“We could crisscross Spain on horseback,” Abel said.
Of course we could. We started to study Spanish.
. . .
On the thirteenth of July, a Friday, Abel departed. He would buy the horses; I would join him when school was over at the beginning of August. Artists and models gave Abel a great send-off banquet complete with speeches and admonitions. At 11 P.M., we put him on the train at the Gare d’Orsay.
Our boisterous group walked back to Montparnasse. We passed Pont Alexandre. An exalted painter climbed one of the ornamented lampposts. “Abel’s spirits have remained among us,” he proclaimed as he came down. He then climbed the facade of apartment buildings on Boulevard Saint Germain and finally came crashing down with the neon lighting of our favorite nightclub. He disappeared into the police station between two officers only to walk out one hour later, all smiles. “A votre age, Monsieur” (“At your age, sir”), the police chief had said a bit sadly as he released him.
Ah, the Paris policemen of the ’30s! They monitored traffic to let the artists’ horrendous parades proceed through the whole city. They watched with us when we burned the giant papier-mâché effigy of a bad professor on Place de la Sorbonne. And the day a dozen of us student girls, decided that the waist had to go back to its rightful place and marched down Boulevard Saint Michel, our waists cinched by wide black patent-leather belts, the policemen stopped cars and trolleys.
When did those amiable policemen, together with the good days, depart?
Less than a week after Abel’s departure, the Spanish Civil War exploded, and even if, at first, everyone I knew refused to take it seriously, I was in shock. I went through the last days of school like a sleepwalker. Then one cheerful letter from Abel arrived, dated July 15, confirming our date on August 4 at 10 A.M. in front of the post office in Vigo, Spain. Against all logic—the letter had been written before the troubles had begun—I regained confidence.
Abel in Paris, 1928
Spanish consulates and banks closed, the peseta lost all value, train tickets for Spain were no longer sold.
“Vigo is a harbor. Why don’t you take a boat?” a friend said.
Why not, indeed? I spent one whole Thursday rushing from one maritime company to another. Against all expectations, I found a British ocean liner bound for Buenos Aires scheduled to make a stop in Vigo on August 4. Such an incredible stroke of luck! Refused a ticket for Vigo, I bought one for Lisbon, the next port of call, imagining myself getting off in Vigo and staying there. . . . Surely Abel would approve of my adventurous spirit.
Abel, 1935
I have forgotten the name of the ocean liner I embarked on that beautiful August 1, 1936.
I was taking with me little more than an overnight bag and traveling third class—rough wooden bunk beds in tiny doorless cabins, straw sacks for mattresses, no sheets, just one gray blanket. In the narrow, dark eating area, one long wooden table and two benches were bolted to the floor. The passengers ate out of tin plates with tin forks and spoons, a food that I have mercifully forgotten.
But then, in third class there were mostly lively French, Portuguese, and German students who quickly befriended me.
There was a fourth class on the British boat, a small triangular deck at the stern where several Polish families bound for South America camped in the open. At mealtimes, the women got busy cooking food on little charcoal stoves. The rest of the time, men, women, and children huddled in one big heap and sometimes sang low, sad songs.
Second-class-passenger ladies—long dresses of pale blues and yellows and voluminous hats—often stood on their balcony-like deck looking at the third- and fourth-class decks beneath them.
First class was way up out of sight. I ascended to it, in the company of a student girl who spoke English, to consult the captain about a rumor that an ongoing battle in Vigo would prevent our boat from stopping there as scheduled.
We saw chandeliers and Oriental rugs in first class. The captain was young, and his manners were refined. On his orders, coffee was served to us, poured out of a silver vessel into cups of fine china. Alas, the captain confirmed the rumors.
But on the third day at sea, the victorious Franco commandant telegraphed our British captain that he had won the battle and pacified the city, and that British visitors were welcomed.
I was standing on deck after supper when I heard the good news and jumped for joy. My foot hit the moving deck and began to swell alarmingly. The unsmiling gray-haired nurse on board—there was no doctor—tightly bandaged my foot and leg up to my knee. “No walking,” she shouted. I could understand that much. When a passenger I had befriended explained to the nurse that I had to get out in Vigo, where I had a date, the nurse, deaf to my protestations, locked me in the infirmary.
At dawn, our boat entered the beautiful deep bay of Vigo. I watched from the porthole, which, I discovered, was located above a deck. There was a pile of cordage right under it. My luck! I squeezed through the porthole, tumbled down on the cordage. The deck was deserted except for one young man who was taking photographs. He helped me to my cabin. A few hours later, carried by two Spanish-speaking students who knew my story, I was on Spanish soil.
At 10:15 we stood in front of the post office. Abel did not show up.
We went to the military commandant, who received us as he was being shaved. The white towel tied around his neck could cover neither the array of medals and decorations adorning his broad chest nor the knives and guns strapped to his ample girth.
We inquired about a German artist who, the stamp on his letter attested, had been in Vigo two weeks before. “Is he a Russian?” the commandant asked.
“No, no, alemán, alemán.”
“We have only Russian spies here, and they are in jail,” the commandant declared with ferocious glee.
We were dismissed.
We wandered through dead streets. Restaurants and shops boarded up, piles of rubble, an old civilian or two, truckloads of stern young soldiers wearing blood-red berets. At a makeshift place we ate fresh sardines fried in smelly oil. Downtown we passed somber walls of medieval thickness pierced with tiny barred openings. “The jail!” my companions snickered.
It did not enter my mind that Abel could be there. But he was. Jailed as a Russian spy, I would learn weeks later when his letters caught up with me in Lisbon.
He spent two appalling weeks in the Vigo jail until the answer to a telegram of inquiry sent by the German consul confirmed that, indeed, his family resided in Germany and that he had been born there.
After appropriating all his money—for room and board—the commandant ordered Abel put on a German boat and delivered to the Gestapo in Hamburg. After three days in a German jail, he was permitted to contact an artist friend who had retired in Hamburg. The friend vouched for Abel, took him to his home, and promptly sent him back to Paris.
Penniless, a ghost of his old self, Abel sat at the terrace of the Dôme in the lonesome Paris of August.
A smiling waiter brought him a week-old newspaper that had already published Abel’s obituary. The manager offered congratulations and a drink. Then a young artist friend, on his way to a vacation at the seashore with his family, spotted him and took him along.
By the time I returned from Portugal in