Fermín Martínez's Secret Burial

The secret burial of Fermín Martínez brings a hidden death into the open, but not into safety: in besieged Madrid, Guillermo García Medina can offer Amparo no proper choice of cemetery, only a grave across the street from his own grandfather’s. The burial’s improvised rites—a neighbor with a cemetery job, three handfuls of home-grown geraniums, and prayers without a priest—make private grief visible while exposing the distance between political conviction and the human need to mourn.

Discovery and concealment

Guillermo finds Fermín’s body in a bedroom reached through the bookcase that once concealed his childhood hiding place. His body recognizes the change before memory can explain it: he is too large to move easily through the familiar opening, and the smell of a corpse displaces the childhood recollections. Fermín lies on a carved matrimonial bed, dressed in a diplomat’s uniform, rosary in his rigid hands. A saber rests beside his leg and a blue bicorne with white plumes completes the strange formal display. The closed room has held not simply a body but the evidence of a death kept out of sight.

The discovery forces Guillermo to revise what he had been told. Months earlier, Experta had explained that Fermín had gone to San Rafael, where a sister had a house, and that the front had left him on the other side. She had presented her decision to clean the house as the consequence of his absence, while avoiding the explanation Guillermo now needs. The body and the sealed room give those earlier details a different meaning: Fermín had not returned, and the story of his departure had served to conceal what had happened.

Guillermo’s grief is bound up with the manner of Fermín’s last days. He remembers the older man’s friendship with Guillermo’s grandfather, a friendship sustained for decades despite their opposing political, religious, and moral positions. Chess was their clearest shared interest, but their connection exceeded it. Guillermo had loved Fermín and mourns not only his death but the lonely, suffocating confinement he imagines Fermín and his granddaughter sharing. The grief is sincere, yet the distant sirens announcing another bombardment immediately summon him back to the demands of the present.

A burial made under siege

Guillermo insists that he, Amparo, and the others leave the bedroom and sit in the office so he can hear what happened. When the party reaches the cemetery, Experta has already arranged practical help: her younger son has brought a friend, and Marcial, an older neighbor who works at the cemetery, has opened a grave. A wheelbarrow is ready to carry Fermín. The preparations are modest and hurried, but they turn a concealed death into a burial that can be witnessed.

The grave’s location makes the ceremony painful from the outset. Guillermo tells Amparo that his grandfather is buried in the Civil Cemetery and that he has no other place to offer her grandfather. He promises that after the war he will help move Fermín to the cemetery across the street and sign whatever papers are needed. For now, he says, they must bury him where they are. The promise acknowledges the indignity of the arrangement without pretending that he can remedy it immediately; the city’s circumstances have narrowed even the choices available at a funeral.

Amparo tries to resist, then breaks down crying. Guillermo responds in a tone of dry authority that surprises him, takes her arm, and guides her toward the grave. Beside it stands the granite headstone of his grandfather, whose chosen epitaph identifies him as a republican and free thinker and declares that humanity was his only homeland. That inscription turns the neighboring graves into more than a logistical coincidence. The dead men’s opposing commitments remain present at the burial, but neither can cancel the grief of the living.

Flowers, prayer, and political difference

There is no priest at the ceremony, and the Civil Cemetery has no flowers on its graves. Experta supplies what the besieged city cannot: she opens a bag and takes out three fresh bunches of red geraniums, cut from the pots that once decorated her balconies. She gives one to Amparo, one to Guillermo, and keeps the third for herself. Their domestic origin and cheapness sharpen their sudden value. The flowers do not disguise the open grave or the weight of the epitaph; they create a small, vivid act of attention within that bleak setting.

Guillermo embraces Amparo as she weeps and tells her she may pray if she wants, even without a priest present. Experta begins the Lord’s Prayer; Amparo manages to join her only near its end. The two women then say a Hail Mary together. Their shared prayer does not resolve the divide between Amparo’s religious allegiance and the inscription on Guillermo’s grandfather’s grave. Instead, it makes room for both at the graveside: the prayer belongs to the mourners, while the headstone’s assertion of a human homeland remains in view. Once the geraniums are placed in the grave, Fermín is covered with earth.

The scene also recalls another funeral, that of the commissar Medina, and the loneliness of another granddaughter. Guillermo fears that the memory of that earlier grief will only grow more bitter. This recollection makes him alert to the particular solitude Amparo faces and helps explain why the three geraniums matter to him. Yet the flowers deepen his sorrow too, making the grave and the inscription feel more, not less, consequential. The ceremony holds tenderness and pain together rather than offering a clean consolation.

After the funeral

As the burial ends, Guillermo gives Marcial a substantial tip and follows Experta, who supports Amparo as if she might come apart. He cannot stay: it is nearly a quarter past three, and he must return to the hospital. Before leaving, however, he gives Experta the keys to his house, explaining that he has another set at the hospital. She and Amparo may go there to eat and rest, and Amparo can collect what she needs. He does not know whether he will return that night or even the next day; he asks only that the keys be put through his mailbox afterward and makes clear that his offer extends to Amparo as well.

The journey back does not neatly separate the funeral from the work waiting for Guillermo. The taxi still smells of Fermín’s death. At the hospital, the clean white coat he puts on will be the only clean thing in his life for many hours, amid cutting, stitching, cauterizing, and the continuing aircraft overhead. Against that coming labor, he feels something closer to joy than calm. He knows he may soon regret the feeling, but for the moment he lets himself have it. The burial’s immediate consequence is not relief from the siege; it is a brief act of care and a place, however inadequate, for the dead and the bereaved.