“Professor Abel, you’ve arrived at an opportune time. Come with me. I’m leaving for France in half an hour. Unfortunately we’ll have to take the long way, on the Valencia highway, because by now we might not be able to get out going north—the rebels will come in that way. The question is whether the government can count on a sufficient number of loyal units to defend the Guadarrama passes. Did you come in this afternoon from the Sierra, as you do every Sunday? Were the trains still running?”
Without waiting for a reply, he turned toward the window, gesturing to Ignacio Abel to approach. Implicit in the question about the Sierra was an allusion to possible confidences from Judith, perhaps to the double adulterous life he’d no longer take part in as an accessory, knowing she’d ended it. The vanity of showing or suggesting he knew things about others without revealing the source of his knowledge provided Van Doren with an intense satisfaction. He looked through the binoculars, pointing toward the long, almost dark tunnel of the end of the Gran Vía, down which came flashes of headlights. In the background, beyond the vague, barely lit rectangle of the Plaza de España, the Mountain Garrison was a great block of shadows dotted with small windows. Van Doren handed the binoculars to Ignacio Abel. Far away, at a distance the tiny size of the figures made remote, armed men stood guard at the corners, behind the street lamps, watching at their posts with the immobility of lead soldiers.
“The other question is why the rebel military didn’t come out of the Mountain Garrison when there was still time to take the city. Now it’s too late. Have you seen the cannon at the corner, on the right? They’ll make sure no one comes out, and as soon as it’s light they’ll fire. It’ll be like shooting trout in a barrel. But I’m sure our Judith would have found a better expression in Spanish.”
Her name spoken aloud made Ignacio Abel’s heart pound. He’d gone to Van Doren’s house looking for Judith and now he didn’t have the courage to ask about her.
“You speak as if you’re sorry the uprising has failed.”
“And what makes you think that? Do you believe those militiamen armed with old shotguns will defeat the army? As you can see, they’ve begun to devote themselves to the revolution. The strange thing is that they’re putting so much effort into burning the churches in Madrid, so unfortunate from an architectural point of view. The military will win, but they’re very dim and will wait too long, and in the meantime there’s nothing for people like you or me to do here. I at least can count on the protection of my embassy. But you, Professor Abel—what are you going to do? Is there still time for you to go back to the Sierra with your family? It’s better if you come with me until the danger’s past. You know you’re not safe in Madrid. It was enough to look at your face when you came in to realize you know it. From Biarritz we can make arrangements with the embassy and Burton College for your trip to America. You just have to tell us who’ll be traveling with you.”
The telephone rang in the empty room, where workers had just finished rolling up the calfskin and zebra rugs. Beyond the windows a horizon of fires shone above the roofs. A maid brought the phone to Van Doren, who moved away from Ignacio Abel, listening with his head lowered, responding with monosyllables in English. It must be Judith calling, and he’d hide it from him, warn her not to come, to wait for him somewhere. Van Doren hung up and looked at his wristwatch, making the automatic gesture of pushing up his sleeves as if to get to work.
“Things no one has seen are going to happen here, Professor. Now it’s the turn of those who control Madrid, but then the others will come, and I’m not referring to the old soldiers who haven’t dared to leave their garrisons and are waiting to be killed. I’m referring to the Army of Africa, Professor Abel. You and I, if we’re still alive when they come in, will not want to see what they do in Madrid. They’ll descend like the Italian legionnaires in Abyssinia. They’ll have even less pity, except they know how to kill. They know how, and they like it.”
“The Army of Africa can’t leave Morocco. The navy hasn’t joined the uprising. What ships will they use to cross the strait?”
Standing in the middle of the empty room, Philip Van Doren looked at Ignacio Abel as if pitying him for his incurable innocence, his inability to understand the things that mattered, which he discovered thanks to sources he wasn’t going to reveal. In all the empty space, the only thing left was the telephone on the floor. A servant closed the windows and took down the blinds, and when he finished, he approached Van Doren and said something in his ear, looking at Ignacio Abel out of the corner of his eye.
“For the last time, Professor, come with me. Why stay here? You have no one left in Madrid.”
27
WHAT HE REMEMBERS about those days was the permanent sense of suspended reality and frustration: Madrid a turbulent glass bubble of shouted or printed words and music and dry bursts of gunfire, a clouded bubble that didn’t let you see what lay beyond it, what had become inaccessible, a conjectural country of cities subdued by rebels, reconquered by loyal forces, then lost again but about to fall before the advance of our heroic militias; and he, from one day to the next, torn by blows, Adela and his children in the Sierra, Judith he didn’t know where, construction at University City suspended and the offices empty, the wind blowing through the windows shattered by explosions and gunfire, covering the desks with dust, scattering blueprints and documents across the floor. Córdoba controlled by loyal militias. The surrender of Sevilla is imminent. Having quashed the uprising in Barcelona, loyal regiments from Cataluña are in sight of Zaragoza. He wrote letters he didn’t mail because he didn’t know where to send them or had discovered that the postal service no longer functioned. Government forces surround Córdoba, surrender of rebel forces expected. He turned on the radio, turned it off again, not a single piece of real information in the tidal wave of headlines, interrupted from time to time by announcements and military marches, that then inundated all the front pages. The government has imposed its authority on the entire peninsula except for a few cities where the rebels are still resisting, and confirms that the uprising has been defeated. The window of the store that carried stationery and stamps had been broken and the store sacked; in a shop a few blocks away, a bald, unctuous clerk, crouching behind the counter, waited on him as if nothing was going on, though he did say the supply of stamps had been interrupted, and if the Canary Islands were once again under the control of the government, why weren’t they sending any tobacco? The government confirms that the insurrection in Cataluña was suppressed soon after it began. The topography of “daily life” was partly in ruins and partly undamaged, just as the geography of the country had become capricious, with entire regions as inaccessible as if suddenly swallowed by the sea, and borders so malleable no one knew where they were. The people’s justice, implacable and powerful, will fall on the ringleaders of this heinous, ill-advised attack that is doomed to failure. On a corner of Calle de Alcalá, the small church where a blind man always played the violin was in flames. The impression steadily grows stronger that the dramatic episode we’ve gone through since last Sunday is coming to an end. He dialed a number, and the ring was repeated endlessly with no answer; he picked up the receiver again a little while later and there was no dial tone. Radio Sevilla is transmitting the latest proclamations from the insurgents, filled with lies and intended to raise the sinking spirits of those who have taken up arms against the people and their legitimate government. Several regiments of loyal forces and militias are advancing against the rebels in Sevilla, where insurgent soldiers are beginning to desert. He scrutinized the newspaper reports on fighting in the Sierra for the name of the village and didn’t see it mentioned. The attack by Republican militias on Córdoba is imminent. Just as the censors left entire columns blank, there were cities and provinces erased from the map, their names not spoken or written. Several units from Cataluña have reached Zaragoza, where the rebel situation is critical. He stayed in his apartment, larger now because he lived in it alone, feeling remorseful for not d
oing anything, for not joining his children, for not looking with more determination for Judith. The heroic regiment of the glorious Colonel Mangada has overrun the enemy on the peaks of the Sierra de Guadarrama and with implacable force has advanced toward Ávila. He’d go out with no real purpose and feared that in his absence the telephone would ring and he would miss an urgent message. According to reports that reached our editorial offices yesterday afternoon, the forces of Colonel Mangada are at the gates of Burgos, ready for the final attack against the insurrectionists. Sitting on a bench in the shade of the acacias on the central walk of Calle Príncipe de Vergara, Professor Rossman perspired on the July afternoon and searched in his briefcase for news clippings. “I didn’t wish to bother you, my dear Professor Abel, but I wanted to be certain you were all right and had returned in time from the Sierra. How do you explain that according to yesterday’s report Colonel Mangada’s unit was advancing toward Ávila and in today’s paper they say he’s at the gates of Burgos?” Armored combat vehicles are prepared to take the Alcázar de Toledo, which is in flames. Ignacio Abel called the station to ask whether the trains were running, and no one answered the phone. Government troops surround Córdoba, assuring the quick surrender of demoralized rebel forces. The station’s number kept ringing when he dialed it, or else there was no sound at all. In Madrid numerous arrests are being made of Fascist elements, clergy and army officers, all traitors to the Republic. He wanted to send a telegram but the post office was closed. Even if he’d been able to send it, how could he know it would reach its destination? Dear Judith, I don’t know where you are but I can’t stop writing to you. I can’t live without you. On the Aragón front the insurgents, in their disorderly flight, have left numerous dead and wounded on the field, along with trucks, machine guns, and rifles. In the extreme confusion of the Cibeles Palace, where a militia recruiting center had been improvised on the main floor, no one was at the telegraph windows, and no one answered the ringing phones. Zaragoza is beginning to feel the hardships of the siege imposed by loyal forces. He managed to speak to a clerk and learned that all service to the far side of the Sierra had been suspended indefinitely, and that the map of Spain, filled with sudden blank spaces it was forbidden or impossible to establish communication with, changed every day and almost every hour according to the rumors and embellished reports of offensives and victories. A group of friars armed with knives assaults militiamen preparing to carry out a search. Dear Adela, tell your parents I saw your brother a few days ago and thought he looked fine. The status of the rebellion in Sevilla is so desperate that the traitorous general Queipo de Llano is preparing to flee to Portugal. Ignacio Abel got up before dawn to go to the American embassy, and though it was still dark, the sidewalk was lined with refugees, trying to hide their social status: upper-class ladies without watches or jewels, men without ties or wearing a cap or beret and an old jacket. To obtain a visa he first had to present the letter of invitation and the contract from Burton College, but international mails weren’t working, or the mail carriers had enlisted in the militias and replacements hadn’t been found. The troops of the Republic have occupied the outskirts of Huesca and cut off electricity in Zaragoza, where the rebellion is in dire straits. Dear Mr. President, Burton College, Rhineberg, N.Y., he wrote in English, it is an honor for me to accept your kind invitation, and as soon as current circumstances improve in Spain I will send you the documents you have requested. The troops from Cataluña, their morale high, continue their victorious march through the lands of Aragón, advancing toward Zaragoza, bombed again by our air force. He wanted to be far away, to leave and never come back, to sink into a silence where day after day there would be no sound, not just of gunfire and explosions but of words, words repeated, obtuse and triumphal, vengeful and toxic, almost as frightening as actions. The Carlist beasts march like packs of hyenas, accompanied by the ever more ferocious and terrifying cassocks of the priests. The same words in a constant barrage, on loyal radio stations and on the enemy’s, in newspapers and on postered walls, immune to the evidence of the lie, imposed through the brute force of repetition. Day by day, enthusiasm grows among the fighters defending the cause of the Republic and freedom on the frontlines, rendering the rebels’ desperate efforts useless. How could he not listen to them, not be infected by them, the drunken binges of words supporting the collective hallucination? Each morning and afternoon he waited for the mailman, who on many days didn’t come. He waited with the same painful intensity for a letter from Judith, from his children, from Burton College, from the American embassy. A large number of militias from Lérida paraded through the city to wild cheers before reconquering Zaragoza. He went down to ask the doorman if any mail had arrived for him and saw that he’d traded his blue livery with gold braid for a coverall over his undershirt, and had stopped shaving. The surrender of the insurgents in the Alcázar de Toledo is imminent. On the advice of a driver in the neighborhood, the doorman had joined the CNT, and though he continued to wear the peaked cap that made him so proud because it gave him the look of an Assault Guard, he now tied a red-and-black handkerchief around his neck and wore a pistol on the right side of his belt, as bulky as the key ring that had always hung on the left. Loyal forces marching toward Zaragoza encounter no resistance. He said he’d been given the pistol in a distribution of weapons taken from the Fascist military defeated by the people in their assault on the Mountain Garrison. Tanks of loyal forces are leaving Guadalajara for Zaragoza to protect the infantry’s advance. The doorman polished his pistol with the same concentration he’d once brought to polishing the shoes of some affluent resident, but he hadn’t managed to obtain ammunition, and he asked his friend the Anarchist driver for some, assuring him that, after all, he was an official too, and kept a sharp eye out for possible ambushes or saboteurs hidden in the building. Five by five, their arms raised high, the rebels defending the Alcázar de Toledo abandoned it. Ignacio Abel went out in the morning and the doorman, in his proletarian coverall and with the pistol at his waist, opened the door for him and bowed as he removed his cap and discreetly held out his hand to receive a tip. “You don’t have to worry about anything, Don Ignacio. In this neighborhood the working people know you, and if it comes to that, I’d put my hand in the fire for you.” Granada is about to surrender to government forces, and according to reliable reports, soldiers are deserting or rebelling against the insurgent leaders who have brought them to dishonor and defeat. He called the pensión on the Plaza de Santa Ana in the insane hope that Judith hadn’t left, and an irate voice shouted that there wasn’t any guest there by that name. The squadron of airplanes that left Barcelona this morning is reconnoitering the terrain and protecting the advance of the loyal troops that will take Zaragoza and have almost reached the city. Please check—Judith Biely, with a b, a foreign señorita, American. He took a streetcar up Calle de Alcalá on the way to the Plaza de Sevilla, where a large red flag waved over the tower of the Círculo de Bellas Artes and the bronze Minerva. On the outskirts of Córdoba our troops are waiting for the decisive moment to launch an attack. When he was closer, if not to Judith, at least to the house and room where she’d lived, it became impossible to go on: at the corner of Calle del Príncipe gunfire broke out as suddenly as a summer storm; he left the doorway where he’d taken refuge, and in the sunlight coming from the Plaza de Santa Ana, he thought he saw Judith crossing the street. All drivers of vehicles confiscated from the enemy are strongly urged to respect traffic signals placed on public thoroughfares in Madrid to avoid accidents.
In the Night of Time Page 50