Today is Saturday, the eighteenth of October, 1924, and the fine, stubborn rain keeps falling on Paris, soaking into clothing and dampening hearts. Pablo has already been to Marly and back. And tonight, he has let Robinsón convince him to come to La Rotonde, the café par excellence of rebellions and conspiracies, located at the corner of the boulevards Raspail and Montparnasse. It was here that Lenin started incubating his own crusade, while playing chess with his nihilist compatriots; here that, between tirades, Trotsky slurped coffee as thick as the silt of the Seine. The café was also frequented by writers: Rubén Darío would come here to empty bottles of cognac and then to slog, hung over, through the writing of his journal Mundial; Pío Baroja would often show up in sandals and a scarf, lamenting that Paris was much more boring than his Bidasoa River valley; even Josep Pla, looking like an angry peasant, would come and sit in a corner to rant against anything that moved. But La Rotonde didn’t just thrive on hack writers and revolutionaries: for many years, it was also a melting pot of artists, bohemians, students, transvestites, police informants, petty criminals, and an unending stream of people who spent hours conversing, drinking absinthe or contemplating the paintings that cluttered the walls. The models for these paintings would pop by every now and again and surprise the clientele, baring their garters and putting on lipstick in public.
La Rotonde was also, inevitably, the place chosen by many of the Spaniards living in exile to combine their forces and their words of resistance against the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. Shortly before the coup d’état, the freemason Carlos Esplá, personal secretary of Blasco Ibáñez, founded an interesting discussion group here, called the “Spanish Club.” This club went on to become notorious, not so much for the quantity and quality of its participants, but rather for the amount of noise they were able to produce despite their small numbers. The café could be full of shouting people, and only the Spanish would be heard. With the ascent to power of the Military Directory, the group started to fill up with VIP expatriates, such as Marcelino Domingo, Francesc Macià, or the former minister Santiago Alba, but the ones who really brought glamour to the group were not the politicians, but the writers and intellectuals, such as Ortega y Gasset and, most notably, Miguel de Unamuno, who became the undisputed star of the meetings, to the point that the “Spanish Club” was renamed “Don Miguel’s Club.” Indeed, the very epicenter of the exiled professor’s Parisian life was here at La Rotonde, where he came every day to compose the sonnets of his book De Fuerteventura a París, one of which ended up being inspired by the young man who, just now, in a private room in the same café, is standing up to shake hands with Buenaventura Durruti and Pedro Massoni:
“Good evening, comrades,” says Durruti, extending his thin hand to Pablo, and squeezing firmly, “Nice to meet you.”
“Hello,” Pablo replies, squeezing back.
Massoni sits down without saying anything and starts to leaf through some papers. Out of superstition or maybe just caution, Durruti remains standing, since the only free chair has its back to the door.
“Have they told you what’s going on?” he asks.
“Well …” Teixidó starts to excuse himself, rubbing his nose, “the thing is … Look. It seems there’s been a misunderstanding.”
“What’s the problem?” Massoni asks, lifting his eyes from his papers. With a frank look, he says to Vivancos, “If it’s a question of money, we don’t have a red cent.”
“The problem is that he doesn’t want to collaborate,” says Teixidó.
“Wait, look,” Pablo defends himself, “it’s not that I don’t want to help, but it’s not as simple as that. I already told Robinsón—” and here, he shoots Robinsón a dirty look “—that we can’t print the broadsides without Faure’s consent, and it seems that Faure flat refused.”
“Yeah, exactly,” Durruti huffs, “and that’s why we thought of you. Knowing your militant history, we thought that you wouldn’t mind giving us a hand, particularly in a moment like this, which is so difficult for us. We’ll provide the paper, you don’t have to worry about that, we already ordered ten thousand sheets …”
Everyone looks at Pablo, except for Robinsón, who is busy picking a bit of lint from his bowler, while in the next room, Unamuno receives applause after reading his latest sonnet.
It should be noted that Unamuno does not come to La Rotonde just to garner applause: from day one he realized that this place is an inexhaustible source of stories, and anytime he can, he takes advantage of it to listen and snatch bits of conversation out of the air: secrets revealed, rumors and jokes recounted; the inimitable raw materials he turns into his articles in Le Quotidien, which light up the minds on the other side of the Pyrenees and make Henri Dumay wring his hands—Dumay being the director of the newspaper and the one who organized Unamuno’s rescue in Fuerteventura. The razor-sharp, vulgar wit of the ex-rector of Salamanca has grown so famous in Paris that a French journalist said that he uses ink to frustrate his enemies, like an octopus or squid. The crowning moment came in late summer, when Primo de Rivera himself wrote an angry letter to Dumay denying the accusations Unamuno had heaped on him. The letter was published immediately, on the front page, three columns wide, along with the implacable image of the ex-rector. Le Quotidien has been strictly banned in Spain since then.
The power that Unamuno has acquired in the salon is so great that he has allowed himself the indulgence of tacitly expelling Rodrigo Soriano, who was rescued along with him from Fuerteventura. The trigger was the publication, in Paris-Soir, of an article by Soriano, in which he criticized “armchair revolutionaries,” in clear reference to Unamuno. Since then, the ex-rector never grows tired of repeating, while fidgeting with his bread and reminiscing about his time imprisoned in the Canaries, that “The dictator didn’t punish me by banishing me to Fuerteventura. The real punishment was making me live with Rodrigo Soriano—and that’s what I can’t forgive,” and then, gathering momentum from the laughter in the peanut gallery, he goes on: “I know Don Rodrigo is nothing but a mosquito, but the thing is that mosquitoes sometimes get into an animal’s ears and annoy them till they drive them crazy. But he doesn’t annoy me, the little mosquito.” One of the biggest fans of these speeches is Blasco Ibáñez, Soriano’s well-known enemy, who, even though he has his own salon at the Café Américain, never misses a chance to pop by La Rotonde to take advantage of Don Miguel’s popular draw in order to spout a few of his own diatribes, usually followed by a bit of self-aggrandizement. Such as now, when he has just arrived at the salon with an elegant, slightly cross-eyed lady on his arm, while Pablo is meeting in the private room with the vanguard of the Committee of Anarchist Relations. The first person he sees is José María Carretero, the young, prolific Spanish writer who signs his works with the somewhat immodest pen name “El Caballero Audaz.”
“Come to my arms, Carretero!” exclaims Don Vicente, with his enormous rain-barrel gut. Carretero lets himself be embraced, to the point of almost disappearing.
“How are you, Don Vicente?”
“Fine, fine, thanks. Have you read the Quotidien?” he asks, not bothering to introduce the woman on his arm.
“Yes, I’ve seen the interview. It seems you’re in revolutionary mode. Is that so?”
“Absolutely.”
“And what are you thinking of doing?”
“Why, what must be done: the revolution!”
“And how is that done, Don Vicente?” asks the Audacious Gentleman, with a certain disingenuousness, as if to belie his pen name.
“Don’t you play innocent with me, Carretero, open your eyes. Spain can’t go on like this, any way you look at it. And that’s just the problem: the people who should be doing something prefer to close their eyes and look the other way. What we need in Spain are more Strogoffs, you get me? People who are capable of weeping for their nation and saving the whole country’s sight, despite the hot irons that the bastards want to shove in their eyes. We have to wake people up, Carretero, get ’em j
umping. And I’m planning to do it, no matter what. I’ll hold the necessary meetings, I’ll write articles in the newspapers, I’ll distribute my pamphlet myself, if I have to …”
“And you haven’t thought about taking up arms?” the young writer interrupts.
Blasco pales a bit, and then bursts out in a great peal of laughter, which silences everyone around him. Then, becoming suddenly serious, he replies:
“Look, sir, you’re making a big mistake if you think I’m some kind of Capitán Araña, who’s going to embark a crew and then stay on the land. No, no, my dear friend. No, I’ll be on the front lines, you hear me? I’ll be the first to take a bullet in the chest!” Raising his voice, he concludes emphatically: “I’ve lived enough, and I don’t care if I die. I’m not afraid of them! I’m not afraid to fight, and I’m not afraid of death!”
A flurry of applause accompanies his closing words. Carretero excuses himself and goes to dine upstairs with a more cautious group of Spaniards, having decided to write a biting little exposé to take Blasco down a notch, which he will end up titling, “The Novelist Who Sold His Country Out.” But let’s leave Blasco, the Caballero Audaz, and their dialectical battles for now. Let’s go down these two flights of stairs, which lead, at the bottom and to the left, to the private room, where we’ve just heard the conversation between Pablo and Durruti and company. Because let’s not forget that La Rotonde is not just a haven for politicians and intellectuals who fight their revolution using letters to the editor and rhetorical devices, but also for true men of action, erudite anarchists who cherish more than anything the elegant lines of a Browning semiautomatic, the impossible beauty of a harmonica pistol, or the understated grace of a cachorrillo, the pocket pistol Larra used to commit suicide. So, while Unamuno and his ilk wage their paper war, the next table is usually talking about incursions, attacks, offensives, and putsches. But when things get serious, or there’s concern that a snitch or informant is in their midst, they go downstairs to meet in the private room at the bottom left.
“Fine, okay, I’ll do it,” Pablo finally gives in, although he’s still not very sure that a revolutionary incursion is the best available option. “When do you need it?”
“The date of the expedition hasn’t been finalized yet, it doesn’t depend so much on us but on the comrades in the interior, but the broadsides can be printed now. Well, as soon as we get the paper, of course.”
“And the money,” Massoni interjects, “Since, between Vivancos and Teixidó, we’ve spent everything.”
The accused try to protest, but Durruti nips the conversation in the bud:
“Please, friends, we’ve come here to make plans. Let’s leave the dirty laundry for some other time. Pablo, thank you for your cooperation, doubtless you will be a great help. I don’t need to tell you that this matter calls for the utmost discretion. We will keep in touch with you through Robinsón, if you like.”
And so, after shaking hands with everyone present and casting a dire look at Robinsón, Pablo makes his exit from La Rotonde. Meanwhile, in Don Miguel’s salon, someone’s just told a joke and the room erupts in strenuous laughter.
Safe to say, Pablo has now been inducted into the Orchestra of the Revolution.
IV
(1899)
“MY NAME’S ROBERTO OLAYA. BUT YOU can call me Robinsón,” said the boy, lifting his eyes from a book with all its pages cut.
Pablo and his father had arrived ten days beforehand in Béjar, one of the larger villages of the province of Salamanca. About fifty miles south of the provincial capital and surrounded by mountains, the village was often cut off from the rest of the world by deep winter snows, as was the case at the time of the Martíns’ visit.
“My name is Pablo Martín. But you can call me Pablo.”
The two boys looked at each other in silence. Robinsón was slightly younger, but he looked older.
“What’s that book you’re reading?” the boy from Baracaldo asked.
“Robinson Crusoe,” replied the boy from Béjar.
“Will you let me read it?”
“You can have it when I’m done with it. But don’t let my papa catch you.”
The boy’s father was the owner of the inn where the inspector and his son had taken a room, located at the uphill end of Calle Flamencos, next to the church of San Juan Bautista. This man had been a syndicalist in his youth, but an accident at work in the textile factory had left him without his left hand, and he had had to open the inn to make a living. He had a reputation in the village as an atheist and freethinker, and those really in the know whispered that he was a Marxist, a word that tended to put people ill at ease.
“Why can’t I let your papa see me?” Pablo asked.
“Because he doesn’t like this book. He says it defends slavery. But I’ve already read it three times!”
“Are you almost done with it?”
“Yeah, almost,” said the innkeeper’s son, showing Pablo the pages he had left to read.
Béjar was the last village that Julián Martín had to inspect before returning to Baracaldo to spend Christmas with his family. The municipality had eight primary schools (four for boys and four for girls) and the provincial inspector was planning to visit all of them before going home for vacation, leaving the schools in nearby towns such as La Calzada, Ledrada, and Candelario for the next trip. However, he did not plan for the tremendous snow that would fall just before his departure, leaving them cut off from the rest of the world, a snow that would take many days to melt and decades to fade from the memory of the people of Béjar.
“In any case,” said the boy called Robinsón, “with this snow I don’t think you’ll be able to leave the village until after Christmas, so you’ll have plenty of time to read the whole book.”
Julián sent a telegram to María to tell her about the situation, with the hope that he would soon be able to take Lucero across the mountain pass of Vallejera on the way to Salamanca. But the next day was already Christmas Eve, and it would be very difficult for them to reach Baracaldo in time for Christmas treats. The other guests at the inn were all in the same situation, so they decided to celebrate Christ’s birth together, telling themselves that sometimes it is better to be in bad company than alone, despite what the proverb says. When the word got around that there was a provincial inspector staying at the inn, he was appointed master of ceremonies, and Julián had no choice but to fulfill his duty and officiate the evening’s modest festivities. And it was that very night, a few hours before dinner, that the inspector’s son found the innkeeper’s son in the attic reading a book called Robinson Crusoe.
“Why are you hiding up here?” asked Pablo, who had arrived in the attic by following a pregnant cat strolling through the inn like she owned the place.
“This is my temporary lair. With all the snow I can’t get to my hideout,” Robinsón replied, mimicking the language of an adventure novel.
“And where is your hideout?”
“I can’t tell you that. At least, not right now.”
The two boys observed each other attentively in the dim light of the tallow lamp illuminating the attic space, a skeletal room filled with beams and rafters that to Pablo looked like the hold of an old pirate ship. Robinsón was sitting on an enormous, worn-out trunk, with a plaid blanket covering him from the waist down and the pregnant cat curled up on his lap.
“And when will you be able to tell me?”
“When you pass the test.”
“What test?”
Robinsón closed the book he was reading and released a sigh.
“What test do you think? The friendship test.”
“What’s that?” asked Pablo, who was not much of an expert on friendship.
But Robinsón did not reply, because a voice was calling from the stairs:
“Roberto! Where have you run off to, Roberto?”
The boy made a sudden hushing gesture. Surprised, the cat leaped from his lap and disappeared behind pile of wooden posts i
n a corner of the attic.
“Roberto! Robeeeeertoooo! If you’re in the chicken coop again, I’m going to take off my shoe!”
Robinsón tossed away the blanket and stood up, exposing the orthopedic device the doctors had placed on him to try to build the muscles of his left leg, which were atrophied due to a recent bout of polio.
“Here, get inside and make room for me,” he whispered, opening the trunk and putting out the lamp, “if my mama finds us here, she’ll thrash us good.”
They nestled into the darkness of the chest and heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Both boys held their breath when the door’s hinges creaked.
“I know you’re up here, Roberto!” the mother exclaimed. “Do you think I can’t smell the tallow smoke? But I’m not a fool, I’m not going to wear myself out poking around in the dark up here trying to find you. If you’re not in the kitchen in five minutes helping me peel potatoes, there’ll be no Christmas dinner for you!”
That said, she slammed the door as she headed back downstairs. Inside the trunk, Pablo and Robinsón could not contain their laughter. When they came out from hiding, it was as if they had been friends their whole lives.
“Sorry, I have to go help my mama,” said the innkeeper’s son as he opened the door to let in a little light.
“What about your hideout? When are you gonna show it to me?” the inspector’s son asked, his curiosity unabated.
“First you have to pass the test, Pablo. Don’t forget. Here, you can borrow the book for a while if you want. Anyway, I know the whole thing by heart.”
“Thanks, Roberto.”
“Robinsón, call me Robinsón,” the boy corrected him, and started down the stairs dragging his lame leg.
The Anarchist Who Shared My Name Page 8