“And of theology, Father. And of theology,” the Franciscan clarified.
“So between the two of us, we carried you here,” continued Father Jerónimo. “But we still do not understand how you were able to survive a bullet in the heart.”
“And Angela?” was Pablo’s reply.
“She is in good hands, don’t worry about her,” the priest lied. “But rest, my son, rest, there will be time to speak of her.”
And the two clergymen left the room.
Over the next few weeks, Father Jerónimo went up to the sanctuary every day to see the convalescent, and not a day passed that Pablo did not ask after Angela. But the answer was always the same:
“She is in good hands, do not worry. The sooner you recover, the sooner you will be able to see her.”
And so, in hope of seeing his beloved again soon, Pablo turned into a model patient: he obeyed Father Jerónimo’s instructions, took the medicine administered by Brother Toribio, and controlled his urge to smoke, since the injury had seriously affected his left lung. When he had enough strength, he asked for some paper and ink, and wrote a letter to his mother saying that he was doing well, that she shouldn’t worry, but that he was very busy with work and would not be able to come to Baracaldo for Christmas.
“How much longer do I have to rest?” was the question Brother Toribio had to field every time he came to treat the “impatient patient,” as he started calling him.
“As long as your body needs,” the Franciscan invariably replied.
And the young man’s body appeared to need much more care still, because as soon as he got out of bed and tried to walk he would start to asphyxiate, his head spinning, and he would have to get back in bed, exhausted and pale as sea foam. Christmas Eve arrived, and then Christmas, and then New Year’s Day; on Epiphany, Father Jerónimo went up to the sanctuary, entered the cell, and gave Pablo a parcel wrapped in brown paper. The pale, cool January sun came in through the little window, illuminating the room with diffuse light.
“What is this, Father?”
“A gift, what do you think? Go ahead, open it.”
It was a jointed wooden puppet with a thick string hanging from its waist, like a miniature reproduction of the rope holding Brother Toribio’s habit. When Pablo pulled the string, the doll’s arms and legs flailed up and down.
“I made it myself,” said the priest, a smile on his lips.
Pablo pulled on the string three times, absorbed in the puppet’s movement, until he finally lifted his gaze and looked at the man with the aquiline nose, of whom he had started to grow fond:
“Thank you, Father, but … I’m not a child. If you really want to give me a gift, tell me where Angela is.”
The cleric furrowed his brow and his smile turned into a sigh:
“Aye, my son,” he deflated on the only chair in the room. “It will never be doubt that drives us mad, but certainty. But, after all, I had to tell you sooner or later …”
A shadow of anxiety covered Pablo’s eyes.
“Angela loved you … loves you very much—” Father Jerónimo continued, looking at his hands, the fingers of which were writhing on his lap like a collection of small white worms.
“How do you know that, Father?”
“Because I was … I am her confessor,” said the priest, looking up to see the effect of his words. “And when she spoke of you, her eyes glowed with the flame of the purest love I have seen in my life—”
“Father, you’re frightening me,” Pablo interrupted him, his voice trembling, skeptical. “Why do you keep talking about Angela in the past tense?”
The fingers stopped their writhing and a thick silence took over the scene, interrupted only by the chaplain’s nervous throat-clearing. Almost a minute passed until he managed to open his mouth again, a minute that seemed an eternity to his interlocutor.
“Because Angela has disappeared,” he finally said. “She ran away from home on the day of the duel and no one knows where she is.”
Pablo sat up suddenly in bed, his face twisted by suffering both physical and spiritual.
“But she knows I’m here, right?”
Father Jerónimo shook his head.
“Only Brother Toribio and I know that you are here. Angela most likely thinks you died in the duel.”
“Goddammit!” Pablo lost his temper, jumping out of the bed and then doubling over in pain. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” he squealed.
“It wasn’t the right time, my son.”
“The right time? What do you mean the right time? Who knows where she’ll go now, if she’s even still alive! Where are my clothes, Father?” Pablo asked, making his way toward the door.
But he had only taken two steps before his eyes clouded over and his knees gave out. the last thing he saw before he fell to the ground and lost consciousness was the jointed puppet waving goodbye from the foot of the bed.
PABLO WAS NOT ABLE TO LEAVE the Sanctuary of El Castañar until Saturday, February 13, 1909, the feast day of Saint Stephen and Saint Hermenegild. Back on Epiphany, when he had first regained consciousness late in the night, Brother Toribio and Father Jerónimo had convinced him that it would be no use to throw himself into the search for Angela in his current physical condition. It had been more than a month since her disappearance and, although her family, the police, and the neighbors from Béjar had combed the whole area and alerted the nearby villages, they still had no information about the Gómez daughter. The possibility of a suicide was growing ever more remote, because sooner or later the body would have shown up somewhere. The most likely thing was that she had managed to flee on her own, perhaps taking a train to some random destination. On the other hand, the fact that no one had found Pablo’s lifeless body had left Don Diego and Rodrigo Martín disconcerted. When they commented on the strange situation to Father Jerónimo, the priest ventured, “Maybe the wolves ate him,” but he did not manage to convince the duelists.
Now, after five more weeks of convalescence, Pablo’s health had improved considerably and Angela was still missing. If anyone in the world can find her, he thought as he rose from bed on a frigid February morning, it’s me. And he decided, despite the snow that had fallen in the last few days, that the moment had come to begin the search. Although in truth he did not have the slightest idea where to start.
“Be very careful,” Father Jerónimo advised him, seeing that his decision to leave was firm. “If Don Diego finds out you’re still alive, God help us. Bundle up, and take the medicine Brother Toribio gave you.”
“Yes, Father, don’t worry about me. And if you hear anything about Angela, write me right away. Who knows, maybe she’ll end up coming back to Béjar.”
“Angela? I’d be surprised. You know better than anyone that she was sick and tired of this village, that she was only waiting for the day when you would come take her to live far away, the farther the better. Do you know what she once told me? She said if dreaming of you was a sin, she was sinning every night—”
“I have to find her, Father, so she’ll know I’m alive,” said Pablo, his voice shaking.
“Yes, my son, yes. Ite cum Deo.”
And the two men embraced. Outside, Brother Toribio was waiting in a wagon to take the young man out of the village hidden under some blankets.
“Pablo,” Father Jerónimo stopped him before he left the sanctuary.
“What?”
“I think you should keep this,” he said, taking from under his robe a small parcel covered in the same brown paper as the Epiphany gift.
“Another gift, Father?” Pablo asked, smiling.
But a shadow of worry was covering the priest’s face:
“I only hope it’s not a poisoned gift.”
Inside the parcel, cold and heavy like a corpse, there was a pocket revolver, the one Don Diego Gómez had slyly placed in Pablo’s hand when he left him for dead on the day of the duel.
IT WAS DINNERTIME WHEN THE TRAIN stopped in the station of Salama
nca. It had been three months since Pablo had left there ready to face a whole army, and now he was returning injured and defeated. He had asked Brother Toribio to leave him in Ledrada to buy a third-class ticket to the provincial capital. Not that he thought he would find Angela wandering around the bleak streets of Salamanca, but for the last few weeks of convalescence he had been imagining a thousand ways to start the search, and he had reached the conclusion that the most reasonable thing was to go first to the guesthouse where he had lived since his father died: he held out the hope that he had received some letter there, if not from Angela then at least from someone who could put him on the right track; and, in any case, he had to get his belongings … including the money he had saved and hidden under the mattress. Later there would be time to visit the office of El Castellano, where he had almost certainly lost his job, and ask for Ferdinando’s help; maybe he would be able to publish an article in the newspaper announcing Angela’s disappearance, however belatedly.
When he arrived at the guesthouse of Madam Crow, the old wrinkled one was exhorting the last diners to clear their plates and go to bed. Seeing Pablo enter, she made a sour face.
“Lord have mercy,” she murmured, and crossed herself repeatedly.
“I know I owe you three months of rent,” Pablo blurted out suddenly, approaching her, “but if you give me the key to my room I’ll pay you every penny.”
“You don’t have a room anymore, little sir,” the old woman grunted, pointing her finger like a pistol. “Do you think you can just appear and disappear as you please? Well you’re wrong.”
Two students stood up and left the room.
“Then just let me go in to get my things. Have any letters come for me?”
“I have your things and your letters in storage, little sir. But if you want them back you’ll have to pay me for the two months you left the room empty.”
“I’ll do just that, if you’ll only let me go in,” Pablo insisted, suggesting with his eyebrows that the money was in the room.
The owner seemed to hesitate a moment, then finally walked over to one of the diners, a young man with bulging eyes who was drinking an herbal tea in little sips.
“Mr. Gregory Cook,” the woman asked in a dripping tone, “would you be so kind as to allow this gentleman—”
“Not a worry, my lady, I shall accompany him myself,” the man said with a distinct English accent, taking charge of the situation. And after finishing his cup, he got up from the table and approached the new arrival with a certain affectation. “Follow me, please.”
They went up the stairs to the second floor and, upon entering the room, Pablo was petrified. Not because it stank of mothballs; nor because the room had been rearranged by the new occupant, giving it a decidedly bourgeois look; and also not because the top blanket (monogrammed G.C. in gold letters) was turned down with irritating care, ready to receive the prince of the pea; and also not because the proprietress had let the Englishman place hot water bottles under the sheets, something Pablo had never been allowed to do. Rather, it was because the old straw mattress hiding all of his savings had been replaced by a brand-new wool mattress.
“What happened to the old mattress?” Pablo managed to ask, his voice trembling.
“I asked the owner to throw it out, it was full of, oh I don’t know the Spanish word. Bedbugs,” the little man said with a very British combination of disgust and apathy.
“Holy goddamned shit …”
But the dandy was not at fault, so Pablo left the room, slamming the door. In the stairwell he ran into Madam Crow, who was coming up to collect her rent.
“So?” she asked, mistrustfully.
“What did you do with the mattress?” Pablo replied.
“What mattress?”
“The one I used to use before the Englishman moved into my room.”
“I sold it for four pence to a family of gypsies. So what?”
“So, what you sold them, goddamn it, was all of my savings and your two months’ rent! Now give me my things and stay here with your Mr. Cook.”
“Nothing doing, little sir,” the old harpy responded. “No money, no luggage.”
That’s when Pablo finally lost it. He took out the pistol Father Jerónimo had given him and pointed it at the innkeeper, though knowing it was not loaded:
“No more funny business, Madam Crow. Give me what’s mine.”
The old woman seemed more offended by the nickname than by the threat, but she did as she was told. She went to the reception and opened a double-doored closet. Inside was Pablo’s suitcase, full to the brim, and everything that had not fit inside: his books, his umbrella, and his father’s felt hat, as well as three letters that had arrived during his prolonged absence.
“I knew with those books you’d end up a bandit,” the papery old woman spat, pointing to a book by Bakunin.
But Pablo wasn’t listening. He leapt on the letters and inspected the return addresses, with growing frustration: one was from his mother, another from El Castellano, and the third from the Provincial Government of Salamanca. None of them appeared to carry any news of Angela, so he put on the felt hat, picked up the suitcase and left the guesthouse, not suspecting that the third letter was going to decide his path for him. He was badly injured, out of work, and the love of his life had disappeared, but the patria does not listen to excuses: Pablo had just turned nineteen years old, and he had been placed on the military draft list. The Provincial Government wished to inform him: the draft lottery was set to take place on the fourteenth of February—the very next day.
– 12 –
This Max was a svelte man, with a pale, bLuísh face. He had a heart condition, he said, and was at risk of dying at any moment. He had a union card from Barcelona, and he was an astute, friendly man. He always seemed to be amused by everything; he had seen many things, and he was an aficionado of cocaine. Max, it was said, brought some of the syndicalists to a brothel, where they drank and created quite a scandal.
PÍO BAROJA,
La Familia de Errotacho
MAX HERNÁNDEZ, “EL SEÑORITO,” MUST BE over age forty, some even say he’s over fifty, but he doesn’t look it in the slightest: his white, cleanshaven skin, his meticulously combed blond hair, his thin, surgeon’s fingers, his impeccable dentition, and his glowing smile, his turquoise blue eyes, his white, pin-striped suit, and his patent leather shoes make him appear younger than he really is. And while he claims that his heart is failing, he treats his suffering as a pretext to announce far and wide that he doesn’t give a damn about danger, which gives him a certain rejuvenating vitality, amplified perhaps by his fondness for cocaine. He is also distinguished by his loquaciousness and an uncommon gift for languages, which together with his disarming looks give him an extraordinary ability of seduction. He appears in Saint-Jean-de-Luz on Wednesday, a little before lunchtime, looking like a perfect dandy and sporting a cane with a mother-of-pearl handle. “It’s the best way to go unnoticed,” he says with a certain cynicism to the men who come to greet him and ask how things are going. His reply only exacerbates their impatience and nervousness:
“The thing’s just about ready, boys. Any minute now it’ll be time to cross the border.”
Yesterday, after the improvised meeting at the golf course, the revolutionaries returned to the village and dispersed into the twilight. The crypt keeper’s hut again showed its hospitality, playing host to another lost soul, just turned eighteen years of age, who curled up with Kropotkin next to the fire. Today, the morning went more or less the same as yesterday, and when El Señorito arrives in the village at noon, the leaders of the movement are gathered around the music gazebo choosing the three emissaries they will send across the border tonight to find out the actual situation in Spain, against the stubborn opposition of Juan Riesgo, who still thinks the idea is useless and dangerous. But Max’s arrival will completely disrupt his plans.
“It’s coming to a head,” Max repeats, faced with Juan Riesgo’s distrustfu
l sideways glance. “I’ve just arrived from San Sebastián, where the soldiers are ready to rise up when they receive the order. It seems that tomorrow Rodrigo Soriano will arrive from Paris to take charge of the matter.”
“And what the hell does Soriano have to do with all this?” barks Gil Galar, who considers all politicians to be potential dictators.
“Hey friend, it’s always good to have a politician on our side,” responds El Señorito, taking off his white leather gloves. “We cannot underestimate the influence politicians can have on society, and on the army, who are always more cooperative if they know there’s an ‘authority’ behind a movement like ours. Some even say that Romanones would be willing to take charge of a revolutionary government that overthrows the Directory, and that’s an option we can’t rule out—”
“That’s an option you can shove up your ass,” Gil Galar rants on, “We’re not going to risk our lives just so some damned duke can step in and take the reins. This is an anarchist proletarian revolution, get that into your head!”
“Fine, listen, fine,” Luís Naveira tries to calm their spirits with his fluty voice, “Let’s not get excited. The important thing is starting a revolution and overthrowing the dictatorship, we can talk later about how we’ll rebuild the country. In any case, Max, we are waiting to receive word from the interior to cross the border, because coordination is vital in cases like this. Now at least we know that things are about to heat up in San Sebastián.”
“And not only in San Sebastián, I’ve heard also in the better part of the Cantabrian coast, from Bilbao to Santiago de Compostela. And from what I’ve seen, most of the villages of Navarre and the Basque Country are ready,” El Señorito forcefully asserts. “The ideal would be to go to Hendaye and enter Spain via Irún, where we can meet up with the comrades from there, who are very well organized, so that we can all go together to San Sebastián.”
The Anarchist Who Shared My Name Page 24