A Long Petal of the Sea(16)
“The reprisals are ferocious, Do?a Carme. Did you know they take children from their mothers and put them in orphanages run by nuns in order to indoctrinate them in the one true faith and the values of the fatherland?”
“My children are too old for that to happen.”
“That’s just an example. What I’m trying to say is that your only course is to come with me, because otherwise you’ll be shot for teaching revolutionaries to read and write, and for not going to Mass.”
“Listen, young man. I’m fifty-four years old and have a consumptive’s cough. I’m not going to live much longer. What kind of a life would I have in exile? I prefer to die in my own home, my own city, with or without Franco.”
Aitor spent another fifteen minutes trying in vain to persuade her, until finally Roser intervened.
“Come with us, Do?a Carme, your grandchild and I need you. After a while, when we’ve settled and can see how things are in Spain, you can return if you wish.”
“You’re stronger and more capable than I am, Roser. You’ll get along fine on your own. Don’t cry, now…”
“How can I not cry? What will I do without you?”
“All right, so long as it’s understood I’m doing this for you and the baby. If it were up to me, I’d stay and put a brave face on it.”
“That’s enough, ladies, we need to leave right now,” insisted Aitor.
“What about the hens?”
“Set them loose, somebody will find them. Come on, it’s time to go.”
Roser wanted to sit astride the motorbike behind Aitor, but he and Carme convinced her to use the sidecar, where there was less danger of damaging the child or causing a miscarriage. Carme, wrapped in several cardigans and a black woolen Castilian blanket that was rainproof and as heavy as a rug, clambered onto the pillion seat. She weighed so little that if it hadn’t been for the blanket she could have blown away. They made very slow progress, dodging around people, other vehicles, and draft animals, skidding on the icy surface and fighting off desperate individuals trying to force their way onto the bike.
The exodus from Barcelona was a Dantesque spectacle of thousands of people shivering with cold in a stampede that soon slowed to a straggling procession traveling at the speed of the amputees, the wounded, the old folks, and the children. Those hospital patients able to walk joined the exodus; others were taken by train as far as possible; the rest were left to face the Moors’ knives and bayonets.
They left the city behind and found themselves in open country. Peasants deserted their villages, some with their animals or wagons loaded down with baggage, and mingled with the slowly moving mass. Anyone with valuables bartered them for a place in the few vehicles on the road: money was worthless now. Mules and horses struggled under the weight of carts, and many of them fell gasping for breath. When they did so, men attached themselves to the harnesses and pulled, while the women pushed from behind. The route became strewn with objects that could no longer be carried, from crockery to pieces of furniture; the dead and wounded also lay where they fell; nobody stopped to attend to them. Any capacity for compassion had gone: everyone looked after only themselves and their loved ones. Warplanes swooped low overhead, spreading death and leaving in their wake a spattering of blood that mingled with the mud and ice. Many of the victims were children. Food was in short supply: the most farsighted had brought enough provisions to last a day or two; the rest went hungry, unless some farmer was willing to make an exchange for food. Aitor cursed himself for having left the hens behind.
Hundreds of thousands of terrified refugees were escaping to France, where a campaign of fear and hatred awaited them. Nobody wanted these foreigners—Reds, filthy fugitives, deserters, delinquents, as the French press labeled them. Repugnant beings who were going to spread epidemics, commit robberies and rape, and stir up a communist revolution. For three years there had been a trickle of Spaniards escaping the war: there was little sympathy for them, but they were dispersed throughout France and were almost invisible. After the Republican defeat, the authorities knew that the flow would increase; they were expecting an unknown number of refugees, possibly ten or fifteen thousand, a figure that already alarmed the French Right. No one imagined that within a few days there would be almost half a million Spaniards, in the last stages of confusion, terror, and misery, clamoring at the border. France’s first reaction was to close the ports of entry while the authorities reached an agreement as to how to deal with the problem.
* * *
—
NIGHT CAME EARLY, BRINGING with it enough rain to soak their clothes and turn the ground into a quagmire. Then the temperature fell several degrees below freezing and a biting wind rose, chilling them to the bone. The lines of refugees came to a halt: there was no way they could continue in the darkness. They huddled together on the ground wherever they could, covered in wet blankets, the women hugging their children, the men trying to protect their families, the old people praying. Aitor Ibarra settled the two women in the sidecar, telling them to wait for him. Pulling a cable from the motorbike engine so that nobody could steal it, he stepped off the road a little way to relieve himself: he had been suffering from diarrhea for months, like almost all those who had been at the front. In a crack in the rocks his flashlight picked out a motionless mule, perhaps with broken legs or simply overcome with exhaustion. It was still alive. Aitor took out his pistol and shot it in the head. This single gunshot, different from the enemy strafing, attracted several onlookers. Aitor was trained to receive orders, not to give them, but at that moment an unexpected gift of command surfaced in him: he organized the men to butcher the animal, and the women to roast the meat in small fires that would not attract the attention of the warplanes. His idea quickly spread through the crowd, and soon single shots could be heard in different spots. Aitor took two pieces of this tough meat back to Carme and Roser, together with mugs of water heated on one of the campfires. “Imagine it’s a carajillo, all that’s missing is the coffee,” he told them, pouring a slug of brandy into each mug. He kept some of the meat, confident it would not go bad in the cold, and half a loaf of bread that he had bartered for with a pair of goggles that once belonged to a crashed Italian pilot. He thought those goggles must have passed from hand to hand twenty times before reaching him, and would continue going round the world until they fell apart.