Golden Earrings (46 page)

I
n October 1938, at the height of the Battle of Ebro, the League of Nations pressured Republican Spain to demobilise the International Brigades and repatriate them back to their home countries. The Republican government hoped that if it agreed, the League of Nations would also force Franco to dismiss the Italian and German troops fighting in Spain. But Franco had no intention of quitting.

Although Doctor Parker and his staff didn’t want to leave, they had to obey orders or face losing their citizenships. I helped them with handing over the convalescent hospital to a group of anti-Fascist German and Italian doctors who couldn’t return to their countries due to either the racial laws that were being passed by Hitler and Mussolini or because of their political beliefs.

The German surgeon who would be heading the hospital shook Doctor Parker’s hand. ‘This was the last “great cause”,’ he lamented. ‘The last chance to fight for democracy in Europe. If the rest of the world understood what the Nazis intend to do, they would have been here too.’

The evening before Doctor Parker was due to leave, he came to see me. ‘You should go too, la Rusa,’ he said. ‘The battle here is lost. You can do more for your country by becoming an international ambassador for Republican Spain. But first, get the people you love out of Barcelona.’

I gave my ambulance to the new staff to use and returned with the transport convoy to Barcelona. Xavier was there when I arrived. The family from the south who’d been staying in our apartment had left for America. From the balcony, we watched the farewell parade of the International Brigades. People threw flowers and blew kisses to the men and women who had come from all around the world to help us. I was grateful for all the International Brigades had tried to do, and to the many who had given their lives for the Republic, but my spirit felt like a dead weight in my body.

‘It really is all over, isn’t it?’ I said, turning to Xavier. ‘There is nothing more that we can do.’

Xavier’s face hardened. ‘There are certain Russians who believe the way to solve the Spanish problem is to assassinate Franco.’ My eyes met his. I waited for him to continue. ‘I’ve agreed to find means for their agents to infiltrate Spain and get close to him. I’m going to need you, Celestina, to carry intelligence reports for me into Paris.’

Xavier’s determination to keep fighting had a powerful effect on me. While I had lost my faith in the idealism of the Spanish Republic, I cared about the fate of the Spanish people. The international press could argue the pros and cons of the Nationalists and Loyalists all they liked, but Franco was a brutal murderer. He needed to be stopped.

‘Yes!’ I told Xavier. ‘I will do whatever is required.’

He embraced me. ‘Good! You’re the only one I trust; the only one with the required nerve.’

I knew what the stern expression on his face meant. The mission we were undertaking was precarious. But I did not allow myself to dwell on the risks nor on the horrific fate either of us could suffer if caught. I simply felt an ache in my heart at the idea that this might be the last day we would ever spend together. I pressed myself to Xavier’s chest, holding him with all my strength.

‘Whether the mission succeeds or fails, we will meet in Paris,’ he said, kissing the top of my head.

‘Yes.’

‘But … if I don’t make it to Paris,’ he said quietly, ‘please promise me that you will watch out for my family.’

I closed my eyes tightly to hold back the tears that threatened to come. But I wouldn’t cry. I refused to believe that anything could go wrong.

‘You’ll make it to Paris,’ I said. ‘And there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you — or for your family.’

Because of the non-intervention embargos imposed on Spain by the allies, Xavier had to resort to negotiating with Barcelona’s underworld bosses to traffic illegal weapons into Spain for the Republican army. It was a murky world and he hated being involved in it; he knew well that the men with whom he did business would as happily supply Franco at the right price. There was, however, a crime syndicate that seemed to be an exception to this rule. One of its members was a man known as el Garbanzo, the Chickpea, who had definite Loyalist leanings. It appeared that he also had a network of informers willing to help the Russian agents get close to Franco.

One of my first assignments was to make contact with el Garbanzo to obtain a list of Franco’s aides whose loyalty could be bought. Through one of Xavier’s agents, it was arranged that I would meet el Garbanzo at an address in the barri Xinès, the slum area of Barcelona where I had been born. It was unsettling to be walking those gloomy, narrow streets again. The overcrowded apartment buildings, some in ruins due to the bombings, and the rank smell of rotting garbage and rat droppings brought memories flooding back to me: Papá and Anastasio leaving at dawn for the factory; my mother slicing the bread thinly; Ramón and me playing make-believe in the streets.

The apartment where I was to meet el Garbanzo gave the appearance of never having received sunlight. The walls were water-stained and damp and the entrance smelled like a drain. Then a disquieting feeling came over me. I glanced up and down the street. The spice merchant had been replaced by a seedy-looking café, but this was the street and the apartment building where I had grown up. When I was a child, there had been no building next door — it had collapsed in some heavy rains — which was why I had failed to recognise where I was at first. When I stood before the apartment number I had been given, a sense that I was moving towards some kind of destiny prickled at me. I was the only person in the network who didn’t use a false name; it was all too obvious who I was. Surely it couldn’t be pure coincidence that this meeting had been set up in my childhood home.

I knocked on the door. It was answered by a gaunt-faced man with thin-rimmed glasses and the air of a funeral director about him.

‘I’m here on el senyor Pinto’s business,’ I said. Senyor Pinto was Xavier’s codename. Xavier and el Garbanzo had never met and never used their real names; they communicated through go-betweens.

The man beckoned me inside. The apartment had not been inhabited for a while judging from the layer of dust on the floor. Blending with the smells of decay and mould was the aroma of an expensive cigar. It was then I noticed a man wearing a three-piece suit sitting on an upturned crate and gazing out the window. From his beefy frame and puffy cheeks, I gathered he’d been given the name el Garbanzo because he was so round. Then our eyes met and a flash of recognition ran through me. When I blinked and he was still there, I gave a startled sob. Ramón!

I knew for certain that el Garbanzo was my brother even though thirty years had passed since we were parted. Gone was the bright look on his face, the way he had always observed
the world with wonder. He had bags under his eyes and deep grooves around his mouth, and the puppy fat he had carried as a child had turned into a pot belly. Yet I recognised him as only siblings can: intuitively. It was as if I had summoned him out of my imagination. I had been thinking about my childhood and my brother had appeared.

At the sight of him, I forgot my original reason for coming to the apartment. I ran towards him and reached out my arms. To my horror, Ramón shoved me away. I stared at him, bewildered. Why had he called me here, to this apartment, if not to be reconciled with me?

Ramón’s lips tightened. He put down his cigar. ‘I didn’t think you’d realise it was me,’ he said.

‘Where have you been?’ I asked him. ‘You promised to come back for me!’

He considered me a moment before speaking. ‘I did return to find you. I risked my life to escape when the authorities came to take us away from Alcañiz after Teresa died. All I could think about was that I must get back to Barcelona and save my sister. But when I returned, I couldn’t find her.’

‘I was supposed to go to Juana,’ I told him. ‘But I had no idea where she lived —’

‘Juana was arrested and exiled herself shortly after Teresa,’ said Ramón, cutting me off.

My heart sank lower as Ramón described to me how he had searched every night in the barri Xinès, staring into the faces of the child prostitutes, terrified that one of those forsaken creatures could be me. He told me how he had worked for the drug criminals, talking his way into their circles while all the time looking in orphanages and workhouses. In the end, he began to believe that I may have been one of the victims of Enriqueta Martí, the woman who murdered street children and used their bones and fat to make youth-enhancing face creams for Barcelona’s high society.

Ramón looked at me in such a pointed manner that at first I didn’t know what to say.

‘It wasn’t on purpose that you couldn’t find me,’ I told him. ‘I was with the gypsies. I danced in flamenco bars in the barri Xinès. How could God have been so cruel to let us pass like ships in the night?’

‘A dancer?’ repeated Ramón, with a sarcastic laugh that stabbed at my heart like a knife.

He told me that when he became older and had more power as a drug trafficker himself, he had called in people who owed him favours to trace what had happened to me. ‘They found you and, as I feared, you had become a whore … only not a whore to sailors and perverted old men. You were the willing whore of
Xavier Montella
!’

I lowered my eyes and dug my nails into my hands. The word ‘whore’ burned into me. So this is the reason for his hatred, I thought. This was why, although he knew where I was, he had never made contact with me.

‘You don’t understand,’ I told him. ‘I love Xavier Montella. I’m not his whore.’

Ramón’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘I remember the Montellas, Celestina,’ he said. ‘I recall the way even their servants snubbed us. I keep forever in my mind the fact that Anastasio was sent to his death to defend their mines in Morocco, and that Leopold Montella said that such an injustice was simply the workings of the economic system. And … I can never erase the image of Papá being shot for protesting against that system.
I remember
, Celestina, even if you have chosen to forget!’

‘I’ve not forgotten!’ I cried.

My eyes filled with tears. In all the time I had hoped that Ramón and I should find each other again, I had never imagined it would be like this. The look of contempt on his face crushed me. I wanted to tell him that I had searched for him at Alcañiz,
and that when I couldn’t find him I had danced a
soleá
for him to express my sorrow. But I saw it would not do any good.

‘Why, if all this time you have been shunning me, did you want to see me now?’ I asked. ‘You knew who was being sent to see you, obviously.’

Ramón didn’t answer at first. He seemed to be studying me.

‘And yet,’ he said, ‘your heart can’t be completely black. According to my informers, you drove an ambulance for the Republican army. A woman in your position could have gone and lived in any city she wanted.’

‘That is true,’ I said. ‘I have not forgotten as much as you think I have!’

For a moment, the hard look on Ramón’s face softened. The expression that came to his eyes was the one I used to see when he brought me a piece of cake from the markets or lifted me up in his arms when I was a child. I wanted to embrace him again; to show him how much I still loved him. But then the severe look returned.

He reached into his pocket and handed me an envelope. ‘It’s only because of the respect I have for el senyor Pinto that I trust you with this list.’

I grabbed the envelope and fled the building. I ran through the maze of streets, desperate to find a place with sunlight. Finally, I came to a square with a fountain where enough sunlight came through the surrounding buildings to heat up the cobblestones. I stood there for a moment, absorbing the sun’s warmth. The tears came. Ramón! My brother Ramón!

I remembered the way he used to charm the women at the flower market, his talent for persuading people. If we had not been poor, he might have become someone great rather than a criminal. I bore the truth of my brother’s unsavoury profession much better than his rejection of me. The idea that Ramón, my childhood companion and protector, despised me hurt me the deepest.

I wiped the tears from my eyes. I have to go back, I thought. I have to make Ramón understand that Xavier Montella is a social reformer. The irony that the man Ramón was working with
was
Xavier Montella was too much for words. I looked back in the direction of the apartment. Would Ramón change his mind about the Montellas if I revealed senyor Pinto’s true identity? But real names were not to be exposed under any circumstances. I had no choice but to keep Xavier’s identity secret so as not to jeopardise the mission.

There was nothing I could do other than to let Ramón’s barbs pierce where they had landed. Once again I had lost my brother, only this time I feared it was for good.

In November, the Ebro front collapsed. The Republican army of the north was defeated. As Franco began his march into Catalonia, it became increasingly difficult for me to carry out intelligence work. As each successive town fell, Nationalist supporters who had been clandestinely undermining the Republic came out openly. They turned on Republican soldiers and denounced Loyalist supporters. Barcelona, being a city with many places to hide, was full of this kind of treachery; and I had to be cautious as I was easily recognised.

It was also time to get Xavier’s family out of Barcelona. Xavier was in Agullana near the border, from where he intended to help us safely across into France. On my last trip to France I was able to buy a van, but making my way back to Spain proved to be an arduous journey. The Germans were bombing the roads, and I was driving against a tide of refugees fleeing towards France in whatever type of transport they could find: buses, lorries, horse-drawn carts, bicycles.

The day I reached Barcelona is one that I will never forget. As I was driving past Vallcarca Hospital, I nearly hit a man in pyjamas. I looked to the entrance and saw patients staggering out of the building. Some appeared to be victims of the bombings,
but many were clearly wounded soldiers. I saw amputees using their elbows to drag themselves along the ground because they were terrified of what would happen to them if they fell into the hands of Franco’s army. They called out to people to help them but no one would stop. Of all the horrors I had seen in the war, the sight of those men disturbed me the most. These soldiers had given their youth and their limbs to defend the Republic and now they were being abandoned.