—The Basque nationalists were the reason, of course. They were middle class in the main, religious, conservative in the English sense of the word. The PNV’s decision to ally with parties which stood for the destruction of the sort of society it believed in was the great drama of the Basque country; it created tremendous conflicts of conscience from which I believe this country has not totally recovered to this day …
Though his father had been a member of the PNV, and his family was totally Basque, MALZAGA’s sympathies lay with the insurgents. They represented law and order and the means of living a ‘normal life’. He, who had never had any faith in politics, who believed that the degree of a country’s civilization could be measured by its capacity for compromise rather than the ‘typical Spanish notion that one must defend one’s ideals to the death’, was convinced that a republican victory could lead only to a communist dictatorship. ‘Quite irrespective of one’s political ideology, people like myself felt the need to defend our fundamental interests.’
* * *
Episodes 2: Flight
MADRID
In the cubicle-sized actors’ dressing-room, separated from his two friends who had been arrested with him hours before, he waited to be summarily tried and shot.
Disregarding the Union Jack and the strongly worded document the British embassy had authorized him to put up, three militiamen had hammered on the door. Assuming a slightly foreign accent, the 22-year-old Marquess PUEBLA DE PARGA had told them that this was a diplomatic flat. It gave a young falangist he was sheltering time to escape down the service stairs. Then he opened the door.
The militiamen, heavily armed and wearing red and black neckerchiefs, searched the flat. ‘You’re not foreigners, you’re Spaniards, fascists,’ they said when they found a Michelin map the marquess had spread out on a table with flags pinned on it to mark insurgent victories. Worse still, they found a shotgun in a cupboard. ‘Arms as well! We’ve made a good haul.’
Under arrest, in the car, he thought: ‘If they turn to the left, it means they’re taking us for a ride. We’ll be heading for the wasteland behind the bullring at Ventas. If we turn right, we’ll be heading for the centre, a checa, we won’t be shot immediately –’
The car turned right, stopped outside the Bellas Artes building in the Calle Marqués de Cubas. ‘The FAI checa,’ he thought. Men, women and children were milling about guarded by militiamen. On the first floor, in the ballroom, a scene that recalled the French revolution met his eyes: men of all ages, and a few terrified women, were sitting on the floor amidst piles of chalices, candelabra, religious objects, suitcases – some open, some shut. One of the militiamen pointed out a bedraggled man in a dirty shirt who appeared to have been mishandled because he was a priest. As soon as the marquess and two companions, to whom he had given refuge in his flat, were left unobserved, they went across to the man and, without ascertaining that he was a priest, confessed.
Waiting in the cubicle, the marquess remembered the sounds that had become familiar in the Madrid summer night: the car driven at great speed, the tyres screaming as it came to a halt, the engine revving fast. The noise of hammering on doors, the sound of the car a few moments later starting again. Sitting in the darkened dining-room of the flat, he and his friends had known that another victim was going to his fate.
The cubicle door opened. A militiaman took him into the theatre which was where the tribunal sat. Everything except the stage had been removed.
—In the middle now there was an enormous table covered by a black and red flag – or rather two pieces of black and red material crossed over each other, quite tastefully arranged. There were five people behind the table; one of them was a woman, who looked about thirty, dark and pretty. I was taken up to the table …
Two of the men questioned him. Why wasn’t he at the front defending the republic? He had had time enough to think up answers to this sort of question. Because of his eyesight, he had been failed for military service. Moreover, he was a student who had been living in France and was in Madrid by chance. ‘You’re a fascist.’ ‘Of course not.’ He was determined to brazen it out. The interrogation didn’t last long. The questions had, all in all, been fairly noncommittal. As he was being taken back to his cubicle, he saw his friend Enrique being brought out of his.
At dawn his cubicle door opened again; he, his two companions and some others were herded out of a side door and into a lorry. Again he was convinced that they were being taken out to be shot. But their destination was the interior ministry in the Puerta del Sol. Once they reached the cellars, he breathed a sigh of relief. They were out of ‘the FAI’s hands, out of the hands of the most ruthless and bloody force amongst the reds’. The next day, at dawn, to his despair, they were again put into a lorry, this time to be taken to a former religious school in the Calle General Porlier which had been turned into a prison. He had spent barely fifteen minutes in the classroom which was to be his communal cell when three militiamen appeared and grabbed him by the arm. ‘Follow us.’ Convinced that he was being taken to his death, fellow prisoners crowded round to protest. Swearing, the militiamen opened a passage, shoving him forward.
—We went down two or three floors, reaching a windowless basement, illuminated only by naked bulbs, from which I was taken through to a boiler room. I prepared myself to die; ever since our arrest I had been resigned to my fate. The enormous boilers in one corner, the great pile of coal opposite – it was an ideal place for an execution.
‘Canalla, you’re going to die now, you and all your class –’ One of them caught me by the shoulders and pushed me against the opposite wall. They stepped back and raised their weapons; took aim. Although I’d had a deeply religious upbringing, no religious thoughts crossed my mind. Rather, I felt a great wave of indignation. I don’t know whether this was particularly Spanish, but my instinct of self-preservation expressed itself as anger. I took a few steps forward and began to insult them. ‘Canalla, you’re going to kill an innocent person.’ It was a banal thing to say, but at least not wholly undignified.
All this took much less time than it takes to tell. The men suddenly lowered their arms and one of them started to laugh. ‘You’re lucky this time, you’re not going to fall. But you will die –’ They came towards me. My shirt was open at the neck and I had a gold chain on which two or three religious medallions hung, as was the custom then. One of them stretched out his hand and tore the chain from my neck. I didn’t say anything. They pushed me towards the stairs …
When he reached the classroom, the other prisoners crowded round to comfort him, an act of solidarity that could have cost them dear.
In the following days there was no repetition of this senseless, brutal act. The marquess carved a chess set out of bits of chalk left in the classroom and played with a fellow prisoner. Two police alsatians with red and black collars patrolled the corridors with a militia warder who liked to expound anarchist theory to all who would listen. Every explanation ended with the example of the ants. ‘You see,’ was the triumphant conclusion, ‘the ants have no commanders, but theirs is a perfect society.’
However, if the days were spent in relative safety, the nights were a different matter. After lights out, a militiaman or two might appear at the door, turn on the light and start to call out names from a list. Often they appeared not to know which prisoners were confined to which rooms and went through the whole list anew in each. The suspense was terrifying.
—A man answered ‘presente’ when he heard his name; it was useless trying to hide. As he got up, the rest of us – thirty or forty crammed into the room – looked at him, trying with our eyes to give him solace and encouragement. Everyone I saw being taken out went with tremendous courage, serenity. It is one of the things Spaniards can be proud of, one of the things which heightened my awareness of life: the way they bore themselves as they went to their deaths. Then we heard the lorries driving away; the executions did not take place in the prison itself …
On
e morning in September, militiamen came into the room and called their three names. The marquess felt instinctively that things were all right, it wasn’t a dangerous hour. Picking up their bedrolls as ordered, they were taken to the ground floor where they found a small, dark-suited man with a lively face who appeared to be in his fifties. His name was Juliá.
—‘I am from the British embassy’s economic section. I have come to take you to Atocha railway station; I think it is going to be possible for you to escape’ …
Hardly able to believe their ears, they found themselves walking out of a side door of the prison and getting into a small black car with a Union Jack on the windscreen. Without further ado, Juliá set off for Atocha; when they reached the station, he took them to a room and told them to wait. ‘Don’t be frightened, no one will come in here.’
After several hours, he reappeared. ‘Follow me. You can’t leave. There has been a mistake –’ He drove them to an office of the British embassy’s commercial section where they remained hidden for several days. A man of few words, Juliá explained little. Gleaning what they could, it appeared that the British embassy had taken some forceful steps when it learnt that they had been arrested in the flat which the marquess shared with a British diplomat friend who had left the capital before the start of the war. The government, concerned about its relations with Britain, considered the arrests a mistake; the Bellas Artes checa seemingly had come to share this view. ‘Throughout the war, the flat was the only place under British protection to be broken into.’
From the moment their case became known, the likelihood of their being executed was dramatically diminished. But their escape was another matter. They got the impression that the acting British ambassador in Madrid knew of Juliá’s initiatives and approved of them as long as they in no way involved the embassy which, officially, had shown itself reluctant to help individuals escape.
One day Juliá burst into the office: ‘Come on, we’re off.’ In the Peruvian ambassador’s house, where he took them – the marquess’s friend Enrique was a relative of the ambassador who at that moment was in Lima – his face beaming, Juliá handed them forged identity cards.
—It was evident that this was an initiative he had taken on his own. During the days we had been in hiding in his office we had come to like him tremendously. A Catalan by birth, he was a republican and a mason. ‘Your lives are in danger, it is a mason’s duty to help anyone in danger.’ Later we learnt that he had managed to save a considerable number of people. But when we looked at the identity papers – mine showed I was a FUE delegate on a mission to Alicante – we cried: ‘But what are we going to do in Alicante? Do you expect us to swim to France?’ ‘You don’t understand. There are German and Italian warships in Alicante. Relations between Germany, Italy and the republic haven’t yet been broken. But they will be in a few days. If they can’t help you, English ships also call there. I can see no other solution –’ It was evidently all Juliá could do. We decided to try …
Having drawn lots, it fell to the marquess to be the first to try to get to Atocha station. Dressed in a pair of overalls, he got past the control without difficulty and found a place in a coach directly behind the sleeping car, a stroke of luck that was shortly to save his life. With time to spare, he started to pace the platform when, to his horror, he saw a small figure bustling through the crowd of militiamen, soldiers, and war-wounded. He recognized her instantly.
—Nellie Cunningham, my old Irish nanny! From several yards away she cried out in English: ‘My darling boy! –’ In her hands she had a bottle of whiskey and two cartons of cigarettes. ‘Nellie,’ I hissed, ‘go away at once. You’re endangering my life, don’t you understand? Turn round and get lost in the crowd. Don’t say a word –’ In silence, she turned away, obeying the order, and disappeared. Poor Nellie! She must have learnt on the grapevine that I was leaving. What an English scene! A man fleeing for his life and his nanny turns up! …
No one appeared to have noticed the incident. Shortly afterwards his friend Enrique turned up; but their third companion did not appear. Only later did they learn that his papers had been challenged at the control post and he had gone immediately to the Argentinian embassy to take refuge.
The train set off, the night passed uneventfully; in the morning, approaching Alicante, the marquess was looking out of the window at the landscape he had never seen before when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man in a tie and jacket coming down the corridor. He stopped in front of him, turned the lapel of his jacket over to reveal a badge: republican police.
—And then he said words I’ll never forget. ‘You are the son of the ex-duchess of Mandas, aren’t you?’ Out of weariness, or because I thought the game was up, I replied, ‘Yes.’ ‘You are under arrest’ …
In each carriage there was a militiaman; the policeman called him over to guard the marquess.
The policeman was young, rather plump. Racking his memory, the marquess managed later to place him: he had been an assistant in a bookshop where he bought all his university books and knew him quite well.
—Nothing is as true as Dr Johnson’s saying that going to the gallows concentrates a man’s mind. The mechanism of self-preservation leapt into action …
Sensing that the militiaman harboured no particular hostility towards him, he began trying to gain the man’s confidence, saying that the policeman was a draft-dodger who was attempting to make trouble for him. The only hope of salvation lay in the sleeping car ahead where Juliá had told them the Argentinian minister was travelling. As the first houses of Alicante appeared, the marquess decided to try. ‘I’ve got to go to the lavatory.’ The militiaman made no objection. He went up the corridor and into the WC, rattled the bolt, re-opened the door and leapt across the communicating platform into the sleeping car. The conductor, still wearing the classic brown wagon-lit uniform, barred his way, but he pushed him hard to one side. By a stroke of luck, he saw the Argentinian minister in the corridor. He leapt towards him, saying who he was. ‘I’m in great danger.’ Without a moment’s hesitation, the minister pushed him into his compartment and shut the door. Not for nothing was he known as Madrid’s Scarlet Pimpernel. He told the marquess to stay there and went out. It was the last time he saw him. For at that moment the train was slowed down at the entrance to the station by an enormous demonstration come to welcome the war-wounded. A river of people swept past the window. The marquess realized that this was his chance. He opened the window and jumped out.
Lost in the crowd, he made his way out of the station and walked through the small city to the hotel Juliá had told them was the meeting-place of the Italian and German naval officers. Enrique, who had witnessed the scene in the train and believed he was now the sole survivor, arrived almost simultaneously outside the hotel. In low tones they discussed what they should do.
—It was a moment even more terrifying than being in the checa or prison. We had been so certain that we were going to die then that nothing much had mattered. But now that there was the chance of escape, life and death became a question of primary concern. Moreover, I had the police on my tail …
From the lobby they could see a large room whose parquet floor, potted palms, white wicker tables and white-jacketed waiters struck them, after Madrid, as incredibly clean and smart. Right at the back of the room five Italian naval officers were sitting; at a table slightly closer, a group of German officers.
—‘What shall we do?’ Enrique asked. I had no doubts. ‘Go and tell the Italians your father is Franco’s consul-general in Genoa. They’ll help us, you’ll see.’ Enrique had a moment’s indecision. ‘But if they refuse, everything is lost. We’ll have been seen –’ He was right, of course. But we had to risk it. I put all my powers of persuasion into propelling him those forty metres across the room. I saw him – can see him to this day – approaching the Italian officers, saw them stop talking, Enrique leaning across the table, murmuring something. Immediately one of them got up and accompanied Enrique ac
ross the room to where I was waiting. Without any explanation, he made a sign, saying: ‘Follow us.’ We went out of the door and past some militiamen in the street. A short distance away, I saw a place that looked like a mixture of toyshop and haberdasher’s. Casa Rossi said the sign. We went in, the officer spoke to the owner. Without wasting a moment, the latter opened a door at the back of the shop and we went down some stairs into the basement. Soon Rossi returned to tell us not to move, the officer would be coming back to explain.
‘From now on, you’ll completely forget your true identities,’ said the officer when he came back. ‘You’ll become two Italian naval deserters from the warships anchored in the bay. That is how we are going to get you out –’ The proposition seemed incredible. Our papers were already being made out, he said. I still remember my Italian name: Parodi …
The next day at dawn an Italian petty officer came to get them. He treated them brutally, as befitted deserters; they had been warned to expect it. They were taken to a republican police car which drove them to a jetty outside Alicante where a launch flying the Italian flag was tied up. The republican carabineros on duty appeared to be expecting them. Under close escort they climbed into the launch, which set off. The marquess looked back at the carabineros leaning over the jetty rail, looking bored, and a great yearning rose in him to shout ¡Arriba España! ‘But I rapidly thought better of it!’
Aboard an Italian destroyer, the two reached La Spezia; it was the end of their escape, but not the end of their war. The marquess returned to nationalist Spain in 1938 to join the Foreign Legion in which he served as a temporary second lieutenant until victory the following year.
Blood of Spain Page 28
