Death of a Nationalist

by Rebecca Pawel

  Chapter 13

  Tejada damned the full moon to seven kinds of hell as he slid past the gates of the post. The streets were deserted, but without the flood of moonlight it would have been easy to follow Señorita Fernández without her knowledge. Relatively easy, at least. Most of the streetlights were still out, and she was not expecting pursuit. On the other hand, she knew both the city and her destination and he did not. And she’s an intelligent woman, he thought, with a bitterness that seemed disproportionate to the offense.

  He kept well behind her, so that she would not be alerted by the click of his boots on the cobblestones. She was walking quickly and showed no tendency to glance back. Tejada allowed her to draw ahead at first, fairly certain that she would head toward the center of the city. It would, he knew, be more difficult to follow her once she reached the heart of Madrid. As he had expected, she hurried east, but he was unprepared for her sharp turn to the north immediately afterward, and he almost lost her. Fortunately, there were streetlights up ahead and the lone female figure was readily visible. As he drew nearer to the lights, he heard the sound of the anthem being sung loudly, and not very tunefully, by a couple of voices. They were, he realized, near a barracks. That explained the light, and the unusual noise. Tejada felt himself relax slightly. He was quite competent to handle Señorita Fernández and anyone she might be meeting, but it was still comforting to know that he would have support, if he required it. He kept to the shadows, aware that his khaki uniform would be conspicuous among the dark uniforms of the soldiers. He was not, he saw, the only loiterer in the darkness. The spaces outside the puddles of light were populated with both men and women— usually in pairs. They were generally anxious to be ignored and perfectly willing to be politely blind to him.

  He passed the main gate of the barracks. Señorita Fernán-dez had pulled ahead of him again, and he did not want to lose her in the darkness. The sound of the anthem got louder, covering his footsteps, as a pair of young soldiers stumbled out of a side street ahead of him and his quarry, and made toward the barracks. They were singing with the slurred enthusiasm of the moderately drunk. Tejada cast a glance at them and decided that they would be wiser and sadder men at the next reveille. Boys, rather. Neither of them looked much older than Jiménez or Moscoso.

  One of them attempted a whistle as Señorita Fernández approached. “Hey, beautiful!” She kept walking. “I said hello.” He weaved away from his companion, nearly blocking the sidewalk in front of her. It was difficult to tell if the maneuver was deliberate or if he was simply unsteady on his feet.

  “Hey, Little Red,” the other boy spoke. “Why’re you in such a hurry?”

  “Little Red!” The first one roared with laughter. “Li’l Red without a hood!” They were walking along on either side of her now, giggling at their own wit. The sergeant felt a twinge of irritation. If she was in fact heading for a place where Reds were in hiding, she was unlikely to lead two drunken Falangists to it.

  One of them grabbed at her arm. “How ’bout a kiss, Little Red?”

  They were well up the street and away from the lights by now. By moonlight, Tejada saw Señorita Fernández shake the soldier’s hand off her arm. She said something, too softly for him to catch, and attempted to go forward. The other man caught her around the waist and propelled her toward him. “Don’t be shy, sweetheart!” He inclined his face toward hers, and then suddenly recoiled, thrusting her backward at his companion. “You bitch!” The echoes of the oath drowned out the sound of his knuckles as he backhanded her. His companion caught her as she stumbled, and threw her to the ground.

  Without thinking, Tejada broke into a run. “Guardia Civil! Hands up!”

  The two soldiers heard the cry but ignored it, assuming that it was addressed to some criminal. Tejada realized that they would not respond to threats, even at gunpoint, and grabbed the nearer boy, dragging his arms behind him more by force than by finesse.

  “That was an order, soldier!” he snapped, twisting one arm until he heard the boy whimper in pain. “I don’t like repeating myself. You!” He addressed his captive’s colleague. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  The second soldier straightened and tripped over Elena as he stepped clear of her, looking somewhat befuddled. “I-I don’t know, sir.” His gaze took in Tejada’s uniform. “Hey, you’re one of the Guardia.”

  “We hold military rank,” Tejada snarled, obscurely annoyed that his prisoner was not struggling. It would have given him great satisfaction to smash the boy’s head into the cobblestones. “Do you want to be court-martialed for insubordination?”

  “N-no, sir.” The soldier managed a sloppy salute.

  “Good. We’ll settle for drunk and disorderly conduct then.” He released the boy he had been holding with some reluctance. “Unless you care to beg the lady’s pardon, in which case it’s her choice.”

  “But she’s just a Red wh—,” one of them began, and then stopped, as he felt the guardia civil’s pistol make contact with his forehead. “She spat at me,” he finished, with some petulance and considerably more courage than he knew.

  “She had ample provocation. Now, are you going to apologize?”

  One of the boys turned (still cradling one arm, Tejada noticed with vicious satisfaction) and looked down at Elena. She was sprawled on the cobblestones, her face turned away from the three men, her shoulders hunched, shivering. “Sorry, Señorita,” he muttered.

  “Sorry,” the other one added. And then, to Tejada, “Can we go now?”

  Tejada would have liked to make good his threat of arrest and court-martial, but the fact that Elena had not risen from the pavement worried him. “Get out of here,” he said. “And don’t go attacking decent women. The whole damn city is full of whores, if you need them.”

  The soldiers might have argued, but Tejada had not holstered his weapon, and something in the casual way he held it suggested even to their slightly muddled brains that he would not be averse to using it. They stumbled off, muttering together. Tejada turned his attention to Señorita Fernández. She was, he realized with relief, not actually lying but sitting, propped on her hands, and curled forward. “Are you—,” he began, kneeling, and putting his hands on her shoulders.

  “DON’T TOUCH ME!” The force of the words threw him backward a pace.

  He dropped to one knee again and allowed one hand to hover over her back, carefully not touching her. “Are you hurt?” Her hair had come down during her struggles. The dark braid lay like a gash across the light fabric of her blouse. She remained hunched over and twisted away from him, but did not reply. “Can you stand up?” he asked, with the cold con- sciousness that if she was injured it was his fault for not intervening sooner.

  “Get me my coat, please.” Her voice was shaking.

  Grateful for any reply, he searched for her coat, glad of the moon for the first time. He found it in a crumpled heap in the gutter and shook it out as best he could. She had not moved. He hesitated a moment beside her. “It’s filthy.”

  “So am I.”

  She pushed herself unsteadily to her feet, and Tejada reached for her elbow. “Let me help—”

  “Keep away.” He froze.

  On her feet, she crossed her arms over her chest, head bent, in the attitude of a penitent. Tejada realized that her blouse was torn. “Your coat.” He held it out, staring at the ground. She snatched it with one hand and draped it around her clumsily.

  “I’m sorry,” Tejada said to the ground. “They’re . . . just kids.”

  Her silence could have drowned out a marching band.

  “Drunk, stupid kids, who don’t know any better,” Tejada said, wondering why he felt compelled to defend the boys whom he would have cheerfully murdered five minutes earlier. “They thought you were a Re . . . publican,” he finished carefully, unwilling to add unnecessary insult to injury.

  “So I am, Sergeant. Hadn’t you guessed?” He could not know that the loathing and mockery in her voice were mostly
self-directed.

  “No, I mean they thought you were—” Tejada stopped, realizing that there was no way to finish the sentence without offending a lady.

  Elena was past suffering from excessive sensibility. “A Red whore. Most of us are, nowadays, for food.”

  The edge in her voice suddenly explained to Tejada why she had refused his escort. “I . . .,” he stumbled. “That wasn’t why I wanted to see you home.”

  She was quiet long enough for a treacherous voice in the sergeant’s head to say, Wasn’t it? Would you have refused, if she had offered? He felt himself flushing, and was glad that the darkness obscured his face.

  “Why did you follow me?” she asked finally.

  Circumstances suggested a convenient lie. “I was worried about you,” Tejada said. “A young woman alone . . . at night . . . in a city.”

  “This is the first time I’ve had trouble.” Elena realized that she was trying to provoke the sergeant. Had she been calmer, she would have realized why. She trusted him, and trusting one of the Guardia Civil was dangerous. He should act like a guardia civil.

  Tejada recognized her implication but was more grieved than angered by it. “I’ll see you home,” he said quietly. “To the doorstep. Understood?”

  Elena fought an impulse to burst into tears. “Understood,” she whispered. She licked her upper lip, tasted salt, and then fumbled in her pockets. “Do you have a handkerchief? I think my nose is bleeding.”

  “Here.” Tejada held one out. “It looks like it’s stopped, actually.” He inspected her critically. “You’ll probably have quite a black eye tomorrow, though.”

  “Thank you.” She turned and started up the street.

  Tejada followed her. She was walking more slowly now, and he wondered if she had been hurrying from fear before or if she was simply exhausted now. “Is it far?” he asked, for the sake of saying something.

  “No. Near Cuatro Caminos.”

  They walked in silence for a little while. The moon was setting and the buildings blotted it out, casting the streets into total darkness. Here and there, a streetlamp glowed at an intersection, like a train’s headlight in a tunnel. Tejada saw that she was shivering as they passed under one. He won- dered if she was in shock or simply cold. “You’re sure you’re all right?” He risked putting an arm around her. She flinched, but did not actually pull away.

  “Yes.” Elena spoke automatically. I stink, she thought, marveling that the sergeant was not revolted by the smell. She wanted to be at home, to peel off her clothes and bathe, and to vomit the dinner that she had eaten so gratefully, and purge herself inside and out of everything that had happened this evening.

  If Elena had relaxed into the curve of his arm, Tejada would have been happy to share the quiet with her. Words would have marred the peaceful notes of the whistling breeze and muffled footsteps. But she remained rigid with tension, trembling slightly. He sought for something comforting to say. “You mustn’t think, because there are a few bad apples, that . . . things like tonight . . . happen often,” he said at last. She did not noticeably relax. “I mean . . . the army is disciplined. If those boys had been Reds, they would never have listened to a commanding officer.”

  If they were loyalists, their comrades wouldn’t have let them attack me. Elena was tempted to say the words aloud. Instead she said stiffly, “Perhaps.”

  “Well”—Tejada abandoned his attempt to defend the regular army—“the Guardia Civil would never—our mission is to protect people and property. To keep the streets safe. We—”

  Elena pulled away from him. “Spare me a recital of your charter, Sergeant.”

  Tejada had seen a few women who had been raped but they had all been dead or unconscious. He had never before dealt with a victim of attempted rape. He had the vague idea that women were supposed to cry, or faint, or have hysterics in such a situation. He had not expected this brittle hostility. By rights, it should have irritated him. But he had the illogical feeling that Señorita Fernández was clinging to her composure the way a man clings to the edge of a cliff with his fingernails, and he wanted to throw her a rope. “You know that I would never hurt you,” he said, and it was half a statement and half a question.

  Elena felt her eyes starting to tear, and ducked her head, hoping he would not notice in the darkness. He was a guardia civil. The son of a Carlist landowner. The friend of Falangists. A symbol of everything that was wrong with Spain. But she had trusted him enough to tell him something she thought would protect Alejandra, and now she found herself biting her lip to keep from saying, “Yes. I know. I believe you.” To her profound relief, they reached a familiar dark intersection. “This way,” she pointed and began to walk as quickly as possible. “Here.” She stopped in the arch of an unlit entrance that looked exactly like every other unlit entrance to Tejada. “Good night. And . . . thank you.”

  “It’s nothing,” Tejada said absently. “When will I see you again?”

  “You know where I live,” Elena pointed out. “You can send for me at any time.”

  Tejada shook his head, annoyed. “No. I meant . . . socially. What parish is this? When does the Easter service end? If you are still in Madrid, I could pick you up afterward.”

  “No, you can’t.” Elena’s voice was shaking.

  “But why?” Tejada spoke before he could stop himself.

  Elena’s self-control snapped. “Because I won’t be in church.”

  “What?”

  “I won’t be there,” Elena repeated more loudly. “I’m a Socialist, Sergeant. A dirty Red.” Her voice rose steadily, gaining an edge of hysteria. “I was glad when they burned the churches and executed the priests! Glad!”

  “Shut up,” Tejada said quietly, wondering who might be listening behind the darkened windows.

  “Why? Go ahead and arrest me!”

  Tejada knew some of the basics of how to elicit a confession but he had never tried to stop one before. Señorita Fernández’s clear voice rang through the empty street. “You don’t believe me, Sergeant? Viva la República! I’m a member of—”

  Tejada grabbed her arms and kissed her. He waited until her lips stopped frantically moving and then reluctantly pulled away. “You’re hysterical,” he said hoarsely. “And I didn’t hear any of that.”

  “Traitor,” Elena whispered, hating him for his perceptiveness and for deliberately allowing his hands to rest lightly on her shoulders so that she could easily pull away. “Fascist, parasite, Carlist.” Her tongue tripped over the last accusation, possibly because she was crying.

  He kissed her again, and allowed his arms to close around her with slightly more force. After a few moments, her fingers lightly touched the back of his head.

  “You said . . . the doorstep,” Elena reminded him, a little while later.

  “I know,” he agreed softly. He could feel a pulse pounding at the base of her jaw. “Do you want me to go?”

  “I think . . . I do.” Elena knew that her voice was trembling.

  “Jesus, love, answer yes or no, at least!”

  “Then . . . yes, I want you to go.” Elena pushed him away, while a part of her mind shouted that she was making a huge mistake. “It’s . . . it’s not you, Carlos. . . . I can’t . . . it’s not you.”

  “What, then?” Tejada froze. “You have a lover.”

  “No! No, of course not! No, I just . . . what I said, before. . . . I’m . . . you’re . . . a guardia civil.” The despair in her voice was painful.

  Tejada drew a long, ragged breath. “All right,” he said quietly. “But, Elena, listen, just for a second.” He reached toward her shape in the darkness, and very carefully embraced her. She sighed and finally relaxed against him, and his doubts about her feelings vanished. “Listen,” he repeated soothingly, twining his fingers in her hair and thinking rapidly. “Remember, at dinner, you said you were named for a fickle adulteress?”

  He felt her nod against his shoulder.

  “And I told you that you were wrong. H
elen of Troy wasn’t that. She was seduced into believing in someone who wasn’t worthy of her, and that wasn’t her fault. But I think there was more than that. I think she stayed in Troy long after she knew she had made a mistake because she was noble. I think . . . she understood about honor, and sacrifice, and things that Paris couldn’t even begin to comprehend. So she stayed, even after she knew that he wasn’t worthy of her . . . even after she knew the Greeks would win.” He felt Elena stir, and tightened his grip a little. “I think she stayed because she felt responsible. Because she wanted to help the Trojans who were suffering in a war not of their own making . . . perhaps, especially, the children.” Elena was rigid in his arms now, and he spoke more quickly. “I think she was too proud to beg for mercy when the city fell. She had too much honor for that. She might have perished, or become a slave, when the Greeks finally won back Troy. Perhaps, even, she believed she deserved that. And some of the Greeks believed it too, because they saw only her defiance, and didn’t understand it. But. . . .” Elena made a faint effort to break free, and he held her a little harder. “But . . . her husband . . . who loved her . . . understood why she had stayed. And he sought her out in the ruins, and asked her . . . begged her . . . to return with him. To start over again, to be the wife of a man who could match her bravery. To let him take her away to a place where she would be honored and loved and protected, as she deserved.”

  Elena heaved a long sigh. Tejada loosened his grip, and she raised her head and kissed him on the cheek. It was rough with stubble. “That’s a very interesting interpretation,” she whis- pered. “But I think . . . if it were true . . . she would be known as Helen of Sparta, not Helen of Troy.” She disengaged herself from his suddenly nerveless arms. “And I think perhaps you underestimate Prince Hector.” She took a deep breath and put all of her energy into making sure that her voice did not quaver. “Good night, Sergeant Tejada.” She made it all the way to her room before bursting into tears.