“Don’t worry. It’s still pretty early, so I can go with you.” We walked along Preciados Street, but she stopped in front of Café Varela. “Let’s go in and get a bite. I imagine you haven’t eaten all day.”
We went in, and the warmth brought me back to myself after all day on the cold street. People stared at us. No one failed to notice that a kid in dirty pajamas was spending time with a pretty college girl, though it was hard to say which stood out more in that provincial Madrid environment.
A waiter wearing a white jacket more decorated in braids than an army general’s greeted us ruefully, not wanting his other tables to be disturbed by our presence. Interest waned, however, and within a few minutes the restaurant’s customers had returned to their monotonous lives and I was eating a delicious, steaming steak sandwich.
“I take it you were hungry?” Rosa asked, bathing me in the angelic glow of her smile.
I nodded, my mouth full. “Thank you for everything.”
“Don’t mention it. Sometimes a chance meeting is a gift from heaven, if you know what I mean.”
I did not know what she meant. The only heaven my parents believed in was the one that could be “stormed.” I knew that phrase from the philosopher Karl Marx because my dad had used it once when the neighborhood priest upbraided him on his way home from work for not taking us to church.
“I don’t know what’s happened to you,” she said, “but I assume it was something terrible. Leaving your house in your nightclothes and wandering all that way . . .”
I wanted to trust her, but my father had told me we could never trust anyone outside our class. I still had not learned that sometimes children have to show the way when their parents get turned around.
“The police came and took my parents. They were looking for some papers because my father is a printer. I mean, he has a little workshop near the house. My mom is an actress. She works for the Jacinto Guerrero troupe.”
“I’ve never been to the theater,” Rosa said. “My father’s modern, but not that modern. He lets me go to the movies some Sundays, but doesn’t the playwright you’re talking about do musicals and revues?”
I nodded and wiped some of the steak grease off my chin. “I’ve been a lot. My mom takes us to the rehearsals and sometimes there are snacks. The actors are really picky, and there’s always chocolates and treats.”
Rosa took the napkin and cleaned off the rest of my face, then paid for the meal. It was even colder out on the street when we went back out, the day darkened by gray clouds that threatened snow.
“Brrrr!” she squealed. Then she opened her coat and used it to shelter us both as much as she could.
Before long we were at the entrance to the building where my family had lived until that morning. Few people were out in the streets, and I hesitated, unsure of what to do. The police had taken my parents and probably my sisters too.
“It’s been nice to meet you, but you still haven’t told me your name,” Rosa said.
“Marco Alcalde, at your service,” I answered, just as my mother had taught me.
She reached out her hand and shook mine, fragile and cold. “I hope things work out for you, Marco. I’m going to leave you with a quote. I memorize one every day, to help me learn how to live. People think that existence is just one big improvisation, but really it’s a rehearsal. The phrase is from the philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset: Loyalty is the shortest path between two hearts.”
Rosa turned and walked back to Mayor Street, and I stared after her retreating figure. She had kept the pain and terror at bay and helped me do something other than obsess about what had happened that morning, but as I walked up the dark stairs, my mind replayed it all again. I was trembling as I reached the landing at our door, more from fear than from cold. With not even a whisper of hope, I knocked. I kept knocking, then pounded the door in desperation. Our apartment was my refuge—the thing that separated me from the savage world outside. Finally, I heard footsteps. Someone opened the peephole, but it was totally dark where I was on the landing.
“Who is it?” the nervous voice of María Zapata asked.
“It’s me!” I answered, surprised and also hopeful. Perhaps I was not wholly alone after all.
María timidly opened the door, as if she could not actually believe it was me. She pulled me to her in a tight embrace and caressed my hair. “Oh, my boy, I was worried sick for you!” She brought me inside, heated water in a big pot for my bath, and gave me clean clothes.
“Have you eaten?” she asked. “The sergeant let me keep your sisters here, but they’re asleep. The poor dears have had a terrible time of it today. I didn’t take Isabel to school because I was too afraid. They’ve whimpered in bed all day, like the grief has gotten all balled up in their throats and can’t move an inch.”
That day I learned two lessons I will never forget: No matter how bad things get, someone is always willing to lend a hand; and sometimes you must lie to the villains. My teachers had always taught me that lies limp along for a short time while the truth takes long, confident strides. But I had to protect my family, the most important thing in the world to me. And my father had already warned me that the people in charge of keeping the peace were often the lackeys of the powerful.
Chapter 3
Victory
Madrid
July 18, 1936
I remember it was a Saturday. I didn’t usually keep track of the days of the week when we were off school and had nothing to do but laze about and play outside. A year and a half had passed since the terrifying morning when the sergeant hauled our parents away. For a full week my sisters and I hunkered down in fear with María Zapata, and then one day, with no forewarning, our parents appeared at the door. They had been released without explanation. Their bodies healed, and we slowly returned to our normal routines as a family, though we never forgot that violation of our peace.
I had turned thirteen a few weeks before that day in July 1936, and my parents faced the dilemma of wanting me to stay in school yet not having the funds to pay for it. They could perhaps ask for help from the party, as it was always in need of lawyers and other professionals, or perhaps I could be apprenticed to Dad’s workshop once summer was over. My mother wanted me to continue my studies. She was as committed to the party as my father, but she was unwilling to reject her troupe director’s offer to pay for my first semester of high school. Mom always said that pride was a luxury poor people couldn’t afford. On the other hand, my father surveyed my sisters’ worn-out shoes and the scant food he managed to bring home and preferred to set me up at the printing press so I could learn a trade or to take me to work sites to learn construction, which earned decent wages.
The heat was unbearable that summer in Madrid. The trolleys sped along Mayor Street, and people meandered, trying to stay out of the sun in the hottest hours of the day. There was a war going on, but no one seemed too concerned, perhaps because bloody party infighting had been happening for so long. On July 14 the funeral of the leader of the extreme right, José Calvo Sotelo, had been held, and tensions were as high as the summer temperatures.
Just a few weeks before, the city had smelled of winter’s hot chocolate and churros. Now the aromas of frying lamb intestines—our beloved gallinejas and entresijos—and of Spanish tortillas and freshly sliced hams filled the streets. Older men sat and lingered over conversation at their customary cafés. They rambled about a little girl who had been run over the day before; the actress Tina de Jarque, star of the Teatro de la Zarzuela, and her fine pair of legs; and the murder of “Pepe el de los perros,” a young man found dead on the road between Húmera and Pozuelo. Pious women gathered at the doors of the church of Jesús de Medinaceli to ask for three wishes. There were no strikes in the city that day, which was noteworthy given how often anyone and everyone—from woodworkers to government clerks to elevator operators—marched and went on strike in recent months over the slightest provocation. By the afternoon, rumors were spreading that a military uprising had occurred in Ceuta or Melilla, but this news was far away, no cause for concern.