Marina found herself alone with four children under her wing, and when the government rejected her request for a widow’s pension. They said that her husband was not deceased, and she could not prove her husband’s death. She was forced to sell her brooches, fabrics and everything that her husband, in an attempt to buy her affection, had given her over the years of their marriage.
When Marina turned five, Spain had lost her last colonies in the Americas, plunging the country into a state of sadness and grief that the little girl’s conscience could not comprehend. Small details told her that something was happening in her town; shortages in the pantry, indignation in the streets, and above all, the conversations her modest parents often had about the girl’s uncertain future.
While Marina’s childhood was better than many of her friends’, her parents suffered greatly as a result of the crisis following the loss of these colonies, and when their first-born daughter turned fourteen, they had no choice but to arrange a match for her with a distant cousin who had made his fortune in the Americas before the crisis.
The man, whose name Marina vowed never to say again even in her subconscious, was 35 years old at the time. His still ostentatious way of life made Marina very uneasy. She had to get used to the coarse laughter of his playmates, the black, disgusting smoke coming from Cuban cigars the size of small missiles, and the almost malicious treatment that her cousin, then husband, conferred on her.
There was never a lack of his laughter, his crude caresses, and his belittling of Marina. Although at her age she was much more mature than other young women she always felt small at his side and had to learn to keep her thoughts to herself for fear that her husband would disparage her, as he would by emphasising how much more experience he had in the world. So, as the children arrived, Marina felt like one of the Garijo, one more child in that house of darkness marked by the man’s boastful voice and the constant card game at the dining table.
For this very reason, when her husband went out the door one afternoon with the intention of going to play a few games at a friend’s house, Marina did not see him off with an affectionate kiss, nor with a gentle greeting, but in the same way she was accustomed to addressing him: with complete and utter silence. She didn’t even regret her way with him when she didn’t see him return through the same door of the house, and only felt the bitter feeling of a widow whose livelihood had vanished.
‘It was the game, Doña Marina,’ her neighbours told her weeks later. ‘A disappearance like this could only have been the settling of a score.’
That was the conclusion of those close to the Garijos. A gambling debt. Marina, faced with the image of the heavy coins falling left and right on the dining table. She could only accept this reality as truth and wait for the security agents to confirm her suspicions. However, they never brought him any new ones.
Marina found herself alone with four children under her wing, and when the government rejected her request for a widow’s pension. They said that her husband was not deceased, and she could not prove her husband’s death. She was forced to sell her brooches, fabrics and everything that her husband, in an attempt to buy her affection, had given her over the years of their marriage.
‘No body, no death,’ declared a state security man, despite Marina’s pleas, who was carrying the youngest of the Garijos in her arms at the time. ‘Try running a porter’s lodge, I’ve heard that in the Paseo de las Adelfas they’re looking for a woman,’ the man muttered under his breath, feeling sorry for her.
So, Marina began to look after a porter’s lodge where, for once, she felt at home, despite the precariousness and scarcity to which she had to accustom her children. She had no parents as they had long since passed away, and despite the loneliness, she felt something akin to genuine independence during those years. There were no cigars to blacken the curtains. There was nothing but the presence of her and her children, who at some point stopped asking for their father, forgotten in her still-forming mind. That was a relief to Marina, for that figure was but a shadow in her memories that even as she grew older, returned at times in her dreams and made her wake abruptly amid shudders and gasps.
The situation could have been made easier by something Marina didn’t want to admit, and that was the arrival of a young man in her life. She never thought that she could love, nor that she could experience a first love, but after a while it happened. They met in that small, austere porch. He was a young, handsome and above all kind man, who had fallen for Marina’s grace, her determination and her strength. He was not wealthy but was as humble as Marina’s parents had been. Although precariousness had made Marina’s life bitter since she was five years old, she never felt more protected and stable than when she was with him, even though her eloped husband had lived in luxury. Oddly enough, economic fragility had not made her more conservative in that respect, but the absence of love had made her more eager for it. When she could have that kind, young man, she had fallen for him just as he had done for her.
The few friendships Marina retained from her married days were lost, as she took up with a man without being bound by marriage and gave birth to small, unbaptised bastards. Marina would have liked to scream at them, spit in their faces, and make them relive the days when she had tried to divorce her husband, who must undoubtedly be dead in some swamp, or fed to stray dogs, so that she could marry this smiling young man who brought her flowers and who did not smoke those repulsive cigars that her ex smoked. However, used to keeping quiet, she decided to ignore the whispers. But the difference was that this time, her face showed true indifference, for she had long since ceased to be the frightened child who allowed herself to be manipulated by others. She gave birth to four children, raising a family of eight. Even though the salary of a cinema usher and a concierge was not enough, Marina felt happy, or at least, the happiest she had ever felt for as long as she could remember.
That is why, when years later she had to live alone in the post-war years with her eight children, she would fondly remember those moments with her partner. Although they were not married, she felt much closer to than she had been with her previous husband. She would relive his caresses, the kisses on the cheek she gave him when he left for work, and the regular hugs they exchanged. This would ease the pain of the rationing booklets she would have to use after the war. The pain of passing the doctor in the street who had told her that her husband was well, even though hours later he would die of a heart attack. The unhealed wound left by the death of her eldest son, drowned in the Manzanares River. The fact that the first years of her young children’s lives were marked by hunger, cold and lice. She would endure all that would follow, reliving those moments forever, for her first love would be the love she would pass on to her children, and they to theirs.
I could tell more, narrate Marina’s hardships, and those of her kid’s hardships, but as my grandfather says, we are memories. His mother was much more than hardship and sadness. His mother was love, the memories passed on from her must be more than just bad experiences. And so, the story must end here; with a scene of Marina and my grandfather’s father hugging in the living room, trying to comfort each other as they listen to the bombs going off in Madrid. Around them, the children they were lovingly raising. For even in the saddest moments, my great-grandmother could find something to go on about.
This story was translated by Jack Caine and edited by Jasmin Griffiths.
Laura Velázquez Morales was born in Soto del Real and studies General and Comparitive Literature at the University Complutense of Madrid. She’s the second of three sisters and discovered her love of literature after entering a short story contest in secondary school. She is also passionate about History and Art.
Jack Caine is a twenty-something freelance translator from the Lake District, England who translates documents from Spanish, German and Italian into English on topics such as literature, other cultures, travelling and more.
Jasmin Griffiths is a Plymouth University graduate with a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing. She grew up in the south of Spain and after moving back to England decided to pursue her passion of writing. She has performed music and her poetry all over the country and also enjoys writing creative nonfiction and short stories.
This short story is part of a research project on speculative historical fiction in Ireland and Spain funded by the AHRC and the University of Plymouth.
Picture credits: Kevin Geary
THE WANDERING BARD 