I want to hold a wake for him. The two of us, we were all alone in this world, together. I don’t want him to go through another night on earth all by himself.”
We left Pedro sitting in the chair. A sheet covered Juan’s lifeless body. Walking back to our room with Isabel, I wondered if anything about a person survived once he was dead. I liked to think so. Life felt so short and riddled with dissatisfaction that immortality seemed like the most logical possibility to me. After tucking Ana and Isabel in as if they were little girls again, I dropped into bed like a heavy anchor.
I closed my eyes and thought about Madrid before the war, when the world seemed to make sense and you could hear people chatting in cafés and see them sauntering carefree down the street or dancing at summer festivals. Would that world ever exist again? I still did not grasp the fact that, as each day came and went, the past dispelled like fog to make way for the present. Earth is a huge valley of dry bones buried where, generation after generation, people struggle and live with the same false sensation of being the only ones, never discovering that they are just one part of an endless chain, mere links in line, and that others will take their place as soon as they disappear forever.
Chapter 37
The Return
Veracruz
December 2, 1940
It’s never easy to leave part of your life behind. Usually we don’t appreciate what we have until we lose it. Mexico had been a home for us. I had found love there; in Morelia, I’d forged bonds of friendship that would live forever inside me, but I knew I had to leave it then, that I had to let all the people who had joined me on that difficult part of my journey fly free. It’s not fair to shut lovely birds up in a cage. It’s best for them to fly away, though it overwhelms us with sadness. We always want to get back to the places where we were happy. In Mexico, I’d been happy in a way, but Madrid was still the place of myth for me, the setting of my childhood where everything fit together and even sadness wore a halo of joy.
I recognized how nostalgia would be hot on my trail for some time, like a long winter in which sunlight refused to peek through the gray clouds. But one day, when I least expected it, when I’d gotten used to muted days, the sun would come out with all its strength and burn the gray days up into pure light.
The port of Veracruz was as active as three years before. I was no longer the scared, timid child that had come to Mexico escaping the war with a heart broken from being separated from my parents—yet much of that child was still with me. Growing up doesn’t mean forgetting; it means adding new layers of the past until we become the same person over and over again. My sisters followed me, suitcases in hand. The port of Veracruz had acquired mythical status in their minds, the memories of the place too magical to have actually existed.
We went up to our boat. It didn’t seem as large as the Mexique had been, but it did look newer. We had second-class tickets, but at least we could all travel in the same cabin, not like last time. Before we boarded, we took a last look around at the palm trees on land. We were roasting in the heat since we’d dressed in wool suits more appropriate for Europe than for the Caribbean. As we went up the staircase, we were unaware that our parents were walking just below our boat, in shock at the exuberance of the Americas and trying to take in every detail of the landscape. Our paths crossed without touching, a macabre trick of fate.
Life is a search, though without knowing it we long to return to the nothingness from which we came, confused by the game everything on our path turns out to be. After every decision, we face countless rejections. It doesn’t occur to us to feel nostalgic for the kisses we didn’t give, the people we didn’t meet, and the hugs that will never embrace the souls of those we’ll never cross paths with again—though it is much, much sadder to never again see those we long for.
Our boat set sail in the afternoon. The sea was calm, and the water opened before us seemingly eager to whisk us away from all past happiness as soon as possible. We looked out at Mexico for the last time from the deck. When we leave a place, we never really know if we’ll ever return, even if we live with the arrogant, unconscious audacity of believing we will.
The ship made its way into the immense blue where sky and water got jumbled together, the horizon stretching out to tire our eyes with the infinite monotony of the distance.
We ate a light supper, then went to our cabin. After chatting a little while, we fell asleep easily, all three of us exhausted.
It was a relatively easy journey. We stopped briefly in Havana, just as when we had come, but this time we got to disembark and spend a few hours in the city while the ship was docked. Then we continued through peaceful waters until, ten days later, we came to the Azores. A few days later, we were docked at the imposing city of Lisbon.
It was utterly strange to be in Portugal’s capital. They didn’t speak our language; the white b
uildings covered in elaborate ceramic tiles were so different from the granite buildings of Castile and even more drastically different from the red brick of Madrid; and yet, at the same time, it had the feeling of home.
A trolley took us to the Praça do Comércio, and from there we walked to Bairro Alto. We had to spend the night in the city since our train to Madrid didn’t leave until the next morning.
We left our luggage in the pension. We had just enough money to buy dinner and breakfast the next morning. As we walked, Portugal’s cobblestoned capital city was so calm it nearly unnerved us. The rest of Europe was in upheaval due to the war. Meanwhile, the people of Lisbon were busy preparing for Christmas. It was a perfect evening. We made our way down the hills toward the city’s center and found a cheap restaurant where we ordered fish. Watching the street from the window of the restaurant, Ana began to cry.
“What is it, Ana?” I asked.
She’d been unusually taciturn throughout the whole journey, spending her time reading or taking long walks along the deck. In a way, she was more Mexican than Spanish, with fewer memories of our parents and Madrid than Isabel and I had.
“I just feel like I’m not really alive.”
I didn’t understand her at first, but then I got what she was saying. It took Isabel longer to understand.
“What do you mean?” Isabel asked.
“Life is like a flash of light between nostalgias.”
Her comment left me breathless. I knew my sister was bright, but to hear something like that from a ten-year-old was uncanny. She’d been forced to grow up quickly and would soon have to leave behind all vestiges of childhood innocence, but what she’d just said seemed like something wise old men would be chewing on for years.
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