The Awakening

by Allen Johnson

  Diego noticed one other thing: The white shirt of the defender of Madrid was open at the neck and chest. Perhaps the Spanish hero had torn open his shirt, giving the invaders a clear target of his heart.

  “The man in the painting reminds me of you, Juanito.”

  “No. That is too great an honor, Diego. I would like to have his nobility; it would be a heroic way to die. But I am just a simple man with too many books and an incurable addiction to breathing.”

  “I think it is the saddest thing I have ever seen.”

  “It is a picture of courage in the face of brutality.”

  “How can such things happen?”

  “That is the world we live in. The French soldiers were no doubt duped by their commanders—convinced that they were liberating Spain. But never forget this, Diego: When tyrants talk about going to war for freedom, the real reason is power.”

  “It is strange to me. When I look at his face—the man before the firing squad—he looks both terrified and courageous.”

  “He is a man. Naturally, he wants to live. But he is also willing to die for his principles. In the end, I see him as a man at peace.”

  That began a new conversation. Diego had an entire theory about the state of peace. The two men returned to the kitchen, and Juanito searched for a book.

  “Ah, here it is,” he said, pulling out a leather-bound book from a precarious stack of volumes. “This is the first book that I ever owned and, forty-five years later, it is still my favorite. It was a gift from my father, who was a very learned man. Have I told you about him?”

  “No, you have not. What did he do?”

  “He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Granada. I did not follow his profession, but I did inherit his passion for books; most of these belonged to him.”

  “Is he still living?”

  “No, he is gone now, which is probably just as well; he could never tolerate the kind of political and religious hypocrisy that permeates our Republic today.” He opened the book’s cover. “Would you like to hear my father’s inscription?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Juanito read his father’s dedication very slowly with a kind of reverence that touched Diego.

  My Dear Juanito:

  Think deeply,

  Love profoundly,

  Serve completely,

  And peace will be

  Your recompense.

  Your Loving Father

  December, 1896

  “Your father sounds like he was a great man.”

  “With the possible exception of you, my friend, he was the most virtuous man I ever knew. He was greatly influenced by this tome,” he said, patting the cover of the treasured book.

  “What is it called?”

  “It is entitled Pencées by Blaise Pascal. Have you heard of it?”

  Diego was beginning to feel as ignorant as a stone. “I am ashamed to say that I have not.”

  “Ah, then you will have the exquisite joy of hearing his words for the first time. He was a French philosopher who lived three hundred years ago and talked a great deal about faith and human suffering. There is something that I want you to hear; it addresses my father’s dedication.” Juanito thumbed through the book. “Yes, here it is. Listen to this: ‘All the unhappiness of man stems from one thing only: He is incapable of staying quietly in his room.’”

  Diego shook his head. “What does it mean?”

  “Ask yourself this, Diego: What would happen if you sat quietly in your room? What would you think about?”

  Diego pondered a moment and then smiled. “I would think about Lupe. I would think about my father. I would think about the things that are good.”

  “Precisely. You would think about the things that are good. You asked me about peace. That is the first step to peace: to be silent. When we are silent, we hear the voice of wisdom that lives in us all.”

  “And when you hear that voice, what happens?”

  “Silence always leads to love, and love leads to charity, and charity leads to peace. That is what I wanted to tell you. For me nothing is more important. It is everything: The essence of transcendence.”

  Diego repeated the words. “Silence, love, charity, peace.” He puzzled for a moment. “I am a poor man, Juanito; I can barely eke out a living as it is. How can I afford to be charitable? I have nothing to give.”

  “Charity is not surrendering a few pesetas to a beggar and then dusting your hands with self-satisfaction. That is not charity; that is dishonesty. Charity is giving yourself—your talents, your knowledge, your love—to another human being. My father used the word ‘service.’ That is the charity that summons peace.”

  THAT YEAR IN GRANADA WAS not easy. Many times, the lovers ate only one meal a day. Sometimes, usually on Sunday, Lupe would fry a skillet of paella flavored with a little salt and perhaps a few diced wild asparagus or, after a hard rain, a dozen snails that Diego found on his walk back from work.

  More often, their meal for the evening was a simple soup. Lupe would slice and toast a section of French bread. Then she would rub a little garlic over the slices and place the morsels in soup bowls. Over the bread she would pour hot water seasoned with thyme and salt. Finally, she would top each bowl with a lacing of olive oil.

  After dinner, Diego invariably thanked his wife and said that she could do wonders with nothing.

  After six months, Lupe found work as a seamstress, working from dawn to dusk for thirty-five cents a day. Her work eased the burden of expenses, but the days were long, and Diego thought he saw the brightness in her eyes dim just a little, and that was harder to bear than any number of sacks of grain hoisted on his back and hauled from loading dock to warehouse.

  The lovers lived for Sundays. The day was theirs to do as they pleased, and it was heaven. They would sleep in late, but not too late, for if they were asleep, they could not lie in each other’s arms and declare their love. Then, too, there was much to be done. The apartment needed to be painted and the loose boards renailed.

  They purchased a second-hand oil lantern that, when ignited, drove the shadows to the ceiling, giving the room a domed luminosity. Sometimes, they sat at the table in the lantern glow and talked quietly about their dreams and ambitions. But more often, they preferred to leave the apartment after dinner and go for a long, leisurely walk, looking in shop windows and exclaiming their preferences for this dress or that armchair. Sometimes, just for fun, they called the display mannequins by name, commenting how “Maria was looking a little stiff this evening.”

  Often, their nightly stroll took them past the Granada cathedral. They no longer attended mass—partly because Sunday was too precious to squander within the cold walls, but mostly because Diego had a stomach full of rancor for the church and its clergy.

  On one of their outings, Francisco stepped out of the church as the couple walked past the cathedral. The brothers exchanged glances; then Diego took Lupe’s arm and reversed their course.

  Lupe’s eighteenth birthday was on January 5, 1936, and Diego wanted to make it a very special day. He thought it appropriate that Lupe’s birthdate fell on the eve of the Festival of the Three Kings. Lupe was God’s gift to him; he wanted to celebrate the day with a wonderful gift for her.

  As luck would have it, Lupe’s birthday arrived on a Sunday, so they would have the entire day together. Diego had a plan. In fact, he and Juanito had been working on the scheme for over three months. But, to put his surprise into place, he had to get Lupe out of the house; he had an idea for that as well.

  All day Sunday, Diego pretended that he had forgotten his wife’s birthday. In the late morning after breakfast, he noticed that Lupe was pouting just a little, and he almost gave away the surprise.

  Finally, in the evening, Diego suggested the two go for a walk. As usual, they passed by the cathedral—this time just as the bells were calling the people to mass.

  Diego stopped. “Lupe, do you miss going to mass?” he asked.

  Lu
pe looked carefully at Diego. She knew how her husband felt about the church, so the question seemed odd. “Yes,” she said truthfully, “sometimes I do. Sometimes I miss it very much.”

  “Why do you not go to mass tonight?”

  “Really? Will you come?”

  “You know I cannot.”

  “Then I do not want to go either.”

  Diego insisted. “I want you to go. It will be good for you. Please.”

  “All right, I will then. I will see you at the apartment in an hour.” Lupe licked the tips of her fingers and tamped them across the cowlick on the crown of Diego’s head. It was useless; the hair sprung back like a green olive branch. “I love that tuft of hair.”

  “See you soon.”

  Diego kissed Lupe and watched her walk up the dozen steps and through the grand arched door. Then he turned and ran as fast as he could back to the apartment. Juanito was already waiting for him with the precious load protected under a tarp in the back of his livestock truck.

  “I am so glad to see you.”

  “I am glad to be seen,” Juanito said with an exaggerated bow, seizing his fedora from the back of the brim and flipping it down below his knees in a courtly flourish. “Do you have the mettle, my beaming lad, to put your shoulder to the task?”

  “Huh?”

  “Are you ready to go to work?”

  “Absolutely.”

  When the two had finished the job, Diego embraced his friend. “Juanito, you have rescued me again. How can I ever thank you?”

  “You do not need to thank me. You only need ‘grapple my friendship unto thy soul with hoops of steel.’”

  “You mean be your friend.”

  “I do indeed.”

  “That you have forever.”

  Diego quickly put the final touches on the room and then rushed down the three flights of stairs. He sat down on the front stoop and caught his breath. Then, seeing Lupe turn the corner on their narrow street, he leaned back and cupped both hands over one knee.

  “How was mass?” Diego asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

  “Very lovely. It felt good to be in God’s house again.”

  “Good. Are you ready to go to our house?”

  “Oh, I do not know. Why do we not walk a bit?”

  Diego could not possibly contain his excitement throughout a long, meandering stroll. “No, not tonight. I am feeling a little tired. Would you like to go upstairs and make love?”

  Lupe swatted Diego’s knee, and he pretended to be knocked off balance by the blow. “I thought you said you were feeling tired.”

  “I am, but not that tired.”

  The two walked hand in hand up the two flights of stairs, Diego’s heart beating with excitement. When they got to the front door, Diego unlocked the door and then turned to Lupe. “Now, I want you to close your eyes.”

  “Why? What is it?” she said, smiling an irrepressible smile.

  “No questions, please. Just do as I tell you.”

  Lupe placed her hands over her eyes, as Diego opened the door and led her into the center of the room.

  “Okay. You can open your eyes now.”

  Lupe took her hands from her eyes and gasped. The room was ablaze with candles of every description along the windowsill, around the table, and in every crevice of the room. And there, before her, was the most beautiful oak bed frame that she had ever seen. The arched headboard was over four-feet high with raised molding and a hand-rubbed oil finish. Lupe ran her hand along the rounded ridge of the footboard that featured a hand-carved bouquet of flowers centered on the outside surface. She followed the curve of the raised petals with her fingertips.

  “These are lilies,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion. “They are my favorite.”

  “I know that, silly.”

  Lupe turned and embraced her husband, not just with her arms, but with her whole being. “I love you.”

  “Happy birthday, Lupe.”

  “Oh, I love you; I love you; I love you.”

  Husband and wife stood there in the middle of the room, enlaced in each other’s arms, the flickering candlelights prancing over their bodies and across the ceiling. Then Lupe broke the embrace and turned to stroke the footboard again. “But how did you pay for it?”

  “I did not pay for it. I made it.”

  Lupe placed her hand over her mouth. “You made it! How did you do that?”

  “With the help of Juanito. He knew of a mill in Seville with discarded rough-hewn lumber. Juanito and I made the lumber work. We planed and sanded every board. Then I carved the lilies. That is why I have been coming home so late for the last three months.”

  Lupe again fell into her husband’s arms. “You are amazing. I love you so much.” Lupe took Diego’s hand and led him to the side of the bed where they both sat down. “Now, I have a surprise for you.”

  Perfectly silent, Lupe placed her husband’s hand on her stomach and looked into his eyes.

  “What?” Diego said, not quite getting it, but filled with curiosity.

  She patted his hand over her stomach. “Can you not guess?”

  The light dawned. “No, I cannot believe it.”

  Lupe nodded.

  “It is not true.”

  “Yes, it is true,” Lupe said. “Are you happy?”

  Diego enfolded his arms around Lupe. “I am not happy. I am overjoyed. It is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me.”

  “Really? And all this time, I thought I was the most wonderful thing in your life.”

  “You are. And he is too,” Diego said, placing his hands on the sides of Lupe’s stomach and kissing her belly again and again. “Buenas noches, my son.”

  “How can you be sure it is a boy?”

  “I can tell—just in the way you carry him. He is a boy.”

  Lupe laughed. “Right now, he is only a seed.”

  “And when will this seed be born?”

  “In late September.”

  “You know that?”

  “Yes”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Just as you know he is a boy: I can tell.”

  That night, lying in each other’s arms, Diego thought about his son and all that he would teach him—about olive trees and how to harness a mule and when to plant tomatoes and how to fall in love—and then, just before he drifted off to sleep, he began to worry about all the things that could go wrong when a child is born.

  He was suddenly struck by the weight of his ignorance. What did he know about pregnancies? What did he know about raising a child and protecting him from harm’s way? And how does a child learn to walk and talk? How does he become a man? In the darkened room, he was overtaken by self-doubt. What arrogance to think that he was ready to introduce his son to the world—a world that was hard and unforgiving.

  Then Diego looked down at Lupe, who was sleeping soundly on his shoulder. And there in her beautiful face were all the answers: All the strength, all the wisdom he needed would rise up from their united, undying love.

  Diego was sure that love was the answer. And still, perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of tradition, he whispered a small prayer of supplication.

  “Please, God. Let everything be all right.”

  ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1936, Spain went to the polls. It was a close election, the liberal Popular Front eking out a narrow victory over the conservative National Front. But in Granada the local papers announced the opposite results: the National Front was the victor over the party of the working class.

  The people were outraged, certain that the lopsided results were due to threats and manipulation by the conservative political bosses. There were confirmed accounts of people in the rural areas of the province being held off at gunpoint from the polling stations. The working class in Granada voiced their resentment loudly, organizing a protest for Sunday, March 8. Diego was part of that rally.

  The demonstration began at Granada’s Cármenes sports stadium. Diego had never
seen anything like it. Some say there were 100,000 people at the protest, all outraged about the injustices of the ruling class. There were many speakers, but Diego was most impressed with the socialist minister of education, Fernando de los Ríos, who was a popular professor of political law at the University of Granada; Diego had never heard anyone speak so eloquently about the rights of man.

  When Diego left the stadium, he walked briskly to a square that Juanito had designated as a meeting place for the loading-dock workers. His friend was already there, along with a dozen men from the stockyard, all of them talking animatedly—pointing fingers at each other and shaking their fists in the air.

  Juanito was the loudest of the group, immediately taking command of the small group. He expanded his chest, suddenly assuming the bearing of a man captured by a calling.

  “Marx was right,” Juanito proclaimed. “It is time for a classless society, a society that tends to the needs of the people. It is by the grace of our blood that the people are fed; it is by the mercy of our sweat that the nation is sheltered; it is by the compassion of our tears that the Republic survives. Our blood, our sweat, our tears. And yet, my brothers, we are treated like common slaves.”

  At this point, Juanito drew a red bandanna from his pocket and snapped it open. “This bandanna represents the blood, sweat, and tears of our struggle against oppression.” He held the scarf by opposing corners, gave it a whirl, and tied it around his neck. “I make this pledge: As long as greed denies our brothers a fair wage, as long as political power undermines our pursuit of happiness, as long as tyranny reigns from the Pyrenees to the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, I will wear this bandanna in protest.”

  The men cheered and slapped each other on the back.

  “Today, you have seen with your own eyes how the workers of Spain can unite. Today is an honorable day. We will march in the streets of Granada. We will rally the people. And we will win!”