Law of Return, page 21
Elena had never thought that she would ever greet the sight of one of the Guardia Civil’s vehicles with positive joy. But she laughed for sheer relief when she saw the canvas-roofed truck, parked where Tejada had left it. “Into the back, both of you,” he commanded, relief surging in his voice as well. “And get under the tarpaulin. We’ll probably meet roadblocks.”
Meyer helped Elena into the back of the truck, and then clambered in after her. “Bless you!” His voice was fervent. “If you can take us as far as the hiker’s trails—”
“Forget that,” Tejada interrupted, swinging himself into the driver’s seat and turning the key in the ignition. “I want to be over the border before someone bawls out those Germans for the incompetents they are. Now get under the damn tarp!”
Elena never forgot the ride to the border. The rain spattered heavily on the rough cloth above her for the first few minutes, but soon lightened so that she was no longer able to feel the impact of the drops. But it was difficult to keep her balance on the floor of the truck. Tejada was driving fast and the roads were not smooth. After a few bruising minutes, she managed to cling to one side of the vehicle, half lying down, knees curled to her chest. Meyer, who had been having similar difficulties, clung to the other side in a similar position. Tejada’s kit lay between them, wedging them in as well as giving them some protection against being shaken loose. Elena’s left leg and arm began to fall asleep, and she longed to stretch, or at least to be free of the bumping for a while, but each time the vehicle slowed to go around a curve her heart leapt into her mouth, afraid that they had hit a roadblock and were about to be stopped. Nearly blind in the darkness, and afraid to speak, she could only hope that the professor was surviving the trip.
The jolting ride seemed to go on forever, but in fact it was only just over forty minutes later that Elena felt the truck rattle to a stop. In the sudden silence, she heard the unmistakable voice of a Spaniard. “Lieutenant!”
“Good morning, Guardia.” Tejada’s voice was clear to the two people crouched in the back of the truck. “Here are my papers, if you need them.”
“Yes, sir.” There was a pause, which was agonizing to the lieutenant’s hidden passengers, as the border guard smothered a jaw-splitting yawn. “You’re back early, sir.”
“I know. I found the address I was looking for but it turned out to be a false lead. I wanted to get back as quickly as possible and find the bastard. He’s caused enough trouble.”
“Yes, sir.” The guardia yawned again. “At your orders.”
“Go get some coffee.” The lieutenant sounded amused. “You sound like you’ve had a tough night.”
“Oh, no, sir. The border’s been very quiet.”
“Good. Arriba España.”
“Arriba España, Lieutenant. Welcome home.”
“Thanks.” The lieutenant’s passengers, who had done their best to avoid breathing during his conversation with the border guard, let out simultaneous sighs of relief as the engine rumbled to life, and they began to move again. A few minutes later, the truck once more slowed and came to a halt. This time, they heard the sound of the door slamming, as Tejada climbed out. A moment later, the tarp that concealed them was pulled aside. “Everyone all right?” Tejada asked.
He had turned off the road just before one of its innumerable S-bends. A little clump of pine trees screened them from immediate view of the deserted highway. Leaning over the back of the truck, he looked genuinely worried about his passengers’ comfort.
“Wonderful,” said Meyer seriously, pushing himself into a sitting position with a slight groan. “If I haven’t thanked you already, Lieutenant—”
“You have,” Tejada interjected, pulling his kit out of the back, and helping the old man totter out of the jeep. “Elena? Are you all right?”
“Fine, thanks.” Elena attempted to follow Meyer’s example, but accidentally stepped out of the truck onto her left leg and nearly crumpled to the ground. “My foot’s asleep,” she explained as Tejada caught her. “I’ll be fine in a minute.”
“Good.” He tightened his arms around her a little, in spite of the reassurance, and she leaned against him, content to be supported. He kissed her hair.
Meyer coughed pointedly. Tejada relaxed his grip, and Elena turned out of the circle of his arm, looking (in the professor’s opinion) not nearly embarrassed enough. “Welcome to Spain,” she said, smiling.
“Thank you.” The Jew smiled back, unable to be seriously annoyed. He looked past Elena to the lieutenant. “And now the lieutenant will forbid me to thank you further, no doubt. Is this where we part ways?”
Meyer was not really surprised to see both Elena and her lover look distressed. Nor was he surprised when, after a rapid conversation that he only partially followed, the lieutenant said, “We’re still some ways from San Sebastián, and Elena needs to return there to collect her luggage. I’ll take you closer to the town, and drop you off where you’ll have only a few miles to walk.”
“You’re very kind.” The professor’s voice was grave.
“I thought you might like to ride sitting up,” Tejada explained. “That was why I stopped. No one will stop a Guardia Civil vehicle here, and if you don’t have papers . . . well, then I’m arresting you for not having papers.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Meyer agreed. He turned to Elena with a completely serious face and voice. “Would you like to ride in the front? Since your leg’s asleep?”
“If you don’t mind, thanks.” Elena only blushed slightly.
Where Tejada had driven quickly before, he seemed to dawdle now. The sky was lightening rapidly in the east, and the clouds were lifting. As they came out of the trees into an open field beside the mountains, rays of gold shot out over the eastern hills with the intensity of spotlights at a movie’s premiere. The clouds above them were pink tipped. Elena turned her head toward the rising sun. “Look!” she laughed, and pointed. “Rosy-fingered Dawn!”
The professor laughed also, but there was a hint of regret in his voice as he said, “I’m afraid I left all that remains of my library in the station in Biarritz.”
“My father will know where to find new books,” Elena consoled him.
“Are you planning to stay with the Fernández family for an extended period of time?” Tejada broke in.
“I don’t know,” Meyer hesitated, embarrassed. He did not begrudge the lieutenant the information but he had thought little beyond getting into Spain and had no answer ready.
“You won’t be able to, without papers,” Tejada said bluntly. “You’ll be discovered within a fortnight, either because of routine surveillance, or because someone will pick up their dealings with the black market. Civilian ration books won’t support more than one person.”
Elena was glad of the opportunity to discuss the problem. “We were thinking my brother could help,” she explained. “If he could get a passage to Mexico—”
“Mexico?” interrupted Meyer, who had not been able to follow.
“Sorry.” Elena switched to French. “Hipólito is in Mexico, and my parents thought you’d be safe from the war there. My brother has the money, and he could arrange the passage. It would just mean getting you a visa, and aboard a ship here.”
“That’s very kind of you.” The professor spoke humbly. “I would pay back the passage, of course.”
“If you can find work there,” Tejada commented. “If I were you I’d try to head for the United States from there. At least they’re not openly Socialist . . . yet.”
Elena stiffened slightly, but the professor laughed. “Doch es äng-stet mich ein Land / Wo die Menschen Tabak Kauen / Wo sie ohne König kegeln / Wo sie ohne Spucknapf speien” he quoted, and then, sensing bewilderment, continued, “I think the French translation is something like ‘But I fear a land where men / Chew tobacco in platoons / There’s no king among the pins / and they spit without spittoons.’”
“Where is it from?” Elena asked.
“Heinrich Heine.”
“Another Jew in exile,” Elena commented.
“That’s been our fate for centuries.”
Something stirred in the depths of Tejada’s memory. An exam paper . . . one of his finals at the university . . . old Professor Martínez Velez’s . . . a pedantic old bastard, with something of Meyer’s photographic memory and precision . . . Martínez Velez’s snide comment at the top of an essay on immigration and naturalization that he had not had time to finish: “Sr. Tejada: You show a regrettable ignorance of Primo de Rivera’s policies for one who claims to admire his son. (Or else you failed to understand that the directions were to provide three examples.) Your first two examples of changes in immigration law are admirably supported. The third—which you appear to be unaware of—was promulgated by the Cortes of 1924.” Tejada frowned suddenly. “Where are you from, Professor?” he demanded.
“I grew up in Danzig,” Meyer replied, surprised.
“And your family, had they been settled there long?” Tejada persisted.
“No. My father moved the family there after the Franco-Prussian war,” Meyer sighed. “Germany was better for Jews then.”
“Your parents?”
“From Galicia. Why?”
“Galicia!” the lieutenant echoed eagerly. “They were Spanish?”
Meyer laughed. “It’s a province in Poland, Lieutenant. Nothing to do with Spain.”
“Oh.” Tejada frowned for a moment. “What about farther back? How long had your family been in Poland? 1700s? 1600s?”
Meyer laughed again. “Genealogy has never been one of my interests, Lieutenant. I think my great-grandfather and grandfather grew up in the same town, but beyond that I really couldn’t tell you.”
“But you must have records?” Tejada protested, realizing even as he spoke that the permanent documents he thought of as normal—records of baptisms, marriages, funerals, and so on—would be foreign to the Jew. “How do you trace descent?”
“Jews were only allowed surnames at the end of the eighteenth century,” the professor said quietly. With the teacher’s instinct for when to clarify further he added, “My great-grandfather chose the name Meyer.”
Tejada gasped, with the simple astonishment of a man who had grown up in a society where the titles to both rank and land had been fixed for centuries. “I’ve always thought of the Jews as a very ancient people,” he said, feeling the inadequacy of the response, and suppressing an absurd desire to apologize.
“We are.” The professor’s voice was still quiet. “Ancient, and frequently scattered, and as frequently renamed.”
“Oh.” Tejada brought his mind back to the problem at hand. “I suppose there’s no chance that your family were originally from Spain, then?”
“Sephardic?” There was a note of constraint in Meyer’s voice, almost as if he resented the implication. “No, I’m afraid not.”
“A shame,” Tejada said. “But I suppose if you have no records, then no one else can be expected to either. I suggest you start inventing a family tradition about being from Toledo.”
“Why?” Meyer and Elena spoke at the same time.
“The Law of Return,” Tejada explained. “Passed in 1924. Any Jew who can prove direct descent from those expelled from Spain by the Catholic monarchs is eligible for Spanish citizenship. If you’re picked up without papers, claim Sephardic descent. You can’t prove it, but we can’t disprove it either.”
“You mean I could stay here?” Meyer’s voice was eager.
“I wouldn’t bet on it for the long term,” Tejada cautioned. “But it’s better than being picked up as a German. That means instant deportation.”
“You are a man of infinite resources, Lieutenant.” Meyer smiled. “I would not like to have you as an enemy.”
The professor’s words reminded Tejada of Eduardo Crespo’s, at the Otero’s party a few days earlier. “Well,” he said, with something approaching smugness, “the German army may well be invincible, but I’m damned if we can’t match their police work.” Meyer made no sound, and since he was sitting behind the lieutenant, Tejada could not see his amusement. Elena snickered.
Tejada felt the sun rising on his back, and was content. There was, he reflected, no real hurry to get to San Sebastián. In fact, Captain Alfanador would probably be surprised if he returned too early. The road swung out a little, to make room for a stream almost big enough to be called a river, which had hit a natural dam of fallen trees, and grown into a sluggish pool, several feet deep. In early spring the stream probably ran along below the road, but it had fallen already, leaving a few feet of grassy bank. Tejada glanced at his watch, and then pulled to a halt. “Why are we stopping?” Elena demanded.
“Because,” Tejada said, “there’s a path down to the water there, and I want to shave. I’ve spent too much time in the rain lately, and I feel scruffy.”
He got out of the truck. “Pass me my kit, Professor.”
“Here.” The professor hesitated a moment, and then took the plunge. “Lieutenant! If we must stop . . .”
“Yes?” Tejada asked, surprised at the professor’s diffidence, and half-suspicious. He tried to remember if he had heard anything about Jews praying in the morning. They had rules about bathing too. Perhaps Meyer wished to perform some ritual. Tejada was torn between a desire to shield Elena from any pagan rites and an overwhelming curiosity about witnessing them himself.
“May I borrow your razor?”
The lieutenant recognized his disappointment just in time to smother it, and feel embarrassed at being disappointed. He laughed. “Sure. Can you make it down to the water?”
“I think so. The rocks form a kind of stairway.”
Meyer picked his way down the embankment with an ease that proved his claim of being a serious hiker. He was nearly at the pool by the time Tejada had dug his shaving equipment out of the pack. “Careful!” the professor called upward. “It is not difficult, but the way down is very dirty. I’ve stained my coat, I’m afraid.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Tejada replied, and unbuckled his holster. “Hold this,” he said, handing the pistol to Elena. “If you hear anyone coming, put it under the seat, and hide. We’ll be right back.”
“All right.” Elena looked dubiously at the gun and then placed it on the seat beside her.
Tejada shrugged off his coat and tossed it over the weapon. Then he kissed her lightly and followed Meyer down the cliff. Elena, left alone, collected her thoughts. She had gathered that both men wished for privacy in their toilette, and it seemed likely to take some time. She twisted in her seat to admire the rising sun, and then lowered her gaze to where Carlos had abandoned his coat. It was wrinkled and wet with rain. He was not likely to feel much less scruffy after putting it on again she thought. She picked up the coat and did her best to smooth away the wrinkles with her palm, aware as she did so that it had Carlos’s distinctive smell and that the folds of khaki had molded themselves to the curve of his shoulders.
It was perhaps embarrassment about the possessive intimacy of the gesture that made Elena abandon her ineffectual attempts to press the coat and to give it a brisk shake by the shoulders. A folded paper fluttered from one pocket. Elena stooped to retrieve the paper and realized that it was covered with writing on both sides. Curious, she unfolded it, and read: “Dear Carlos: Congratulations on your promotion! Mama has almost forgiven your decision to join the Guardia Civil. . . .” She smiled, pleased with the deserved praise on Carlos’s behalf, and kept reading.
When the two men made their way back up the incline, damp-faced and in a spirit of peaceable accord, they found Elena sitting in the front seat, staring straight ahead. Tejada retrieved his coat from where he had flung it, shook out the wrinkles as best he could, and put it on again. “What I wouldn’t give for a hot bath and a cup of coffee!” he said cheerfully. “We’ve only got a few kilometers to go. You won’t mind a bit of a walk, Meyer?”
“Not at all. It looks like it will be a beautiful day.” The classics professor also seemed in a better mood. He leaned forward and tapped Elena on the shoulder. “Lieutenant Tejada has suggested that you tell the manager of your hotel that you met friends and have decided to stay with them,” he said. “We can meet at the station then, and head south. And he thinks that you may change the francs I have brought. I cannot, without papers.”
“How typical. Lieutenant Tejada thinks of everything.” Elena had spoken in Spanish, and Meyer, only half understanding the words, assumed that the remark was not primarily addressed to him.
Tejada, who had no trouble with the language, was considerably surprised by Elena’s tone of voice. He turned toward her in astonishment. “Are you—?” he began.
“Keep your eyes on the road,” she snapped. “Do you want to send us into a ravine?”
Tejada scrupulously returned his eyes to the road, trying to figure out what was the matter with Elena. Had they been alone, he would have simply pulled to one side, and demanded an explanation, but it seemed discourteous to quarrel in front of Meyer. They drove in silence for perhaps ten more minutes. Then Tejada pulled off of the road for a final time. “All right,” he said quietly as the professor scrambled out. “If I were you I’d keep off the road, Meyer. You’re not likely to run into a patrol, but better safe than sorry. And there’s no point in your being seen with Elena.”
“Understood.” The professor nodded and turned to Elena, who had climbed out of the truck unassisted, pointedly ignoring Tejada’s outstretched hand. “We will meet at the station, then? Shall we say at one o’clock?”
