“Come on, let’s go to the casino, we have to celebrate. I got left alone setting Monday’s little poem, and later I’m going to the cabaret to see that beautiful little American gal … But hell, you know my motto: Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow!”
When they had two glasses of cognac in front of them, Pablo started to explain to Ferdinando what had happened, leaving the reporter stunned and muttering:
“That’s better than the feature on Manzoni we ran a few years ago …”
After a few glasses and more explanations than he would have preferred to give, Pablo floated the possibility of putting a notice in the newspaper announcing Angela’s disappearance.
“It won’t do any good,” said Ferdinando.
“Why not?”
“Because her parents already ran one.”
In fact, while Pablo was recovering from the terrible injury suffered at the Fountain of the Wolf, Don Diego Gómez had searched heaven and earth for his daughter, whose disappearance had been announced in all of the newspapers of the province, including El Castellano.
“If you put out another announcement now saying that you’re looking for her, she’ll probably think it’s her family trying to trick her into coming home. What’s more, it would let her father know that you’re alive …”
The truth is that this world-weary man was totally correct, but Pablo was not ready to give up:
“Unless we put out a coded announcement.”
“A coded announcement?” asked Ferdinando, raising his eyebrows.
“Yeah, an announcement in a code that only she will be able to decipher.”
“You’ve read too many novels, boy. Fine, give me an example of a coded announcement,” said the reporter sarcastically.
“I don’t know, something like, ‘Heartless vampire desperately seeks cannibal anthropologist.’”
Ferdinando nearly choked on his cognac.
“Yeah, buddy,” he said when he had recovered, “and underneath we can put: ‘Please meet at the printing office of El Castellano.’ Have you lost your mind or what? Maybe the newspaper is run by a blind man, but he’s not an idiot. An announcement like that would attract everyone’s attention!”
A few patrons of the casino looked curiously at the strange pair formed by the journalist and his protégé.
“But wait, let me think,” Ferdinando continued, seeing Pablo’s desperate face. “Next week is Carnival, right? Maybe we can make it look like an advertisement for costumes for the masquerade ball … What if we put: ‘For sale by owner, vampire and cannibal disguises for Carnival?’”
Pablo’s face lit up:
“Great idea! Or, just put: ‘For sale by owner, heartless vampire costume for masquerade ball.’ That will be enough. If Angela reads that, she’ll know it was me that posted the ad.”
“If you say so … I don’t know if I want to know what vampires have to do with all this, but I’ll see what I can do,” said Ferdinando. “Oh, and let’s not forget: this makes us even Steven for the time you saved my ass in Barcelona.”
Pablo smiled like a heartless vampire:
“Thanks, Ferdinando. So, do you know anywhere I could spend the night?”
“Do I know, man, what is knowing?” the reporter started philosophizing, his spirits lifted by drink and chatter. “Alls I know is I don’t know nothin’, and that there are only two types of people in the world who are interesting: those who know absolutely everything and those who know absolutely nothing … But since you asked, I’ll tell you that you can stay at my house. Only thing is, I only have one bed.”
“I don’t want to bother you, Ferdinando.”
“Then stay in the office, if you like. Tomorrow’s Sunday, and no one will come in until the afternoon. Also, if you get up early you can go to the town hall to see the lottery.”
“Oh, it’s true. If they send me to Africa, I swear I’ll desert.”
“That sounds like a shoddy future for dear Angelina, if you find her, that is,” Ferdinando remarked.
“Angela, her name is Angela,” Pablo corrected him.
“Angel or devil, what’s the difference, at the moment of truth they all drag us to hell.”
The conversation ended after midnight, and Pablo wasn’t the only one who gained from it; Ferdinando got his own benefit by finding the inspiration for the poem for the front page of El Castellano: “Fidel has been called up / so he curses his cruel luck / and complains. / Me, however, what I’d give / To swap and have his life to live!”
AT A QUARTER PAST SEVEN IN the morning, the shouts of the conscripts disappeared down the road on the way to City Hall. Pablo washed his face in a washbasin he found in the director’s office and left the headquarters of El Castellano wearing his backpack. As he reached the Plaza Mayor, a few groups of youths were crowded around the doors of City Hall, smoking their last cigarettes before they submitted to the whims of the goddess Fortuna. The good humor that had trickled through their singing a few minutes before now seemed to have melted like snow on the ground: now they were all sighs and worried faces. A maintenance worker in spotless livery came out to announce that the drawing was about to begin, in a solemn public session.
Pablo dragged his bag up the stairs, grunting with the exertion, and came to a standing rest in a corner of the spacious room where the draft lottery was to take place. A man with a shining bald pate was presiding over the drawing. At the time of Pablo’s arrival, he was filling a kettle with balls marked with the names of the 224 conscripts, before the watchful gaze of those brave or mistrustful enough to attend the lottery. Once the process was complete, the time came to fill a second kettle with the 224 numbered balls corresponding to the total number of conscripts. It was then that the “innocents” were brought in: two boys, no more than ten years of age, dressed as if to receive their first communion. One of them, the darker one, went to the kettle containing the named balls; the other, a blond-haired little cherub, stood next to the kettle of numbered balls. Then, the shiny-pated man rolled up his sleeves like a magician or a butcher, and placed one hand in each kettle, stirring their contents with the pomp and circumstance of one who knows that he is shuffling the cards of fate. A few people in the crowd thought they read his lips saying, “Alea jacta est,” and before you knew it the dark boy pulled out the first ball and gave it to a man with an ample mustache who was acting as stage manager:
“Miguel Sáez Aguña,” the man read aloud, in an unexpected tone of pity.
“Number seventy-seven,” the president responded after receiving the numbered ball from the cherub.
“Shit!” exclaimed a young man, who then stormed out of the room as the municipal secretary wrote his name and number in a ledger with a red cover.
“It could have been worse,” Pablo heard someone near him say. “At least he won’t be sent to Morocco.”
The commentator was right: the balls determined not only who would have to pay the so-called “blood tax,” but also their final destination: the lower numbers would be deployed to the overseas territories, the middle numbers somewhere here on the peninsula, and the higher numbers to the training corps, which is to say, the reserves. Therefore, the lower the number on the ball, the greater the likelihood of not returning home, as the popular wisdom went circulating all over the village that morning: “A boy conscripted, not yet married / he’ll soon be dead and left unburied,” a mother would recite, her heart full of worry. “Ten lads drafted, but only five / lucky ones come back alive,” her neighbor would reply. And so on, enough to fill a book of proverbs.
After ten minutes of drawings, ball number one was pulled, corresponding to one Ángel Preto Beltrán. The unlucky lad left the room pale and stiff as a board, as some tried to cheer him up and others made the sign of the cross, as if he had been condemned to death. A half hour later, the highest numbered ball came out, number 224, and Agustín Arenzana Morán let out a cry of joy as he ran out and down the stairs to go celebrate at the nearest tavern.
“Unpatriotic
swine!” shouted a shriveled neighbor who saw him crossing the square leaping for joy.
Pablo’s ball was one of the last to come out, and it corresponded to number 66. A number that got him out of going to Africa, but not out of military service. As he was leaving City Hall, someone invited him to join the lottery celebration, but he declined the offer with no further explanation. Three weeks later, there would be the classification procedure for new recruits, but actual enlistment would not take place until August, and he would not know his final destination until October or November, so Pablo still had a few months to look for Angela before he had to fulfill his duty.
For the first few days, he wandered the streets of Salamanca with no fixed objective, hoping to run into her around every corner, while he waited for the announcement posted in El Castellano to bear fruit. Sometimes he found himself yelling his beloved’s name on the banks of the river Tormes, or on the outskirts of the city, or even at the doors of the cathedral, until a neighbor threatened to call the police. Some nights he slept in the newspaper office, some at Ferdinando’s house; he also spent some time at a print shop belonging to some anarchist friends, and he even slept a few times under the Roman bridge, his desperation growing ever worse. When he had spent his last penny, he decided to pawn his few belongings, including his suitcase. The only things he didn’t hock were his father’s hat, his revolver, and the good-luck amulet that the old fortuneteller had given him in the cabin in the woods.
So it was that the first Sunday in March arrived, and Angela still hadn’t shown any sign of life. If she had seen the announcement, she hadn’t deciphered it. But the most likely thing is that she hadn’t even come across a copy of the paper. In fact, El Castellano was distributed only in Salamanca, and no one could be sure that Angela was still in the province. She could be in Madrid, or in any other city in Spain. Or even farther, Pablo thought—in America, in Africa, or in Oceania, surrounded by Jivaros or cannibals. There was also the possibility, though it made him sick to think of it, that she was at the bottom of the sea with a sunken clipper ship for a tomb. It was more to get these dark thoughts out of his head than because he had abandoned the idea of deserting that he showed up to fulfill his obligations as conscript number 66. They measured his height and weight, gave him a physical examination and found the wound on his left chest, freshly scarred over. Pablo said that it was a recent injury, and the two technicians appeared to be satisfied. They only asked him if he felt any discomfort, to which he replied that he saw stars when he sneezed and that he had difficulty breathing when climbing stairs. “That happens to everyone,” they said, laughing. “Quit smoking and you’ll see how much better you feel.” Of course, if he had had money to bribe them, it wouldn’t have been difficult for them to declare him unfit for service.
After the examination, Pablo was definitively enlisted in the draft of 1909. And although he still had a few months left to find Angela before he’d be called into the ranks, he realized that if he wanted to find her he would have to do more than wait in Salamanca for a miracle to happen. If only Robinsón were here with me, he thought. And a light went on somewhere in his brain.
“You’re going to Barcelona?” Ferdinando asked when he heard the news. “When?”
“Tomorrow. Well, first I’ll go to Baracaldo to see my mother and sister, to make sure they’re well. But then I’m going to Barcelona.”
“And what’s going on with Angelica?”
“Angela, her name is Angela.”
“Fine, whatever her name is. You’re not hoping to find her in Barcelona?”
Pablo smiled for the first time in many days, because a glimmer of hope had appeared on the horizon. He did not understand why he hadn’t thought of it before, but now it seemed clear that if Angela had left Béjar thinking him dead, she would have gone to look for Robinsón without thinking twice. And where was Robinsón? Until further notice, in a nudist commune on the Catalonian coast. However, he preferred not to share his thoughts with Ferdinando, and merely answered with the force of a poet or a conqueror:
“If she’s not in Salamanca, I’ll have to go look for her, even if I have to go to the ends of the earth.”
– 13 –
We waited impatiently for the telegram. A man who has lived through such moments of shared fever can never forget them. We all knew that when the telegram came, we would have to amass at the border and battle our way across against the border police. Deep down, everyone knew that we were going to be up against numerous, well-organized forces, better armed than ourselves, and that many of us would end up paying with our lives for our revolutionary deed, even if it succeeded. But what did we care? Liberty is worth many a life.
VALERIANO OROBÓN,
statement recorded by Abel Paz in Durruti en la revolución española
WHEN PABLO LEAVES THE BROTHEL, NIGHT has already fallen. The neighborhood is deserted save for a stray cat mewling on the sidewalk next to the street’s lone working gas lamp. Pablo walks in that direction and takes out his pouch of tobacco. A damp breeze comes in from the sea, deadening his muscles and making even the mechanical task of rolling a cigarette difficult. He buttons his overcoat and tugs his beret down over his ears. He hears a distant gramophone, its music arriving muffled and laconic. For a moment he considers going to the square to see if he can find Max, but he suddenly feels tired. Also, the clear image that had appeared to him as the mulatto girl offered him drugs is starting to dissipate, and he no longer feels so certain that El Señorito is the same apocryphal syndicalist he met in Barcelona in 1909. He takes a few drags from his cigarette as he observes the cloudless sky, amusing himself by picking out the major constellations, as his father had taught him in the fields of Castile. There is Ursa Major, the great bear, looking like a wheelbarrow; a little further is Ursa Minor, a twin of her mother but smaller; and at the apex of the celestial dome, Pablo’s favorite: Cassiopeia, with her zigzagging silhouette forming a slightly exaggerated M. “M for Martín,” his father would say, and Pablo believed him. With these nostalgic thoughts, he finally makes his way toward the cemetery along inhospitable streets. He feels a strange emptiness in his stomach, but it is not hunger. The scene in the brothel, which now seems blurry and decomposed, has left him ill at ease and without his protective crystal eye.
As he reaches the cemetery, the moon illuminates the niches and crypts, creating a disquieting atmosphere. Pablo sees that there is light in the decrepit crypt keeper’s hut, and he crosses the maze of graves hastily. But when he approaches, he hears shouting inside: one male voice, another female. It is Leandro and Antoinette in a heated argument. Pablo hangs back, not knowing what to do. Then something strikes the back of his neck, something small and round. He turns around and sees no one, but another projectile strikes his arm: it is a cypress cone, known to botanists as a “galbulus,” though the dead don’t know that. And neither does Pablo, who can only scoop the hard, smooth berry from the ground and ask in an anxious voice:
“Who’s there?”
But the only reply is another volley of galbuli. Pablo’s eyes dart left and right in the moonlight, and he is on the verge of a panic attack when he hears Kropotkin yipping.
“You fuckers! Bastards!” he shouts at Robinsón and Julián, who emerge from behind a large tomb, dying from laughter.
“Shhhh! Don’t shout, there are people sleeping,” Robinsón snickers, gesturing at the array of graves.
“Will you tell me what you’re doing out here?”
“Playing hide-and-go-seek, if you will,” Robinsón answers. “Killing time while those two sort out their problems, which they’ve been at for almost an hour. And where the hell did you run off to, you rascal? We were looking for you all afternoon.”
“Around.”
“Around?”
“Yeah, around, following El Señorito to see if I could remember where I recognized him from.”
“And?”
But Pablo has no time to respond, because the door of the shack opens and
Antoinette stomps out, slamming the door behind her. Seeing them standing there, she runs in the other direction, sobbing. The three men and the dog enter the hut to find Leandro hunched over in a chair, plucking the petals from a chrysanthemum.
“Come in, boys, come in,” he says without looking at them, letting out a sigh. Since none of them dares to ask, he offers the explanation: “Heart or revolution … c’est tout!”
And judging by how Antoinette left, it is clear what the Argentine has chosen.
TIME CAN DILATE, BUT NOT ETERNALLY: if it stretches too far without contracting, it can break. And something has broken in Saint-Jean-de-Luz when Robinsón, Leandro, Julián, and Pablo arrive at noon to the music gazebo in the center of the square. Last night, they stayed up talking until dawn, but Pablo never found the right moment to share his suspicions about Max “El Señorito” Hernández, overwhelmed by the labyrinthine discussions about whether soccer would eventually beat out bullfighting as the national sport, whether ombre is more or less bourgeois than bridge, or if wooden pipes are superior to clay ones. Only when they put out the kerosene lamp and started to hear Leandro and Julián snoring did Pablo work up the nerve to whisper to Robinsón:
“Hey, Robin.”
“What?” replied the vegetarian, half asleep.
“I think I know who El Señorito reminds me of.”
“Who?”
“A police informant I met in Barcelona a few years ago.”
“No kidding? Are you sure?”
“Yes. Well, no. I don’t know.”
“Which is it?”
“It was a long time ago—”
“Look, the best thing would be for us to get some sleep and gather our strength,” Robinsón yawned. “Tomorrow we’ll talk to him and ask him for some explanations, what do you think?”
“Yes,” Pablo responded, though unconvinced, while his friend’s snores joined the off-key chorus.
So this morning, the four night owls have had a hard time getting out of bed and have arrived at the square later than usual, finding it occupied by seventy or eighty very nervous Spanish revolutionaries. But El Señorito is not among them, as Pablo soon discovers.
The Anarchist Who Shared My Name Page 26