Autumn in Catalonia

by Jane MacKenzie

  There was grieving in his voice, and it struck Carla that he must truly have loved his sister. And after she left he’d never seen her again. Life was very strange.

  A silence had fallen over them all. In the background there was the murmur of voices from the courtyard, with occasional bursts of laughter, but it didn’t touch them. Carla couldn’t tear her mind away from the image of Mama in Sant Galdric, frustrated and angry, and seeking a way out. Carla’s parents had a summer home in the hills above Sant Galdric, and you had to drive through the village to get there. Her mother, Joana, always kept her gaze straight ahead as their Mercedes made its way between the stone houses, skirting the square in front of the old church, and then on out again into the wooded country above.

  Toni, her mother’s factotum and driver, was from the village, and his mother had also worked for them – she’d run the summer house for a few years before her health broke down. Both of them would talk to Carla about the village, and their family and friends. But Carla had never once, in all of her twenty-three years, been allowed to go there herself. She’d known she had family there herself – her grandmother, her mother’s uncle, her great-grandmother even – but Toni and his mother were servants, they had their jobs to protect, so the information they gave her was sketchy, and in the face of complete silence from her parents she’d learnt not to ask questions.

  Only when she left home for university in Barcelona had Toni told her about her Uncle Josep, living now with his family also in Barcelona.

  ‘You could visit him,’ Toni had suggested. It seemed impossible, but gradually, as she basked in the freedom of a life away from her parents’ home, she’d finally come to believe that she could, and, using Toni’s directions, she’d one day found the courage to knock on Josep’s door.

  She looked across at Uncle Josep now, and found him watching her. She reached for his hand. ‘You lost a sister,’ she said to him, with more than an edge of bitterness, ‘but she lost much more. God knows how Mama could feel that what she now has was worth losing her family for! She could have got out of the village the same way you did – by working her way out. Instead she prostituted herself!’

  Luc frowned. ‘That’s harsh, Carla.’

  ‘Perhaps, but what else can you call it when a girl from a staunchly Republican family and village walks into the arms of the enemy in exchange for a soft life in Girona?’

  Luc’s gaze went to Josep, sitting across from him, his forehead knotted in distress, and he shook his head at Carla. She nodded, penitent. Whatever her own battles with her parents, to persist in this line with Josep was cruel. What was important was the discovery of her grandfather. An eminent journalist at the heart of the Republic! It was like a gift from the gods to have such a share in history laid at her feet. She gave her uncle a smile and squeezed the hand she still held under hers.

  ‘If Grandma tells you where your father is buried, I’d love to come with you to see his grave,’ she told him. ‘After you’ve been yourself, of course. Do you know where you used to live in Barcelona?’

  ‘Roughly,’ was the reply. ‘My mother told me we lived behind the cathedral. It was important to my father to live in the centre.’

  ‘Not far from where Luc lives, then! Find him, Uncle Josep! You’ve given me something to be proud of, something else than my own father’s politics!’

  Josep still looked grieved. The day of the dead hung over him, with its memories and its ghosts, and it took Neus’s return, with her brisk plans and comforting smile, to lift the trouble from his face. She brought extra sweets for the children, and surrounded them not only with their own three boys but all the neighbours’ children as well, and with his arms around his sons Josep became again the easy-hearted, family man who had helped to change Carla’s life.

  They took the boys with them, later, as they all headed out into the streets of Barcelona to walk among the holidaymakers and drink coffee near the port. We’re just normal Barcelona citizens, Carla thought, a family and two young lovers out to enjoy the evening. Every person around them had a history, every family here had its own complex story, but tonight was a holiday, and with Luc and Josep and Neus she could almost feel she belonged at last with the milling crowd.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Barcelona, 1934–1935

  Josep played as quietly as he could at the end of the long balcony. If he made any noise he would be sent inside, and once inside he wouldn’t be allowed to wave his sword around for fear of damaging the furniture. He was a medieval warrior, and there was a dragon lying dead on the floor beside him. There was another hiding just behind the wall, on the neighbour’s balcony, and it would come out any moment. He was poised and ready.

  Behind him, at the far end, Joana was sitting, also keeping quiet, watching as Papa and Uncle Luis sketched out on paper the outline of tomorrow’s newspaper. She was listening in to their conversation about politics, and later, when they were in bed, she would repeat it all to Josep. Sometimes he had to pretend to be asleep to stop her.

  The balcony was warm, soporifically warm, with no hint of a breeze to cool the summer’s morning, and the scent of jasmine and passion flower hung around them from the plants which Mama watered so lovingly every day. Below them the Barcelona street was two floors down, and they could hear all the people going by, and smell the coffee from the café opposite. It didn’t affect Papa and Uncle Luis, though. They had their heads down so intensely over their papers that the neighbours passing by went unacknowledged, and even a lazy bee droning around the table between the plants couldn’t make them look up.

  Mama came out onto the balcony with coffee, and finally the two men stopped talking. Joana slipped out of her seat to help Mama serve, and Josep left the dragons and came towards the table. There would be biscuits on the tray.

  Joana was placing a cup carefully by Uncle Luis’s elbow, and he reached out his arm and pulled her to him.

  ‘Thank you, carinyo,’ he said, as he hugged her around the waist. He gave her his biggest smile, and reached behind him to pluck a single passion flower from Mama’s precious plant. He tucked the flower behind her ear, sweeping her hair back as he did so.

  ‘How is my princess today?’ he asked, as he did every day.

  ‘Gràcies amable Senyor, thank you kind sir, I’m well,’ she replied, with a mock curtsy. Joana always liked to play these games with Uncle Luis.

  Luis turned round in his chair. ‘And you, young man? How is my Josep?’

  Josep came forward to be hugged, and Luis slipped an extra biscuit into his hand.

  ‘Him?’ Joana answered, dismissively. ‘All he thinks about are his stupid games!’

  ‘Yes, but that’s a mighty fine sword!’ Uncle Luis countered.

  ‘Papa made it for me – from one single piece of wood!’ Josep boasted, and got a broad grin from Papa before the two men turned back to continue their debate.

  ‘What do you think is going to happen to the unions, Maria?’ Papa was asking Mama. He always included Mama in their debates, even if some of his colleagues didn’t like it. The Republic had given women suffrage, he would say, and in this house women would be heard. Joana would lecture Josep that everyone had to respect their Mama, because she was not only Juan Vigo’s wife, she was also Luis Garriga’s sister, and Uncle Luis was the greatest journalist in Barcelona, who had even lived in Paris! Just smell his French eau de cologne, she used to tell Josep!

  Mama was taking her time to answer Papa, wrinkling her nose in thought before she spoke. It would get boring now, Josep thought, and moved back to the other end of the balcony, stuffing one of his biscuits into his pocket for later.

  ‘The right wing are cracking down,’ he could hear his father saying. ‘All in the name of democracy, of course.’ He sounded very troubled, which was strange. Juan Vigo was the most carefree of men, and viewed life as the happiest of adventures, so when he was serious you had to pay attention.

  ‘Have we come all this way in the Republic to give it all up now?�
�� he was continuing, in his crazy Andalucian accent, which Joana could mimic so well sometimes, and then Papa would chase her round the chairs.

  Mama finally answered, speaking in her usual thoughtful way, but just then the dragon emerged from hiding, breathing fire, and Josep forgot all about the grown-ups at the other end of the balcony.

  He couldn’t really exclude them, though – he knew that. There were strikes all over Spain against the new government, and threats of some kind of uprising in Barcelona. Papa and Uncle Luis became more and more busy, and often weren’t around, and then one day Joana and Josep came out of school and found Mama waiting for them. She took Josep’s hand, and ushered them through strangely empty streets to the house, which Maria locked up behind them, securing them inside with all the shutters closed. There was nothing happening that Joana and Josep could see, but Mama told them that there was going to be a major confrontation with the central government – a real battle, Josep thought, half excited, half terrified, with guns and bombs.

  ‘And where is Papa?’ he wanted to know. Maria shrugged, helplessly, and produced juice and cakes which Josep ate with scared eyes, and which Joana couldn’t even touch.

  That night they could hear the guns just a kilometre away. By morning it was quiet, with just a few sporadic shots from time to time. They waited, and waited, but there was no sign of either Uncle Luis or Papa. And it wasn’t until night had fallen again that one of their friends came to tell Maria that her brother had fled arrest, and her husband was in gaol.

  And after that there was no laughter in the house, and Mama spent her days visiting officials, trying to see Papa, who was somewhere they weren’t allowed to visit him. All the politicians and the fighters had been arrested too, it seemed. Joana asked lots of questions. How could it have happened when Papa had always told them things were going to be all right? It was Mama who had to explain everything now.

  ‘They all forgot about democracy, my dears,’ she told them both. ‘They all just wanted their own way. And what your Papa and Uncle Luis had been arguing for, debate and consensus, and the right to strike, and freedom of expression, well all of that has been forgotten for now. But we still have a democratic constitution, and we can vote these people out again one day, and Papa will come home.’

  ‘And Uncle Luis?’

  ‘Well, we don’t know where he is. He has probably gone back to France, and he’ll be fine in Paris, but he’ll come home too, just you wait and see. And Papa will be home before you know it. Many people are working to have him released. He wasn’t involved in the fighting, and the Governor knows that.’

  And after a long winter Papa did come home, but he wasn’t the same Papa any more. He’d been ill in prison, some kind of lung infection, Mama said, and he coughed, and wheezed, and had to pull himself out of his chair, and he no longer laughed and played with Joana and Josep. Mama told them to be patient, and Papa would get better, but one day Mama and Josep found him slumped in his chair, his face all the wrong shape, and Papa was dead.

  Josep lay in his bed in Barcelona with Neus by his side, unable to sleep. Should he have shared that with Carla this afternoon? Would it do her any good to know about her family’s past? Well it might not be doing him any good either, but it was as he’d said to Carla, since she’d come knocking on his door she had brought Joana back with her, and with her came all the other memories. When was it that their father had died? It must have been in the spring of 1935. And they’d moved up to Sant Galdric. Funny, but he had no memory of that move, only of already being there, in their grandmother’s house, and helping Uncle Victor with the sheep, and playing football endlessly with the other boys. It had been a good life for a young boy, and he hadn’t really felt any change in their schooling, for example, though he knew Joana had.

  Joana! What a dynamo she had been! And how she had hated being immured in Sant Galdric. It dawned on him that she must have missed their father dreadfully, and Uncle Luis. She’d idolised them both. His thoughts went back to the final time they’d seen Uncle Luis. It must have been a year or so after their move back to the village, and a left-wing government had been elected again, so Luis could come back to Spain.

  The boys looked up in unison from their game of marbles as the big black car glided slowly past them along the street. It was so seldom that a car came to Sant Galdric that all eyes were fixed on it. From where he sat on the side of the road Josep could only see the passenger, a woman wearing a black hat with some kind of lace over it. The car moved away, and as one the boys rose, watching as it made its way along the street and turned the corner into a side street. Together the boys ran to the corner to see where it was going, and as they reached it Jordi called out to Josep.

  ‘That’s your house it’s stopped at! Look!’

  The car had indeed stopped outside grandmother’s house, and the driver, a man, was ushering the lady in the hat inside the house. Josep stood watching, wondering what to do, but then like a bullet behind them came Joana.

  ‘Quickly, Josep, come quickly! Uncle Luis is here! It’s him driving that car!’ she gasped, and grabbed his arm as she carried on running.

  He followed her, not really taking in yet what she had said. Outside the house they both stopped, suddenly shy, and after staring into the car, gaping at the shiny upholstery and leather-covered steering wheel, they entered the house almost timidly, on tiptoe, as though they’d been caught out doing something wrong.

  They entered directly into the living area of the old village house, and sure enough, there he was, Uncle Luis, standing with a huge grin on his face, while Grandma Aina held him helplessly by both hands, and Mama stood by, twisting her apron in her hands as she waited her turn to touch him. Next to him stood the most elegant woman Josep had ever seen, fair and genteel in a simply cut skirt and jacket, and that funny confection of a hat, and with her hair curling over her peaches-and-cream face like the posters you saw of Hollywood actresses. She was so different from all the women Josep had ever seen in Spain that he wondered what she could be doing here.

  ‘Maria!’ Luis was saying, holding Mama tight, and then he turned and saw the children and his face broke into the smile he’d always kept for them, and they ran to him.

  ‘Look at you, little Josep, grown so big, and as for Joana, what a beauty you’ve become, vida meva!’ Luis exclaimed, and she blushed beetroot red. It brought a wave of memory back to Josep, because he was speaking in that caressing tone Papa used to use. Much as the village boys might run stupidly after her, it was against all their mother’s principles to pander to vanity, so no one in this house ever told Joana she was beautiful. Papa would have told her, but Papa wasn’t here.

  He felt all choked up, and noticed that Mama was crying, and he wondered if she too was feeling as though something terrible was lost in this little room.

  Luis was introducing his wife to them, and it took a moment before Josep realised that the person called Elise that he was talking about was the smart woman by his side. Uncle Luis was married? But he’d never been married! Josep stood staring stupidly until Mama called him to order, and then he stepped forward with Joana to shake the wife’s hand. Elise smiled at them, and Josep caught Uncle Luis’s look of pride as he watched his new wife. He was watching Joana for some kind of lead, but she was no help – she looked stunned, and kind of gutted, and her eyes looked all liquid too. For a young boy there was just too much emotion in this room, and too much to understand.

  And then the adults were at the table, sitting, while Maria made the inevitable coffee, and Grandma tried to calculate what was in the house to serve them for lunch, and all the while Grandma kept talking. She had three children, did Grandma – Uncle Luis was the oldest, and then there was Uncle Victor, away right now with his sheep, and then there was Mama. Josep had never really thought too hard about his family, but it dawned on him now that Uncle Luis was Grandma’s darling, the older son who’d done great things.

  ‘Now you can come home,’ the old woman repeated a
gain and again, fluttering around Uncle Luis, and around Elise. ‘You don’t have to run away anymore. But keep away from politics now. It does no good, and these Republicans, they just want to close our churches, and nothing is any better than the old days.’

  ‘No, Mòmia,’ Luis’s voice caressed her as he disagreed. ‘Don’t be fooled into thinking that way. That’s what the right-wing parties in Madrid want you to believe. No real Republican will ever interfere with your religion, but they want the people to run the country, not the clergy and the army. We’ll make mistakes in the Republic, but they’ll be honest ones, and we will always put people first, and Catalonia first.’

  ‘He always spoke like that,’ Grandma told Elise, who smiled, though she didn’t look as though she understood much of what they were saying in Catalan. Grandma Aina touched her son again. ‘He was always so passionate and so political! Maybe one day you’ll be proved right, my son. Your brother seems to think so, but all I can say is, it didn’t do your sister Maria any good, all that politics.’

  A shadow crossed Luis’s face. He turned to Maria. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Felip in Barcelona told me Vigo died. He was ill? But Vigo was never ill!’ He was talking about Papa, and the room went quiet as Mama answered.

  ‘It was the prison.’ Maria sighed, ‘He contracted a lung disease there, and it affected the heart. He seemed to be getting better after a while, but then one day we found him dead, just where he was working, eh Josep?’

  Josep nodded, his throat tight as it always was when he remembered that moment. Mama wasn’t telling Luis how awful it had all been, but Uncle Luis’s face seemed to suggest he’d understood. He looked desolate.

  ‘He died at home, then, at least?’

  ‘Yes, in his own chair.’