Page 187 of The Moon Sister
‘You are right, I have been. For everything I was. But as we said, this is the start of a new life, and I must try and embrace it. When so many others can’t.’
*
María and Lucía moved into the Villa Elsa a few days later. María took out the Singer sewing machine she had brought with her and sat on the terrace at the rough wooden table making curtains and table-coverings out of the pretty flowered cotton she’d brought from New York. Lucía amused herself by taking the old car up and down the dusty path to the road and back, and within a few hours she was a far better driver than her mother would ever be. María also fashioned her some simple maternity dresses from the fabric, and in her big sunhat, with her belly protruding beneath the flowing dresses, and in a city populated by people who looked like her, Lucía started to venture out to collect provisions. And with her mother’s home cooking, Lucía suddenly found herself hungry and able to sleep without the aid of pills.
‘Mamá?’
‘Sí, Lucía?’ she answered as they sat eating a breakfast of freshly baked bread and trying out the taste of the orange marmalade María had been experimenting with.
‘I think that we should go up to Sacromonte before I become too fat to move beyond the terrace. Are you ready?’
‘I will never be ready, but yes, you’re right,’ María nodded. ‘We must go.’
‘And there’s no day like today.’ Lucía reached a hand to her mother. ‘I will check the petrol.’
Half an hour later, with Lucía’s bump pressing against the wheel of the car, she drove them into Granada and up the winding alleys towards Sacromonte. Leaving the car at the city gate, the two women grasped hands and walked through it into a world that had once been everything they knew.
‘It doesn’t look different,’ said Lucía in relief as they walked along the main path. ‘Except, look – Chorrojumo’s old cave is boarded up. His family must have left.’
‘Or been murdered . . .’ María said darkly, squeezing her daughter’s hand for comfort. ‘Look up, Lucía, I can’t see any wisps of smoke coming out of the chimneys. The place is deserted.’
‘It is high summer, Mamá, no smoke means nothing.’
‘It means everything, Lucía. On days when it was too hot to breathe the air, my fire would still burn to cook for my family. Do you hear it?’ María whispered as she stopped short.
‘Hear what?’
‘The silence, Lucía. Sacromonte was never quiet. Day and night you could hear people laughing, arguing, shouting . . .’ María gave a sad smile. ‘No wonder everyone knew everybody else’s business; the caves echoed out all our secrets. There was no privacy here.’ María took a deep breath. ‘So, first we must head for your grandparents’ cave.’
The two women walked down the snaking mountain path until they reached the caves just above the Darro river, where María’s parents had once run their successful blacksmith’s business. Peering inside, María saw that the pretty home her mother – God rest her soul – had once fashioned was no more. All that was left was the shell itself; the glass windows, colourful curtains, the furniture had all long since disappeared.
‘I am happy they did not live to see what became of their beloved Spain,’ María said as she stood in what had once been the sitting room but was now a dirty and putrid-smelling empty space, the floor full of rubble, empty packets of cigarettes and discarded beer bottles.
‘So.’ María swallowed hard. ‘Now to your brothers’ caves.’
The two women walked a little further up the hill and found both Eduardo and Carlos’s once beautiful homes in an identical state to that of María’s parents’ cave.
‘There is nothing left . . .’ María wiped away her tears roughly. ‘It is as if they were never here,’ she whispered, her voice breaking with emotion. ‘As if the past never happened. What about Susana, Elena and my beautiful grandchildren?’
‘They may have been interned, Mamá. You know manygitanoswere during the war. Meñique told me it said so in thepayopapers.’
‘Well, we will find nothing more here. Come, Lucía, let us go back. I—’
‘Mamá, I know this is hard to bear, but while we are here, surely we must see if we can find someone to talk to who can tell us if they know what happened to Eduardo and Carlos? There will be someone that does, I swear. So, let us walk up the hill to our family cave, see if anyone is left up there.’
‘You are right. If I don’t do this now, I will never again find the courage to return.’
‘Goodness, did we really walk all this way every day to fetch the water?’ Lucía puffed alongside her mother as they trudged up the hill.
‘You’re pregnant, Lucía, so it’s harder for you now.’
‘And so were you when you lived here, Mamá, many times!’ said Lucía. ‘I do not know how you did it.’
‘We all do what we need to when there is no alternative,’ said María. ‘And then when wedoknow something better, we realise how hard our life was. Lucía’ – María clutched at her daughter’s arm as they rounded the bend and their old cave came into view. ‘Look!’ María pointed above it. ‘There’s smoke coming from the chimney.¡Dios mío!There is someone living there! I . . .’
‘Steady, Mamá,’ Lucía said as her mother’s step faltered and her hand went to her mouth in shock. She lowered María gently onto the wall that provided a safety barrier above the olive groves tumbling beneath the cave. ‘Sit here a while, take some water. It’s very hot today.’ Lucía offered a flask from the basket she was carrying and her mother drank long and plentifully.
‘Who can it be . . . ? What will we find behind that closed door?’
