They drag Pablo at gunpoint along the Carretera de Francia, his hands tied behind his back and his jaw clenched as he tries to hide the secret of his injury. At least he has been spared the humiliation of having the buttons torn from his pants, as happened to some of his other comrades, forced to walk with one hand on their neck and the other holding up their trousers. Entering the village, the first lights of dawn are already climbing up the mountains, and the windows of the houses are filled with the drowsy, worried, or curious faces of those villagers who are still at home. In the Calle de Altzate, a little girl steps out onto a balcony and salutes one of the carabiniers, who tells her to go back inside. But the child does not obey, and she keeps looking agog at the limping gladiator, as if seeing some unexpected greatness in his downfall.
Shortly thereafter they arrive at the barracks of the carabiniers, which welcomes them with the familiar motto “Morality, loyalty, valor, and discipline,” engraved on the door, over the insignia of the rising sun that is the emblem of the house. In the receiving room, the corporal and the sergeant sign the admittance sheet, deposit the detainee’s confiscated backpack, and lead him to a waiting room, where they replace the wire digging into his wrists with a pair of rusty handcuffs, leaving him in the charge of two youths recently graduated from the carabiniers’ academy. In the waiting room there is a bench covered with a filthy, worn-out oilcloth, but they require Pablo to remain standing with his face to the wall, and he does not even have the spirit to protest. To his back he feels two rifles pointing at him, as well as the steady gaze of one of the carabiniers, the younger of the two, still beardless, with his eyes wide open so as not to lose sight of him for a single instant. This makes Pablo think of Julianín: who knows what has become of his former assistant? And from Julianín his thoughts jump to Leandro, the Argentine giant … Maybe they managed to cross the border together, and are now safe on French soil. And Robinsón, what has become of Robinsón and Kropotkin? What would his friend have thought when he came back to the palomeras and found him gone? But a shout distracts him from these digressions, a stentorian shout that suddenly resonates from the room next door:
“Bring me the new one!”
Pablo turns his head and the two young carabiniers gesture with their rifles to tell him to walk, and bring him to the interrogation room, somewhat bigger than the last room and less decrepit, though no one would think to call it comfortable. In the center of the room there is a wooden table with a rickety chair on the side closer to the door, and a plush green easy chair on the other side, in which sits Feliciano Suárez, lieutenant of the carabiniers of the section of Vera, who has recently been appointed as the military investigating judge. Next to the window, breathing out mouthfuls of smoke from a recently lit Partagás cigar, is Don Veremundo Prats, the captain of the carabiniers who has spent the night coordinating the search and capture of the seditionists, with the cooperation not only of over one hundred civil guards and carabiniers having arrived by automobile from the nearby settlements of Sunbilla, Lesaca, and Santesteban, but also members of the local Somatén militia, including a good number of the inhabitants of Vera and of the neighboring farmsteads. In the back, on the right, half-hidden behind a typewriter, a typist indolently observes the entry of the detainee.
“Sit down,” orders the investigating judge, without even bothering to look him in the eye. “Take off his handcuffs.”
The beardless boy does as he is told, with nervous and terribly cold hands, while his companion never stops aiming his rifle at Pablo. The lieutenant takes a little tin from a box and with a gesture tells the detainee to dip his index finger in the black, gelatinous mass it contains, and then place it on a sheet of paper on the table.
“You can wash, if you like,” he tells him, pointing to a rag above the spittoon, a burlap rag that appears to have already cleaned several hands today. But Pablo prefers to wipe his finger on his pants, though he does not have time to be too thorough, because they quickly put the handcuffs back on him. “What is your name?”
“Pablo.”
“Pablo what?”
“Martín Sánchez.”
The stenographer records his words like a mechanical echo. A fan hangs from the ceiling, its blades woven together with spider webs.
“Age?”
“Twenty-five,” Pablo replies without hesitating for an instant.
“Profession?”
“Typesetter.”
The stenographer lifts his eyes from his machine, trading his usual indolence for a brief moment of curiosity.
“Religion?”
“None.”
“Ay, another one. Put ‘lapsed Catholic,’” Don Feliciano says to the secretary. “Place of origin?”
“I come from Paris.”
“But you are Spanish.”
“Yes, from Baracaldo.”
“Aha. And what business do you have in Vera?” asks the lieutenant, leaning over the table and looking the detainee directly in the eyes for the first time.
“You’re the ones who brought me to Vera.”
“Listen, don’t be a wise guy,” Don Veremundo Prats suddenly interjects from over by the window, pointing his cigar at Pablo. “You’re being asked what you were doing when you were arrested. Answer!”
“I had just crossed the border, on my way to Bilbao, where I was going to visit my mother and my sister, who live there.”
“Fine, you can take him away,” the investigating judge orders. “Put him in cell number 6.” Turning to Don Veremundo, he muses, “At this rate we’ll have to start putting them in two by two.”
Passing in front of the waiting room, Pablo can see two men facing the wall, monitored by two carabiniers, and while a shove from his guard keeps him from double-checking, he would swear that one of the detained is Casiano Veloso, the leader of the Villalpando clan who barely two days ago was happily frolicking at Madame Alix’s brothel. Pablo is led in silence down a long corridor, after which a few stairs descend toward the cells, from which emanates an unpleasant smell of sewer or latrine that he cannot detect. It is surely the gloomiest, dankest part of the building, barely lit by a dirty lightbulb that hangs from the ceiling in the main room, around which separate cubicles are arrayed, according to the claustrophobic penitentiary system of cell distribution. Under the light there is a table, where a guard sits nodding off. Hearing the three men enter, he suddenly snaps to attention, showing a scar running from his left cheekbone to his right jowl. It is not for nothing that they call him Splitface.
“Empty your pockets and put the contents on the table,” he says to the detainee with unnecessary vehemence, using the informal address in a condescending manner, as the beardless boy removes the handcuffs. “The belt and the shoelaces too. We don’t want you getting any stupid ideas.”
Pablo has no choice but to obey, although for a moment he imagines taking off his belt and using it like a whip to attack the carabiniers. But it must be the fever, which has already started to cloud his judgment, because otherwise why would he have such fantasies when it is obvious that there is no possible escape?
“The money too?” Pablo asks, after putting his passport, pen, tobacco pouch, and matches on the table.
“The money too!” barks Splitface, whose countenance seems to confirm the theories of physiognomy.
The beardless lad then proceeds to search him, and, feeling his pants pockets, discovers the blood soaking his right thigh.
“This man is injured,” the novice carabinier announces, somewhat surprised.
“It’s nothing,” Pablo snaps. “Just a scratch.”
“We should get a doctor,” insists the lad.
“I said it’s nothing,” Pablo cuts him off, staring into his eyes. “Just finish searching me and leave me in peace with my scratches.”
“Whoa there, we’re the ones giving the orders around here,” the sentinel warns him, brandishing a rubber truncheon. And, after a few seconds of hesitation, he instructs the young carabinier: “Hurry up and f
inish searching him, then into the hole, jelly roll. If the wise guy wants to bleed to death, I won’t be the one to stop him. Which cell does he go in?”
“Number 6,” blubbers the beardless boy.
“Signed, sealed, and almost delivered!” exclaims Splitface, with a chuckle.
Having completed the operation, the jailer takes a rolled-up mattress and a filthy blanket from beneath the stairs, and hands them to the detainee along with an outdated newspaper, not to cultivate his wayward soul but to wipe his bodily waste. Then he opens the grilled door of cell number 6 and with a gesture invites him to enter, if one can speak of invitations in such a situation. The door creaks loudly and the key squeals as it turns like a rusty garrote. The cubicle is even smaller and narrower than Pablo had imagined, and the darkness is nearly total, because the only light it receives comes from the dirty lightbulb out in the room passing through a tiny peephole in the door, three thin slits in a row. There is also a hatch in the lower part of the door, through which the prisoner can receive his food without needing to open the cell, but this hatch is closed and can only be manipulated from outside. As his only company, in a corner, he can barely make out the inevitable commode, which others call a crapper, made of thick, curved planks of wood held in place with iron rings, where the incarcerated may deposit his number ones as needed, and also number twos, without risk of leakage. When the footsteps of the two carabiniers fade away up the stairs, Pablo hears a sob in the adjacent cell, but before he has the presence of mind to try to communicate with his neighbor, Splitface’s voice resounds:
“You! If I hear you grumble again, I’m gonna make mincemeat outta you, you hear me? And the same goes for the rest of you!”
A thick silence falls over the inmates, and Pablo has to stifle his desire to know who his companions in captivity are. However, even if he were able to speak with them, in all likelihood he would not even try, because the most sensible thing is surely to give the impression that he does not know any of the five revolutionaries who were detained before him and placed in cells identical to his own. The first to arrive was José Antonio Vázquez Bouzas, whom we saw flee the skirmish and who was captured by the carabiniers responsible for the death of Luís Naveira. A while later they brought in Francisco Lluch, the deserter of the regiment of Sicilia who came to Spain to see his dying father (cell number 2). The roosters were waking up as Tomás García and Justo Val arrived, both natives of Aragon living in Biarritz, the only brave men from the group of Abundio “El Maño” Riaño who dared to cross the border, aside from the unfortunate Abundio and the nephew of the priest from Lesaca (cells 3 and 4). And shortly before Pablo’s arrival, Eustaquio García was brought in to keep the rats company. This is the young man from Soria unable to control his weeping (cell number 5). Unaware of this information, but perhaps suspecting it, the former typesetter of La Fraternelle unfurls his sleeping mat, leaving one of the ends rolled up to serve as a pillow, and he stretches out on it, covering himself with the blanket and trying to control his shivering. Despite the wound, which is starting to get infected, and the roaches and lice creeping all around him in the cell, and his anguish before the uncertain future that awaits him, and the discomfort of the dungeon in which they have just locked him, he quickly falls asleep, not even waking up a few minutes later when Casiano Veloso and Ángel Fernández arrive, both from the Villalpando clan, and are both placed in cell number 7, the last free cell. And he barely wakes up when, after a few hours, they bring him a refreshment in the form of a cup of re-brewed coffee (with a flavor somewhere between chicory and dishwater, but with the virtue of being something hot to drink), whereof he takes a few sips before falling back asleep. It will not be until midmorning that he finally comes to consciousness, with his body stiff and his injured leg numb, when a familiar voice in the central room wakes him:
“Che, don’t bust my balls! The photo goes with me to the grave—” but Leandro cannot finish his sentence, as a rifle butt to the kidney brings him to his knees.
Pablo struggles to arise, and goes to the peephole, but the three narrow gaps are angled up toward the ceiling and he cannot see what is going on.
“I don’t know how it works in your country,” says Splitface’s voice, “but here rules are meant to be followed. Let’s see that photograph … Mmm, not a bad looking little lady, she can keep me company while I guard you scumbags.”
“Son of a bitch,” this time it is the voice of the former guardsman Santillán that Pablo hears on the other side of his cell door, followed by another blow of a rifle butt and a shout that is not so much of pain as of wrath.
“Alright, alright, party’s over,” the sentinel says loudly, “Finish searching them and let’s finally throw these rats in their goddamn pigsties. No blankets or mats for them, we’ve run out.”
It is then that Pablo’s cell door opens and they shove Santillán inside. He has just enough time to catch a glimpse in the bare bulb’s dirty light of the silhouettes of Leandro and Julianín, guarded by half a dozen pissed-off carabiniers.
XVII
(1913)
THERE ARE VARIOUS STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCING memory, but techniques for the cultivation of forgetting are poorly understood. Time heals all wounds, some say. Including heartbreak. Sure. And in the meantime? In the meantime, Pablo said to himself, the best thing to do is to put some distance between yourself and your sorrow. Especially if you are also being pursued by the police.
In Madrid, Sancho Alegre was going to be interrogated, incarcerated, judged, sentenced to death, and pardoned by Alfonso XIII, but by the time that happened, Pablo Martín and Vicente Holgado would be ten thousand miles away. After the failed regicide and the chance encounter at the door of the Amelia Inn, they seemed to have developed a silent agreement: if fate insisted on uniting them, the most reasonable thing to do would be to follow its plans. At North Station they took the train to Irún, where they arrived near dawn, with just enough time to hire a smuggler who would help them cross the border. Once in France, they had no problem reaching Bordeaux, whose port was the point of embarkation for various ships, merchant boats, and transatlantic liners.
“I’m going to America,” said Vicente, gazing at the sea. “And you?”
Pablo took a few moments to reply. They had sat down at the end of the pier, and it was starting to get dark. The idea had crossed his mind, too, but it seemed crazy. It’s one thing to forget, and another to travel to the end of the world. He tried to imagine what kind of life he could have in America, but he could not. Maybe it would be better to stay in France, to go looking for Robinsón and become a naturist, or a vegetarian, or whatever; or maybe to stay right there in Bordeaux, why not, waiting for better days when he could go home to be with his mother and sister. But then, with no warning, he had a vision of Angela in the arms of another man, and a knot formed in his throat. Madrid was still definitely too close. He needed to gain some distance in order to cleanse himself thoroughly. In the fog that had started to lift, Pablo looked at Vicente, who was still staring at the horizon, and remembered the old proverb his father used to say: in case of doubt, movement is always better than stillness, because if you hold still, you might just be on a scale being weighed with your sins. He stood up, sighing, gripped the Velo-dog pistol he had been planning to use on the king of Spain, and threw it as far as he could into the sea.
“I’m going too,” he finally said, determined to start a new life.
Within a few days, they managed to find work as waiters on a transatlantic liner with a promising name, the Victoria, of the Transamerikanische Linie, which was transporting first- and second-class passengers, as well as third-class, reserved for the poorest immigrants hoping to find a better life in the land of opportunity. The imposing two-chimney steamship had come from Hamburg, weighed fifteen thousand tons, traveled at a speed of twenty-one knots, and carried an initial crew of eighty men, gradually increasing as they took on new passengers at port after port: Amsterdam, The Hague, Bordeaux, Bilbao, La Coruña, an
d Lisbon, then heading for New York and ending the trip in Buenos Aires. And although neither Pablo nor Vicente had ever been on a steamship, their stubbornness and courage finally convinced the captain, an old sea wolf who appeared to have leapt from the pages of a novel by Conrad or Melville:
The Anarchist Who Shared My Name Page 37