Remember Me

by Mario Escobar

  People in the restaurant turned to look at us. The few regular customers sipping on cider or beer were speaking in hushed tones. The regime’s spies could be anywhere, and no one trusted anyone.

  “So tomorrow we’ll head to Miranda de Ebro. There weren’t any more buses going this afternoon. We’ll get there in time, and it’ll all work out. It’s got to.”

  Mom breathed deeply from my confidence to calm her nerves. Then she took a sip of wine and finished her plate of food, sighing over every bite.

  “I thought the war was the worst thing that could ever happen to Spain, but I was wrong. The postwar fallout is even worse. Those swine are ravenous for revenge. And the worst part of all is how they package everything in the pretty language of the Christian spirit and loving their neighbor, when really they’re savage beasts. Our guards at the prison were Falangists, but there were also nuns who came by. I’ve never known any group of people to be so cruel and bloody.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “In the prison they stole our souls. I think you should hear about it all; you need to know. These people know their biggest victory is convincing people to fear them. They had us living in complete terror. They had it in for me in particular from the moment I arrived. They seem to have a special predilection for stronger women, as if they are thrilled by breaking us. Not long after I arrived, one of my cellmates gave birth to a premature baby. The poor nutrition and the beatings made her go into labor early. We begged for a midwife to help her, but one of the nuns answered that we reds were like rabbits and didn’t need any help. After a long night in pain, the baby was finally born. The poor wretch was so tiny. We put him on her chest, and the mother smiled when she saw her baby, in spite of everything. But it wasn’t long before the mother started to bleed. One of the prisoners who’d been a nurse tried to stop the hemorrhage, but it was hopeless. We screamed for help and banged the bars of the cell, but no one came. The next day, two men took her away. We told them the child hadn’t had any milk and begged them to take the baby to one of the women who was nursing her children there at the jail. The men actually showed a modicum of compassion for the creature and sent for a nun. It was Sister Diana who came, hours later, around noon. By then the tiny baby had lost nearly all the strength he had. Sister Diana looked at him and said with such spite that the red rat wasn’t worth saving. She left him there in our cell, and he died in my arms. Sometimes I think that was the best thing for the child. Living in this hellhole has to be worse than whatever world awaits beyond.”

  I felt sick, though after what I’d lived through at the orphanage, such a story wasn’t surprising. The regime’s executioners had lost the last remaining shreds of their humanity.

  “Another of the prisoners who was there with her two daughters, precious twin girls, went stark raving mad. A few weeks after she’d arrived, she was called to a room for an interview with a priest. Then they put her in the cell next to ours. The next day, two of the guards took her daughters to be adopted. My poor companion screamed that her daughters already had a mother, and she refused to eat after they were taken. She was dead within days.”

  “I’m so, so sorry,” I said.

  “I’m just so grateful you three are okay,” she said, stroking my cheek.

  It was very late by the time we went back to the pension. Perhaps we’d been delaying so that we’d be exhausted enough to fall asleep as soon as we lay down.

  We woke very early the next morning, and after a light breakfast with weak coffee, we boarded the bus and were traversing the forests of Basque Country by dawn. A couple hours later we stopped at Vitoria and then went on to Miranda de Ebro. The bus dropped us off around noon and then continued its route to Burgos. The concentration camp was between the railway and the river. A ten-minute walk in the bitter cold led us to the main gate, which was guarded by soldiers.

  “What do you want?” one of the soldiers asked. His jaw barely moved, and he seemed frozen stiff. He had a blanket thrown over his shoulders and a rifle in his hand.

  “I’ve brought an official pardon for one of the prisoners.”

  The soldier frowned and called for his superior. The situation was extremely out of the ordinary. The corporal came out of the observation tower. He was a large man, and his skin was whipped red by the wind. A thick black mustache partially covered his lips.

  “You brought a pardon? That’s not how it works. Orders always come straight from the office. You go on back home and carry on,” he said, turning back toward the observation tower.

  “Corporal, this order is signed by the Department of Justice.”

  He turned back and held out his hand. I gave him the folder, and he studied the paper carefully, as if reading it were a difficult chore.

  “Follow me,” was all he said.

  The soldiers opened the security gate for us, and we walked through the frozen mud down a row of white barracks until we reached a larger building with soldiers standing guard all around. They let us in, and the warmth inside the building was a welcome relief. The corporal went into an office and came out a few minutes later.

  “Go in,” he said, holding the door open for us.

  Two men waited inside, one Spaniard and another who looked to be a foreigner and spoke with a decidedly German accent. “Sit down. Who gave you this letter?” he demanded, seemingly angered by the mere existence of the piece of paper.

  I briefly explained how the pardon had come about. The Spaniard nodded but said nothing.

  The German said, “Pardons always come straight from the office. They’re never brought to us by the prisoner’s family.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s what they told me to do in Madrid,” I said, working hard to sound calm and unaffected.

  “Paul,” the Spanish officer said, “it seems there are some in Madrid who don’t think we’re doing our jobs properly.”

  “Well, no matter what, we have hardly any Spanish prisoners here. Most are other nationalities, former members of the International Brigades or foreigners suspected of spying. We’ll look to see if your father is really here at this camp.”

  My mother kept her head bowed the whole time. The camp reminded her of being locked up in the women’s prison.

  Paul and the Spanish officer called the corporal back in and sent him to look up my father’s name in the records.

  “Everyone here deserves to die. The foreigners are squeaking by for the moment because the Caudillo doesn’t want any diplomatic trouble with other countries, but there are very few Spaniards left,” the German said dryly.

  I hazarded to say, “My father was not a fighter. In fact, he saved many people in Madrid, people who were accused of treason or of working for the enemy.”

  The Spanish official took a step forward and looked hard at my mother. “Was your husband involved in a political party?”

  Terrified, my mother looked at him, not knowing how to answer. Finally, she whispered, “Yes, like most people during the Republic.”

  “Did he have an official post?”

  She nodded her head slowly.

  “That’s enough for the sentence to be carried out.”

  The corporal returned and whispered something in the officer’s ear. The Spanish officer nodded and said indifferently, “I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done. Half an hour ago your husband was taken out with other prisoners to the firing squad. By now the soldiers will have finished their job.”

  The German smiled at us, pleased at the turn of events. My heart was seizing, and my mother lost it. She stood up, grabbed the pardon off the table, and waved it around. “It’s an order from the Department of Justice. You’ve got to stop the execution right now!”

  The two men looked at each other in annoyed surprise. The corporal stepped toward my mother to take the letter from her, but I jumped in front of him.

  “Calm down, Curro, let’s not get out of hand,” the Spaniard said. “It won’t do any good, but take these two down to the execution site, and if
it’s not finished, have them find this—”

  “Francisco Alcalde,” the German finished.

  We got out of the building as fast as possible. The corporal, Curro, was none too pleased with his mission and dawdled as much as he could. We got to the front gate and then walked toward the river. Before we arrived, we saw a truck parked among the trees. We kept walking down a path, and my mother broke into a run. I followed her, and the corporal quickened his pace a bit.

  We could see a wall and a dozen soldiers lined up. One of them raised his hand, and we started screaming. The officer kept his hand raised and the firing squad took aim at the prisoners. When he heard our commotion, the officer turned and inadvertently dropped his hand. The soldiers interpreted it as the command to shoot, and a flurry of shots resounded off the wall. The officer screamed for them to halt, but the prisoners were already lying in pools of their own blood.

  “Halt, I say!” the officer roared.

  “Captain,” the corporal called, finally showing some initiative.

  “What is it, Corporal?”

  “I’ve got orders to halt the shooting. There’s been a pardon for Francisco Alcalde.”

  I panicked at the sight of the men and shook with the terror of what I’d just witnessed. Where was my father? Was he already among the dead?

  The officer shrugged and moved toward the lifeless and bullet-ridden bodies. He leaned down over one and examined it. “He’s still breathing,” he said.

  My mother screamed, and we ran. We ran toward the man he claimed was my father, and I lifted his head. The man opened his eyes and smiled. “Marco, my boy!” he rasped.

  “Don’t die!” my mother screamed through her tears.

  “I’m sorry,” he struggled to say, his life slipping away.

  My mother clung to his chest while I held him from behind, but his body grew progressively stiffer.

  “Where are my daughters?” he managed to ask.

  “They’re okay,” I croaked. “They’re alive.” My voice was hoarse from crying, and my trembling hands were covered in my father’s blood.

  “They must be so big by now.” He took a labored breath. “I won’t see them anymore, but tell them their father loves them with his whole heart and that I’ll always be by their side. Death is better; there’s no place for me in Spain anymore. You, Marco, keep fighting. Someday things will change.”

  “Francisco, Francisco,” my mother kept whimpering, kissing his face everywhere she could reach.

  A stream of blood trickled out from between his lips, and his eyes locked. The weak breath coming out of him stopped, a flame that had flickered out.

  They let us mourn beside him for a while. Beside him lay five other bodies that no one screamed or cried over, murdered on the altar of rage and vengeance. As we grieved, the executioners stood to the side, smoking cigarettes with such indifference. Their consciences were as light as if they’d just shot a deer in the middle of the woods for supper.

  My mother refused to leave my father, even though she knew the empty, soulless body was no longer the man she had loved, the father of her children. I pried her fingers off and struggled to help her stand upright. “Mom,” I said, “we can’t stay here.”

  With great reluctance we started walking past the line of soldiers. Most were very young, and one or two had the pinched expression of something resembling compassion. They were victims in a different way: conscripted and forced to murder their own people, workers and poor farmhands like the families from which they’d come. As we walked away, coups de grâce echoed in the background.

  We stumbled toward the railway and watched a line of prisoners leaving the concentration camp to go to their work site. We slouched deeper in sorrow at seeing their pale, haggard, bruised faces. My father had escaped hell, at least, but those men would keep enduring the abuses of the victors.

  We didn’t speak until we got to the train station. It was as though my mother was gone, her brain incapable of facing such grief.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, crying. “I should have come here first instead of Bilbao. I—”

  “Shh, don’t,” she said, hugging me. “You’ve done all you could have done.” She did not cry. The reserves of her beautiful eyes had been used up.

  “Remember all of this, everything,” she said. “No matter how much time passes. The world has to know the truth. The victors always write the history books, and, when things have calmed down and new habits become routine, they’ll deny all this happened. Don’t let your father and everyone like him disappear into oblivion.”

  “I’ll remember, Mom,” I promised. Her words would haunt me my whole life, just like what she’d said in Bordeaux right before we were separated.

  “It’s devastating, Marco, when brothers become enemies. At the end of the day, the same blood has been spilled on both sides of the front: two Spains at each other’s throats because of their damned ideals. Do we really have to do so much damage in order to live in peace? Each human life is more important than any ideology. We thought we could build a new world, an ideal country where injustice and inequality would be no more; but evil is inside the heart of every human being. Long before the war was over, we’d already lost by committing the same inhuman atrocities as our enemies. The innocent ones are always the ones who suffer most in the war, while the cowards who didn’t go to the front kill from the rearguard in the name of God, of the Republic, of Franco . . . What difference does it make? Whatever name they use to justify themselves—their killing disgusts me.”

  The train plodded toward us across the frozen field, slowing to a stop in front of the small station where hardly a dozen passengers waited with us. We got on the third-class car, sat on the hard wooden bench, and listened to the sound of the steam engine as smoke puffed by the closed window. It was so cold, and people sat hunched together in search of any warmth possible. Everyone traveled in silence. There were no songs, no conversations, no laughter; the entire country felt like one big cemetery. My mother’s eyes were closed, but I knew she wasn’t sleeping. She was trying to go far, far away from there, perhaps back to the happy past when the five of us were a family, when life was all future and hope, youth and dreams. On that train ride from Miranda de Ebro to Madrid, I understood that suffering is our only lifelong, faithful friend. At every moment it reminds us that we’re mortal and that around every corner we could lose all our happiness and long to curse the day we were born.

  I bowed my head and tried to recall every good moment I’d had with my father and everything I’d learned from him. As long as I was alive, he would never fully die, because he’d be present in my movements and expressions and all my memories.

  Chapter 47

  Madrid

  Madrid

  January 11, 1941

  It was late when we got back to Madrid, and we went straight to Jacinto’s house. Angelines opened the door and let out a little scream when she saw my mother. The maid wrapped Mom in her bony arms and covered her with kisses. We went inside and sat on the sofa. Mom’s reserves of tears had built back up again, and the floodgates opened when Jacinto came into the room. He didn’t say a word, just hugged her. And then he hugged me. We didn’t say anything about what had happened in Miranda de Ebro. There was no need to. We ate hot soup and bread all together in the kitchen. Jacinto sat next to us and stared back and forth between Mom and me the whole time but never spoke.

  Finally, my mother asked, “So the theaters are open again?”

  “Yes, right now I’ve got a show running and another in the works,” Jacinto said, trying to smile.

  “That’s good. Laughter is probably more important than bread right now in our dead, soulless country.”

  “My dear Amparo, how I’ve missed you. The young actors hardly know the four basic rules of the stage. There’s been no one to train them for years now. The older actors are no longer with us or are living in exile. I was tempted to go abroad myself, but someone’s got to raise the curtain.”

&nbs
p; “You made the right choice,” Mom said.

  “Where will you go when you get your daughters back?” Jacinto asked, timidly proffering what we were all wondering.

  Mom sat there deep in thought, as if the question had taken her by surprise. For years, she had been used to simply surviving; people can’t make plans during a war.

  “I have no idea. I admire you, my good friend, but I’m not sure I could get up on stage again, certainly not in Spain. The country I loved doesn’t exist anymore.”

  Jacinto’s shoulders drooped at her answer. Perhaps he had secretly hoped she would return to the theater. “Whatever you do, it’ll be the right thing,” he said, though it was clear he wished she would stay in Spain and, more specifically, in the acting world.

  “The right thing? I’m pretty sure that nobody thinks about doing the right thing anymore. We’ll go back to being the country of rogues, blessed virgins, go-betweens, and tricksters bent on shameless survival like we’ve always been. A complete scoundrel is in power, surrounded by crooks just as bad if not worse than him because they’re not brave enough to wrest his power away.”

  “It’s not cowardice, honey, it’s self-interest,” Jacinto clarified. “The regime has no ideology; it’s all a façade. The only thing most of them care about is taking the biggest slice of the pie. The monarchists aren’t clamoring for the king’s return, at least not most of them; the military is well paid by their caudillo; the old shirt Falangists complain in private but fawn all over themselves in public just as much as the new shirts; the priests are doing what they’ve always done; and the rest of us tremble and pray we’re not carted off to the firing squad.”

  We finished eating, washed our weary bodies, and went to bed. Mom tucked me in, then lay down in the bed beside mine. After a while, I could tell she was still awake.

  “Are you asleep?” she whispered.

  “No,” I said, turning to face her.

  “What do you think we should do? Stay here or try to go to the Americas?”