Guernica (15 page)

“Well, we are here to witness, not to judge,” Miren said to Alaia, tentatively echoing Xabier.

“Good girl,” Alaia said. “I don’t expect you to understand, I just hope you would trust me.”

“I have to tell you, Alaia . . . I just bore witness to images I may never be rid of.”

“What . . . not a handsome vision?”

Miren didn’t say it—she felt too hurt to try to be clever—but she believed it was the first time she envied Alaia’s absence
of sight.

The priest slid back the panel on the grated port that provided the confessor plausible anonymity.

“Welcome, my child,” he said, feeling a bit ridiculous greeting a man in his early forties that way. But it was protocol.

“Forgive me, father, for I have sinned,” a voice pronounced in the customary low and serious tones the situation demanded.
“It has been a week since the last time I got drunk with my priest.”

“That will cost you ten Our Fathers and another bottle for the priest. But for our new president, the penance will be waived.”

At times, if Xabier could not be found in the rectory when he sought his private counsel, Aguirre would slip into a confessional
and visit with his unofficial adviser. That position of confidence had become more important in recent months. In a move to
assure their assistance in the fight against the rebels, the embattled Republican government had granted nationhood to the
Basques. As expected, Aguirre was named president, and he swore his oath of office in Guernica in an intentionally understated
ceremony. No one saw benefit in announcing the event to prospective Francoist assassins, who would not have been pleased with
his message that day.

“Humble before God, standing on Basque soil, in remembrance of Basque ancestors, under the tree of Guernica, I swear faithfully
to fulfill my commission,” Aguirre said before presenting his statement on the war.

“We stand against this rebel movement, which is subversive of the legitimate authority and hostile to public will, because
we are forced to by our profoundly Christian principles,” he said. “We believe Christ does not preach the bayonet, the bomb,
or the high explosive. Until Fascism is defeated, Basque nationalism will remain at its post.”

In a time when informants and spies and political opponents might shadow someone in Aguirre’s position, the meetings with
Father Xabier in a back confessional, half obscured by a concrete support column, offered welcomed privacy.

“Bad news,” Aguirre announced softly.

“Has there been any other kind?”

“Workers and farmers were trying to defend Badajoz against Franco’s rebels, and doing a surprisingly good job of it,” Aguirre
said. “But the African troops fighting with the rebels were so upset by the resistance that they drove them all into the bull
ring, and machine-gunned every one of them.”

“Damn them,” Xabier said, forgetting his location.

Aguirre paused. “Four thousand dead.”

“Dear God. In the name of the church, of course,” Xabier added sarcastically.

“Of course. Pious Franco.”

Hard-heeled footsteps neared and paused. Aguirre and the priest sat silently.

The footsteps moved on, and Xabier now whispered so close to the grating that he could smell the tobacco on Aguirre’s breath.
“It’s not a matter of piety. The church is a broker of power, so he’s waving the banner of Catholicism. I’m not surprised
he’s trying to exploit it; I’m surprised the church is falling for it.”

“Does the Vatican really understand what he’s doing here?”

“That’s the war I’m fighting: the Roman front,” Xabier said. “The bishops of Vitoria and Pamplona broadcast a letter to condemn
Basque Catholics who supported our cause, but, thankfully, the vicar-general rejected the letter. So we’re again facing a
split that could turn nasty.”

“Have you said anything to them, to the bishops?” Aguirre asked.

“All I am is an assistant parish priest; the prelates aren’t going to tip their miters just because I ask them to.”

“Would that lead to trouble for you from above?”

“Do you mean the Vatican or God?”

Aguirre laughed more loudly than he should have. They hushed and listened for footsteps.

Miren couldn’t forewarn Miguel or alert her father, fearing both would revolt and physically restrain her. They would never
understand the problems she faced, the trouble that was being caused, and how much pain she’d endured. Miren was certain that
this was one crucial decision she had to make on her own and live with the consequences. She had no choice; she had to cut
her hair.

It dangled into problem areas when she leaned over to change Catalina. And whenever the baby came up onto her shoulders to
be patted to sleep, she would grab tiny fistfuls and attempt to pull her body weight up by the hair. The pain jolted Miren
to the roots. Besides, to waste time in vain pursuits like maintaining it was inexcusable. Mariangeles understood and was
surprised it had taken Miren this long to reach the decision. She offered to cut it.

“You’re married, you have a good and understanding husband,” Mariangeles reminded her when Miren grew skittish at the sight
of the shears. “You will be as beautiful to him with short hair. He might feel as if it’s a new wife for a while.”

“He better not,” Miren objected. “I just wonder if I should have asked him about it first.”

“Too late now,” Mariangeles said, snipping off a foot and a half of braid in one clean cut.

“There you go . . . feel like you’ve lost weight?” Mariangeles asked.

“And gotten taller,” Miren said as she retrieved the hair and moved to discard it.

“Wait, I’ve got an idea for that.” Mariangeles took another small ribbon and tied the severed end so that the braid was secure
on both ends and would not unravel. She then clipped and straightened the edges of the remaining mane and shaped it around
her daughter’s face. Miren looked the part of a mature and lovely young matron.

When Miguel came down from the hills that evening, Miren rushed to him, lifting the ends of her hair to the side of her head
in a quick display. She twirled so the hair flew, stopped to face him again, and unleashed her most winning smile.

“I like it,” Miguel said. “I liked it long. I like it short. I like it.”

“I was afraid you’d be angry,” Miren said, relieved. “I thought you might be done with me until it grew back.”

“It’s different now,” Miguel said. “We were young and now we’re parents. Things are different. It looks wonderful. Even better.
Easier to take care of.”

She feared her father would be less understanding. When Miren was young and her hair was too long and full for her little
arms to manage, she would lie on the kitchen table with her head over the edge so that her hair hung nearly to the floor.
Justo would sit in the chair, brush out the tangles, and braid the mass, all the while kidding her that he felt as if he were
currying a picador’s mount. Even in her teens, she would enter the main room in her sleeping gown and deliver the brush and
hair-tie to her father: “Papa, would you do my hair?” He never passed up the opportunity.

When she and Miguel walked to Errotabarri that night, Catalina asleep in the stern of her carriage, Miren knew she would have
a critical audience.

“
Jinko
, girl! What have you done?” Justo shouted on her arrival.

“Papa, Catalina kept pulling my hair out and it hurt and I had to cut it.”

“It was beautiful; I loved your hair,” Justo said, immediately nostalgic. “Did you have to?”

“I did, Papa, but I have a present that I hope will make you happy and help you forgive me.”

Miren offered her father a small rectangular box that Miguel had made for her to hold her few chains and earrings. It was
now topped by a ribbon and a bow. Justo opened it as if it were Christmas and started laughing.

“Thank you,” he said. “This is perfect.”

He pulled from the box the lengthy plait of her hair.

“Thank you for saving this for me,” he said. “I’m touched. I’m surprised Miguel would surrender this.”

“I have the rest of the hair, the head beneath it, and the woman who grew it all,” Miguel said. “This part belongs with you.
From what I hear, you’ve invested time in cultivating its growth.”

Justo retrieved a hammer and nail and attached the braid to the hearth mantel. “I’ll keep it in a place of honor,” he said.

CHAPTER 14

Lieutenant Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen of the German Luft-waffe discovered that even those Spaniards with a passion for
revolution treated war as if it were something to be played at between a leisurely breakfast and a lengthy siesta. They were
occasionally fierce but chronically inefficient. They were capable of killing but not of planning. They understood rage but
not urgency. He had not given up the diplomatic service in Rome to become allied with a nation of bumbling procrastinators
who had old-world notions of warfare. Besides, they constantly wanted to kiss him on the cheek and ask of his relationship
to the famed “Baron Rojo,” as if he hadn’t heard enough of that.

Von Richthofen had no interest in Spain’s internal conflicts, except to the extent that Franco’s invitation to participate
created an opportunity, a low-risk testing ground. As always, he would be a diligent officer regardless of the circumstances
or the nature of the allies. Still, von Richthofen had made himself comfortable upon arrival. It could be reconciled as yet
another means of reinforcing his status among his men. His comfortable suite on the top floor of the Fronton Hotel near the
airfield in Vitoria was symbolic of his rank.

The name of his command was ridiculous, he thought, but his fliers liked the sound of “Condor Legion,” and they loved the
new, experimental bombers at the airfields in Vitoria and Burgos. His men took particular pride in the legion’s emblem near
the nose of their ships, comprised of a graphic condor, whose body was a blood-red bomb with swept-back white wings, emblazoned
on a death-black circle. They did not seem to be bothered by the reality that condors were scavengers who lived off carrion.

Another comfort for von Richthofen had been shipped to Spain by the Führer himself: a new Mercedes-Benz roadster. When duties
called for him to meet with staff in Burgos, von Richthofen drove it as if it were a fighter, flying low and fast across the
winding roads, covering the seventy-five miles in less than an hour.

He rose before dawn each day, examined the bedside photo of his wife, and performed a series of calisthenics: press-ups, stretches,
running in place. His commander, Göring, was detestably porcine, which further spurred von Richthofen to maintain his condition.
He was forty-one and fit as his youngest pilots. He was not merely an officer but a military weapon himself, and he understood
that such things required daily maintenance to operate smoothly.

Miren agonized for more than a week, weighing whether she should tell Miguel her discovery about Alaia and whether a lack
of disclosure amounted to a betrayal in a marriage. She decided to test him, to dance around the subject delicately as they
slipped into bed.

“When I took the trout to Alaia’s—”

“Was she alone or with a guest?” Miguel interjected.

Miren paused for several breaths, trying to calm her heartbeat.

“With a guest?” she asked.

“Maybe she wasn’t alone; maybe somebody else was there helping her with something, or giving her something she needed.”

“You know, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Whispers in town.”

“What did you say?”

“I told the man I would hear no more, from him or anybody else.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t know if it was true, and I didn’t want to pass it on if it was just evil gossip.”

“Well?”

Miguel took time with this, because he had struggled to sort through the implications.

“I love you; nothing will ever change that,” he said.

She squinted in fear of the next sentence.

“But this is a problem—”

“Miguel, she has so little in her life.”

“She has your friendship; I would think that’s something to protect. She has a reputation, like anybody else. What she does
affects you.”

Quiet.

“It’s not about me, Miguel.”

“It is about you, and us, more than you think. It’s about all of us.”

Quiet.

“So is it what people think and what they might say in town that bothers you, then?”

“My mother always told us that the most important thing we have is our name.”

“Miguel, I don’t understand it; I’m more shocked than you are,” Miren said, reaching to him, petting his near arm. “I don’t
like it either. I was upset, too. I don’t know why. I know she had nobody for so many years that she is trying to find some
closeness.”

“Closeness you can get from one man,” Miguel said, for the first time raising his voice. “You get other things from many men.”

She took her hand off his arm and rolled to face the wall.

“I’ve thought about this,” Miguel continued. “I thought about just demanding that you not see her. But I hoped you would make
that decision on your own. I know I’m going to keep my distance. I don’t think she should come here.”

He could feel the bed shake from Miren’s crying.

“
Kuttuna
, if this was some other woman, I would never say a word,” he said, rolling to touch her back. She jerked away. “If it were
some other blind woman, I might even admire her in some way. It’s not. It’s your best friend; it’s the girl—woman—you spend
your time with. Yes, it
is
about how it looks. And it’s about Catalina. Yes, it’s about me, too. I’m angry that I have to talk like this to you when
it’s something that should have nothing to do with us. My job is to protect you and Catalina. And I’m going to do it.”

“Are you saying I have to choose?”

“I’m not saying that.”

She stayed silent as she played that comment back in her mind. Did he stress the word “not” or the word “saying”? Did he mean
that he was not going to force the matter with her? Or did he mean that he expected her to stop seeing Alaia without his having
to demand it?

Miguel turned and stared at the wall in the opposite direction. He was angry at Alaia, he was angry at Miren. And he was angry
at himself, because he knew he could never tell her that it wasn’t coincidental that he sent her to Alaia’s that evening with
a fish in her hands.

“El Director,” Picasso said to the gathering at a back table in a Left Bank café. “You may call me El Director.” They laughed,
but Picasso gave no hint of self-mockery.

He had lived in Paris for more than thirty years but never sought French citizenship. Spain was his home, in his mind and
his art. But nothing had caused him to adopt a side in the country’s chaos, even when Franco rose in revolt against the Republic,
until a simple letter pulled him into Spain’s complex politics. The position offered him was titular and meaningless—director
of the Museo del Prado—but of considerable significance emotionally. He couldn’t calculate how many hours he had spent memorizing
the masterpieces of Goya and Velázquez and El Greco while studying at the Prado as a teen.

He accepted the directorship, which did not require him to return to Spain. It became an unexpectedly functional role within
two months when Falange rebels encircled Madrid. Shells from Heinkel bombers and ground artillery struck and damaged the museum.
Hand-to-hand combat left bodies beneath the plane trees lining Paseodel Prado in front of the museum. The scenes of devastation
on the street were hardly less disturbing than the Bosch triptych
Garden of Earthly Delights
, which Picasso had devoured for hours there as a student.

The museum was closed to the public as madrileños dealt with more pressing matters than the appreciation of art. The Prado
staff removed the paintings from the upper floors and stacked the pieces in rooms encased by sandbags. In fierce fighting,
loyalist troops managed to fend off the assault on Madrid while members of the government fled for Valencia. When Picasso
heard this, he demanded that the masterpieces of the Prado be evacuated. From Paris, he organized the transfer of hundreds
of paintings to Valencia.

El Director discovered that he was no longer a nonpolitical observer of events in Spain. Rebels slaughtered countrymen and
threatened masterpieces. This moved Picasso as both an artist and a Spaniard, and it made him susceptible to an invitation
that soon arrived. He was asked to provide art for the Spanish Pavilion at the World’s Fair to open in Paris the following
summer. If he would complete a mural, it would be used as the pavilion’s signature piece.

Picasso had never painted anything that size, considered the notion garish, and did not appreciate the concept of an artist’s
being commissioned in such a manner. As much as he now supported the Republican cause and despised the way Franco was burying
his sword in the neck of Spain, he feared that he would be expected to produce something that was more a political statement
than a work of art. Art sprang from the gut, not from assignment, he said.

But there was much to consider. In response to the invitation, El Director promised only that he would give the matter thought,
as it would do no harm to wait and see if a suitable subject arose.

Miren struggled to recognize some of the townspeople she’d known all her life. Going hungry had caused them to shrink from
the inside, leaving them wearing their skin like old clothes that no longer fit. The crowd in the ration line was mostly women,
as few men had the patience to pass the numbing hours there, and most who did were widowers or half of elderly couples who
needed all four shaky hands to transport the few precious packages of food.

Talk was limited to those near to each other in line, and the tone was low. Get this many people together two years ago and
there would have been a dance, Miren thought. Now they scarcely speak. Still, she smiled and greeted everyone she saw, trying
to inquire about their families and businesses. But she knew she could no longer say, “Good to see you, you’re looking well.”
They weren’t looking well. Or “Your chorizos are wonderful this year.” There were no chorizos. But smiling cost nothing and
carried no demands.

Although most had seen Catalina in town many times, Miren still thought it worthwhile to introduce her, believing that a few
moments with a cheerful little one could benefit everyone. Cat could pull herself up and stand at the edge of her carriage,
greeting all who neared with an extended arm. It drew people to her. “I’d like my daughter to meet you,” Miren would say.
Not “I want you to see my daughter.” She made it sound as if seeing them was a privilege her daughter would remember until
she was grown. It was a small distinction, but Miren felt it brought a few words of respect to days now filled with indignities.

Depending on stores, the ration card allowed the purchase of small sacks of garbanzos and rice, a little sugar, perhaps a
hundred grams of bread, and either a bottle of olive oil or tomato sauce.

Two women in line in front of Miren were mothers of girls who had danced in her group. “It is not as bad here as it is in
Bilbao,” one said to Miren. “We still can get things from the farms and the Monday markets. In Bilbao, with all the refugees
and no farms around, there’s nothing but what you can get from standing in lines.”

“Yes, we’re lucky,” Miren said.

The women would not go that far.

After a few moments of quiet, Miren heard Catalina speak a sentence in her own language and pull herself up.

“What’s her name?” a girl asked, having approached the carriage.

“Hello . . . this is Catalina.”

The girl, perhaps eight, in a long cotton skirt and faded white scarf, stepped slowly toward Catalina, careful not to make
it seem as if she were trying to edge ahead in line.

“What happened to her ear?”

Miren told her the story.

“Mine were pierced when I was a baby, too,” the girl said, turning an ear up toward Miren for inspection.

“Mine too,” Miren said, leaning over in a similar display.

The girl’s mother was home with “the babies,” she explained. “I’m big enough to get the rations now.”

She smiled at Miren and went back to a clap-hands game with Catalina, singing a soft chorus that caused the little one to
laugh and rock the sturdy carriage. It made the time pass, and Catalina’s giggling lightened the solemn trudge forward.

Miren brought a sack to hold the packages and bottles, which she arranged in the bow of Catalina’s carriage after turning
in her ration card. The girl behind her collected her bread, beans, and rice, holding them up with the hem of her skirt. But
when she was handed the slippery bottle of olive oil, it shot through her hand and crashed on the stones.

As she screamed, the wrapped sacks of rice and beans fell from her skirt, along with the bread, until everything was scattered
around the broken bottle. Miren turned at the sound of the glass breaking and picked up the other foods to keep them from
being wrecked in the oil spill.

“My mother . . . ,” the girl cried to Miren. “My mother.”

“It’s all right,” Miren said softly. “Here, we’ll take care of this.”

“My mother . . . the oil . . . ,” she grieved.

Miren emptied her rations into the carriage from the sack she’d brought to hold them. She gave the sack to the girl to carry
what was left of her packages.

Calmer, slightly, the girl still shook against flowing tears and a running nose.

“Thank you,” she said. “My mother . . .”

“Be careful now,” Miren told her, pushing the carriage toward home.

As she put the bags of rice and beans into the sack, the girl saw a corked bottle of olive oil inside.

“Wait!” she yelled after Miren, who waved back and continued.

Miren had worried about the strain with Miguel for the past week, since their talk of Alaia. Now she wondered how he’d react
when she told him that she dropped their olive oil for the week on the stones of the square.

Although effective, the rebel blockade of the major Biscayan ports could not completely choke off the shuttling of guns and
food into Spain and the evacuation of refugees to France. Across the border in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Dodo Navarro cultivated
sympathetic contacts to donate grain, potatoes, and other food supplies, while the two
patroiak
had no trouble finding people eager to get out of Spain ahead of the Fascist army. José María Navarro and Josepe Ansotegui
would off-load the goods in Lekeitio at times, or challenge the rebel blockade and sail up the Nervión River to the edge of
Bilbao, where the influx of refugees had made the problem of starvation among the locals a contagion.