Law of Return (23 page)

“Thanks.” The lieutenant’s passengers, who had done their best to avoid breathing during his conversation with the border guard, let out simultaneous sighs of relief as the engine rumbled to life, and they began to move again. A few minutes later, the truck once more slowed and came to a halt. This time, they heard the sound of the door slamming, as Tejada climbed out. A moment later, the tarp that concealed them was pulled aside. “Everyone all right?” Tejada asked.

He had turned off the road just before one of its innumerable S-bends. A little clump of pine trees screened them from immediate view of the deserted highway. Leaning over the back of the truck, he looked genuinely worried about his passengers’ comfort.

“Wonderful,” said Meyer seriously, pushing himself into a sitting position with a slight groan. “If I haven’t thanked you already, Lieutenant—”

“You have,” Tejada interjected, pulling his kit out of the back, and helping the old man totter out of the jeep. “Elena? Are you all right?”

“Fine, thanks.” Elena attempted to follow Meyer’s example, but accidentally stepped out of the truck onto her left leg and nearly crumpled to the ground. “My foot’s asleep,” she explained as Tejada caught her. “I’ll be fine in a minute.”

“Good.” He tightened his arms around her a little, in spite of the reassurance, and she leaned against him, content to be supported. He kissed her hair.

Meyer coughed pointedly. Tejada relaxed his grip, and Elena turned out of the circle of his arm, looking (in the professor’s opinion) not nearly embarrassed enough. “Welcome to Spain,” she said, smiling.

“Thank you.” The Jew smiled back, unable to be seriously annoyed. He looked past Elena to the lieutenant. “And now the lieutenant will forbid me to thank you further, no doubt. Is this where we part ways?”

Meyer was not really surprised to see both Elena and her lover look distressed. Nor was he surprised when, after a rapid conversation that he only partially followed, the lieutenant said, “We’re still some ways from San Sebastián, and Elena needs to return there to collect her luggage. I’ll take you closer to the town, and drop you off where you’ll have only a few miles to walk.”

“You’re very kind.” The professor’s voice was grave.

“I thought you might like to ride sitting up,” Tejada explained. “That was why I stopped. No one will stop a Guardia Civil vehicle here, and if you don’t have papers . . . well, then I’m arresting you for not having papers.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Meyer agreed. He turned to Elena with a completely serious face and voice. “Would you like to ride in the front? Since your leg’s asleep?”

“If you don’t mind, thanks.” Elena only blushed slightly.

Where Tejada had driven quickly before, he seemed to dawdle now. The sky was lightening rapidly in the east, and the clouds were lifting. As they came out of the trees into an open field beside the mountains, rays of gold shot out over the eastern hills with the intensity of spotlights at a movie’s premiere. The clouds above them were pink tipped. Elena turned her head toward the rising sun. “Look!” she laughed, and pointed. “Rosy-fingered Dawn!”

The professor laughed also, but there was a hint of regret in his voice as he said, “I’m afraid I left all that remains of my library in the station in Biarritz.”

“My father will know where to find new books,” Elena consoled him.

“Are you planning to stay with the Fernández family for an extended period of time?” Tejada broke in.

“I don’t know,” Meyer hesitated, embarrassed. He did not begrudge the lieutenant the information but he had thought little beyond getting into Spain and had no answer ready.

“You won’t be able to, without papers,” Tejada said bluntly. “You’ll be discovered within a fortnight, either because of routine surveillance, or because someone will pick up their dealings with the black market. Civilian ration books won’t support more than one person.”

Elena was glad of the opportunity to discuss the problem. “We were thinking my brother could help,” she explained. “If he could get a passage to Mexico—”

“Mexico?” interrupted Meyer, who had not been able to follow.

“Sorry.” Elena switched to French. “Hipólito is in Mexico, and my parents thought you’d be safe from the war there. My brother has the money, and he could arrange the passage. It would just mean getting you a visa, and aboard a ship here.”

“That’s very kind of you.” The professor spoke humbly. “I would pay back the passage, of course.”

“If you can find work there,” Tejada commented. “If I were you I’d try to head for the United States from there. At least they’re not openly Socialist . . . yet.”

Elena stiffened slightly, but the professor laughed. “
Doch es äng-stet
mich ein Land / Wo die Menschen Tabak Kauen / Wo sie ohne König
kegeln / Wo sie ohne Spucknapf speien
” he quoted, and then, sensing bewilderment, continued, “I think the French translation is something like ‘
But I fear a land where men / Chew tobacco in platoons /
There’s no king among the pins / and they spit without spittoons
.’”

“Where is it from?” Elena asked.

“Heinrich Heine.”

“Another Jew in exile,” Elena commented.

“That’s been our fate for centuries.”

Something stirred in the depths of Tejada’s memory. An exam paper . . . one of his finals at the university . . . old Professor Martínez Velez’s . . . a pedantic old bastard, with something of Meyer’s photographic memory and precision . . . Martínez Velez’s snide comment at the top of an essay on immigration and naturalization that he had not had time to finish: “
Sr. Tejada: You show a regrettable ignorance of Primo de Rivera’s policies
for one who claims to admire his son. (Or else you failed to understand
that the directions were to provide
three
examples.) Your first two
examples of changes in immigration law are admirably supported.
The third—which you appear to be unaware of—was promulgated by
the Cortes of 1924.
” Tejada frowned suddenly. “Where are you from, Professor?” he demanded.

“I grew up in Danzig,” Meyer replied, surprised.

“And your family, had they been settled there long?” Tejada persisted.

“No. My father moved the family there after the Franco-Prussian war,” Meyer sighed. “Germany was better for Jews then.”

“Your parents?”

“From Galicia. Why?”

“Galicia!” the lieutenant echoed eagerly. “They were Spanish?”

Meyer laughed. “It’s a province in Poland, Lieutenant. Nothing to do with Spain.”

“Oh.” Tejada frowned for a moment. “What about farther back? How long had your family been in Poland? 1700s? 1600s?”

Meyer laughed again. “Genealogy has never been one of my interests, Lieutenant. I think my great-grandfather and grandfather grew up in the same town, but beyond that I really couldn’t tell you.”

“But you must have records?” Tejada protested, realizing even as he spoke that the permanent documents he thought of as normal—records of baptisms, marriages, funerals, and so on—would be foreign to the Jew. “How do you trace descent?”

“Jews were only allowed surnames at the end of the eighteenth century,” the professor said quietly. With the teacher’s instinct for when to clarify further he added, “My great-grandfather chose the name Meyer.”

Tejada gasped, with the simple astonishment of a man who had grown up in a society where the titles to both rank and land had been fixed for centuries. “I’ve always thought of the Jews as a very ancient people,” he said, feeling the inadequacy of the response, and suppressing an absurd desire to apologize.

“We are.” The professor’s voice was still quiet. “Ancient, and frequently scattered, and as frequently renamed.”

“Oh.” Tejada brought his mind back to the problem at hand. “I suppose there’s no chance that your family were originally from Spain, then?”

“Sephardic?” There was a note of constraint in Meyer’s voice, almost as if he resented the implication. “No, I’m afraid not.”

“A shame,” Tejada said. “But I suppose if you have no records, then no one else can be expected to either. I suggest you start inventing a family tradition about being from Toledo.”

“Why?” Meyer and Elena spoke at the same time.

“The Law of Return,” Tejada explained. “Passed in 1924. Any Jew who can prove direct descent from those expelled from Spain by the Catholic monarchs is eligible for Spanish citizenship. If you’re picked up without papers, claim Sephardic descent. You can’t prove it, but we can’t disprove it either.”

“You mean I could stay here?” Meyer’s voice was eager.

“I wouldn’t bet on it for the long term,” Tejada cautioned. “But it’s better than being picked up as a German. That means instant deportation.”

“You are a man of infinite resources, Lieutenant.” Meyer smiled. “I would not like to have you as an enemy.”

The professor’s words reminded Tejada of Eduardo Crespo’s, at the Otero’s party a few days earlier. “Well,” he said, with something approaching smugness, “the German army may well be invincible, but I’m damned if we can’t match their police work.” Meyer made no sound, and since he was sitting behind the lieutenant, Tejada could not see his amusement. Elena snickered.

Tejada felt the sun rising on his back, and was content. There was, he reflected, no real hurry to get to San Sebastián. In fact, Captain Alfanador would probably be surprised if he returned too early. The road swung out a little, to make room for a stream almost big enough to be called a river, which had hit a natural dam of fallen trees, and grown into a sluggish pool, several feet deep. In early spring the stream probably ran along below the road, but it had fallen already, leaving a few feet of grassy bank. Tejada glanced at his watch, and then pulled to a halt. “Why are we stopping?” Elena demanded.

“Because,” Tejada said, “there’s a path down to the water there, and I want to shave. I’ve spent too much time in the rain lately, and I feel scruffy.”

He got out of the truck. “Pass me my kit, Professor.”

“Here.” The professor hesitated a moment, and then took the plunge. “Lieutenant! If we must stop . . .”

“Yes?” Tejada asked, surprised at the professor’s diffidence, and half-suspicious. He tried to remember if he had heard anything about Jews praying in the morning. They had rules about bathing too. Perhaps Meyer wished to perform some ritual. Tejada was torn between a desire to shield Elena from any pagan rites and an overwhelming curiosity about witnessing them himself.

“May I borrow your razor?”

The lieutenant recognized his disappointment just in time to smother it, and feel embarrassed at being disappointed. He laughed. “Sure. Can you make it down to the water?”

“I think so. The rocks form a kind of stairway.”

Meyer picked his way down the embankment with an ease that proved his claim of being a serious hiker. He was nearly at the pool by the time Tejada had dug his shaving equipment out of the pack. “Careful!” the professor called upward. “It is not difficult, but the way down is very dirty. I’ve stained my coat, I’m afraid.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Tejada replied, and unbuckled his holster. “Hold this,” he said, handing the pistol to Elena. “If you hear anyone coming, put it under the seat, and hide. We’ll be right back.”

“All right.” Elena looked dubiously at the gun and then placed it on the seat beside her.

Tejada shrugged off his coat and tossed it over the weapon. Then he kissed her lightly and followed Meyer down the cliff. Elena, left alone, collected her thoughts. She had gathered that both men wished for privacy in their toilette, and it seemed likely to take some time. She twisted in her seat to admire the rising sun, and then lowered her gaze to where Carlos had abandoned his coat. It was wrinkled and wet with rain. He was not likely to feel much less scruffy after putting it on again she thought. She picked up the coat and did her best to smooth away the wrinkles with her palm, aware as she did so that it had Carlos’s distinctive smell and that the folds of khaki had molded themselves to the curve of his shoulders.

It was perhaps embarrassment about the possessive intimacy of the gesture that made Elena abandon her ineffectual attempts to press the coat and to give it a brisk shake by the shoulders. A folded paper fluttered from one pocket. Elena stooped to retrieve the paper and realized that it was covered with writing on both sides. Curious, she unfolded it, and read: “
Dear Carlos:
Congratulations on your promotion! Mama has almost forgiven your
decision to join the Guardia Civil. . . .
” She smiled, pleased with the deserved praise on Carlos’s behalf, and kept reading.