A Most Uncivil War Read online

  “Enough of that kind of talk, Basque. You’ve eaten and slept well. Now we work.” Raul allows himself a mischievous smile as he turns back towards the village.

  Pedro ties the horse up in front of the hut. Salvador’s eyes never leave him. Pedro turns to Esteban. “The girl’s child will start work with you today. Work him hard, but make sure he comes to no harm.” Esteban nods.

  The woman holds her hands out to the boy. “Come here, Salvador, you can start by helping me.”

  Pedro puts his hand on Esteban’s shoulder and walks him out of earshot of the others. “Should I be concerned with the Basque?” The rumours had always given Esteban cause to speak carefully, but the way Pedro spoke so warmly towards him often loosened his tongue.

  “He has said nothing of consequence. He is a learned man of the city. Don’t worry yourself. I will make sure that there is no Basque mischief for you.”

  Reassured, Pedro pats him on the shoulder. “Good.”

  The two men walk back to the group. Pedro continues, “I need you to open another small channel across the middle of that field there; there is not enough water reaching the olives. Also, I have brought you a rifle and cartridges for the hares.” He takes them from the saddle holster and hands them to Esteban. “Be careful, it is one of my hunting rifles.” Esteban slings the Mauser 93 over his shoulder and puts the two spare magazine clips into his pocket. Raul watches them as he puts his bedroll and sack into the hut.

  Pedro unties his horse and starts walking back towards the village. The two cousins make their way across the fields with the tools over their shoulders. Esteban turns to Raul. “You help with the channel. We need to get as much dug out as possible before the sun reaches midday. We can finish it off this evening.” Esteban turns to Salvador who is partially hidden behind the woman. “We’ve got jobs for you to do as well. You can help the men with the channel in the morning and in the afternoon you can help harvest the peaches. But the most important job for you is as lookout. The hares have been eating Don Pedro’s crops so we need to watch out for them. When you see one you will let me know, yes?” Salvador’s smile lights up his face.

  Esteban turns to the woman. “Find him a hat; otherwise, we’ll send him back to his mother looking like a gypsy.” Esteban ruffles the boy’s hair before following behind the other men. As he walks alongside the field he checks the magazine cartridge is loaded correctly before re-shouldering the rifle.

  The brother’s wife, Maria Dolores, comes out of the hut holding a cream cotton flat cap and pulls it tight onto Salvador’s head. The brim throws a shadow across his face, “There you go. Now you look like a worker. Catch up with the men and see what you are to do.” Smiling broadly, and with one hand holding the oversized cap on his head, the young boy runs along the raised bank of an irrigation channel after the men.

  *

  Pedro reaches the house to find his mother and son waiting for him in the hallway. He looks at Juan Nicolas and smiles. The little boy looks nervous in his best clothes. Marianela watches them from where she is kneeling scrubbing the kitchen floor. Dona Soledad is dressed in black. “Good, then we are ready to go,” she says. Pedro glances briefly at Marianela before turning and leaving the house.

  The three of them make their way towards the church, down the street and across the square. As they pass the window of the baker’s, the succulent odour of baking bread surrounds them.

  Juan Nicolas tugs at his father’s sleeve. “Why can I not go with Salvador? I do not want to go to church.”

  Soledad slaps him hard across the back of the head. “Don’t blaspheme. You shall do as you are told.” The strike is hard enough to force him into a forward stumble. Pedro fires her a look of contempt as he puts his hand on his son’s shoulder to steady him.

  “Salvador has to work in the fields and you must learn with Father Nicolas. You will be able to tell Salvador what you have learnt tonight.” The reassuring hand on his shoulder and warmth of his father’s voice silence Juanico for the remainder of the short walk.

  The family enters the melancholy gloom of the church. Pedro crosses himself at the font and Soledad bends her knee, steadying herself with her walking stick. She mutters a prayer under her breath. The tight monotony of the priest’s voice echoes through the church. “Do you not pray when you enter the house of our god?” Pedro turns to see his son standing still and the colour draining from his face.

  The priest glides unnaturally down the central aisle, his cassock covering his feet and his eyes never leaving the boy. The malevolent smile almost permanently fixed on the priest’s face angers Pedro to his stomach. He feels his muscles tightening as the priest gets close enough for him to see the pencil thin smile and the skin around the mouth tightly drawn in contrived superiority.

  The priest hits Juanico across the side of the face with the flat of his open hand. “Cross yourself when you enter the church, child.”

  Pedro feels his molars grinding against each other as the muscles in his jaw tighten. He watches as the skin around Juanico’s cheekbone and eyebrow reddens. Pedro clenches his teeth and says nothing. Soledad hits the child across the back of the head. “Do as the holy Father says before I beat you.” The child quickly crosses himself and mutters a prayer as his eyes well up with tears.

  Once the procession of four have made their way to the office at the back of the church Juanico stands in the corner in silence watching the adults talk about him. As the time passes and conversation drags on he soon finds himself thinking about Salvador; imagining him playing in the fields with other children. As Pedro listens to the priest his mind also wanders, but mostly to the prostitutes in Zaragoza pleasuring other men.

  “Your son is to come to morning mass and will then join the other boys in morning lessons. Do not worry, Don Pedro, I will have your son reading and writing in no time.”

  Pedro forces a smile. “Thank you, sir, for your kindness.”

  “Say nothing of it. It is my duty to God,” the priest replies. He continues, “We must all ensure our village is a gracious home to our kind duke, no? Your family are a very important part of that.”

  Soledad can hardly contain the pride swelling within her. “You are too gracious, Father.” Pedro nods his head in agreement.

  The priest continues, “I will teach him to read and write, to honour his father and to serve his country and God. Do not worry, Don Pedro, give your son to the holy church and it will return you a good man, a responsible man that is a credit to your name.”

  *

  Salvador is the first to see the ears of the hare poking up above the leaves of the garlic plants in the corner of the field. Standing up on its haunches, the ears twitch as it glances nonchalantly across the patch of green leaves. Salvador calls to Esteban and points in its direction. Esteban stands up straight and scans the field. He picks up the rifle, cocks it and raises it to his shoulder. The old man looks down the sights at the hare nearly 200 metres away. The barrel of the gun twitches in his adrenalin-filled grasp.

  Raul and the other men stop working to watch. Raul focuses on the tip of the gun and sees it moving. He turns to scan the field, judging the distance between the shooter and the hare. He knows that the old man will never make the shot and reaches out towards him. “Give me the gun, Esteban. I can hit it from here.” Esteban squints his eyes to block out the blinding radiance of the sun. The animal takes two bounces forwards and then stops again. Esteban lowers the gun.

  Raul sidles across to him with his hand still out. Esteban looks to the floor and hands him the rifle. In one movement Raul drops to one knee, wraps the strap around his steadying hand, lifts his glasses onto his head, brings the butt up to his shoulder and rests his cheek against it. The hare stands up on its hind legs and looks towards the men. Its ears twitch and then, in a flash, it turns and starts bounding away. Salvador dare not blink as he watches the stranger. He exhales,
emptying his lungs and then his chest is still. Salvador allows his gaze to move down the rifle. The barrel of the gun is moving minutely, keeping time with the hare springing forwards a metre with every stride.

  The rifle cracks like a bullwhip and the hare is caught in mid-air. The bullet enters by its left thigh and drags the pin-wheeling mass through the air in a spray of blood. Salvador involuntarily lets out a yelp and from the surrounding fields birds take flight. The Mauser jams the next round into the firing cylinder as Raul scans the horizon, still holding his breath. Twenty metres from the first hare’s twitching corpse another is bounding away. Raul lines it up in the sights, again allowing the barrel to keep time with the second hare’s gait. Two more seconds pass before the Mauser cracks its whip again. An instant later the second hare is lifted into the air from its rear, somersaulting it before it tumbles lifelessly through the foliage.

  Raul lifts his cheek from the rifle butt and scans the field. He inhales, filling his lungs. He stands up and unwinds the strap from his hand before passing the gun back to the dumbstruck Esteban. The whole time the old man was watching he had left his hand resting on the handle of the knife in his belt. As he hands the gun back to the older man he says, “This is no hunting rifle. It is an army rifle. Probably from Africa.”

  Esteban takes it from him and puts it over his shoulder. “Is that where you learned to shoot?”

  Raul raises his eyebrows and smiles at the boy before turning back to Esteban. “No, my uncle taught me to hunt when I was young. It was the only time we ate meat.” He takes the glasses off his head, steams them up with his breath and wipes them with the neckerchief from his pocket. The old man watches him without responding.

  As Raul turns to walk away he puts the glasses back on. Salvador and the three men stand in silence, staring unblinkingly at Raul. The men look at one another in silence and then pick up their tools and return to digging the trench. Salvador runs to Esteban’s side. “Shall I get the hares for our pot?”

  Esteban puts a hand on the boy’s capped head, and without looking away from the Basque replies, “Good idea, boy. We shall eat well today, no?” Salvador barely hears the last part as he runs as fast as he can along the lines of bushes towards the two dead animals.

  *

  Marianela races through her work, energised by the promise of seeing adults that will treat her as a human being. She scrubs the floors, makes the beds and prepares the lunch all before the shadows in the street disappear. Once she is done she hurries through the village and along the dirt tracks towards Pedro’s fields. In her hand is a sack containing yesterday’s bread, a small portion of goat’s cheese and a few slices of chorizo. The shawl around her head is unduly warm but protects her from the sun high above. With just less than a kilometre to go she hears the first gunshot coming from the field. She stops still. A second later she sees the birds launching themselves into the sky from their camouflage in the fields.

  She only has a few seconds to survey the horizon before the second gunshot rings out. Fearing the worst, she runs faster towards the hut. She arrives at the same moment Salvador bounces up with a large grin on his face and the limp bodies hanging by their ears in his outstretched hands. A trail of blood snakes along the earth behind him.

  She runs over and grasps him in her arms. “My son, are you all right? I heard the guns.” She quickly checks him all over.

  Pointing to the working men, his words jostle for space between laughs as he tries to explain what happened. “Esteban’s new friend is the best hunter in all of the world.”

  Marianela pulls him close and wraps her arms around him. The blood from the hares drips onto her skirt. Maria Dolores walks up behind them and puts her hand on Marianela’s shoulder. “Do not worry. I am watching your son. He will come to no harm here.”

  Hearing the voices, Raul looks up from the trench and sees Marianela. He asks the other men quietly, “That’s the mother then?”

  Esteban looks up. “Yes, the maid of Don Pedro. She is called Marianela.” The men continue dragging the hard soil from the trench. Their clothes are sodden with sweat and their brows spattered with sunbaked soil.

  Maria Dolores takes the hares from Salvador, “I will show you how to skin them, so that when you go hunting you can make your own lunch.” The grin doesn’t subside on Salvador’s face as he follows Maria Dolores back to the hut with his mother still clinging on.

  Marianela looks back over her shoulder at the men hunched over, working. She pauses on the one she doesn’t recognise. Without turning back she asks Maria Dolores, “Is that the new worker? Who is he?”

  Maria Dolores lays the hares out on the cutting stone, pausing briefly to look up. “He is a Basque teacher, I believe from San Sebastian, I am not sure.” Marianela nods her head, still watching the men. Maria Dolores continues, “His name is Raul. He is polite enough, agreeable, learned. Esteban doesn’t like him.”

  Marianela laughs. “Like him or trust him?”

  Maria Dolores smiles, “With my brother-in-law it is the same. Trust, like, be polite too. None of it matters; he has the manners of a gypsy.”

  Marianela smiles and turns to face her. “The men of your family are strong, honest men. You are too hard on them.”

  Maria Dolores passes her a knife and an onion. “You should work in the fields with them all day and sleep in the hut with that smell. God forgive me; the cousin pleasures himself every night with us all listening. It is like living with animals. I should work in the house with the fine gentleman while you tend these animals.” Embarrassed, Marianela laughs. She hasn’t laughed in a long time. The darkness lifts for a few moments.

  Once the food is prepared, Marianela walks over to the men digging the trench. Her eyes focus on the stranger’s shoulders as she gets closer. The sweat-soaked overalls cling to his back outlining an athletic, but not heavily muscled, man. “The food is ready,” she calls out. The men and the boy look up from their work.

  Esteban responds, “In a moment.” They clear the last loose earth from their most recent digging and pat it down into peaks running along either side of the furrow. They wash their hands and faces in the flowing water of the nearby irrigation channel and return to the hut in silence.

  Raul watches the sway of Marianela’s hip twenty metres in front of him as he walks back. It has been weeks since he was with a woman and this one catches his attention. As they reach the hut Maria Dolores starts spooning out the rabbit broth from the pot into bowls and hands it to each man as they gratefully take it and then take up position on the floor. Marianela hands the wineskin to Esteban. “Thank you, kind lady,” he says before lifting the skin at arm’s length. The single flow of wine hits the back of his throat with a gentle hiss.

  Salvador places himself beside Raul. It takes him several minutes before he musters the courage to ask the question that has been on his mind since the shooting. Between mouthfuls, Salvador asks Raul, “Will you teach me to shoot like —”

  He is cut off by his mother before he gets to finish his sentence. “Don’t bother the man while he is eating.”

  Raul looks her in the eyes. The sun glitters in the corner of her eyes and catches his breath. “It is no bother,” he says to her. He turns to the boy and smiles. “I would be happy to teach you.” Sensing Esteban is watching, he quickly continues, “Once I have finished my work, of course, and if your mother wishes it.”

  Chapter 8

  As he leaves the church and his son with the priest, Pedro feels an indescribable tension gnawing at his insides. He neither likes nor trusts the other man. Unlike many in the village, and even some in his own family, he does not believe the priest is the voice of God. No, Pedro thinks of the priest as just a man: a very flawed, bitter, viscous man. A man that he doesn’t trust his son with.

  Soledad links arms with him. “Do not worry, son. He is in good hands with the priest. You must go about
your work and we can talk at lunch.”

  Remembering what he had said to Marianela, he informs Soledad, “I told the girl that she could lunch with the workers in the field. She will have prepared the lunch and will be back in time to cook and serve it.”

  Soledad nods to herself and says warmly, “You have the beauty of the saints about you. After all that girl has done to us and still you treat her so well. I pray she has the grace to honour you for it.” Pedro doesn’t respond.

  When they reach the servants’ entrance in the rear wall of the gardens he kisses his mother on both cheeks and leaves her to continue on without him. Once in the gardens, Pedro sees his workers picking up the pine cones from the floor and sweeping the pathways. He stops to roll himself a cigarette and contemplates a new fiction that would allow him to make the journey to Zaragoza. The heat in the garden is unbearable and Pedro takes a moment’s respite under the shade of a nearby tree. He continues watching the workers as he smokes and thinks.

  *

  Many hours later Pedro opens the high doors of the storehouse to let Esteban in. The old man leads the mule who, in turn, is pulling the cart piled high with crates. Pedro notices Salvador sitting on the back of the cart as he holds the large barn door open and the procession inches past him.

  “Is the channel dug?” Pedro asks Esteban.

  “Yes, Don Pedro, and the water is flowing. We have also harvested most of the second field. We should be finished with that tomorrow,” Esteban replies as he lifts Salvador from the back of the cart.

  Pedro asks, “And the boy, do we keep him or throw him to the dogs?” A smile hints at the corner of his mouth as he asks the question.

  The colour runs from Salvador’s cheeks as he has never heard the master of the house joke. “I think we will get more from him working,” Esteban says as he pushes the young boy towards the house. “Anyway, there is not enough meat on him to feed the fleas on the dogs,” he continues.