In the small hours of this Monday morning, a soldier patrolling near La Merced Convent challenged a shadowy movement. There was no response. The soldier fired, and other soldiers ran to the scene. Together they advanced on the intruder—they had killed a stray dog. His was the first death in Guernica that day.
The soldiers’ nervousness stemmed in part from the intermittent shelling in the mountains; flickering summer-lightning flashes followed by dull thuds, and once, the sound of a heavy machine gun. The patrol’s fears were heightened by the small groups of soldiers who continued to enter the town throughout the night. After hours of blind plodding across rough fields, these stragglers displayed the fatigue of retreat.
Occasionally an ambulance drove over the Rentería Bridge to the Carmelite Convent, where the night staff coped with the wounded and the newly dead.
Carmen Batzar twice jerked awake while dozing at the bedside of Juan Dominguiz. Both times she was disturbed by orderlies carrying out a corpse and bringing in a new, critically wounded man.
All around her, she whispered to the night sister, were “the faces of men dying and not knowing it.”
The nun monitored Juan’s pulse rate, frowned, and hurried away. Moments later she returned with a doctor. He rechecked Juan’s pulse and listened to his breathing, then turned to the nun and said there were signs of postoperative shock.
In the next hour the doctor came several times. On each occasion he told the night sister there was no change.
Carmen sat staring imploringly at Juan’s face, “willing him with my prayers to live.”
Around 4:00 A.M. Mother Augusta appeared with Captain Cortés, who carried a saline drip. Swiftly he linked Juan to the drip tube. Then he listened to the lieutenant’s breathing.
Cortés looked at Mother Augusta and shrugged, a gesture the Superior interpreted as “more eloquent than words. God and the young man’s willpower would decide if he would live or die.”
Mother Augusta and Cortés left Juan’s bedside. At 5:00 A.M., they returned. Cortés listened through a stethoscope to Juan’s breathing, then turned to Carmen. “He’s pulling up. Go and get some sleep.”
Mother Augusta led Carmen to the wing where the nuns slept, showed her to a cell-like bedroom near the one where Teresa Ortuz was sleeping, and promised to call her if there was any change in Juan’s condition.
Antonio Arazamagni, determined that nobody would steal any more of his precious flour, spent an uncomfortable night stretched out on sacks in the shed behind the bakehouse with two of his cats for company. Shortly after 5:00 A.M., aching in every muscle, Antonio stumbled from the shed.
In a tiny cobbled courtyard he sluiced sleep from his eyes under a cold tap, stretched, and studied the sky. One glance told him it promised to be a fine day. Over the mountains a spreading pool of light mingled with the flood of ocher rising from beyond the horizon. The rain clouds had disappeared; only a handful of soft cirrus remained to catch the reflection of the rising sun. It was a classical Vizcayan dawn.
Antonio humped a sack of flour into the bakehouse. He might be late delivering this morning, but nobody would complain about the quality of his loaves. After racking the last tray in place, Antonio relaxed.
Whistling cheerfully, he stepped out of the bakery into narrow Goyencalle. His good humor vanished the moment he caught sight of his car. Soldiers were stretched out on the seats; rifles, blanket rolls, knapsacks, and burlap bags were stacked against the wheels and on the hood; rifles and cartridge belts stood against the body.
Antonio gave a shout and rushed to the car. The soldiers might have thought they were being overwhelmed by a small army as, fists flailing, Antonio pushed them and their equipment clear of his Ford. Startled neighbors emerged onto Goyencalle and offered Antonio vocal support. The soldiers fled.
At 5:30 A.M., Mother Augusta woke Teresa Ortuz. For a moment the nurse lay on her cot, listening to the rustling sounds of nuns rising from their straw-filled mattresses. Then from somewhere a voice intoned, “Praised be the Lord.” In the tiny cubicles on either side, Teresa heard the soft bump of bodies dropping to their knees on the bare wooden floor. There was a moment of silence. Then began the recitation of the Hail Marys.
Teresa followed the words of their prayers, knowing that if her special prayer were answered, this was the way she, too, would awaken every morning. She knelt and again asked God to grant her wish.
Around her the nuns offered up their Aves, saluting the Virgin in clear, glad voices. Then, with starchy rustles from their habits and the clink of keys attached to their leather belts, they left their cells to have breakfast.
Teresa was not hungry. She walked down the corridor and back into the hospital.
In the operating room Captain Cortés was scrubbing up, his first case of the day already on the table.
Across town, in the Convent of La Merced, Lieutenant Gandaría was reading the overnight situation reports. Despite the intermittent shelling, the Nationalist troops had made no serious move under cover of darkness; in places they had even been pushed back by the Basques. This was not unusual. During the day Mola’s troops could move forward more easily, protected overhead by the Condor Legion. At night, without that umbrella, they often lost half of the ground they had gained. Gandaría knew the final result was that the Republicans would continue to lose ground.
His mood became blacker as he read the overnight report from within Guernica. There had been several incidents between townspeople and soldiers.
Gandaría had always believed it essential for the garrison to maintain a good relationship with the civilian population. Although he felt no sympathy for the people of Guernica, he made sure soldiers under his command behaved correctly toward them. In the space of a few hours, the behavior of the retreating soldiers had damaged that relationship.
Angrily, he began to draft a report to his commanding officer, requesting swift punishment for all transgressions. If punishment were not meted out, he said, civilian morale would slip, “and so present me with further problems.”
Having completed his report, he walked outside. Below him in the courtyard, companies of men were forming up to salute the Basque flag.
Then Gandaría watched as the men marched to the field kitchen in a meadow beyond the convent. This was an obvious danger point, easily seen by aircraft. Gandaría looked upward. There were no planes.
The lieutenant turned away and looked back into the town. From the roof of the Carmelite Convent he spotted a reflected glint. He raised his field glasses and brought into focus a reassuring sight. Two nuns were sitting on the roof, back to back, each scanning the sky for enemy aircraft. Beside them was the hand bell that would be rung to warn of air attack.
He knew that after a time the large binoculars would make their arms ache. Yet the two nuns must endlessly repeat the same procedure; holding the heavy glasses to their eyes, each swung her binoculars very slowly through an arc of 180 degrees. After a brief pause, they duplicated the movement in the opposite direction.
This morning, apart from a lone soldier on La Merced’s roof, the two nuns were the only lookouts specifically charged with watching the sky.
Gandaría turned his glasses away from the Carmelite Convent and swept the hillside behind the town, to the west. On a brow, high above Guernica, the church of the hamlet of Luno stood out in bold relief. Below the church, in the bushes and trees of the hillside, were many soldiers. But in spite of his searching, Gandaría could see very few signs of them; for all he could tell, they might have disappeared. Once he had viewed with sympathy men who cracked and ran away. Now Gandaría had one answer for any deserter: a bullet in the back of the head.
Lower down the western slopes of the town, the roof of the Parliament Building came into focus; long ago Gandaría had earmarked the building as an ideal machine-gun position. With more machine guns in the Church of Santa María nearby, the combined firepower from their elevated position would decimate any advancing force.
Behind the Parliament Building, Gandaría could see the top of the bell tower of the Convent of Santa Clara. As it was a closed order whose nuns never ventured outside, it was one building he had promised to try to spare.
Gandaría lowered his glasses, having failed to notice that the convent’s sanctity had already been pierced.
María Ortuza was so intent on watching the soldier in the convent’s belfry that she forgot the time. From her attic bedroom she could see him clearly as he examined the countryside through binoculars, sweeping over some thirty square miles of fields and villages.
The sight of that soldier rekindled in her mind the events of the previous night. But now, in the daylight safety of her bedroom, her fears were replaced by anger that the convent had been occupied. Cupping her hands around her lips, María shouted to the soldier “some rather unladylike words.”
Startled, he swung his glasses to María. She shook her fist and closed the window, suddenly aware she was still in her nightgown. Then she also realized that for the first time in two years she was in danger of being late for work. Dressing quickly in black smock and white bonnet, she crept down four flights of polished stairs to the basement kitchen.
An undermaid had already laid out her mistress’s breakfast tray. María hurried to a broom closet and opened the door. From inside came a nervous clucking. Swiftly she removed an egg from under each of the two hens roosting in the cupboard. María kept them there to protect them from thieves.
This morning when María entered her mistress’s bedroom to deliver breakfast, she found the señora standing in her nightdress at a window, peering through a telescope.
She turned to María and said, “The Moors are out there.” The old woman thrust the telescope at her housekeeper: “Look for yourself.”
María took the eyepiece and scanned the countryside. She could see nothing. She lowered the telescope and said soothingly, “Do not be alarmed. There is no one there.”
She guessed that a combination of high-strung nerves and the sounds of shelling in the hills was probably the reason for her mistress’s strange behavior.