“Then you know more than we do!”
A voice started speaking in a more clipped Spanish accent and I couldn’t hear what it said at all clearly because the individual must have had his back to the door. When I heard that voice, I remembered it was the village mayor’s, Filthy-face and the one now speaking in Andalusian Spanish was the head of the local Civil Guard, Martínez — whom people simply called Martínez — and he was notorious because his daughter’s skin was so tanned it was almost black — people called her Negrita—and her hair was blacker than coal, and according to the biggest lads in the village she was always ready to ‘let herself be felt up,’ or ‘give a blow job,’ as they put it.
“Otroz asuntoz…” said the civil guard, “…rezpecto a otroz asuntoz…, habladuríaz de pueblo…”
“I completely agree with you, sir, village gossip,” said Dad Quirze when the civil guard finished his little speech.
“I must insist yet again on our need to conduct a search, if only to put a stop to the accusations coming our way from the Administration,” said the mayor in a more conciliatory tone.
“As you wish,” responded Dad Quirze, “Our house and stables are open to everyone, come whenever you like. Right now…” Dad Quirze paused briefly before adding: “I mean, right now if you turn the electricity back on, because with the power coming through now, we don’t have light anywhere, we’re in the dark… In the pitch-black you couldn’t tell a sow from a suckling pig. We’re still forced to use oil and carbide lamps. You should tell the company to extend the cables from the Saint Camillus monastery to here…”
“We’ve already discussed all that,” said the mayor. “They must change the posts for the cables. That’s the responsibility of the owners and the company.”
Dad Quirze emitted a strange noise I couldn’t interpret.
“To get back to the matter at hand,” resumed the mayor, “you ought to know that the horse was stolen from a farmhouse in the lower reaches of the Pyrenees, near Setcases.”
And I so learned there were animal thieves who stole horses or heifers, oxen and also sheep that were easier to transport when they were taken to mountain pastures and brought down to the plain to be sold to butchers or breeders. They’d even steal pigs and suckling pigs, so they said, but those thefts tended to be between neighbours or people in the same village because they were animals that were too noisy — they never stopped squealing — and difficult to transport. Horses were the most valued though, I gathered, particularly if they were studs that had shown their worth in mating, and also because they could be used for transporting heavy loads and by the army. The army had an entire cavalry regiment stationed near the Lleida Pyrenees, the Vall d’Aran, Esterri d’Anéu, Viella…and other place names I didn’t recognize. People in this country, so they said, weren’t used to eating horse meat like the French. They drifted from one topic to another as if they had lost their thread. It seemed like a courtesy visit, but I was sure that the mayor and the head of the Civil Guard hadn’t come just to shoot the breeze with Dad Quirze, who couldn’t stand the sight of them. Then it came to me in a flash that the horse business was only an excuse and that what had really brought them to the farmhouse was the scandalous behaviour of the young civil guards and Aunt Enriqueta. I listened hard but I don’t think they mentioned that. Perhaps they did but not overtly, as was the wont of adults when they discussed delicate matters. But they didn’t know young ears were about, that I was eavesdropping.
Suddenly some thing or other made them change tack, they started talking about whether the CNT, the CEDA, the POUM, the FAI, Esquerra Republicana, or other parties…names I’d not heard in the factory town or perhaps I didn’t remember because they were never mentioned at home or in the neighbourhood. They also talked about the phantom pickup truck that drove around the district at night with the militia patrol transporting the people they dragged from their homes for a little ride: that meant driving them to a suitable place to shoot them in the back of the neck. They didn’t say ‘the individuals arrested,’ they used the word nacionales. Priests and nacionales were the words they used. They also mentioned communists and anarchists.
“You were fortunate not to get involved in anything, Quirze,” the mayor said at one point in the argument, as if that were praise indeed.
“I…” answered Uncle Quirze, “…haven’t a clue when it comes to politics…” and then he added, as if he thought his first comment hadn’t gone far enough: “People should be left to get on with their business…but respectfully, they shouldn’t be bawled out or roughed up.”
Then suddenly the conversation returned to the horse. To the strange way it had died, disembowelled.
“It must have been exhausted…” said the mayor, “Pure exhaustion. It was on its last legs because it had been ridden too far.”
“Y del pezo de la carga,” added the civil guard, though I’d first heard caga or shit.
“But what heavy load could a stolen animal be carrying?” Dad Quirze’s voice seemed artificially soft and even, soft and even as it went in the Christmas carol. “Or perhaps they did overburden it and forced it to ride down from the mountains with a couple of miscreants on its back.”
The mayor laughed for the first time in all that while I’d been listening. And as if Dad Quirze’s comment had brought that particular conversation to a close, he added in a conciliatory tone: “Fine. Best if you follow our advice and sign those papers and that will be the end of the matter. You’ve got precedents in your family and you’re not on good terms with the village priest. Fortunately you are a friend of the Superior at Saint Camillus, who gives you a helping hand, or we’d have been forced to send in reports that would have really upset the apple cart.”
“Me…?” Uncle piped, whispering again. “But I never get involved in anything. Don’t I just work all the hours God sends like a pack mule? The fact is I don’t like those ceremonies, parades and stuff. I don’t feel happy away from the farm.”
“I’m not referring to times past, to the war,” rasped the other man, “because you were very clever at sitting on the fence, nobody knew which side you were on, the whites, the reds or the men with the black and red flags. I am talking about now, these years when we are cleaning up the Fatherland, when we all have to pitch in together and move forward in unison. I reckon you learn every way you can.”
I hadn’t noticed that Aunt Ció had positioned herself next to me, two steps away from the gallery door. Night had fallen over the sitting room and it was pitch-black everywhere. Outside you could hear the first nocturnal sounds: crickets, sheep, owls… Aunt Ció put her hand on my waist, as if she wanted to stop me taking a step forward, though she had gone to where she was now listening. I thought she was about to scold me because my candle hadn’t singed a single mosquito wing.
I understood perfectly that the mayor had been referring to my father and Cry-Baby’s father when he mentioned the precedents the family had, and my heart had missed a beat. Not out of fear, but rather regret, I reflected, because my father rarely entered my thoughts, yet those strangers were badmouthing him as if he was a nuisance, an irritation and a bother. Remoteness had transformed my father into an object. Memories withered and turned into the kind of yellowing photo you came across in your pocket when you were looking for something else and you really don’t know what to do with it, whether to put it somewhere to be revered or in the drawer for odds and sods.