The Songs of Manolo Escobar

by Carlos Alba

  I seemed to have spent my life being told by members of my family how little I knew. ‘I know how hard you’re taking Papa’s illness, but you can’t just give up, not now when he needs you most, I said.’

  He sat forward and shuffled uncomfortably.

  ‘You need to keep yourself together, for Mama’s sake.’

  He remained silent.

  ‘What do you think Papa would say if he saw you like this?’

  He put his head in his hands.

  ‘What’s the matter, Pablito? Talk to me.’

  He looked up. ‘It’s my work,’ he said plaintively.

  ‘What about your work?’

  He started to sob. This wasn’t how it should be. He was my older brother, and for most of my life he’d exercised authority over me. He looked vulnerable, broken, and I didn’t know what to do for him. ‘I took some money.’ he said through his tears.

  ‘What do you mean you took some money? You mean you stole it?’

  ‘I was going to pay it back.’

  ‘Why did you need to steal money?’

  ‘To pay for the holiday in Spain. I was going to return it, but my boss found out and now he’s going to the police.’

  I felt a sudden pain in my chest. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t sustain any pity for him. ‘Oh, Christ, how much?’

  ‘Two grand.’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’

  I felt like a boy again, at the mercy of my family’s foibles and weaknesses. It was the stolen camping stove. It was having to tell lies to Mama. It was opening the letter to Mr McKendry and discovering my father was illiterate. It seemed that no matter how much I tried to improve myself or to be truthful and honourable, there was always someone close to me to drag me down. For most of my life I’d been answerable for the failings of my father. Now he was dying, and still there was no respite. I couldn’t bear to be in my brother’s company any longer.

  ‘You should go and see Papa. You owe it to him.’

  ‘I owe him nothing,’ he protested.

  ‘How can you say that? Whatever shit you’re in, at least you have a good relationship with him. Despite all of his faults, he always stood up for you.’

  ‘I have no relationship with him,’ he insisted.

  I couldn’t believe Pablito could say such a thing. ‘But he loves you. He respects you.’

  He laughed. ‘No, he uses me – he always has done. But he has no respect for me. I allow him to behave badly because I do too. It’s you he respects, because you stand up to him. In fact, he’s jealous of you.’

  ‘Jealous? Why should he be jealous of me?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘Because you’re a success, and he’s a failure. You’ve done all the things he was never able to do. He resents the hell out of you for it, but deep down he thinks the world of you.’

  21

  I received an email reply from the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory’s messageboard in response to a posting I’d made. I’d decided to defy Papa and had asked if anyone had information about the fate of Paco Noguera from Alguaire, who hadn’t been seen since September of 1938. My heart pounded as I logged on to my computer. By the time it booted up I was beginning to have doubts, troubled by the kind of guilty trepidation that accompanies challenging a parent, even in adulthood.

  ‘Hi, my name is Montserrat, and I think I may be related to you. Please call me,’ the message said.

  There was a phone number with an overseas dialling code, which I Googled. It was for Mexico. I thought about dialling the number there and then, but I stopped myself. It would still be the middle of the night in Mexico, but that wasn’t the only thing holding me back. I didn’t know if I could go through with it without Papa’s approval. I tried to reason that what I was doing was justified and that he’d be pleased at the discovery of one of his relatives, but I wasn’t convinced. It also occurred to me that something in his story didn’t ring true. If it had been this simple for me to track down a member of his family, why had he never done it himself?

  I’d been in Glasgow for a fortnight, and I’d already slipped into an unbroken routine of sleeping, working and helping Mama to look after Papa. She continued to do the bulk of his caring – lifting, carrying, cleaning, feeding, changing and dressing him, laundering his clothes, administering his drugs, keeping him amused and stimulated, boosting his spirit and stopping him from dying. The only respite she had was early in the morning when she left to visit Pablito’s flat, where she did much of the same for him.

  Pablito continued to languish in despair, despite having had the immediate threat of police charges lifted. I’d visited his boss at the petrol station, who agreed not to pursue the matter of the stolen two grand, provided that I repaid the money and that he never clapped eyes on my brother again.

  In return for helping him, I demanded that Pablito get out of his flat and look for a job, which he did for a short time, but without much conviction or success. I also persuaded him to visit Papa, but he didn’t stay for long and he left obviously trauma-tised, his eyes swollen and red.

  I’d already decided I was leaving the paper, so I had no misgivings about leaving Uli or Kevin in the lurch. I hadn’t yet told anyone of my decision to quit – that conversation could wait until later – only that I’d be taking an extended period of compassionate leave. The paper had a small regional office in Glasgow, and I’d agreed to work the odd day from there if there was an emergency.

  Mama had taken to leaving the house to visit Pablito before Papa was awake, so I looked in on him every morning. It became a ritual for me, knocking gently on his bedroom door and edging my head around as he was waking up, helping him to sit upright and plumping up his pillows to give him support before serving his breakfast on a tray.

  On the first morning I made him a boiled egg with soldiers and a cup of tea, rather than his customary fresh coffee and churros. He seemed to enjoy it. As he ate, I perched on the edge of the bed and we talked. I had never felt completely relaxed in his company, and the prospect of his death made things more tense. It hadn’t occurred to me how difficult it would be to hold an ordinary conversation with him, knowing that he knew he was dying. Compared with the unspoken issue that hovered between us, any topic seemed trite and immaterial – the weather, the consistency of his egg yolk and the strength of his coffee, how well he’d slept, his plans for the day.

  I made to leave, and he smiled, which made me nervous because I hadn’t seen him smile for such a long time.

  ‘You are good boy,’ he said quietly.

  I hovered at the end of the bed, half-standing, half-sitting, unsure of what to do, whether to interpret it as a off the cuff observation or as a belated attempt to instigate some closer connection between us.

  ‘I wish you’d told me a bit more often,’ I said.

  He raised his skeletal hand and waved it downwards. ‘You go now. I wanna sleep.’

  Mama was looking forward to the family being together at Christmas for the first time in years. She told us to forget about Papa’s illness and concentrate on having a good time. I spent several days ferrying her around the little continental food shops that she and Papa had unearthed and patronised over the years, so that she could buy all the esoteric ingredients she’d need to create an authentic Spanish Christmas.

  We stocked up on several kilos of seafood and a bream – to be baked and eaten with potatoes – as well as a large leg of lamb that Mama planned to roast with tomatoes and paprika. We bought toasted almonds and marzipan, and I talked Mama into choosing a couple of bottles of cava to drink chilled, when Papa was out of sight.

  Ben flew up from London to spend a couple of days with us the week before Christmas. When he was young, Ben had told me he was frightened of his abuelo. Now it was Papa who looked alarmed at the sight of his grandson, dressed in a long black leather coat and wearing studded cuffs and a large silver pentagram hanging around his neck.

  Ben took time every day to sit on the end of Papa’s bed an
d try to have a conversation with him, which wasn’t easy given that he was now virtually comatose with morphine. Cheryl, he informed me, was spending Christmas with Connie and her husband. Ben had planned to stay at his girlfriend’s family’s house, but he offered to remain with us in Glasgow instead.

  ‘That’s okay, Ben, but thanks for offering,’ I told him. It was obvious he was mightily relieved, but I appreciated the gesture nevertheless. I hugged him close and planted a kiss on the top of his head.

  It was a peculiar feeling, preparing for a Christmas at home with my parents for the first time in almost thirty years. Choosing a Christmas present for Papa was upsetting. I wandered the city-centre shops, contemplating the purchase of clothes I knew he’d never wear, books he’d never read, music he’d never listen to. I opted for a multi-pack of pure silk socks from Marks and Spencer on the principle that, even if he didn’t wear them, he’d appreciate their sartorial value. It also occurred to me fleetingly and, at a deeper, almost subliminal level, that I had the same size feet as him and was in need of new socks.

  Mama was up before anyone on the morning of Christmas Eve, cleaning the house and preparing the meal. I was awake early but chose to lie in bed for a couple of hours longer, staring at the ceiling. My life promised to be significantly different in the coming year – Papa would die, and I’d have to decide how I’d feel about it; my marriage was over; Ben might or might not be at university; and I’d be out of a job. Of all the changes that were coming, what worried me most was not the certain grief, loneliness, or shortage of cash, but the loss of control over my life, which until now had been built of what I believed to be certainties. I was throwing a pack of cards in the air, unsure of where they would land.

  I showered and dressed and helped Papa walk downstairs. I lowered him on to the settee in the living-room and swaddled him in a duvet. He sat expressionless, his eyes flickering as though he was doing his best to stay awake.

  Pablito arrived shortly after midday, smelling of stale drink. It didn’t take him long to discover the cava, and after a few glasses his mood became spirited and expansive. He sang a few verses of ‘Viva el vino y las mujeres’ by Manolo Escobar, and even managed to get Papa to smile.

  We decided to eat mid-afternoon rather than waiting until the evening, as was customary, as we knew Papa would be too tired by then. Mama set all the courses out on a coffee table in the living room. I tried to assist her but she insisted on doing everything herself.

  ‘You are a man, you sit down.’

  ‘Mama, let me help,’ I pleaded. ‘Modern Spanish women don’t think like that.’

  ‘What do I know how modern Spanish women think?’

  Papa picked at some of the seafood and a few pieces of lettuce while we tucked in to everything else. The one thing I appreciated more than anything about staying with my parents was the home-cooked food, and I set about the fish and meat with gusto. The highlight of Papa’s day seemed to be the single cigarette he was permitted after his meal. The consultant had told Mama that, while he shouldn’t be encouraged to smoke, he was beyond the stage where the occasional fag could do him harm.

  After the meal, presents were unwrapped with as much ceremony as we could muster. Papa considered his socks uninter-estedly and dropped them at his side without comment. Mama unwrapped a tube of cheap face cream she’d bought as a present to herself from Papa and feigned surprise and delight. I unwrapped the suit carrier she’d bought me and mentally stored it alongside the foldaway coathanger, the plug-in teacup element, the mini-alarm clock and the countless other travel-related products she’d bought for me every birthday and Christmas since I could remember.

  It was mid-afternoon and still daylight when Papa said he was tired and wanted to return to bed. Pablito and I carried him upstairs. After Pablito returned to the living-room I hung back to make sure Papa was comfortable.

  ‘Did you have a nice day?’ I asked when he was settled.

  He nodded slowly.

  ‘You no bring egg tae me this morning,’ he reprimanded me.

  I laughed. ‘Papa, it’s Christmas.’

  ‘I still like egg.’

  I sat on the edge of his bed as he dozed, and I tried to guess how long he had and how much of a relief it would be when his time came. I hadn’t mentioned the email from Mexico, but it continued to prey on my mind. Should I ask him about it or should I let it lie? Was it too late to mean anything to him? I couldn’t understand why he appeared willing to see out his life with such an important part of his past unresolved.

  ‘You remember the scientists in Spain that I told you about, Papa? The ones who recover the bodies?’

  He turned his head slowly towards me.

  ‘They can also help to find relatives who are still alive.’

  He looked pained. ‘And I was thinking, what if Paco didn’t die after you left him in Barcelona? What if he survived?’

  He smiled lazily. ‘Paco is dead.’

  ‘They have a website that has thousands of names of people who lost relatives during the Civil War, and it helps them to reunite if they are still alive.’

  ‘Paco is dead.’

  ‘But you don’t know that. You just assume that because you lost touch.’

  He tried to lift a hand to wave me away, but he didn’t have the energy, and he closed his eyes. ‘I know,’ he said quietly.

  I bent down to kiss the side of his face. A tear had rolled down his cheek.

  ‘Have you had a happy life, Papa?’ I asked him.

  He sighed. ‘You know when I am happiest?’

  ‘No, when?’

  ‘When I am in Tangier.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Because I can still see Spain across the water.’

  I returned downstairs. Mama had made coffee that Pablito had laced with cheap brandy from the off-licence. The television was on, but both of them were asleep. I sat and sipped at my coffee, thinking about what Papa had said. I remembered what Cheryl had told me in the supermarket canteen – that, unlike mine, his actions could be excused because he was still affected by the war.

  I considered myself, Pablito and Mama – a self-absorbed workaholic, a dysfunctional semi-inebriate and an exhausted old woman doing her best to keep the whole charade going – and it occurred to me that Cheryl was wrong. The reality was that all of us, in our own ways, continued to bear the scars of the war.

  Kevin rang my mobile phone early on Christmas morning, ordering me to take part in a conference call with Uli, from the Glasgow office, within an hour. Uli was keen to start the new year by announcing the paper’s move to China, hence the urgency of calling me on Christmas Day, he said. I suspected pissing me off was also an added bonus for him. I didn’t have time to make Papa’s boiled egg, and when I popped my head around his bedroom door he was fast asleep, so I decided to leave him.

  I had a keen sense of the reception that awaited me, and, as expected, the conference call was terse. Uli was in a foul mood because I wouldn’t commit to returning to London to handle the media storm that would inevitably be prompted by the announcement of the move. He threatened me with the sack. I told him I’d take him to the cleaners at a tribunal. I also told him I was taping the conversation, which I wasn’t, but it was fun hearing him squirm. Knowing that I was leaving anyway gave me a warming sense of empowerment.

  I came away from the call smiling. I hadn’t felt so cheerful in ages, and I was looking forward to talking with Papa. His reaction to my suggestion of trying to track down his relatives had, I felt, actually been quite positive. He’d dismissed it, but not as vehemently as I’d feared, and I certainly thought it was worth pursuing. I resolved that I would tell him I’d been contacted by Montserrat from Mexico.

  It was the middle of the afternoon and the city centre was post-apocalyptically quiet, so I had no trouble hailing a taxi. The cab approached my parents house’ just in time for me to see an ambulance disappear around the corner at the end of the street. I told the cab driver to wait and m
ade my way into the house, which was eerily quiet. I hurried upstairs and opened the door into Papa’s bedroom. The duvet and top sheet were stripped back, and the window was wide open. Biting cold air was blowing into the room.

  22

  I stood by the graveside, shivering in the chill of the afternoon. It had been pleasantly warm when I left the hotel in Barcelona earlier in the morning, and I was surprised at how much the temperature dropped the further I drove into the mountains.

  I’d fallen in love with Collbató the moment I saw it – a fairytale hamlet nestling at the foot of the silver-grey range, halfway between Barcelona and Lerida, dotted with whitewashed stucco villas and polished pitch-pine chalets. The countryside around it was wooded and lush, and it was difficult to imagine this was the same country that housed the dustbowl of Andalusia.

  My family had no connection with the village, but we’d stopped here on a coffee break following Papa’s arrest in Alguaire, and I remembered the picturesque cemetery on its gentle slope, enclosed within a square of drystone and flanked by fir trees and tall black pines.

  I stood alone, waiting for the priest to arrive. Fermin had asked whether I wanted a humanist celebrant – many of the people the Association dealt with were the relatives of atheists and didn’t want a religious service. Mama didn’t know if Papa’s parents had been religious, so I opted for a Catholic priest to be on the safe side. Papa never went to church, but he had always been tolerant of Mama’s faith.

  The service was supposed to have started ten minutes earlier – typical Spanish efficiency, I thought – but there didn’t appear to be another funeral party waiting to follow us. After another ten minutes or so a small red car drew up outside the gates and a priest got out. He was youthful – I didn’t know why, but I’d been expecting an older man – and he wore a black cassock and an expensive-looking pair of designer glasses. He walked briskly towards me, smiling, and shook me firmly by the hand.

  ‘How do you do? I’m Father Carballo. I’m sorry I’m late. I was held up making arrangements for a wedding in the cathedral in Lerida,’ he said in English.