A Long Petal of the Sea(20)

Roser fell asleep on some sacks on the floor, her nose buried in the dog’s rough coat as it snuggled up to her for warmth. When they said farewell the next morning, she followed the charcoal-burners’ custom by kissing them three times on the cheeks, and told them she couldn’t have been more comfortable in a feather bed. The dog followed them for a good while, trotting along at Roser’s heels.

On the afternoon of the third day, Angel announced that from then on they were on their own. They were safe now; they only needed to descend into France. “Follow the mountain edge and you’ll come to a ruined farmhouse. You can shelter there.” He gave them bread and cheese, took his money, and said goodbye with a brief embrace. “Your woman is worth her weight in gold, gudari, look after her. I’ve been the guide for hundreds of men, from battle-hardened soldiers to criminals, but I’ve never known anyone who put up with everything without a single complaint the way she has. And with that belly of hers, on top of everything.”



An hour later, as they were approaching the farmhouse, a man armed with a rifle strode out toward them. They came to a halt, holding their breath. Aitor had the pistol ready behind his back. For what seemed like an eternity, they stood staring at one another from fifty meters, then Roser took a step forward and shouted that they were refugees. When the man realized she was a woman and that the new arrivals appeared more frightened than he was, he lowered his weapon and called out to them in Catalan: Veniu, veniu, no else faré res. He told them they weren’t the first refugees to pass through there, and they wouldn’t be the last. He added that his own son had fled to France that morning, scared that Franco’s troops would pick him up. He led them to a hovel with a beaten earth floor and half the roof missing, gave them some leftovers from his stove, and let them lie down in a simple but clean bed where his son used to sleep. A few hours later, three more Spaniards arrived and were also given lodging by this good man. At dawn the next day he offered them a salty broth with bits of potato and herbs in it, which he said would help them bear the cold. Before showing them the path they had to take, he gave Roser his last five sugar lumps, to sweeten the baby’s journey.

Led by Roser and Aitor, the group set off for the frontier. It took them the whole day, but just as the Catalan had said, at nightfall they came to a rise and suddenly saw houses with lights. They knew this must mean they were in France, because in Spain nobody switched on lights for fear of bombardment. They continued the descent toward the houses until they came to a main road. Soon afterward, a van full of gardes mobiles, the French rural police, pulled up alongside them. They gave themselves up cheerfully: they were in the France of solidarity, of liberty, equality, and fraternity, the France with a left-wing government presided over by a socialist. The gendarmes searched them roughly and took Aitor’s pistol, penknife, and what little money he had left. The other Spaniards were unarmed.

The gendarmes led them to a large stone building, the granary for a mill that had been adapted to receive the refugees arriving by the hundreds. It was packed with people: terrified men, women, and children crammed together, all of them hungry and desperately trying to breathe because of the lack of ventilation and the clouds of dust from the grain floating in the air. All they had for their thirst were some drums filled with dubiously clean water. There were no latrines, only a few holes outside the building, where they had to crouch under guard. Humiliated, the women wept while the guards laughed.



Aitor insisted on staying with Roser, and when they saw her bulging belly, the guards made no objection. Curled up in a corner, the two shared the last piece of bread and the Italians’ dried salami, while Aitor tried to protect her from the crush and sudden ripples of despair that ran through the detained refugees. Word went around that this was a transit point and that they would soon be taken to a centre de rétention administrative. No one knew what that meant.

The next day, the women and children were taken away in army trucks. This was agony for the families; the gendarmes had to use their batons to force them apart. Roser hugged Aitor, thanked him for all he had done for her, assured him she would be fine, and walked off calmly to the waiting truck. “I’ll come and look for you, Roser, I promise!” he managed to shout, before he fell to his knees, cursing furiously.



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WHILE MUCH OF THE civilian population was escaping to the French border by any means possible, followed by what was left of the defeated army, Victor Dalmau, together with the doctors still at their posts and a few volunteers, transported the wounded from the hospital in trains, ambulances, and trucks. The situation was so dire that the director, who was still in charge, had to make the harrowing decision to leave the most seriously wounded behind, since they were bound to die on the journey anyway, and fill the vehicles with those who had a chance of surviving. Crammed into cattle trucks or battered vehicles, lying on the floor, freezing cold, constantly jolted, with no food, combatants who had just been operated on, or were wounded, blind, had amputated limbs, or were delirious from fever, typhus, dysentery, or gangrene, made their way out of Barcelona. The medical staff had nothing with which to relieve their suffering, and could offer only water, words of comfort, and sometimes, if a dying man asked for it, a final prayer.



For more than two years, Victor had been working alongside the most expert doctors. He had learned a great deal at the battlefront and later at the hospital, where nobody asked what qualifications he had: there, only dedication counted. He himself often forgot that he needed several more years’ study to graduate, and pretended to his patients he was a qualified doctor, in order to reassure them. He had seen dreadful wounds, assisted at amputations without anesthetics, helped more than one unfortunate youngster die, and thought he had developed the hide of a crocodile; and yet that tragic journey in the wagons he was in charge of destroyed his spirit. The trains reached as far as Gerona, then stopped to wait for other means of transport.