Read Online Lost Cause by John Wilson - Free Book Online Page B

with the kids playing.”
    â€œYes, it is,” Laia agreed. She pointed to the door behind the boys. “That is the church of Sant Felip Neri. It was built in the eighteenth century. During the war, the Fascists bombed Barcelona, and the church was used as a refuge. One day, a bomb landed here and killed twenty children who were sheltering.”
    I looked at the boys kicking the ball about and wondered what the bombing had been like. “Is that why the walls are so pitted?”
    â€œNo, the bomb fell through the roof and exploded inside. The scars on the walls are from the end of the war. After Barcelona fell to the Fascists, people were brought to this square, lined up over there and shot. See, all the marks are at chest or head height.”
    I sat in silence, staring at the bullet holes in the wall and trying to imagine the last moments of the terrified people who had stood in front of it. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked eventually.
    â€œThere is a lot of history in Barcelona, and in Spain. Some would say the problem is that we have too much history. History has soaked into everything here—the earth, the walls, the people, even those children playing over there. It’s a violent and sometimes tragic history, and your grandfather was a part of it.
    â€œI don’t know what’s in that book from the suitcase,” she continued, “but I know from Maria that it is from a very brutal and tragic time. I brought you here to show you that because I want you to be certain before we begin that you are prepared to go wherever the book might lead you.”
    â€œI am,” I said, although I wasn’t certain. I had assumed that the quest Grandfather had sent me on was a mystery adventure. I would find out things from the clues I had been given and it would all be fun. Laia seemed to be presenting a much darker side to what I was undertaking. I suppose I should have taken what she said more seriously, but I couldn’t stop one word racing excitedly around my brain. Laia had said she was telling me this before “we” began. The prospect of spending the next two weeks in the company of this incredible girl swamped any worries she was trying to create.
    â€œOkay,” Laia said. “Then I will tell you the idea that I had. Maria once told me that she had known a young man who had fought in the Fifteenth International Brigade. She said she had nursed him after he had been wounded in the battle along the Riu Ebre in 1938.”
    â€œThe Ebre?” I interrupted.
    â€œYes, that’s what we call the Ebro River. You know it?”
    â€œNot really. Someone mentioned it to me once,” I explained, thinking of Aina on the bus from the airport but not wanting to stop Laia’s flow. “Go on.”
    â€œMaria never gave me any details about the soldier or even told me his name, but the look in her eyes when she mentioned him was so sad and faraway that I knew he must have been important to her.”
    â€œMy grandfather?”
    â€œI think it must have been. Maria told me this last year and a few days later asked me to go on the Internet and see if I could find an address for an organization of Canadian Spanish Civil War veterans. I found one. I think she used it, and that’s what triggered the response from your grandfather.” Laia fell silent and stared into the sparkling water of the fountain. At last she looked up. “I wish she had sent a letter earlier. Maybe they could have met.”
    â€œThat would have been awesome,” I said, but I didn’t really mean it. If Maria and my grandfather had met, then I wouldn’t be here now, and there was no way I wanted to change that.
    â€œAnyway,” Laia said, “after Maria told me about the brigader, I spent a long time wondering who he might have been. I found out as much as I could about the war, the Fifteenth Brigade and the battle of the Ebre River. This summer I