Treasure of the Spanish Civil War

by Serge Pey

Genres: World War II; Short Stories; War & Military

Synopsis

An intimate portrait of childhood during Spain's violent fascist regime, rendered in a surreal kaleidoscope of linked stories.

Serge Pey's stories are lyrical, vivid vignettes of life during and directly following Spain's violent fascist regime of the thirties and forties. The collection is a defiant ode to the resilience of the human spirit, each story depicting a small act of human resistance: a man plants a fruit tree for each of his assassinated comrades; a professor hides a secret library of banned books in plain sight. Many of the stories are surreal, fable-like impressions from the perspective of children caught in the midst of the political violence. Pey's understated yet unusual prose renders a brutal landscape with childlike wonder. The Treasure of the Spanish Civil War and Other Tales is a strikingly original meditation on courage, survival, and hope in the face of oppression. 

Release date: March 3, 2020

Publisher: Archipelago

Print pages: 180

Sample

An Execution
THERE WERE FOUR of them at the entrance to the field. Then another one appeared behind the shed. Five now. The boy saw birds scared up from the bushes. Yet another one, rifle in hand. Six. The boy heard a horse whinnying and a bird flapping off behind a boulder. Then he saw the guardia civil corporal pointing them out to the other five with his cord riding-crop. Slowly the mounted guards surrounded the man and the boy.
”Are you the spitter?”
The man did not reply. He simply spat straight ahead, between the horse’s legs, without lowering his head.
“You have six hours to leave this property and you won’t be warned again.”
The man spat for a second time between the legs of the horse, which sidestepped and reared at its own shadow. The corporal drew his revolver and, trembling, pointed it at the man’s head. The man still did not look down. Then the guard, pulling his horse to the side, took aim at a little black pig that the boy and the man were fattening up for the feast days. The pig’s head exploded from the impact of the shot and its body rolled soundlessly onto its side. Despite the detonation the man’s gaze did not waver and he spat yet again between the horse’s legs. The man had spoken.
“We’ll get you soon, spitter! You’ll end up like that pig and then you can go spit in hell!” said the corporal before disappearing with the other riders in a cloud of dust.
The boy watched an eagle wheeling in the sky. As though harnessed to an invisible noria, the majestic bird drew all the sunshine towards the two of them where they were amidst shadows. The boy would remember this. The man kept silent for a long while, observing the eagle as it turned towards the mountain, perhaps to check its work and draw the sun to another valley. At last the man turned and spoke to the boy.
“Give me your knife.”
The man gutted the piglet and wrapped it in leaves, then dug a hole and lit a fire in it with dry wood. When he had glowing embers he placed the animal’s spread-eagled carcass on them and covered it with soil. The boy and the man had been collecting stones all morning without exchanging a single word when the boy suddenly came upon a snail’s glistening shell under an old tree stump. It was glossy and yellow. A bluish spiral wound around it up to the gaping hole that once contained and protected the creature’s body. The boy picked up the shell and showed it to the man.
“I found a shell.”
“Keep it, kid,” the man replied. “They say that shells bring good luck because they hold the voices of the departed.”
The boy thought to himself that it would soon be midday.
And indeed the man pointed out the shortening shadows as they climbed the mountainside and shrank little by little. By the time the pig was ready the sun was casting no shadows.
The boy was crouched by the spring filling their canteen when he saw a flock of birds rise suddenly from a bush. Further off, the noise of a waterfall had abruptly become the only sound. Then he sensed them, up above, with their horses. He heard a man’s voice yelling words he did not understand. Three shots rang out, followed by a fourth. For a brief moment the silence in the boy’s chest was broken and the roar of the waterfall was deafening.
A horseman had asked, “Where’s the kid?”
A rasping voice answered, “Go and see, and take care of him. He must be by the stream. You, set fire to the hut and the chicken coop.”
The boy dragged himself in among an old oak tree’s roots which, as they wound between rocks, had created a niche he had discovered earlier while trailing a fox. This hideaway was exactly the right size for him. He crawled backwards into the burrow and pulled a branch across the entrance to conceal it. Then he let himself slip down to the point where the narrow passageway made a right-angled turn and continued underneath a boulder.
Sweat trickled into the boy’s eyes and for a moment he stopped breathing. The sound of his heart filled the whole den. He felt as
though he no longer had any heart and that the whole universe was a vast throbbing.
The guard came down to the spring. The boy knew that he was inspecting the canteen that he had left behind and the wine bottle tinkling like a bell under the stream of water. The horse came close, passed above the rocks, then returned and halted by the branches that concealed his hiding place. The guard knew the boy was in there. He sensed the boy’s presence. He was a hunter, honed like a knife, well used to tracking every kind of game, man or beast. The boy pictured him flaring his nostrils and deeply inhaling the scents of the forest as he scanned the trees without turning his head.
“What are you doing?” came the far-off voice of the corporal. “Did you find him?”
The guard guided his horse around the rocks. The boy heard him dismount. The sound of his boots came nearer, then he was pulling aside a few branches just above the hidey-hole. The guard knew that the boy was not far away. Suddenly his voice came, distant: “I know you’re there. You can come out. I won’t kill you.”
The boy knew that the guard had not seen him, because he was speaking from the other side of the rocks. The guard was lying to win his confidence and then shoot him. The boy was behind the guard and very careful not to make the slightest movement for fear of causing stones to topple.
“Come out of your hole. You can’t stay in there all day.”
From the silence that followed the boy realized that the guard had spotted the hole. The guard knew that the boy was down inside, crouched underground. But he could not enter the boy’s hiding-place because the passage was too narrow, so all he could do was fire blindly down the hole in hopes of hitting him. The boy told himself that he had a chance of surviving, for he was at the elbow-bend in the burrow behind another rock. The boy sensed that the guard now had his rifle pointing at the entrance and was about to fire.
“Come on. I’m not going to hurt you.”
A stone tumbled by the boy’s shoulder. It was at that moment that the guard fired wildly into the den. The bullets passed close to the boy without hitting him and grazed the rock against which he was leaning. He remained motionless, burying his face in the earth. Then the voice of the corporal resounded again.
“Come on back. Forget it. You got him. It’s late already.”
The guard waited for a moment. The boy heard him reload his gun and then depart on foot, leading his horse. The boy did not budge.