The Poet's Wife (18 page)

Such are the chilling tales of the war that engulf our existence, yet they exist on both sides, for revenge becomes as rife as the crimes themselves. Priests continue to be hounded down in their dozens just as stories abound that men of the cloth themselves take part in many a violent reprisal. Anarchic peasants continue to burn down the houses of their landlords and bloodthirsty gangs loot shops and offices as this becomes the chilling normality across towns and villages.

But I take comfort in my family. We are all alive, and we are all well. Ravenously hungry, tired, scared, but well.

We all loathe the way this war is consuming our country, but my daughter María seems to suffer the most. All those days we spend cooped up at Carmen de las Estrellas, one can see the fear that flickers across her eyes every time she hears an unusual noise from outside. María is a girl who needs to be entertained, to try on fine dresses in boutiques and go for her evening
paseo
to admire the latest fashions on the street and to be admired. Solomon, this man who strangely entered our lives, represents my daughter’s escape from Spain. He is a wealthy man, and though I should not be cynical when they announce their engagement, I cannot help but feel that María’s motivations reach beyond a simple love story.

They do not wait long and when the fragrant blossoms begin to appear on the trees, Solomon and María marry. Part of me rejoices, as I know she shall be granted her passage out of this hell we are trapped in. Yet she is so young, only just sixteen, and I also grieve that another daughter shall be moving far from me. We hold a small ceremony in the chapel near Carmen de las Estrellas and, to my delight, Solomon announces that they are to move to Switzerland which, granted, is still another country, yet not so far as the distant shores of the United States of America. Joaquín’s face on their wedding day is as thundery as the threatening black clouds hovering low in the sky and I notice that María can scarcely look him in the eye. There are some things that a mother shall never be a party to or be able to fully understand.

And then Isabel’s orange tree, which my dear husband nurtured in our garden since her birth, comes down in a violent thunderstorm that lashes branches and debris against our windows and sends the wind howling down our corridors with deafening shrieks. The force of the storm simply snaps the tree in half. It has been a wet and windy month, but nothing has been experienced like this for years. The hurricane lasts one single night, yet in this short time it blows roofs from houses, shatters the windows of motorcars and the Río Darro even bursts its banks and floods parts of the city.

I am horrified to see the damage to the garden the next day, but it is nothing that cannot be put in order again – with the exception of the orange tree. Eduardo is already in the inner courtyard in his pyjamas, staring in horror at the fallen tree, one hand clasping at his head. I walk up behind him and encircle my arm round his waist and breathe into his neck.

‘
Lo siento mucho
,
cariño
. We shall plant another one. When Isabel gets back, we shall plant another, all together.’

Eduardo remains silent and I look at his pale face in profile, lips clenched tightly together and an expression of pained disbelief contorting his features. I squeeze his waist and kiss his cheek and suddenly hear movement from behind us. Turning, I see Pablo, Fernando and Joaquín approaching, Fernando kicking at a broken plant pot as he walks.

‘Mierda!
’ Fernando says. ‘Would you look at all this mess?’

‘Fernando!’ I say sharply. ‘Well, this shall keep us all busy for some time, sorting out the garden and this courtyard.’

Joaquín has walked up to Eduardo and touches his arm with surprising tenderness. ‘Papá,
estás bien?
’

‘Hmm?’ Eduardo mumbles as he looks sideways at Joaquín, his eyebrows knitted. ‘No. I am not alright. This…’ he gestures at the chaos around us and then the tree, ‘it’s all too much. Perhaps it’s a sign.’

I frown. ‘What do you mean?’

He continues to look at the tree then after a while speaks again. ‘
Nada
.’

‘I think,’ I say slowly, ‘that after breakfast we should designate everybody jobs to help tidy up.
Gracias a Dios
the house has escaped the worst of the storm but the courtyard and garden shall take some time to get back to normal. Edu, why don’t Pablo and Joaquín chop the tree up for firewood? We’re so desperately short anyway.’ I sigh. ‘And at least this will be one good thing to come from this storm. It has been terribly cold this spring.’

‘
¡No!
’ Eduardo cries, so forcefully that we all turn to look at him. ‘You must not chop this tree up. This tree belongs to Isabel.’

‘But Edu,’ I say gently, ‘otherwise it shall just rot. It cannot be re-planted. You know that.’

‘Don’t tell me what I know,’ he snaps and I look at him, stunned. I know that he is upset – I am too – but it is a voice I have scarcely ever heard.

I shiver involuntarily from the cold and wrap my gown tighter around me. ‘I am going to have breakfast. Shall anyone join me?’

The boys and I leave Eduardo standing there in front of his beloved fallen orange tree, his head hanging and the wind whipping around his thin shoulders. As we walk Pablo squeezes my arm and when I look at him, he smiles understandingly at me. It is a small thing, his smile, yet it somehow serves to make our predicament less dreadful. I have not the slightest idea who it is that says something to Eduardo during the course of that day which makes him change his mind; or perhaps his mind changes alone, but by early evening Pablo and Joaquín are out in the courtyard, methodically cutting up the orange tree’s carcass whilst Juan and Alejandro make the trips back and forth to the conservatory with its firewood.

That night, we all sit around the fireplace warming our hands and feet with the first prolonged, blazing fire we have enjoyed in months. Perhaps I imagine it, but I am certain the burning wood emits the delicate scent of oranges. I look around at the other faces to gauge whether anybody else has noticed it, but they all seem lost in a happy, glowing warmth and I do not care to spoil this moment with words. Only Eduardo is absent and it is not until the fire has died low in the hearth and I realise how late it is that I peer out to the gloom of the inner courtyard. Eduardo is still there, sitting on the stump, clutching a piece of paper and pencil in his hand, scribbling something. As though sensing I am watching him, he looks up. I raise my hand to wave at him, but perhaps he does not see me, for he looks down again and my hand is left hanging, motionless, in the air.

W
ith two of
my children now far from me, I have less heads to obsessively count. This may be a blessing of sorts as in these days of rebel control of Granada it feels like people are watching us each time we leave the house. Perhaps I am being too distrustful, yet I feel it prudent to be cautious, not least because of Miguel’s warning to us. One morning, much as it pains me to do so, I comb the house from top to bottom, pulling out anything and everything that could possibly suggest we have ever been supporters of the Republic. I burn old copies of
El Defensor
, notes I made during my meetings and the children’s schoolbooks. In mine and Eduardo’s bedroom, I stand in front of the bookcase which holds dozens of García Lorca’s works of poetry, stories and plays and hesitate, biting my bottom lip. I know I cannot add these to the bonfire, yet neither can they remain here. Eduardo is in the garden and, taking a deep breath, I pull one book from the end of the shelf and, like dominoes, a long line of volumes clatter down. I pull them all into a box and hurriedly arrange them side by side. Crouching down, I attempt to lift the box but it is too heavy. I push against it to try to move it across the floor and it shifts a mere inch.

Suddenly, I hear a noise at the door and look up guiltily, expecting to see Eduardo. But it is Fernando. He appears to have just awoken and is rubbing his eyes.

‘Fernando,’ I whisper, ‘help me,
por favor
.’

He walks over to me, peers into the box and, without saying a word, takes a book out. He looks at the back cover grimly, the picture of Federico García Lorca smiling up at him and sighs before placing it back. Even Fernando cannot make light of this situation and between us we move the box under a table in the corner of the bedroom. I fetch a cloth to go over the table and replace the vase of flowers on top of it. The books are hardly in a secret place now, but they are, at least, out of sight.

Whenever anybody from our household goes out, which is fairly rare these days, it is imperative I know where they are going and what time they shall return. Of course we still need to buy supplies but I prefer to go alone or with one or two others accompanying me.

I begin to have nightmares about the
mangas
verdes
, the green sleeves, so called because of the green armbands they wear. On my shopping trips to the city I notice more and more people wearing them, along with increasing numbers of civil guards and Falange flags – Miguel’s party. But it takes some time for me to realise what the
mangas verdes
signify.
El Defensor de Granada
is long gone, but even if it had been replaced, I know attempting to buy a left-wing newspaper would be nothing short of suicide. We can only listen to nationalist radio, but not a single time have green armbands been mentioned.

So at market one day, as I watch a kilo of unhealthy looking tomatoes being weighed out in front of me, I ask in as neutral a voice I can muster who they are.

‘
Las mangas verdes?
’ the market seller replies in a low voice. He looks around nervously and leans in a little closer. ‘Keep an eye on them. They’re under instruction to spy on neighbours and denounce suspicious activities.’

I gulp and nod, feeling too afraid now to even meet his eye. He hands me my bag of tomatoes and I thank him hurriedly and turn away. Suspicious activities? What would be classed as suspicious? Joaquín’s guitar playing? Making fortune cookies? Buying tomatoes even? I rush home, pull at the heavy door and then stand with my back against it, sweat trickling down my forehead as I close my eyes. I feel sick with fear. I must tell my family to keep an even lower profile if that is humanly possible. When, when,
when
, I think in exhaustion and fury and dread, when will this all be over?

T
en months pass
before Sara and I are reunited. Ten long months during which I know I have changed beyond recognition. Something in me has ceased to exist, a kind of innocence. Yet at the same time something is born in me: a maturity and confidence of spirit that will see no going back. I can feel myself changing, and as I step out of the skin of adolescence, I wrap my new self-esteem around me and hug it tightly to me until I can relax my grip and it feels natural.

When I manage to find a break, Sara and I go for a walk together, recounting and comparing our experiences. Sara’s face looks drawn and tired but we are so delighted to be reunited and, as my arm links comfortably into hers, I feel my whole body relaxing.

‘You’re too thin, you know, Isabel,’ Sara tells me. ‘I must say though, apart from that you look very well. Different somehow…’

‘I feel different.’

I glance at my friend, her long brown hair piled up boyishly on top of her head and kept in place with a scarf. She inhales deeply on her cigarette and hands it to me. ‘Oh Isabel, I’m not cut out to be a nurse. I’m not saying I wish I wasn’t here, but
por Dios
,
I wish this damned war would end and we could all go home.’

‘I’m sure you’re a good nurse—’

‘No.’ She shakes her head forcefully. ‘I’m not. But I know they need every pair of available hands, even useless hands like mine. I’m not as cool-headed as you.’

I raise an eyebrow.

‘
Venga
, I saw you at the training camp. You were as cool as a cucumber and you know it.’

I smile at her gratefully but feel strange that she only knows half the story and that the reality is that, up till now, I’ve been a behind-the-scenes nurse. We continue to walk through the long grass, exchanging news from home that has been intermittently reaching us over the months and easily falling back into that familiar companionship we always enjoyed. We are so lost in conversation that when we first hear the siren coming from the direction of the hospital we completely ignore it. After a few moments, the sound begins to register in my consciousness like a dull, familiar pounding. I drop the wild flowers I’ve been gathering and watch them fall to the long grass as though in slow motion, their petals spiralling as they cascade out around me. Turning, I instinctively grab Sara and we begin running towards the white slats of the corrugated iron building, gleaming in the winter sunshine.

‘What does it mean?’ Sara calls over the noise.

‘
No sé
,’ I shout. ‘But we need to get back.’

The earth and the air fall silent but for the pounding in my ears as I trample on the flowers I’ve dropped. I’m scared because I sense that I am about to experience something horrifying and that I can’t hide any longer from the pungent scent of blood. Somehow, I know that my life is about to change.

The hospital is in chaos. There are people tearing wildly about, nurses collecting syringes, stretcher bearers shoving past one another in the corridors and wounded soldiers pouring in from every corner. I’m not sure how long it takes to register that the stench filling our nostrils is burnt flesh, but I think Sara realises at the same time as me and I watch her face grow pale as my stomach begins to heave in revolt. We are rooted to the spot in the hospital entrance, dumbstruck, not knowing how we can help. ‘Why are you two just standing there?’ cries a faceless voice. ‘Get yourselves down to ward three immediately.’

I’ve never seen anything like it in my life, and I don’t think any sight will ever equal its horror, for here exists the worst of the battlefield and the extent of human destruction and mutilation. I stand at the door of ward three and take in the small details of the scene unfolding before me: a man with his ear blown off, screaming in agony; another vomiting on the floor before slumping heavily forwards as he passes out; another still calling out for his mother and crossing himself as blood trickles in small rivers out of his mouth and down his chin. I am gripped with a desperate urge to turn and run; I taste bile in my mouth as I try to cross my eyes so that everything falls out of focus. But it doesn’t work. Tears are streaming down my cheeks. Mother, I need you. I can’t do this. What am I doing here? I cannot be a nurse, not a real nurse.

A senior sister appears at our sides and all of a sudden Sara is no longer there and I am being told to attend to the man in the corner. No more instruction than that. Just ‘attend to him’. I feel as though I’m not really there. I feel as though everything I’m witnessing is real but I am no longer resident in my body. Instead, I have detached myself from flesh and bone and am hovering somewhere close by, pushing at my back and whispering in my ear ‘
Go on, go on.
’

I realise that I’m moving; or rather, not me but my body. I am taking rapid, even steps across the floor whilst everything around me greys and blurs. The other beds and people in the room lose their definition and the screams of pain become one ringing note. The moment I approach the bed and look down into the face of my patient, I know without a shadow of a doubt that this man is going to die, though he seems in a better physical state than many of the soldiers in the room. All his limbs are intact and although he has several lesions on the surface of his body, they don’t seem that severe. Yet I know, through an intuition that no amount of medical training can possibly equip you with, that the wounds this man is suffering from have reached the very core of his being. Slowly, painfully slowly, life is leaving him as he bleeds internally to death.

His eyes are flitting across the ceiling in terrified fits and starts and the muscles in his cheeks are heaving in violent spasms. As I stand over him, he manages to focus on me. The force of recognition we read in one another’s eyes shocks me, sucking all the air out of my lungs and I lean heavily against the bed. Because in my eyes, he reads that I know he is going to die. And in his eyes, I read him taking this message from me without a single word passing between us. And I read his need for comfort.

I hear the faintest whisper escape from his lips. He is asking for water and, with relief, I fill up a cup from the jug beside his table. Propping myself against the bed, I help him to sit up a little so that he can take a few sips. He leans heavily into the crook of my arm as he does so, his face contorted in both agony and gratitude as the water dribbles down his throat. The pain of this slight action overwhelms him and he gasps for breath, digging his fingers into his thighs so that his knuckles gleam white.

‘What’s your name?’ I ask.

He looks at me, his eyes wide and uncomprehending as a patter of words escape his lips. At first I can’t hear what he is saying, but leaning closer I realise he’s speaking French. Thankfully, I’ve always been quite good at the language and, taking a deep breath, I repeat the question. His words abruptly stop and he stares at me, stunned to hear his mother-tongue spoken.

‘Jean-Marie,’ he whispers hoarsely.

I smile at him as I repeat his name, laying a damp cloth on his forehead. I walk to the foot of the bed and remove the pitifully inadequate rope-soled shoes that have taken him through his life as a soldier. As I come back round and sit on the side of the bed, I take his hand and stroke it very gently as I look into his face. He is a handsome man with fine, fair features and thick yellow hair that now lies in damp, bloodied clumps against his forehead, the sight of which sends a ripple of nausea through me. To my shock, however, the nausea quickly subsides as I concentrate on him as a person, not what he has become. He looks so young, so innocent. Yet here he is lying in a hospital bed after having suffered something I’ll never really understand. And now he is dying.

I find myself thinking about the chance nature of our meeting. That same morning I was Isabel Torres Ramirez from Granada, a city where the sun so often shines, even when it is freezing cold, who has a poet for a father and a mother who makes fortune cookies. A girl who has never met a French man in her life and has certainly never watched anyone die. And he was Jean-Marie from France, a young man far from his family, fighting bravely for another country’s cause. A man who has probably never had his hand stroked by a Spanish girl and has certainly never known such pain before. We both believe in the Republic, yet our similarities end there. But here we both are in the corner of ward three, looking at one another and communicating with our eyes. For all the power of words, I know that there is a time and a place for them, just as there is a time and a place for silence. After several minutes of sitting like this, he slowly speaks.

‘I’m going to die, aren’t I?’

During our initial training camp we were told that if we ever found ourselves in a situation in which it was clear that a man was going to die, we must tell them otherwise. We must encourage them with hopeful words for the future and make their last moments as comfortable as possible. At the time, I agreed whole-heartedly. It seemed without a doubt the most humane way to treat a patient. But now here I am, with my arm around a man who is losing strength by the second, and I know with all certainty that I can’t lie to him. If I do, somehow I’ll be violating him and his trust.

Part of me wants to scream as loudly as I can for somebody to come; that this young man with the yellow hair who has travelled all the way from France to help us fight this war needs help. But I know deep down it would be useless. All I have to do is look around the hospital ward and drag myself back to the reality of the grim medical shortages. Even more importantly, I know Jean-Marie is not going to make it and that I have the greatest responsibility I could ever imagine: of helping him to die peacefully.

I place my arm around his shoulders again and he leans into me. I can feel his laboured breaths rattling painfully in and out.

‘
Je m’appelle Isabel
,’ I say. ‘Jean-Marie, I don’t want you to be afraid, because dying is the most natural thing in the world. I want you to tell me about your family; about your home.’

And so, in short, sharp gulps, he describes the rolling hills of his village outside Bordeaux. The fishing boats filled with oysters slowly making their way into shore as the sun comes up. The way his father’s nose goes bright red when he is angry. The fullness of his sweetheart’s lips.

He tells me all this with his eyes closed and I can see the movement under his eyelids; the journeys that he takes as he describes all these things to me between gasps for air which he swallows like razors. He is smiling ever so slightly as these memories come flooding back to him and I know that he isn’t in a hospital room in an obscure Spanish mountain town any more, fighting in an even more obscure war. He is walking along the cliff top as the wind plays with his hair, looking down at the oyster trawlers coming into the bay. He is arguing with his father whose nose grows pinker and pinker before he slaps his son heartily on the back and the pair of them laugh cheerfully. And he is walking his sweetheart home in the warm evening. Her hand is as soft and smooth as velvet and they are shooting each other sideways glances of delight before they arrive at her doorstep. And he is reaching his hands up to both sides of her head and gently pulling her lips to his. That is where I leave Jean-Marie, miles and miles from the hospital bed and the stench and the screams clamouring around him: in the arms of his sweetheart.

I
could never look
at life in the same way again after that experience. And despite the horror of watching the young man in the bed beside me transformed from Jean-Marie from Bordeaux to a nameless corpse as he is carried out to make room for another wounded soldier, I sleep deeper and sounder that night than I have done in months. Of course I think about him, wondering if his sweetheart is still alive and what kind of memorial will be laid for him. But I realise that something important happens to me that afternoon. In helping Jean-Marie to die a peaceful death, I have finally been given a glimpse of the person I really am and what I can achieve. And like a skin I have shed, my fear of blood leaves me. Just like that. Yet I know that if it weren’t Jean-Marie, the same thing would have happened to me later with another person. For many more come after him. Too many.

Does this make me sound callous, the way I feed off these experiences? I’d give anything to breathe life back into these men. I would like to give them the opportunity to sling their packs over their shoulders and stride as confidently out of the doors of the hospital as the day they signed up to our grotesque war. I do save lives too, it isn’t just about dying. I’ve become a good nurse, I know that; better even for the fact that, not so long ago, I couldn’t even look at blood without the world spinning around me. The training during those first few weeks certainly helped in a way, though at times it was easy to forget why I was really there. Placing an arm back into a plastic skeleton was simple; it was a noiseless task after all and lulled me into a false sense of security. And, more significantly, no blood came from the plastic.

Even so, I experienced a faster learning curve during my training than I could ever have imagined. Materials and resources were poor, but we were taught everything from general first aid to the safest way to amputate a leg. Those days were demanding. Mentally demanding because of the amount we were expected to learn and physically demanding because of the sheer number of hours spent on our feet. But despite all that, I took to nursing in a way that surprised me..

Those hours at the end of the day we used getting to know our companions. After a simple
cena
of soup and bread that we took in turns to prepare, we wandered outside and sank into the long grass with blankets wrapped around us. As we gazed at the stars and compared stories of our homes and families whilst roughly rolled cigarettes were passed around, I tried not to think about how horrified my parents would be if they could see me smoking.

I was and still am fascinated by the backgrounds of my new friends. I’ve always known I’ve had an incredibly privileged upbringing: private tutors, a big house with a courtyard and garden, trips to the coast in the summer. But it wasn’t until I met several girls with equally large families who were brought up in two-roomed apartments that I really understood the extent of this. I’m not thought of as a conceited rich girl though. We are all comrades here, on an equal footing, and people love hearing stories of my large family.