Falp i Plana furrowed his brow almost imperceptibly, and observed the recently arrived young man with a certain suspicion:
“You must mean naturist. A very interesting trend, of course, although a bit shameless, don’t you think? It’s one thing to live in communion with nature and quite another to walk around in your birthday suit … But to my knowledge nudism has yet to arrive in Spain. What did you say your friend’s name was?”
“Roberto, Roberto Olaya, but he goes by Robinsón.”
“Very appropriate,” the doctor smiled again. And then, as if he had suddenly remembered something, he went to the frizzy-haired secretary. “Escolti, Eulàlia, no li diu res aquest nom?”
“Oi, it tant, doctor: és el que va dir aquella noieta tan mona de fa uns mesos i que a vostè li va fer tanta gràcia. Encara el dec tenir apuntat per aquí …”
Pablo tried to understand what they were saying, but these fine people’s Catalan was Greek to him.
“Justa la fusta!” exclaimed the founder of the Vegetarian League, clapping his hands together.
“What is it, doctor?”
“No, nothing,” said the man, dismissively. “Just that two or three months ago a young woman came by here asking about a certain Robinsón. Curious, no?”
But curious was not the right word for how Pablo felt about it. His eyes opened wide as saucers and his lower lip started to tremble.
“Are you alright, young man?”
“Eh … yes, yes. What did she look like?”
“Who?”
“The girl.”
“Oh, her. I don’t know. What did she look like, Eulàlia?”
“Very pretty. A morena, rather dark. Big eyes.”
It’s her, Pablo thought, filled with joy, it has to be her.
“And what did you tell her?”
“About what?”
“About Robinsón.”
“Oh, nothing. Told her I never heard of any Robinson other than Crusoe. She apologized, thanked me, and left. I didn’t even have time to ask her name.”
Pablo opened his mouth to say something more, but he decided to bite his tongue. This was the first news he had had of Angela in a long time, and although it was no guarantee that he would find her, at least it meant that she was alive and had been in Barcelona. It was even possible that she was still in the city.
“And now, young man,” the doctor interrupted his thoughts, “you’ll have to excuse us, we have things to do. Leave me an address where I can find you. If I hear anything about your friend, I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Pablo said, filled with hope.
And the last thing he saw before leaving the room was the secretary’s smile, as bright as a freshly sliced head of lettuce.
THE DAY THAT PABLO FINALLY EMBRACED Robinsón again, a bomb had exploded on the Calle de la Boquería. He heard the detonation as he was walking down Las Ramblas on the way to the Estación de Francia, and he saw the look of fear on the faces of the passersby. But he did not stop. Maybe on the train I can find out what happened, he thought. And he was not mistaken. At the entrance to the station, a group of workers was commenting on the event: a pipe full of dynamite had exploded next to Estabanell Orthopedics, leaving various clients injured, afflicting the already afflicted.
That same morning, Dr. Falp i Plana had summoned Pablo, who had spent a few days wandering all over the city hoping to find Angela, but with no results. It seemed that a member of the Vegetarian League had confirmed that a group of German naturists had taken up residence on the Costa Brava, hoping to proselytize in Spain the doctrines of Élisée Reclus and Richard Ungewitter:
“Who knows, maybe your friend is there,” the doctor suggested when Pablo arrived. “What we don’t know is the exact location of the camp, or commune, or God knows what it is. Near Blanes, apparently. You’ll have to go there and ask. Let’s hope it’s not as hard to find as the Atlantis of mossèn Cinto.”
Remembering the fallen poet, the doctor’s eyes grew moist, and Pablo ran out of the Palace of the Vicereine to buy a third-class ticket to see his childhood friend.
Blanes was the first village of the Costa Brava, with its little stone houses that appeared to defy the name the Romans had given the place, blanda being Latin for “smooth.” Since it was Wednesday, the village was filled with workday bustle, although the splendid sun that adorned the firmament tempted everyone to indolence. Pablo approached the little fishing port, but when he asked about the naturist commune they answered him with furrowed brows and suspicious looks, a hostile attitude that told him that he was on the right track. It doesn’t matter, he thought, if I have to I’ll stay on and live here until I gain their trust. But he did not have to go so far, because in the middle of the afternoon he crossed paths with the only person in Blanes whose tongue the cat had not gotten: the village idiot.
“Excuse me,” Pablo inquired, “can I ask you a question?”
The man was seated on the sidewalk, trying to confound an orderly parade of ants scouting for food: he was licking his finger and drawing lines across the ants’ path, erasing the scent trail left by those that had gone before, producing disorder among the followers. The idiot looked up and squinted in the sunlight.
“Whatchoo waaaan?” he said, stretching out the final syllable as he lifted his hand to his forehead to shade his eyes. His bottom lip was wet and drooping.
“I’m looking for a naturist commune.”
“A whaaaaa?”
“A group of people who live in communion with nature,” Pablo replied, quoting Dr. Falp i Plana.
“Ya gimme a kiiiiiiisss?”
The poor man was clearly not in full possession of his wits.
“Never mind. I’ll leave you to your ants,” Pablo gave up, turning around.
“If ya gimme a kiss, I’ll brin’ ya theeeeere,” he heard the village idiot say behind him.
“What?” Pablo turned around.
“Tony’ll brin’ ya theeeere, Tony knows where they aaaare, but Tony wants a kiiiiiiiss.”
“You mean if I give you a kiss you’ll bring me to the naturist commune?”
“Tony don’t know what that iiiiiisss, people says Tony is as good as bread and as dumb as a dried chestnuuuut, but if you give him a kiss Tony’ll brin’ ya where you’re looking fooooor.”
Pablo thought about leaving the matter there, but then perhaps this dimwit really knew the location of the commune. And after all, he wouldn’t lose anything by giving him a kiss; if it ended up being a wild goose chase, at least he would bring a bit of joy to this poor man, who was obviously starved for affection.
“Alright then,” he said. “I’ll give you a kiss, but only after you bring me there.”
The man’s face lit up like a child’s on Christmas morning, and he jumped up from the sidewalk clapping his hands. Without another word, he started walking toward the outskirts of the village, with the sea to the right and the hills to the left. When they had passed the last houses, he took a path snaking into the woods above the precipitous coastal cliffs. They walked in silence for a while, with the song of crickets as background music. Finally, they stopped next to a massive rocky promontory, which surpassed even the tallest pines in height.
“This is iiiiiit, I wan’ my kiiiiiss.”
“What? I don’t see anyone.”
“Liiiisten,” said the man. And standing there hushed, they heard children’s voices in the distance. “They’re on th’other side of the rooooock. Gimme my kiiiiss.”
Pablo smiled like a proud father and gave the man a sincere hug, topped off with a loud kiss on the cheek. A cherubic glow came over the idiot’s face, and a thin string of drool hung from his lower lip. It had been years since anyone had kissed him, as he stank like hell, where the greatest punishment the damned must suffer is neither burning pitchforks nor lakes of fire, but the putrid, nauseating stench of their own corrupt souls. Pablo did not realize it, but his left arm had emerged from the embrace stamped with the wet seal of hap
piness.
He climbed up the promontory with considerable effort and, reaching the top, he felt like the first discoverers of El Dorado must have felt: down below, in a bend in the coastline flanked by pine-covered hills and the crystalline waters of the Mediterranean, a group of about twenty people were sunbathing in the buff. There were even a few children, who were splashing about in the sea while their mothers did gymnastics on the beach. A few yards away, a piñon pine leaning precipitously over his head, an elder with toasted skin was addressing a handful of men wearing bowler hats. Among them, Pablo could make out his friend Robinsón, despite the latter having let his beard grow long, his chest now covered with red hair. The first thing he thought was that he should turn around and come back later, in the evening, when this uninhibited troupe would hopefully have occasion to cover up, be it only to ward off the cold. But then he remembered the reason that had brought him there, and he said to himself that if he’d gone through the ordeal of kissing a slobbering idiot, he wasn’t about to become too prim to walk up on a gathering of unclad naturists. It was then that he saw Robinsón walking a few yards away from the group of men to play with a dog that had just emerged from the water. Suddenly and for no apparent reason, one of his father’s frequent sayings came to his memory, something like “the shortest distance between two points, when there’s an obstacle in the way, is a curved line.” So he decided to walk around to try to reach Robinsón, taking care not to tumble from the cliffs and to avoid being discovered by the others. He skirted the steep cove in a C-shaped path and, coming near to the group, he could hear the tanned old man extolling the benefits of the sun for a long and healthy life, his Spanish pitted with gutturals:
“Why fill your body with dangerous drugs when you’re ill, when the sun sends us the best remedy every day? When we offer up our naked bodies to the sun’s rays for hours at a time, its fire burns off the thousands of invisible animals that live in our blood and on our skin, destroys the poison in our veins, and brings us health and strength—”
“So why did Homer say that one doctor is worth many men?” asked a gray-haired younger man with earrings in both of his ears, looking like a seventeenth-century pirate.
The old man clicked his tongue:
“You must know, Paco, that even Homer’s genius dozed off from time to time. As Engels said, ‘The proof of the pudding is in the eating,’” the old man quoted in English.
“What does that mean?” asked a stout, hairy companion.
“It means, Manel, that you can tell if the pudding is good by how it tastes. Wouldn’t you all agree that you feel better since we started coming to sunbathe here at the cove?”
The men all nodded, and Pablo continued his way around the edge of the rubble, trying to get as close as possible to Robinsón, who was still playing in the sand with his dog. Getting a look at the creature, Pablo thought he recognized Darwin, the water spaniel his friend had had in Béjar the last time they saw each other.
“Pssst,” he tried to get Robinsón’s attention, but the sound was lost in the sea breeze and the crash of the waves. Not even Darwin turned to look, hypnotized by his master’s caresses. Finally, Pablo picked up a pebble and tossed it with perfect aim, hitting Robin’s bowler hat. Robinsón looked at the sky, took off his hat, examined it with confusion, and muttered a few words, just when another pebble hit his back. Then he turned around, perceived his childhood friend, recognized him, opened his mouth in astonishment, leapt to his feet, and shouted at the top of his lungs:
“Pablo!!”
Twenty heads turned at once, first toward Robinsón and then to where he was looking. And although it may be hard to believe, the truth is that Pablo felt more naked than ever before in his life.
– 14 –
On the night of November 6 of this year, a few groups of peasants crossed the French-Spanish border, comprising a total of around seventy, coming from Saint-Jean-de-Luz, where they had convened, with a handful among them leading the way, carrying automatic pistols and a good deal of ammunition, with the aim of starting a revolutionary movement.
La Voz de Navarra, 5 December 1924
IF IT IS TRUE THAT IT is possible to have a revolution without heroes but not without martyrs, right now at the golf course there are seventy-odd men destined to join the pantheon of revolutionary martyrs, although most of them would prefer to think of themselves as heroes. Not all the revolutionaries are present; several have abandoned ship at the last moment, such as Perico Alarco and Manolito Monzón, who have mysteriously disappeared. Furthermore, not all present are revolutionaries, because the group has been joined by more than one man whose only aim is to get into Spain without going through customs, due to not having his papers in order or being wanted by the police, such as Francisco Lluch, a deserter from the regiment of Sicily who wants to reach Eibar to see his dying father. It may seem outlandish, but most of them are dressed in suits and ties, as though even the business of revolution called for presentable dress (just ask Robinsón, who persists in wearing his bowler hat). Only those gifted with foresight or pragmatism have traded their suit for a corduroy jacket or a thick, high-necked sweater. But all of them do have a good coat to keep out the cold, and some have even brought a raincoat, because although the rain appears to have stopped, an army of black clouds is still arrayed menacingly across the sky.
The group of men has gathered in a circle around a large trunk and two crates, recently opened by Juan Riesgo, who has arrived to distribute guns and to bid the expedition farewell. The smaller crate contains a shining assortment of about fifty semiautomatic pistols, mainly Stars, Brownings, and Astras, although “shining” might be putting it a bit too poetically, because some of them are older than the men who are going to use them. The other crate, slightly larger, is full of packs of bullets of various calibers, mostly 9 or 7.65 mm.
“Anyone who’s never used a gun before, wait till the end,” says Gil Galar, starting to distribute the pistols, while Bonifacio Manzanedo takes care of distributing the corresponding ammunition, and Pablo takes advantage of the opportunity to distribute a few bundles of broadsides among the revolutionaries.
By his side, Luís Naveira opens the trunk and takes out two full doctor’s kits containing plasters, antiseptic gauze dressings, small bottles of iodine tincture, bandages, packets of cotton, thread, needles, scissors, and a few pills and creams. Since he used to practice medicine, he keeps one of the kits and gives the other to Robinsón, who in turn gives it to El Maestro, his vegetarian friend, arguing that he only believes in medicine from mother nature. Naveira also takes a few electric flashlights from the trunk, as well as five or six compasses, various Michelin maps of Southern France and Northern Spain, two or three spools of rope, and even a few opera binoculars, which he distributes among the leaders of the expedition.
It is almost six in the evening when the distribution process is done. Since some of them were already carrying, it turned out that there were enough pistols for everyone, except for four or five who prefer not to take them because they don’t know how to use them; on the other hand, some receive a double ration, such as the ex-civil guardsman Santillán. Juan Riesgo and those who are staying behind to wait for Durruti say goodbye to their companions, along with those who are hoping to meet up again tomorrow on the other side of the border, and depart carrying the empty trunk and crates. The regiment then divides into five small groups of twelve to fifteen men, each led by one of the leaders of the incursion: the exalted Gil Galar, the veteran Santillán, the explosives expert Bonifacio Manzanedo (who some say is carrying a pineapple bomb in his duffle bag, which is untrue), the doctor Luís Naveira, and an Aragonese snake-oil salesman known as “El Maño” (a nickname that rhymes with his real name: Abundio Riaño), who will lead the group from Bordeaux, where he used to earn his living selling various elixirs and hair-growth tonics. Ideally, they would have formed even smaller squadrons, and if they only formed five it’s not due to a lack of men willing to lead them, but rather because the
re were not many who know the way into Spain. In fact, out of all the revolutionaries who spent those anxious days in Saint-Jean-de-Luz waiting for the telegram with instructions to cross the border, only three have stated that they are capable of guiding the expedition across the mountains, so at the last minute they have had to convince two smugglers from Ciboure to act as guides, in exchange for a small sum of money. So the plan, as Luís Naveira explains once the groups have been formed, is the following:
“Here’s the plan, comrades. The departure of each of the five groups will be staggered, but we won’t head toward Irún, as some have proposed, because it would be almost impossible to cross through Hendaye without being noticed. What we’ll do is go up Mount Larrún and cross the border at different points that are less closely watched, between markers 10 and 48, and then we’ll meet up again at the towers of Napoleon’s Pass in Spain. From there we’ll all go down together into the first village, which is called Vera. Don’t get separated from the guides, always follow their directions, and walk in silence, in tight groups. It’s possible that one of the groups will run into a stray pair of carabiniers who are unaware of the popular uprising and are still guarding the border. If this happens, we’ll invite them to join the group and come with us to liberate Spain.”
“What if they don’t want to?” someone asks.
“What if they attack us?” asks another.
“If they seem resistant, or if they try to stop us,” Naveira concedes, “we’ll subdue them with blades. Only in case of absolute necessity do we use the firearms, so we don’t draw attention from any other carabiniers that might be on the mountain. Once we get to Vera we’ll have to assess the situation. If the uprising has already started in the village, we’ll join the revolutionaries and follow their instructions. If not, we’ll go to the foundry there and distribute the posters among the workers, and try to convince them to join us. Then we’ll go to the Civil Guard barracks and invite them to join the revolution, or to give up and hand over their weapons; if they resist, we’ll take the barracks by force, which shouldn’t be too difficult since it’s unlikely that there will be more than two or three pairs on duty.”
The Anarchist Who Shared My Name Page 28