machetes until the steep cobbled streets of the town were literally running with blood. Grenades were thrown into the San Juan Hospital and as the Regulares approached a seminary, in which a group of anarchists were holed up, it burst into flames.
30th September 1936, Toledo
Oscar has found out that the republicans left the El Grecos in the city and has arranged through our Captain for us to see them. In the end we see seven of the Apostle paintings but not the famous Burial of Count Orgaz. I am mesmerized and quite unable to unravel his technique, how he seems to achieve an inner light that shines through the flesh and blood, even the robes, of the apostles. After the roar of battle, the mutilations, the blood-spattered streets, we find peace in front of those paintings and I know now that I want to become an artist.
20th November 1936, Ciudad Universitaria de Madrid This war has reached a new level. We have been bombing our own capital with explosives and incendiaries for more than a week. We were camped out by the railway tracks on the west side of the River Manzanares, with our every attempt to get across being easily driven back. Then suddenly we were over it and running up to the university, unopposed and amazed. We couldn’t think what had happened — another loss of nerve at the vital moment or the usual republican fiasco of one unit retreating before the replacement had arrived. The fight that ensued indicated the latter. We’ve taken the School of Architecture but have been driven back from the hall of Philosophy and Letters. We are fighting International Brigades of German, French, Italians and Belgians. The buildings ring with German communist songs and the ‘Internationale’. Oscar says these brigades are all made up of writers, poets, composers and artists. They even name their battalions after literary martyrs. I ask him why artists exclusively support the left and he gives one of his usual enigmatic replies: ‘It’s in their nature.’ And I, as always, have to ask him what he means. Our pupil/teacher relationship has never changed.
‘They are creative,’ he says. ‘They want to change things. They don’t like the old order of monarchy, the church, the military and the landowners. They believe in the power of the common man and his right to be equal. To bring this about they have to destroy all the old institutions.’
‘And replace them with what?’ I ask.
‘Exactly,’ says Oscar. ‘They will replace them with a different order … one that they like with no kings or priests, no businessmen or farmers. You should think about that, Francisco, if you want to be an artist. Great art changes the way we look at things. Think of Impressionism. They laughed at Monet’s blurred vision. Think of Cubism. They assumed that after Braque was shot in the head and had to be trepanned, he lost his mind. Think of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon — call them women? And what do you think General Yague hangs on his wall? Or General Varela?’
‘You ‘re playing with me now,’ I say.
An attack starts and we crawl to the window and shoot down on the men running out of Philosophy and Letters (we’re in Agriculture). There’s a large explosion in the Clinical Hospital (we find out later that a bomb was sent up in the lift to the Regulares). We decide to retreat from Agriculture and go back to the French Institute’s Casa de Velazquez, which is full of the dead bodies of a company of Poles. As we zig-zag back, Oscar shouts to me that General Yague will probably go to his grave wrapped in the canvas of my heroic painting. Bullets rip across the wooden doors of the building and we change course and dive through the windows on to the soft landing of the dead Poles. We fire back through the windows until the attack loses heart.
‘Think about it,’ says Oscar. ‘Here we are at the front line, not just of a civil war, but of the whole of cultural Spain, maybe even civilized Europe. What do you want to paint in the future? Yague on horseback? The Archbishop of Seville at his toilet? Or do you want to redefine the female form? See perfection in a line of landscape? Find truth in a urinal?’
We make for the back of the building and sprint across behind the Santa Cristina hospital to the Clinical Hospital to support the Regulares. We find the shattered lift in the rubble of its shaft and run up the stairs. In one of the laboratories there are six dead Regulares with no evidence of bullet wounds or bomb blast. On the floor a fire smokes and there is the smell of roast meat. There are animals in cages all around and we realize that the Moors have cooked and eaten some of them. Oscar shakes his head at the bizarre scene. We go up on to the roof and survey the terrain. I ask Oscar what he wants out of all this and he just says that he doesn’t belong anywhere. He’s an outsider.
‘It’s you that matters,’ he says, ‘you’re young. You have to decide. Look … if you want to cross over, don’t worry about me, I won’t shoot you in the back. And I’ll put it in my report that you went over for artistic reasons.’
This is what I hate about Oscar, he’s always trying to prod me into thinking, into making decisions.
25th November 1936, outskirts of Madrid
We have pulled out of the direct assault on Madrid. That vital month we spent in the relief of Toledo gave the republicans time to organize themselves. We could keep hammering away but it would cost us too much. The strategy has changed now. We are going to overrun the outlying country and lay siege. We are an army that swings from the most advanced techniques (aerial bombing) to the mediaeval (siege) …
In the space of six weeks the two armies seem to have become more equal. The leftists now have Russian tanks and planes and men from all over the world are fighting in their International Brigades. They have the supply ports of the Mediterranean — Barcelona, Tarragona, Valencia. Oscar had always said it would be over by Christmas, now he thinks it will take years.
18th February 1937, near Vaciamadrid
We have been shoved off the Madrid-Valencia road, which is what we expected when we first took it. The Russian fighters strafed us mercilessly. We are in a stalemate now and can only wait to see how it goes in the north. We have time and good supplies of cigarettes and coffee. Oscar has made a chess set out of empty cartridges and we play, or rather he teaches me how to lose gracefully. We have conversations so that I can practise my basic German, which he is also teaching me.
‘Why are you a Nationalist?’ he asks, moving out a pawn.
‘Why are you?’ I counter, meeting his pawn with mine.
‘I’m not Spanish,’ he says, covering the pawn with his knight. ‘I don’t have to decide.’
‘Nor am I,’ I say, supporting my pawn with another. ‘I’m African.’
‘Your parents are Spanish.’
‘But I was born in Tetuan.’
‘And this allows you to be apolitical?’
