Derek Lambert - The Gate of the Sun

At first the different factions within the crusade hadn’t bothered her. They were all fighting for the same cause, weren’t they, so what did it matter if you were FAI or CNT or UGT or a regional separatist? She herself had favoured Anarchism because the belief that ‘Every man should be his own government, his own law, his own church’ seemed to be the purest form of revolution.

But what she believed in even more passionately was Spain – a wide, free country where equality settled evenly with the dust in the plains and the snow in the mountains – and she now believed that this vision was endangered. By the Russians. True, they were providing planes and tanks and guns but do we have to pay with our pride? Everywhere the Communists seemed to be taking over – there was Stalin smiling at her benignly from a banner on the other side of the square. And in Barcelona, so she had heard, the Communists who took their orders from the Kremlin were poised to crush the Communists in POUM who were independent of the Kremlin.

What has it come to, Ana Gomez asked herself, when not only are we divided but the divisions themselves are split? Where was the single blade of revolution that had flashed so brightly at the beginning?

A breeze rippled the banner of Stalin making a deceit of his smile.

Ana called the children. Outside the Gran Via cinema she met Carmen Torres who was taking the children to see the Marx Brothers. She gave them five pesetas and, skirting a bomb crater, made her way through the debris and broken glass to the church.

It was open to the sky and naked and, when she arrived, Diego was about to speak from the stone pulpit. Watching him from the back of the nave, Ana felt uneasy. Although she despised the priests who had defiled religion she still believed in the God they had betrayed and she didn’t like to hear politics instead of prayers in his house. But there was more to her unease than that: there was slyness abroad in the roofless church, a sulking defiance, and at the sides of the congregation stood several men with zealots’ faces.

Diego offered his congregation the clenched fist salute. ‘No pasarán!’ he shouted and they hurled it back at him. He spread his arms. We are one, his arms said. Then, with a plea and sally, he beckoned them into his embrace and when they were there he told them what they had to do.

Diego, with his myopic eyes peering from smoked glasses and his small, button-bursting stomach, did not have a prepossessing appearance, and this was perhaps the secret of his oratory: no one could believe that such fire could issue from such a nondescript body.

But on this disturbing day even Diego sounded suspect to Ana. First came the impassioned affirmation that they would stand together to fight the Fascist oppressors who had ‘plundered their souls’ – lively enough, but predictable, as were the warnings of sacrifices to be endured and the promises of the individual freedoms to be celebrated after the bourgeoisie were sent packing.

After that Diego, man of the people, faltered. And whereas normally his voice soared, hoisting collective passions with it, before diving as abruptly as an eagle on its prey, it was flat and cautious.

Ana listened. State controls, centralism … workers to have their say, of course … but while the war lasted the country must be protected against lawlessness … What was this?

On the sidelines the men with the zealots’ faces clapped. The rest of the audience followed suit but the customary cheers remained stuck in their throats. Diego moved on to ‘our good friends the Russians’.

Planes glinted silver in the sky above the nave. The earth shook with the impact of their bombs. Anti-aircraft guns started up.

‘We must never forget that the Soviet Union fought a civil war against capitalist exploitation …’

And look where it got them. Diego, why are you reciting to us?

‘ No pasarán! ’ she shouted and strode down the aisle towards the altar, arm raised, fist clenched. ‘No pasarán!’ Ana Gomez, is this you?

Two of the men from the sidelines stood in her way. They smiled indulgently but they were snake-eyed and muscle-jawed, these men.

‘Please return to your place, Ana Gomez.’

How did they know her name?

She half-turned to the audience.

‘This is a woman’s war as well, comrades, in case you hadn’t heard. Ask La Pasionaria.’

From the body of the crowd came a man’s voice: ‘Let her speak. Where would we be without our women?’

‘Thank you, comrade,’ Ana shouted. Two years ago he would have told her to get back to the kitchen!

One of the sidesmen said, ‘The meeting is over. I order you all to disperse in an orderly fashion.’

Order! That was his mistake.

‘Let her speak … Go back to Moscow … This is our war …’ The audience began to stamp and slow-handclap.

The sidesman’s hand went to the long-barrelled pistol in his belt.

‘Go ahead, shoot me,’ Ana said.

The shouts seemed to unify into an ugly sound that reminded her of the first warning growl of a dog with bared teeth.

The sidesmen looked at each other, and shrugged.

Diego came down from the pulpit and took her arm. ‘What are you trying to do to me?’ He had taken off his spectacles; he was naked without them. ‘Didn’t you get my message?’

‘Message? I received no message.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Speak to them,’ Ana said pointing at the audience which was quiet now. ‘The way you used to.’

She pushed past him and mounted the steps of the pulpit. She saw beneath her, as priests before her had seen, faces waiting for hope. What are you doing here, Ana Gomez, mother of two, wife of a museum guard, resident of one of the poorest barrios in Madrid? Who are you to talk about hope?

She laid both hands on the cold knuckle of the pulpit. She had no idea what she was going to say, no idea if any words would emerge from her lips. She noticed the scowling faces of the two men who had tried to stop her. She heard herself speaking.

‘My husband is fighting at Jarama.’

A hush as silent as night settled on the people below her. She saw their poor clothes and their hungry faces and she felt their need for comfort.

‘He did not want to fight.’ She paused. ‘None of us wanted to fight.’

Gunfire sounded distantly.

‘All we wanted was enough money to live decently – decently, comrades, not grandly. All we wanted was a decent education for our children.’

A child whimpered in the congregation.

The two sidesmen seemed to relax; one leaned against a pillar.

‘All we wanted was a share of this country. Not a grand estate, just a decent plot that belonged to us and not to those who paid us a duro for the honour of tilling their land.’

Sunlight shining through the remnants of a stained-glass window cast trembling pools of colour on the upturned faces.

‘All we wanted in this city was a decent wage so that we could feed our families and give them homes and live almost as grandly as the priests.’

She stared at the sky which the bombers had vacated and whispered, ‘Forgive me God.’ But although she knew not where the words came from, they could not be stemmed.

‘No, we did not want to fight: they made us, the enemy who sought to deny us our birthright. But now, at their behest, we shall win and Spain will be shared among us.’

They clapped, and then they cheered, and hope illumined their faces. The two sidesmen clapped and exchanged glances that said they need not have worried. Ana paused professionally, then held up her hands, palms flattened against her audience.

‘I repeat, Spain will be shared among us . Not among foreigners.’ A shuffling silence. The two men snapped upright and stared at her. ‘We shall always be grateful for the help that has been given to us – without that we might have perished – but let us never forget that the capital of Spain is Madrid, not Moscow.’