Free The Return by Victoria Hislop Page A

steel. A few old shop fronts remained with their ornate fascias and the owner’s name etched in gold on black glass, but they were a curiosity deliberately preserved for the sake of nostalgia, not part of this modern Spain.
     
    At the bottom of the street where the shops ended and anonymous blocks of flats were planted in crop-like rows, Sonia could clearly see beyond the city to the green plains of the Vega, the lush pastureland beyond the city. Consulting her city map she turned right and through some gates into a park. It extended over several acres and had been laid out in a style that was somewhere between dreary municipal and Elizabethan knot garden, with sandy pathways running between geometrically arranged borders and low box hedging. The plants had been recently watered. Moisture hung like crystal beads on velvety crimson petals and the heavy scents of rose and lavender mingled in the moist atmosphere.
     
    As far as Sonia could see, the park was empty save for a couple of gardeners and two silver-haired men sitting on a bench, walking sticks propped against their knees. They were deeply engaged in conversation and did not even look up as she passed, nor were they remotely disturbed by the sound of a trumpet that pierced the air. The acoustics of the empty park amplified the sound of the lone musician, who was not busking (there would have been little point, given the paucity of passers-by) but using the space to practise.
     
    According to the guidebook, La Huerta de San Vicente was in the middle of the park and through the dense foliage of a group of trees Sonia could now make out the shape of a white, two-storey dwelling. A few people were clustered outside waiting for the door to be opened.
     
    The house was more modest than she had imagined for a place associated with such a grand name as Federico García Lorca. At eleven o’clock the deep green front door opened, visitors were permitted to file in and a smartly dressed middle-aged woman welcomed them in Spanish. Her manner was that of a housekeeper, thought Sonia, proprietorial yet reverential about the house she looked after.Visitors were expected to treat it like a shrine.
     
    Sonia’s Spanish allowed her to grasp a few things from the speech that the woman trotted out at the beginning of the tour: Lorca had loved this house and had spent many happy summers there - the house was as it had been the day he left in August 1936 to seek safety with his friends in the centre of the city - after his death, the rest of his family had gone into exile - visitors were requested not to use flash photography - they had thirty minutes to look round.
     
    Sonia got the impression that she expected visitors to know about the man and his work, just as a guide in a cathedral would assume tourists might know who he meant by Jesus Christ.
     
    The house was as stark as the information. The walls were white, the ceilings lofty and the floors tiled. For Sonia it had as little soul as the parkland that now surrounded it. It was difficult to imagine lively conversation around the dark wooden dining table, with its hard, high-backed chairs, or to picture Lorca at the cumbersome desk composing poetry. Some of his manuscripts were displayed in a cabinet, the fine, loopy writing illustrated with delicate, coloured drawings. There were interesting portraits on the walls and some of Lorca’s theatre set designs but what it lacked was any sense of who this man was. It was a shell, an empty husk, and Sonia was disappointed. The old man in the café had spoken with such passion about him and she was slightly bemused by how little atmosphere remained in what had once been a family home. Perhaps it filled her with gloom because she had been brought here by the story of the poet’s assassination.
     
    She paused at the postcard display. Only here did something clarify itself. There were several dozen images of a man’s face. Here was the man who had once filled this building with his