THE SCENE OF MY EPILOGUE is laid in Lisbon on the morning of a late autumn day. After we left Spain we never returned after all. We stayed in Gibraltar for a time and then our affairs called us home. We tried to forget the war, but all the while it lay heavy and sore at the bottom of our minds – and lies there still, though now we can think of other things and almost forget it.
I think that, odd though it may seem, Gibraltar seemed to me almost a more unpleasant place to be in during the Civil War than Malaga itself. I remember the paeon into which Borrow breaks forth in The Bible in Spain when he crosses the frontier from the Spanish side, and comes upon ‘noble’ English faces – ‘Protestant’ too, I suppose, as that was Borrow’s first requirement for nobility. Either I am less susceptible to nobility and Protestantism than Borrow was (which I am afraid is very likely!) or else the Rock has changed.
Before the war we used always to find it amusing with its cribbed and confined garrison life, full of the usual parties, quarrels, flirting, gossip and games. And those narrow shopping streets with their little booths whose Oriental shopkeepers lean out with dark clutching hands to draw you in and sell you papery silk kimonos embroidered with golden dragons for 7/6d. Those busy quarters with their dark foreign faces, wandering sailors of all nations and tourists straying about in the sun pricing the cheapjack wares, had a ‘Somewhere East of Suez’ effect which diverted us when we came fresh from village life in Spain.
Then there was the Rock Hotel, at the other extreme in every way. In fact I used to feel on the occasions when someone invited us to it for a meal that one lunch there was almost enough to make a Communist of anyone. For some reason you felt concentrated there all the irresponsible stupidity of modern wealth. The sort of conversation you would hear from the tables around you, smug, self-complacent, secure in the power of unearned money – money which for the first time in history is not expected to carry any obligations with it, made me, for one, long for a cataclysm to shock these dulled creatures out of their stupid battening. I wished for it indeed as heartily as any of the Medieval Fathers of the Church would have done while they cursed them for their ‘usury’ and their refusal to undertake their part in the Commonwealth of God.
There were, however, guests at the Rock Hotel who were of a different sort. These were a number of Spaniards, mostly old ladies in black, who had left Spain after the Republic came in, or after the rising at Oviedo, and had been waiting in Gibraltar ever since for the revolution which was to come; and which finally more than justified their fears by coming in a more horrible, more devastating form than even these tremblers can have apprehended – though it came from a quarter they had not, I suppose, expected it from. Once the Civil War began of course, Gibraltar was absolutely crowded with refugees of every class and party, who carried on their hatreds comparatively harmlessly in neutral territory.
The Rock Hotel had always, as I say, produced a disagreeable effect, as luxury hotels are apt to do, especially when you come from a region where hunger is common. But during the Civil War Gibraltar as a whole made a most unpleasant impression. The poor refugees hated and feared, and occasionally broke out into disturbances; and their anxious, excited state made everyone feel troubled and insecure. Most of the civilians as well as the Army and Navy officers we met talked the most extraordinary nonsense about ‘Reds’ and ‘Communists’ and were bursting with incredible atrocity stories. For the real sufferings of the Spanish people of all classes they cared not a particle: it was not a subject which had the slightest interest for them. Perhaps it was natural enough: they were interested in riding and tennis, in swimming and bridge. What had the Spanish people or their sufferings to do with them?
Complete indifference we would not have minded very much, it is natural enough to be indifferent to the misfortunes of others; but what was particularly unpleasant in the attitude of the English at Gibraltar (and I might add of the Americans and most of the other foreigners one met), was that they combined this essential indifference and ignorance with the most violent prejudices and a perfect revelling in preposterous atrocity stories. They were generally not so much for the Nationalists (since they tried us extremely by depreciating the Spaniards as a race – an attitude only possible to those who have never known that extraordinary people) as against the ‘Reds’. And it would have been amusing, if it had not been so discouraging to anyone who would like to think well of the human intelligence, to listen to some stalwart Englishman or Englishwoman holding forth about the ‘Communists’ and their extraordinary atrocities, then, sometimes, to see a look of doubt and hesitation come over their faces, and the uncertain question ‘Which side are the Moors fighting on?’ A remark occasionally varied, as it was by one Army woman I happened to be talking to, by violent indictments of those criminal ‘Reds’ who had brought over the wild Moors to attack their own country! If you pointed out that as a matter of fact it was the Nationalists who had brought over the Moors, it immediately became a wise and necessary measure. For Reason and Justice if not actually killed in time of war, are at least under detentive arrest.
While atrocities supposed to have been committed by the ‘Reds’ were naturally the favourite consumption, a number supposed to have been committed by the Nationalists were told with equal enjoyment. Even the crucified baby was crucified again (this time by the Nationalists), and seen by an English sentry from his post on the edge of Spanish territory. One very odd atrocity story about the Nationalists was told later on by some of the Italians who had been at the taking of Malaga. They said that the wounded militia in the hospitals had been intentionally so badly treated by the surgeons who were of secret Right sympathies that many were unnecessarily dying of slight wounds and many had been deliberately crippled by bad treatment. I should find this story hard to believe about surgeons anywhere: nothing would make me believe it about Spanish surgeons. For I have seen something of the medical profession in Spain, and I believe there is no country where it contains such devoted servants of humanity.
For those who talk as if Spain were the country of illiteracy, bull fights, massacres and atrocities, have forgotten, or have never known, that Spain (as well as being a country of a glorious history, a most beautiful language and a magnificent literature) is also the country of the saints. There is surely no other country where extraordinary, single-hearted, passionate goodness has occurred so often as in Spain. How many names come to the mind – Las Casas, the Dominican spending himself ceaselessly for the Indians, San Tomás de Villanueva and his devoted work for the prisoners and captives – and how many more. And if it does not now often find its outlet in the charitable works of the Church (though you will still find it there) as it did in times past, it is diverted into various lay activities, often into the care of the poor and suffering. But indeed you may find this single-hearted passion anywhere in Spain, among the Sisters of Charity caring for the sick and poor, among the patient, starving mothers of hungry children, among the Anarchists – where you least look for it there starts the hare.
Not long before our time in Granada a saint lived there. He was a priest who worked among the poorest of the city. And I have often had the great pleasure of listening to stories about that exquisite character, lost to the world in love of God and devotion to men, from members of his own family, who told half laughing, half in wonder, these family legends of the saint, to whom money was something to give to the poor and food something to divide among the hungry.
And where but in Spain has there ever been a legal opinion like that of Father Francisco de Vittoria ‘the father of International Law’ and his colleagues at Salamanca, which made Dr Johnson say long afterwards ‘with great emotion’ as Boswell tells us: ‘“I love the University of Salamanca, for when the question arose as to whether it were lawful to conquer the Indians the University of Salamanca gave it as their opinion that it was not lawful.”’
But I must not begin to talk about the saints and the remarkable men of Spain or where would I stop!
It amused us to find that the only thing that really made people in Gibraltar feel that the Spanish War might have serious consequences after all was the possibility that the Calpe Hounds might not be able to hunt on the coast opposite Gibraltar that winter if the war kept up! – But General Franco was a gentleman, we were seriously told, and would no doubt manage to arrange it. I suppose he was expected to keep the war away from Algeçiras lest it inconvenience them. What General Franco and the other Spanish officers who found that this was the only preoccupation of most of the English officers and officials in connection with the war in Spain, can possibly have thought of English heads (not to mention English hearts) it is difficult to imagine.
But Gibraltar with its ignorant depreciation of the Spaniards, its empty fulminations, and its embarrassingly erotic lust for atrocities was really a most unpleasant place during the Civil War. And we left it with relief when our affairs at home called us back to England. We were on the boat going home when our ship stopped for half a day at Lisbon, and that is why I say that the scene of my Epilogue is laid there.
We had gone ashore to do some shopping and visit friends and Gerald had hurried off to see someone while I went to the office of Aero-Portuguesa to make some enquiries for a friend who was coming aboard. But it seemed that I had arrived at an awkward moment, and there was no one in the office who could speak more than a few words of anything but Portuguese which is the most incomprehensible of languages unless you speak it yourself, very rich and musical, but spoken, I always think, with a strangely Germanic accent, sounding rather like a Visigoth speaking late Latin.
I was waiting and had been waiting for some time when in my boredom I picked up a Portuguese journal, though I cannot read Portuguese very well either. It turned out to be a number glorifying the Portuguese forces, and was full of the sort of pictures we are always seeing in the news reels at the cinema, of sailors grouped on the decks of warships, naval guns being turned into position, soldiers playing games, or receiving their stew from camp kitchens and so forth. I was looking at the pictures without much interest and had in fact come to the advertisements of military tailors and naval outfitters, and was about to lay the paper down, when I turned over the last page, and saw something, which as George Fox says, ‘struck at my life’.
It was a picture of a machine-gun, and under it were these words or others like them:
M— ARMS ARE THE BEST.
The M— Machine-Gun was chosen in open competition
in 1928 for the use of the Portuguese Army.
Enquiries of our Portuguese Agent Senhor —.
M— Arms Company.
It happened that I had never seen an advertisement of munitions manufacturers before. Coming fresh from the Civil War with my mind still overshadowed by its horrors I was affected by it in a way which perhaps it would be difficult for people still quiet and safe in England (for the present at any rate) to understand. In fact it would be hard for me to exaggerate the shock which that advertisement gave me. What is this world we live in? I thought. It seemed to me that I might well find on some other page of that sinister magazine another advertisement.
THE M— PISTOL.
The best weapon for
murder and assassination. Well tested.
Or (why not?):
NEW PREPARATION OF ARSENIC.
Impossible to detect.
Successfully used recent Brighton Murders.
For that would be the logical sequel to that advertisement of the M— Machine-Gun. It was selected after all for its efficiency and economy in killing people too. It is that well-tested machine-gun guaranteed to cut flesh and break bone better than any other, manufactured and sold to make a profit for certain factory owners and shareholders in foreign and neutral countries, who were here offering the pain and death of their fellow men for sale.
I put down the paper and pushed it away as if it were stinging me. I would not wait any longer for my thoughts troubled me and I felt unable to stay still, so I got up and went out. The day outside was radiant, the sunlight fell so brightly on bricks and stones that Lisbon might have been newly gilt for some golden festival: but I went sombrely through the bright streets. My mind was full of horrors, and I saw the mild faces around me as murderers – First Murderer: Second Murderer: Third Murderer: – like the cast in some Shakespearian Tragedy – and I myself as Fourth Murderer: a small but necessary part in the world’s crime.
I walked down the bright street and the dark cloud went with me. But before I had gone very far I met something which I had liked so long that the sight of it pierced through the cloud and made me see how bright the world outside me was that day. What I saw was two of the tall fisherwomen who are so magnificent in Lisbon, great amazons with big baskets of fish on their heads striding splendidly along.
The Dictator had recently made a law that these women were to wear shoes, since their barefoot state both shocked propriety, and made visitors think that Portugal was a poor country. And the two women I met were observing the law and had bought some wretched cheap slippers, which they were however carrying in their hands to save wear and to be more comfortable. Just as they came up to me they happened to catch sight of a policeman in the distance and hurriedly stooped down to put on their slippers and observe the law as long as he was in sight. I could not help smiling at them, and they answered my smile with a half smile of complicity as they strode grandly on in spite of the shuffling slippers, their heads proudly holding up the heavy baskets of silver fish, like magnificent caryatids.
The cloud about my mind began to lighten. These were not Shakespearian murderers, but characters out of Dekker or Thomas Deloney. People are not always engaged in making war after all – they also cheat dictators and tease policemen. There are ‘olives of endless age’. People dance and fly kites – I could see them sailing above the roofs of Lisbon. Even the Civil War, I thought, some day will be over: even its inevitable aftermath of terror and suffering will be forgotten at last. Perhaps one day it will please us to remember even these things when generations have passed away and the Civil War is a dim half-forgotten story of old tragedy – as legendary and far away and as shadowy and faint in its power to evoke pain as the War of the Seven against Thebes or the wars of Clusium and Rome.
As I stood looking after the tall striding fisherwomen I noticed the woollen head handkerchiefs they were wearing tied around their dark heads, and remembered that I had wanted to get one for a present for a friend, and perhaps one for myself as well; so I left the fashionable shopping streets and threaded my way through squares and alleys until I came to the poor quarter, the part of any city that I like best. There is a street of little drapers’ shops I know, their cheap goods overflowing on to the sidewalks, and I walked along it until I came to the one which for some reason I liked the look of best, and went in. There were two fisherwomen inside already turning over the handkerchiefs: one of them was choosing one, but she could not make up her mind between the green one and the yellow. It is obviously a most serious choice when you have saved for months, even skimping yourself of the most necessary food to be able to buy one. It would be a tragedy to get the wrong one after all, to choose the yellow and be always regretting the green.
They were handsome women, tall and erect with fine heads; but with that gaunt austere look of the woman worker who has always worked too hard and never had quite enough to eat – it is a look I know so well in Spain and Portugal. At last the buyer chose her handkerchief, still hardly able to leave behind the rejected one: and with a sigh unwillingly put down the escudos to pay for it, and they went out. I watched them as they went and saw them stop in the doorway silhouetted against the sunlight in the street, the one who had bought the handkerchief (it was the yellow one) took it out of its wrapping to look at it once more and make sure before it was too late that she had not really preferred the green one after all. Then apparently satisfied, she wrapped it up again, and talking animatedly they hurried on.
I looked after them as they went away, and I knew that unless the Lord hardened my heart like Jonah’s I could not be angry any more. It was impossible not to be reconciled to mankind for their sake – for the sake of these creature who starve themselves to buy a patch no bigger than a handkerchief of that beauty and colour the world denies them. Impossible not to love creatures who set their hearts on such little and innocent things. And I felt suddenly reconciled to the whole world – and even to myself, as I too began to turn over the soft handkerchiefs and could not decide between the red one and the grey.