Lime's Photograph (14 page)

Some days I went with him on his expeditions in the surrounding countryside where he was exploring the old trenches from the siege of Madrid in 1937 and 1938. He had been just a lad at the time, but child soldiers are not an African invention. They had fought on both sides during the bloody, savage confrontation when General Franco rose against the legitimate government of the Republic. We found old weapons and pieces of rusty barbed wire and helmets shot to pieces and other relics of the bloody fratricidal wound in the history of Spain. Alfonzo made a note of everything and drew meticulous maps of where he thought the lines of trenches had been when the fascists tried to capture Madrid. Huge passenger planes flew lazily above us on their way to and from the airport. They were a conspicuous sign of change, of a Spain that had forgotten the grand overture to the slaughter of the Second World War.

We didn’t say very much to one another. We found a slope where we sat and shared a loaf of bread and some cheese and ham from one of the small local farms. Don Alfonzo drank wine. I couldn’t bring myself to address him as Juan or just Alfonzo. He was an old-fashioned man and it came naturally to address him with the formal
Don
. I drank cola. I felt that I must keep my promise to Amelia. Mostly we sat in silence and then I would tell him that I could hear the grasshoppers in the shimmering heat of the plain. He liked to hear me say that. It was one of the things he missed. Hearing the vibrating tune of the grasshoppers, the monotone melody of summer. We never talked about our loss. There wasn’t anything to say. It was simply too unbearable. Don Alfonzo would say something like, “As long as there’s a fine little wine, fresh-baked bread and a good piece of cheese, it can’t all go wrong,” as if he was quoting Graham Greene who he had undoubtedly never read, but I didn’t tell him that. I would reply, saying something like, “They’re singing loudly today, the grasshoppers.” He would cup his hand behind his ear and try to listen. Using his hand to form an
ear trumpet to try to catch the high-pitched quivering sound just once. He was looking very old, with paper-thin skin covering his narrow cheekbones. Older than 72 anyway. He had looked ten years younger than his age in the past. Now he just kept his precise little moustache ruler-straight and he dressed every day in clean clothes, which his housekeeper put out for him. She was a 60-year-old widow from the neighbouring village who came every morning and cleaned, did the washing and the shopping and prepared his meals. The fullness of his body faded. He wasted away a little more every day, as if he was being slowly airbrushed out of the picture before my eyes. I had the impression that he enjoyed my silent company, our occasional words hanging in the parched midday heat. He would point at a Stork’s nest, saying:

“That was there during the war too. I remember it. I was lying over there, shooting in the direction of the city. The Republicans wore red scarves round their necks. It was stupid of them, but they were anarchists after all, so it was a kind of uniform for them, even though they were actually against uniforms and badges of rank. That’s why the communists loathed them. They devoured one another. They were easy targets in those scarves. But I didn’t hate them.”

It was a conversation with neither point nor substance. Everything we did had just the one purpose, to pass the time. To let the slowly ticking seconds of our lives pass, without losing our sanity.

It was for this very reason that I took photographs of ants. Otherwise, I didn’t take photographs any more, at least not of people. But I bought some new equipment and photographed the big anthill at the bottom of my father-in-law’s garden. The garden covered almost 4,000 square metres on a gentle slope, and was well-kept, with cypress trees and large red geraniums and my father-in-law’s two greenhouses where he pottered about looking after his flowers and tomatoes. The ants were large and reddish-black, working and
struggling from morning to evening. I took long shots of the anthill, medium shots and sharp close-ups of the formidable beasts. I studied them intimately and was impressed by their talent for organisation. Their progress to and from the anthill made me think of the construction work of a Roman legion. The worker ants were just like legionnaires as, in marching step, they took waste products from the mound and food and building materials home to their queen. Time stood still, but moved on anyway, as I scrutinised them for hours on end. It was the same sensation of timelessness I’d had as a child, sitting on the toilet watching the myriad of patterns and squares on the terrazzo flooring. I used to imagine that it was a town inhabited by small creatures who reported to me on their lives, and their victorious campaigns. The stone floor became a whole world populated by these creatures who I controlled and yet didn’t control, because my imagination seemed to wander at their bidding along the paths they chose. The same daydreams came tumbling into my mind at night, as I stood in the bathroom and developed prints from the negatives. It was like beginning again. I had my Leica and some equipment which I set up every night. I could have been a child again. I took photographs that were of no use whatsoever. Which had no purpose other than to kill time.

In order to get back and forth between Don Alfonzo’s house and the city, I had bought a motorbike. Now I paid for my coffee and left the Cerveceria Alemana, driving out of the city along with millions of others. It was a powerful Honda 750 that I rode swiftly and recklessly, moving in and out of the lanes of cars. Oscar had muttered something about a subconscious death wish, and maybe he was right. But maybe it wasn’t all that subconscious. I drove fast and I took risks, but I also enjoyed the feeling of the wind in my hair as I left the suburbs behind and could glide through the twists and turns along the small back roads leading to my father-in-law’s house.

He was pottering in the garden as usual. I could see his bleached straw hat as he nipped the tomato shoots and watered the plants. I fetched a cola and a glass of chilled rosé for Don Alfonzo, and sat out on the terrace. It was very warm and very quiet. There was a droning sound in the distance, a plane lazily banking and beginning its approach. The cicadas were singing and I could see a donkey in the neighbour’s field. Apart from the airport it was as if time had stood still just 40 kilometres from Madrid. There was something eternally Spanish about the evening. The shimmering heat slowly rising into the clear, gleaming firmament and the little lights emerging in the twilight out towards the mountains on the horizon.

He sat down with a formal
buenas tardes
, took off his hat and mopped his tanned forehead. We sat for a while in our usual, comfortable silence that never felt awkward. Then I recounted my conversation with Rodriques. He listened without interrupting. I often forgot that this taciturn old man had been one of the Franco regime’s astute intelligence agents, with many important contacts all over Europe. Franco’s Spain may have been officially abhorred and isolated by the rest of Western Europe, but Franco was, above all, anti-communist and harboured American air-bases even though at the time the country wasn’t a member of NATO. Franco’s Spain was the USA’s friend because he was the enemy’s enemy, and the CIA worked in close collaboration with the Spanish security services.

When I had finished, he waited a moment and then began to speak in his usual, drawn-out manner. The sentences came slowly, punctuated by pauses. He was a man who had all the time in the world.

“Yes, Pedro. It sounds plausible. But my life has taught me that intelligence work is like an iceberg. Most of it is hidden beneath the surface. Information is a currency with no fixed exchange rate. Its value fluctuates, and words cover both lies and the truth. People want confirmation that a piece of information is important. That it is
significant. That the very thing you and I can tell them is crucial, that it is the one thing that counts. People and organisations have in common the need for solutions and explanations. The equation must work out, otherwise we get uneasy.”

“You don’t believe it, then?”

“It certainly sounds very logical and reasonable. It has ETA’s fingerprints all over it. Mistakes happen, but the whole thing bears the stamp of that ruthlessness which is at the heart of terrorism. It would be good for you and me too – it would give us a little peace if we had an explanation. Perhaps it would heal our wounds if the senselessness of their deaths made illogical, absurd sense. If there was a reason for our loss. Perhaps.”

We were getting close to what was usually left unsaid. So I sat quietly for a while before I spoke.

“I thought I’d go to San Sebastián.”

“Of course. It might be a good idea. Try to do something. But Rodriques is right – the State will leave no stone unturned. It will use all its resources to obliterate the malignant tumour in our society.”

“Well, I’ve got some old contacts there.”

“I know, Pedro. But the police know them too.”

“They’re clean today.”

“Nevertheless,” he said.

He knew what I was talking about. In 1977, before the first free election in 40 years, Spain had given full amnesty to all members of ETA who renounced the use of weapons. Political prisoners had been released, and the slate wiped clean. The vast majority of the old members of ETA had given up arms and now lived normal, lawful lives in the Basque Country, which had achieved a degree of self-governance under the old Basque name of Euskadi. But a new generation of young Basques kept up the armed struggle against the Spanish State, and they surpassed the old partisans in ruthlessness.

“They’re Basques, above all. They’ve laid down their weapons, but they’re still reluctant to talk to the police. They don’t want to be informers. Maybe they’d talk to me?”

“Maybe. It will give you something to do, Pedro. I understand.”

“I’d like your help.”

“I understand.”

“You’re in a position to make inquiries, to ask.”

“Let me give it some thought. I’m an old man.”

He took a careful sip of his rosé. I went in to get our supper. The food would be ready and waiting, I just had to add the final touches. The villa was well-planned and sparsely furnished, but there were more than enough books. It was two-storied, with an open-plan ground floor and a large, comfortable kitchen. The tiled floor and bare white walls made the interior feel cool. There were four rooms upstairs; one of which was mine. In the living room, under a picture of the Virgin Mary holding the Infant Jesus, Don Alfonzo had placed a photograph of Amelia and Maria Luisa. I had taken it one summer’s day two years earlier, in the garden, in front of his beloved tomato plants which were weighed down with ripe, red fruit. Amelia and Maria Luisa were laughing at the camera and there was a glow like a halo around their light summer frocks. It was a beautiful and happy photograph and it made me ache every time I saw it, but Don Alfonzo refused to put it away. There were two candles next to the framed photograph and I knew that he lit them when I wasn’t home.

I made a tomato salad using his sun-ripened fruit, and fried some lamb chops in oil with garlic and basil from the garden. Doña Carmen, his housekeeper, had also bought fresh bread. I put everything on a tray and poured a glass of red wine for the old man, found another can of cola in the fridge and arranged it all on the terrace table. We ate in silence. We didn’t eat a lot and I don’t know how much
we enjoyed the meal, but we had to eat. I washed up, made coffee and took it out to him with his evening brandy. He smoked his second cigar of the day. It was completely dark now. A soft and lovely darkness that enveloped us and muffled all the sounds around us and made the distance appear clearer.

“I used to believe in life,” he said. “I actually believed there was some point to it. I lost my faith in God in the trenches outside Madrid. But, then again, many of us did. I regained my faith when Amelia was born. A person can’t live in a void. A person who can’t pray is an unhappy person. When my dear wife died in childbirth, I was unhappy, but it was fate and I didn’t blame God.”

There was another long pause, before he continued.

“This century has been one long violation. But on the eve of the next millennium, we have cause for certain optimism. If I disregard the commandment about not being conceited, I can even feel a certain pride on behalf of my generation. We overcame Nazism. We overcame communism. Two ideologies born in blood and lived in blood. We overcame fatal poverty here in Europe. My own country? Maybe you won’t believe me, but during those years under Franco, I felt that although the means we used weren’t always sound, their objective was to make Spain civilised. The country I was born in over 70 years ago was a poor, underdeveloped and isolated country, rife with destitution and illiteracy, hatred and cruelty. A million people lost their lives in the fratricidal war. Deep wounds and scars split the country for 40 years. Such terrible hatred. Spain today? Look around. We are a civilised, democratic country. That makes me happy. It makes me happy that once again a king is protecting my native land. It makes me happy that the new generations take it for granted. That was the whole purpose, after all. That living in peace is taken for granted.”

Another pause and then he continued in a low voice.

“When Amelia and Maria Luisa were taken from us, God died for
the second time in my life. This time I don’t think He will be revived again. But I have hope, and if I damn Him, then I must believe that He’s there. Why damn a being that doesn’t exist?”

He paused, and in the stillness of the warm night his words were like an echo of my own thoughts at Amelia and Maria Luisa’s funeral. Don Alfonzo went on.

“I go to Mass, I hear the familiar words, I close my eyes, I fold my hands together, and nothing happens. I still can’t pray. My prayers have dried up, like this garden in August. I can’t go to confession. My sins are not as great as His negligence, so why should I confess them to Him and ask Him for forgiveness? Therefore I can’t receive the Sacrament either. This time He is dead. He is as dead as my daughter and my grandchild. I do so want to believe again in the Resurrection and eternal life, but I can’t.”