“Goddammit! I’ve been waiting for you all morning! Where the hell have you been?”
“But Monsieur Faure, I’m scheduled to start at two in the afternoon, and it’s not even one yet …”
The Savage’s eyes widen until they are nearly bursting from their sockets, and he starts to puff up like a balloon, going from pink to red and then purple in a matter of seconds. Finally, he lets out a grunt and starts deflating, little by little.
“It’s fine,” he says, smoothing down his mustache tips, which are already greasy from so much handling, “let’s go to the Point du Jour, I’ll buy you a drink and we can talk.”
There, he tells him about the print shop’s new orders: the pamphlet against the Spanish dictatorship, the trilingual review, and the anarchist encyclopedia. Pablo pretends not to know anything about the matter and listens attentively, interjecting a question or suggestion every now and again.
“Listen well, Martín. The pamphlet needs to be published immediately, and I don’t want to hear any excuses about the Minerva, because it’s been fixed. So you better plan to have it ready for Monday—it’s only eight pages. If not then, have it done by the time I arrive next Friday.”
The review and the encyclopedia are not as urgent, he explains; they are medium- and long-term projects, so they will not mean too much extra work for Pablo. Just the same, the old anarchist asks him if he would be available to work on Friday mornings as well.
“But, Monsieur Faure, the print shop is packed to the gills on Friday mornings.”
“Fine, you’re right. What about Mondays?”
“I don’t know, I’d have to check. Look, maybe it’s better if we leave things as they are for the time being, and we’ll see later. Julián is making great progress, maybe between the two of us we can take care of all of it. Of course, the ideal would be to get new machines; if we could invest in a Roto-Calco, which can print almost two thousand sheets an hour—”
“Over my dead body!” shouts Sébastien Faure, his anger returning. “Have you still not understood that this is a printing house, not a sausage factory like you have in your country? Watch your step, Martín. Don’t piss me off.”
And he leaves the bar without paying for the drinks.
WHEN THE PRINT SHOP CLOSES THAT night, Robinsón appears, walking Pablo’s trusty, rusty Clément Luxe, with a smile from ear to ear and his bowler jauntier than usual. That’s the great thing about Robinsón: he never loses his smile for any reason. It is obvious that, whatever happens, he is always in communion with nature.
“While you were gone I took the liberty of using your velocipede,” says the vegetarian by way of greeting, chewing the last word with a certain smugness.
“Good for you,” Pablo replies, “but if you don’t mind, I’d like to walk the rest of the way home.”
“But of course.”
Kropotkin wags his tail in gratitude, clearly in harmony with his master’s spirit. During the walk, as Robinsón pushes the bicycle, he tells his childhood friend what he has been doing these last few days in Paris.
“I have been chosen to recruit people who are ready to go through with the revolution. Workers, syndicalists, anarchists, communists if necessary; any Spanish expatriate with enough courage to drop everything and take up arms.”
“Sounds like the Committee has finally given in to your messianic gifts,” Pablo says sarcastically. “And have you managed to win anyone over?”
“A few, yes.”
“And what do you say to them?”
“‘Brothers,’” Robinsón begins reciting, projecting his voice theatrically, “‘the time has come to overthrow the dictatorship. In Spain, the unions and workers’ associations have been shut down, and the jails are filled with prisoners from among our ranks. We cannot close our eyes. Revolution is the only choice. We are preparing an insurrection at the border that will inspire the rest of the country to rise up. When we finally enter Spain, the people will unite with us and an extreme left government will take power. Anyone who enlists will receive some money and a train ticket; you will receive your arms at the border, so they won’t get seized by the French police during the trip—’”
“I can’t believe you managed to recruit anybody with such a sloppy pitch,” Pablo interrupts.
And although Robinsón says nothing in return, the truth is that in his role as Pied Piper he has already recruited a few dozen collaborators, many of them from the Renault auto factory where Durruti works, where his evangelism was quite effective among those workers most dissatisfied with their situation in France. In the union locals as well he has rounded up some malcontents ready to enlist in the mission, as well as at the Community House and the labor exchange. Even in the Spanish Theatrical Lyric Group he managed to seduce a few volunteers at the end of the show, with the priceless help of Felipe Sandoval, a member of the Committee and a regular at the theater who got up on stage to rally the attendees and to reassure them that the revolution would bring amnesty to prisoners and exiles, to deserters and all those who had to leave Spain to save their necks. His passionate speech ended with the crowd chanting “¡Viva la revolución!” Furthermore, Robinsón plans next week to tour the neighborhoods with the highest concentration of Spanish exiles, such as Saint-Denis or Ménilmontant, and the bars and cafés most frequented by anarchists and syndicalists, such as the Café Floréal on Avenue Parmentier, and those on Avenue Gambetta and Rue de Bretagne.
“Of course,” says Robinsón hesitantly, “at the Point Du Jour there were a few interested people, and for a moment I had the impression that your Argentine buddy was going to tell me that he wanted to get on board.”
Pablo says nothing, but something stirs in his guts.
“And since I eat every day at the vegetarian restaurant on Rue Mathis, I have also been able to light a fire in two or three of the Spanish regulars there. There’s a Galician who is rather convinced that he wants to enlist, a guy with an intellectual look, who gives talks in Esperanto on naturism and free love. I suppose that’s why he’s called ‘El Maestro.’You should come eat with me one of these days, I’ll introduce you to him.”
But the recruiting work they have assigned Robinsón is only one part of the array of activities going into the revolutionary plan. As he explains to Pablo while they go down Rue Faubourg du Temple, the group works in a collective manner, although in practice the main ideologues of the operation are Buenaventura Durruti and Francisco Ascaso. The two men complement each other perfectly: Durruti is a man of action, the charismatic leader who knows how to inspire the masses with his drive and his words; Ascaso provides reflection and calculation, cold logic and strategy. Both have the same idea of what revolution and anarchist struggle should be; an idea that is of course rather far from Robinsón’s, who, whenever someone asks him what anarchism is, responds: “Anarchism? It’s the doctrine of universal love,” and leaves it at that.
Apart from Robinsón as lead recruiter, Durruti and Ascaso have appointed various trusted individuals to more specific tasks. Pedro Massoni has been chosen as manager of finances; he is a man with good contacts, accustomed to working with numbers and money since Bravo Portillo’s henchmen left him one-eyed and limping in Barcelona in 1919. His first initiative was to organize an internal pool to buy weapons: thirty francs per head, which could be recuperated by selling a few “Pro-Liberation of Spain” stamps to sympathizers.
Miguel García Vivancos, one of the members of Los Solidarios who participated in the attack on the Bank of Gijón, is the man responsible for obtaining weapons, for which he has three open fronts: first, the Russian Bolsheviks living in France, always ready to provide top quality materiel for their communist comrades, but more hesitant to negotiate with anarchists; secondly, the arms traffickers of the Moroccan War, although they already have a reliable market and are reluctant to make deals with Spanish exiles hoping to overthrow the regime that is giving them fat benefits; and finally, and this appears to be the most economical and feasible way, are the
small groups of French smugglers who root around in the old battlefields of the Great War looking for abandoned arsenals and selling any weapons they find in working condition.
Ramón Recasens (also known as Bonaparte, since he has a Napoleonic streak, with his short stature and his knack for military strategy) and Luís Naveira (a smart type who was a nurse or doctor at Santiago de Compostela and who is known as “El Portugués,” even though he is in fact Galician) are those responsible for counterfeiting the documents and passports for the members of the Group of Thirty, since many of them have police records and could endanger the expedition if they were to travel under their real names.
Gregorio Jover, nicknamed “El Chino,” another former member of Los Solidarios who escaped a few months ago from a commissariat in Barcelona by jumping out a window, has been designated as Committee representative and is taking care of communications with the various groups involved in the movement, both those from the south of France, who have the mission of drafting new participants who will unite with the groups coming from Paris, and those inside Spain, contact with whom is more difficult and dangerous.
Finally, Mariano Pérez Jordán, alias “Teixidó,” the man with the raspy voice and an affinity for snuff, has been chosen as the manager of propaganda, which is why he approached Pablo the other night after Blasco Ibáñez’s meeting, as publishing the broadsides is one of his main missions. No one in particular is responsible for the rest of the activities; those are being doled out as the project proceeds.
“And what’s the plan for the expedition?” Pablo asks as they cross Place de la République.
“I’ll tell you later,” Robinsón whispers as he notices a squad of policemen emerging from a side street.
But we can skip ahead a few minutes as the two friends walk in silence through the intricate streets of the third arrondissement. The idea is that two large groups will leave from Paris for the border, one heading to the west end of the Pyrenees and the other to the east end. The first will amass in Saint-Jean-de-Luz until the order comes to liberate Spain, attacking the border posts and taking Irún, finally to reach San Sebastián, where some sectors of the army appear ready to rise up; the second will set up in Perpignan, to cross the border at Portbou, head toward Figueres to liberate the comrades being held in prison and then to advance on Barcelona, where the definitive uprising should take place with the support of social movements and sympathetic members of the military from the Atarazanas barracks. In order for the plan to work, both expeditions need to be perfectly coordinated, both between each other and with the revolutionary movements on the interior, whose mission is to attack the barracks and set up barricades, putting the squeeze on the security forces and inciting the rest of the civil population to rebel against the dictatorship, with the consent of the more progressive elements of the armed forces and liberal-leaning politicians. According to some rumors, it is also possible that, to the west and south of the Iberian Peninsula, other revolutionary groups will come in, made up of Spanish exiles in Portugal, Algeria, and Latin America, as well as some rebel factions from among the ranks of military stationed in Morocco, tired of a war that they consider absurd and unnecessary. Of course, Durruti and Ascaso are aware that the success of the operation depends on the revolution taking hold simultaneously throughout the whole country, as if it were a kettle placed on a flame, in which all the drops of water must start boiling at the same time.
This is more or less what Robinsón tells Pablo when they arrive at Rue Saint-Denis and sit in the frame of the carriage door to share a cigarette, before ascending to Pablo’s loft.
“So, Pablito, when are you going to decide?” he asks after an awkward silence.
“When am I going to decide what?”
“You know, to work with us.”
“I don’t know. If old Faure says no, we can’t do much. You fellows are crazy if you think I’m going to be able to convince him.”
“We don’t want you to convince him. Just print the broadsides without telling him.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because the old man isn’t stupid. How many copies are we talking about? A few hundred, a few thousand?”
“More like a few thousand.”
“Think about it. I can’t make thousands of sheets of paper disappear without him noticing. Also, all the sheets bear the press’s letterhead. He’d end up hearing about it, even if they were only distributed in Spain.”
“What if we bring the paper ourselves?”
Pablo takes the last drag from his cigarette and flicks it toward the far gutter with his thumb and middle finger. Kropotkin runs to look for it, thinking it is a game.
“No. I don’t want you finding a way to convince me.”
And the two friends go upstairs to bed, each wrapped up in his own thoughts.
ON SATURDAY AND SUNDAY ALIKE, PABLO gets up at dawn and rides his bicycle to the printing house. He spends the whole day doing piecework, since in addition to correcting, laying out, and printing the material left for him over the week by the various writers for Ex-Ilio, he has to do his own work with the eight pages published by the International Group of Anarchist Editions, Spain: One Year of Dictatorship, written by Durruti and the elder of the Orobón brothers, Valeriano, who, despite his youth, is already making a name for himself as a writer and translator (his adaptation of the Polish “Song of Warsaw,” A Las Barricadas, will be a rallying cry in the Spanish Civil War). There is so much work that Pablo has had to invent a clever trick to incentivize the lazy Julianín: the boy will be paid five cents for each error he finds in the galleys; however, for each one he misses, he will lose ten. The bonus tends to be a pittance or even negative, but at least Pablo manages to keep him motivated and working.
After the hard day, the typesetter returns to his loft and smokes a cigarette with Robinsón before going to bed. For his part, the vegetarian takes advantage of Pablo’s intense hours to get a bit of extra sleep on the mattress when his friend leaves for work, at which point he opens the door and lets in Kropotkin, who slides between the sheets like a little lord, as if to confirm the words of the Englishman who gave the dog to Robinsón: “Take care of him, boy, this perro is a direct descendiente of Queen Victoria’s last teckel.” However, this noble lineage does nothing to prevent the dog from leaving the sheets littered with hair, which Pablo of course notices, but says nothing. Robinsón also takes advantage of the weekend to meet with the Committee at the International Bookstore and inform them of his progress in recruiting. It is decided that once the pamphlet is ready, Robinsón will take care of distribution in Paris, using his recruiting work as an opportunity to distribute pamphlets and using the pamphlets as a tool to draw in more recruits.
On Monday morning, October 13, Spain: One Year of Dictatorship starts circulating from hand to hand through the City of Light, while Pablo sleeps in the train on his way to Marly, after an exhausting weekend that finally ended on Sunday at the cusp of midnight.
III
(1896–1899)
“THE LUMIÈRE CINEMATOGRAPH.” AND UNDERNEATH, IN smaller letters, the price of entry: “One peseta.” Pablo and the newsboy had arrived at 34 Carrera de San Jerónimo with their hearts racing, after passing the offices of La Época on Calle Libertad, and now they found themselves standing in line to see the never-before-seen, the unthinkable, the unimaginable: moving pictures. The first session was going to take place at ten o’clock and they did not want to miss it for anything in the world, even if they had to spend everything they had in their pockets. When their turn came, the older boy asked:
“Children pay half price, right?”
The ticket man shot them a grumpy look through his monocle. “If you’re less than ten years old, yeah,” he said curtly, stroking the thick beard sprouting from his cheekbones.
“Ten years between the two of us, or ten years each?” the boy asked.
The man was so surprised by the question that he said, “Go on,
give me a peseta and get inside before I change my mind.”
Pablo placed his two reales on the counter while the newsboy rummaged in his pockets producing small coins until coming up with half a peseta. The clerk gave them two tickets and muttered a few incomprehensible words, while the sky suddenly went overcast, envious of the two boys’ happiness.
Inside the building, a few men and women were discussing the virtues of the new gadget. The optimists claimed that the cinematograph would improve people’s lives and contribute to the development of human thought. The pessimists seemed to be convinced that it would never be anything more than a sideshow gag, like so many others that had appeared and disappeared with more pain than glory. The doomsayers predicted that it would shrink children’s brains and end up another petty entertainment like the theater and the opera. But there they all were, expectant, impatient to attend the event of the year. Soon, a side door opened and a sharply dressed little man entered; he walked beneath the great white cloth dominating the end of the room and sat down in front of a splendid German Spaethe piano. Only then, with rigorous punctuality, did the room lights go down, and everyone ran to get a seat. In the darkness, the thick cloud of cigarette smoke appeared to condense and the spectators all held their breath when a humming sound started up behind them. Almost immediately, a spotlight illuminated the white cloth and before the spectators’ eyes appeared the image of a Parisian street, with its cars, its houses and its inhabitants frozen, immobile. A murmur of disappointment spread through the room, but then, suddenly, the crowd all hushed at once, a shiver running down their many spines as the image began to move, like a black-and-white version of real life. The carriages traveled from one end of the screen to the other; people got into and out of the cars and disappeared beyond the white cloth; some children were playing with a dog, which barked silently and leapt wildly in the air; a few cyclists passed in front of the camera, smiled, and waved at the astonished spectators in Madrid, who instinctively raised their hands to return the wave. All of this enlivened by the joyful music of the sharply dressed little man.
The Anarchist Who Shared My Name Page 6