Quince

by David Rees

  In the garden of the Casa Badajoz was a corpse; it had evidently been put there ― under the quince tree ― while Stephen was out. Two boys, the same ones who had pelted the girls in the Plaza de las Ranas with water-filled balloons, were in the garden, throwing stones at the body, quite viciously.

  ‘Stop that!’ Stephen yelled. He knew, before he could identify it, that it was Pablo. ‘Stop it at once!’

  ‘But he’s a queer!’ Inocencio cried.

  In answer, Stephen picked up a stone and threw it at him, scoring a glancing blow on the back of the boy’s head. Inocencio ran away, Luis following. A scrap of paper had been pinned to the lapel of Pablo’s jacket, with these words: SOCIAL DEVIANT/HOMOSEXUAL. Stephen ripped it off and tore it into tiny pieces. He avoided looking at the face as he dragged Pablo into the house. He laid him down, tenderly, on the kitchen floor. Then looked. It was the deadness of the eyes that hurt so much: as if a light had just been put out.

  The clothes were filthy. And one cheek was bruised. (Where Pablo crumpled onto the parade ground.) The bullet hole was just above the left ear. Brains, blood, and chips of bone were splattered on the shoulder. I must clean him, Stephen said to himself. Slowly, with difficulty, he pulled Pablo’s clothes off. And was amazed and horrified to experience, as he touched the naked body, sexual desire.

  He filled a bucket with water, then went to the bathroom for a flannel. Returning to the kitchen, he said, quietly: ‘Pablo!’ And kissed him on the mouth. Touched the cock: he’d hardly ever seen it other than springing erect, or already a flagpole ― only two days ago, here, in the kitchen, he’d held the soft warm balls as Pablo, exuberant, joyful, came in his mouth.

  Lifeless.

  He washed the body clean (there was shit down the backs of the thighs) and dressed him in the suit he’d worn at the concert. Then he threw himself on his bed ― Pablo’s smell was still there on the sheets ― and wept: great wracking sobs that jarred his whole body, that caused shooting pains in his lungs and a violent trembling that he couldn’t control. Hours afterwards he said to himself, I won’t go back to England. Not yet. I’ll find Pedro, and José and Cristina, and stick by them until justice is done.

  The attack on Zahara by Pedro’s brigands was a simple piece of planning, brilliantly executed ― more like a modern commando raid than an old-fashioned battle. The roads into the city were patrolled by small units of soldiers, but, taken by surprise, they did not have a chance in most cases even to fire a shot. They were all stabbed to death: Pedro had emphasised to his men that drawing attention to themselves by shooting would be the easiest way to court disaster. There was firing where the Jaén road entered the city, but the soldiers who were dispatched to see what the trouble was had their throats cut. The attacking forces reassembled in the Plaza de la Tristeria, where a brief diversion occurred ― ten minutes were wasted by a few hot-headed maniacs who had to be persuaded not to burn down the cathedral. They then advanced on the barracks, which were so unprepared for an assault that the only guards were outside the main entrance. Pedro’s troops avoided going anywhere near that, and simply climbed over the walls. Once they were inside, there was a great deal of firing. Twenty young men of the Anarchist and Socialist Youth were killed, and thirty wounded, some of them seriously. But most at the casualties were soldiers. After fifteen minutes many of the conscripts, realising the battle was lost, started to throwaway their weapons and put their hands up, or turned their guns on their officers. Five minutes later. General Araquistain ordered the garrison to surrender.

  He might as well have instructed his units to fight to the last man, for surrender did him no good at all. Every officer who was still alive was shot, Pedro himself firing the bullet that finished Araquistain. The regular soldiers, once their weapons had been removed, were given the choice of death or captivity; no one was silly enough to choose the former. The conscripts were told to take off their uniforms and dress in civilian clothes; many of them subsequently joined Pedro’s army and fought on his side. The uniforms, on the following day, were burned in a celebration bonfire outside the barrack gates.

  Word spread quickly. At two thirty a.m. most of Zahara’s inhabitants were out on the streets, enjoying a fiesta as exciting and colourful as any the city had ever seen; even the bourgeoisie, realising that que será será, joined in, though they took care to leave their middle-class suits and ties at home. A terrible revenge awaited soldiers who were not in the barracks during the assault; when they were found ― some of them being pulled out of hiding-places in churches ― they were hacked to bits. A crowd stormed the police station, and Pérez and his underlings were taken out and shot. Miguel Goicoechea, because Araquistain had locked him up, was considered a hero and was forced, most unwillingly, to get out of bed and join in the jollifications. There were street parties everywhere, with music and dancing; whole pigs were roasted over fires in the squares; children ran up and down, wild with excitement; and bars and cafés that had closed for the night were reopened, their proprietors finding themselves rushed off their feet serving all who wanted to drink. A great deal of shooting went on ― intoxicated young men just happily firing guns in the air for no particular reason. Pedro deplored the waste of ammunition. Hundreds of people rapidly got drunk; several girls lost their virginity, and the brothels worked flat out.

  By sunrise Zahara had not reverted from the control of the army to that of the Popular Front, but to something much more revolutionary than either. The anarchist millenium had dawned. It had been created by Pedro Badajoz, garage mechanic and undisputed master of the city. He now had to impose on it a necessary discipline.

  Bishop Guzmán, still in Zahara, was looking through his index when a group of six ‘hoodlums’ (so he described them, later), led by the trigger-happy young man who had wanted to shoot José, burst into his study. They asked him for one good reason why his cathedral should not be set alight. ‘Because it’s the largest building we have.’ he said.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘You can use it as a store-place, A warehouse … an ammunition dump … anything.’

  They considered this to be a satisfactory reply, and turned their attention to the filing cabinet. They pulled out handfuls of cards, stared at them, and threw them onto the floor. None of them could read, and they thought that what was written on the cards were the sins church-goers admitted at confession.

  ‘Please don’t do that!’ Tomás said - a little too peremptorily, he felt, for his own good.

  ‘What are they?’ Sebastian asked.

  ‘More than two thousand years of history is written there! It’s still not complete. You will be in it! I’ll write one for you!’

  ‘Show us.’

  They crowded round and watched. ‘Marvellous, isn’t it,’ one of them said, ‘to form letters! I can’t even write my own name!’

  When it was done, Sebastian said, ‘Read it.’

  Tomás obliged. It was a short hymn of praise to the anarchist movement, and to the virtue and honour of these six young men in particular. May God forgive me for telling such lies, he said to himself.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Sebastian said. ‘Let’s find a girl to fuck. Goodnight, Bishop. ¡Viva la República!’

  ‘¡Viva la República! Goodnight.’

  When they had gone, Tomás ripped up the card. While he sorted out the hundreds littering the floor, he prayed for the six young men, whose souls he considered to be in grave danger. Their bodies, too, as it so happened. Carmen Goicoechea was their victim, selected because she was ‘bourgeois.’ They held her down while each in turn raped her. When this crime was found out, Pedro had them shot ― in public ― a penalty so severe that no woman in the city was thereafter molested during the whole anarchist administration. But Carmen never recovered from her ordeal. Some weeks later, she slipped out of Zahara at night, and fled into Nationalist territory, where she repeated her tale to all who would listen, thus helping to strengthen the fascist myth of lawless, godless, anarchic, Red Sapin. Knowing her cha
nces of marriage had disappeared, she eventually became a nun in a convent at Cadiz,

  There was little rejoicing that night at the Casa Badajoz. Pedro, arriving at four a.m., was stunned to hear from Stephen what had happened, and appalled by the sight of Pablo’s dead body.

  He dosed his brother’s eyes.

  He vowed revenge; he wouldn’t rest, he said, until he had brought the murderer to justice.

  ‘Whoever killed him,’ Stephen pointed out, ‘may also be dead by now. He could well be one of the officers slaughtered in the barracks.’

  ‘It was one man. Pablo died from a single shot, a pistol, at very close range. It wasn’t an execution squad.’

  They spent the night in Isabella’s room, their first night together in a bed. Making love was a conflict of emotions for both of them: Pablo in the house. And, Stephen thought, I’m being fucked by a man who only hours ago stabbed and shot scores of human beings quite coldly and ruthlessly; who master-minded the deaths of many others. It seemed weird that such a person could kiss and touch with tenderness, could penetrate and reach orgasm so unselfishly, be so aware of his partner’s needs; murder and rape, Stephen felt, were allied, not murder and loving. Afterwards they talked: about the tumultuous events that had occurred since they had last seen each other, about Pablo ― including Social Deviant/Homosexual, and his having sex with Stephen.

  ‘I’m glad you made him so happy in his last few days,’ Pedro said.

  Other matters: despite Stephen’s doubts ― what would José and Cristina think? ― Pedro insisted they would sleep together on future nights in this room, in this double bed. They would be together until Stephen went back to England at the beginning of October; they would, after that, write and phone, and Stephen would return to Spain at the earliest opportunity.

  ‘If you’re still living ― that will be my greatest fear.’

  ‘I’m a cat,’ Pedro said. ‘The Lynx. Nine lives.’

  ‘The fascists will certainly try and retake Zahara.’

  ‘Let them! They’ll be treated just like Araquistain.’

  ‘I love you.’ Stephen said.

  ‘I love you too. I’ve been trying to deny it, but I can’t … and won’t. I’d like my parents to know, because… I’ve accepted it. Rejoice in it.’

  ‘You’ve changed. I mean… in your feelings about me.’

  ‘Not really. Just thought about it, come to terms with it.’

  ‘I’d marry you if I could.’

  Pedro laughed. ‘Two men! What nonsense!’

  ‘It’s a way of saying… I’d like to be with you for ever.’

  ‘No one can separate us, no one at all … unless it’s you or me.’ He took off the silver ring he always wore on the little finger of his left hand, and gave it to Stephen. It fitted the third finger of Stephen’s right hand. Such was the difference, physically, between them. Though delighted, Stephen voiced more doubts: what would José and Cristina think when they saw it? ‘They’re adults; they do as they wish and what they feel is proper,’ Pedro answered. ‘So must we.’ But, he said, his parents must be handled with loving care and a great deal of consideration. Not only was there the shock of Pablo’s death to ease them through, but funeral arrangements, grief ― and the new Zahara: they would not like some of the things that would happen.

  Murderer, lover, dreamer of Utopian dreams, Stephen said to himself. Man with an extraordinarily uncomplicated conscience.

  ‘Let’s sleep,’ Pedro said. ‘The sun’s already up. José and Cristina will be here in an hour or two.’

  ‘If Araquistain wasn’t dead, I’d have him shot for gross incompetence!’ Queipo de Llano roared when he heard the news. Then he laughed. ‘I can’t help admiring that bunch of Reds, though. What men they must be! If I ever get my hands on them, I might even pardon them!’

  The contradiction was characteristic. He was not at all like a modern general ― the cold, calculating man of will that Franco turned out to be ― but a wild cowboy who’d ambushed the ranch owner and now ran the ranch. Though coarse, blood-curdling and brutal ― the repression he unleashed on Seville and the surrounding area was appalling ― he was not totally unchivalrous. He ruled his fiefdom of western Andalucía like a medieval despot; his power was absolute, but he didn’t always abuse it. Franco came to think of him as a joke in rather poor taste, and gradually eased him out. At the moment, however, the man of will was not concerned with Queipo de Llano ― he was still preoccupied with how to ferry his army across the Straits of Gibraltar. So when Queipo telephoned him to say he needed a great deal of motorised transport to recapture Zahara, Franco told him to go to hell. Mola, whom Queipo rang later that evening, said much the same thing. And it was no use trying to contact Goded, the other senior general in the conspiracy. Goded’s attempted rising in Barcelona had failed: he was in prison and about to be executed.

  The problem with Zahara, Queipo realised, was geographical. Though he had enough troops to push the frontiers of Nationalist territory up to the city’s gates, the defenders, Zahara being on a mountain-top, would see them coming from miles away, and take all kinds of precautions. It would be a bloody battle, and he could not afford to risk the casualties.

  He consulted with his aides, who said he should wait until Franco and the Army of Africa had been air-lifted to Seville. When they arrived in the first week of August, the idea of an attack on Zahara was shelved. It was more important, Franco said, to strike to the north, to Mérida and Cacares, and make contact with Mola who was now advancing on Madrid.

  Zahara was left in peace for a whole year.

  SIX

  The anarchist experiment in Zahara on the whole worked, though the quality of life it produced was a bit duIl. A committee, with José as its chairman, made all the decisions, but his appointment was nominal: a broken man now, he merely rubber-stamped things; real power lay with Pedro and his most loyal lieutenants. Their first act was to abolish money and substitute in its place a rationing system. Everyone could obtain coupons from the committee for so many grams of meat, bread, wine, rice, sugar, etcetera, in exchange for a fair day’s work. Special provision was made for children, the elderly, and the unemployed. A clothing allowance equivalent to two hundred pesetas a year was also introduced, but it could not be spent all at once. The food ration was too generous, and later it had to be cut as stocks fell. No one went hungry, but Zahara was a city; its work force was not in the business of food production. A system of barter was developed ― manufactured goods were exchanged for wheat, olives, wine, vegetables, and so on, through deals with villages that had begun similar collective experiments. The cathedral and the churches were the main store-places: all religious worship was banned. Pews were taken out and used as building wood.

  Banks were closed down. The police continued to operate as before, which was contrary to anarchist practice elsewhere; Cuenca was the new chief. He now sat behind Don Miguel’s old desk, and ran his force in much the same way as Miguel had done. The barracks were converted into a school, and its walls and gates destroyed. Education was a prime concern; it was compulsory and tree. The committee was determined to put an end to illiteracy. The soldiers who had been captured were used as a labour force to build new schools. Stephen, like everyone else, had to work in order to eat ― there would be no parasites in this millenium, Pedro told him ― and to obtain his food allowance he had to devote seven hours a day to teaching adolescents rudimentary English. He had many problems; a third of his pupils couldn’t even write their own names. The work was exhausting, but he found ― somewhat to his surprise ― that he enjoyed it.

  Women were given the same legal status as men, and divorce, abortion, and homosexual liaisons were legalised. These liberal decrees were accompanied, paradoxically, by a new puritanism. Lipstick and make-up were forbidden. A man who had a mistress as well as a wife had his food ration cut. Prostitution, the committee ruled, was degrading to women; so the brothels were closed and their inmates sent out to work on building sites. (On
e madam rose to the position of chief overseer of the new hospital project. She liked her job so much she became quite converted to anarchism, and gave all her jewellery to the committee; To help feed the poor,’ she said.)

  Bullfights were stopped. ‘Inhumane, bloodthirsty, and contrary to all that is best in man,’ the committee declared. This caused some resentment, for there wasn’t a great deal for people to do in their free time in anarchist Zahara. The cinemas remained open, and a symphony orchestra was founded; but the abolition of money made such forms of entertainment difficult to operate. Sheet music was in limited supply, and it could only be obtained from other cities ― for money. The Zahara Symphony Orchestra (not likely, even in first-rate conditions, to be world class) was never able to play a symphony. They performed, somewhat cacophonously, the same programme every Sunday in the gardens of the mosque ― selections fromMadam Butterfly and The Bohemian Girl, and transcriptions of piano pieces by Albéniz, Turina and Granados. Falla was beyond their capabilities. The cinemas had problems too. A new film could only be hired by someone travelling to Málaga or Jaén (the former a perilous journey) and swopping it for an old one. So The Bengal Lancers was shown, day in, day out, to decreasing audiences, despite the fact that admission was free.

  Middle-class dress ― suits and ties ― was illegal. Everyone wore workmen’s clothes. All buildings now belonged to the city, but most people remained in the houses they had always lived in; José, Cristina, Pedro and Stephen, for instance, continued to five in the Casa Badajoz. It was only when someone died that there was any real change; a house could not be inherited or sold ― it was requisitioned by the committee, and allocated to a family in dire need. Church property was also dealt with in this way. Bishop Guzmán had to share his palace with four working-class families (other buildings of size, such as hotels, were commandeered for similar purposes), but he didn’t object; plain, unworldly man that he was; he still had his bedroom and his study to himself, and his precious card index, which was now sorted out and being augmented at great speed. History was taking place under his very eyes, and had been doing so since July the eighteenth. Tomás abandoned research, for the moment, into Isabella the Nymphomaniac and concentrated on the here and now; every evening he wrote new cards with headings like WOMEN, EMANCIPATION OF BADAJOZ. PEDRO (there were dozens of these); ARAQUISTAIN, IGNACIO - there was even one entitled FAITH, ESTEBAN EL INGLÉS, and written on it was ‘See card number - homosexual affair with Pedro Badajoz.’