CHAPTER ONE
"Let me tell you about my friend Bartomeu Camús," my father said, out of nowhere.
He was resting his head against the pillow, his eyes closed. At the time neither of us could know that he had only seven days left to live. It was the second and last mention he ever made of the concentration camp. A staccato of short sentences fell from his lips at a steady pace; he paused occasionally to rest and sip from a glass of water.
"Bartomeu was from Barcelona. He was a young man, younger than me, with a pale, gaunt face and a ready laugh. He’d been taken prisoner in the region around Terol in February of ’38. He showed up at the prison camp in the early ’40s, after I’d already been there for almost a year. We quickly became friends. I was the only one he trusted. We slept in the same barracks. The two of us shared everything, talked about all the things that we’d do together in Barcelona once it was all over . . . I don’t know why, but the soldiers were extremely cruel to him. He was always the first to be punished. They assigned him the most thankless tasks and beat him for no reason . . . Bartomeu hadn’t been classified yet, despite the fact that he’d been there longer than most of the other prisoners. Whenever there was a surprise search, they always rummaged through his possessions with particular zeal. I asked him why they had it in for him, but Bartomeu Camús just shrugged his shoulders and smiled. That I’m here today, that I’ve managed to live just a little bit longer, it’s thanks to Camús. He saved my life.
"One day they took us to work in a quarry, outside the camp. As we were about to pack up, a strange feeling came over me. I couldn’t catch my breath, my head reeled, and I fell to the ground. The soldiers tried to kick and club me back onto my feet, concentrating their blows on my head, chest, and kidneys. They split my lip, gashed my cheek, and practically shattered a couple of ribs. Just breathing made me feel dizzy with pain. By the time they realized that they’d gone too far, a lot of damage had been done. The soldiers wanted to finish me. Dump me on the mountainside like a piece of dung. It was the most practical and simplest thing to do: They shot you up with a couple of bullets and then claimed that you had attempted to escape. I wasn’t so much afraid of dying as I was of being wounded and then abandoned by those scum in the middle of nowhere. That I would perish slowly, and alone. Bartomeu Camús begged them not to do it. The soldiers were so taken aback by his reaction that they came up with another diabolical idea. Bartomeu’s kindness spurred them to more wickedness. They told him that they would spare my life if he was able to carry my body on his back all the way to the camp infirmary without once letting my feet touch the ground. Laughing, they said that since he was so brave, he could either accept the task or both of us would be shot on the side of the road. Bartomeu Camús accepted. The other prisoners were scared to death and began to mourn us before he’d begun. It was an impossible feat. Clearly they were going to lose two companions instead of one. They helped me climb onto Bartomeu’s back. I held on as best I could, despite the agonizing pain in my ribs. It wasn’t only my body he was hefting; it was the exhaustion of a full day’s work. But slowly, dragging one foot after the other, as the soldiers taunted and prodded him with rifles, he reached the infirmary without once slackening. Bartomeu Camús saved my life.
"As soon as I recovered, we were separated. Before I was transferred to another barrack, Bartomeu showed me a small blue folder emblazoned with a dragon drawn in crimson ink. He told me in a grave voice: ‘Now they’re splitting us up. Here are some papers of mine that I want you to keep safe if anything should happen to me.’
"I thought it was strange and replied that the opposite was more likely to be the case. After all, I was the one whose life was most at risk, I was the one who was leaving, abandoning the numbingly familiar routine of camp life. Bartomeu Camús replied with a placid smile:
"‘The way things are going, you never know. If anything should happen to me while you’re away, the papers will be in Purgatory. Understand? Do what you see fit with them.’
"‘Purgatory’ was a safe hiding place where we used to stow small items temporarily. It was a hole in a tree that was very discreet and practical, as it was out beyond the barracks, well out of the sight of other prisoners. Normally we would stash food there, pieces of bread, a potato, a handful of carob beans . . .
"My battalion was sent off with orders to rebuild a convent near Valladolid, some one hundred and twenty miles away. The daily regime was no different than that of Camp Miranda: shouting, beatings, and constant humiliation. We worked from morning till night, subsisting for days on a crust of bread and a broth of boiled turnips or potato skins. They worked us to the bone. We cut stone and heaved the blocks, built walls, cleared away rubble . . . Our lack of strength led to accidents: crushed hands, broken arms and legs, head injuries. The wounds would often get infected and the already weak prisoners died quickly. They were buried like dogs in unmarked graves right where they fell. Sometimes the military wouldn’t even bother to register their deaths. We were back at the camp in two months’ time. It was a bitter cold winter day. Everyone was anxious; a prisoner had tried to escape, which was strange. The soldiers had been given orders to shoot to kill. And if they didn’t execute the fugitive on the spot, he was beaten and kept tied to the flagpole that stood in the central plaza for all to see. In winter being bound and exposed all night with the thermometer below zero meant pneumonia. In summer being out all day under the hot sun led to heatstroke. Either one could be fatal. We all knew that if you did manage to escape, your family outside would pay for it in the form of threats, reprisals . . . Nobody wanted to take that chance. It didn’t take long to capture the fugitive. In the distance we could see how they dragged him, semiconscious, to the river. The man barely twitched when they threw him in headfirst. The Bayas River is narrow and the water scarcely goes up to your waist. He couldn’t manage to pull himself up. Once he had gotten good and wet, they stretched him out on a sort of bench by the riverbank. They tied him up like a sausage, with his head hanging out one end and his feet the other. Then they just left him there. The prisoner spent the whole night like that, soaked, frozen, and, I imagine, terrified.
"The next day, as always, they called us to order for the flag raising in front of the barracks with a barrage of shouts and clubbing. Our castigated companion was brought over. He was completely rigid. The man looked like a block of ice. He had frozen to death in the exact same position that he had taken on the bench. It was Bartomeu Camús. They forced us to go through the daily ceremonials as though nothing had happened: formation, roll call, raising the flag, and singing their anthems with all the appropriate cheers thrown in. And all the while Bartomeu seemed to be watching us intently, with his eyes wide open and his face stretched tight, as though he longed to sing with us . . .
"The military didn’t even wait for the corpse to thaw before they buried him. I was lucky enough to be chosen to do it, together with a couple of other inmates. Bartomeu’s body was loaded onto a handcart. I pushed him while the other two men carried picks and shovels. We left camp heading toward the river and walked along its banks for a while, without knowing where we were going. Three soldiers, guns loaded and at the ready, guarded us closely. Maybe they were afraid that we would try to get even. The morning was clear and bright, but very cold. And we were going to give Bartomeu Camús, my friend, a most indecent burial. As his body defrosted, the wheels of the cart sank deeper into the ruts in the road. We followed a pair of train tracks until reaching a fairly large thoroughfare. We walked along the side of the road for another three quarters of an hour until they made us stop at a dusty fork, marked by a round rock that was flattened like a small millstone. We headed down a dirt road that disappeared into the landscape. The cart banged against the rocks and ruts in our path. Bartomeu Camús’s body, no longer frozen, jerked about like a man with convulsions. It took yet another good half hour to reach a pine forest. We started to dig a hole before a pine tree whose two great branches made it look like a giant letter Y. The earth was as hard as a stone, but we were able to carve out a sufficiently deep cavity. Perhaps too deep, but the least we could do was to keep the animals from ripping open his grave and desecrating the remains. We lowered the body with great care and began to cover it with earth. The soldiers, furious, interrupted our work. All three of us prisoners, lined up in a row, bowed our heads in silent terror. They were yelling at us because we had begun to bury Bartomeu without having pronounced his last rites. We were forced to kneel down in front of the chasm, facing the body, while the soldiers offered a muttered rendition of the Lord’s Prayer. Only then did they let us carry on with our somber task. Once we had finished, I asked a corporal for permission to fashion some sort of cross, no matter how simple, even if it was just a pair of branches bound together. He wouldn’t allow for any sort of marker, let alone a cross. Bartomeu Camús, like many others, was laid in the ground as you might bury a common beast . . . But yes, his assassins had the delicacy to recite the Lord’s Prayer before sending him off to the great beyond.
© Lluís-Anton Baulenas, 2008, 2005
Editorial Planeta, S.A., 2005
English translation copyright © 2008 by Cheryl Leah Morgan
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