The Anarchist Who Shared My Name

by PABLO MARTÍN SÁNCHEZ

  Outside the door, breathing on the windowpane, Eros looked on, buckling with laughter.

  – 7 –

  “From Paris and Soissons new details have been received regarding the purchase of weapons in France. A few weeks ago, the police were informed that a Spaniard who worked as a barber in Amiens had made an agreement with various workers employed in the Red Zone in the recovery of war materiel, negotiating with them the purchase of any weapons and ammunition they might find. Two Spaniards were detained; their stated names were Serrano Blas and Rodríguez Juan, and they declared that they acquired these munitions in order to sell them on the black market in Morocco. However, the police believe that these individuals are working for Spanish revolutionary forces.”

  El Pensamiento Navarro, 16 November 1924

  TODAY IS THURSDAY AFTERNOON, AND IN Marly, Pablo is recovering from three days of hard work. Torrential rains have destroyed the small dock on the pond, inundated the better part of the garden, and torn away some of the house’s roofing tiles, causing leakage indoors. Luckily, by Tuesday it was already starting to clear up, and Pablo has had a few rainless days to fix the damage. Also, the work has helped him keep his mind off what happened on the train, although he hasn’t been able to resist the temptation to go into town every night to see if he hears anything. But the name Vivancos doesn’t come up in any conversation or in any newspaper, so no news is good news, as his father used to say. It is already starting to get dark, and Pablo, after bathing in the pond and changing his clothes, walks down the road toward town with the idea of calming the rumbling in his stomach. He’d like to eat something hot and have a good glass of red wine—back home he would have called it “tinted wine,” vino tinto, which goes to show that reality depends on the lens through which you view it. What Pablo doesn’t know is that this metaphor will soon come back to haunt him.

  Madame de Bruyn’s bistro is full of people at this hour, mostly workers who have finished their work day and are making sure to get in some elbow exercises before they go home to find dinner ready. Most are crowded around the bar, trying to stretch out the best moment of the day. But at the back of the place there are two large wooden tables, with benches on both sides, where a few diners with no one to make them dinner at home are stuffing their faces with the delicious fare that Madame de Bruyn serves for a song.

  One such dish is this gargantuan hochepot the waiter has just placed in front of Pablo: a stew of various meats and vegetables, identical to the plates in front of the two guests sitting opposite and talking enthusiastically. At first, the typesetter pays them no mind, busy as he is allaying his stomach’s urgent complaints, but as his hunger subsides, his brain starts working and a few words filter in through his ears. One of them is “Amiens.” Another is “police.” And when the term “anarchistes espagnols” is muttered, Pablo almost chokes.

  The two diners don’t know all the details of the story. All they’ve heard is that yesterday afternoon near Amiens the police thwarted an illegal arms deal, catching two men in flagrante delicto trying to buy a war arsenal from a couple of workers from Reims. When they were arrested, they claimed that they wanted the weapons to sell them as contraband in the war in Morocco, but the police suspected that it was more likely part of a plot hatched by Spanish anarchists. In this, they are onto something: the two men detained near Voyennes, on the road between Amiens and Reims, are Juan Rodríguez, aka “El Galeno,” and Blas Serrano, his constant companion, assigned to the task of obtaining weapons for the revolutionary expedition.

  The fatal outcome was set into motion last week, when El Galeno received Pablo’s handoff of the letter assigning him the task of procuring weapons. Within a few days of setting about the task, he found the first offer—a Belgian war salvager had just found a German cache near Damery containing several rifles, cartridges, and grenades in decent condition. They were prepared to sell the rifles and grenades at the requested price, and would throw in the cartridges for free since some were damp and the powder was probably bad by now. Rodríguez contacted Vivancos and they decided to make the buy immediately so as not to lose this great opportunity. So Vivancos traveled to Amiens on Monday to pass El Galeno the money, an operation that the police very nearly thwarted and which only succeeded because Pablo happened to be on that train. Some people thought that the gendarmes’ intervention was not a coincidence, and the rumor gained momentum yesterday afternoon, when a patrol unexpectedly showed up at the planned site of the swap.

  The meeting had been planned for seven o’clock in the evening. Rodríguez and Serrano were leaving Amiens in a meat truck, a rattling Renault. They arrived half an hour early at the meeting place near Voyennes. The salvager, a man of few words, so blond that he looked like an albino, arrived twenty minutes later. With a gesture he invited them into the truck, and they accompanied him along a dirt road leading into the woods. Soon they reached a house in ruins. El Galeno and Blas Serrano exited the vehicle and entered the house behind the albino, who lifted a few planks from the floor and opened a trapdoor to the cellar. Down there, in crates, there were over one hundred Mauser rifles, several dozen grenades, and a few boxes of ammunition. They assessed the inventory by flashlight and handed over the corresponding money. Without saying a word, the three men started loading the truck. It took several trips. When they stepped out of the house with the final load, the police were waiting for them, pistols drawn.

  Pablo still doesn’t know the whole story, but he leaves his stew half-eaten and asks for the check. The diners’ conversation has ruined his appetite, because he suspects that the arrests in Amiens have a direct relationship with the Committee of Anarchist Relations, and more specifically with the man on the train to whom he has passed an envelope and a briefcase in the past two weeks. Pablo doesn’t know what the former said, or what the latter contained, and he still doesn’t even know the name of the man with the medical bag, but if it turns out that he’s one of the two who have just been arrested, and he ends up singing, Pablo’s future looks very dark indeed. The police took his information on the train, and it’s possible that his name is already circulating around the commissariat. But one needn’t be so pessimistic! It’s also possible that the man from the train won’t squeal, that he’ll take the fall. Because, as the two diners at Madame de Bruyn’s bistro said, the arrested men claimed that they wanted the weapons to sell on the black market in Morocco. You’ll just have to wait until tomorrow, little Pablo, when you get back to Paris and can learn more about what has happened. For the time being, though, everything seems to indicate that the authorities are hot on the heels of the revolutionary movement.

  That night, Pablo has trouble falling asleep, and not only because of indigestion brought on by the stew—though that doesn’t help. When he finally manages to fall asleep, nightmares disturb his rest. He dreams of railroad tracks beneath his feet and leading off into infinity. At the start of the journey, he sees a sign reading “Salvation, after all.” He starts to walk, first slowly, then faster and faster. Along the way he sees more signs: “Hurry. Salvation is in your hands,” and “Not much farther. Salvation is up to you.” Pablo starts to run. Another sign: “Salvation, 2 km ahead.” Then another at 1 kilometer, then 500 meters; he’s choking, he can’t take it anymore; then 100 meters, then 50, 20, 10 … Then there is a sign that says “We’re sorry, Salvation has been postponed,” and he turns just in time to see a train coming straight at him. He wakes up screaming and drenched in sweat. He goes out of the house and washes his face in the pond. The nearly frozen water jolts him, but still he goes back inside to try to get some sleep, suspecting that troubled times are coming. In this, he is correct: he will never return to Marly or to the pond house.

  THE NEXT DAY, PABLO FALLS ASLEEP as soon as he boards the train. He makes the transfer at Lille and again falls into a stupor. After a while, the conductor wakes him up, the same man who defended him against the suspicions of the gendarmes. Pablo feels tempted to ask him what happened at the end of the other da
y, but at the last moment he bites his tongue. Arriving in Paris, he buys a newspaper as soon as he exits the Gare du Nord, but before he can even read the headlines, he is attacked by a wiener dog who sullies his trousers with mudprints.

  “Damn it, Kropotkin!” Pablo complains, waving the newspaper. “What are you doing here? Where’s Robinsón?” he asks, fearing the worst. Kropotkin makes to pounce on him, but this time Pablo manages to dodge the attack with a pirouette worthy of a toreador. “What is it? What do you want?”

  Kropotkin runs off toward a narrow street that disappears behind the station. Pablo follows, but by the time he turns down the little street, the dog has disappeared from sight. When he’s about to give up and turn around, he hears someone talking to him, though he still sees no one.

  “Psst, Pablo, over here!” It’s Robinsón’s voice, and it seems to be coming from behind a pile of trash at the end of the street, next to a half-built house. On approaching, Pablo sees a head poking out through a window on the second floor, half-camouflaged by a wooden scaffold. The head belongs to Robinsón, with Kropotkin by his side.

  “What are you doing up there?”

  “Shut up and get up here, quick! Climb the right side of the scaffolding.”

  Pablo climbs up to join his friend, who is acting like a conspirator, which, truth be told, is exactly what he is.

  “What’s going on?” Pablo asks as he climbs through the window. The building looks like it’s been under construction for a long time, as if the work had been interrupted due to lack of funding. Inside, someone has set up a bench made of a plank and two bricks.

  “A lot of things,” says Robinsón, making room for Pablo on the bench.

  “Good or bad?”

  “Mostly bad. We’re going to have to proceed with more discretion now.”

  “Oh, great. They’ve caught Vivancos, haven’t they?”

  “No, hell no. He almost killed himself jumping off the train, but he managed to get away. Of course, the Committee thanks you for everything you did. Too bad it won’t amount to anything.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they nabbed Rodríguez.”

  “Who?”

  “El Galeno. The guy you passed Vivancos’s briefcase to.”

  Robin tells Pablo the whole story of the detention of the barber from Amiens and his companion.

  “But do you know if they ratted?”

  “Everything seems to point to no, that they’re holding up under the police pressure and maintaining the story that they wanted the guns to sell in Morocco. But we don’t know how long they’re going to hold up. So you can imagine how morale is in the Committee.”

  “Yeah, I can imagine.”

  “And on top of all that, there’s the matter with the telegram.”

  “What telegram?”

  “The one that arrived yesterday from Spain. From Barcelona, to be precise. It said, ‘Everyone to the border. Revolution about to explode.’”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah, you can imagine the situation. We tried to have a meeting at the International Bookstore, but word of the telegram had gotten around, and we couldn’t fit everyone there. In the end we held the meeting in the basement of the Labor Exchange. Some people wanted to head off to the border right away, but others said that the telegram was very suspicious, that our people in Spain would never have been so explicit. Finally, after a tremendous debate, the cautious voices won out, and this morning Jover and Caparrós left for the border to find out what’s going on firsthand. Jover went to Portbou and Caparrós to Irún. From there they’ll send a coded telegram to inform me of the situation.”

  “What’s the code?” Pablo asks, more automatically than out of real curiosity.

  “My, don’t you have a lot of questions, Pablito!” Robinsón replies with a mischievous smile. “In theory, only those of us on the executive committee are supposed to know the code. Actually, it’s really simple: if the telegram says ‘Mama stable,’ it means that the comrades on the interior aren’t yet ready to start the revolution; if the message is ‘Mama serious,’ it means that they are ready and that we need to go to the border and wait to start the incursion, and if the telegram says ‘Mama has died,’ it means that the revolution has started and we need to go to Spain as soon as possible.”

  “Slim pickings,” is Pablo’s terse reply. “How do you plan to have a revolution without weapons?”

  “Well, the cock-up in Amiens doesn’t mean we don’t have any weapons. The Committee has its own reserves, and there are still a few unspent rounds. If it comes down to it, we can risk trying to bring the thousand rifles that Los Solidarios bought in Eibar after hitting the bank in Gijón. They’re stored at a secure location at the port in Barcelona. But it would be best if we didn’t have to play that trump card yet. It seems that there’s a Spanish gun runner here in Paris who’s prepared to sell us a decent arsenal, and tonight we’re going to approach Vicente Blasco to ask him for money. Also, the comrades in the South are working on obtaining equipment. That’s one of the things I’ve been talking about with Max lately.”

  “Who’s Max?”

  “The guy in charge of propaganda and recruiting in the southwest. They call him ‘El Señorito.’”

  “I see. So the Committee’s suspicions about him haven’t been confirmed?”

  “Well, he didn’t give me such a bad impression, despite his aristocratic pretensions and his cocaine habit. Got to admit it’s the best disguise to keep the police from thinking he’s an anarchist, no doubt about that. Also, the way things are, we can’t afford to be too fussy about it. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “Well, I don’t like the sound of it. I met a guy in Barcelona during the Tragic Week; he claimed to be a sculptor named Emilio Ferrer, but turned out to be a police informant.” Pablo sighed, rubbed his eyes. “Hey, so whatever happened to Leandro?”

  “He stayed in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. He says he’s fallen in love with the village, but I have a feeling the real story is he’s fallen in love with a village girl.”

  “And what’s happening with the broadsides we were supposed to print?”

  “I have no idea. I suppose that Teixidó still hasn’t rounded up the paper.”

  “So if the telegram comes saying you have to go, you’re going to leave without the posters.”

  “That’s true. Hey, couldn’t you print them with the paper at the printing shop? Just black out the letterhead.” Seeing Pablo’s sour face, he says, “Hey, don’t take it like that! Anyway, will we be seeing you tonight at Blasco and Unamuno’s shindig?”

  “We’ll see, Robin, we’ll see,” says Pablo, disappearing through the window to head to La Fraternelle, as Kropotkin wags his tail and lets out a pair of woofs: bye-bye.

  VII

  (1904–1906)

  WHEN THERE’S NO BREAD, CRACKERS WILL do. If bread is passion, crackers are mere stand-ins: some are given to gambling, others to drink; some devote themselves to God, some to lost causes. Pablo was inclined to writing love letters and cultivating revolutionary ideas. The former grew ever more daring and received ever more fervent responses. The latter, ever more dangerous, were nurtured as the work at El Castellano put him in touch with “the reality of the present moment,” as Ferdinando put it, in a stupendous pleonasm. It was there, on Calle Zamora, as he was emptying wastepaper baskets and trying to dodge Obdulia’s attentions, that he first began to hear about workers’ rights and about the law that had just been passed in Spain guaranteeing a day of rest on Sundays.

  “Maybe someday it’ll apply to us,” said Fulano, the optimist.

  “My eyes will never see the day,” said Mengano, the pessimist.

  “Well, the Times doesn’t come out on Sundays, and it hasn’t led to any weeping or gnashing of teeth,” Zintano chimed in on a hopeful note.

  It was also in the office of El Castellano that Pablo became familiar with the ideas of communism and followed Russia’s 1905 revolution with great interest, from the terrible
events of Bloody Sunday to the October Manifesto and the creation of the first soviet in Saint Petersburg, presided over by a young Leon Trotsky.

  “Those Russians have lost their minds,” muttered Mengano, who was a Carlist.

  “They’re more dangerous than you think,” warned Zutano, who was a liberal.

  “We’ll see if that revolution doesn’t spread through all of Europe,” said Fulano, who was elated. But the revolution went up in smoke; while the tsar had agreed to create a constitutional government, the truth is that he reserved for himself the power to veto any law and limited the vote to the most privileged classes. This was enormously disappointing for Pablo, who had been rooting for the revolutionary side as he followed the Russian conflict with the eager anticipation of Spanish soccer fanatics or people who obsessively track the changing fortunes over the stages of the Tour de France. Feeling dejected, he traded his red jersey in for a black one the day Ferdinando appeared at 28 Calle de Zamora and spoke to him about anarchism.

  “Berkman has been released from prison,” said Ferdinando, his spotty cheeks stretching with the syllables, as he entered the room and made his way through the cigar smoke. “Do you know who Alexander Berkman is, boy? No? Then grab a pencil and paper, this New York Times article needs to be translated and my eyes are tired.”

  Alexander Berkman had become one of the most famous American anarchists after his failed attempt in 1892 to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, the bloodthirsty executor of the program developed by Carnegie Steel Company to repress its workers’ strike; now, after fourteen years of incarceration, he had been released onto the street, having turned into a veritable icon of the libertarian left, whose most radical arm advocated tyrannicide and regicide as the straightest path to their objectives. If you don’t believe me, just ask the twenty-fifth president of the United States, William McKinley, assassinated at the start of the century by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz.