The Gate of the Sun. Derek Lambert
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Angels is the centre of Spain.’
‘I hope not; the Fascists hold it.’
‘We held it for one great day,’ Ana said. ‘Enrique Lister took it in January. And took 400 prisoners. We showed them what to expect.’
‘Just the same, this plaza is the centre of Spain because it is in Republican hands. Kilometre 0.’ He pointed across the plaza, shouldered by the red and white façade of the Ministry of the Interior, with its kiosks selling merchandise that no one wanted these days – dolls and combs and fans – and the umbrella shop with sawdust on the floor. ‘Have you ever been here, guapa, on New Year’s Eve when you must swallow twelve grapes before the clock has finished striking twelve?’
‘I have been here,’ she said. ‘And I have been to the Retiro on a Sunday and seen the jugglers and the mummers and listened to the guitars and eaten water ices and taken a rowing boat on the lake.’
‘It was beautiful to be in Madrid then,’ the vendor said. ‘Here, I will give you a ticket.’ He tore a pink ticket from one of the strips hanging from his neck.
‘But you will have to pay for it.’
‘You can repay me one day when we have won this bloody war. Now perhaps you can use it to trade for a candle which you can trade for a can of beans.’
‘If not, you share the rabbit with us.’
‘Have you noticed that all the cats have disappeared?’
‘Then there will be plenty of rats to eat. Where are these candles?’
He named a street near the Plaza Mayor where, from a height, the roofs looked like a scattered pack of mouldering playing cards.
At the stall, where a man with sunken cheeks was trading candles, Ana became inspired. Glancing at the ticket she noticed that the last three figures were 736. The seventh month of the year of ’36 – the month in which the war had broken out.
‘What have you to offer?’ asked the trader, who was not doing good business because, after dark, Madrileños went to bed and watched the searchlights switching the sky and listening to the gunfire to the west of the city and had no need for illumination.
‘I want six candles, comrade,’ Ana said.
He appraised her. Ana was flattered that men still looked at her in that way; she was also aware that she carried with her a fierceness that discouraged all but the most intrepid.
‘I asked you what you had to offer.’ A cigarette in the corner of his mouth beat time with his words.
‘This.’ She held up the lottery ticket.
‘You expect six candles for that?’
But Ana knew her Madrileños: they would bet on two flies crawling up the wall.
‘This is a very special ticket,’ Ana said. ‘With this you will be able to buy a Hispano-Suiza. And an apartment on the Castellana. And a castle in the country.’
‘Let me have a look at this passport to paradise.’
She handed him the ticket. He held it up to the light like a banker looking for a forgery. Cold rain began to fall from a pewter sky.
‘What is so special about this ticket?’ the vendor asked.
‘Imbecile. Look at the last three numbers. The month of the year the war started.’
The trader hesitated. Then he said, ‘Three candles.’
‘Burro! They were looted from a church anyway.’
‘Four.’
‘No, it is I who am the imbecile. I have always wanted a castle in the campo … Give me back the ticket.’
He handed her six candles.
She took these to a bakery off the Calle del Arenal where they baked bread for the troops; twice a week Ana and ten other women from the barrio took this bread by tram to the front. Its warm smell made the saliva run painfully in her mouth but she never touched any of the loaves nestling in the tin trays on her lap.
The baker, plump with a monk’s fringe, hands gloved with flour, stood at the doorway.
‘You have made a mistake, Ana Gomez. Tomorrow is the day for the front.’
‘No mistake, comrade. How was the electricity last night?’
‘Twice the lights failed. How can a man make bread in the dark?’
‘By candle-light,’ Ana said handing him the six candles. ‘Now give me three of those loaves.’ And when he hesitated, ‘You are fat with your own bread; my children are starving.’
She placed the three loaves in the bottom of her basket and covered them with a cloth. As she walked home through the rain she thought, ‘Today is Friday and we will be able to eat – the bread and some of the vegetable pap that was supposed to be a substitute for meat. And on Monday there will be more rations. But what of Saturday and Sunday? We shall eat the rabbit,’ she decided.
As she neared Tetuan the air-raid siren wailed. No one took much notice: they had become used to Junkers and Heinkels laying their eggs on the city. The city, she thought, was a fine target for bombers, a fortress on a plateau.
She walked down a street of small shops guarded by two tanks. The crews wore black leather jackets, Russians probably. A bomb fell at the far end of the street; a thin block of offices collapsed taking its balconies with it and crushing the empty butcher’s shop below. The air smelled of explosives and distemper.
The crews disappeared into their tanks.
Ana took shelter in a doorway beside a small church. A poster had been stuck on a shop window on the opposite side of the street, beside a bank still displaying the stock market prices for last summer. It showed a negro, an Asian and a Caucasian wearing steel helmets; beneath their crusading faces ran the caption, ‘ALL THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD ARE IN THE INTERNATIONAL BRIGADES ALONGSIDE THE SPANISH NATION’.
The bombers flew lazily back to their bases at Avila or Guadalajara and the leather-jacketed crews emerged from their tanks and stood stretching in the powdery rain blowing down the street with the dust from the explosions.
Ana emerged from the doorway. She thought about the bread, still warm and soft in her bag, and thought how good it would taste tonight and then, anticipating tomorrow’s hunger, she thought, ‘I will kill that rabbit while the children are playing. Break its neck with a single blow with the blade of my hand. Who are you, Ana Gomez, to worry about killing a pet when you have shot Moors and Spaniards and would have shot your own kind if they had turned and run?’
She wished the rabbit wasn’t so trusting.
When she got home she noticed that the faces of the children were dirty with dried tears.
‘So, what have you done?’
Pablo, lips trembling, pointed into the yard, ‘The rabbit escaped,’ he said.
Anger leaped inside her. She went to the bedroom and shut the door behind her and sat on the edge of the bed.
When she came out the children were sitting in one corner watching her warily.
‘Who let it escape?’
‘I did,’ they both said.
She nodded and said, ‘Your hunger will be your punishment.’
Then she fetched one of the loaves from her bag and cut it in three pieces. She sliced them, then smeared them with olive oil and sprinkled them with salt.
They sat down and ate like a family.
The slaughter was cosmopolitan.
Chimo brought the details to Adam Fleming who was resting with other legionnaires in an olive grove at the foot of Pingarrón, the heights which the Fascists had just captured