‘I may yet have a trick up my sleeve that will surprise Sergi, though!’ she continued. ‘Bring my daughter here, Martin, and we’ll talk. She can’t have the baby here, but before her time comes perhaps I can change a thing or two. I’ve maybe accepted Sergi’s diktats for just a little too long. It’s time I remembered whose daughter Carla really is.’
Alex’s face came into clear focus before her, and she wanted to tell him, to reassure him. No one will take your grandchild away, Alex. No one will harm Carla’s child. It was like a promise to herself, to the Joana she had once been, before she became afraid.
CHAPTER TEN
Sant Galdric, 1939
It was the coldest January Joana could ever remember. Above Sant Galdric the Pyrenees were cloaked in snow, deep snow that had driven the shepherds further and further down the mountains to the point where the sheep now huddled in hurriedly fenced areas just outside the village, in dirt fields normally used to grow vegetables. But the ground was too hard this winter for planting vegetables, and, hearing the bleating of the sheep, Joana wondered if they were as hungry as she was. They certainly weren’t producing much milk, Uncle Victor said. The little cheese the villagers were eating was sparingly spread on hard bread. But while they had the sheep and last year’s flour and potatoes they could still eat, unlike some people in the towns. Franco’s armies had cut them off from food supplies, and the winter was hard indeed for the people in the cities.
Joana huddled against the church wall, sheltering from the icy wind. There were no village youths in the square this evening, but that suited her. She was waiting for Alex. She hadn’t seen him now since Christmas, two weeks ago, and travel was so difficult, but this afternoon he’d arrived home, coming into the village on foot, to spend the long holiday weekend with his family. There would be no feasting for Epiphany this year, but Alex’s mother and father were on their own now, with his brother away fighting, and Alex had found a way to be with them – and with her.
At Christmas Alex had asked her to marry him. At the thought she hugged herself, enfolding their secret inside her thick woollen coat. They couldn’t tell anyone yet. It had been a great thing for his family when Alex was taken on for training by the solicitor in Girona. Until he completed his training they would resist him marrying anyone. And Joana was just a child, or at least that’s what they thought of her. She smiled. Alex didn’t think her a child. He loved her, he said, for her laughter, her life, and her belief in dreams, and together they were going to make a future, one where she could take Mama and Josep and all of them away from Sant Galdric and into a different world.
Night had fallen now in the little village square, and Joana was seriously cold. Supper, such as it was, would be ready at home now, and she could not stay out much longer. Hurry up, Alex, she murmured, and as she did so he turned the corner, his tall, slender form outlined against the dark sky. She came away from the wall like a shot, and he pulled her into his arms.
But he was uncharacteristically sober as he drew her through the church doors, out of the night air and into the marginally less cold nave of the church. He sat her down beside him on the hard pew, and cupped her shoulders in his hands so that she looked straight into his face.
‘I only just made it up here today, carinyo,’ he told her, ‘and God knows how I’m going to get back. I may have to walk all the way to Girona, all thirty kilometres. There’s no fuel anywhere, and I was lucky on the way up to get picked up by a carter for some of the way. This may be the last time I can get home for a very long time.’
Joana gulped. ‘They’re coming, then?’
‘Yes, my love, they’re coming, and much faster than anyone thought. Franco’s best generals, and an army of hundreds of thousands. They’re nearly at Barcelona already, and they’ll show no mercy once they take it.’
‘But we have an army too! They’ll defend Barcelona!’
‘We have no weapons left, Joana. The Nationalists have tanks, and planes, and ammunition, and food, of course. Our men have nothing left to fight with.’
‘And your brother?’
‘God knows! We’ve had no news of him for months. If he’s still alive he’ll be one of those left fighting in the streets of Barcelona when the attack comes. My father already told me today he doesn’t expect to see him again. You know, it makes me so angry in Girona when I hear people saying they just want the war to be over now, no matter who wins. I know they’re suffering, but what do they think is going to happen if the fascists walk into the city? Do they think everything’s just going to return to normal and we’ll all shake hands and be friends? Those bastards of Franco’s will murder us all just for being Catalans and for daring to hope!’
‘My uncle Victor says there could be a truce – a negotiated end,’ Joana voiced, but without conviction as she looked into Alex’s dark, troubled eyes. He didn’t answer, just shook his head, and put his arm around her as she shivered.
‘You’ll be all right here, carinyo. They’ll be too busy fighting over the cities to worry about tiny villages like this one.’
‘And you?’
‘I’ll be all right as well,’ he said. ‘I’m just a clerk, and nobody in Girona knows that my brother fights for the Republicans. They’ll have no reason to come looking for me, and I’ll just lie low. There won’t be any reason to go to work anyway, if the Nationalists take Girona. I can’t see anyone worrying about property conveyancing and the like for a while, can you?’
He sounded bitter and Joana knew how it had galled him not to be fighting alongside his brother. But his parents had begged him – one son was enough, they’d said, to lose to a brutal Civil War. She raised her hand and touched his cheek.
‘If no one needs solicitors right now, must you go back to Girona? Could you not stay here until it’s all over?’
‘For how long, though? It may take weeks or it may take months. Nobody knows, and meanwhile the boss keeps up the pretence of being open, and when all this is over we will at some stage have some kind of government, some kind of life, and I’ll need my job!’
They sat for a while longer in silence, their breath misty in the cold air of the church.
‘I’ll need to go,’ Joana said eventually, with a despondency unusual in her. ‘They’ll be waiting for me at home to eat.’
‘Me too,’ Alex replied, then smiled at her ruefully. ‘We’ll be all right, you know. We just need to wait and things will come out the other side. You and I have no involvement.’
Joana protested. ‘My father was a Republican journalist. He was gaoled by the same people who now fight with Franco’s army. My Uncle Luis too, and he was a ringleader, so his name was well known. If they come to Sant Galdric looking for Republican sympathisers then my family stands out like a sore thumb.’
‘Only if they come, and only if someone tells them. What your uncle and father were involved in happened way before the actual war started, and miles away from Sant Galdric as well. When your mother brought you and Josep back here she broke the link with all of that. No, the scores the Fascista will be looking to settle will be much more recent. My parents will be more vulnerable, like others in the village who have a son in the war. But the village will hold together, if needs be. No one will say a word.’
Joana shivered again. You really believe that if everyone sticks together we’ll be all right? She didn’t voice the question – it was useless for now to speculate, and all they could do was hope. There might yet be a negotiated settlement.
‘Meet me tomorrow, behind the byre,’ Alex was saying, and she nodded and kissed him with a fervour that made no concessions to being in church. She would meet him anywhere. It might be their last chance for a long time.
In the weeks after Alex’s visit little or no news came to Sant Galdric. Nobody was travelling, except for one fruitless journey made by Uncle Victor with a mule and cart to try to get more hay for the sheep. He came back with some meagre sheaves for which he had paid with three valuable livestock, and some news
that Barcelona was being fought for street by street, by civilians and military alike. They heard aeroplanes rumbling in the distance, and could imagine the bombardment which must be taking place, both in Barcelona and in coastal towns nearer to Girona. Barcelona had been so grievously bombed in the last year that it was a wonder anything still stood, or so it was said.
Alex had left on 8th January. It was nearly three weeks later that they heard the planes that bombed Girona. Oh my God, thought Joana, this is it! Barcelona must have fallen and they’re attacking Girona now. The bombs fell with a dull boom, which resonated up the valley towards them and seemed to amplify as it echoed immediately back from the mountains above. The villagers gathered together in the square to listen, in silence, Uncle Victor with his arm round Grandma Aina, and Mama standing erect and calm, with one arm around each of her children. Little Josep, who normally never stayed still, stood as silent as them all in the arc of his mother’s arm, his eyes huge as they saw the planes curve round above them after the sound of the bombs had ceased, heading for their base back south.
And then the silence was deafening, and all you could do was imagine, and wait, and worry. On 5th February, after five more bombardments, they heard that Girona had fallen, not like Barcelona, where they’d fought for every street corner – this time there was no army left to resist, and the word was the Nationalists had just walked into the city. Joana held her breath and waited for news from Alex. Surely among all the refugees making their way out of the cities he could find a way to walk home? But Sant Galdric wasn’t on a route to anywhere and no one came this way – there was no news, no visitors, just silence and hunger, and to her shame Joana found herself longing for something to happen, even though it would almost certainly be bad news. But Alex might come – surely Alex would come.
At home her mother continued as patiently as ever to make soup from practically nothing, and to cook rice and potatoes. Straggling refugees finally appeared in the village, thin, hungry and very cold, with stories of a mass flight of the army and thousands of civilians across the border to France. As the village got hungrier and the numbers to feed grew greater, Victor and the other shepherds killed two sheep, splitting the meat between the houses. It was a desperate thing to do – these were female sheep and the life of the village in the future depended on their offspring. Once they’d done this, though, they took the remaining sheep far away from the village, where nobody could find and steal them. There was too much hunger, and too many strangers around whom they distrusted.
It was just a few days later, in mid February, that the first victorious troops appeared in the village, just one rattling truck with about a dozen dirtily clad soldiers, waving the Nationalist flag and hooting their horn. People hid, but the soldiers banged on the doors and demanded that everyone come out of their houses, and slowly the villagers did so, grouping again in the square, all together, facing the soldiers, murmuring sotto voce. Joana heard Victor whispering to her mother.
‘Look, isn’t that young Sergi Olivera, old Carla’s grandson? What is he doing here among that lot?’
‘Goodness knows! I haven’t seen him in the village for nearly a year. He wasn’t a Fascista back then, or at least no one said so! But knowing his father, it shouldn’t surprise me!’
‘His mother would turn in her grave! She was a fine woman.’
‘Well, and so was the boy, until the mother died and he was left with that rogue of a father. I used to feel sorry for the poor little bugger – but who’d have thought he’d end up with that evil bunch!’
Joana looked across at the group of soldiers, armed with a mixture of rifles and revolvers, and there he was in the middle of the group, talking to an older man who looked like the officer in charge. Sergi! Why she knew him! Last summer he’d been among the young men who hung around the square and ogled the girls, and he’d made it clear he liked her more than all the rest. She remembered a comment he’d made that had shocked her at the time.
‘You’ll take some flowering yet, my beautiful girl, but one day you’ll be ripe and ready for me to pluck. So don’t take any of these village idiots while I’m away. Keep yourself for a real man, and I’ll be back!’
He’d held her arm and stroked his hand down her back, and she’d been frightened a little by his sheer manliness, but he wasn’t seriously threatening, not there in the village square with Alex nearby.
Now Sergi was even broader and more muscular than he’d been all those months ago – and he’d become a Nationalist soldier. When had he made that decision, she wondered? Had he decided to join the winning side, enlisting so late? Somehow it didn’t surprise her – there was something of the profiteer about Sergi, and anyone that Alex had disliked was not to be trusted.
She shrank back behind her uncle. Oh God, Alex, she thought, you told me this wouldn’t happen in Sant Galdric! Did Sergi bring those people here? What do they want with us?
What they were looking for, it seemed, were runaway Republican soldiers. Half a dozen of the men were dispatched to search the houses, and the rest advanced behind the officer in charge to stand right in front of the villagers.
‘Right, Olivera, you know these people! I’m sick of going through villages and finding that everyone has suddenly turned into a loyal Nationalist! All these bastard Catalans are filthy Communists, we know that. So tell me who is who here that we should know about.’
To be fair to Sergi he looked very uncomfortable as his eyes shifted along the little crowd, and when he caught his grandmother’s eye he flinched. The old lady stood stock-still, her eyes gazing at him in despair from behind her thick headscarf, and he dropped his eyes from hers and turned to the officer.
‘I don’t live here,’ he explained. ‘My father left here years ago, and I just come up on holiday sometimes to see my grandmother. They’re pretty quiet-living people here – it’s a dump of a village with nothing going for it. They probably don’t even know what’s been happening out there in the real world.’
The officer frowned and tapped his foot impatiently, clearly unsatisfied, and Sergi turned searching eyes and pointed suddenly to someone in the crowd. ‘That family,’ he called out. ‘They have a son fighting for the Communists. That one I know. The son’s called Felip, Felip Companys.’
‘Companys? That’s the name of your Catalan chief, isn’t it? The one who calls himself your president! President, hah!’ the officer spat. ‘President of a bunch of monkeys who thought they could stand up against the real Spain! Where’s the guy’s father?’
Joana clutched her uncle’s hand as one of their close neighbours was pulled out from the group.
‘So you’re a Companys, eh? Related to that cowardly bastard who’s now running for cover in France, are you? No? Well, that’s what you say now! But you’re a sympathiser, aren’t you? You all are! And you sent your son to give him a hand!’ The officer’s eyes bored into Companys, standing helpless in front of him, and suddenly he punched him, low down in the belly, with the butt of his revolver, so that he doubled up with an agonised grunt. His wife screamed, and ran forward, but the officer brushed her aside, catching her cheek with the edge of the gun without even glancing her way.
‘Take him away,’ he ordered, and from behind him two men leapt forward to grab Companys, and dragged him to the truck, dumping him in the back and jumping in beside him. Small sobs came from the ground where his wife lay.
The officer turned to Sergi. ‘That can’t be all,’ he muttered. ‘This is the type of village that breeds sloppy anarchists who think they know better than the people who gave them their land and look after them. There must be other Republican supporters here.’
Sergi shook his head, and the officer stared him down, and then turned angrily to a man who looked like his deputy.
‘What about you? You know anyone here?’
The man shook his head as well. ‘I’m from Barcelona, sir! I don’t suppose any of these bumpkins have been near Barcelona in their lives.’
The office
r paced impatiently around the crowd, his eyes raking over each frightened figure. Nobody moved an inch. Next to her Victor had his eyes fixed on the ground, but Joana couldn’t help watching the man’s angry, vengeful progress. He caught her eye, and she lowered her head in a hurry, but he stopped beside her and held out his gun to sweep her hair back from her face.
‘Well, look what we have here!’ he leered. ‘Who’d have thought this miserable region could produce a beauty like this? What’s your name, belleza?’
‘Joana, sir.’ She tried to keep her voice steady.
‘Joana? What kind of name is that?’ The anger was back in his voice. ‘A Catalan aberration, that’s what that is! Call yourself by your decent Spanish name, my girl! Juana, that’s what a decent Christian name should be! What are your family names?’
She bit her lip and answered him. ‘Vigo Garriga, sir. My name is Juana Vigo Garriga.’
She saw the deputy beside him start, and touch his superior’s arm. ‘Now that’s odd, sir! An odd combination of names, I mean. Vigo isn’t a Catalan name, and I’ve never met another one around here, but there was a Vigo in Barcelona who worked alongside a guy called Luis Garriga a few years ago. And this girl carries both their names! They ran a filthy, left-wing newspaper, and we crushed it in ’34, when we had a right-thinking government in power. I was in the police then in Barcelona, and I remember we arrested Vigo, but we never caught the man Garriga.’
‘Is that so?’ The officer’s eyes narrowed. A smile came to his face, and he grabbed hold of Joana’s arm and pulled her forward. His face was so close to hers that she could feel the warmth in his frosted breath. ‘So, my little beauty,’ he purred. ‘Do you have a famous little revolutionary for a father?’
Autumn in Catalonia Page 10
