The Summer Snow Read online

  “You mean it doesn’t snow here in the city?” Toño asked, wide eyed.

  “Once in a while,” Alejandra answered him. “But only a few flakes, and they never stick. Not like real snow.” She sighed.

  Tejada smiled at her. “Do you know the story of the Moor who tried to bring snow to Sevilla?”

  She shook her head. “Tell!” Toño commanded.

  Tejada lifted his son onto his knees and began to retell a half-remembered legend from his childhood. “Once upon a time, there was a Moorish prince who fell in love with a slave girl. He decked her with jewels and silks and brought her trinkets from the ends of the earth. She fell asleep to the sweetest music his musicians could make, and the air of her rooms was perfumed with roses and jasmine. But although she had everything her heart desired, she languished.”

  Tejada paused for poetic effect and to think what came next. “What’s ‘languished’ mean?” Toño asked.

  “She was unhappy. The prince saw this and asked her what was wrong. Now his love was a northern girl, from a distant land of long, white winters. ‘I miss my home,’ she said to the prince. ‘I miss the snow.’

  “‘The snow?’ the Moor said, puzzled, for he had never seen snow.

  “The girl tried to explain what a snowstorm looked like, until she began to weep. ‘I miss the smell of pines and wood smoke. I miss running to a frosted window on a morning cold enough to see your breath in and seeing the land turned white with snow.’ The prince pleaded with her, but it was no use. She would only reply, ‘It never snows here.’

  “For many days the prince was thoughtful. Then he had an idea. He called together his gardeners and ordered them to scour the countryside for blossoming almond trees. Then one night, as his love slept, he ordered all the almond trees planted outside her window. In the morning, the wind began to blow, and the blooms whirled through the sunrise in a gentle blizzard. The prince woke the girl and led her to a shuttered window. He threw it open. ‘Look, my love,’ he cried. ‘I have brought you the snow.’”

  Toño considered the story. “That’s stupid,” he said at last. “Almond blossoms aren’t like snow. They’re not cold.”

  Tejada was amused. “I think the point is the lengths a man will go to for the sake of a woman he loves,” he said.

  “So, the girl was happy then?” Toño asked.

  “I assume so. If she wasn’t, at least he could feel he’d made every effort.”

  “He could have set her free.”

  “What?” Tejada said, startled.

  “If the almonds didn’t work,” Toño persisted with the inex- orable logic of a four-year-old, “he could have set her free so she could go back home.”

  Disconcerted, the lieutenant looked to Alejandra for support, but she said nothing. He smiled down at Toño. “You’re too young to understand,” he said indulgently. “He couldn’t set her free because—because of politics.”

  “Oh,” Toño nodded, satisfied.

  “I think he was cruel to her,” Alejandra remarked. “Showing her something that looked like snow but wasn’t, to make her realize how far out of her reach her homeland was.”

  “I’m sure that wasn’t the intention!” Tejada protested.

  Alejandra gave a very adolescent shrug. “Then he should have thought it out better.” Her voice held a trace of defiance.

  Tejada turned to his wife. “What do you think?”

  Elena was silent for a moment before replying. “I think it depends on what the girl thought,” she said at last. “And I think the problem with the story is that it doesn’t say.”

  “I bet she was unhappy.” Alejandra was truculent.

  “I’m no good at arguing literary subtleties,” Tejada said, joking although he was annoyed by Alejandra’s tone. “You’re probably right.”

  “Of course I’m right.” Alejandra was firm.

  Toño, bored by the discussion, wandered a few steps away to another bench that presented interesting climbing possibilities. Elena followed him, with a significant glance at her husband. Tejada took a deep breath and followed the opening he’d been given.

  “You’re good at arguing about the meaning of stories.”

  Alejandra shrugged again. “All right, I guess.”

  “You must get good marks in composition.”

  The gaze Alejandra turned on the lieutenant carried the full weight of a teenager’s contempt for a clumsy adult. She said nothing.

  “Do you like literature?” Tejada asked, feeling vaguely ridiculous. Still the unflinching, disgusted gaze. “You’ve been so kind to Toño, telling him about history, I thought perhaps that was your best subject.”

  “I hate history.”

  “So you like literature best?”

  No response.

  “Surely you don’t like science and mathematics best? That would be very unusual for a girl.”

  Still stony silence.

  Tejada’s discomfort began to turn to anger. No chit was going to give him the silent treatment. “What are your grades like?”

  “All right.”

  The lieutenant abandoned subtlety. “So what is this nonsense about your refusing to attend mass?”

  Shrug.

  She had always been a stubborn little person, Tejada recalled. “I asked you a question,” he said harshly. “I expect an answer.”

  Alejandra raised her head and met his eyes, clearly intending to be defiant. For a moment she held his gaze, and then her lashes dropped again. When she spoke, her voice was a mumble. “I don’t believe in all that stuff.”

  Tejada opened his mouth to reply, and then shut it again. He was sure she was lying. She must be lying. But he was unsure how to say so. Who ever asked if someone believed in the rites of the church? The point was to practice them. Except of course, the point was to believe in them. He remembered Elena’s words: “You can’t tell her how to feel.” His own reply came back to him, and he unconsciously used the argument his wife had intended to use: “If you don’t go, you’ll be expelled.”

  Shrug.

  “It’s for your own good. And only for a few more years. But it’s not worth losing your chance of an education for the sake of a silly principle.”

  “I don’t need more education. I’m old enough to work.”

  Tejada leaned forward to catch her sullen mutter and sud- denly saw her as she had been six years ago when they first met: a wounded, starving, pathetic little creature, ready to resist him with all of her pitifully small strength. He made out her words now with the frustration of a man who liked his antonyms clearly defined: black and white, good and evil, truth and falsehood.

  She was old enough to get a job. Many girls no older than she were already maids or laundrywomen, and children half her age worked as shepherds and cowherds in Potes, and as messengers and street vendors in Madrid. But the lieutenant knew that the baby curves of their faces hid hollow bellies. He knew how easy it had been to seduce the servant girls of his adolescence, if seduction was the right word for what happened between a hungry fifteen-year-old who earned a peseta a day and tried to send money home to her parents and a bored señorito whose weekly pocket money exceeded her monthly salary. He looked at Alejandra. Her face was as grave as an adult’s, but she held her body as rigidly as the frightened child she had been in Madrid. He half wanted to put an arm around her shoulders and reassure her that he would protect her. He wholly wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled for being such a stubborn little fool.

  “You’re old enough to work,” he said honestly, “but you’re not old enough to earn a living.”

  “I can help out my mother.”

  “She doesn’t need your help.” Tejada saw her draw a breath to retort and added quickly, “Right now. She wants you to stay in school. And if you become a nurse or a teacher you can help her more later.”

  “I don’t want your charity.” Her words were choked.

  “It’s not charity,” the lieutenant denied.

  “What is it then?
”

  “Keeping a promise I made when you were a child,” Tejada said shortly. He had no intention of discussing the circumstances of his promise with an insolent adolescent. “I said I’d take care of you, and I’m going to. You’re going back to school in the autumn, and that’s final.”

  Alejandra raised her chin. “You’re not my father. You can’t tell me what to do!”

  “You think if you were working you’d be able to talk that way to your boss?” Tejada snapped.

  Alejandra lowered her eyes. “Sorry,” she muttered. “But I remember my father a little, you know.” Her voice was trembling, but it still held a hint of belligerence. “He was a Red.”

  “I know.”

  “They say . . . things about the Reds in school.”

  “I know.”

  “When I was little I told the sisters that what they were saying was wrong. They’ve hated me ever since.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” Tejada replied, although he thought it was more than plausible. If she showed her teachers the same attitude she was showing him it was a miracle she was passing any of her classes.

  “I don’t care if he was a Red.” Alejandra was crying silently. “He was my father.”

  Tejada was embarrassed by her emotion. He looked for something to say and came up with a platitude. “It’s to your credit you feel that way.”

  “That’s not what they say in school!” Alejandra’s voice was choked, but she impatiently waved away the handkerchief the lieutenant offered her. “They say the Reds were pigs. And that they d-did terrible things. And th-that we’re lucky General Franco led the National Movement to s-save S-Spain and th-they talk about the girls who have relatives in prison.”

  “Are there many?” Tejada asked, surprised.

  “No.” Alejandra shook her head and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “Just two others. And they’re friends but everybody whispers and points at them behind their backs and the sisters give them the lowest marks even though one of them is smart, and anyway they’re not like me either and I hate them. I won’t go back there after June! I won’t!”

  “Be reasonable,” Tejada said, angrily because he found himself feeling sorry for her. “What other choice do you have?”

  “I’ll get a job!”

  “As what?” The lieutenant was contemptuous. “A maid? A nanny? With no experience and no references? Girls ten years older than you are with experience are looking for positions. You don’t have a hope!”

  “I’ll find something.” Alejandra was dogged. “I don’t care if it isn’t anything grand. I just don’t want to keep going to school.”

  “It’s not a question of what you want.” Tejada was once more in control of himself. “It’s a question of what your elders decide is best for you.”

  Alejandra stood up and faced Tejada. “Then I’ll refuse to go to mass so the sisters won’t take me back.”

  “You’ll be taken to mass, whether you wish to go or not.” Tejada spoke with deadly calm.

  Alejandra’s eyes narrowed. “They can’t make me go to confession.” She hissed, “I’ll just sit there and won’t say a word. And . . . and I’ll gag if they make me take communion.”

  “You do that and I’ll take a strap to you!” Tejada threatened, forgetting that he was only planning to be in Granada for another week.

  “That’s what you people do, isn’t it?” she shot back.

  “You ungrateful brat!” Tejada sought words and found that he had raised his voice without being aware of it. His wife and son had heard him and were heading back to the sunny bench, looking concerned. He took a deep breath as they approached. They drew up and stood for a moment in a frozen tableau, Elena frowning at her husband and Toño staring at his father, his eyes enormous. Then Toño moved to put his arms around the girl’s waist.

  “Don’t cry,” he said, with a little catch in his own voice. “Please don’t cry, Alejandra.”

  “Oh, Aleja.” Elena put one arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry.”

  Surrounded on all sides, Alejandra was unable to pull away. She settled for hunching her shoulders and shrinking inward away from Elena’s embrace. “I’m not crying.” She patted Toño’s head, her voice shaking. “I’m all right, Toño.” She turned to Elena. “I’ll be all right.”

  “Let’s go home,” Tejada said. “We can talk about this later.”

  Chapter 18

  “Why not find the girl a decent apprenticeship with a seamstress or something?” Felipe Ordoñez suggested.

  “Because I want her to stay in school,” Tejada replied with a scowl that even he knew was sulky.

  The two men were sitting in a café in the Plaza San Miguel Bajo, watching the afternoon sunlight play across the facade of the church of San Miguel. Tejada had sent a message to his cousin the preceding evening, suggesting that they meet at a restaurant for lunch after mass on Sunday. Felipe, recognizing that the lieutenant was attempting to compromise, had agreed and suggested that Tejada bring his family to San Miguel.

  Tejada had been unsure of the wisdom of taking his wife and son to the Albaicín to meet Lili and her children, but to his somewhat rueful surprise, an instant sympathy had sprung up between Elena and Lili. Maya and Pepín had apparently been briefed in advance, and they were immediately kind to “our cousin Toño.” Now that the meal was over, the children were racing around the square playing hide-and-seek. Lili, holding a sleeping Mariana on her lap, was carrying on a low-voiced conversation with Elena. Tejada and his cousin were chatting, and the lieutenant, in an effort to avoid discussing Doña Rosalia’s death, had confided his difficulties with Alejandra. “It’s not what her mother wants either,” he added, defensive.

  “I’m not saying you’re wrong.” Felipe was soothing. “But if the girl wants to get expelled she’ll manage it. And you ought to have something for her to do. She doesn’t have a father, you say?”

  “War orphan,” Tejada replied briefly.

  “Well, then, with no money and no father, she’s not likely to marry soon,” Felipe said. “So you’ll have to figure out what to do with her eventually.”

  “You’d want that for Maya?”

  “Maya’s parents can support her until she marries. And Maya will have a dowry,” Felipe pointed out. He frowned. “At least, she will if I can manage it. You’re sure there’s no word about Mother’s will, Carlito? I talked to Nando yesterday and he was downright cagey with me.”

  “I thought you said she’d disinherited you.” Tejada avoided the question.

  “I thought you said that.” Felipe gave his cousin a shrewd look. “Is this something I’m not supposed to talk about?”

  Tejada hesitated. Then he said, “I haven’t seen her will. I’d talk to Pablo Almeida if I were you. He knows what’s in it, but he’s not telling the Guardia.”

  “And you think he’d tell me?” Felipe laughed. “Pablo doesn’t approve of me, Carlito. Too much of a stuffed shirt.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you,” Tejada said, feeling guilty although his response has been absolutely truthful. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right.”

  The two men sat in companionable silence for a little while. Then Tejada said, “I went to see Don Pablo when I first came. And I ran into old Nilo.”

  “Who?” Felipe leaned back in his chair, his eyes on Pepín and Toño, who were chasing each other around the fountain by the side of the church.

  “You must remember him—the porter, an ex-guardia, walks with a cane.” It had not occurred to Tejada that other people might value Nilo less than he did. He summarized his meeting with the ex-guardia to Felipe and ended up describing their evening together. “We both liked him, didn’t we?” he finished, with an appeal to his wife.

  Elena looked across the table. “Who? Nilo? Yes, a nice man. A sad story about his wound.”

  “What happened to him?” Lili asked, and Elena recovered much of the ground Tejada had already gone ov
er. She explained the circumstances of Nilo’s injury and present employment a little more fully, and Lili clicked her tongue in sympathy.

  “He’s lucky Pablo bought that building before the city seized all the Rioseco properties,” Felipe commented. “Any connection of the Riosecos would have been out on his ear if the government had confiscated it after that business with Miguel.”

  The lieutenant made an annoyed noise. “You can’t fault him for his loyalty. And it’s not as if he’s responsible for the family. He was just one of their peasants.”

  “I know that. I’m not faulting him,” Felipe said. “But you know what politics are like.”

  “Their peasants?” said Elena pointedly, at the same moment.

  “Don’t argue.” Lili shook her head at Elena with a faint smile. “It isn’t worth it.”

  Tejada was exasperated. “This city is impossible! You can’t do business that way, stigmatizing everybody because they might be related to somebody who was a Red once upon a time!”

  Felipe was still mild. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t do business that way. I bought some of the Rioseco lands that adjoined mine, and I haven’t dispossessed anyone. But I know of people who were dispossessed, because some of them ended up asking my foreman for work. And Nando’s, too, come to that.”

  Tejada exchanged glances with his wife, half ashamed that he suspected he agreed with her and half relieved that someone at the table understood his feelings. Life in Potes would have been impossible if everyone with blood relatives among the Reds was excluded from civil affairs, much less everyone who had at one point or another come into contact with them. Besides, he had the odd feeling that Felipe had never actually met any of the people he had been too kind or too sensible to throw out of their jobs and homes. “I suppose Nilo is lucky then,” he said.

  “Weren’t the Riosecos the ones who had that cottage on the coast we stayed at when Pepín was teething?” Lili asked, tactfully turning the conversation.

  “No, Ramiro just recommended the place, he didn’t own it,” Felipe corrected, and the discussion moved on to other things.