Message From Malaga Read Free Page B

Málaga, long before the Romans had even got here.
    Ferrier listened, but his own thoughts were wandering. His mind kept coming back to Jeff’s answers to his questions this evening as they had driven down through the city towards thewineshop.
    * * *
    Ferrier had looked at the busy streets through which they were travelling slowly, at the bright lights, the crowded cafés, the masses of people on the sidewalks. “They’ve forgotten,” he had said. “Or didn’t the Civil War touch them much?”
    Reid had stared at him. “They haven’t forgotten. That would be difficult,” he had added grimly.
    “Was it as bad as that here? In Málaga?”
    Reid had nodded. “That’s why they don’t talk much about it. Not to me, not to—”
    “But you’ve lived here for almost eight years.”
    “I’m still el norteamericano when it comes to politics; let’s not kid ourselves about that. There’s such a thing as an experience gap, you know. We didn’t go through what they suffered.”
    “Some foreigners did.”
    “Only for a couple of years. They weren’t here before the war started, or after it ended. They didn’t live through twenty years of misery.”
    “Twenty?” Ferrier had been disbelieving.
    “I’m not even including the years when grudges and hate were built up, long before the violence really started.”
    “And when did it?”
    “In Málaga? 1931. Forty-three churches and convents burned in two days. A pretty definite start, don’t you think?” Ferrier had been puzzled. (As someone who had been brought up on Hemingway and graduated to Orwell, he thought he knew something about Spain.) “Have you got your dates right?” he asked half-jokingly. “There was an elected government inpower then. Newly elected, too. It didn’t have to burn and terrorise. It had the votes.”
    “And couldn’t control its anarchists. Not in Málaga, certainly. Those burnings took place just one month after the Republic was declared.”
    “But that doesn’t make sense!” Anarchists and communists had been on the side of the Republic. “Unless, of course,” Ferrier said thoughtfully, “it was some kind of power grab.”
    “It was just that. The Republic was never given a fair chance. The anarchists had their ideas of how to dominate the scene; the communists had their own plans for coming out on top—anything that created a revolutionary situation was all right with them. So things went wild. Burning, looting, kidnapping, killing. Málaga had five years of that before the Civil War really got going. And you think no one remembers? Look—they have only to walk down their most important street—the one we have just passed through, all modern buildings and plate-glass windows. When you looked at it, what did you think all that newness meant?”
    “I didn’t think. I just assumed. Natural growth of an active city.” Experience gap, thought Ferrier. He was being given a sharp lesson in the meaning of that phrase. But he had asked for it.
    “Once, it had historical buildings, some fine architecture; a kind of show place. It also had rich families and art objects—an unhappy combination when anarchists are taking revenge. In 1936, it became a stretch of burned-out rubble.” Reid’s tone was quiet, dispassionate. In the same even way, he continued, “A couple of months later, the Civil War started. You know what that meant. Bravery on both sides; and cruelty, and hate,and vengeance. At one point, the communists thought they were going to win, and that’s when they made sure the anarchists wouldn’t give them any future trouble. So it was ‘Up against the wall, comrade anarchist!’ Literally. In Barcelona—but you know about that?”
    “I’ve read my Orwell. The anarchists were shot by the hundreds, even thousands, weren’t they?”
    “Just after they had come out of the front-line trenches. Their rest period.” Reid shook his head. “I don’t know why that seems so particularly bloody in all that bloody