A Brief Visit to Ceuta ( a short story )

Shortly before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, I first learned of Robert Barclay. I had been sorting through some of the personal effects of my beloved mother, who had died two weeks before of cancer. It was a journal I discovered among some papers tied together with string. Sandstone was decapitated in Ceuta in July sometime before evening prayers, the first line on the first page of the journal read. Sandstone? My father?

I was born in England in 1913. My father died in 1914, a month before the start of World War I. After my father's death my mother, who was an American, took me to the United States where I grew up. It was not until 1950 that I was able to begin my search.

The journal, which had become part of my late mother's personal effects, belonged to this Robert Barclay. As there were several notations about Algeciras, a city in southern Spain not far from the British colony of Gibraltar on the Mediterranean coast, my inquiries began there. To my surprise I located Robert Barclay within a few weeks. I immediately wrote a letter. Perhaps a month later I received a reply stating he would not be leaving. A strange response I thought at the time. Nevertheless, I made my arrangements and wrote back telling him when I would arrive.

I met Robert Barclay in an outdoor cafe on a warm, sunny day one late afternoon. I guessed him to be around sixty years old, with a face lined but gentle-hearted, and the darkest blue eyes I had ever seen. Barclay was an Englishman who had lived in Algeciras, I later learned, since 1921. The first time I met him, he wore a white rumpled suit and a straw hat. Standing beside his chair, he presented a tattered, painful dignity, like the rest of Europe in 1950 only beginning to recover from the nightmare of the Second World War.

He seemed almost shy when we introduced ourselves. "You have your father's hands," was the first thing he said to me.

"Did you also know my mother?" I said.

He grasped the back of the chair for a moment and then sat down. "Yes. I knew your mother." He gestured for me to sit. "I am truly sorry." He gazed at me for a moment. "May I call you Richard?"

"Of course."

"How did she die? Your mother wasn't old." I told him. He remained quiet for a minute or so and then said, "Are you married?"

"Separated. I appreciate you taking the time to see me," I said.

"No, no. You have traveled from America. It's the least I can do."

I took out the journal from the Pan American flight bag I'd been carrying and handed it to him. "This was yours I believe."

He place the journal on the table and ran his hand slowly across its faded and spotted green cover once or twice. He glanced over at me, a distant smile on his face. He looked back down at the book, opened it and thumbed slowly through its pages. I waited. A few minutes later he closed the journal and nudged it to my side of the table. "Thank you."

"Would you like to keep it while I'm here?" I said.

He shook his head slowly. "Were you in the war?"

"In the Pacific. You?"

"The war to end all wars as they once said. Until yours came along. I was with the British army, in the desert. Arabia and Damascus." He paused. "How long will you be here?"

"Only for the week."

"I see." He again paused. "You have your mother's eyes. Did you know that?"

"I think I noticed as I got older. How did you meet my mother and father?"

"Of course you want to know, everything. But I can not promise you resolution you see. It is not at all what you might think. Not like an American film."

"Mr. Barclay, I really don't think anything yet. Until I came across your journal, my father had always been a mystery to me. As close as my mother and I were, she never said that much about my father. I sensed that she loved him but after a while I stopped asking. I think there's more that she never told me. For whatever reason."

Again, I felt Robert Barclay watching me closely, studying me. "Why don't we go to me place. It's only three blocks away." I started to rise but Barclay held up his hand. "I was not there, in Ceuta, when it happened. Allegedly the window sill where the head had been placed was the bedroom where resided the mistress of the abode, half Moroccan and half Spanish, who was the madam of a notorious brothel. The two Arab boys who found him before six on Monday morning stated on the 'breath' of Allah that they were not the ones who placed the severed head on the window sill of this house, two blocks away from where your father's body was found. Elliot Sandstone, your father, was decapitated. Shall we go?"

I remained frozen in my chair, unable to move. Robert Barclay stood up, watching me with his piercing blue eyes. "Yes," I said finally.

Barclay lived on a narrow street above a small department store, in an area that had an obvious Arab flavor: The rich smells of nutmeg, rosemary, and saffron blended together with the faint aroma of cooked lamb somewhere nearby, a distinct mixture of the Mediterranean and Africa. We entered his flat which was dark and cool with high ceilings and a creaking wooden fan revolving slowly above our heads. The only light were the thin slivers that came through the closed wooden shutters and sparkled on the smooth wood floor. On one wall was a tapestry, difficult to make out in the dim light, but covering the entire wall. "Please, have a seat. Would you like some coffee?"

"Thank you." A minute later Barclay returned with two small cups. The coffee was sweet and syrupy.

"Have you ever been to North Africa, Richard?" I said I had not. "Your father was one of those Englishmen who loved the desert. That very peculiar trait certain Englishmen possess."

"Are you one of those Englishmen, Mr. Barclay?"

"No, not at all. I am like most of the Arabs. Given the choice, very brief, periodic visits would suffice." Barclay took a sip of coffee. "What do you know about Ceuta?"

"Until I saw the name in your journal, I had never heard of it."

"Ceuta was a Carthaginian settlement. Hannibal supposedly spent time there. Later, Rome built a colony in the area. Spain took it from the Moors in 1580. Ceuta is today a military and penal station governed by Spain, even though the enclave is within Morocco."

"And what was my father doing there?"

"I met your father in 1912. He was one of the bright young lights in the rather dull and unimaginative British Foreign office. Nearly ten years older than me, I was placed under his tutelage as I had just been accepted into the service. I eventually met your extraordinarily beautiful mother at a diplomatic function in London. The three of us became close friends.

"In 1913 your father was posted to Spain. He pulled some strings and managed to get me there as well, as a sort of junior-junior officer in the commercial section."

"In Madrid?" I said.

"Yes. Where our embassy was. From the first day he arrived in Spain, your father was constantly on the go, traveling around the country. He made a number of trips to Gibraltar. And perhaps other places."

"What exactly did my father do at the embassy?"

Robert Barclay smiled slightly. "He was in the political section."

"I see. Doing what?"

"The political section tended to be a catch all for all sorts of activities."

"I'm not sure I understand," I said.

Barclay shrugged. "Your father may have been with British intelligence."

"But you're not certain?"

"No."

"And my mother?"

"I'm not sure what she knew. But in 1913 Europe was backing into war. And no one could begin to imagine that the horror of the twentieth century would commence in 1914."

"Are you saying my father's death was connected to his work?"

"No. I don't believe so."

"Then..."

"When your father first graduated from the university he spent eight or nine months in Syria as well as North Africa on a archeological dig. The desert fascinated him from the very beginning. I think because he always saw it as both appearance and reality. It's difficult to tell you see..."

While not expressing my feelings to the man sitting in the chair across from me, I was beginnings to feel restless, sensing much more had not been stated. "Mr. Barclay, your portrait of my father certainly conjures up a rather romantic and mysterious figure. I would very much liked to have known him. My mother never mentioned any of this." I paused. "But his horrible death in Ceuta?"

"Yes." Robert Barclay gazed past my shoulder for a moment and then his attention returned to me. "Richard, do you believe in the spirit world?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Beyond what we can see, feel, understand sometimes. Outside what science and technology can tell us."

"Mr. Barclay--"

"Robert. Please."

"Robert. No, I have not thought about the, the spirit world whatsoever."

"I understand. Would you care for more coffee?" I shook my head. "Your father believed."

"In the spirit world?"

"Yes."

I cleared my throat. "How did you happen to give my mother your journal?"

"Let me show you something." Robert Barclay got out of his chair and opened the wooden shutters, which looked onto the street where we had walked down earlier. I squinted as the bright Mediterranean sun surged into the room and its warmth enveloped me immediately. "Look at the tapestry."

I stood. The bottom half of the tapestry was a cerulean blue. But, the color gradually changed as my eyes moved from the middle of the tapestry to the top. The blue darkened until, near the top of the tapestry, it became dusk-colored in a kind of half-light. A thin, delicately rolling line depicted the horizon. I stepped closer. A shadow near the right side of the tapestry, slightly above the horizon, was clearly noticeable, yet not definite and distinct. But to me it appeared to be the silhouette of a person. "It's almost hypnotic," I said. "Where did you get it?"

"From an Arab dealer in 1927."

"And there is a connection?"

He looked at me for an instant with an almost curious expression. "It seems to me each person has to decide for oneself." He paused. "I gave the journal to your mother in this very room, in 1928. After the two of us had returned from a brief visit to Ceuta." I now remembered my mother getting a telegram and going away suddenly when I was fifteen. I was sent off to stay with my grandparents until she returned.

Robert closed the shutters and the interior began to cool immediately. He sat down and I did the same. "Your father went to Ceuta once or twice in 1913, that I know of. He told me so."

"On embassy business?"

"Officially. But there were other reasons as well."

"And what were they?"

"Richard--by March of 1914, your father knew he was dying."

I sat up in my chair. "From what?"

"Doctors in London, where he returned for one month, told him they thought he had a brain tumor. Remember, this was 1914, not 1950. Your father declined any operation. He returned to Spain. And traveled even more, frequently with your mother. I learned of his condition one night while dining at their house. No one else knew how ill your father really was. But, he told me something else." Barclay became silent.

"Was my father in much discomfort?"

"He never talked about it, at least in my presence, but your dear mother told me sometime later that the last month was quite difficult."

"What did he tell you that evening?"

"That he had met the past in North Africa, in the desert outside of Ceuta."

"The past?"

"Soldiers from Carthage, Roman Legionnaires, Moors, and Spaniards. All who had occupied and lived in Ceuta at one time."

"Robert, you've lost me. My father saw, spoke to, to what? Ghosts? Spirits wandering around in the desert?" I got out of the chair, irritated with the direction of the conversation. "My father was a sick man at this point. Wasn't he ?" Barclay nodded. "Good lord. He was probably losing his mind." Robert remained silent in his chair. "And who killed him?"

"I don't know. I never considered it important I suppose."



I watched as my daughter, along with my eldest grandchild, drove away in the taxi. Their visits with me in Algeciras were always enjoyable, but had become more and more tiring for me each year; however, considering I had just turned eighty-six the day before, understandable. My daughter knew I would never return to the United States. After all, I had been living in Spain for the past twenty years, shortly after Robert died and I inherited his place. My oldest grandchild has expressed an interest in living here some day. We shall see.

I closed the wooden shutters and returned to the chair facing the tapestry. I noticed several shadows near the right side of the tapestry, slightly above the horizon, yet not definite and distinct. Beside me on the table next to my straw hat was the journal, which I picked up, letting my fingers rub across the worn green cover. In 1975 I traveled to Ceuta for a brief visit and went out to the desert one night. I understood then why my father loved it so much.

He was there, along with my beloved mother. And there were others as well.