As they boarded the train, there was some effusiveness. Pepe set the example; he embraced Cavañitas and then each one of us. Padre Inocencio patted us on the cheek and placed a conical package of sweets in Alfau’s hands:
“For all of you, and don’t fight for them. Now run along to school and be good boys.”
As the train departed, Pepe shouted from the window:
‘‘Sostened el nombre de los Madrileños. “
Blushing and feeling quite silly, we all answered in chorus that we would and there we remained for a while watching the train recede.
Then there comes another fog in my memory out of which only one incident stands out clearly like a colorful picture upon a black background.
I cannot recall the circumstances or even how it came about. I only remember that I was standing with my mother in the road that led to the school and that she was talking to a man who held a horse by the bridle.
Then the man helped my mother on the horse and she drove away as far as the school and then turned back at full gait.
My mother was very blond and was dressed in some sort of green dress. The sun was bright and the horse big and white.
I remember that my mother’s hair came undone and flamed in the wind like molten gold, and that when I saw her approaching thus, upon that great white horse at full gallop, I instinctively shrank back and hung on to the man’s coat in a mixture of fear and admiration. I always remember with amazing clearness that dazzling scene, of my mother advancing ominously upon that white horse. I don’t know why, but from that day I stopped taking her for granted.
As a contrast to that vivid experience, I do not remember what came after but I knew that there followed a period of studying under the insufferable circumstances of which I have already spoken. I never heard again from Pepe Bejarano. Soon after that, the term ended and the summer holiday began.
But before going on with my narrative, I must tell of an incident which, if I am to trust my confused memories of that time, began and developed during Padre Inocencio’s absence and came to a climax a little after the unfortunate incident that put an end to Padre Inocencio’s life.
I refer to another dog as huge and ferocious as the one of which I spoke before. This dog belonged to the school. It was a watchdog.
Every day, the moment the classes began in the school, this dog was released into the patio, through which we had to pass in order to reach the stairway which led to the classrooms. The purpose was, I presume, that should we arrive late to the class, the dog would attack and frighten us.
I remember arriving late one day and finding the dog. I remember how my heart sank to my heels. I beheld the door which led to the stairway at the other end of the enormous patio, distant, small and unattainable.
I stood there for a long time, the dog watching me. I thought of circling around the school, but gave up the idea as I knew that there was no other way of reaching the classroom where I was due.
The dog and I remained there for a long time looking at each other. The time was passing and my tardiness increasing. And then I made a resolution. I took some object, I don’t know what, and hurled it toward the farthest corner in the patio from the stairway. The dog made for it, and just as he reached it, when he was farthest from the point I wanted to gain, I started at right angles.
It was a mad sprint. I did not run, I flew, swept by uncontrollable panic. I can still hear the air humming in my ears and the dog, who had turned to chase me, was right on my heels. With a final desperate leap, I landed four or five steps on the stairway, past the door where I knew the dog was trained not to enter, and there I remained motionless, stunned by fear, panting from the strain and shock to my nerves.
I arrived very late at my class and the punishment I received on that account seems to me to this day out of all proportion, brutal, cruel beyond adequate description, and I therefore will not attempt to describe it. Perhaps I might be carried too far by my own feelings, feelings which I do not trust, for such was my mental condition in those days that sometimes I fear being unjust. I fear that my imagination enlarges on my experiences; that after all, perhaps things were not as bad nor people as cruel or indifferent as I imagine. For it seems unbelievable that a child of that age could go through so much for such a length of time and older people not know it; that a child could suffer to that extent and older people not offer him a helping hand. Yes, undoubtedly I imagine things worse than they really were.
But I know for one thing that those two dogs of which I have spoken played a great part in the drama of my existence and contributed largely to making those days some of the darkest of my life. They have left an indelible imprint from which I still suffer.
Those two dogs lined my path between school and home. There was a dog closing my way home where I wanted to go, and there was a dog closing my way to school where I had to go. These two animals loomed fatally in my childhood and framed my life, binding it with fear, a fear that woke and brought to the surface feelings that might better have remained dormant and which together with other things made my schooldays more harmful than helpful.
And then the summer. a feeling of immense freedom and infinite relief, at home or in the village park, without books, without dogs, without priests.! But my memories of vacation days are confused also, perhaps more so, for it is those things which are unpleasant which remain, due to a self-destroying desire, clearer in our mind or in our flesh. Our memory sometimes seems to pick the unpleasant things out of our past, with masochistic accuracy, and now that summer passes like a cloud gilded with sun, an ephemeral cloud carried away by a hurried wind of time, setting past the horizon of my memories. and then the night again. I began the third year of Bachillerato.
Things became more entangled. I remember passing through this course without understanding a single word of what I studied. Textbooks out of all proportion to our age. A purely theoretical education beyond our grasp. Priests too ill-tempered or impatient to explain, making us the victims of their personal feelings. Fourteen hours a day of study during a year, and all of them without exception gone to waste. Such is the education which explains the prodigious ignorance of a Spanish graduate.
But going back to the original theme, soon after the school opened we learned that Padre Inocencio had returned bringing with him a young nun from Madrid to the convent next to our school. There was much talk and gossip about the matter in school and out of it. We did not dare to ask Padre Inocencio and he did not seem to care to explain. But the talk went on and our curiosity increased
One day Alfau came to me:
“Garcia, do you know who the new nun is?”
“No.”
“Bejarano’s sister. You remember Pepe. Well, her name is Carmen Bejarano, they call her Sister Carmela.”
My curiosity knew no limits. We made several conjectures upon the subject. No one had seen her. Alfau had the most absurd ideas regarding the cause of her becoming a nun.
And that same day, I think, we went on the roof of the school and looked down at the convent’s grounds.
“You see that one there?”
“Which? That one? Why, that one was here last year.”
“No, not that one, the other. You see there by that tree?”
And then I saw her near some trees and up to this day I don’t know what I saw in that distant figure that woke something in me.