Golden Earrings

by Belinda Alexandra

  ‘As well as his military officers, Franco’s army was made up of Moroccan mercenaries and soldiers of the Foreign Legion,’ explained Mamie. ‘They swept through the country, torturing, butchering, raping and executing any who stood in their way.

  ‘Because of his language skills and the time he had spent abroad, Xavier was asked to join a diplomatic mission whose purpose was to convince the other European powers to help the Republic.

  ‘As things were precarious in Spain, I went with Mama to stay in Paris until the baby was born. We rented an apartment on avenue Hoche by parc Monceau. There, the war and the shadow that was falling over all Europe seemed far away. The French were living with a sense of joie de vivre, as if happiness and pleasure could somehow ward off evil. Feliu had come with us, and it was with great mirth that we listened to his stories when he returned each day from exploring Paris with his governess. “Tia Evelina,” he would say, snuggling up to me on the sofa, “the sweet shops here are even more wonderful than on the passeig de Gràcia! The macarons are so sweet they make my lips tingle!”

  ‘Xavier came to visit us while we were staying in Paris. He was despondent after yet another of his diplomatic missions to the city had failed to achieve anything further for Spain.’ Mamie cleared her throat and took a sip of tea, preparing herself to finally tell me about the downfall of Spain — and her family.

  ‘The Germans and Italians are flagrantly ignoring the non-intervention pact while Britain and France are sticking so firmly to it that they are breaking international law,’ Xavier said, venting his frustration. ‘The legitimate government of Spain has a right to defend itself, but they’ve put in place an embargo preventing any country from supplying us with matériel. In the meantime, the Italians transport arms to Franco unchallenged by the Royal Navy! The Americans are as bad. Their government adheres to non-intervention while private companies like General Motors and Texaco are providing goods to Franco on credit!’

  I was upset by that news, and also to see Xavier looking so defeated. At thirty-seven years of age, he was still handsome but there were dark circles under his eyes from a lack of sleep and he hardly smiled any more.

  ‘Your father says the allies are afraid that if they help the Republican government it will place them in direct conflict with Germany and Italy — and that could bring about another European war,’ Mama told him.

  Xavier examined his knuckles. ‘I used to think that too, but now I see things differently.’

  ‘How?’ I asked, pouring him a cup of coffee.

  ‘The British and French hope that the Fascists will exhaust themselves in Spain and therefore will be incapable of starting a larger war. We are to be sacrificed to that end.’

  ‘Margarida proposed to the Cortes that Spain should grant Morocco independence,’ I told Xavier. ‘She said that it would stop the flow of Moroccan soldiers into Franco’s army.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Mama, slicing some cake. ‘That would completely alienate the British and French.’

  ‘My opinion is that we should give up caring what the British and French think,’ said Xavier. ‘They are never going to lift a finger to help us anyway. In fact, I have come across some reports that suggest Franco was flown into Spain by British intelligence officers. It’s time we looked in other directions for support.’

  ‘The Soviet Union, you mean?’ I asked him.

  ‘There’s been a workers’ revolution of sorts in Spain, so that would make sense,’ he said. ‘The problem is supply. Russia can’t easily transport weapons to Spain by sea, and they don’t have the production capabilities of Germany. Right now I’m negotiating with the Mexicans and buying military supplies on the black market. But that means the Republic is paying ten times as much for equipment as the rebels are.’

  Xavier went on to explain how the lack of military supplies was crippling the Spanish government. ‘The Republic’s General Rojo is a genius strategist and far superior to Franco, but he is constantly thwarted in his attempts to regain Republican territory. He never knows if the required arms will arrive for a planned offensive.’

  Xavier told us a terrifying story about a shipment of arms from Poland that was so defective, most of the casualties on the Republican side were caused by the soldiers’ own weapons exploding or misfiring. Later, the backup shipment that he had bought from Mexico turned out to be a collection of rusty guns taken from museums.

  I went into labour on 7 November 1936, two weeks past my due date and the day the battle for Madrid commenced. As I strained and panted to bring new life into the world, I thought of all the lives that were now being extinguished on the battlefield. In the early hours of the morning, Julieta was born. I cried when I saw her. I named her after my maternal grandmother.

  Not long after Julieta’s birth, we began to receive a frequent visitor to the apartment: la Rusa. She was living in Paris, which meant she and Xavier could be more open about their relationship. Although Mama absented herself when la Rusa came to visit, she made no objection to me receiving her. That was the contradictory etiquette to which we adhered: Mama liked la Rusa because she made Xavier happy, but, out of loyalty to Conchita, she could not appear to approve of her.

  La Rusa seemed lonely in Paris. She usually lived and travelled with a large group of gypsies, but a few months earlier Margarida had warned her that gypsies in Germany were being rounded up and sent to work camps where the conditions were horrific. With the rise of Fascism all over Europe, la Rusa wasn’t going to take any chances. She sent her clan to California, where she kept a property near Los Angeles. I expected her to follow them soon; many Spanish entertainers had already left for America. So I was astonished when, a few days before Christmas, during a visit with Xavier, she told us she was returning to Spain to drive ambulances for the Republican army.

  ‘The brave people of Madrid held on to their city despite the massive onslaught by the rebel army. I have to help them!’

  ‘It’s too dangerous,’ Xavier protested. ‘Unless this international ban on selling arms to Spain is lifted, the Republican army and its supporters are going to be slaughtered!’

  ‘How can I desert Spain,’ la Rusa said, her eyes flashing, ‘while every day I see foreigners going to fight for our country? Ordinary men and women — British, Americans, Russians, Poles, Jews, anti-Fascists from Italy and Germany — all risking their lives to help us even though their governments will do nothing! They are fighting for a system of rule that gives equal value to all citizens. The kind of society my father and brother believed in. The kind you have always believed in.’

  ‘We are wrong to let them fight for us,’ said Xavier, ‘when we can’t give them decent weapons.’

  This decision of la Rusa’s was the one thing I ever saw her and Xavier argue over. Still, although Xavier tried to persuade her not to go, I think he was secretly proud of her. I was in awe of her. Her courage was inspiring.

  The day la Rusa departed Paris, I accompanied her and Xavier to the station. I left Julieta back at the apartment with Mama; I did not want her out in the winter chill. As Xavier and la Rusa made their farewells, they could not have looked more like a couple in love. They held each other for a long time, before staring into each other’s face. La Rusa’s eyes were brimming with tears and my brother’s lips trembled when he said, ‘In all my life, there has only ever been you.’ It was hard for me to watch two of the strongest people I knew look so vulnerable.

  La Rusa took my hand and squeezed it before she climbed into the train. When the whistle sounded and the train began to pull out of the station, she put her head out of the window so she could wave to us as it departed. Although she kept her gaze fixed on us, I had a feeling that she didn’t really see us. Her mind was somewhere else.

  It would be nearly a year before I would meet her again.

  La Rusa wasn’t the only one who wanted to return to Spain. When Julieta was three months old, Mama decided that we should go back too. The front was still far from Barcelona, and Catalonia was
so close to France that many of the city’s inhabitants felt certain that if the Nationalist rebels truly threatened it, the French would intervene.

  ‘Pare and Margarida need us,’ Mama said. She was not a woman to be apart from her husband for too long. She was of the breed of wife who put duty above comfort.

  When Mama and I, Julieta, Feliu and his governess returned we found a revolution of sorts had taken place. After the Anarchists and Communists had defeated the military coup in the city in 1936, they had taken control of everything and the weakened parliament had not tried to stop them. Now, Anarchist and Communist flags hung from the railway station and the buildings around it.

  Because our family cars had been commandeered to drive militia men to the front, we had to wait in line at the taxi stand. All the taxis had been painted in the Anarchist colours of red and black. We engaged two vehicles: one to take us, and the other to carry our luggage. The drivers made no attempt to help us lift our bags into the taxi, and I had to open the door for myself although I was holding a baby in my arms. Mama was about to scold the drivers for their lack of manners when we saw the note pinned to the back of the front seat. It said that as all citizens were now equal in Barcelona, taxi drivers expected to be treated with respect. Mama glanced at me and raised her eyebrows.

  Once we pulled out of the station, it didn’t take us long to realise that taxis were not the only form of transport that been painted red and black. The trams and trucks had been repainted too. Restaurants were now canteens for the workers, and shops and cafés had signs on them stating they had been collectivised.

  ‘Oh my goodness!’ Mama gasped, before checking herself.

  We passed by the gutted and burned frame of a church. The remnants of a statue of Mary were scattered on the pavement. I felt a strange mix of sorrow and anger when I saw one of Christ’s nail-pierced hands tossed in the gutter.

  ‘There will be no more churches,’ the taxi driver told us. ‘They are being torn down.’

  Mama paled. I took her hand and held it.

  While I could understand the anger at the corruption of the clergy, I couldn’t bear to think of Barcelona’s beautiful churches and cathedrals being destroyed. Our family had made several donations to the construction of the Sagrada Família. Although it wasn’t to everyone’s taste, I loved the whimsical cathedral. I had grown up watching it develop like a giant tree with each passing year. The bell towers were now finished, along with the cypress spire. I shut my eyes against the terrible vision that it might have been painted red and black — or even worse, dynamited.

  There were other noticeable changes in Barcelona: there were no priests or nuns to be seen; and when we pulled into the passeig de Gràcia, there were no well-dressed people either. Everyone was wearing workers’ overalls and badly tailored coats. Perhaps the clerics and the rich had fled the city? Or were they walking around in disguise? I wasn’t sure that I liked Barcelona this way, but then in the whole trip from the station to our house, I hadn’t seen any beggars or homeless children on the streets either.

  When the taxis pulled up outside my family’s home, I had a terrible premonition that it had been divided up into flats for the working class, as I had heard the Soviets had done to mansions and palaces in Moscow. I wondered what Xavier and Margarida would say if that had happened. They might have liked it, having always been more egalitarian than me. I didn’t like the idea of children starving on the street, or of their parents working like slaves in factories, yet at the same time I was shocked to realise how much I enjoyed the status quo. I wanted to wear beautiful clothes and live in a fine mansion. I might wish for good things for others, but I didn’t want to lose what I had.

  I was relieved to discover that the biggest change at home was that the menservants had left for the front and the maids greeted us with ‘Salud’, which was considered more revolutionary than Buenos días or Bon dia.

  Unlike the people on the streets, Conchita was stylishly turned out in a dress with diagonal stripes and a tailored jacket with white piping. Despite the fact that she had not seen Feliu in months, she was as stiff and formal with him as ever. ‘Run along with la senyora Tortosa now,’ she told him, patting his head in an absentminded way. ‘I’ve got some things to discuss with your grandmother and aunt.’

  When Feliu and his governess had left the room, Conchita turned to us. ‘You can’t imagine how bored I’ve been here without you two,’ she said. ‘One can’t go out on the streets without hearing those insipid revolutionary songs. Barcelona isn’t fun any more!’

  She peeked at Julieta, who was asleep in my arms. ‘She’s dark, isn’t she?’ she said. ‘People would think she was mine not yours and Francesc’s. He’s so blond and you are fair too.’

  I prickled at the comment. Having been away from Conchita, I’d forgotten how caustic she could be sometimes, even to people she liked. There were plenty of dark beauties on Mama’s and Pare’s sides of the family.

  Mama’s personal maid, Maria, appeared and offered to bathe Julieta for me. ‘You and la senyora Montella must both be exhausted,’ she said. ‘I will bring you some tea.’

  ‘Well, thank goodness Maria hasn’t changed,’ Mama said when the maid was out of earshot. ‘I half-expected her to tell you to bathe Julieta yourself.’

  ‘Look, Mama,’ I said, sitting down next to her, ‘it is all a bit strange, but I guess we’ll have to get used to it. It’s far better to have the city run by the Anarchists than to be invaded by Franco’s army. They are murderers.’

  I shivered, although it was warm in the house. What I had read in the French papers on the train had shocked me. When Málaga fell to the rebel forces, Italian troops had pursued the fleeing civilian population for miles before massacring them. Such brutality made everything that was going on in Barcelona mild by comparison. Instead of throwing bombs, the Anarchists were trying to create a society of equality and peace where everybody had food and a home.

  ‘But the churches,’ Mama wept. ‘I agree that it is better for people to be educated and fed, but do we have to become heathens?’

  I put my arm around her, wondering if it would have been better if we had stayed in Paris. ‘Go rest for a while, Mama. You are exhausted from the trip.’

  I turned to Conchita. ‘I’m not sure who to go see first: Pare or Francesc?’

  ‘Go to your father,’ Conchita replied. ‘He is the one who needs you most.’

  I couldn’t find another taxi, so I caught the tram to the outskirts of the city where Pare’s main textiles factory was located. Revolutionary songs blasted from the tram’s speakers the whole trip. People kept staring at me, at my handmade shoes and tailored clothes, and I realised that I was going to have to find some different attire if I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. Near the factory tram stop was a women’s clothing store. I bought a shapeless coat to wear over my dress. The material was scratchy and stiff and I could smell the chemicals that had been used to dye it. I felt dowdy in it but I reminded myself that people all around the country were dying, and that kept my discomfort in perspective.

  I found Pare in his office, which he now shared with his secretary and clerk.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he said, when he saw me.

  He took me around to the side of the factory where we sat on a bench. ‘They’ve collectivised all the Montella factories in Barcelona,’ he said, looking more bemused than angry. ‘Almost all the other factory owners have fled or joined the Nationalists. But I’m not going anywhere. I built these factories up from nothing, and even though nobody wishes to call me “senyor” any more, I’m not going to let them run my life’s work into the ground.’

  ‘I don’t like Barcelona this way,’ I told him. ‘It’s lost its charm.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he assured me. ‘The revolutionary atmosphere is dying down. It’s much calmer now than it was a couple of months ago. I think the government is finally understanding that they have to get the workers under control. The Republic could hav
e been harnessing Barcelona’s industrial power to manufacture matériel for the war effort. I think the workers here need to wake up to the fact that it’s more important to repel the massive death squad that is marching towards them than worrying about whether or not people speak to them nicely.’

  ‘Do you really think Franco’s army will reach Barcelona?’ I asked. ‘The Republican army seems to have regained some ground.’

  Pare shook his head. ‘Franco is taking his time, letting the Republicans exhaust themselves. He doesn’t want to destroy the infrastructure of Spain. What he wants to destroy is his enemies. And if he has to kill two-thirds of the Spanish population to do that, it seems to me he is prepared to do so.’

  On our way back to the passeig de Gràcia together, I thought about what Pare had said. He wasn’t a revolutionary or a leftist; he was a die-hard Catalan who hated Barcelona being beholden to a centralist government. That was why he hadn’t deserted his factories. But if the Nationalists reached Barcelona, he would certainly be executed as a traitor for keeping his industries running.

  I did my best to put those thoughts out of my mind when we arrived back home and Pare laid eyes on his granddaughter. ‘She’s a true beauty, all right,’ he said, cradling her in his arms and touching her hands and feet. ‘Look at her delicate fingers and toes.’

  When I returned to the Cerdà household, Francesc was waiting there for me. The furniture, what was left of it, was covered in white cloths and all the servants were gone.

  ‘They are fighting in the popular army,’ Francesc said. ‘Poor devils! The maids have all taken roles in the factories and transport.’

  ‘Where are your parents?’ I asked.