Quince

by David Rees

  ‘You wouldn’t know the interior of the cathedral,’ he said to Stephen.

  ‘It’s a store, isn’t it?’

  Tomás laughed. ‘Yes! Not only of food and oil and petrol and guns, but people ― thirty families now live in it. You can hardly see in there for smoke … they cook over a fire in the crossing. I’m afraid it may darken all those beautiful white walls, but … then, it’s wartime. I mustn’t expect perfection. They sleep on mattresses in the nave, and have huge political arguments. The men play gambling games in the pulpit… They try to keep things tidy, not make too much of a mess. At least they go outside to… mmm… evacuate…’

  ‘Evacuate?’

  Tomás looked embarrassed. ‘Their bowels,’ he said shortly.

  ‘Doesn’t it all distress you?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘Well… there’s nothing I can do about it. And the war can’t last for ever.’ Catching Pedro’s stern look, he added, ‘It can’t Either we win, or they win.’

  A shell wailed overhead, frightening Stephen, but the others, more used to this, calmly went on eating guzpacho.

  ‘If the cathedral gets blown up,’ Pedro said, ‘that’s just too bad.’

  ‘An old woman died in there this morning. Nothing to do with the war … a stroke. I had a coffin sent in. It’s strange … I’m used to a coffin being taken into the cathedral with a body already inside it. I don’t think an empty one’s ever gone in there, then been carried out full.’

  Stephen felt he wanted to ask the bishop all sorts of questions, but it would be impolitic, he knew, in the presence of the Badajoz family. What did Tomás think of the anarchists, the fascists; whose side was he really on; what were his priorities, his future plans?

  He asked himself the same questions later that night, in bed; Pedro was already asleep: they had just made love. That, and Pedro’s arms round him., the fact of Pedro physically there, were all that mattered. He had thought of this nearly every minute since he’d returned to England last October. The ache of absence ― ticking off days on a calendar: a week nearer to being with his lover again. The dialogues in his head: showing Pedro the beauties of Cambridge ― ‘This is the Mathematical Bridge, built by Sir Isaac Newton’ ― and Pedro nodding, staring down into the green waters of the Cam. A picnic in buttercup fields. Always there in his monastic college bed at night, not his own right hand inducing orgasm but Pedro’s; even in the examination hall as he translated a piece of Dickens, Pedro telling him the Spanish for The girl rowed, pulling a pair of sculls very easily; the man, with the rudder-lines slack in his hands, and his hands loose in his waistband, kept an eager look-out. In a punt, Pedro wielding the pole, he trailing his arms in the cool river. And is there honey still for tea? Standing one day at the back of King’s College Chapel, he listened to an orchestra rehearsing for a concert. The Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis ― soaring strings, hushed blocks of sound, shifting minor-major chords and cadences; distances and heights: this music was a kind of ecstasy. He wanted to make love while listening to this. Pedro standing with him in the chapel, behind him, arms round him, looking up at the dazzle of stained glass and fan vault. He bought a ticket and went that evening to the concert ― a programme of English music: Vaughan Williams, Holst, Elgar. And explained English music to Pedro, contrasted it with Spanish music, the Enigma Variations and The Perfect Fool vis à vis El Amor Brujo and Capricho Arabe. Would any of it ever come true? His teenage romantic and sexual fantasy. No … it wasn’t fantasy; the past had been real enough ― why should the future not be?

  Vaughan Williams, Holst and Elgar made Spain seem very far off ― a castle in Spain. Absurd country! Welded by accident onto the rest of Europe, now busily tearing itself to pieces; did it in fact exist?

  Stephen’s attitude to the war was equally unreal. He shared the same views that were held by most liberal, thinking people of his time ― the Republic had a legitimate, elected government and the rebels were fascists, that it was a fight to the death between freedom and tyranny, democracy and dictatorship, a sort of trial run of a greater, European war that was bound to happen soon. This is also the popular verdict of history. But Stephen knew it was all much more complex than general opinion would have it. People on the right of the political spectrum, for instance, were not being unreasonable when they objected to the burning of churches and the murder of priests; and anarchism, in the long run was as totalitarian as fascism, even if it appeared to work in one particular place for a brief period of time. Dons and fellow-students at Cambridge, aware he had been in Spain when the war started, wanted to know his views his predictions as to the outcome, and he was always ready to discuss these things. His answers were rational and intelligent ― by liberal, English standards. It was in the facts of war that he was ignorant unrealistic. Too young to know the horrors of 1914-1918 except at second-hand, he never properly considered the mud and the misery of Spain; the eyeless, armless, legless war-wounded; the terrified refugees who had lost everything; the sheer agony of it all. He read about it in the newspapers and felt indignant of course, indeed passionately concerned, but his own presence in Spain was to be with his lover ― the war was secondary, almost a lark. So he didn’t think of the dangers, the possibility that he and those he knew might be killed or mutilated, tortured, imprisoned, shot. The god Pedro wouldn’t let it happen. He had won a crushing victory over General Araquistain; why shouldn’t he win another, and another, and another? Even push the fascists out of Seville, out of all Andalucía?

  He yawned, but he was far from sleepy ― it was eight months since a man had curled round him in bed; he wasn’t used to it. Pedro’s skin, bones, muscles, hair touching him; Pedro’s breath on his neck: he’d missed this more than anything else in that long, dull separation ― and he lay awake now, just taking pleasure in the fact of it. It is real, he thought; not a fantasy.

  The dinner party had broken up early. Gone were the times for staying up till three in the morning, arguing politics and drinking plum brandy: everyone went as soon as the food was eaten - Bishop Guzmán to work on his index, José to the cathedral to check on a fresh delivery of flour, Cristina to the hospital, and Pedro to a meeting of the committee, which was in almost permanent session day and night, regardless of whether Tomás was there or not to minute its business. Stephen washed up the plates. The absence of two people that evening he had felt acutely: there would never be politics and plum brandy again, not without Miguel Goicoechea and Pablo Badajoz.

  It was best not to mention Pablo, he had realised, in front of a guest. When he had done so ― obliquely ― at dinner, José steered the conversation to a very uncontroversial topic: the decrease in iron ore production in the Republic since July 1936, and the reasons for it. But when Stephen was briefly alone with Cristina in the kitchen she said, ‘That suit of Pablo’s, the one you borrowed to wear at the concert; do you remember? I’ve kept it… I thought you might like to have it. You looked … rather elegant.’

  ‘It would … be … an honour.’

  ‘Only … please don’t wear it in Zahara. José and I wouldn’t want that.’

  ‘I won’t.’ Stephen said.

  ‘In any case, it’s not a good idea to wear a suit in public now. I’ve … I’ve given all his other clothes away. There are teenage boys who needed them … some who don’t even possess a pair of shoes.’

  ‘How … have you … managed?’

  She looked stony. ‘Would you take the coffee into the other room?’ she said.

  He was sleepy now, but his right thigh had pins and needles. He rolled over and wriggled down the bed, burying his face in his lover’s chest hair. He slipped one hand between Pedro’s legs; Pedro stirred, muttered incomprehensibly, and wrapped him in his arms.

  He was aware in the night of people coming to the room and talking, something to do with the Grazalema road. Pedro got up, put his clothes on, and left. There were flashes of light as in a summer storm, and artillery fire a long way away ― distant thunder. Whatever was happening wa
s not affecting this part of the city, Stephen concluded. He slept again.

  ‘The fascists have taken the ridge,’ José said at breakfast. ‘They broke through at dawn. We’re surrounded ―cut off from the Republic.’ He seemed very matter-of-fact. Too much drama had occurred in a year for him to get particularly excited about anything, unless it should perhaps be ― miracle of miracles ― the total defeat of the enemy. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, as he observed Stephen’s alarmed face. There’s a counter-attack going on now, and we’ll probably beat them off. And if we don’t we can still get out of the city … it’s not that difficult to cross between the lines after dark almost anywhere in Spain. But if we can’t recapture that road the problem is food. Thank God those bags of flour came in last night! There’s enough to make bread for the next six weeks.’

  ‘Where’s Pedro?’

  ‘At the front I imagine. He’s the generalissimo.’

  ‘You’re proud of him.’

  ‘Yes.’ Cristina said,

  ‘I’m glad I came back.’

  ‘So am I. He needs you!’

  ‘Why?’ Stephen wanted to know. ‘Why me?’

  She laughed. ‘I used to ask myself that question about José! Why me, why me? There isn’t any coherent explanation, is there?’

  ‘Point and purpose.’ José said.

  ‘He never stopped talking about you,’ Cristina said. ‘You … you inspire him!’

  ‘Oh, that’s rot.’ Stephen answered.

  And rot it seemed a few moments later when Pedro burst into the house to say that the counter-attack was not yet successful; they had regained some ground, but the fascists were still on the ridge and digging themselves in. He swallowed a piece of bread and jam, and drank a cup of coffee; then said he was withdrawing as many men as he dared from the barricades to throw into the fight. He looked superb in his battle-dress, Stephen thought: face and arms grimy with smoke, machine-gun on his shoulder, waistband of bullets. Brigand. Urban guerrilla.

  It will leave the barricades extremely vulnerable,’ Pedro said. ‘But I’m hoping the fascists are doing the same thing. We need everybody. Stephen, take one of these’ ― he offered the machine-gun and his pistol ― ‘and go to the Calle Santiago. Use it. Shoot to kill.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’ Stephen said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I can’t. I just can’t!’

  ‘Why did you come back here if it wasn’t to help?’

  ‘Pedro,’ Cristina said, ‘you mustn’t ask him to do this!’

  ‘I’ll be a stretcher-bearer … run messages … assist the doctors … load guns for you … but I can’t fire one!’

  ‘Stephen, what did you think your role would be?’ Pedro jeered. ‘A little light housework, and acting the girl in bed? You cunt!’ He picked up his weapons and ran out of the house. José followed, armed with the rifle from the kitchen fire-place.

  “He doesn’t mean that.’ Cristina said.

  Stephen did not answer. Maybe Pedro did mean it Maybe he ― Stephen ― was wanted just to fill a hole in the line. And to have his own hole filled.

  ‘Take this rifle,’ Cristina said ― it was the one by the stove ― and when she saw he was about to refuse, added, ‘You don’t have to fire the wretched thing if you don’t want to! It’s simply this … you may need it. And it’s very odd, possibly dangerous, an unarmed man strolling about the streets.’

  So Stephen took it, and set out to explore the city. Would he use it? He didn’t know how to use it.

  The familiar scenes: the mosque, the cathedral, the tower on the summit. The Plaza de las Ranas with its octagonal fountain and stone frogs, but no boys throwing water-filled balloons at the passing young girls. The bull-ring. Quince trees. The same heat, the same blue sky. The light through the window that shone onto a terrace overgrown with green creeper. Water from fountains sparkling in the sun ― he remembered it had made him feel thirsty. The smell of coffee, of horse shit; lemons, jasmine, bougainvillaea. But it was a city transformed. Except for children playing, the street life had gone. The bars were silent. House doors were shut. There were no young men swaggering in tight trousers. No crowds gossiping, laughing, quarrelling: no noise at all. Just old women sitting in doorways, murmuring ‘Dias’ as he passed. It was like a perpetual siesta.

  There were slogans he’d never seen before on buildings and posters ― not pictures of Negrín or Azaña, but Lenin, La Pasionaria, the dead anarchist leader Durutti, and unnamed working-class youths clenching fists. They were preposterously out or place on walls Arabs had built in the tenth century.

  He climbed up to the tower, the cumbersome rifle on his shoulder more cumbersome with every step. Through the almond orchard, past the prickly pear, to the level ground and the plane trees where the stone seats still invited the weary climber to rest. He paused for a moment, then went into the tower and trudged slowly up the stairs. The roof: the punishing sun: the battlements, the place where he’d made love with Pedro in the dark, that first time.

  The terra cotta hats of whitewashed houses. He could see the damaged suburbs ― much more devastated than he’d imagined, some streets just roofless ruins, and he knew there was no hope. That kind of injury was caused by heavy artillery. Once the fascists felt their encirclement of the city was secure, those guns would be turned on Zahara and pound it to bits . He could see the big guns from here, to the north-west ― silent now, but tomorrow, or the day after?

  He turned and looked in the opposite direction ― the granite summits, the highest still snow-capped, the cotton-thread of the road to Grazalema, all impervious to the dramas beneath. Whatever the outcome that stare of indifference wouldn’t change. How absurd all human effort seemed! How ridiculous ― his eyes scanned the ridge where the current spectacle was being performed ― the movements of fly-like men, their anger, their principles, their visions of ‘Spain’! All that was needed for happiness was to be, not to do. And they were like flies, these soldiers killing each other for the sake of grabbing a little bit of territory: the Grazalema road. He could see both armies, the flashes and puffs of smoke their weapons made, the men immured in trenches or scurrying from bush to bush or crawling from rock to rock. Kids with lethal toys. Some were not moving at all, not even twitching an arm; they lay in exposed dangerous places: the dead.

  What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

  Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

  He thought, as he climbed down the stairs of the tower and made his way back into the city, of the changes Tomás had seen in a year. Collectives had been given agricultural implements such as threshing machines in payment for their vegetables and fruit. The peasants, used to winnowing corn as they had done since Biblical times, marvelled at such modem devices and were immensely grateful. Goatherds and shepherds now had motor-bikes (confiscated from bourgeois city youths) to round up their animals, which shortened their working day considerably. People no longer had to toil from dawn till dusk: they had time to relax with their families. ‘But,’ Tomás said, ‘there’s no stimulus to work properly in a collective. If a man is lazy, the example spreads. And what happens in a bad year? The harvest last summer was excellent, and so it will be this summer. But if there’s a drought or floods, what then? And the committees! Committees for this, committees for that. There are far too many of them. Everyone talks too much. Action is slow. And the right person isn’t always chosen for the right job. What we needed when the army rebelled ― I wish I’d realised it ― was an administration of the most influential people of both the left and the right. To organize protection for the whole of Zahara against whichever idiotic extreme arrived here first. But it’s too late now.’

  This last comment, about an administration of both the left and the right, Stephen thought profoundly true.

  He ventured out of the old city into the wrecked suburbs. The silence here was not that of a siesta; it was menacing, spooky. The streets were littered with stones from tumbled walls, smashed glass, charred
rafters, shattered tiles, ruined furniture. The private histories of whole families had been torn up in a single day and were now on show for everyone to see: chairs, tables a wireless set, teaspoons, a coffee pot, books, photographs. Ceilings swayed dangerously. Water dripped. There were still a few residents. An old man stared at him, suspiciously, from an upper room; in some houses people who had refused to be evacuated still tried to live. Amazingly young children played here in the streets ― war games with bits of shrapnel. There was a sudden burst of firing: Stephen ducked and the children scattered ― not he observed, into the houses, to relative safety, but to where the bullets ricocheted from walls. They were racing each other to see who could grab the shrapnel first. A couple of older boys, wearing helmets much too big for their heads and armed with pistols, stared contemptuously at the running children. They were too grown up for this kind of play. Stephen recognized them: Inocencio and Luis. He knew the legs, which were not yet in long trousers. There were a few more hairs on the skin than a year ago.

  ‘Have you killed anyone today, Luis?’ Inocencio asked.

  ‘I was at the barricade in the Calle San Juan,’ Luis replied. ‘I got a fascist here’ ― he gestured ‘in the heart.’

  Inocencio was impressed. ‘The heart! That’s good! The only one I got was smack in the bum.’

  ‘He won’t enjoy his next shit.’ Luis said, and they giggled.

  Their voices had broken.

  Stephen turned into a lane that led to the Calle Santiago. He wanted to observe what was happening at a barricade, risky though it was; there were, he reassured himself, enough empty houses to hide in if need be. He saw a man’s head lying in a gutter: all bloody, the hair matted, the face distorted with agony.

  Not one, but two barricades, the first of barbed wire, through which you could at the moment pass, but it could easily be shut. There was washing hanging on the wire ― shirts, dresses, nappies, underwear. The second was built of stones and wood that had once been parts of a house; the wood was window-frames, floor-boards, a cupboard. Men were spread-eagled on this barricade, their rifles cocked. Another burst of fire from the enemy, and Stephen shrank into a doorway as the bullets sprayed up the street.