The Guardian of Secrets

by Jana Petken

  By the end of May, the morale of the republican soldiers and medical corps at La Glorieta had fallen to an all-time low. They accepted, in an atmosphere of grief, that their position was under threat and that if Valencia fell, all would be lost. María lived from day to day in an atmosphere of defeatism and fear. Soldiers from the front lines were brought in convoys on a daily basis now. Many had suffered botched operations at the hands of surgeons who had neither the time nor the facilities and supplies to treat their injuries properly. Amputees suffering from the effects of unsterile knives lay listlessly, in pain and dying of spreading gangrene. Some who had been sent there to recuperate were impatient to rejoin the fighting again, whereas others were glad that their participation was over and wanted nothing more than to go home and forget the misery that war had brought them.

  María thought unceasingly about Madrid and wondered where Carlos was and what he was doing. However, since her return to La Glorieta, her dreams of raging battlefields spewing out the dead subsided and were slowly replaced with peaceful, restful nights and rainbow skies at dawn.

  As her pregnancy progressed, she was given a less active nursing role and unwittingly became a symbol of hope in a place where death, not life, was prevalent. She spent much of her time in the wards, sitting by the beds of frightened men and boys, giving comfort to them. Only a few British soldiers were left, but they were her most important patients, and she never tired of seeing their eyes light up when they heard her speak in their native tongue.

  She also spent an hour or so every day strolling through her family’s land. She scolded herself for her snobbery, but she couldn’t help but feel a growing sense of resentment at the way they had exploited her family home. They had turned the land to the east into a huge parking area for trucks, tanks, and ambulances. They had cut down orange trees and planted corn seed. The grapes had all but disappeared, and in their place were vast tracts of land filled with vegetables, picked by the panic-stricken land labourers before ripeness and used, along with the corn and wheat, to feed the army. The house was beyond all recognition. The rooms had been painted a sterile white and were devoid of furniture save the rows of beds, which filled every room. The top floor suite of rooms, where her parents had once lived, was now home to the officers, and they’d ripped the age-old wooden panels from the walls and used them as firewood. Her grandfather’s library had been turned into an operating theatre, and the books her mother and grandfather cared so much about had been shredded to fill pillowcases and mattresses.

  The only constant in her life was Marta’s grave, and at times the desire to speak to her sister was so strong that unwanted feelings of hatred against those who’d killed her surfaced and spilled over, saturating all republican soldiers.

  At the beginning of June, a letter arrived unexpectedly from a nursing friend in Madrid:

  Dear María,

  Things in Madrid have turned eerily quiet, and we are enjoying a sense of normality once again. I was able to travel by tram to the front lines last week and see my boyfriend José (whom I’d not seen in two months). I am a little surprised at the way in which the population has become almost immune and insensitive to danger and death. I myself have become so used to seeing dead and mangled bodies in the streets that I quite often pass them by now without giving them a second glance, and when an air raid begins, I saunter along slowly and sedately, with no sense of the panic I felt earlier last year.

  My boyfriend did not talk to me about the end of the war, and I, like him, have a feeling that it will never truly end. I do not know if this is pessimism on our part or if we simply cannot bring ourselves to believe that we will ever be defeated. But I do know that Spain will never be the same again, no matter who wins.

  The reason I am writing, apart from the fact that I miss you, is because last week I saw your Carlos. He was sitting in the little cafe that we used to go to for hot chocolate, and he looked so sad. I didn’t speak to him, as he seemed to be deep in thought, (thinking about you, no doubt), but I did wave to him on the way out. He waved back, but I don’t think he knew who I was …

  María stopped reading and let the page fall to the floor. Carlos was safe. That was all she needed to know. She stroked her stomach and felt the baby kick.

  “Please God,” she said aloud. “Please let him come home to me.”

  Chapter 80

  Rosa demanded that she return to Spain. Her mental decline had happened rather suddenly and had taken even Ernesto by surprise. In the middle of March, she’d turned her back on all earthly things, as she called them, such as mealtimes, afternoon tea, and any social activity that involved the art of conversation. Her entire existence had been confined to the inner sanctuary of her bedroom, and she opened the door only to admit the water from a tray of tempting offerings left outside three times a day. She never washed, and her hair had become a matted white mess that looked more and more like a bird’s nest. Her long black dress began to smell of unwashed body odour, and scabby sores, where she’d beaten herself, began to show signs of infection. Celia had long since given up the fight to get her to eat. Rosa herself barred the doctor from visiting her, calling him secular scum through a crack in the door, and Celia made no bones about the fact that she wanted her committed to a psychiatric facility.

  Rosa’s wailing began before dawn on most days and went on into the night without pause. She also began to call out Marta’s name on a regular basis, also singing in an unknown melody ‘Saint Marta the holy martyr, hear my prayers!’ over and over again. Celia and Ernesto were used to her speaking about Marta but this new development, the screeching and wailing non-stop was more than they could stand.

  By the end of May, her state of health had declined so much that she was rushed to the nearest hospital, kicking and screaming. Whilst there, she started to babble with wide unseeing eyes in a language that nobody understood. The doctor explained to Ernesto and Celia that apart from being half-starved, she was suffering from a complete nervous breakdown, and so severe were her symptoms that he suggested she be institutionalised. Her destination was a secure psychiatric hospital just outside London where, Ernesto was told, she would stay for an indefinite period.

  Celia made daily calls to the Spanish Medical Aid Committee, hoping for information about Pedro. The disappearance of his entire unit was puzzling, even to the organisation itself, but no information was forthcoming, and their own conclusion, although never verbalised, was that it had simply been wiped out.

  Aunt Marie still lived most of the time in London, but she had formed the habit of spending most weekends in Kent, where she made it her business to keep the bored and worried family occupied with snippets of information given to her by John Stein.

  Celia wrote in her journal:

  May, 1938

  Aunt Marie, who had taken it upon herself to visit Rosa in hospital on a regular basis, brought us the sad news today that Rosa passed away. She told us that Rosa’s dying words were for Marta, and that information has comforted Ernesto immensely. Personally, I do not know what comfort there is right now or what to think, for nothing seems to appease my mind, which is fraught with worry. I think that Pedro’s disappearance has taught me not to think about anything much at all. Waiting and wondering is a torture that I try to avoid, although, in essence, waiting and wondering is all I seem to do. I have received no word from María, and I pray that she survives, for should my only daughter die, I will die too.

  Chapter 81

  The sound of shellfire filled the air at La Glorieta. Wounded men arrived in trucks and were carried into the house on stretchers by drivers and soldiers with frightened faces. María ploughed through the injured with a back that was breaking and legs that felt so heavy that she was sure she was going to drop to the floor at any moment. Her baby, due within weeks, was kicking to get out, yet still she worked on, giving comfort to those in even greater pain than she. This was no time to take things easy, she decided, going against the doctor’s orders.

  Her
waters broke unexpectedly one morning, and worried doctors and nurses stood above her pain-racked body, attempting, unsuccessfully, to still her fears. It was too early, she told herself. The baby wasn’t due for another two or three weeks. She was going to lose it. The baby, however, had no such fears and arrived safe and well within hours.

  María found herself torn between the love she felt for Carlos and the anger she felt towards him. Her baby, a boy, was strong considering that he had arrived early amidst havoc, but as she cradled him in her arms, María couldn’t stop herself from thinking about his father. Carlos remained, as always, elusive and unreachable. He had supplied papers for her return to La Glorieta; therefore, he knew where she was and had the means to contact her by letter or in person, but he chose not to. He chose to keep her in ignorance, and in doing so, he kept himself in ignorance of the fact that he was now a father.

  Chapter 82

  The republican forces were once again pushed back towards the river Ebro. Wounded and dying were left lying where they fell, and medical stations were unable to get to them, as they too were trapped, at times ahead of their own front lines.

  The republican government also took the decision at that time to dismiss the International Brigades, hoping to achieve some form of international mediation. On 14 September, 1938, Carlos was ordered on to the higher ground, which was dominated by nationalist forces. The remaining British in the unit, now greatly depleted by deaths and injuries, laughed that this would be their final day’s work and that they would be only too happy to go out on a high note. Morale was high, but the tiresome effort to dig in and secure a good defensive position was hindered by stony soil, which made it difficult to dig trenches, and the task was made even more difficult by the arrival of some heavy thunderstorms and torrential rain.

  Carlos was stationed in a defensive position with a couple of Englishmen, two Spaniards, and a shared machine gun. For hours on end, a nationalist artillery barrage that left them deaf and disoriented pounded them, and because of this, they ceased to hear the noises that surrounded them and failed to see the approaching tanks until they were almost upon them. Their fate was sealed. It had long been a nationalist policy to shoot machine-gunners on sight, and they knew that they would not be allowed to live if captured.

  Carlos looked about him, dazed and confused by ringing ears and a gash above his right eye caused by shrapnel. In his possession were official papers, maps, and identity cards of the SIMS and SEIP, the hated spy and interrogation units he served in. He knew that even if he was lucky enough to survive with his life intact, he couldn’t afford to be captured with any of the sensitive material on his person. As a member of the communist-run intelligence forces, he would be important to the nationalists and would most likely be kept alive until they got their fill of information out of him.

  The noisy engines and crunching wheel belts of the approaching tanks grew louder and more distinguishable to Carlos’s still-ringing ears. He picked up his binoculars and, with shaky fingers, scanned the area to ascertain just how close they were. They would be on top of them in a few short minutes, he deduced quickly. Later, the infantry would come to finish them off, and they would step over their dead bodies as though their remains were no more than irksome boulders. He lay back down with his back against the wall and stared at the sky for the last time. Above the smoke, he saw fluffy, peaceful clouds tinged with yellow in a reflection of the hidden sun. He saw María’s face floating, smiling down at him, and he smiled back. He then watched the men around him, noting that they too were engrossed in their own worlds, blocking out the horrors that surrounded them.

  The two British men spoke to each other in hurried tongues, both so sure that they would die any minute.One of them took a photograph out of his tattered shirt pocket and showed it to his comrade. He looked at it again, kissed the image, and put it back inside his jacket pocket and was then lost once more in a lifetime of memories. Beside them lay a dead Spanish soldier, wounded before they had even reached their position, later dying in agony from his injuries. Huddling in the corner against the trench wall was a frightened teenager who was, in Carlos’s opinion, far too young to be anywhere near a battlefield. He offered the boy a cigarette, and he took it with quivering fingers.

  “What are you doing here?” Carlos asked him.

  “I’m killing rebels! They killed my parents at the beginning of the war, but I’ve killed plenty of them since,” he told Carlos with a triumphant smile.

  Carlos attempted to still the young boy’s fears with questions about his family. His name was Bernardo. His mother and father had both been killed early on in the war, shot by some Civil Guards who then ransacked and burned their house, which, he added, was in fact a two-roomed metal shack that leaked water in the winter and burned like an oven in the summer. Carlos laughed; Bernardo was describing his own house at La Glorieta. He was, he continued to say, the only member of his family to survive, and in memory of his family, he would fight to the death and take as many rebels with him as possible.

  The tanks’ noisy engines grew louder, and the turrets were now clearly visible as they trundled over the top of the rise. A fountain of dust and dirt from the machines filled the already smoke-filled air, and Carlos covered his face with his arms. There was no time left to talk about anything, he thought. The end was all that mattered now, and the way in which he conducted himself in the face of death was important to him. María flashed through his mind, calling his name, begging him not to die. He knew the vision wasn’t real, but something in her voice quietened his pounding heart. He grabbed his rifle and told Bernardo and the British men to man the machine gun.

  “Give it everything you’ve got!” he shouted above the noise. “Take as many of the bastards as you can with you into hell!”

  Pedro flanked the left side of the tank, carefully stepping over dead republican bodies. He had made it his own policy not to look into their faces; he had probably served with some of the republicans scattered on the waste ground. He had probably laughed with them, eaten with them, and shared stories of family and home. He couldn’t look, for if he did, the memory of those faces would haunt him forever.

  He passed one of the republican dead, lying unnoticed, half in and half out of a shallow trench. The dead man’s eyes were half open, looking skywards. His hair blew across his face in the wind, and his shabby jacket fluttered, opening and closing against his chest. He had been shot three times in the upper part of the body. His face was red with blood from a wound to his cheek, which lay open like flaps on a tent. The chain with a silver identity tag stuck to his bloodied chest, clearly visible beneath the remnants of his shirt. It read carlos Pons nrep17349 …

  Chapter 83

  The nationalists had managed to cut off the republican forces that were trapped in the hills around the Ebro without sufficient food, arms, or medicines. The republican hierarchy ordered the troops not to retreat, telling them to fight on and throwing out propaganda in an attempt to keep morale high, but after four months of continuous shelling that killed thousands, Hitler’s Condor Legion aeroplanes bombarded them from the air and wiped them out completely.

  Just before Christmas, 1938, the republican government moved up to the north and then on to Gerona, a town bordering France, and from there they crossed over, leaving Spain without any government at all. With the total breakdown of the republican government now public knowledge, soldiers from every front line were surrendering where they could or just going home. Many of the soldiers occupying the garrison at La Glorieta had deserted in such large numbers that only a handful were left. Some hid in the hills, while others headed to Valencia in the hope of securing passage on a ship to anywhere.

  In Valencia, Gandia, and Alicante, people thronged the ports, trying to get on board ships leaving the country, and although several ships approached the harbour, they turned back when they saw that too many desperate and frightened people would storm them. Some of the republicans on the dockside, fearing Franco’s repri
sals, committed suicide, while others waited, exhausted and resigned to their fate.

  At La Glorieta, Ramón urged the registered communist land labourers to escape before it was too late, but most of them had lived on Martinéz land all their lives, and the majority refused to leave. María and Lucia waited desperately for news of family and lovers. María prayed daily at Marta’s grave for a miracle. Neither woman received letters, and the lack of news from abroad, and in the battle areas of Spain, was a sure sign to María that the infrastructure had broken down and that the end of the war was imminent. Lucia, ever the optimist, wholeheartedly disagreed with this assumption and believed that everyone was just too busy fighting to write.

  In the last week of March, 1939, Ramón found María and the baby at Marta’s grave. She watched him approach with a stony expression, and his swollen bloodshot eyes told her all she needed to know. He sat on the ground beside her and held her trembling hands in his own, but neither spoke. María closed her eyes, allowing the tears to fall.

  “So it’s confirmed.”

  “Yes,” Ramón said, nodding his head and handing her an envelope. “I received the official letter this morning. It was hand delivered. Here, read it.”

  María shook her head. She couldn’t bear to look at it, didn’t want to touch it, for that would make it real.