by Colm Toibin
Isona was two now. When she woke in the morning she would demand to be let down to Carlos’s room with her bricks or toys. She talked to him as though he were a child, and sometimes he answered her. She imposed a strain on him that on occasions he could not bear and he would lie on the bed with his face in the pillow and Isona would go to find Katherine.
What was he like before the war? Katherine imagined him as gentle, refined, quiet. Miguel laughed at her. No, he was a journalist, not a rich journalist or even very famous but, Miguel said, he was nasty. When he wrote for the anarchist newspaper his scorn was special. He knew how to hate, that was why Miguel liked him. He was from an ordinary family in Barcelona and spoke Catalan. He used his pen, until words were no good, Miguel looked at her, and then Carlos used bombs, he explained. And when the war was over, and the Republican leaders had gone into exile, he stayed behind and used more bombs.
“La policía sabe que está aquí?” she asked. He told her that when the police noticed him, they would come to see what he was doing. There was one man in the police station at Llavorsi who remembered everything: Sust, a Catalan. He knew Miguel, had already questioned him, and knew Carlos Puig. Should we leave, she asked him. Wait, he told her, wait and see!
In the spring Michael Graves came to stay. He put his huge canvas bag on the table and emptied it. Isona watched carefully as he took out a duck that walked when you wound it up. She ran to show it to Carlos. Michael Graves called her back and gave her a mouth organ to give to Carlos as well; they listened in the kitchen to see if he would make a sound with it, but nothing happened. He brought Katherine paint and brushes.
“You look very happy,” he said to her.
“Do I?” she asked. “Do I?”
They put a bed for Michael Graves in the front room. In a few days Michael Graves had managed to find out a great deal. Michael Graves told them that Carlos still believed that they were going to come after him. He had told Michael Graves that he often saw them around the house. Katherine said there had been no one around the house. Michael Graves repeated what Carlos had said.
She wondered how Michael had found out so much. Her efforts to talk to Carlos Puig had come to nothing and Miguel hardly took any notice of him. As the weather became finer Miguel and Michael Graves went for long walks across the mountains, often disappearing for days at a time. They left Katherine there, as she wanted to be left, to work on drawings and paintings of Isona and Carlos Puig. Katherine had difficulty understanding what Carlos Puig said, and did not know whether he was whispering to himself or trying to talk to her. That day, he was deeply troubled, she could feel a sense of longing in him, he was trying to say something. He continued to whisper and search her face. His eyes were clear and blue and when he spoke now he looked like a younger man, but wasted and worn down. I can’t understand you, she said to him, Carlos, I can’t make out what you’re saying.
He stopped whispering and stared at her in a mixture of wonder and suspicion. She had spoken in Catalan, and she did not know if that was right: maybe he wanted to talk in Spanish. He gestured to her to come closer. When she brought over a chair beside him he gripped her wrist and the whispering started again, words came and then anxious, heavy breathing. “Carlos,” she said to him, “what do you want to say? I’ll stay and listen, I swear I’ll stay and listen.”
She listened to each word, she listened carefully until she realised what he was asking her, and she understood with horror how difficult it was for him, how desperate he was, and she did not know what to reply. He asked her again, his eyes hard and intent this time. Will I, do you think, am I going to get better, am I going to be normal again, am I going to be all right? The words and phrases came with great difficulty. What do you think?
She told him that every day he was better, that since he came to them he had improved, and soon he would be better, and maybe he would go to Paris, maybe he would find a job there, and they would all help him. After she spoke he was quiet. Later she found him in the same chair, with his eyes closed and his head nodding, and the force of his pain palpable in the room.
* * *
The police arrived a few days after Michael Graves left. She saw them walking up towards the front door of the house; two of them had machine-guns. Isona was eating at the kitchen table, Carlos Puig was in his room, remote and quiet, Miguel had been out since early morning.
She went to the door to meet them.
“Dónde está su marido?”
“No sé,” she said. They pushed in past her and found Carlos Puig in the front room. He didn’t look up at them, he seemed not to notice that they had come in. She told them he was sick. What was wrong with him, they wanted to know. She pointed to her head and they left the room. They found Isona alone in the kitchen. She looked up at them in wonder, three men entering the kitchen unannounced.
“Dónde está su marido,” the oldest one said again. She repeated that she didn’t know where her husband was. He asked her what was the name of the man in the other room.
“Carlos Puig,” she said. The man suddenly snorted and laughed. He had his gloves in his hand and he beat them against the leg of his trousers. The other two policemen, both younger, remained serious. Suddenly, Isona began to laugh as well and Katherine went to her and took her in her arms. They left the kitchen and stood in the hall.
“Dónde está su marido?” he asked again. This time she didn’t answer; when he stared at her, she looked away. He kicked open the door of Carlos Puig’s room and let out a loud shout. Carlos Puig looked around at him with a start just as the policeman suddenly turned away to leave.
It was after dark when Miguel came back. She told him what happened, she told him they could put their things in the jeep and go to France, it would take only two hours to get over the border, they could wait until it was late and sneak across. He told her if they left they could never come back.
She told him that she wanted to go. He told her to wait until the morning.
The same three men came in the morning, quite soon after dawn. They would not allow Miguel time to dress himself, they led him out to the jeep; they had handcuffs on Carlos Puig who was already dressed. Carlos Puig looked behind as they walked him down to the police jeep with a look of utter desolation on his face. They pushed him forward with the butt of a gun. In five minutes they had gone. It had happened. She sat in Carlos Puig’s chair at the window and caught glimpses of the jeep as it curved its way down. They could have gone by night to France, to Barcelona, to Andorra; they had left it too late.
The jeep had disappeared now. Miguel had no clothes, they had taken him so quickly from the house, she was now on her own with Isona and the villagers who would have witnessed the scene.
There was enough food and there was enough wood. Isona was used to Miguel being away. Katherine took to leaving the child with Fuster’s wife in the village and walking for hours in the hills above the house, meeting no one except the foresters, keeping her mind empty. Miguel needed it to happen here; he could not have gone away. And this she could not understand. She could not fathom why he did not agree to get into the jeep that night with her and Carlos and Isona and flee, leave, never to come back. She could have loved him anywhere. She walked for miles every day to fill in the time before he came back.
She tried to write to her mother and to Michael Graves to tell them that it had gone wrong, that he was taken out of the house in the freezing early morning and that was several weeks ago and she was here on her own with the child. She went no further than composing the letters in her head. She didn’t write; she couldn’t tell them that she didn’t understand something fundamental that had happened here in the mountains.
When she drove to Llavorsi one day to buy supplies, she stopped in the bar to have a coffee. The policeman was there, the older one who had asked her the questions. She did not approach him at first but kept her head down. Only when she ordered a second coffee and took a newspaper from her bag and started to read did she catch his eye, but
she looked down again. She drank the coffee and went up to the bar to pay. He turned his back on her.
Outside, she was tempted to go in again and talk to him but she decided instead to go to the police station in the square. A young heavy-set policeman sat at the desk. He did not look up when she approached, although he must have heard her. She stood there for several moments waiting for his attention. Eventually she spoke.
“Buenos días,” she said.
“Buenos días, señora,” he replied and continued looking at the desk.
“Qué quiere usted?” She told him that her husband had been taken from the house three weeks ago, she gave the name and the date. He stood up and walked out past her into the square.
“Un momento,” he called back to her.
Boxes with initials on them were stacked neatly against the wall. From above them Generalissimo Franco looked down, proudly, implacably. She heard footsteps and she turned around. The policeman she had seen in the bar was coming towards her followed by the younger man.
He asked for her documents. She reached into her bag and took out her driving licence.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“I’m Irish,” she said.
“That’s a Catholic country, no?”
She hesitated for a moment. “Yes,” she assented.
“Like Spain,” he said.
“I’m looking for my husband,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you know where I can find him?”
“Where is your passport?”
“It’s in the house,” she told him.
“Bring it here tomorrow,” he told her.
The following day he was not there, but the younger man told her to wait, that he would be back. She wished to go to the bar and have a coffee but he had instructions to make her wait. The jefe said she must wait.
As soon as the jefe arrived he asked to see her passport, which she showed him. He disappeared into a back room. He came out and threw her passport on the table and said she had no right to be in Spain. He stared in anger and she stared back. He picked up the passport again and told her she had to leave.
“My daughter is in the village,” she said.
“So what?”
“I simply want to know where my husband is,” she said.
“He isn’t your husband,” he told her.
“Please, I want to know where he is.”
“He is in prison,” he told her.
“Where?”
“In Tremp,” he replied.
“When will he be let out?”
“Now he’s in hospital with his friend.”
“Can I visit him?”
“They will be let out next week,” he told her and he walked away. She stood at the desk until it was clear he did not intend to return.
“He has my passport,” she told the man at the desk. He shrugged. She tried to walk past the desk in the wake of the captain but she was stopped.
“Tiene el pasaporte,” she repeated.
“Mañana, puede volver mañana,” the policeman said.
She did not go back. She waited in the house most of the time, talking to the child, trying to paint on board, watching. The jefe had said a week and when a week was up her watching became intense, overwrought. She stood at the window constantly watching for a sign of the jeep, or even a figure on foot. She tried to paint fear, she worked on dark paintings, with figures in the background, faint, ominous figures. All the figures in the foreground were naked, fearful, coiled round one another as though in some hell.
* * *
He came back late one evening and he talked as though nothing had happened and would not let her look at him closely. He said he was fine. His arm was in a sling. When she went over to him she saw his arm was in plaster. He asked her not to talk. In the morning, he said, they would leave the child in the village and go to Tremp to get Carlos Puig.
She lit another candle so she could see him better. He put his head on the round kitchen table. Again, he asked her not to talk, to leave him, to go to bed. She didn’t move. At intervals she could hear him breathe deeply. She asked him if he had eaten and he lifted his head and opened his mouth and pointed into it. His front teeth were broken. “He mengat els dents,” he said. He told her to go to bed. Please, he asked her, go to bed. Tomorrow, he said, they would go to Tremp to get Carlos Puig. He repeated this several times. Go to bed, please leave me.
She went upstairs with a candle and lay in the bed knowing that he would not come up. When she took a blanket down and put it around him he did not move, although she knew he was not asleep. She blew the candle out and left him there until the morning.
He had not moved when she came down. She closed the door again and made Isona dress in the bedroom then went down and collected the child’s coat. Isona asked if Papa had come back—Katherine told her that he had, but he was tired and would see her later. She took her in her arms and went down to Fuster’s house.
In the distance the snow covered only the highest peaks. The sky was clear and blue and a haze lay over the valley as the dew dried on the grass. She stood for a moment and listened to the rush of water all round. The brown stone of the village looked solid and steady now in the morning sunlight. Tremp was three hours away; Carlos Puig was in Tremp; she went into the kitchen and asked if Miguel still wanted to go there. He asked her the time, she told him it was eight in the morning. He told her he wanted to go to bed, she could call him at twelve.
When he stood up she saw him more clearly. His eyes were bloodshot and one eye was bruised and his head had been shaved in several places. He walked with a limp.
She went back to her work. She looked at what she had done, the figures in the foreground looped in terror and anguish and the figure of authority at the back standing erect and supreme. She saw how crude the ideas had been, how bad the painting was. She stacked them into a corner. Later, she would burn them.
He lay in the back of the car on the road to Tremp. He did not speak to her. He brought a cushion and blanket and huddled up. Once beyond Llavorsi the road was flat and easy. After an hour or so she could feel the heat of the summer which had not yet come to the mountains.
She asked him where Carlos Puig was and he told her that he was in a mental hospital.
She asked him why. He didn’t answer. She asked him again what was wrong with Carlos Puig but he merely sighed and said he didn’t know. He told her the police had broken Carlos Puig’s arm with a mallet, and then they had broken his. She asked him whose clothes he was wearing; he told her he had been given clothes in the hospital. Carlos had started to shout and wouldn’t stop; he shouted and screamed all night and all day until they moved him. It wasn’t loud, but it was a noise everyone could hear. He couldn’t do anything except make the noise. He had lost control over his bowels. Miguel tried to talk to him but he didn’t seem to hear. Miguel talked to her in a tone that was detached, cold, distant. They were silent for the rest of the journey.
When they arrived in Tremp he told her to take a left turn. For several miles there was nothing except flat fields with cattle and some trees standing alone, but after a while she came to a large clump of pine trees. Miguel was now sitting up in the back of the jeep. He told her he wasn’t sure, but he thought she should turn right after the trees. One of the policemen had given him these directions. She could see a building in the distance so when she came to two stone pillars and a gate she got out and opened the gate. There was no sign. Miguel thought this was the mental hospital. She drove through and got out again to close the gate. The avenue was long and the trees grew close in on either side. They drove up to a large grey stone building. Several cars and a van were parked at the side. They could see beds through the windows.
They made their way in by a side door. There was dead silence. The walls were painted a dark brown and there was dark lino on the floor. Religious statues and pictures hung on the walls. When Miguel opened a door at the end of the corridor the
y found themselves in a long ward, a women’s ward. No one noticed them. Some of the women were dressed and moving about, others lay in bed. There was a smell in the ward and Katherine noticed how the blankets and sheets looked stale and dirty. They went back out. At the end of a corridor, they met a nun. Miguel spoke to her and after a while she led them up a few flights of stairs. The nun walked ahead of them and did not speak. There was the same foul smell as there had been in the ward, only muted now by disinfectant. There was still silence everywhere until they reached the top floor. They could hear shouting as they passed a number of doors. They went up a small stairway into an attic. Faint light came from small dormer windows in the roof. The beds were close together. She looked behind as a boy who looked about fifteen or sixteen called out to her and laughed. She smiled at him and he smiled. Further down the ward there were figures in cots with bars over the top making gurgling sounds. Some lay back in the cots, their arms tied to the bars. She couldn’t bear to look at them.
The nun walked up the steps into another attic ward and they followed. She saw Carlos Puig immediately. His head was covered in a bandage but she recognised the dead eyes. His hands were tied with bandages to the back of the iron bed. He didn’t see them. Miguel talked to him but he didn’t respond. Katherine noticed that his teeth were missing. The nun stood at the end of the bed, waiting.
Miguel continued to talk to Carlos Puig but there was nothing. He told the nun that they wanted to take him home. The nun said he was still in police custody, Miguel would have to go to the police.
They walked out of the hospital. She turned to him and said that they should have gone to France when they had the opportunity, they should have disappeared when they had the chance.
