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24

The Election

Andrew had written to Theo before the end of term telling him that he now judged it safe to return to Spain:

The authorities’ focus is on the upcoming elections, which they expect to win handsomely with support from landowners like me. Past quarrels are forgotten and the cacique and the captain and I are now firm friends, which delights your mother, who really seems to have turned a corner ...

And two weeks later, he and Elena and Senora Constanza gave Theo a hero’s welcome as he was driven up through the wrought iron gates to where they were standing on the front step of the house under a handwritten sign reading Bienvenido A Casa, Theo .

As Theo dutifully ate his way through the huge feast that Constanza had prepared, Elena kept up a constant flow of questions about Trinity College, focusing particularly on its dress code, and told him that they would have to go shopping for a new wardrobe now that he was going to university. “You must look the best. The best of all the clever students with their grand titles!” she said, clapping her hands. “Mustn’t he, Andrew?”

“Definitely,” said Andrew with equal enthusiasm. “And then perhaps we can pay Theo a visit and see him in his magnificent rooms, dressed up in his new clothes.”

Theo remembered his last conversation with his stepfather and understood that he was trying to use the news from Oxford as a way to coax his wife to leave Spain for England, at least for a visit, and he smiled, feeling like a coconspirator.

Andrew opened a bottle of champagne and they drank to Theo’s health, and two round pink spots appeared in Elena’s pale cheeks, which made Theo laugh. And while he was laughing, Andrew disappeared into his study and came back with a present in silver paper tied up with a red bow—“Wrapped by your mother,” he said.

Theo opened it and took out a beautiful watch in its own special box.

“It’s a Rolex,” said Andrew. “They’re a Swiss company, and they make the best watches in the world. The case is white gold and so is the dial. It’s worth a good deal, so you must take care of it.”

“I will,” said Theo as he put it on his wrist. He loved the watch, with its strange, unexpected design of six larger black numbers at the top and bottom and six smaller ones on the sides, all enclosing the Rolex name at the center in tiny gold letters above a separate miniature dial for the seconds.

“Thank you,” he said, shaking his stepfather’s hand and leaning down to kiss his mother.

She took hold of both his hands and looked up into his eyes. “To think of how far we have come since New York,” she said wonderingly. “Who would have thought it? You and me.”

It was the first time in as long as Theo could remember that his mother had referred to their previous life or spoken of them as a pair, and he felt a surge of gratitude and hope for the future.

In the new spirit of reconciliation, he went to church with his mother the next morning and sat through a fire-and-brimstone sermon by Don Vincente in which he attacked the Popular Front as the Antichrist and urged the congregation to put their hands in their pockets one last time and give generously to the National Front, whose mission was to save Spain and the Church from the godless Marxists, Freemasons, and Jews.

“We will win the election,” he shouted, thumping the pulpit with his pudgy fists. “Because God wills it. Viva Cristo Rey! ”

And next to Theo, Elena crossed herself fervently, looking up with the rest of the congregation past Don Vincente to Christ bleeding on his cross above the altar, imploring him to answer their prayers for victory.

After Mass, Elena insisted on Theo waiting with her for Don Vincente to emerge from the vestry.

“Many congratulations, young man! I have heard from your dear mother about your splendid success,” said the priest, keeping hold of Theo’s hand even though he knew Theo wanted to let go, just as he had when they first met. Don Vincente’s Spanish seemed to have become even more flowery than he remembered, Theo thought, as he mumbled an acknowledgment. Just as his stomach had grown rounder.

“You are fortunate to have your mother to guide you in your progress. I have always thought that the commandment to honor thy father and mother is among the most important of the ten,” said the priest, looking hard at Theo.

“My father is dead,” said Theo, unable to resist the obvious response.

But Don Vincente was ready for him. “All the more reason to honor thy mother,” he said.

Theo knew what the priest was telling him. If Don Vincente hadn’t known before about Theo’s suspected involvement in the abortive attack on the ayuntamiento, then he was certainly aware of it now, and he was using the commandment to warn him to stay on the straight and narrow.

The old fraud! Theo thought with disgust. Lecturing him about the commandments when he had broken the sanctity of the confessional without a second thought, as well as sundry other priestly vows, if Antonio was to be believed. But Theo knew better than to rock the boat when his mother was happy, and so he swallowed his irritation and bowed his head respectfully to Don Vincente.

In the afternoon, Antonio came to the house. They embraced warmly, and Theo felt happy and relieved that Antonio had kept his promise not to allow his father to come between them.

Theo fetched his coat, and they began walking up the hill toward Santa Leticia’s chapel.

“Nothing’s changed, if that’s what you’re wondering,” said Antonio, glancing over at Theo and answering the question that he could see Theo was burning to ask. “Maria’s still locked up in Burgos, learning how to be a good Catholic.”

“Have you heard from her?”

“No, but I didn’t expect to. If Mother Superior is under instructions not to let her out, then she’s hardly likely to furnish her with writing materials. My father’s intending to bring her back to marry Pedrito once the election’s over and he’s finished bargaining over the dowry with Don Fadrique.”

“You’re making it sound like she’s a lump of merchandise. Something to be auctioned off to the highest bidder!” Theo protested, feeling outraged by Antonio’s matter-of-fact tone.

“No, I’m not,” Antonio shot back. “Maria’s my sister and I love her. But she’s also my father’s daughter, even though she likes to pretend she isn’t. And as I’ve told you before, this country’s not like America: girls do what their fathers tell them to do. That’s how it’s always been and how it always will be.”

“Not if the Anarchists have their way!”

“If they have their way, we’ll all be dead,” said Antonio, slicing his finger across his throat. “I thought you’d learned your lesson about them last time you were here.”

Theo had no answer to that. Antonio was right. He had learned his lesson, which was why he was trying to make a new start. And to do that, he needed to stop thinking about Maria, even though that was far harder now that he was back in the village and walking past the exact spot where she had kissed him only a few months before.

“Everyone’s talking about the election,” he said, changing the subject. “I went to church this morning to make my mother happy, and Don Vincente’s sermon was like a political fundraiser. You should have seen him: banging his fists on the pulpit and demanding more money for the cause, while one of the altar boys went round with a special collection plate.”

“Did you give?”

“No, of course not. What do you take me for? I kept my hands in my pockets, even when my mother gave me a dirty look. I hate that the Church is so political and takes the side of the rich against the poor.”

“Yes, God help the priests of Spain if Christ comes back and sees what they’ve got up to while he’s been away,” said Antonio, grinning. “But, in the meantime, they’re having quite an effect with their sermons, particularly on women. Last time, most of them voted for the CEDA, the Catholic Party, because the Church told them to. And the Right is hoping for a repeat. Maybe the republic made a mistake giving them the vote.”

“Surely you don’t mean that?”

“No, I’m a democrat like you. But I wish they would think for themselves, that’s all.”

“Who do you think is going to win?” asked Theo. He felt nervous asking the question, because it made him realize how much he cared about the outcome.

“People say the Right,” said Antonio. “They’ve spent ten times as much as the Left, and they haven’t just got the priests working for them. They’ve got caciques all over Spain fixing the vote as well.”

“But you’re not so sure,” said Theo, picking up on the underlying doubt in his friend’s voice.

“No,” said Antonio, shaking his head. “I’m not.”

“Why?”

“Because of the Anarchists. They didn’t vote last time because they don’t believe in elections, but this time they’re putting their principles in their back pockets and turning out in force.”

“Why?” Theo asked, impatiently this time. He wished that Antonio would just explain everything, instead of speaking in riddles.

“Because the Popular Front has promised an amnesty for the thousands of Anarchist prisoners that the government has kept locked up since the rebellion two years ago. But it’s not just that. The working class as a whole are angrier than they were before, angry enough to defy the caciques and the priests. The few concessions they were given at the beginning of the republic have been taken away since the Right won in thirty-three, and they’ve had enough of starving while parasites like Don Vincente and my father live off their labor.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Theo.

“I hope I’m right too. But it could go either way. The only thing I know for sure is that it’s going to be ugly, whoever wins. Largo, the Socialist leader, spouts Marx and calls himself the Spanish Lenin, and Franco and the generals are itching to carry on where they left off in Asturias, with the Church and the landowners cheering them on. And you know from Carlos what the Anarchists have in mind.”

Theo shivered. It was the same forecast of disaster that he had heard from his stepfather when they had talked in the salon before he left for England. “ Violence is where all this will end, ” he’d said. “ I can feel the tide running out beneath my feet. ” And now Antonio was telling him the same thing.

“Look, even the heavens agree with me. The Day of Judgment is coming,” said Antonio with a smile, pointing up to where a flotilla of black clouds had suddenly appeared, rushing over the mountains toward them. It was extraordinary. One moment the sun had been shining on a beautiful afternoon; the next, it was being swallowed up in a vast darkness stretching out like a grasping hand over the village. The birds fell silent and gusts of wind blew this way and that through the trees, bending and contorting their branches.

Ahead of them, lightning flashes lit up the peaks, followed by rolls of reverberating thunder. The air turned cold and rain began to fall. To Theo’s surprise, the drops were solid and white—hailstones bouncing up off the ground like miniature ping-pong balls. They hurt with a sting when they hit his hands and face, and he felt disorientated. He’d never been in Spain in winter, and this kind of rain was a novelty to him.

But he remembered the electric storms in New York when he was a boy. Standing at the window with his father’s arm around his shoulder, watching the lightning drawing jagged white lines between the skyscrapers.

“ When thunder roars, get indoors, ” his father had told him. He’d loved mottos, particularly ones that rhymed. “ And don’t go near trees. If lightning hits one, it’ll explode the trunk and spread through the roots in the ground. That’s how a lot of people get killed, because they don’t know that. ”

Clearly Antonio didn’t, because he’d taken shelter under a big oak with a canopy of thick branches. Theo told him to move, bellowing to make himself heard above the noise of the thunder, and when that didn’t work, he took hold of his friend’s arm, pulling him into the open.

The hail was coming down harder now, pounding the beaten-earth track and breaking the surface into rivulets of running water, and the lightning had moved overhead as they came under the eye of the storm. Theo looked frantically around, searching for shelter. The houses of the village were hundreds of yards behind, but the old woman’s cottage was only a stone’s throw away up ahead. He knew it was there because a lamp was burning in the window—a solitary gleam flickering in the gloom.

“Come on. We have to get inside,” he shouted to Antonio, pointing toward the light. He tried pulling him again, but Antonio wouldn’t move. It was as if he was anchored to the ground.

“No,” he said. “I won’t. Not there.”

Going up close, Theo saw panic in his friend’s eyes. He took hold of his collar with both hands and shook him hard. “You’ve got to. We can’t stay here,” he yelled. And when that had no effect, he reached up and smacked the side of Antonio’s face.

He was prepared for Antonio to hit him back, but the blow had the opposite effect. Antonio stroked his cheek and nodded and began to walk. Theo ran on ahead and knocked on the door, just as a flash of lightning lit up the overgrown weeds and bushes surrounding the cottage.

“Is anyone there?” he shouted. “We need to get out of the rain.”

He knocked again, harder this time, the noise in synchrony with the hail that was hammering the ground, and then stumbled involuntarily over the threshold when the door suddenly opened. Picking himself up, he found himself staring into the small, hooded eyes of the oldest human being he had ever seen. The skin of her face was like an ancient brown parchment covered with a myriad of thin lines grooved by time and stretched tight across her sunken cheeks. Her hair and ears were concealed under a black cowl, and she was smoking a short white clay pipe that poked out from the thin line of her mouth.

Antonio was in the room too. Like Theo, water was dripping down from his clothes and soaking down into the rushes covering the earthen floor. The old woman closed the door and walked across to a rocking chair beside a fire burning on a small hearth, and sat down. A paraffin lamp stood on a low table beside her: a counterpart to the one flickering behind the window that they had seen from outside.

There was a bed on the far side of the room and several cupboards, but the only other piece of furniture was a high-backed settle facing the fire, and Antonio and Theo sat on it after taking off their coats, shivering as they held their hands out to the flames. Steam rose from their sodden clothes.

Theo remembered the cottage from the times he and Antonio had passed it on their way up into the hills. A tumbledown ruin, he’d thought it, so he was surprised to see that the roof was holding firm without a leak, in spite of the storm, which was reaching a crescendo of fury outside.

Inside, everything was clean and swept, but he could see no sign of a broomstick. The old woman looked like she was over a hundred, but that didn’t make her a witch.

She sat and rocked gently in her chair, smoking her pipe and looking into the fire, saying nothing. It was as if she was unaware that they were there.

“I’m sorry,” Theo said, feeling he needed to say something. “The rain came on so quickly and there was nowhere else to go, so thank you. You really saved us ...” He stumbled to a halt, not knowing what else to say in the face of the old woman’s silence.

“Have you money?” she asked, turning to look at Theo. Her voice was a harsh whisper, grating on the ear, and she spoke without taking the pipe out of her mouth.

“I don’t know,” said Theo, rummaging in his waterlogged pockets. “Yes, two pesetas,” he said, holding out the silver coins that he had withheld from Don Vincente’s collection plate in the morning. “I’d be happy for you to have them.”

But instead of taking the coins, the old woman held out her hand and Theo, leaning forward, placed the coins on her outstretched palm.

“One,” she said, holding up a finger, and put the top coin on her table, while placing the other somewhere inside her black dress.

Theo was about to sit back in his seat, but the old woman’s hand shot out and seized his wrist in a surprisingly strong grip, bringing his palm under her eyes.

“The other too,” she said, beckoning, and when Theo complied, she looked intently from one to the other, while he squatted down awkwardly beside her.

After a few moments, she let go of his right hand and began to trace the lines on his left. The unexpectedly delicate touch of her fingers had an extraordinary effect on Theo, making him feel as if she was looking inside him and that he was powerless to stop her seeing what was secreted there.

And when she began to speak, he believed utterly in what she was saying, even though it made little sense. It was only afterward as he was walking home that his natural skepticism returned, and he laughed at her contradictions and decided they were absurd.

“You will be lucky in love, and you will be unlucky in love. You will save your friend, and you will betray your friend,” she said as she traced a line crossing his palm at the base of his fingers.

“You are clever, but you are a fool,” she told him, shifting her finger to a line that seemed to rise from his wrist to above his thumb. “You run forward faster, faster, but you will go back to where you began.”

Without warning, she let go of Theo’s hand, severing the connection between them, and he felt an intense disappointment, as if he had lost something of immense importance that he would never now get back.

She pointed at Antonio and picked up the coin from the table and held it out to him, while extending the open palm of her other hand, just as she had done with Theo.

To Theo’s surprise, Antonio did what she was asking him to do. It was as if he was under some kind of spell that he had to obey. Crossing her palm with silver.

Again, she pocketed the coin and held his hands. But this time she didn’t read the lines. She stared down at Antonio’s palms for half a minute or less, and then abruptly dropped them as if they were live coals.

“What did you see?” asked Theo.

But she wouldn’t answer, resuming her rocking as she gazed into the fire, acting as if they weren’t there.

“Tell me!” he demanded, raising his voice and getting to his feet. He was surprised by the force of his own anger. It wasn’t his fortune that she was concealing, and Antonio wasn’t protesting. But he couldn’t stand the unspoken implication of disaster. If the old witch wouldn’t say what she saw, then how could they deny it?

“He has a right to know,” he insisted, leaning down over the old woman. “We paid.”

Reluctantly, she looked up and met his eye, and then reached inside her dress and dropped one of the coins on the floor at Theo’s feet. “Go,” she said, pointing at the door.

Theo would have stood his ground, continuing to demand the truth, if Antonio hadn’t intervened. He bent down and picked up the coin, gave it to Theo, and opened the door, standing aside for Theo to pass through. Outside, the rain had slackened and the sun was peeping out from behind the retreating clouds.

Theo hesitated and then walked out, and Antonio closed the door behind them. And the falling of the latch acted on Theo as more than a physical separation. It was as if an electrical current connecting him to the old woman had been turned off, and now he could not remember why it had been so important to force her to speak.

They walked back down the hill in silence, picking their way through the puddles and mud. The rain had stopped and the air was cold and fresh, filling Theo with a sense of new beginning, which made it hard for him to hold on to his experience inside the cottage. It was like the storm, which had so quickly come and gone. It felt like it had happened to someone else.

And what the old woman had said made no sense. “Save a friend, betray a friend; lucky in love, unlucky in love!” Fortune-telling was easy if you told it both ways. Which was how to do it, of course. Because no one could predict the future. He laughed at himself for believing in such a stage-managed fraud. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up like Antonio, who saw witches flying over the village on All Hallows’ Night.

Theo glanced over at his friend. He was walking with his head down and his shoulders slumped. A picture of misery.

“You can’t let her upset you,” he said as they approached the gate to his house. “She didn’t see anything. It’s all hocus-pocus.”

Antonio looked at Theo and smiled sadly. “It’s fate. You can’t change what is written,” he said, holding up his palms in resignation. “I would prefer not to have known, but I think that she was always there waiting for me. I sensed it every time I went past her cottage.”

“But she didn’t say what she saw,” Theo insisted. “I asked her, but she wouldn’t. Because there was nothing there. That’s why. She saw nothing.” Antonio’s stoic acceptance of his fate infuriated Theo because he didn’t believe in destiny. He refused to. Human beings’ ability to change their lives was the foundation of what made the world bearable. There was no meaning to life without it.

But Antonio was unmoved. “I know you care,” he said. “Because you are my friend, and I love you for it. But you have to understand that it doesn’t matter. There is nothing I can do to change what will happen. Nothing.”

“Yes, there is,” said Theo passionately. “Don’t join the army. Tell your father to go to hell. It’s not who you are. You know that.”

“But it is who I am,” said Antonio. “It’s my duty.”

Reaching out, he embraced Theo and then walked away down the path.

The rains continued through the weeks that followed. The streets and squares turned to mud. Carts got stuck and drivers beat their steaming mules in vain efforts to get them to move. The air was full of oaths and imprecations, and everyone spoke darkly of the effect that the storms would have on the saturated crops.

Another year of unemployment and hunger loomed for the landless laborers shivering in the barrio as the thatched roofs of their hovels leaked and collapsed under the weight of the relentless rain. Unless there was change. Their hopes crystallized around the election. This time it would be different. It had to be.

On the day of the vote, they climbed the hill in droves, headed for the wide door of the ayuntamiento, where the cacique and his underlings were waiting with their threats and inducements, backed up by a squadron of Civil Guardsmen in their tricorn hats.

“If you vote for the CEDA, you will work; if you vote for the Socialists, you will starve. Or worse, if we have occasion to pay you a visit in the middle of the night. Have a cigar, have a drink. Think of your family. They are depending on you. Be wise in your choice.”

All day the braceros and their wives came and went, passing under the dripping, drooping flag of the republic until the polls closed at dusk and the counting began.

Four days later, the results were announced. The Popular Front had received 4,654,116 votes, the National Front 4,503,505. A difference of 1 percent, but in the Cortes, it meant 130 more seats. The Left had won.

Alone on the terrado the next morning, Theo looked out over the village and the plain lit by golden sunshine and felt a euphoric sense of expectation and excitement. Everything would change now, and this long-suffering, ancient people that he had come to love would at last be free of their chains. Free to lead the lives of dignity and fulfillment that they deserved.

A memory of Esmond floated into his mind. In his room at Saint Gregory’s quoting poetry: “ Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive / But to be young was very heaven. ” Yes, that was it exactly. Heaven.

Theo took a deep breath and composed his features into an expression of deep concern, just as if he was an actor entering the stage in the final act of a tragedy, and went down the stairs. In the salon, he could hear his mother’s voice raised in lamentation.

“They will murder us in our beds,” she cried. “Just like they did in my country. And in Russia. Hammers to break down our doors; sickles not for wheat but to cut off our heads and parade them through the town.”

“No, they won’t,” said Andrew. “They can’t. There are laws, and the Guardia will enforce them. There will be changes. Yes. But some change is needed. People can’t be left to starve for half the year and be paid next to nothing when there is work.”

“You’re on their side,” Elena shouted, losing her temper. “You always have been. I expect you voted for them.”

She got up from the sofa, pulling away from Andrew, who had been trying unsuccessfully to comfort her, and went over to the window. She looked out and then drew quickly back, beckoning to her husband.

“They’re coming,” she said—her voice a fearful whisper. “I told you.”

Standing beside his stepfather, Theo could see the marchers several streets below. Wearing blue shirts and scarlet ties—the Socialist colors, although there were some wearing Anarchist black and red too. Their arms raised in clenched-fist salute were like the pollarded branches of the plane trees in the square, and even through the glass he could hear them singing “The Internationale.”

Spanish words, but the same song that Theo had heard years before in New York, sung by the athletes in the City College stadium and the strikers outside his father’s factory. Sung the world over by brave men and women refusing to give in to exploitation and injustice. His heart leaped.

The marchers didn’t come any higher. They turned back to the main square, and the sound of their singing faded away.

“They were celebrating. That was all. And they’ve gone now, so there’s nothing more to worry about,” said Andrew, kneeling down beside Elena, who had curled up into a fetal ball on the sofa as she relived the horrors of that day when she’d heard her parents die and fled across the fields from her burning house.

Slowly, he coaxed her back up to a sitting position, and Constanza brought tea and the green and blue and orange-and-white-striped pills that had replaced the yellow ones that Theo used to get for his mother from the pharmacy on MacDougal Street in the Village when he was a boy.

The medicines had changed with the years, becoming more powerful and varied and expensive, but Theo understood that the underlying cause of his mother’s trouble had not. She was seared by the experience of her youth. It had sapped her capacity for reason, twisting her naturally loving character to support a ruthless regime that her Savior would have abominated.

Looking at her now, Theo felt a gulf between them that he did not know how to bridge. He feared for her health, knowing that another nervous attack would weaken her still further, loosening her grasp on the side of the cliff down which she was slowly falling, slipping from one handhold to the next. But he did not know how to haul her back to the top. Andrew had a better chance with his unending store of patience and understanding, and Theo no longer felt excluded by his stepfather’s love for his mother. He was glad instead that Andrew could give her comfort, because he did not know how to provide it himself.

He needed to get out. Away from the doom-laden atmosphere in the house. He got his coat and went looking for the marchers, hoping to hear more of their song.

But they were gone, and instead he found Antonio when he got to the square, sitting alone outside his father’s shuttered café with a half-drunk bottle of wine on the table beside him.

“Theo! Just the man I wanted to see! Sit down and have a drink!” said Antonio, patting the empty seat beside him. “Celebrating can be a lonely business when you’re on your own. And there’s no need to worry about my father,” he told Theo when he saw him hesitate. “He’s down on his knees in the office in front of his Franco photograph, praying for a coup. We’ve got the whole place to ourselves.”

It was true. It wasn’t just the café; the whole square was empty, and Theo sensed a false note in Antonio’s enthusiasm, as if he was trying to defy the surrounding desolation.

National Front posters lay trampled in the dirt. A slight breeze caught one where it lay and blew it up into the air where it fluttered for a moment before falling into one of the fountain troughs, where its inky headlines dissolved in the gray water.

“Where are the marchers?” Theo asked. “They were up near my house, but now it’s like they’ve vanished into thin air. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

Instead of replying, Antonio poured himself another glass of wine, and Theo could see that his hand was shaking.

“Tell me, Antonio,” he insisted.

“They’ve gone to occupy the marquis’s untilled land that he leaves fallow for raising his fighting bulls,” Antonio said quietly. “They’re going to plow it and claim it for their own. But I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. My father says the cacique’s got men waiting for them and the Guardia’s there too. I told you this would turn ugly, didn’t I?”

All morning, they waited for news, listening for the sound of the marchers returning. But when news came, it was not from below but from the café behind them. The door suddenly opened and Senor Bernardo appeared, wreathed in smiles that didn’t disappear, even when he saw Theo.

“They drove them off and killed one of them, too, so they won’t be back,” he boomed. “Order is restored. And we can open again, praise be to God. Antonio, lay the tables. It’s business as usual!”