Tell the Moon to Come Out Read online

  ‘What a waste.’ Sister Encarnata sighed and shook her head at the devastation in the streets.

  ‘It was the Italians who bombed the city, wasn’t it?’ said Nick. ‘In support of Franco.’

  ‘Well, that may be,’ said Sister Encarnata uncertainly. ‘Though I believe the Republicans did some burning of their own, early on.’

  Nick felt Isabel press his arm. Yes, he should be careful. But when you were angry it was difficult to be careful.

  ‘What was your grandparents’ address again, dear?’ asked Sister Encarnata.

  Reluctantly Isabel repeated the false address that had been given to them by Salvador.

  ‘Right, come with me! It’s near the river and the market, if I recall correctly.’

  They went, it being easier to do than to refuse, especially while the nun was holding on to Isabel. When they reached the street they saw that one end had sagged into a jagged, dusty heap. Further along windows were boarded up and dogs prowled.

  ‘What number was it, dear?’

  ‘Six.’

  Six no longer existed, which for them was a piece of luck.

  ‘You poor children, how distressing this must be for you! We must try to find out if anyone has any knowledge of your grandparents. We might ask at the Church of San Juan.’

  ‘No, no,’ protested Isabel, ‘please don’t trouble yourself further, Sister. We will make some enquiries.’

  ‘But I can’t leave you like this! Two poor children in a strange city.’

  ‘We have relatives who live up in the mountains,’ put in Nick. ‘We could go there.’ Somewhere in the sierras lived a cousin of his father and his family, though he could not remember the name of the village or where it was exactly. He had visited them only once, many years ago, when he was small.

  Sister Encarnata was ignoring their protests. Spying a priest on the opposite side of the road, she went charging across to intercept him, her white, winged head-dress bobbing from side to side, her black skirt swirling over her bare, sandalled feet. An oncoming truck had to brake, but she did not appear to notice. ‘Father Geronimo!’ she cried, waving her arm. Glancing back at her charges, she said, ‘He’s an old friend! A good friend. He will help. Come along!’

  Isabel turned to Nick and he held up his hands in surrender. They followed Sister Encarnata across the road. The priest, however, looked ancient and proved to be deaf.

  ‘What are your grandparents’ names?’ asked Sister Encarnata.

  ‘Juan and Sofía Rosso,’ mumbled Isabel.

  ‘JUAN AND SOFIA ROSSO,’ bellowed the nun into the priest’s ear. ‘DO YOU KNOW THEM?’

  He looked puzzled. ‘I have a sister called Sofía.’

  ‘ROSSO,’ repeated Sister Encarnata, turning up the volume of her voice even more. Passers-by were giving them too much attention. ‘THEY LIVED IN THIS PARISH.’

  ‘You have worked in my parish, Sister?’

  She shook her head. ‘He is not the man he used to be,’ she said to her two young companions.

  A woman stopped. ‘Were you asking about the Rossos? I used to know a family called Rosso.’

  ‘Would you happen to know their given names?’ asked Sister Encarnata.

  Nick and Isabel edged back a step or two, anxious to make their escape before they attracted any more attention. The situation was getting out of control. A couple of other women and an elderly man with a dog had paused on the edge of their group to listen. Any moment now a Civil Guard or a policeman might come by and stop to ask what was going on.

  ‘The man was called Emilio. And his wife Josefa. But they disappeared. Well, you know how it is.’ The woman dropped her voice, then looked over her shoulder.

  ‘They are not our Rossos,’ declared Sister Encarnata. ‘Unless of course they might be related to your grandparents?’ She appealed to Isabel. ‘Could that be a possibility?’

  ‘Please don’t trouble yourself further,’ said Nick firmly. ‘We will go and look for our other relatives. But thank you very much for your help. You have been very kind.’

  And with that he took Isabel by the arm and guided her back across the street. They walked swiftly, turned down a side street and kept on going until they felt confident that they had lost Sister Encarnata.

  ‘She meant well,’ said Isabel.

  ‘I know. But unfortunately –’ Nick shrugged. Unfortunately they couldn’t come clean with anyone and tell the truth, not unless it was someone in the network of names given to him by Jean-Luc. They must now try to track down Carlos Cortes.

  ‘How are we going to find his street?’ asked Isabel.

  They had quickly realized that a bombed city was difficult to navigate. Sometimes it was not possible to tell where one street ended and another began. Many street names had disappeared. Here and there blocks of houses existed intact as if by a miracle. Children played in among heaps of stone and tangled wires and broken, half-burnt furniture. In some places workmen had begun the task of clearing up. Dust hung thick in the air. And everywhere they looked there seemed to be beggars, with missing limbs, hirpling on make-shift crutches, wearing dirty bandages wrapped round their heads or patches over empty eye sockets. They passed a gypsy woman sitting on the pavement with her baby. The woman’s arms and legs were as thin as sticks, the baby looked half dead. When she saw them approaching she held out her cupped hand, but as they drew level and she registered that they were dishevelled and shabby-looking themselves, she dropped it.

  ‘I wish we had some food to give them,’ said Isabel in a cracked voice. ‘They’re starving.’

  But they had nothing and what little money they had they must keep to see them through their journey.

  They came to a small food shop and, pushing aside the beaded curtain, they entered, finding themselves in a dim, poky room. There was nothing much on the counter, though a woman with a basket was negotiating the sale of some eggs. They stood back and waited. The shopkeeper eventually beat the woman down to his price.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ she said, with an air of resignation. She counted out her eggs into the box on the counter, her fingers curling round each one as if she was reluctant to let it go. ‘You drive a hard bargain.’ She looked weary. Her feet, in their rope sandals, were black and her dress torn. ‘I have walked three hours from my village up in the hills to get here. I left at first light. Now I have to walk three hours back. I have had to leave my children alone all day.’

  The shopkeeper shrugged. ‘Such is life. It is hard for all of us. I do not find it easy to make a living either.’ He removed the eggs from the counter in case she might take them back. He opened his till, took out a few coins and dropped them into her hand. She stared down at them.

  ‘My children are starving. They have no father. Not any more.’

  ‘Here is some bread for them, señora.’ He produced a half-loaf from under the counter. ‘Do not say I am ungenerous.’

  She did not respond. She put the bread in her basket and shuffled out. Isabel stepped up to the counter and asked the man if he could help them with directions. He knew the street and told them how to get there. ‘It’s not far.’

  Nick hesitated and then asked, ‘Have you any food we could buy?’ They had long since finished what Eugenia had given them.

  ‘A bit of bread. I can’t let you have any eggs. They are spoken for.’ The man put a half-loaf on the counter, perhaps the other half of the one he had given the egg woman.

  ‘Have you anything else at all?’ asked Isabel.

  ‘You have money?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He placed a tin of sardines on the counter and said the price, probably double what it should have been, but Isabel paid and they left the shop. They went round the corner and squatted on the pavement with their feet in the gutter. Nick twisted the key on the sardine tin and wound it back to reveal the tightly packed little silver fish sitting in their pool of olive oil. They tore off pieces of bread and ate them with the fish, soaking up the oil from the tin. They did no
t speak. The food tasted good. Nick offered Isabel his water-bottle and she drank, then he did, too.

  Fortified, they set off to look for the street where Carlos Cortes lived. The southern sun was at its height, and it was hot, blisteringly hot. Wherever possible, they sought the shady side of the street. Nick longed for the refreshing winds that blew through his native glen. He thought of plunging into the loch and feeling its cool waters close over his back.

  The shopkeeper had given them good directions. They arrived at the street within minutes to find that most of it was intact and people were still living there.

  ‘Number thirty,’ said Nick.

  ‘It’s still standing!’ said Isabel. ‘We seem to be in luck.’

  ‘It’s the first floor and the first flat on the right.’

  They climbed the first flight of stairs. The doors were all blank and nameless. In front of the one on the right they stopped, and Nick knocked, giving three short and two long raps. They waited. There was a steady drip of water coming from somewhere.

  Nick had to knock again. After the second time a voice spoke to them behind the door. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m looking for a friend.’

  ‘What name?’

  Nick felt uneasy, but then he always did at this point. And there was nothing else he could do but go through with it. He cleared his throat. ‘I’m looking for Carlos Cortes.’

  ‘He doesn’t live here any more.’

  ‘Since when?’

  No answer.

  ‘Do you know where he is now? Or where his mother is?’

  There was still no answer.

  The silence on the landing was feeling more and more eerie by the second. As they started to tiptoe away, one of the other doors on the landing opened, just a crack. They barely saw the person inside. It was a man, that was all they could make out.

  ‘He was executed by the Nationalists,’ said the man in a voice so low that they could only just make it out, ‘along with some of the wounded in his ambulance.’

  The door closed.

  Nick ran down the stairs into the street and threw up his sardines and bread in the gutter.

  Twenty-One

  ‘It doesn’t necessarily mean your father was among them, Nick,’ said Isabel.

  ‘He was in Carlos’s ambulance.’

  ‘Yes, but Carlos might have got that batch to a first-aid station and taken on a new load.’

  ‘Might.’

  ‘Well, it’s a possibility.’

  She was just trying to be comforting, to find some ray of hope. He couldn’t see it himself. He felt he’d reached the end of the line. And the end of his tether. He thought of poor Carlos Cortes driving his ambulance, taking the wounded away from the battlefield, taking his father, and then ending up… He should stop his thoughts before they developed into the worst scenario he could imagine, but they raced relentlessly on. His father taken prisoner along with Carlos and the other men, hauled out of the ambulance like a sack of potatoes, half dead already, propped up against a wall, and then the order to fire…

  ‘Nicolás,’ said Isabel softly, putting her hand over his, ‘you’ve got to keep hoping.’

  He was sweating badly. What a disgusting mess he was in. He must stink. He wished he could clean himself up. But there wouldn’t be much chance of that. He felt his gorge rise. Was he going to be sick again? He felt sick, sick from the knowledge that his father might be, could well be, dead. And if he was dead he might never find where he had died or where he was buried. The country was full of mass graves.

  ‘All right, Nicolás?’ asked Isabel.

  He gave a half-nod and turned back to look at the building they’d just left. He thought he caught a glimpse of a face at a window.

  ‘Isabel, do you see a man up there at the window?’

  She frowned. ‘I can’t see anyone.’

  Nick looked again, saw no one, either. ‘Maybe I was hallucinating.’

  What were they to do now? For a start, they had to get out of the burning sun. Nick had the address of another contact in Málaga, one that had been given to him by Jean-Luc. They decided they might as well try it.

  Wearily they set off again through the city streets. They were on the point of exhaustion, having spent one night on the train, and another on a station platform, and having slept little on either. The sun was dazzling, the heat blazing up from the pavements. Isabel had to ask the way several times. On one occasion, while she had gone to find someone, Nick thought he caught sight of a man dodging behind a blitzed house. He blinked, saw only rubble then. His head was playing him tricks. It must be the sun, though a few minutes before he’d had the feeling that they were being followed.

  Isabel returned. ‘Not far now. Five minutes’ walk.’

  They found the street but the house they were looking for no longer stood. It lay in a sad heap. Nick felt no surprise. And there seemed no point in asking anyone. It could be like opening up a new can of worms.

  ‘We seem to have run out of luck,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t look well, Nick. In fact, you look dreadful!’

  He felt it. His head was thumping and his eyes couldn’t seem to focus properly.

  ‘You need water.’ Isabel laid a hand against his forehead. ‘You’ve got a temperature. You’re bound to be dehydrated after being sick.”

  ‘I’m just a drag on you.’

  ‘Don’t be silly!’ She scrutinized the street, but there was no drinking well here like the one in her village. ‘We need help.’

  ‘Who’s going to give it to us?’

  ‘Sister Encarnata.’

  ‘No, Isabel!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It could be dangerous. The Church is on Franco’s side, isn’t it?’

  ‘Officially it might be, but that doesn’t mean all the nuns and priests take sides.’

  ‘Francisco – one of the men who helped me up north – told me about a friend of his who was betrayed by a priest. They lived in the same village. They’d been neighbours. The man had known the priest since he was a boy.’

  ‘These things happened in the war. And yes,’ Isabel added quietly, ‘they are still happening.’

  ‘How can you be so calm about it?’

  ‘Because I lived through it. If I’d had hysterics every time something terrible happened in our village I would be insane by now.’

  Like her mother. Nick fell silent.

  ‘I am not defending such things.’

  ‘I know,’ he muttered.

  ‘I’m sure many of the clergy are neutral.’

  ‘How can you be sure Sister Encarnata is? She was very keen to hang on to us.’

  ‘She only wanted to be helpful. All right, I can’t be absolutely sure. But my instinct tells me I can trust her. And there is no one else we can turn to.’

  ‘Her sister could be married to an officer in the Civil Guard, for all we know. I’m sorry, Isabel, I didn’t mean –’ He broke off. He had not meant to suggest that anyone related to a member of the Civil Guard was not to be trusted, since it was obviously not true. He felt his head was about to split open like a tomato over-ripened in the sun.

  ‘What other choice do we have?’

  ‘We could go and look for my father’s cousins. I’d rather be up in the mountains than in this hell of a city.’ That was what it felt like, a hell on earth, with raging furnaces and desolation all around and people with missing limbs and desperate eyes.

  ‘You don’t even know where they live.’

  ‘I sort of do.’

  ‘What use is that? Aren’t there dozens of little white villages up in the sierras? You said so yourself. We could wander for months and not find it.’

  He tried to stand but the street tilted and the pavement came up to meet him, and he went down like a felled log. Isabel crouched beside him and put her hands under his armpits. ‘Let me take your weight. Right, try to push up!’ She hoisted him back on to his feet.

  They staggered until they’d found
their balance, then they stumbled on.

  ‘You’ve done this before for me,’ he muttered.

  ‘Don’t talk. Just save your energy.’

  He could not think any more, he could barely see. He floundered along, seeing the street, the buildings, the people, pass in a blur. He heard Isabel’s voice saying from time to time, ‘Los Santos Mártires?’ They came into a square.

  ‘There should be a little street running off,’ she said. ‘Yes, here we are. There is even a sign for the church.’

  They went up an alleyway, came into another square, smaller than the previous one, and there was the church, and it was open.

  It was blessedly cool inside after the scorching heat of the streets. Isabel helped Nick on to a bench and went to find someone to ask about Sister Encarnata.

  Candles were flickering, lighting up the gold on the altar and the niches at the sides of the church. There was a smell of incense and flowers. Carnations, thought Nick. Their sharp smell was unmistakable. His mother grew them in her garden. And roses. She was fond of roses. Dark red velvety ones, others a soft yellow, some a vivid flaming orange. He closed his eyes and gave himself up to the silence.

  He opened them when he became aware of someone sliding on to the bench beside him. His head jerked up.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said the man, ‘don’t panic! Stay still. I’m a friend.’

  Nick kept still. The man leant forwards and closed his eyes as if he were praying.

  ‘Why did you want Carlos Cortes?’

  ‘I was looking for someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  Nick hesitated.

  ‘It’s all right, I assure you. I truly am a friend.’

  ‘Sebastián Torres.’

  ‘He never came to Málaga. He was badly wounded.’

  ‘I know that much.’

  A man passed the end of their pew but he kept on going, up to the altar.

  ‘They dropped him off with his relatives in Cómpeta before they got to Málaga.’

  The man pressed Nick’s hand and then rose.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Nick.

  He took a look now at the man and felt sure that it was the person who had been following them and who had spoken to them from behind the door. He heard his footsteps retreat and fade and the church door close.