Lost Cause by John Wilson Page B

ever seen pictures of her when she was older. Everything was lost from that time.” She reached out and gently touched the surface of the photograph as if she could make contact with the smiling young woman standing in the doorway. Her finger slid over to the young man. “Is that your grandfather?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhen was the photograph taken?”
    â€œIn 1937 or ’38, I think.”
    Laia nodded. “Maria would have been seventeen or eighteen. Look,” she said, pointing at the young Maria’s neck. “Do you think that could be this scarf?”
    â€œIt’s hard to tell from a black-and-white photograph, but it’s possible.”
    Laia stared for a long moment at the photograph. “He looks like a nice young man, your grandfather,” she said eventually. “They look so happy.”
    â€œThey do,” I agreed. “And Maria was very beautiful.”
    â€œBut we must get on,” Laia said, handing me back the photograph.
    We almost bumped heads reaching forward to retrieve the next item from the case. I pulled back, flustered. Laia laughed lightly and lifted the pamphlet out. The cover was dark orange and made of cheap creased cardboard. It showed a charcoal sketch of a determined-looking man holding a rifle and running forward. The title, Spain in Arms 1937 , was at the top and the author’s name, Anna Louise Strong , at the bottom, along with the price, 25c . Laia examined it and passed it over to me.
    The pamphlet was more a small book, over eighty pages long, and it smelled musty. I thumbed through it, looking at the chapter headings: Heroic Madrid , Front Trenches , The International Brigades . Someone—Grandfather?—had underlined sections in blue pen. Most had no comment, but one caught my eye. Underlined was, I would rather die stopping fascism in Spain than wait until it comes to Britain. In the margin beside it, someone had scrawled or Canada!
    As I reached the back of the small book, a folded page fell out. It was so cracked along the fold and stained and worn that large pieces were unreadable, but it seemed to be a small poster advertising a meeting in Toronto in 1937. The headline was Stop the Bloody Hands of Fascism in Spain, and it had been distributed by the Communist Party of Canada.
    While I was looking at the book, Laia had been gently lifting out the first few newspaper cuttings. Some were in English and some in Spanish. One was the front page of the New York Times for July 18, 1936, with the headline, Spain Checks Army Rising in Morocco .
    Laia pointed to a clipping from a Spanish paper called El Diluvio . Most of the page was taken up with huge black letters that screamed NO PASARAN! “That was the slogan from the defense of Madrid in the first months of the war,” she explained. “It means They Shall Not Pass .”
    Silently and carefully we lifted the last of the cuttings out. All were about Spain and all were dated 1936 through 1938. Underneath them was a colored poster, the same size as the bottom of the suitcase. It showed old-fashioned biplanes with garish red stars painted on the sides, flying in formation over a muscular arm ending in a clenched fist.
    It was all very interesting, but I was disappointed. The beret and the scarf were links to the young couple in the photograph, but they couldn’t tell us a story. The book and the newspapers could tell a story, but it was one I had mostly discovered on my computer at home. How did all this help my quest? Laia reached in and lifted out the poster. She began to translate the Spanish slogan below the raised fist, but I wasn’t listening. The poster wasn’t the last thing in the suitcase.
    The book at the bottom of the suitcase was thin and not much bigger than my passport. It was covered in plain brown leather, worn at the corners and heavily stained. One particularly large stain spread darkly out from one corner over almost a third of the