A Most Uncivil War Read online

  The priest walks threateningly around the room, gripping the wooden cane behind his back. He looks carefully at each desk to make sure the uniformity is consistent. When he finds what he is looking for, a pile of books not in size order, he grabs the top of the boy’s ear. The boy stumbles to keep up with the priest as he drags him to the front of the classroom and flings him towards his desk. The boy hits the desk with a loud thud. Juanico can see the shoulders of all the children in front of him flinch. With one hand, the priest bends the boy over the desk, and with the other, he pulls his shorts and his pants down, baring his naked behind to the class. Juanico can hear the two older boys to his right stifling their amusement.

  The priest turns to face the room of boys. His empty hand moves back and forth ever so slightly across the boy’s buttocks behind his back. The children in the class dare not look away from the priest’s gaze as he scans the room. In a deliberate tone heavy with threat the priest says, “Must you always try my patience!” He turns back towards the boy, holding the cane high above his head.

  The stick comes crashing down, time after time, against the boy’s naked flesh. Juanico, sick with fear and thankful that it isn’t him on the receiving end of the priest’s ire, focuses on the young boy’s naked buttocks. He sees the reddening of the skin as the blood rises to the surface. Slowly, flecks of blood appear as the skin starts to break. At the corner of the priest’s mouth a few bubbles of saliva appear as he shouts between each strike. “You will learn to respect me. You will respect the word of God. You will do as you are told or you will be punished,” he shouts while the boy whimpers. After striking the six-year-old boy twelve times in quick succession the process finally comes to a halt.

  The priest pauses to catch his breath before once again running his hand across the boy’s behind saying, “Remember our holy father teaches us that uniformity of mind is uniformity of soul.” He walks over to the window holding the cane behind his back, turning to the classroom to say, “Take your seats.” The boys sit down at their desks. The little boy, fighting to muffle his tears, his ribcage rising and falling in accelerated terror, pulls his shorts and pants up and rushes back to his desk. As he sits down he lets out a barely audible exhalation of pain. The two older boys snigger. Staring out of the window, the priest allows himself a small smile before saying in a more passive tone, “Open your mathematics where we stopped yesterday.”

  The morning drags for the young boy. He keeps his back straight and his eyes locked onto the work before him. Maths is replaced by Latin and algebra is replaced by verb conjugations screeching across the blackboard. Fine white chalk dust hangs in the air like an aura around the priest’s black cassock. Juanico spends the morning, like every other day, in a constant state of fear.

  Once the morning lessons finish, Juanico and all of the other boys, except for one, walk through the church. The one who was punished earlier is detained. The other boys, grateful and relieved that it is not them, thank the same god in whose name the six-year-old now suffers. The other boys mark time through the church until they reach the doors where many will run as fast as their legs will carry them from the priest and his lessons.

  As he steps into the sunlight the glare of the sun momentarily blinds Juanico. He squints his eyes. To his embarrassment Marianela is waiting for him. The same sullen expression greets him. The chance of him seeing a smile on her face is now little more than a memory. He can’t remember when it was but he knows she was happier once.

  The other boys circle like sharks as he leaves the church. They always seem to be looking for a weakness to fall upon. He promises himself that he will not give it to them today. He hands his satchel to her in silence, and with no other acknowledgement, he walks straight past her. She accepts both slights in silent deference. She follows a few steps behind him, “How was your day, young master?” she asks.

  Nervous that the other boys can still hear him he snaps back his reply, “You wouldn’t understand, girl.” Marianela resists the temptation to slap him across the back of the head. She closes her eyes and continues walking behind him, her head hanging and resolve hardening. They walk the rest of the way in silence.

  Once they are closer to the house Juanico runs ahead, leaving Marianela trailing behind. He runs through the building and joins his grandmother and great aunt in the shaded coolness of the garden. He sits down and starts retelling the day’s event. Both women put their crocheting down on their laps to listen. Marianela closes the front door behind herself. Juanico, hearing the door, shouts to her, “Girl, bring me my school books.” Marianela does as she is told and the young boy waves the girl away.

  Juanico takes out his bible and finds the last verse he was working on. The two old women look at each other and then back to the boy. They listen as he begins reading in badly pronounced Latin, “Servi, subditi estote in omni timore dominis, non tantum bonis et modestis, sed etiam dyscolis.” They nod approvingly. Slowly and stilted, he translates it, ‘Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward’.

  “Quite right,” says Dona Isabel. She crooks her head backwards towards the house and raises her voice to repeat what he just said, “Servants, be subject to your masters.”

  Pedro pulls back the beaded curtain covering the doorway into the central courtyard. He stands still for a moment as he listens to the boy reading out loud. He lets the curtain fall noisily back into position as he turns back into the house. He passes the door to the kitchen and turns momentarily to see Marianela frying red peppers. The smell of oil, garlic and sugar infuses the warm air in the kitchen. “I’ll take my wine in the dining room,” he says. She nods, wipes her hands on her apron and follows behind with the ceramic carafe and glass. He places himself at the table while she waits in the doorway for him to sit down. As soon as he does she immediately rushes over, places the glass down, fills it, puts the carafe next to the glass and then rushes back to the kitchen. He doesn’t look at her directly. He rolls himself a cigarette, lights it and opens the newspaper.

  Marianela continues turning the peppers in the pan while she listens to the boy in the garden. “Similiter et mulieres subditae sint viris suis: ut etsi qui non credunt verbo, per mulierem conversationem sine verbo lucrifiant,” he says. Almost immediately he starts to translate it, “Similarly, wives be subject to your husbands.” He doesn’t get a chance to finish it as Dona Soledad, hearing Marianela taking the plates and pans through to the dining room, stands up. Juanico accepts this as the signal to stop reading and respectfully draws the silk place holder between the pages and places the bible carefully on the table.

  Walking behind him through the house, his grandmother rests her hand on his shoulder for balance and connection. When they reach the dining room they find Pedro sitting at the head of table reading the paper and Marianela hurriedly laying their places. They take their seats as Marianela brings the fried aubergines and peppers to the table. Soledad lays the napkin across her lap, looking with disdain at Marianela as the bread knife noisily saws through the bread.

  Soledad raises her voice so as to be heard over the noise of the bread, “Tell me, my son, what is the news?”

  Pedro lowers the paper slightly to look at her over the top. The cigarette hangs lazily at the corner of his mouth. He takes it from his mouth and flicks the ash onto the floor. “No news. The same news as always,” he responds, and once again raises the paper.

  “Perhaps Juanico can tell us what he has learned in class this morning then,” she continues without pausing.

  The boy looks around the table nervously as he tries to recollect the morning’s lessons. “We didn’t learn anything new. The priest continues with our mathematics, Latin and scripture.”

  Exasperated, Soledad turns to her sister, “Clearly, the men have a lot on their minds that they do not wish to bother the women with.”

  Hearing his mother’s tone
and seeking to draw the incessant noise to a conclusion, Pedro quickly starts summarising what he is reading. Anger clearly infuses his every word, “The workers are hungry. The workers are lazy. The workers are striking.” He rustles the pages as he turns them, “Wait a minute, here is something. Yes. Now we are hungry and, of course, Madrid won’t feed us. Wait a moment, there is some good news though. The Pope is going to feed us by filling my son’s head with Latin.” He folds the paper and slams it down on the table. “If you want to discuss something perhaps you can tell me how that is going to happen. Perhaps the crops will leap from the ground when he speaks to them. No, wait, the duke’s garden will burst into flower as he reads scripture to them. No, that isn’t it. I know, it is that the baker now accepts Latin verbs for his bread. That is how we will eat.”

  The room falls silent. Pedro stares at his mother for several seconds before shaking his head and picking up his knife and fork. He starts cutting aggressively through the fried vegetables on his plate with the serrated meat knife. The others sit at the table in silence, staring at him. The only sound is the scraping of the knife’s tiny teeth against the china. The rest of the courses come in silence; as they are consumed in silence and their remnants returned to the kitchen in silence.

  Marianela tiptoes around the diners so as not to draw any irritation towards her. As the last course passes and they wait for their coffee, the ticking of the clock is the only sound in the room. Pedro’s mind is elsewhere and is oblivious to the sound of time passing. Raul’s disappearance and how the estate manager and the policeman will respond when they find out is at the forefront of his thoughts. He rolls a cigarette as Marianela places the coffee in front of him. He watches her leave the room. When she turns the corner and moves out of sight he notices his mother watching him. He holds his expression statue still as he stares back for a second and then looks down at the cup in front of him.

  After the meal Marianela walks Juanico back to the church in silence. The sun has passed directly overhead and is now making its way through the afternoon sky towards the west. The shadows in the street are growing longer and the still air is thick with dust.

  As they get closer to the church they start to see the boy’s classmates appearing. As Juanico steps down from the pavement onto the street Marianela pulls him back towards her. A man on a bicycle with a black beret narrowly misses the boy as he cycles past. The two older boys by the church door jeer as the young boy stumbles backwards and Marianela reaches out with both hands to catch him. Embarrassment swells in his chest and is then quickly followed by anger in the pit of his stomach. He pushes her hands away from him. “What do you think you are doing, girl?” he croaks at her. His adult voice struggles to break through his prepubescent tone.

  Juanico steadies himself on his feet and then, seeing the boys are still watching him, pokes his finger into the girl’s chest. “Take care I don’t take a stick to you,” he pronounces in his most manly croak. Marianela steps back and her eyes fill with tears. The brown eyes staring back at her only flicker with emotion for a moment before it is gone. The boy snatches his book satchel from her, turns and walks across the road without saying another word.

  Marianela stands staring at the young man walking away from her. In that moment she feels that the inevitable has come to pass; the whole family now think of her as less than nothing, as less than the mule in the field or the chicken in the storehouse. She watches the boy that suckled at her breast enter the church without looking back. She looks down at her hands, the hands that washed the excrement from his behind. She remembers the spluttering mass in the blanket against her chest, throwing up on her one dress in the middle of the night while the others slept. She remembers the non-judgemental eyes filled with love and trust looking up at her from the cradle; those same eyes that were now filled with disgust and superiority. She turns and dejectedly walks back to the house, her heart hardening with every step.

  The rest of the day passes painfully slowly for Marianela. Her concentration wanders between the people in her life, while her hands unconsciously continue working. She mops the floors throughout the house and her thoughts focus on her son and Juanico. She struggles to understand how they are both pulling away from her. While she scrubs the stains on the sheets she thinks of Pedro and Raul. She wonders if lying with Raul would be as wonderful as lying with Pedro had been. She remembers those first few months when she came to the house. She remembers feeling loved and safe in his arms for those few short hours. Then she remembers how the initial warmth gave way to the chill, and eventually the stifling blanket of oppressive bleakness. She wonders if Raul’s warmth would be as transient, his passion as fleeting and his heart so fickle. The chemicals in the water burrow into the cracks in her knuckles, burning at the flesh underneath the skin. Much as her mind tries to wander towards her dreams, her body anchors her in reality.

  Over the course of the trudging afternoon Marianela feels increasingly torn between Juanico and Salvador and Pedro and Raul. The afternoon makes way for the evening, and the household chores for the dinner preparations. Before long it is cleared away and Marianela finally finds herself at the door to the hut where her son is waiting. Through the gaps in the shutters she can see the light of the fire and the candles. From the chimney she can see the black smoke of the sunbaked kindling whisping into the starry night sky.

  She pushes the door open and finds her son sitting at the table writing. She rushes across the room and throws her arms around him. Taken aback, he allows the embrace with neither response nor refusal. She holds her head tight against his. “I have missed you today, my beautiful son,” she says.

  In the most recent years he has grown quickly and is now bigger than her. He feels like a man in her arms. The downy facial hair has stiffened since he began shaving and she feels the small pins pressing into the skin of her cheek as she pushes hard against him. He widens his arms to loosen her grip and asks, “What is wrong, Mother, why are you so emotional?”

  She stands up beside him, resolving not to tell him the truth. “Nothing, I am just pleased to see you,” she says as she walks over to the fire. He puts the pencil down and turns in his chair to face her. She puts water into the pot over the fire. “Mother, has anything happened?” he asks her.

  After putting the garlic and lentils into the water she sits down at the table. She holds her hand over his, “Everything is perfect as long as you are happy.” He furrows his brow inquisitively, smiles and pats her hand.

  As soon as they have finished eating and have cleared away the lentil broth, Salvador walks Marianela back to the house. As they walk through the largely empty streets he grips tightly to her arm linked through his. His closeness makes her feel safe. The waning moon is low in the sky.

  The CEDA youth pass by and he pulls her tight against him so that her ribs push into his arms. The youth watch him closely as they pass. His general demeanour and the skinning knife on his belt warn them against overreaching themselves. He feels the nerves in the tips of his fingers and a heightened awareness of how prone to attack he is with his back to them. He rests his free hand against his belt, the tip of his thumb touching the handle of the knife. His heart races as they continue walking. Over and over in his mind he repeats the words to himself, “Please, not tonight.”

  The footsteps grow fainter and he allows his breathing to deepen and subsequently his heart begins to slow. He looks down at his mother and smiles to reassure her. A fixed visage of fear beneath the surface of her face greets him. He looks back over his shoulder. The group have continued walking up towards the station. He lets the hand on his belt swing freely again.

  As the two of them turn the corner he starts to hear the welcoming noise of the bars in the square. The clinking of glass on glass and the din of raised voices. In the distance he can hear a guitar. The noise brings a welcome rest to his troubled mind. She feels the tension in his arm lessen as they reach the door to the store
house. She kisses him on both cheeks. “Please be careful. The streets are dangerous,” she implores.

  He strokes the hair on the back of her head. “Go to bed, Mother. I will be fine,” he assures her.

  The transition from being the carer to the one being cared for has been difficult for Marianela. However, with time, it slowly becomes easier. When she looks up into his strong face and embracing eyes she can imagine him looking after her. The warmth inside her grows and her heart softens. He opens the door to the storehouse for her and she steps into the dark. He closes it behind her and waits. He looks up and down the road. The bars are not busy enough to demand the waiters’ attentions. They sit at the tables in front of the bars, smoking with the few customers that have ventured out.

  Salvador walks to the main square and makes his way across it. The hour is late and many of the villagers have already retreated to their homes. He scans the tables in front of the bars surrounding the square. The shops have long since closed, their darkened windows hinting at the treasures inside. Salvador recognises the duke’s estate manager and the policeman sitting in their regular spot. He notes the absence of Don Pedro. He wonders if Raul’s leaving has changed the man’s usual pattern of behaviour.

  He refocuses on the dusty ground in front of him and makes his way to the Casa Del Pueblo. When he reaches it there is an uncomfortable quietness inside. Three of the factory workers are sitting at the bar arguing with each other and the owner who is standing behind it. Salvador’s four comrades from the union are sitting at the corner table. His appearance in the doorway draws a blanket of silence across the bar for a moment before the chatter resumes. He nods to the men at the bar before focusing on the men at the table. The oldest of them gestures him over with a twitch of the head. He joins them.

  Salvador sits down beside Esteban’s cousin, Miguel, and pats the top of his hand. The other man remains silent. The oldest of the men continues speaking, “We must decide whether we take a vote to strike. The word will come from Barcelona soon.”