The Summer Snow

by Rebecca Pawel

  “No,” Señora de Encinas shook her head. “We would have loved to pass along the clinic to Cristina, but she was a surgeon. She had just earned a post at the university hospital here. Ubaldo was sorry she wasn’t interested in the home, I think, but I was so proud of her. I’d wanted to be a doctor, but when I was a girl it wasn’t possible. . . .” She trailed off, her eyes tear bright.

  Elena silently watched her grief, remembering a friend—had it been Cristina or someone else?—from her years at the university saying exultantly, “Nowadays we can do anything!” Cristina’s mother took a deep breath and spoke almost steadily. “After—the government changed—we thought maybe it was for the best. The church had never liked our work, but we thought, since Cristina wasn’t involved with the home, they’d have nothing against her. We’d hoped . . .” She closed her eyes and remembered that she was speaking to a stranger, albeit a sympathetic one. “We’ve been very lucky,” she finished piously. “Ubaldo is up for parole soon. He has friends who’ve interceded for him. And Félix and his family are doing well.”

  Parole, Elena thought. Ubaldo Encinas must be nearly seventy. If he had been arrested at the outbreak of the war as a city official, which seemed likely, he had spent nearly ten years in prison. And they’re the lucky ones. Señora de Encinas was asking her now about her own life, with kind courtesy. Elena was accustomed to embarrassment about her husband’s profession, but now she found herself admitting to the bare fact of marriage and motherhood almost regretfully. We were going to do so much more, she thought. To be so much more. Horrified at her own disloyalty to Toño and Carlos, she crushed her thoughts and began looking for a graceful way to end the visit.

  Elena had just risen to her feet and begun her farewells when the door to the courtyard opened and a boy of about sixteen came toward them with hurried steps. Señora de Encinas presented him. “My grandson, Baldo. This is Elena Fernández. She was a friend of your aunt’s in Madrid.”

  Baldo supported the introduction as well as could be expected for a shy adolescent. His grandmother explained that he was currently employed as a delivery boy and messenger for El Ideal. “And he hopes to be a reporter soon.” His presence delayed Elena’s departure, but only by a few minutes. When she again began to leave, Baldo spoke up, a bit nervously. “I could go with you a little ways, Señora. Since you’re new to the city. And maybe show you some of the sites. This is a very old neighborhood. Very historic.”

  Elena had no particular desire for an escort, and her visit to the Encinas family had depressed her, but she did not want to hurt Baldo’s feelings, or injure his grandmother’s. She accepted with as good a grace as possible and set out with Baldo by her side.

  The boy was silent as they left his home, and Elena was beginning to think that he was going to be too shy to make good his promise of showing her the sites when he coughed and said, in a slightly furtive tone, “Señora Fernández, can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.” Elena liked children, even older ones, and she smiled at him encouragingly.

  He gulped and fell into step beside her. “You—you said you were a friend of Tía Cristina’s?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you—” The boy turned a deep shade of red. “Do you know anything about her? About what happened to her?”

  “Only what your grandmother told me.” Elena was puzzled.

  “What did she say?” His voice was sharp.

  “She didn’t tell me much.” Elena frowned, seeking a gentle way to remind the boy that asking for details was against the unwritten code.

  Baldo hesitated. “Could . . . could you help me find out what happened to her?”

  “Surely your family—” Elena began.

  “They all say she’s dead,” the boy interrupted. “But I know she’s not.” Seeing that Elena looked skeptical, he plunged on. “Look, there wasn’t ever a funeral or anything. No body. No news from the police.”

  Elena opened her mouth to explain to him that all over Spain people were waiting for a body or official notification that would never come and found she had no words to tell a grieving boy the truth. “Sometimes in wartime—” she began, seeking for one of her husband’s phrases.

  “It wasn’t like that!” There was almost a sob in Baldo’s voice. “Look, I know you mean you think she was shot up by the cemetery walls, like Julián’s dad and the mayor and all those others, but listen, she knew they were coming. The night she left, I woke up because I heard my parents and my grandparents arguing about it. And Grandpa was saying she hadn’t done anything wrong and she shouldn’t run, and Grandma was crying, and I wanted to get up and get a drink of water, because I hoped they would stop yelling. But I was too scared to get out of bed. And then the door opened.” Baldo closed his eyes, as if reliving the scene. “And Tía Cristina was there. She was dressed like she was going out to make a house call. And she just stood there in the doorway for a second, outlined, and I sat up in bed. And then she came over and hugged me and said she had to go away for a little while but that I should be a good boy and she would come back. Then she left.” Baldo swallowed. “And they didn’t arrive looking for her until a few hours later. So I know she got away.”

  Elena’s memories of Madrid were very near the surface and she realized unwillingly that Baldo was the age of many of her students. How many of them lived through that? she wondered. “Be a good boy and I’ll be right back.” How many of them are still waiting? “After all these years,” she murmured, “don’t you think she would have sent you a message?”

  “Maybe she went to France.” Baldo’s face lit up as Elena tacitly conceded his version of his aunt’s disappearance. “Maybe she couldn’t write until now. But now that the war’s over . . .”

  Elena knew it was a fool’s errand. Her friend was dead, and it was wrong to let the boy think anything else. But Cristina had been a vivid, laughing, daring personality, and it was difficult to imagine her vitality snuffed out, decomposing in an anonymous lime pit along with countless others. Perhaps she had managed to stay one step ahead of the Fascists who had sought her death—either for her politics or because she was a woman who had dared to trespass in a man’s profession. Elena doubted that the Guardia had accurate records of everything that had taken place at the outbreak of the war. Too many people were too invested in forgetting what had happened. But it would not hurt to try. “I . . . know someone who could look at the official records,” she admitted. “I’ll try to see what I can find out.”

  Baldo gave a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank you, Señora. Thank you so much. But you won’t tell my parents or my grandparents, will you? They get angry when I mention it.”

  “No,” Elena promised. “I’ll try to let you know directly.”

  “You can leave a message for me at El Ideal’s offices,” Baldo offered. “And listen, one thing that might help, if you can really look at the records. Find out what happened to Dr. Esteban Beltrán.”

  “Esteban Beltrán,” Elena repeated. “Who’s he?”

  “He was a doctor at the same hospital as Tía Cristina,” Baldo explained. “And he came to dinner a few times, and he used to bring bonbons. I thought they were for me when I was a kid, but I remember my mother joking with Tía Cristina about ‘your friend Esteban’ and I thought maybe he really brought them for her, because they were . . . well, close. So maybe if he went abroad, she went with him.”

  Elena sighed. Baldo had worked out an entire fantasy, perhaps even complete with little cousins he had never met. She did not know whether it would be kindness or cruelty to confirm for him that the aunt who had passed him candy from her lover and the man who had courted her were both long dead. But she had given her word. “All right. I can’t promise you anything. But if I find out anything about Cristina or about this Dr. Beltrán, I’ll let you know. Where are El Ideal’s offices?”

  Baldo gave her directions with almost feverish eagerness, and then added, a little apologetically, that he needed to run back to work. “
I had to run a message to the Calle Elvira, and I wanted to check in on Grandma on the way back,” he explained. “But if I’m away too long they’ll wonder.”

  “Run then,” Elena commanded. “It would be a shame to jeopardize your career when you have the makings of such a fine journalist.”

  Baldo flushed. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re good at research,” Elena explained.

  “Oh. Thanks.” The boy scuffed his heel. “I guess. But someday I want to write, you know. Really write, I mean. You think I can still do that, even though I didn’t finish school?”

  “Absolutely.” Elena spoke without hesitation. “Now run.”

  Baldo ran, after a final thanks that encompassed her assistance in finding out Cristina’s fate and her encouragement of his literary ambitions. Elena returned to the Tejadas’ home thoughtful. Her husband would be less than pleased to hear about her morning, and he was likely to firmly negate any request to check the Guardia’s records for mention of Cristina Encinas. In Potes she would have been able to speak to the parish priest, and if he had been unable to help he would have leaned on the mayor, who was his cousin. But here in Granada she could only act with Carlos as her proxy. And he was likely to tell her to let well enough alone. He won’t want me upsetting his mother by knowing “that sort of person,” she thought with a flash of anger. He won’t want to get the Guardia involved, even if definite word could put an end to a family’s private hell. Her annoyance at her husband’s probable opposition made her more and more sympathetic to Baldo.

  Chapter 13

  Elena arrived a little before lunch, anxious to discuss the question of Cristina Encinas’s fate with her husband, but he was distressed and annoyed when he returned to his parents’ home, and Elena had no chance to speak to him alone before he disappeared into his father’s study after the meal, and then hurried back to the post. When she went to put Toño down for his nap after lunch she found Carmen Llorente waiting for her.

  Elena had temporarily forgotten Carmen’s request to speak to her, but confronted by the woman’s silent reminder she reluctantly put aside her worries about her promise to Baldo Encinas. Carmen observed Elena as she prepared Toño for sleep, never offering assistance, but wordlessly picking up the toys the little boy had left out in his room, and straightening the clothing that Elena had carelessly folded. When Elena left the child’s room, Carmen followed her, head respectfully bowed. “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Señora.”

  Elena winced. She remembered Carmen talking to her with the friendly superiority of an older woman and a mother addressing a younger, unmarried one, and Carmen’s present punctilious formality depressed her. Carmen saw her involuntary wince and added hastily, “If you’re tired now, Señora, you can send for me at any time. I do appreciate the favor.”

  “No, no, we can talk now.” Elena wistfully recalled a grim November afternoon during the war when Carmen and Aleja had shared a crowded streetcar in Madrid with her. “Sit, hija,” Carmen had commanded her, pointing to the only available seat. “You’re on your feet all day running after the kids.”

  “And you’re not on your feet?” Elena had retorted. In the end, Aleja had taken the seat.

  Now, listening to the maid’s polite deference, Elena realized she had been foolish to hope that Alejandra’s mother would refer to their previous acquaintance. None of the Tejadas knew that Alejandra had been Elena’s student long before the lieutenant had taken responsibility for her after he had murdered her aunt. They did not know that Carmen had been a Red, although perhaps they suspected something. Carmen doubtless hoped for anonymity in her new home. Besides, Elena thought sadly, I betrayed her. I married a man who destroyed everything and everyone she loved, and then tried to soothe his conscience by making her his dependent. At least he has taken care of her though, and she never had any reason to think well of him. But she used to believe I was different. Why should she or Alejandra ever want to lay eyes on me again? Why should Baldo or his grandmother trust me? I’ve become one of Them.

  Elena wondered a little nervously what the older woman wanted to tell her or ask her. Perhaps Carmen merely wanted Elena to relay a message to the lieutenant.

  “Why don’t we go into my room?” Elena suggested, since the other woman seemed hesitant how to begin. “We can sit there, and no one will disturb us.”

  “Thank you.” But even when they were sitting with the door closed, Carmen was still unable to begin. “Maybe the lieutenant would be the one to speak to, actually, Señora. But since I saw you . . . and besides Aleja always liked you.”

  “Aleja?” Elena asked.

  “Yes.” Carmen took a handkerchief from her pocket and began to nervously tie knots in it. “The lieutenant’s been so good to Aleja. Paying for her schooling all these years. At the same school as Señorita Marta and everything. She’s had so many opportunities. More than she would ever have had without his help. It’s just that now . . .” She paused, and Elena, who had gained some experience of the problems of schooling, half guessed what was coming next. She remained sympathetically silent, and Carmen continued, “She’s going to be fourteen this May. I haven’t said anything, because I didn’t know if Lieutenant Tejada had thought about it, but . . .”

  “She can study for the baccalaureate,” Elena assured her. She knew that her husband would pay for the rest of Alejandra’s education without a murmur, but should she be proud or ashamed of the reason he would do so. “And university is free for war orphans, if she has the grades.”

  “University!” Carmen’s laugh was half a sob. “Oh, God, her father would have been so proud of her. He wanted his daughter to have a high school degree and work in an office. There was a stationery store with a typewriter in the window on the Ronda de Atocha, and he used to push her carriage past it every Sunday and say, ‘Someday my baby is going to know how to work that thing.’” She hastily unknotted her handkerchief and brought it to her eyes.

  “She’ll learn.” Elena put one arm around Carmen’s quivering shoulders, and prayed that she was telling the truth. Alejandra’s education, Elena realized, would purchase not only her husband’s peace of mind but her own. “It’s no problem. You shouldn’t have worried.”

  Carmen shook her head. “No. It’s Aleja that’s the problem. She says she won’t study for the baccalaureate. That she wants to get a job when the school year’s over.”

  “What?” Elena was confused. “But why?”

  “She says school is useless.” Carmen looked down at her hands. “That it’s all lies and fairy tales and has nothing to do with the real world. And that she hates it.” Elena stared, incredulous, remembering Alejandra’s glee at memorizing the times tables before anyone else in the class, her enthusiasm for history, and her eager interest in science. For a split second it seemed to her that the most evil outcome the Civil War had not been the death and destruction that had engulfed Aleja’s world, but the extinction of her love of learning. Then the world came back into perspective, and Alejandra was once more an incredibly lucky girl to have a place to live and enough to eat. Carmen was still talking. “I’ve reasoned with her, pleaded with her, even screamed at her. But it’s no good. She hates school and she won’t go back. ‘I was working at her age and why shouldn’t she? There’s no point in going to school anyway,’” is what she says.

  “Do you want me to speak with her?” Elena asked.

  “Would you?” Carmen spoke with pathetic eagerness. “You’re educated. You even went to university. You can tell her that it’s a good thing for a woman. She could become a teacher, like you. Or a nurse. Tell her she shouldn’t throw away her opportunities.”

  She can become a teacher, Elena thought. And then marry, and then become . . . like me. Or not marry, like Cristina. A Fascist’s wife or a nameless grave. Why should she listen to anything I say? “Of course I’ll speak to her,” Elena said. “But . . . I assume her grades are all right?”

  “She gets Bs and Cs,” Carmen reassured her. “She
failed History last year, because she said she didn’t like the teacher, but she’s made up the work.” Elena winced. Alejandra had been an A student in the midst of bombardment and starvation in Madrid. She felt her confidence ebb further as Carmen added, with painful honesty, “The thing is, she’s refused to attend mass for the last quarter. The sisters have said that they’ll expel her if she doesn’t start going next semester. And they say that she’s sullen and uncooperative in all her classes. Can’t you urge her to at least go to mass?”

  Elena’s discomfort grew to alarm. She had been proud of teaching in a completely secular school but she had always believed that religion was a matter of private conscience, and that a student’s private beliefs should be respected. (This attitude had in fact led to arguments with her more vigorously anticlerical colleagues during the war years and still provided fuel for a running debate with Father Bernardo in Potes.) The idea of convincing an unwilling student to attend mass was repugnant to her. “I don’t suppose another school . . .” she began doubtfully.

  Carmen shook her head. “It’s the same everywhere, Señora.”

  Elena bowed to the inevitable. “I’ll speak to her.”

  “Now?” asked Carmen. “She should be upstairs.”

  Elena hesitated. She would have liked a chance to ask her husband for ideas on how best to approach Alejandra. But in the face of Carmen’s desperation, Elena knew there was only one thing to do. “I can’t promise anything,” she said, rising. “But I’ll go and have a chat with her.”

  Carmen and her daughter shared an attic room, up a flight of stairs that was steep enough to make Elena breathless. She paused a moment on the landing to catch her breath before knocking. “Come in!” Alejandra called.

  Elena squared her shoulders and then pushed open the door. She was standing in a room with a sloping roof, illuminated only by a skylight. The open door brushed against the foot of a neatly made single bed pushed against the wall in one corner of the room. Alejandra was leaning against the headboard of the other bed, with a textbook braced against her raised knees to form a makeshift desk. Her book bag and other textbooks were lying on the bedspread in front of her. The girl’s eyes widened when she saw who it was, and she put aside her textbook and pen, and slid off the bed to bob a curtsy. “Hello, Señora Fernández. Did you need me for something?”