Law of Return (4 page)

He finished writing a little over an hour later, placed the precious document in a locked filing cabinet, and stumbled back to bed, feeling as if his eyes were the size of watermelons. Naturally, since he wanted to make the most of the few remaining hours available for sleep, his mind became suddenly alert.
How could a man under surveillance disappear for a week?
He supposed it was logical that Señora de Arroyo might not be overly anxious to involve the Guardia in her personal affairs, but most women would have been worried if their husbands suddenly disappeared. Unless she knew where he was, of course. His mind sharpened. She had denied knowledge of his whereabouts and he had believed her.
Why?
She might well be Arroyo’s accomplice.
In what?,
the lieutenant asked himself, and received no good answer. Tejada could not remember any charges against the former lawyer aside from his signing of the petition four years earlier.
What else might make him want to disappear? And did
it have to do with the other “petitioners”?

In the morning,
Tejada told himself,
I’ll read all of their files again,
carefully. And I’ll find out what the standing of the Otero Martínez family
really
is. And if Arroyo’s family are leftists. In the morning. And right
now, I’ll go to sleep so that I’ll be alert tomorrow . . . today . . . in just a
few hours . . . shit, stop wasting time. GO TO SLEEP!
Naturally, he tossed and turned until a few seconds before reveille, when he was forced to arise totally exhausted.

Chapter 4

B
reakfast readings were a tradition in the Fernández family. Guillermo always claimed that he wrote best in the small hours of the morning, preferably when facing a tight deadline. His children had grown up with the phrase, “Go to bed now. Papa needs to write.” Frequently, the morning after uttering these magic words, Professor Fernández would appear at the dining-room table unshaven and with bags under his eyes, clutching a sheaf of papers. “It’s done!” he would proclaim. “Would you like to hear it?” Then he would read the speech or article to his wife, pausing anxiously at the end to ask for her comments. As Hipólito and Elena grew older, they too became part of his morning audience, praising and criticizing with increasing knowledge and interest.

Elena had missed the morning readings when she returned from Madrid. She had relegated them to the irretrievably lost world designated as “prewar.” So she felt a rush of relief and pleasure when her father appeared the next morning with his chin covered in gray stubble, holding a folded sheet of paper, and said as he reached for the coffeepot, “The letter’s done. Would you like to hear it?”

Elena caught her mother’s quick smile as well, and a knot in her chest tightened. It was almost painful to remember what her father had been like. “Of course,” she said, and waited for him to declaim.

Professor Fernández had worked hard on the letter. It was reasonable to assume that it would be read by both the Spanish and French authorities before it reached its destination—if it reached Meyer at all. He had carefully cloaked any reference to taking in the refugee in allusions to the
Odyssey
. Even his daughter had to work to follow these allusions, and his wife had to interrupt him with questions. “What do you mean ‘visit Sparta for news of Odysseus?’” María asked halfway through the letter.

“That’s where Telemachus meets Theoklymenos,” Elena explained impatiently.

“Yes, dear.” Her mother shot her an irritated glance. “But I meant what does it
mean
?”

Guillermo smiled briefly. “I was thinking that you deserve a holiday from all the heat. How would you feel about a few weeks in San Sebastián this summer?”

“I suppose.” María was dubious. “If you’re given permission to travel.”

The professor nodded. “It would be simple to pick up Meyer there, if he can slip across the border.”

“I love the seashore.” Elena smiled, pleased above all that her father was once again planning things.

The professor shook his head. “I meant your mother and I. There’s no need for you to get involved, Elenita.”

Elena was annoyed. I’m already involved, she thought, and then reproached herself for being ungrateful for her father’s intermittent efforts to protect her.

The professor continued reading, unaware of her mutinous thoughts. “Well,” he asked, as he reached the end of the much worked-over letter, “what do you think?”

“It’s wonderful, Guillermo,” his wife said sincerely. “No one who wasn’t as obsessed with Homer as you are could understand it.”

“I wonder.” Elena was hesitant, but the old urge to critique the professor’s work was strong.

“Yes?” Her father looked at her anxiously, but it was with his old anxiety about his writing, and she was not upset by it.

“Is it
too
obscure?” the young woman said slowly. “You don’t want something that shouts it’s a code. Because a coded message is sure to attract attention.
Because
it’s coded, you know.”

The professor nodded. “I know. That’s why I didn’t write in Greek. It would have been simpler, really.”

“Censors aren’t known for their subtlety.” María spoke comfortingly. “I think it’s fine, Guillermo. They’ll probably just make some comment about absent-minded professors, and pass it along.”

The professor looked relieved. “Maybe. What do you think I should change, Elena?”

His daughter shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably not one censor in a hundred has studied the classics. So I’m sure it’s fine.”

“Probably not one in a thousand.” The professor spoke with a trace of bitterness. “I’ll go and make a clean copy then.”

Elena nodded, trying not to wince at this break in the routine. In the old days, her father had always rushed out of the house without the time to make fair copies. His speeches tended to be crosshatched and doodled-over affairs, with arrows leading from paragraph to paragraph. But at least her father was moving with some purpose, even if it was only to recopy a letter.

Elena had come to dread the end of breakfast since her return to Salamanca. During her childhood, breakfast had been a hurried affair; her father had been perpetually late for his lectures, and she and her brother had been rushing to school. In Madrid, before the incident that had cost her her job as a teacher and forced her to return home, she had stopped eating breakfast entirely, and had simply prepared for work first thing in the morning. But now breakfast had no natural end. It was usually Señora de Fernández who finally stood, after it was no longer possible to pretend to linger over coffee, and cleared the cups away with a final air. Then Elena would cast an apologetic look at her father, and follow her mother out of the room, to help her with the housework that both of them hated. Guillermo Fernández would stare at his hands, or else stand and mumble something about going to his study. He seldom left the house in the mornings anymore. He had few errands to run, and aimless walks tended to attract unwanted shadows with three-cornered hats and rifles. On good days the professor had private tutoring to look forward to in the afternoons, and he would spend hours carefully planning how to pound basic Latin into the head of a wealthy and unwilling adolescent. On days when there was no tutoring he did not leave the house at all.

Elena hated the drudgery of cleaning and mending. But she hated watching her father’s idleness even more. She knew that her mother sympathized with him. But María de Fernández had never had to leave the house in the morning for work and Elena suspected that she did not understand how miserable it was to
not
have to leave for work. Even though Elena’s stay in Madrid during wartime had been filled with hardship, and even terror, especially when her students’ families were persecuted by the Guardia Civil, Elena missed teaching. She had an unarticulated feeling that she understood her father better than her mother did. The professor’s daughter had never discussed her insight with her parents, perhaps because she felt obscurely guilty about it. But she also felt as if her secret understanding made her somehow responsible for her father, as if she were the adult in the relationship.

It was this lingering sense of responsibility that made her say every Friday afternoon, with false cheerfulness, “If you’re going out, Papa, can I come along? I’d like a walk.”

The professor always accepted her company on his walks to the Guardia Civil post. Elena felt at her most maternal towards him on these walks. It never occurred to her that she might be a burden as well as a blessing to him when he reported to the Guardia Civil; that Guillermo Fernández might wish to protect his daughter even as she wished to protect him; that he hated the fear that made him cling to her arm as they approached the post as much as she did. Neither father nor daughter wished to tug at their tangled skein of love and resentment, for fear that it might unravel entirely.

The professor was more cheerful than usual this Friday. He emerged from his study and poked his head into the living room where Elena and her mother were working considerably earlier than usual. “I’m going to stop by the post office before reporting to my parole officer,” he announced, waving an envelope. “Would you like a walk, Elenita?”

“I’d love one.” Elena’s alacrity was less forced than usual. She turned to her mother. “Unless . . . ?”

“You go along,” María reassured her quickly. “You need the fresh air.”

Elena enjoyed the walk. Father and daughter reached the post office shortly before it closed for the siesta, and mailed two copies of the carefully written letter: one to the address Meyer had specified, and another to the address in Leipzig where Guillermo had sent his previous correspondence. Then they dawdled in the empty streets, taking the shady way whenever possible. At this time of year looking for shade was more a game than a necessity. The professor shared his daughter’s good mood.

“Of course, it probably won’t even reach Meyer,” he said, as they turned out of sight of the post office. “Things are so unsettled now, and if the Germans have sealed the borders. . . .”

“I’m sure he’ll get
one
of them,” Elena soothed.

“And you think that’s a good thing?” The professor turned and smiled at her. She was a hair taller than he was, and he had to raise his chin slightly to meet her eyes. “And here I was worrying about protecting you and your mother.”

“Of course it’s a good thing,” Elena said firmly. “I liked him a lot. It’s the right thing to do.”

The professor sighed. “I’m lucky to have such a daughter.”

Elena squeezed his arm, both pleased and embarrassed, and her father patted her hand. They walked arm in arm without speaking until they reached the Guardia Civil post, topped by its watchtowers and red-and-yellow flag. Elena, who had been leaning on her father’s arm, straightened, as she felt him begin to lean on her. She wondered, as she always did, if his stoop actually became more pronounced in the presence of the Guardia, or if she merely thought that he suddenly seemed much shorter. “Will you ask the Captain for permission to travel today?” she asked, to distract him from his fear.

“If he’s in a good mood,” her father replied without meeting her eyes.

Elena sighed. She had wanted to ask him to ask the captain to give her permission to travel to San Sebastián as well.
So I can keep
an eye on them,
she told herself, knowing that her real motive was the choking fear that she would be abandoned in Salamanca without news, or even a letter, if her parents were arrested in the north. But she did not have the heart to make demands on her father now, when he was leaning so heavily on her arm, with his eyes fixed on the ground to guide his faltering steps.

The professor stated his name and business to the guardia on duty in a low voice that was almost a mumble.

“And you are?” The guardia turned to Elena, rifle held across his chest.

Elena held her breath for an instant, praying, as she did every week, that her father would say something. For once, her prayers were answered. “My daughter,” Guillermo muttered.

The guardia stood aside to let them pass, and they entered the familiar waiting room. Elena looked about her with hatred. The ugly, hard-backed benches, the dirty floors, and the harsh lights were as disgusting as they had been last week. The room, however, was noticeably emptier. Elena recognized most of the civilians in the room as her father’s fellow parolees, although only a few of them were present. She and her father easily found a bench for themselves. She wondered where the other parolees who usually clogged the room were. Perhaps their appointments had been changed. Perhaps they were no longer under surveillance. Perhaps they had been arrested. Her father was still holding her hand, staring fixedly at the ground, unwilling to meet anyone’s eyes. Elena gritted her teeth. Surely they had not been arrested. The Guardia Civil were not doing sweeps anymore. No one had been executed in Salamanca for months now. Perhaps it was simply that another waiting room had opened up.

The door to the inner corridor opened and then slammed, and a sergeant whom Elena recognized from previous visits emerged. “Fernández!” he called. “Fernández Ochóa.”

“Here, sir.” Guillermo shuffled to his feet, and Elena rose with him, nervous at how short the waiting period had been. Either the Guardia Civil were unusually efficient this week or . . . she decided that they must be unusually efficient.

The sergeant nodded, and made a note on a clipboard. Then he gestured toward the door he had just walked through. “Come on, then, the Lieutenant’s waiting.” He recognized Elena as she had recognized him, and nodded to her. “Good afternoon, Señorita. You can come too, if you want.”

Elena nodded, and barely managed a courteous reply. Her father’s fingers were like claws on her arm. The steady tramp of the sergeant behind them was giving her a headache. Why the lieutenant
?
Elena wondered, temporarily forgetting her worries about Joseph Meyer in light of more urgent questions. In the past, the post’s captain had seen them. Surely if it was something important we’d see the captain again? And they wouldn’t let me come if they meant to . . . She cut off the thought just as they reached a closed door, and the sergeant ordered them to halt.