“It was right to tell me.”
“Truly? For I am ashamed and I will do anything for thee that thou should wish. Pilar has told me of things one can do for a husband.”
“There is no need to do anything. What we have we have together and we will keep it and guard it. I love thee thus lying beside thee and touching thee and knowing thou art truly there and when thou art ready again we will have all.”
“But hast thou not necessities that I can care for? She explained that to me.”
“Nay. We will have our necessities together. I have no necessities apart from thee.”
“That seems much better to me. But understand always that I will do what you wish. But thou must tell me for I have great ignorance and much of what she told me I did not understand clearly. For I was ashamed to ask and she is of such great and varied wisdom.”
“Rabbit,” he said. “Thou art very wonderful.”
“‘Qué va’,” she said. “But to try to learn all of that which goes into wifehood in a day while we are breaking camp and packing for a battle with another battle passing in the country above is a rare thing and if I make serious mistakes thou must tell me for I love thee. It could be possible for me to remember things incorrectly and much that she told me was very complicated.”
“What else did she tell thee?”
“‘Pues’ so many things I cannot remember them. She said I could tell thee of what was done to me if I ever began to think of it again because thou art a good man and already have understood it all. But that it were better never to speak of it unless it came on me as a black thing as it had been before and then that telling it to thee might rid me of it.”
“Does it weigh on thee now?”
“No. It is as though it had never happened since we were first together. There is the sorrow for my parents always. But that there will be always. But I would have thee know that which you should know for thy own pride if I am to be thy wife. Never did I submit to any one. Always I fought and always it took two of them or more to do me the harm. One would sit on my head and hold me. I tell thee this for thy pride.”
“My pride is in thee. Do not tell it.”
“Nay, I speak of thy own pride which it is necessary to have in thy wife. And another thing. My father was the mayor of the village and an honorable man. My mother was an honorable woman and a good Catholic and they shot her with my father because of the politics of my father who was a Republican. I saw both of them shot and my father said, ”Viva la Republica’,’ when they shot him standing against the wall of the slaughterhouse of our village.
“My mother standing against the same wall said, ‘Viva my husband who was the Mayor of this village,’ and I hoped they would shoot me too and I was going to say ”Viva la Republica y vivan mis padres’,’ but instead there was no shooting but instead the doing of the things.
“Listen. I will tell thee of one thing since it affects us. After the shooting at the ‘matadero’ they took us, those relatives who had seen it but were not shot, back from the ‘matadero’ up the steep hill into the main square of the town. Nearly all were weeping but some were numb with what they had seen and the tears had dried in them. I myself could not cry. I did not notice anything that passed for I could only see my father and my mother at the moment of the shooting and my mother saying, ‘Long live my husband who was Mayor of this village,’ and this was in my head like a scream that would not die but kept on and on. For my mother was not a Republican and she would not say, ”Viva la Republica’,’ but only ‘Viva’ my father who lay there, on his face, by her feet.
“But what she had said, she had said very loud, like a shriek and then they shot and she fell and I tried to leave the line to go to her but we were all tied. The shooting was done by the ‘guardia civil’ and they were still there waiting to shoot more when the Falangists herded us away and up the hill leaving the ‘guardias civiles’ leaning on their rifles and leaving all the bodies there against the wall. We were tied by the wrists in a long line of girls and women and they herded us up by the hill and through the streets to the square and in the square they stopped in front of the barbershop which was across the square from the city hail.
“Then the two men looked at us and one said, ‘That is the daughter of the Mayor,’ and the other said, ‘Commence with her.’
“Then they cut the rope that was on each of my wrists, one saying to others of them, ‘Tie up the line,’ and these two took me by the arms and into the barbershop and lifted me up and put me in the barber’s chair and held me there.
“I saw my face in the mirror of the barbershop and the faces of those who were holding me and the faces of three others who were leaning over me and I knew none of their faces but in the glass I saw myself and them, but they saw only me. And it was as though one were in the dentist’s chair and there were many dentists and they were all insane. My own face I could hardly recognize because my grief had changed it but I looked at it and knew that it was me. But my grief was so great that I had no fear nor any feeling but my grief.
“At that time I wore my hair in two braids and as I watched in the mirror one of them lifted one of the braids and pulled on it so it hurt me suddenly through my grief and then cut it off close to my head with a razor. And I saw myself with one braid and a slash where the other had been. Then he cut off the other braid but without pulling on it and the razor made a small cut on my ear and I saw blood come from it. Canst thou feel the scar with thy finger?”
“Yes. But would it be better not to talk of this?”
“This is nothing. I will not talk of that which is bad. So he had cut both braids close to my head with a razor and the others laughed and I did not even feel the cut on my ear and then he stood in front of me and struck me across the face with the braids while the other two held me and he said, ‘This is how we make Red nuns. This will show thee how to unite with thy proletarian brothers. Bride of the Red Christ!’
“And he struck me again and again across the face with the braids which had been mine and then he put the two of them in my mouth and tied them tight around my neck, knotting them in the back to make a gag and the two holding me laughed.
“And all of them who saw it laughed and when I saw them laugh in the mirror I commenced to cry because until then I had been too frozen in myself from the shooting to be able to cry.
“Then the one who had gagged me ran a clippers all over my head; first from the forehead all the way to the back of the neck and then across the top and then all over my head and close behind my ears and they held me so I could see into the glass of the barber’s mirror all the time that they did this and I could not believe it as I saw it done and I cried and I cried but I could not look away from the horror that my face made with the mouth open and the braids tied in it and my head coming naked under the clippers.
“And when the one with the clippers was finished he took a bottle of iodine from the shelf of the barber (they had shot the barber too for he belonged to a syndicate, and he lay in the doorway of the shop and they had lifted me over him as they brought me in) and with the glass wand that is in the iodine bottle he touched me on the ear where it had been cut and the small pain of that came through my grief and through my horror.
“Then he stood in front of me and wrote U. H. P. on my forehead with the iodine, lettering it slowly and carefully as though he were an artist and I saw all of this as it happened in the mirror and I no longer cried for my heart was frozen in me for my father and my mother and
