Study

This pic inspired the character, Iniga

Study has bogged me down while writing Adriane; my next novel. Adriane is a complex adventure that begins in 1998 with a forty year old French woman of Basque background. She is unaware of the heroics of her father mother, and Godfather before, during,and after the Spanish Civil War. It is a historical novel but I am no historian. I admit that freely but I have been studying the Spanish Civil War... reading as much as I can beyond Wikipedia. Orwell, Hemingway,and Neruda excited my first inspiration for delving into the past. But before these writers I had created Alesandro out of the idea that some of these Maquisards of the Resistance would go to the hills after fascism was defeated everywhere else but Spain. And, because the Basque language and culture has remained cohesive in Southern France and Spain despite persecution by Franco, I just imagined that there would be an Alesandro. It turns out that there actually was in likes of el Quito and el Cara Quimada. These continued the struggle for Basque independence 'til they were killed in the sixties.

While I studied these I learned of the practice of taking the children of Resistance fighters and adopting them out to conservative families. This continued into the 90's and it gave a contemporary touch to some of the story. 

All of that and more has been a pleasure to explore but might take longerhas delayed the progress on the novel. I do hope to finish it by the New Year. I am no Michener so it might take longer.

A sample from the first chapter:

Adriane: The Chaos of Desire

Cold… chills… sweats: she’d left a window open a couple of hours before she’d passed out on top of the blankets wearing light cotton pajamas. Off to the side from the window, over the garage, a light cast a glow onto the lawn from the servant’s quarters. Other than that light, the house was as empty. She needed to talk with somebody and Alesandro was... well, Alesandro. He had been more than the chauffeur to the family: officially her God Father, a guardian angel, throughout her growing up and awkward teens. He was there when her father, Marcel Fournier, couldn’t be after the tragedy of her younger brother’s lingering death from AIDS. He had rescued her from Rémy, her older brother. It only seemed fitting that she should find comfort in the company of this single-most dependable man in her life now that Marcel was gone.

 “Alesandro… are you awake? It is me,” she tapped lightly at his door.

The door swung open, “Of course, Adriane, please… come in.”

Her eyes adjusted to the loom of the light of dawn’s sun rising above the hills from the window of his small but comfortable room. She preferred the side of the house facing west because she rarely crawled out of bed before noon but she saw the majesty of Alesandro’s choice that morning.

 “So, this is why you didn’t take the guest house when Papa offered it.” Her father had remodeled one of the maids’ quarters and added it to the small chauffeur’s quarters above the garage especially for Alesandro. The window faced the open expanse of the horse pasture and forested hills beyond.  From the window she saw his need for the sunrise, a small sitting room, and a smaller single bedroom.

Alesandro was the family chauffer, of his own volition: he insisted on having a job as a condition for staying on. The family knew he had been writing something of a confession; of his years in isolation, his near solitary campaign against Franco; of ranging over and back across the Pyrenees, of his lost companions at arms and his imprisonment at Carabanchel. This was his real job and, he’d said when he allowed her to see what he was writing, he told Adriane; “I’m no writer. I don’t care whether anyone reads it either.”

She knew better about his insistence that he wasn’t a writer. After all, since before 1936 and into the fifties, he’d sat at tables and drank wine with the greatest luminaries of his time: Malraux, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Camus, Hemmingway, Neruda, Dos Passos, and Orwell. From what she’d read of his work, she could see that it was profoundly spiritual, with sense of serious history that didn’t depart far from the natural poetry of Alesandro’s humility.

She looked around the room. Her picture was framed on the wall above his writing desk. It was taken when she was fourteen; an innocent image, naked in the surf, with arms stretched above adolescent breasts budding skyward. He’d snapped that picture in better days before the incident with Rémy. Next to it was a 2 ½ x 3 ½ Kodak Box picture of Alesandro with an arm over her father’s, shoulder from the days before Madrid fell. They cut dashing figures, standing in Basque berets… boyish grins… like they were going to bite-off Franco’s balls. Marcel’s eyes were raised to the lean, taller, hardened veteran, as though he were a fan standing next to a film star even though they were both eighteen. Alesandro’s demeanor in that picture reminded her of an image painted by Orwell in his memoir, Homage to Catalonia: “a face of a man who would commit murder for a friend…” and Alesandro would have killed for Marcel. The two were together in Barcelona and when Madrid fell in ‘38. Marcel was a novice, free-lance, journalist there. Whenever she asked him of those times his eyes would dart away as he would modestly say, “I was little more than a Civil War tourist.”

“You are always up before dawn, even when no one is here,” she stood by the window. Under the glass of Alesandro’s desk was another picture she hadn’t seen before. It was a wallet sized, black and yellowed white, fading, crumpled photo of a young woman with fierce eyes under a beret cocked jauntily to the side barely holding down a cascade of jet black curls. Her cupid-bow lips kissed the tip of an odd-shaped knife she held in front of her face, “Who is that woman, Alesandro? I’ve never seen her picture before.”

“I will tell you about Iniga someday.”

“Is she the mother of the boy you wrote of that was born in prison?”

“Yes, she was a fierce angel…, guard your heart.” his eyes darkened and he turned away.

Disregarding his change of mood she asked, “Then you were lovers?”

“No,”

As though the subject was a secret he’d promised to keep, he motioned her to sit. She could see he was purposely evading the topic altogether as he moved some of his papers and books off the chair at his desk, “How are you doing, Moineau?”

 “Oh, I don’t know…” she blushed. Moineau, meaning little sparrow, was his name of endearment for her, “things are so strange. Rémy tried to take charge of everything. Mama was content to let him run all our affairs at first… what have I to do?”

“And this is not okay with you?”

“I can’t complain… I’m hardly ever here anyway. Rémy can handle all the lawyers and banks… the estate. I counted on being here for Mama, and that’s all. But Rémy swooped in like a hawk and scooped her up before I could do anything.”

“Yes, I’d heard you were back for a few days.”

“Just a few… to pay my respects,” She caught herself tearing up.

“You could have come for the funeral, perhaps?”

Anger replaced grief with this reminder, “Funeral services are nauseous for me.” It was a sore subject.

The bile always arose in her throat, if reminded of how the village congregation wouldn’t allow Eder to be interred on church grounds. Those memories had not faded in the least: of the fucking village assholes, so afraid of queers and AIDS; of Papa sitting with her in the priest’s office while Papa pled. Marcel Fournier, the powerful banker and financier and gracious donor to the very church whose office he was begging in, pleading in vain… that’s what brought up the taste… the bitterness of bile, from her gut. Standing before the mahogany desk, the priest cowered behind, she’d let the dogs out; “What are you afraid of Christian? That the dead will be… your good Christian corpses buried there…. will be recruited or infected by this queer?” She’d stormed out of the office, tearing past a secretary carrying a stack of files… pages fluttering to the tiles like fallen angels: it was the day she left the God Damned Church for good.

Alesandro had good instincts: he read her feelings, “You know, you are Basque. We always follow the church… with a candle or a club.”

Adriane laughed. It felt good to laugh with Alesandro. His quips relieved her angst.

“Understood, so, what is it you plan to do now?” he held both her hands. It was a comfortable gesture and a fatherly one she longed for now that Papa was gone. She loved her father… how badly could have she disappointed him. And then there was Eder. They had rebelled so thoroughly from father’s influence, yet his love was unflagging. It was as though Alesandro was an angel standing in on father’s behalf. Eder too was like a son to Alesandro. He was named after Alesandro’s father.