The Snow Gypsy(67)

Maria dug the ladle into the bowl of curds. “He stopped coming here.”

“When?” Rose couldn’t see her eyes.

“I don’t remember.” Maria scooped a generous portion of curds onto the leaf at Gunesh’s feet. The dog gobbled it up instantly.

“The last letter I had from him was dated March 1938,” Rose said. “Did you see him after that?”

“I don’t keep track of months and years,” the woman replied. “Up here, they don’t matter much.”

“Did you hear anything about him?” Rose persisted. “He was planning to go to France. Did any of the others talk to you about that?”

Maria didn’t answer. Instead she turned to Zoltan. “Can you come and help me with the billy goat?” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “He’s got one of his horns stuck in a fence.” To Rose she said, “You’d better stay here—he’ll get even more worked up if he sees the dog.”

Rose watched them disappear behind the house. She didn’t believe that Maria hadn’t heard her last question. It seemed she’d simply dropped the subject of Nathan as if it were of no more importance than one of her animals.

When Zoltan returned, he was alone. “Maria’s gone to have a rest,” he said. “It took both of us to free the goat, and she’s worn out.” He bent down to stroke Gunesh. “Shall I walk you back down to the village?”

“It’s okay—you don’t need to do that.” Her voice came out high and reedy. She wondered if he could tell how close she was to tears.

“It’s no trouble—I need to call at the post office.”

They walked in silence until they reached the ruined mill. Zoltan asked her if they could sit down for a few minutes. She followed him inside, surprised that he needed to rest when they were going downhill, not up the mountain. He sank down onto the ancient grinding stone and patted the space beside him.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” he said. “Maria asked me to do it because she couldn’t face giving you the news herself.”

Rose felt as if an icy hand had gripped her heart. “Nathan’s dead, isn’t he?”

“I’m so sorry, Rose.” Zoltan took her hand, the calluses on his palm rubbing against her fingers.

“H . . . how?” she whispered.

“He was caught up in a mass execution staged by a gang of fascist thugs called the Escuadra Negra.”

Rose stared at him, motionless, not even breathing. The Black Squad. The same men who had taken Lola’s mother and brother.

“Maria said it happened in the spring of ’38,” he went on. “It must have been soon after he sent that last letter. She remembers that it was snowing, and he’d come to see her, early in the morning, to ask if she wanted anything from the village. An hour or so later, she heard gunfire down in the valley. When some of the other partisans came for food the next day, they told her that your brother had been on his way to his fiancée’s house, but the fascists had arrested her and were marching her through the village to be executed. When he tried to rescue her, they killed him, too.”

Silent tears coursed down Rose’s face. It was what she had known, deep down, all along. But no amount of expectation could soften the blow. Until this moment, there had always been that flicker of hope.

Zoltan wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to him.

“I . . . I’m sorry,” she mumbled into his shoulder.

“Shhh.” He stroked her hair. “Don’t try to talk. We can just stay here for a while.”

Rose closed her eyes tight, aware that her tears were making his shirt wet. She could hear the babble of the stream through the gaping windows, the calling of birds in the trees that overhung the tumbledown roof. It seemed wrong that the world outside could just go on, exactly as before, when for her, things would never be the same again.

She could feel the rise and fall of Zoltan’s chest, the throb of his heart. It should have been a comforting thing—but all she could think about was Nathan lying on the ground with the life ebbing out of his body.

“Would it be easier if you came to my place instead of going back to the village?” Zoltan whispered the question into her hair. “I could go and fetch your daughter from school and fix us something to eat.”

The mention of Nieve tipped Rose over the edge of the precipice of grief and shock. She felt as if the grindstone beneath her were disintegrating, and she were falling into some dark abyss beneath the mountain.

“She’s not my daughter.” She heard the words, not fully aware that they had come from her own mouth.

Zoltan remained silent for a while. Then he said, “You don’t have to explain if you don’t want to.”

Rose raised her head from his shoulder. His eyes were the clear, pale blue of the meltwater from the mountain glaciers. Something in the way he looked at her made a dam burst in her heart. She began to pour out the story of Lola and the harrowing rescue of the baby from the massacre in the snow.

“Is Lola the friend you mentioned to Maria? The one whose family was shot for sheltering partisans?”

Rose nodded. “She’s the one who told me about this place. I only knew Nathan was here because she recognized his description of the fountain in Pampaneira.”