Between Two Millstones, Book 1 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Author:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc.

And then right away Salamanca, built of warm golden stone—and on a sunny day. (Unlike the British, the Spaniards are all out in the streets on Sundays—this, too, a Russian trait—and eating sunflower seeds, no less!) Near the Church of the Vera Cruz was an inscription: “In memory of those fallen for God and Spain!”66 And on the wall of the old cathedral, once more (we were clearly in Franco territory): “José Antonio—¡Presente!” and beneath it ten myrtle wreaths. “The Legacy of Franco: King, Peace, and Democracy!” Then medieval Ávila—beyond compare—how much can fit inside the walls of a city!

Then once more arid lands all the way to the mountain pass. Billboards jutting out painfully all over the bare landscape, something prevalent throughout Spain: advertisements for car tires with a raised hand and a gaping mouth, as if Spain itself were crying out, having lost all hope, and nobody in the world can hear its cry. Beyond the pass, almond trees blossoming in tender purple, cypresses, round, thick-branched olive trees, vineyards, and people riding about on donkeys, carrying large flasks in their baskets and large bales (just like Sancho Panza), their speech raucous and hoarse.

The Alcázar of Toledo, an epic legend of the Spanish Civil War! Colonel Moscardó sacrificing his son, a Homeric moment. (The Reds had put a phone call through to the Colonel in the fortress, informing him that they would kill his son if he did not capitulate. “Put my son on the phone,” the Colonel had replied, and then said to the boy, “Long live Spain, my son!”) During the seventy days of the defense of the Alcázar, Moscardó’s men had less than two pints of water per person per day, and a ration of less than half a pound of bread, this for the defenders as well as for the women giving birth in the dark cellars; attack after attack, siege, all-out artillery shelling, demolished towers, flattened ramparts, tunnels dug, detonations, walls leveled, flamethrowers, plans to flood the fortress—the heroes of the Alcázar withstood all these Republican onslaughts (saving the lives of five hundred women and children). “They turned the Alcázar into a symbol of freedom for the fatherland.” Even in our Soviet “Republican” youth this fortress was an object of admiration. And now one can walk through its corridors (everything rebuilt), through the damp, dark cellars, past the altar to the Virgin Mary. Lord in Heaven! In Russia too the officers and cadets of the Vladimir Military School had fought the Bolsheviks, and the Novocherkassk cadets had freed Rostov, and all for naught. Be that as it may, we make our own history, no one else is to blame.

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