by Carlos Alba
I feared we’d have nothing to talk about, but the events of the day provided enough material to allow the conversation to meander along without us settling on anything in particular, far less any issues that might provoke contention. Pablito sat slumped in his seat and took a long draught of beer.
‘The old man’s in great nick for his age, isn’t he? He’ll go on forever,’ he said cheerily.
‘You think so?’
‘Yeah, I mean, he’s got a very positive attitude, and coming back here will be a tremendous boost for him. That’s why I insisted he should come. If I’d left it to him he’d have put if off for months, so I just thought, hell, book it, and he’ll have no choice but to come.’
‘You don’t think it might stir up bad memories he’d sooner forget?’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked, genuinely perplexed.
I didn’t really know what I meant. Papa’s rare recollections of Spain always seemed so doom-laden, but he spoke in such generalised terms I was never entirely clear why he should feel personally threatened.
‘Well, you know the way he used to go on about Franco and the Civil War and all of that stuff,’ I said, unintentionally belittling my argument.
‘Yeah, but that was years ago, and I’ve always told him he can’t live in the past. These times are dead and long gone.’
Pablito offered to buy us both another drink, and as I watched his hunched frame draped over the front of the bar, I felt a sudden, sad pain. He’d inherited more of Papa’s magnetism than I had, but he’d been a reckless guardian of his looks and now he was stooped and beaten. His youthful gameness was gone, and his face looked shrunken and deep-lined.
It was after eleven o’clock when we returned to the hotel, by which time an orgy of merriment was in full swing in the adjoining bars and nightclubs. Flashing strobe lights and the spine-jolting boom of dance music followed us through the complex. Several touts tried to coax us into their establishments with the promise of deals on lethal-sounding drinks.
I pressed ahead, flushed and harassed, but Pablito allowed himself to be detained by a couple of tall, blonde girls no older than Ben, dressed in teetering high heels and skimpy lingerie. I was too far away to hear their conversation, but the forced laughter of the girls was clearly enough to manipulate Pablito’s gossamer-thin ego, and he decided to go off with them.
When he finally arrived back in our hotel room, it was almost four a.m. I’d long since abandoned any hope of sleeping. The metronomic beat of the music was loud and constant, interrupted sporadically by soprano howls of giddiness and aggressive alpha-male exchanges. When the music finally stopped it was light outside, and I felt like a punch-drunk boxer.
I came to with a start mid-morning. Pablito was still asleep, so I made my way through to Mama and Papa’s room. Mama was sitting outside on the verandah. Papa had gone out to look for a British newspaper, she said, so I made myself a cup of coffee.
‘He never reads newspapers,’ I pointed out.
‘I think he’s missing home already,’ she said smiling. ‘He wants to know what’s going on.’
I sat down with my coffee and closed my eyes. For a few moments I basked silently in the rejuvenating morning sun. It was the first time Mama and I had been alone since we had arrived, so I decided it was a good time to quiz her again about Papa’s letters to the Ajuntamente in Lerida. But her anxieties appeared to have dissipated, because she no longer felt willing to discuss or explain it.
‘It’s not important,’ she said dismissively.
I felt angry. It was clearly something that had troubled her to the extent that she’d taken me into her confidence, forcing me to drop everything and leave my work at a critical time, because she’d felt so concerned about it. Now she’d decided it wasn’t even worth mentioning.
‘You can’t do that to me, Mama. I have a right to know.’
She shuffled irritably. ‘You don’t need to know.’
‘I know I don’t need to but I want to know.’
She looked pained. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you.’
By the time Pablito wandered through, looking hungover and dishevelled, it was almost one o’clock. Papa hadn’t yet returned from his mission to buy a newspaper. We’d made plans to drive into Girona and wander around the shops in the afternoon, so Pablito agreed to go to look for him while Mama and I cleared away the breakfast dishes. He returned half an hour later, having failed to find Papa.
‘He’ll be fine, Mama, you know what he’s like. He’ll have gone for a walk and discovered something that has grabbed his interest,’ Pablito said, trying to calm her down.
Judging by Mama’s reaction, I wasn’t so sure. Pablito and I agreed to search a bigger area together. As he’d gone out to buy a paper, we planned to take one side of the town each and visit all the tourist shops. We were about to set off when I noticed the car was missing from its parking space. I told Mama and she sat down slowly.
‘We should call the police,’ she said.
‘The police? What are you talking about?’ Pablito demanded.
‘We need to call the police. We need to stop him. He’s going to Lerida.’
‘What’s he going to do in Lerida?’ I asked calmly.
She didn’t answer.
‘Talk to me. Why is he going to Lerida?’
She dropped her head and gazed at the floor.
‘We can’t call the police if you’re not willing to be open, Mama. What are we going to tell them – that we’re concerned for the safety of an 83-year-old man driving an uninsured car, hell-bent on a mission to settle a score that you’d rather not talk about?’
She blushed. I suggested we had two options – we could sit and wait for him to return, or we could follow him to Lerida and hope we arrived in time to stop him doing whatever it was he’d gone there for.
‘Let’s go,’ she said with a sudden burst of determination.
By the time we were on the road it was late afternoon. I’d had to track down a different car-hire firm from the one we’d used previously, to avoid questions about why I needed a second vehicle, and then I had to persuade the clerk to serve me before the office closed for the siesta.
Navigating an unknown route and driving on the right in an attempt to find my lost father would have been stressful enough without the presence of Mama, sitting in the back and continually asking if I was sure we were going the right way. We took the motorway to the north of Barcelona and from there we drove through the mountains, where the temperature dropped and the terrain changed from brown to a lush green. The hills were cloaked in mature fir trees, and for a while my mind was lost in their stillness.
By late afternoon we were approaching Lerida on the main trunk road, and Mama said we should look for an area called Alguaire. I reprogrammed the satnav and followed the instructions to a hamlet about fifteen kilometres north of the centre of Lerida.
The roads leading into it were flanked by peach and fig groves, vineyards and olive fields, and the centre was a bustle of activity, with narrow cobbled streets, lofty stucco apartments and sloping terracotta roofs. Small Juliet balconies were framed with bushes of purple bougainvillea and potted orange carnations. This was where Papa was born, Mama told us – this was our home village.
The main square was lined by rows of horse-chestnut trees whose thick foliage provided a canopy against the late-afternoon sun. There were a few small shops and a bar with a couple of pavement tables. A small group of black men, I guessed migrant workers servicing the local farms, gathered around the door of a telegraph office that offered cheap international calls.
I parked the car and we found the Ajuntamente, a small modern building at the corner of the square. Inside its reception area was low-ceilinged, sparsely furnished with a pair of desks and some filing cabinets. We arrived just as it was about to close and an elderly cleaner, wearing a sky-blue housecoat and carrying a damp cloth, looked at us, wide-eyed and edgy, as we entered. Mama took a photograph of Papa out of her handbag
and mentioned him by name. The woman immediately became animated, speaking loudly and pointing at the picture repeatedly before throwing her head back and her hands in the air. I couldn’t make out most of what she said, but two words I did understand were ‘Guardia Civil’.
We left and walked quickly along the narrow streets towards the other side of town, where the cleaner had told Mama the village police station was located. It was a single-storey building with nothing to distinguish it as a hub of law enforcement other than a small silver plaque on the door, and we would have walked past it had Pablito not spotted our first hire car parked around the side.
Inside, two uniformed officers sat languidly in a stale, smoky fug, their feet resting on adjacent desks. A couple of yellowing computer terminals were located amid a jungle of paperwork, overflowing ashtrays and dirty cups. The scene resembled Ben’s bedroom, though with the addition of a pair of utility belts to which handcuffs and pistols were attached.
The men were fixated on a basketball game playing on a small television set attached high on a wall on the far side of the room. The game had reached a critical juncture, and we had to wait until the team in red had missed a penalty shot before we were afforded the attention of one of the officers.
‘Si,’ he said curtly, without standing up.
Mama went through the same routine she had gone through with the cleaner in the Ajuntamente, handing him the photograph, which he held and scrutinised before throwing it down on his desk next to a plate of olive stones. He looked too old to still be working: his clothes hung off his skinny frame, and large, protruding gums dominated his mouth. His hair was pitch black, greasy and thinning, and he hadn’t shaved for several days.
He talked slowly and unenthusiastically, frequently shrugging and pouting. He struck me as a time-server, seeing out the dog-end of his career in a backwater town. From his tone I might have deduced that he didn’t know anything about Papa, if it hadn’t been for the fact that his car was parked outside the building.
‘What’s going on, Mama?’ I asked.
She ignored me, continuing to address the policeman in a tone that became sharper and firmer the more she spoke. The mood changed quickly and the policeman exploded in anger. He stood up and gesticulated, presenting his upturned hands to Mama, jutting his head forward in a gesture of rebuke. He spoke for around a minute, apparently building a concise, empirical case. As he neared the end of his diatribe, Mama interrupted.
‘¿Dónde está mi marido?’ she asked slowly and deliberately. ‘Where is my husband?’
The policeman ignored her question and continued with his rhetoric. She asked the question a second time, louder and more forcefully.
‘¿Dónde está mi marido?’
Again he ignored the question and raised his voice to compensate. Suddenly Mama snapped, her face reddened, and she began to shout at the top of her voice.
‘¿Dónde está mi marido?’ she screamed. ‘Quiero ver mi marido.’ ‘I want to see my husband.’
The other policeman, who until now had remained silent, stood up, white-faced, and intervened. He was clearly the good cop – younger than his colleague, and apparently the junior partner, but more eager to help. He turned down the sound on the television set with the remote control and offered Mama a glass of water, which she accepted. The bad cop sat down slowly and sheepishly concerned himself with something on his computer.
‘Mi marido está muy enfermo,’ Mama said. ‘My husband is very ill.’
She reached into her handbag and pulled out a strip of tablets.
‘Él tiene cáncer. Si él no toma su morfina regularmente, los efectos de su tumor serán muy dolorosos,’ she explained. ‘He has cancer. If he doesn’t take his morphine regularly the effects of his tumour will be very painful.’
‘What did you say?’ Pablito asked.
Mama put her hand over her mouth.
‘I’m sorry Pablito,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean for you to find out like this.’
My brother rocked on his feet and I moved forward to steady him, then I lowered him on to a seat. He slumped down and stared at the floor.
The good cop spoke to Mama at length. She nodded appreciatively, occasionally mouthing ‘claro’, a term of understanding and conciliation. He took the pills from her and lifted a bottle of water from his desk, then he turned and unlocked a door immediately behind him, below the television set, that led into another room. Mama tried to follow him, but he closed the door behind him and locked it from the other side. He was gone only for a couple of minutes, and when he returned he picked up the telephone and dialled a number.
‘What’s going on, Mama?’ I asked.
‘Let’s go outside,’ she said. ‘I need some air.’
It was dark and cool and perfectly silent, and the sky was peppered with golden bright stars. It was at times like this I wished I smoked.
‘Your papa’s in trouble,’ Mama said tremulously.
‘I guessed that. What’s he done?’
‘He went to the Ajuntamente and threatened the staff unless they told him who in the village had objected to his request.’
‘What request?’
‘He submitted an official request to dig a piece of ground but he was refused because several of the villagers objected.’
‘What?’
‘And when they refused to tell him who the objectors were, he went to the place, which is on a farm that grows olives on the edge of the town, and he started to dig, and when the farmer moved to stop him he tried to hit him with the shovel and now . . .’
‘Wait a minute, I’m lost – start again,’ I pleaded. ‘Papa was digging in an olive field, and he tried to hit a farmer with a shovel? Mama, what the . . .’
‘. . . and now the police want to charge him with violent behaviour and trespassing on to someone’s property and criminal damage.’
She began to cry.
‘Stop crying, Mama, and explain to me what this is about. Why did Papa travel halfway across Spain to dig a hole in the middle of the countryside?’
‘He was looking for bodies. He wanted to exhume them and give them a proper . . .’
‘Bodies? What bodies?’
‘His parents,’ she said calmly. ‘He was looking for the bodies of his parents.’
I felt shocked but not surprised. Deep within me, I’d always imagined a day like this would come.
5
The good cop emerged from the police station and beckoned Mama over. They spoke for a few moments, his expression earnest throughout, but I could tell from the easing of tension across Mama’s face that he had good news.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked after he’d returned inside.
‘The policeman has spoken to his superiors in Lerida, and, because of your papa’s age and his illness, they will release him. The farmer he threatened doesn’t want to press charges, no one wants to . . . what’s the English expression? . . . pick old sores.’
‘So he’s free to go?’
‘On the condition that he leaves Alguaire and returns to the resort, where he must stay until we leave Spain.’
We were made to wait until Papa had signed some forms. I needed some time alone, so I decided to go for a walk, wandering the deserted streets until I found myself back in the main square where the Ajuntamente was located. Opposite it was a tall building with a bell tower I hadn’t noticed earlier in the day. It was the only structure in the village that looked anything like it might pre-date the last century. It had obviously been badly damaged at some point and only a small proportion – a gable end and part of the facing wall – remained of the original yellow sandstone structure, which dated, I guessed, from the eighteenth or early nineteenth century. There had been a restoration attempt, but it looked rushed and unsympathetic, with cheap red house-bricks replacing the damaged parts.
It was possible to imagine the building in a previous incarnation, handsome and impressive, perhaps municipal chambers, or even a church, but now it had the disfigu
red look of a poorly healed burns victim, an ill-considered hybrid of old and new, principle and compromise.
A figure emerged from the darkness, crossing the square, and on impulse I stopped him and asked him if he spoke English.
‘Of course,’ he said, as though I had insulted his family.
He was young, perhaps in his late twenties, with thin rimmed glasses and a neatly cropped beard.
‘I was wondering about that building over there. Why is it like that?’
‘It was damaged during the Civil War, I believe,’ he said.
‘Was it shelled by the Nationalists?’
He gestured across the road to the Ajuntamente. ‘Why don’t you ask at the town hall? They’ll be able to help.’
I explained to him that I’d be leaving the village that night and wouldn’t be returning. ‘I’d really like to know what happened to this building.’
He smiled. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know.’
‘Is this your hometown?’ I asked.
The smile dropped from his face, and he eyed me suspiciously. ‘Yes it is. Where are you from?’ he asked, suddenly disconcerted.
‘I’m from Britain.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m half Spanish. My family is from Alguaire.’
His expression softened. ‘Oh. Well, good luck with your inquiries.’
Papa was guided from the police station by the good cop, with Mama’s coat draped over his shoulders. He crouched in the back seat of the car, head bowed like a prisoner under escort, and Pablito followed close behind him, dazed and robotic.
Despite telling the police that we would return to the resort immediately, Mama and I agreed Papa was too tired to endure a two-hour drive back that night, so we decided to stay in Lerida. We drove the short distance in silence and circled the centre for a few minutes before settling on a smart-looking hotel on the edge of the old town.
