The Map

by T. S. Learner

  But what about the mysterious outline on the wall? Why did La Leona and her men leave their shadows behind? Was it a cry for acknowledgement of their deaths? August had to find out more about the massacre.

  He had to go back.

  Olivia leaned forward as the taxi swung around the Plaza de Cervantes, following the harbour front down to the old fishing port, the two jetties – Mollaberria and Mollaerdia – jutting out into the bay. Fishing boats bumped gently against the buoys as Basque fishermen unloaded that morning’s catch of cod and sardines. The sight took her mind back to another small fishing port she’d visited thirty years earlier, on the Cornish coast, with Julian Copps who was then her lover. They’d argued, she remembered, walking along a sweep of white sand under an overcast angry English sky, where the grey sea dissolved into a grey horizon. They’d argued about what they always argued about at that time – the esoteric texts that fascinated both of them. Despite her own vast knowledge, she’d been awed by his seemingly endless knowledge, historical and intellectual, of such literature. But even then, early on in their love affair, she had become aware of the limitations his rationality foisted upon his mind. She had seen and felt things he couldn’t even imagine and her world was fragmented into those who believed and those who didn’t, the ones who saw and those who were content in just being seen.

  They had been talking about an Andalusian text Julian had found in Fez, Morocco, dating from the twelfth century. At that point Olivia remembered she had picked up a seashell, a small periwinkle with a black strip around it that wrapped like a thin ribbon right into the mouth of the shell. She’d slipped it into her pocket as a marker of the moment. She still had it somewhere. The text had described the ten sephiroth that made up the Tree of Life as spiritual platforms to a ground map that led to spiritual enlightenment. ‘Basic kabbalistic beliefs,’ Julian had remarked, dismissively, but the text had also talked of a hidden sephirot that was a doorway or portal to Ein Sof – the state of being one with God. It had mentioned that the philosopher Elazar ibn Yehuda had proven that it was possible to depict such a doorway physically and ‘be taken into God’. It was this enigmatic phrase that they were arguing about; Olivia was convinced the meaning was literal, that Yehuda had found a way of physically as well as spiritually transcending. Julian was emphatic, in a dry academic way.

  ‘The text was metaphoric!’ he had shouted, into the wind. ‘Such events were the dreams of medieval fabulists and not the thinking of a rational philosopher influenced by both Aristotle and Plato.’ They’d ended up walking back to the small rented cottage in sullen silence, neither wishing to surrender to the other. But for Olivia it had been a turning point, the trigger that had led her directly to this moment in a car in 1953, as it accelerated into the centre of San Sebastián. It was the argument that had set her on a journey.

  A branch broke underfoot and August stumbled, his right foot sinking into a soft layer of leaf mould and brush. Ahead, a startled woodcock scuttled across the path. He straightened himself, now feeling the weight of the small shovel and pick he had strapped to his back an hour earlier, when he’d borrowed them from Izarra’s barn. He’d waited until he was sure both Izarra and Gabirel were well away from the house – Izarra at the village market and Gabirel in the orchard – before he’d left, meticulously following the path he was sure Gabirel had taken to reach the maze.

  He rested for a moment against a tree and lit a cigarette. Exhaling, he watched the plume of smoke drifting up through the canopy overhead. Part of him wanted to turn back, the other was driving him forward. The sun passed out from under a cloud and sunlight streamed through the branches, and it was then that he saw it, a clearing, visible through the leaves up ahead. He was almost there.

  It was an eerie feeling standing at the site. The scent of the rosemary drifting across again seemed to lull him into a mild stupor. Shaking himself alert, August clambered down to the wall. It was about sixty feet across, the large sandstone blocks only decayed at the two ends. The rest had withstood time remarkably well. There was no sign of the sinister outline so clearly visible in the photo. August walked up to the middle – it was here that the mysterious shadow had fallen against the photographed wall. Reaching out, he put his hand against the stone, as if he might intuit something through his fingers; nothing, no vibration, no locked-up echo. Just blank solidity. Close up there were no markings on the stone, just the crusty white of lichen and moss that had grown between the large blocks. For a moment August stood against the wall, his back flat against the surface, the coolness seeping tendrils through his clothes, then into his skin, as though the wall itself were trying to claim him. He broke away, then, measuring the distance, he started pacing directly away from the wall, carefully counting each of his strides. At thirty he stopped and swung around to face the wall. His mind returned to the image of the outline in the photograph. He would be looking directly at it at this point. Kneeling, he scanned the grass and broken rock around him. There seemed to be nothing but wild grass and flowers sprouting up between the sections of old stone that had once, hundreds of years ago, made up the floor of the dwelling. A sudden haunting cry above him made him glance up – in the small rectangle of sky an eagle circled hungrily, gazing downwards. August saw a flurry in the perimeter of his vision, a rabbit sitting on its haunches, grazing, blissfully unaware of the eagle above. A second later the raptor had swooped, carrying the kicking rabbit up into the endless blue as it flapped its wings lazily back towards the mountain peak. The rabbit’s fate made August feel curiously vulnerable, like he too was terrifyingly oblivious of who or what might be watching him from above.

  Looking back down at the cracked ground, August realised he didn’t know what he was searching for, but felt compelled to keep exploring. He moved a few feet to the left. Here it seemed he was standing on the foundations of a small room, perhaps a sleeping chamber. The surface was lower than the rest and the ground appeared more disturbed by time, decay and vegetation. Just then he noticed a tiny glint, light bouncing off something metallic. He walked over and, kneeling, found the source, barely visible – the metal tip of something poking through the soil. He uncovered some more of the object with his hands. With a sickening lurch, he recognised it as the barrel of a rifle. Reaching for the spade, he began to dig, the metallic sound of the shovel hitting rock echoing out across the valley.

  There were eight of them, laid out side by side in the long shallow grave. Seven men and one woman, La Leona herself, the long black hair still partly attached to the skull. Skeletons still clad in makeshift uniforms, they all bore bullet holes to the torso. Most of the men still wore the beret of the Basque Nationalist Army, the cloth badge still stitched into the rotting fabric. Two of the men had the Republican three-pointed red star sewn into their khaki jackets. It had taken August three hours of digging to uncover them all, but he had felt no emotion until now. Lying along the foot of the grave were several rifles abandoned and hidden with the bodies. Squatting, he picked up one of the rifles and brushed away the mud from the wooden stock. It was marked ‘Property of the US Army’. August stared down at the marking, then dropped the gun back into the grave, and doubled over retching.

  A terrible cry came from the forest nearby. Thinking it must be an animal of some sort, perhaps even a wolf, August stumbled back to the wall, but Gabirel came running erratically out from behind the pine trees. To August’s horror he ran straight towards the grave. August ran at him, determined to protect the youth, and he grabbed him by the waist.

  ‘Gabirel, no!’

  For a moment the two wrestled, August trying to hold the boy back as he struggled. Finally he broke free and ran to the grave, throwing himself down beside the female corpse, moaning and weeping, his eyes swinging wildly back to the corpse over and over again. August managed to pull him away and sat him down on a rock, placing himself beside him. He threw an arm over Gabirel’s shoulder.

  ‘I saw … I saw …’ Gabirel could barely speak, as his face twisted into
a horrified recollection.

  ‘You saw? You saw the massacre, your aunt?’ August tried to prompt him gently. But the boy was inconsolable.

  ‘My aunt?’ He looked at August, amazed. ‘La Leona was my mother.’

  Izarra was standing in the open barn turning the handle of a corn grinder. As soon as she saw the distraught youth with August, she dropped the handle and came running out.

  ‘What have you done?’ she screamed, in Spanish, at August, then swung around to Gabirel, reaching out to touch his face.

  He knocked her hands away violently.

  ‘What is wrong, Gabirel? Tell me!’

  Ignoring her, August led the boy to the front door. ‘Go inside, we will be with you later,’ he told him. Emotionally exhausted, the boy disappeared into the house.

  August turned back to Izarra. ‘Last night as I was developing the photographs I’d taken of the maze and the ruins, a strange shadow appeared on the wall in one of the pictures. It was an outline I recognised. So this morning, when you were both out, I went back to the ruins. Something, an instinct, an old soldier’s hunch, call it what you like, made me begin looking and then digging …’

  ‘¡Dios mio!’ Izarra’s face was ashen, twisting as she tried desperately to stop herself from crying.

  August continued: ‘There were the remains of eight of them, all soldiers, some of the Republican Army, some of the Basque, seven men, one woman.’ At which Izarra let out a small strangled cry. ‘I guess it was the work of an ad hoc firing squad, just as Jimmy described. They had been lined up against the wall and shot – together. Whoever buried them, buried them in a hurry, as if they didn’t really fear the discovery of the bodies or perhaps any consequences.’ Here, he couldn’t help himself, his voice dipped into bitter sarcasm, ‘After all they were only Republicans and Basques, who is there to care?’

  ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ She covered her ears.

  ‘No, you need to hear, the time for keeping secrets is past!’ He pulled her hands away from her ears. ‘When I’d finished uncovering the bodies, Gabirel appeared from nowhere. I had no idea the boy had followed me. He saw the bodies and started weeping and screaming like an animal, then threw himself down … I tried to pull him away, to protect him.’

  ‘I thought he was too young. If I told him it hadn’t happened, that his mother had gone away …’

  ‘So you are his aunt.’

  Izarra nodded. ‘Gabirel was seven. I didn’t know about the massacre until afterwards, until it was too late. I didn’t even know Gabirel had been in the forest that day playing. I thought he would forget, that the memory would disappear, that I could free him from it by denying it ever happened.’

  ‘I need to know the whole story.’

  ‘How do I really know you’re not government, you’re not a spy?’

  August held up his finger, the one missing a tip.

  ‘This was the work of a fascist sniper in Jarama in 1937. I was lucky – my friend next to me was shot in the eye. The scar on my face is from shrapnel as I defended Teruel. I gave four years of my life to the Republican cause. We fought alongside your people. Two of the dead in that grave are Republican soldiers – you owe me an explanation!’

  She stared up at him, then placed her hand on his arm.

  ‘Come, come inside, I will show you.’

  She led him into a small upstairs drawing room. To August’s surprise, there was a framed print of Franco in uniform hanging on the wall.

  ‘It’s not what you think,’ Izarra said, noticing his reaction. She flipped it over and pulled out a sheaf of photographs that had been taped to the back. She placed them on a small side table and sifted through them; a couple were obviously of her parents, but several were of a striking young woman, who bore some resemblance to Izarra – La Leona.

  ‘These are the only photographs of my sister in existence. She kept as invisible as possible.’

  ‘I remember, even during the war I thought she might have been a fiction – a propaganda ploy to encourage the troops.’

  Izarra smiled. ‘La Leona burned through life like a star. When the Euzko Gudarostea, the Basque National Army, surrendered in 1937 at Santona, La Leona never forgave Aguirre. She kept on fighting, her and her men.’

  Izarra pulled out a small photograph of a group of people in uniform, standing beside some trees. In the middle stood Andere, with her arm around a tall brown-haired man August recognised immediately. Jimmy van Peters, younger, vibrant and uncharacteristically radiant with happiness. Dressed in the khaki of the US infantry, he gazed down at the diminutive, strong-featured woman, herself dressed in fatigues, a black beret pushed back from her high forehead. She was smiling and looking back up at the American. There was no doubt the two were in love. August stared down at Jimmy.

  ‘That’s him. You wouldn’t recognise him now – he’s dying.’

  Izarra, watching him, softened at this flash of vulnerability. ‘I’m sorry, I liked him. I think he was an honest man.’

  August picked up the photograph. In the foreground sat the two Republican soldiers – the purple, yellow and red stripes of the Republican flag stitched into their shirts, the same tattered fragments he’d seen on their corpses. One was polishing a rifle; the other stared back up at the camera warily. Smaller in physique and olive-skinned, they had the sharper features of the South – Spaniards a long way from home. In the top right-hand corner August could just make out two other men – in US uniforms in the middle of erecting a tent. Was one of them Damien Tyson? Somehow August doubted it. Tyson wasn’t the kind of man who would allow himself to be photographed, August guessed, not the Jester. He placed it back on the desk. ‘So what happened, Izarra?’

  ‘Before the Civil War we all lived together, in this house – my parents, my sister and her husband, and myself. Traditionally, it is the women who are sorgina and Andere and I had been instructed by my mother in how to guard both Mari’s cave and the maze. But when the war came, my father, Andere’s husband and Andere herself joined the Basque Army – by the end Andere was a widow and my parents were dead. Andere was older than me, and stronger. She was the fiercest, most determined person I knew – man or woman. There were some who were terrified of her. Not me. I was her sister, I had seen the human side. It was the war, the execution of her husband and all that death that had made her cold. When the retreat happened, Andere put out a rumour she’d been killed. Then she came back here, to these mountains, to continue the struggle after the official surrender.

  ‘It was easy. This village is not well known to the Spanish, and the Basques keep it that way. There were eight of them living here, for six years, waiting and doing what they could to help the refugees, men fearing for their lives, trying to get into France or wanting to escape to fight with the Allies. Then in 1945 after Berlin fell, Americans visited my sister, officers sent by the US president. Jimmy was one of them. They said they were willing to help us, to train us, give us guns.’

  The image of the file came back to August, that afternoon in Grosvenor Square.

  ‘Operation Lizard,’ he said, out loud, more to himself than her.

  ‘You know of this?’ she demanded, distrust spreading across her face.

  ‘Only what Jimmy told me. But the more you tell me the more I might be able to help you, perhaps even catch the murderers.’

  ‘The murderers were your government.’

  ‘It’s not that simple. Please, you have to trust me.’

  ‘At first Andere welcomed them. They told us that now the Allies had destroyed Hitler they were worried about another insurgence of fascism in Europe. Truman felt a democratic Spain and a Basque republic might be safer for the rest of Europe. So they started working with Andere and her men. There were other American officers training with the exiled Basque government in Paris.’

  ‘How many were here?’

  ‘Six. Elite officers, all of them trained killers. The man in charge was called Tyson. I’ll never forget him.’

  ‘Jest
er, his codename was Jester.’

  ‘Jester?’ Izarra laughed bitterly. ‘This is some sort of clown, no? Damien was not a clown. An actor, yes, but not a clown, although he was professionally charming like a clown. Andere put all her trust in him and his men. I’ve never seen her do this before, but I think she realised this could be their last hope of an independent country from Spain, and the Republicans in her group had family murdered and tortured by Franco, so surrender was not an option. So Damien and the five others set up camp in the forest behind the ruins and started training Andere and her men in the latest guerrilla warfare. All was going well. There was new hope of independence and the possibility of overthrowing Franco. And we all grew to trust and like the Americans. Andere and Jimmy even became lovers. Then secret orders were sent from Washington, to Damien Tyson, orders to destroy the very men they had been training.’

  ‘Izarra, this isn’t true. The men were tricked into committing that massacre. They thought they were following orders.’

  ‘Do you not believe your own government could commit murder?’

  ‘I haven’t lived in America since 1932, and I certainly don’t approve of the current regime, but I also know committing a massacre is riskier than a quiet withdrawal. It would have been impractical for the Americans. The original order was for a quiet withdrawal. Tyson wanted your sister and her men dead.’

  ‘I know this much – that day Damien Tyson tricked Jimmy and sent him out of the area on a false mission. Damien knew he had to separate Jimmy and Andere to keep Andere vulnerable. He then lured Andere and her men into a trap and had his men shoot them – all of them. I was working in the field behind the house. I’ll never forget it, that sound of the rifles, one short report. I knew instantly what had happened. I called out for Gabirel but he was gone. They would have shot me, except I ran and hid in the hiding place we have in the house, built during the wars of the last century. All around me I could hear the sound of smashing furniture, drawers being overturned. It was terrifying. I crouched there in the dark, praying that Gabirel was safe. When I came out eighteen hours later, the house had been ransacked, the chronicle was missing and Tyson and his men had gone, and the bodies were buried. I eventually found Gabirel hiding in the cave. He’d been there for two days. He didn’t speak for a week after that. It was only later when Jimmy returned that I discovered Andere had given the chronicle to him for safekeeping, and I let him leave with it. I thought he would return it within a year. But now you’re here eight years later with it, why?’