A few nets of anchovies or sardines served as an effective disincentive to most inspectors who might stop their boats. A number of times the Egun On and the Zaldun were boarded for inspection, but neither the rebel navy nor their Guardia Civil allies would wade down into a hold to check beneath the day’s catch.
If the special cargo of the day was human, the passengers were told to hold their noses and burrow under the fish. Many responded with a grunt of disgust, but when the ship was stopped by a rebel gunboat, they had no problem shimmying under the reeking fish.
One guard, automatic weapon slung across his chest, ordered Josepe to open the hold. The guard peered down the hatch as Josepe and José María looked at each other, silently praying that the three refugees hidden there would be able to hold their breath and not move beneath the weight of the sardines.
The guard inhaled meekly, shuddered, and motioned for Josepe to shut the hatch.
“Stupid Baskos,” he said, walking toward his boat, which was lashed alongside them.
“Yes, we are just fishermen,” Josepe said.
“Ugly, too,” José María added.
“And we smell of fish,” Josepe continued as the guard stepped over the side.
“Poor us,” José María lamented.
CHAPTER 15
Justo entered his daughter’s house as he entered most rooms, with an exclamation. In this case, it was a rumbling greeting to his granddaughter on her first birthday.
“Cat-a-leeen-aaaa!”
Aboard her hobby-ram, she kicked and scooted in his direction so she could be picked up and pulled tight to his scratchy face. Her great joy was pulling the beret from his head and flinging it to the ground, and then grabbing great handfuls of his mustache and pulling it all directions as her aitxitxia responded with groans of pain.
For her birthday, Miguel had made a little rocking chair and Miren had sewn red gingham pads for the back and seat. Miren had stashed sugar aside for weeks to bake a cake.
“Look what your amuma made for you,” Justo said, holding up a bag for Catalina to open. She pulled out the small white dress, looked briefly, tossed it in the air, and went back to work on her aitxitxia’s mustache.
“Catalina . . . ,” Miren scolded, picking up the dress, which Mariangeles had crocheted. “It’s beautiful, she’ll love it.”
“Well, we have arranged an occasion when she can wear it soon,” Mariangeles said. “Justo has talked to Arriola at the photo shop and he is going to take a family portrait of the three of you for her birthday. We’ll both get copies.”
Miguel wore his black wedding suit; Miren could still fit in a black-and-white dress she’d made for herself before she was married. It was tighter in places since she’d had Catalina but still attractive. Catalina was certain she was the most special little girl, standing, wobbly, next to her mother, holding out the hem of her skirt to her sides, and then pulling it up over her head with a squeal.
“No, Cat,” Miren corrected her, pulling the skirt down.
“What do we do about the, uh . . . ?” Miguel asked Miren, touching his right ear slightly.
Miren brushed Catalina’s hair from a left part over to the right, but she did not have nearly enough to cover it.
“A hat?” Miguel asked.
“Then we couldn’t see her face. It’s really not very big. It’s such a small ear.”
When Miguel made whispered mention to Arriola of Catalina’s ear notch, he nodded. This would not be a problem. He positioned Miren in a dark wooden high-backed chair, with Catalina sitting on her lap, facing to her right, toward Miguel, who was standing beside the chair.
“Watch the birdie,” Arriola said. Catalina turned her head slightly toward the camera as the flash went off, perfectly catching her face at a three-quarter angle, with the light reflecting off the tiny silver lauburu in her left ear.
Picasso hurled brushes and kicked newly stretched canvases and easels, storming across his studio. Franco’s rebels had taken Málaga, where he’d been born, and after the bombing and artillery destroyed the buildings, they machine-gunned civilians. Enough. He announced to friends that he would create a project to sell in support of relief for the Republican cause.
The Dream and Lie of Franco, in essence a comic book, portrayed the Fascist leader as a buffoon, as a woman, and as a half-horse/half-man centaur being eviscerated by a bull. At times, he was drawn wearing a bishop’s miter, kneeling before the image of money.
To accompany the cartoon plates, Picasso spewed written images in a poem filled with such anger that it had no room for punctuation or syntax until he reached an artistic rhythm.
“. . . cries of children cries of women cries of birds cries of fl owers cries of timbers . . .”
No, the artist could not return to Spain to fight. But he could raise money with his art. And he could let the world hear his rage.
Juan Legarreta collected the carpenters Teodoro Mendiola and Miguel Navarro and took them to the Taberna Vasca, near the marketplace, for a few glasses of Izarra, the liqueur that tasted of mint and left a person’s lips tingling. Legarreta, chief of the volunteer fire department, needed help. The Germans had bombed Durango and the Guernica town council had charged him with the task of constructing shelters, refugios, where citizens could retreat in case of a similar attack.
Mendiola and Miguel had heard of the attack on munitions plants in Durango, but they knew nothing about the specific damages created by high explosives and had no clue how carpenters would go about constructing shelters to withstand such extreme demands. Besides, both had commissioned projects in the works, the pay from which might allow them to continue feeding their families.
“I know,” Legarreta nodded in sympathy. “I’m not getting paid either. But some of the council think we need to build these things just in case. Some are certain that we have no cause to worry. Others are convinced that if we build shelters it’ll just create a panic in the town.”
“Do they know something we don’t know about the danger here?” Mendiola asked.
“I don’t think they know much of anything,” Legarreta said, removing his beret and raking his fingers through his hair. “You get a couple old Carlists and some Republicans and mix them with some Monarchists and Reds and sprinkle in a few would-be Fascists and an Anarchist or two, and what comes out of the room is guaranteed to make no sense. But it’s better to have some protection than none, and if it gets some people thinking about potential danger, maybe that’s not bad. I just don’t see anything here they’d want to bomb.”
Mendiola and Miguel nodded. Even though it meant sacrifice, they were both committed to helping.
“And, Juan,” Mendiola pressed, “do you have any advice on how we should tell our wives that we’ve been diverted to a project we really don’t know how to build to protect against an attack that probably won’t come, and for which we will receive no pay?”
Miguel had not considered the problem of explaining such things to a wife. He laughed at the response he imagined receiving from Miren. “As soon as I tell Miren what we are doing, she’ll insist on coming down to start sewing curtains and putting down rugs, promising to round up all her friends to make these the coziest bomb shelters in all the Pays Basque.”
Legarreta and Mendiola had known her for many years and could imagine those exact comments.
“You know, it might be easier to get her to recruit the construction crews,” Mendiola said.
Legarreta took them to town hall and several of the more stoutly constructed residences, and he suggested reinforcing the basements with additional supports. Miguel quickly envisioned bolstering the connection of each column to the beams with “knees” akin to those used to attach ships’ ribs to the decking, and strapping joints with metal bands. Another freestanding shelter was to be constructed on Calle Santa María, between town hall and the church, with the plan calling for a series of oak supports to uphold beams covered by layers of sandbags.
“I have no idea what it wou
ld take to protect people from a bomb; I just hope this is one building project that never gets tested,” Mendiola said.
“It won’t,” Legarreta said, adding a chuckle as reassurance. Still, he harbored two deep concerns that he did not share. The council’s notion of what constituted a good shelter was a tightly enclosed area that would prevent penetration of bullets and bomb fragments. But that meant that there was little flow of air to these basement rooms. His second worry was more direct: He had ten lightly trained men in his volunteer fire department and one small fire truck, a serious issue in a town constructed mostly of wood.
Father Xabier understood why he’d been sent to Guernica when he came upon the refugees, belongings tied in ratty bundles, clustered in a shapeless mass in the courtyard in front of the train station. He watched ambulances arriving in staggered succession to disgorge their cargo of broken soldiers at the temporary military hospital established at the Carmelite convent near the river.
When Xabier left Bilbao, the town was swollen with the wave of refugees that gets pushed out in front of an invading army. But the inflow of homeless to Guernica evoked a far more ominous sensation. Bilbao was defended to some extent; this was an unprotected valley flooded with human runoff.
When he arrived, he heard of break-ins and the rumor that retreating soldiers had breached the cloister and taken up positions in the Santa Clara convent on the hill. He looked at the rain clouds smudging the sky before twilight and saw no birds. Atop the Carmelite convent, movement caught his attention. Two dark, spectral figures revolved in an agonizingly slow dance. As he walked closer through the crowded street, he could distinguish the black robes and white wimples; they were nuns on the roof, with upraised binoculars, scanning the skies for intruders.
President Aguirre had tracked troop movements of the Republican forces, mostly Basques in this region, in the three weeks since the bombing of Durango. He knew his forces had battled well but been overpowered on successive fronts. They had withdrawn toward the protection of Bilbao, which required many of them to filter back through Guernica. Another battle line had to be established, to forestall rebel troops and earn time for the continuous attempts to strengthen the “Iron Belt” fortifications of Bilbao.
Late in the week, Aguirre had visited Father Xabier’s confessional. Xabier knew Aguirre had entered his box before he heard his voice; through the grating, he could smell him. He had always been a heavy smoker, but now the disquieted Aguirre was lighting one cigarette with the last embers of its predecessor and carried in his clothing a heavy film of tobacco.
“Are you smoking in the confessional?” Xabier asked.
“Forgive me, father, for I have smoked.”
“Put it out; it’s blasphemous.”
“I already confessed to it; absolve me and let’s move on,” Aguirre said.
They crossed themselves simultaneously.
“You’ll never believe this . . . ,” Aguirre started, his voice more tense than the priest had ever heard. “Our engineer, the great Captain Alejandro Goicoechea—”
“The designer of the Iron Belt?”
“Yes, that one,” Aguirre said. “He’s defected. To the rebels . . . took all the blueprints with him. Every detail. Every place where the ditches are narrow and the fence is unprotected.”
“God help us,” was all that Xabier could think to say. “What now?”
“I need you to go home,” Aguirre said. “I need you to arrange to speak at mass, to warn them about what’s going on, to tell them everything you can about the danger.”
“Me? Why not you?”
“They know you and they trust you. You’re one of them. I’m sending others, advisers and counselors, to towns in all directions.”
Xabier had no need to weigh the factors; he knew it was the right approach. Aguirre, kneeling at the confessional, detailed the grim threats constricting around them.
“Now do you see why I need you to tell them?”
Xabier, sensing a challenge greater than any he had imagined for himself as a student, sent word to the priest at Santa María in Guernica and began shaping his warnings.
He arrived at Errotabarri Saturday evening for dinner, a starchy marriage of bread and garbanzo soup. He waved off Mariangeles’s apologies. His brother and his wife were gaunt.
“I want to warn you about what I’m going to have to say at mass in the morning,” he said. “It is going to shock people, but it’s for their benefit. They need to know what might happen if things keep going as they are.”
“Won’t the rebels go straight to Bilbao?” Mariangeles asked. “There can’t be anything in Guernica they could want.”
“Nobody knows,” Xabier answered between bites. “Franco’s troops are bloodthirsty for Basques, and the Germans are unpredictable. For Franco, there is more to this. Every one of us he can be rid of now will be one fewer to worry about when he’s running Spain.”
“If our few troops retreat to Bilbao, then the rebels would just be able to walk in with no need to hurt anybody; isn’t that a possibility?” Mariangeles asked, her voice inflecting upward.
“Anything is possible,” Xabier said. “That could happen, or many could be hurt. There’re no rules to this.”
Justo held a palm up toward Xabier; he had a point to make.
“They know the history of the town. They know what it means to us; they know it’s the heart of our country. If they attack Guernica it would be a sacrilege—it would have the opposite effect of what they want.”
Xabier focused on Justo’s face for a moment.
“Exactly,” Xabier said. “They know the importance of this town.”
When the bells of Santa María made their call to mass, Xabier watched the pews fill with the people he’d known since he was a boy. Not a seat was empty, yet there was little sound beyond a few whispered greetings and pardons for jostling as parishioners slipped into their usual seats. When Xabier stepped to the altar, murmurs of recognition rippled in a wave from the front to the back. “What could bring him back from Bilbao?” “Did you know that Father Xabier was going to preach today?” “He looks thin, don’t you think?”
All rose.
“A reading from Psalm Thirty,” he said, opening his Bible at the purple cord that marked his page. “ ‘I praise you, Lord, for you raised me up and did not let my enemies rejoice over me.’ ”
Solemnly, more slowly, he repeated the passage, stressing “and did not let my enemies rejoice over me.”
He gestured for all to sit.
“Most of you know me and know my family,” Xabier said. “And I hope that you will trust that I’m not here to frighten you into greater piety. President Aguirre himself asked me to come and speak with you. He wanted me to tell you that we all are facing danger as the war comes nearer. It is near enough that some of us should not even be here at mass today. Some of us should be in the mountains and the fields fighting a threatening enemy. We should be preparing to protect our families, our loved ones, our property, our homeland.”
Parishioners stared forward.
“Men and women and children are being slaughtered by Nationalist rebels all over Spain,” Xabier continued. “We have failed you by not telling you how dangerous this is. The rebels are killing in the name of God. And the church, by its silence, would appear to be condoning this evil. I cannot be silent.”
Xabier scanned the front pews, trying to gauge the impact of his words. He wished to shock them into alertness but not scare them to the point that they could no longer absorb the message.
“I know a priest should stand here and tell you how wrong it is to take a life, that it is a mortal sin. But it is not a mortal sin to give your life in the protection of all that is important or for a cause that is just. To protect your family with your life is not a sin.”
A woman near the front gasped. The priest, who grew up worshipping in this church, who had known and provided clerical counsel to many in the town, had committed a stunning heresy.
 
; “It is difficult to understand the savagery of this war,” he continued. “I remind you of the trials of young Saint Agnes, who was violated and murdered. You must not let that happen to your children or your wives; defend all that is precious to you, even if it means giving your life or taking a life.”
Some sobbed openly now.
“I tell you this story only because you need to know the truth,” he said. “There has been too little truth told. It is not a story of some ancient biblical atrocity. President Aguirre showed me a report of what happened recently to the parish priest at Eunari. The Moorish troops of the rebels arrived as he was reciting mass.”
Xabier swallowed against his own emotions.
“They cut off his nose . . . and skewered it to his tongue; they sliced the ears from his head and left him to die, hanging from the church bell tower. These troops, these murderers and defilers, are fighting for Franco only several valleys to the south. Your lives, your family, your country may depend on you leaving this place or fighting to defend it.”
The planning of attacks involved mundane decisions regarding personnel, matériel, bomb loads, targets, and timing. But Wolfram von Richthofen, from warrior stock and a noble caste, was more than an accountant of ordnance, more than a stationmaster eying his watch to be certain his operation ran on schedule. Von Richthofen recognized a vehicle for virtuosity and creativity. Attacks were about planning, yes, but also orchestration. Anyone can point an index finger to a crossroads on a map. But to counterplay the timpani bass of heavy explosives with the pizzicato of fighter guns is the province of a maestro.