The Poet's Wife (34 page)

‘No, no,’ she says. ‘I just need to take the weight off my feet; have a small drink perhaps.’

‘I’ll join you, I was going to light the stove again anyway and we can have some tea. Are you cold?’

‘No,’ she replies and smiles at me. ‘You look like your mother, you know.’

‘Do I? Most people say I’m more like Papá.’

‘
Qué dices
, you have far more of the Spaniard about you,
guapo
though your papá is. And I always was susceptible to a handsome man, as everybody knows.’ Mar raises an eyebrow, almost challengingly. I sense she wants to talk about something I’ve never discussed with her before. At least not with Mar directly.

‘Miguel.’

‘Miguel,’ she repeats, and shakes her head. ‘He was a rogue. But…’ she spreads her hands and sighs, ‘I loved him. I don’t know why, but I loved him. And look at the wonderful son he helped me produce. Who would have thought Joaquín would be such a prodigy?’

‘Did…did he ever show any interest in being part of Tío Joaquín’s life?’

‘
¡Qué va!
Did he ever. No. That man thought only of himself.’

‘Except…’ I hesitate. This isn’t my story. I wasn’t there and I don’t want to speak out of turn. But I know what Mamá told me about the safeguard that my abuelo’s brother put on Carmen de las Estrellas all those years ago.

‘Except what?’

‘Except maybe his way of repenting,’ I reply slowly, ‘was by trying to keep our family safe. And his son.’

I don’t know how she’ll react. But I’m relieved when she pats my hand and says ‘You’re right,
cariño
. There are so many things we’ll never be sure of. But one thing is certain, and that is that there’s no such thing as black and white.’

We fall silent and after a while I remember the tea and ask Pablo to stoke up the fire. He gives me his dignified, quiet smile and nods his head. I turn back to Mar, a woman who’s intrigued me for so long and who now seems to be taking me into her confidence.

‘You know,’ she continues, twisting her mouth into a tight smile, ‘after Miguel rejected me, after I realised there was absolutely no hope for us, I left for a long time. You must think me terribly irresponsible when I had children to care for.’

I open my mouth to say something, but she quickly adds ‘You would be right to think this. It
was
irresponsibility, pure and simple.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘I was never a strong person, not like my mother. I simply could not deal with the fact that I knew Miguel and I would never be together and if it could not work, then I didn’t want to be mother to his child either.’ Her forehead creases up and she looks up at me with those haunted eyes. ‘Terrible, isn’t it?
Claro
,
I love Joaquín, but in a different way. It is your grandmother who is his mother, not me.’ She shrugs. ‘I travelled west along the coast and took various jobs and spent so many lonely weeks and months on my own. I think I was determined to return only once I felt liberated from that bond of love, futile, rotten love that it was. I
know
it was weak to leave my family. But I am a weak person, Paloma.’ She smiles at me brightly, as if she has just told me some wonderful news. Confused, I search her face questioningly. I know she doesn’t want me to say anything and so I don’t. Pablo draws up at that minute with cups and a
tetera
of tea that he pours out and then disappears back into the shadows of the cave. How is it that Pablo has that uncanny knack of always camouflaging himself with his surroundings?

‘Anyway,’ Mar continues. ‘The point is that I knew my heart would call me back when the time was right.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Thirty-three, thirty-four or thereabouts. When I got back, I was refreshed in mind and spirit and I made a vow to myself that I needed nothing from a man from that day forwards beyond friendship.’

I stare at her in surprise and, as though reading my mind, she adds ‘And yes, I have been true to my vow.’ She stifles a yawn. ‘
Ahora
, I really am tired. And so are you, Paloma. Perhaps we should all go back.’

I smile at her, grateful that she has opened up to me. She has permitted me a small slice of Mar from long ago, knowing that the words she’s shared have been spoken little over the years. ‘You’re right,’ I answer, squeezing her hand. ‘I can always finish cleaning up tomorrow with Alberto.’

Pablo joins us at the table and we finish drinking our tea in silence. Before leaving
Esperanza
, I take one final look around. My heart skips a beat with pride and happiness. As the moon shines down on us, I pull the door tightly shut and turn the key in the lock.

T
he year
after those longed-for elections is an important anniversary of Father’s death. We’ve never been able to retrace his last steps, but somehow, with Pablo’s drawings, this need has diminished. All we know is that his name appeared on a list of people who were shot against the walls of Granada cemetery on that frosty morning of December 1938. Forty years to the day after father was executed we make a pilgrimage. The entire Torres Ramirez clan are there as well as Mar’s family. Despite Mother and Mar’s age, they insist on walking all the way. We rise silently before dawn and wrap ourselves up in several layers to keep the biting chill of the wind out.

As I walk down the stairs, a glimmer of glass catches my eye. I turn to face the picture hanging on the wall and move closer to it. It is Father and I, immortalised in pencil by Pablo, sitting beneath my orange tree. I am lying on a rug, staring up at the leaves whilst Father reads to me from a book. I remember that afternoon. I remember it well, because it was the only time when I have been the subject of Pablo’s drawing that I noticed him drawing me. Drawing us. I caught him in the act. And I remember that smile of complicity that passed between us. I pause for a moment longer, marvelling as I always do at the uncanny likeness he has caught in those carefully constructed lines, before I continue my descent.

Silently, we congregate in the courtyard of Carmen de las Estrellas. Mother steps forwards, clutching an orange tree seedling in her hands as with infinite care she plants it in a pot and pats the mound of earth down around it. The seedling will receive everything it needs there for it is open to the elements – rain and sun, air and earth and the warmth of the family around it – and I send a prayer up to somewhere and something that this tree will thrive.

We make our way down through the narrow, winding paths of the Albaicín. It is barely light and we can still see a spattering of stars across the sky against the lilac-tinged dawn, the clear night making the intensity of the cold even greater. None of us say a word as we walk along, arms linked for warmth and for strength. Mother leads the procession and I marvel at the spring she has in her step still and the determination set in the lines on her face.

By the time we reach the cemetery, dawn is breaking. A light mist is rising from the frosty ground and gradually the outline of the sierra becomes more pronounced. None of us will ever know the exact spot against the cemetery wall where my father breathed his last breath. Nor shall we know the thoughts that would have been racing through his mind. But as we all stand in silence with our eyes fixed on the wall and the frost-covered moss and ferns covering the ground, we all have our own interpretations.

As I stand there with Mother on one side of me and Paloma on the other, I feel the echo of the gunshot from all those years past searing through my body and the heavy thud of Father’s body as his knees crumple beneath him. I have this idea that his eyes would have remained open for a few minutes as he lay with his head against the cold, hard ground of the cemetery, feeling his life slowly ebbing away from him. And in that time he wouldn’t have thought about the fact that death had stretched its hand out to him. He would have thought about the tears of joy he shed when I was placed in his arms as a newborn baby; the pride he felt at seeing his work in print; the thrill of García Lorca’s presence in his life; those large family meals on the terrace, discussing poetry and music and the quest for a higher truth. But more than anything, I’m certain that he would have thought about Mother; about Luisa, the great love of his life.

After a while, we all notice that Mother has reached into her pockets. She is pulling out pebbles and feathers and is scattering them lightly across the pale ground. I don’t know what they signify, but they clearly have an important connection with Father. She is smiling gently, lost in a world of tender memories of her beloved Eduardo and when there is nothing left, she takes a deep breath and says in a firm voice ‘It is better to be the widows of heroes than the wives of cowards.’ I feel myself choked with emotion – these were the words of
La Pasionaria
, that captivating, inspirational woman whom I heard speaking all those years ago in Barcelona addressing the courage of the International Brigades. How right she is. Her words are so perfectly apt, and no more so than right at this moment. And finally,
finally
,
after all those years of being forbidden to openly mourn, my mother can call herself a widow with her head held high.

I squeeze the arm of Mother and Paloma on either side of me. After several more minutes of silence and contemplation, we take one last look at the walls of the cemetery, listening to the comforting birdsong that is breaking out and feeling the first rays of weak sunshine filtering through the swaying poplars and warming our skin.

As we make our way back down the side of the valley, I break off a little from the group and stand at the foot of a partially wooded slope, gazing up at it. It was the exact spot where, as children, Father brought us to toboggan down the snowy hill on Mother’s skillet pans. I have thought about that time on several occasions but as I stand there, rooted to the spot, the memory comes back to me with a clarity I’ve never experienced before. María, Joaquín and I are standing at the top of the slope, trying to entice one another to be the first to go down the hill. They tell me that I am the eldest and therefore I
have
to go first, and though I’m unconvinced by their logic, I am far too excited to wait much longer.

Carefully, I pat down a small mound of snow beneath my mittens and arrange the pan on top of it. With my legs dangling out at awkward angles from either side, I crouch down and Joaquín gives me an almighty push from behind. I whiz down the hill, the wind whistling in my ears and whipping against my cheeks and stinging my eyes and I can barely breathe, I am going so fast. And there he is, my father, waving his arms excitably over his head and hopping about from one foot to the other. As I reach him and ground to a halt, he lifts me high up in the air and laughs as he twirls me round and round and round.

M
y hospice is
in a small building in Campo del Principe, about a fifteen-minute walk from Carmen de las Estrellas. I would like it to be bigger, and I would like to help more people, but the fact remains: I have a hospice. I am able to work with my head held high. The truth is that I probably could have opened it earlier since Franco’s grasp on the country was becoming weaker and weaker in the years preceding his death. But something prevented me from doing so until he was no more. Besides, I’d been thinking about it for so many years that once that time came, I was given a free rein and people were astounded at how quickly I set it up. I’m proud of what I’ve achieved; proud of what the hospice has become. For I truly believe that it’s a place that people can come to and die in peace and dignity. And people do come; they come in their dozens. Many are survivors of the years of terror and the stories I have heard and continue to hear are horrifying and astonishing. The slow erosion of fear takes more than years, it takes generations. But now that people are starting to talk about those years – the executions, torture and repression – many people, particularly those denounced as ‘reds’, want to quite literally dig up the past and uncover the remains of the bodies of their loved ones who lie in mass shallow graves across the length and breadth of our country. It’s only been since democracy has returned to Spain that Republican victims of the war have been honoured. For some, this comes in the form of people who fled Spain slowly trickling back in and holding memorial services. For others, it means erecting plaques or memorials. And then there are those I mentioned who want to dig up graves to identify victims. I understand the need people have for this – their desire to honour the deaths of their loved ones in a more fitting way and to give them a dignified burial, yet Mother is adamant that we should let Father’s bones lie undisturbed. ‘So what if we find his skull or one of his vertebrae?’ she once remarked dryly. ‘That has nothing to do with his soul. It is not the way I should like to remember him.’

And me, how do I feel about it? I know that people grieve differently, just as people deal with the pain that surrounds death in numerous ways. Yet when we are speaking of my own father, my own flesh and blood, for me it’s not his body that’s important. Instead, I like to keep his memory alive through his poetry, Pablo’s drawings and through stories that will be passed down about the gentle character of Eduardo Torres to future generations.

I shall never forget the first time Mother comes to visit the hospice. She stands on the threshold, her hair snaking down her back, and she sighs, the kind of sigh that is depthless. How desperately I want her approval, I realise. Just as I always have done. She says nothing, simply walking around the hall, each step purposeful. She looks at the pictures hanging on the walls, runs her fingers lightly over the deep red petals of a potted geranium and then turns to me.

‘
Me gustaría ver un paciente
.’ I would like to see a patient.

At that time, as it is the early days of my hospice, there are only three. I hesitate. Whom should I take her to? After pausing for several moments, I lead her down the light, airy corridor, flanked with plants and paintings to the room at the end, take a deep breath and then walk in with Mother following me.

A tiny, frail woman lies in the bed, her head on one side and her mouth open. As she sleeps, her brow furrows in the middle, two thick grey eyebrows touching and a web of veins criss-crossing her face. Very quietly and gently, Mother pulls a chair up to her bedside and looks long and hard at the woman.

‘Tell me,’ Mother says in a whisper, unable to pull her eyes away.

‘Her name is Elvira. She has cancer,’ I reply. ‘Gastric cancer.’

‘And nothing…’ she trails off.

I pause. ‘Of course I always hope for a miracle, Mother. I’ll never stop hoping for that.’

Mother nods. She tears her eyes from Elvira and looks around the small room. There are flowers and cards and a large bay window overlooking the plaza. ‘What a lovely room,’ she says, and then turns her attention back to the bed. Very gently, she reaches her hand out and places it on top of Elvira’s. The old lady starts, opening her eyes in surprise and grunting. She turns her head to the other side of the pillow, watery grey-brown eyes staring at Mother for an instant, before she closes them again and continues to sleep.

‘This lady,’ my mother says slowly. ‘She lost her husband. Just like me. Am I correct?’

I look at her in astonishment. ‘Yes. But how did you—’

‘
No lo sé
,’ Mother murmurs. ‘I don’t know. I just see it. Actually, I do not see it. I feel it.’ She purses her lips together and draws her hand slowly away, folding them in her lap. I stand beside her for several moments longer as we both watch the uneven rise and fall of Elvira’s fragile chest. Then Mother turns her head to me. One stout tear has formed in the corner of her eye and, impatiently, she raises a knuckle to wipe it away.

‘Bien hecho, cariño
,’ she whispers. ‘Well done.’

A
s for my
own dear mother, she needs no help in dying. Independent to the end, she takes her last breath at the age of eighty-four and I lose a true soul mate. I find her in the conservatory in the straight-backed wooden chair with the evening sunlight catching the silver threads of her hair and her face serene and accepting. I sense that she has gone before I witness it; a gentle shift from within the earth and wood of Carmen de las Estrellas, the home that has held and protected us all these years. When I stand in the doorway, arms outstretched towards the frame to steady myself, I know there is no need to feel my mother’s pulse or hope I may be mistaken. And as I stare at her, this beautiful, courageous spirit, I breathe in the echo of secrets, of sorrow and of laughter that press into me from all sides, inhabiting the space around me and around Luisa: mother, grandmother, friend and wife of a poet.