The Communist's Daughter Read Free Page A

the street like lumbering elephants. It seemed an entire neighbourhood of drunkenness. The smell of black tobacco was on everyone’s clothing. I remember a blanket of smoke hanging over the street. Some of the bars were reserved for quiet old men who played dominoes and listened to radio reports of the war and watched the young people through the windows. Heads turned when we walked in. I was not as young as the rest of the crowd but not so old, either. No one said anything to us. I was used to that by then. In these bars nobody liked seeing a new face. It was understandable, your mother said, even healthy, to be suspicious of strangers in times like these.

    *

    This evening Ho passed before my door, propped open to permit the breeze, and stopped. He may have seen my foot protruding from behind this desk, hunched over as I was and thinking about where to go with this story. I rolled another sheet into the Remington. Off he walked to the sound of my clacking.

    *

    I remember rumours were an ongoing source of debate and discussion. They became something of a fascination and a pastime, I think. For some months it was said that the French would not buckle under British pressure to reverse their promise of military aid, and that the Americans would enter the war within six months. People spoke of Mussolini with ridicule and of Hitler with fear and of the devilish Moors with such a grinding racial hatred that I myself began to feel it. Up at the front, during the lulls in fighting, the urge to talk grew, and spies were a frequent topic. Emilio Mola, the Fascist general, spearheading four columns of soldiers at Madrid’s southeastern flank, had proclaimed that a fifth column of sympathizers was said to be waiting quietly, patiently, in the heart of the capital. Soon this was considered fact, though nothing was known for certain.

    Entering the world of gossip and rumour was a common rite of passage that greatly relieved the tedium. At the front there was only waiting and fighting and talking. Women and prostitutes also figured in these conversations, until some remark unwittingly reminded the men of the rapes they’d seen or had themselves committed. Then the jocularity was sucked out of the air as if fire had suddenly stolen oxygen from their lungs, and they would return to their silent stares and memories as the war again became real. Most days, recollections of my own experiences many years before, in Belgium during the Great War, came to me. I never spoke of them, not to your mother and not to these young men. Stories of another war to end all wars would do no one any good. Your mother knew enough to guess what I’d seen before coming to Spain.

    *

    I have been thinking about the night your mother and I spent in a bomb shelter. It was our first night together, and a very strange night, indeed. I’m sure she would tell you the same. I can close my eyes and still smell the dankness in the air, and feel the closeness of those arched brick passageways we moved through under the city. Most of us spent a fair bit of time in cellars and basements in Madrid, but this night was unusual and I think you should know about it.

    Frank Pitcairn had led us into a bar called Los Gabrieles, where colourful mosaic advertisements for brandies and biscuits and sherries covered the walls. It was probably close to one o’clock in the morning when the loud, high whine of an air-raid siren came through the door and all conversations stopped. People made for the basement. Your mother seemed oddly calm, I thought. Could she be so used to this, already? I carried my drink outside and watched the streets being vacated as people ran for the safety of doorways. She followed casually behind. I did not hear the planes, but when the explosions began, the last of the drinkers and the staff quickly headed below for shelter. Your mother and I followed and walked through a long hallway, past the washrooms and down a narrow, dimly lit set