Golden Earrings

by Belinda Alexandra

  It took me a day to transport all the patients to the Red Cross station. When I returned to Barcelona, I parked the van near a building that had been bombed, covered it with blankets and threw rocks and dirt on top of it. I set off through the city, moving like an alley cat. The atmosphere was dark with fear. I passed several houses that were burning, with no one on guard to put the flames out.

  I reached the Montella household about eleven in the evening. Evelina, pale-faced, opened the door.

  ‘Only bring what you can carry,’ I told her. ‘The first part of our journey is on foot.’

  Senyora Montella threw her arms around me when she saw me. It was the first time I had met her. ‘Thank goodness you are here!’ she said, kissing my cheeks. She welcomed me as warmly as one would a daughter.

  Her real daughter-in-law, Conchita Montella, looked on with undisguised revulsion. Her features were beautiful — luminescent skin, round, dark eyes, arched eyebrows — but she was like a piece of ice. In all the years I had been with Xavier, he had hardly mentioned her. Now I saw the reason why. What would there be to say about her?

  She was overdressed for our escape: in her flannel blazer, sweater, pleated skirt and a pair of fashionable Russian boots, she looked as if she was going for a drive in the countryside rather than taking part in an evacuation. From the way she regarded me, I sensed she intended to make things difficult. If that was the case, she’d be risking all our lives.

  I told the women about the shameful scene I had witnessed at Vallcarca Hospital. Evelina and her mother looked upset, but Conchita said coldly: ‘And the point of your story … is?’

  She had a kind of stupid madness about her. I understood why Margarida — always brazenly straightforward — didn’t like her. I could also see that she was going to try to undermine my authority the whole trip. I needed to put an end to that plan immediately.

  I pulled out my pistol and aimed it at her face. It gave me a jolt of pleasure to see her pupils dilate. I told her that I had shot two government officials who had tried to commandeer my van to transport themselves across the border. It wasn’t true, but it had the desired effect: Conchita shut her mouth.

  Evelina went to fetch the children.

  When she returned with Julieta in her arms, the sight of the girl’s mop of dark curls made my heart melt. I glimpsed her beautiful face above the scarf that Evelina was wrapping over her chin and cheeks. She had my dark colouring and Xavier’s fine features. I knew I would do whatever I had to in order to get her to safety.

  So that I wouldn’t get distracted from that purpose, I didn’t allow myself to look at Julieta again once we were out in the street, nor at Evelina who carried her in her arms, nor even at Feliu, who was the spitting image of his father.

  The temperature of the air seemed to have dropped markedly in the past half hour. Vapour poured from our mouths when our breath met the icy air. Barcelona was silent except for the soft squeak of the wheels of the cart into which Evelina had packed supplies, and the click of Conchita’s heels. Evelina and senyora Montella wore hiking boots, like I did. If we had to get out of the van and run from bombs, Conchita’s boots would be a hindrance.

  I was about to guide the women down a side street when I heard car engines starting up. A man jumped out of a doorway in front of us, yelling that we were under arrest. I reached for my pistol, but before I could fire, two men jumped on me from behind. I struggled as they wrestled me into a car. The last I saw of the Montella women and children, they were surrounded by police who were forcing them into the other car.

  I was driven to a hotel, where the two men dragged me to a room on the second floor. The wine-coloured wallpaper gave everything a hellish hue. There was a man standing by the window. He turned and I was overcome by a sense of foreboding when I recognised him. It was Salazar.

  The men pushed me into a chair and handcuffed my wrist to the armrest.

  ‘You can go now,’ Salazar said, dismissing them with the fascist salute.

  His hate-filled eyes fixed on me. We stared at each other for a moment without speaking.

  ‘You drove an ambulance for the Republican army,’ he finally said, in a voice seething with anger. ‘I think we can assume where your loyalty lies.’

  He picked up a piece of paper from the desk and began reading out Franco’s Law of Political Responsibilities: ‘All those who actively or passively opposed the Nationalist Movement will be answerable for their actions.’ Salazar looked at me. ‘The punishment for what you did is death.’

  I knew what Salazar wanted from me. He wanted me to throw myself into his arms and beg for his protection. He wants me to suffer for rejecting him, I thought. Well, I can suffer, as long as Julieta and Evelina and the others are safe.

  I was afraid that if I spoke, the abhorrence I felt for Salazar would come out in my voice. And if I wanted my child and my friend and her family to be unharmed, then I had to avoid antagonising him. But not speaking was my first mistake. Silence was as infuriating to Salazar as a bull that wouldn’t charge.

  ‘You have other unwise loyalties besides the Reds,’ he sneered, circling the chair I was trapped in. ‘Your lover, Xavier Montella, is plotting to kill the Caudillo.’

  Against my will, I stiffened. Oh God, how had Xavier’s mission been discovered?

  Salazar laughed when he saw my reaction. His bloodlust was clear in his malicious face. I resigned myself to the idea that I would probably be tortured. I knew about such atrocities from being near the front. I had seen the body of a peasant who had been forced to lie in the shape of a cross while the Nationalist soldiers hacked off his limbs because he wouldn’t give away the location of deserters. But I would bear any horror if it kept Xavier safe.

  ‘I’m going to ask you to rethink your loyalties and tell me where Xavier Montella is,’ said Salazar.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know? According to our sources, you carried intelligence for him.’

  My mind raced for a way to deflect the attention away from Xavier and back towards me.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I only promised to help his family.’

  ‘You promised to help his family?’

  Was it fear and exhaustion that had caused me to make such a foolish slip? I realised too late that I had made everything worse by drawing attention to the others.

  ‘Xavier Montella loves his family, doesn’t he?’ Salazar said. ‘His mother, his beloved sister and niece, his adored son, and his wife — well, he may not be as ardent about her as he is about his lover, but he respects her as the mother of his child.’

  I felt like an animal trapped by a hunter. I did not fear death for myself; I had faced it many times, and I could have borne anything if the ones I loved were safe. But I saw from the interest on Salazar’s face that instead of saving the people I loved, I was leading them to their demise.

  ‘You see,’ he whispered, ‘you have a choice. If you tell us where Xavier Montella is, we will let his family go. If you don’t, we’ll kill them.’

  ‘I don’t know where he is,’ I repeated.

  ‘Yes, you do. And I will give you another choice. For each minute you delay, I will give the order for one of them to be shot. Starting with the little girl.’

  ‘What?’ The blood began to pulse in my ears. I couldn’t breathe.

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked. ‘Because I loved Xavier and not you? Are you tormenting me for that?’ I tried to stand up but I couldn’t: I was still handcuffed to the chair.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Salazar said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘But there are always plenty of bulls for the kill, and I told you: some creatures are born doomed. You should be grateful that I am giving you this choice.’

  The nausea in my stomach made me feel faint. My mind stumbled over the word ‘choice’. What choice? I loved Xavier with all my heart and soul. I loved my child and Evelina too.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ I screamed at Salazar. ‘W
hat do you want?’

  ‘I want you to choose,’ he said coldly. ‘Tell me where Xavier Montella is and I will have his family released as soon as we’ve captured him.’

  I barely heard what Salazar was saying. My mouth turned dry and I struggled to speak. ‘If you release his family from prison, how do I know that you won’t order them killed if they try to escape to France?’

  Salazar grinned. ‘You have no idea of the power that I hold over all your lives. You aligned yourself with the wrong people, la Rusa. For every day that you show yourself publicly being driven around in my car, dressed as my whore, I will grant your precious Montella women two days to make their escape.’

  I couldn’t think. My throat felt thick, as if I was choking. I wished Xavier was with me to tell me what to do.

  Salazar reached for the telephone and began dialling to give the first execution order. Julieta! Little Julieta with her mop of dark curls! I saw Xavier resting his head on my pregnant stomach. It will be special knowing it is a little bit of me and you. The truth was I knew exactly what Xavier would have told me to do in this situation, but I couldn’t bear to think of it. Xavier! Xavier! My heart cried out. He and I were doomed, but Julieta could live on.

  ‘Give me el senyor Rovira, the supervisor,’ Salazar said to the person on the line.

  The room began to spin around me.

  ‘Agullana!’ I cried out. ‘Xavier is in Agullana!’

  It took them five days to find Xavier and bring him to Barcelona. During that time, I lived like someone whose soul had left her body. The woman that Salazar had conquered was not the magnificent, majestic flamenco dancer of the past. She was a ghost.

  The night they shot Xavier, Salazar took me to see his corpse. The expression on Xavier’s dead face was a contradiction of bewilderment and peace. I fell to my knees and kissed his cold lips. ‘Forgive me, my darling,’ I said with tenderness and remorse. A bitter sadness took hold of me. I threw my arms around Xavier’s body. How could I go on without the man I loved?

  ‘Kill me too,’ I said to Salazar. ‘Finish what you’ve started!’

  Salazar pulled me away and I watched as Xavier’s body was thrown on a truck with dozens of others to be buried in a mass grave. I knew then that a part of me was gone forever: something that could never be replaced.

  As I was driven around Barcelona in Salazar’s Bentley, dressed in furs and diamonds, I viewed the crumbling city with empty eyes. I saw piles of Catalan books being burned; the signs that hung in shops and offices banning the Catalan language. No ladres: habla el idioma del imperio español. Don’t bark: speak the language of the Spanish empire. Castilian. Priests said Masses continually to ‘cleanse the city of the sin of Bolshevism’. Over ten thousand Republicans were murdered in the first five days of the city’s ‘liberation’. Sporadically, fighting broke out as the bravest remnants of the Republican army continued to perform desperate rearguard actions such as blowing up bridges and important buildings.

  I witnessed the mass executions of the captured anti-Fascist Italians and Germans who had fought on the side of the Spanish Republic. I heard rumours from the hotel staff that Republican pilots from the north were trying to reach Madrid, which was still resisting, and that some International Brigaders were also attempting to return. But the flicker of hope faded when Madrid fell and Britain, France and the United States recognised Franco as the legitimate leader of Spain. It was as if Xavier and all he had hoped for had been executed again.

  I would have taken my life long before that, but for the hope that with every day I played Salazar’s game, somehow I was giving Julieta, Feliu and Evelina another chance to live. Although, in truth, if they hadn’t made it into France a few days after being released from prison, they were most likely dead.

  Like most men who hunger for domination and destruction, Salazar turned out to be impotent. Our role of whore and master was entirely for show. Part of our charade was for me to appear dressed for dinner each night, which we ate in Salazar’s hotel suite. One evening, he didn’t answer my knock and I opened the door to find him splayed on the floor in a pool of blood. It seemed Salazar was not immune to old scores from his criminal past. He had been murdered the way a matador destroys a bull — with a sword through the shoulderblades and into the heart. His killer had also mutilated him in the same way a vanquished bull is mutilated after a fight: his ears and penis — in lieu of the bull’s tail — were presented on a platter next to our supper.

  I expected that I would be accused of the crime, and sat for a while in a chair, staring at the body. No doubt I would be slowly garrotted for my act.

  But as time passed, my will, or perhaps the desire not to die at somebody else’s hand, forced me to my feet. I walked to the wardrobe and put on one of Salazar’s suits, flinching at the smell of hair oil and sweat that permeated the fabric. I added a hat, shoes with two pairs of socks, and a short overcoat. My disguise was so poorly assembled that I should have been stopped in the foyer, but no one noticed me when I walked past.

  No one paid any attention to me on the street either; they were too absorbed in the Nationalist soldiers’ victory parades or in looting the houses of those who had fled. I walked onwards as if protected by some angelic force that had made me invisible.

  When I reached the outskirts of the city, I found my van where I had left it. I brushed off the rubble and pulled away the blankets. To my amazement, the engine started. I filled the tank with the jerry can of petrol I had saved for our escape, pumped up the tyres and drove out of Barcelona. I expected at any turn to be stopped by a patrol, but there were no barriers to my escape. I was skilled at driving at night without lights and I had become an expert at dodging bombers. I kept driving until I reached the border. The French had closed it, unable to cope with the thousands of refugees who had fled to their country. It was guarded by Senegalese battalions armed with machine guns. But I was a ghost and ghosts can go where they please. I left my van at the border and slipped across into the mountains undetected.

  I managed to make contact with el Ruso, who had remained in Paris after retiring from show business. He spoke to a government contact in Perpignan who in turn sent his official car to collect me. I was given a change of clothes, and was relieved to burn Salazar’s suit, but not before I emptied the pockets and carefully poured the soil I had collected in the mountains into a handkerchief. The soil of Spain was all I had left of my home.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Paloma

  When he’d finished his story, Ramón stared at his hands for a long time before speaking again.

  ‘I too fled to Paris after the Republic collapsed, but Celestina didn’t stay in the city long. She was shunned by the Spanish émigré community, who, thanks to Evelina Montella, believed that she had betrayed Xavier and had worked as a spy for the Nationalists. All sorts of people accused my sister of denouncing their relatives. Even some of the patients she had rescued from Vallcarca Hospital turned on her, convinced that she must have used them as a cover in some way.

  ‘My sister tried many times to contact Evelina Montella to explain what had happened, but in the end she saw it was easier for everybody if she left France for the United States. You see, Celestina believed that she had caused Xavier Montella’s death and she loathed herself for it, even though she had revealed his whereabouts in order to save his family and their child.

  ‘It was only in Paris that I learned that el senyor Pinto and Xavier Montella were the same man; and that my sister had loved one of the greatest heroes of the Republican cause.’

  ‘The benefits of hindsight,’ I said sympathetically. ‘I’ve learned a lot about that myself lately.’

  Ramón looked at me sympathetically. ‘You’re lucky you’ve learned that lesson so young,’ he said. ‘Self-righteousness is the greatest squanderer of time … time you will never get back.’

  His words gave me an insight into a deep sense of regret that was belied by Ramón’s loud clothes and flashy apartment.

/>   ‘What did your sister do in the United States?’ I asked him.

  ‘She danced in flamenco bars and gave private lessons to movie stars. She made herself into a new person — but she kept to herself and lived alone. She never saw her gypsy clan again, although she set up a trust fund for them. She wrote to me prolifically, which enabled me to piece together what had happened during the years we were separated. I hated myself for being so stupidly stubborn. She was still my sister and I had always loved her, but I’d let my pride cloud my judgement about her.’

  ‘Yes, I know that mistake too,’ I told him.

  ‘In one letter she mentioned that she was experiencing pain in her lower abdomen. A wound I received in the war playing up, she wrote. After that, I didn’t hear from her for months. Then one night she turned up on my doorstep. “I’ve come back to Paris,” she announced. Her eyes had retained their hypnotic beauty and she still held herself proudly, like a dancer, but her legendary energy was no longer there. I knew straight away that something was wrong. She told me that the pain in her side wasn’t an old war wound at all; it was caused by the kidney disease she had contracted due to the deprivations she had suffered as a child. Kidney disease was common among the gypsies and the poor of Barcelona.’

  My heart pinched. La Rusa must have been the most misunderstood woman in the world.

  ‘“The doctors can’t help me,” Celestina told me matter-of-factly. “So I’ve come to a city where I was once happy in order to die.”

  ‘The money Xavier had moved to a Paris bank account for her had all gone into the trust fund for her clan, but she was under the impression that she still had millions of dollars. In truth, all her funds in Spanish banks had been seized. There was only her apartment in Paris left. So I let her believe she was still a rich woman while I took care of the bills.’