“Clearly.”
“Not to mention that they might be bringing some of us to the Civil Guard barracks.”
“Let’s hope not,” whispers Santillán knowingly, having seen how his former colleagues tend to treat prisoners, sometimes shackling detainees to the wall with cruel, short chains so that the prisoner cannot lie down on the ground, can barely change position at all.
Soon they hear the sharp sound of a trapdoor opening and the jailer’s voice ordering the prisoner in the first cell to step back from the door. It seems they are starting to distribute lunch.
“Hey, it was Leandro and Julián who came with you, right?” Pablo asks rhetorically.
“The Argentino and the kid, yeah,” nods Santillán.
“Did they catch you all together?”
“Yeah, we were about to cross the border when two pairs of carabiniers showed up. We hid in an abandoned mine, but the bastards saw us go in and waited outside to hunt us like rabbits—”
“Silence, I said!” bellows Splitface, as cell number 6’s mess hatch opens. “Get back from the door!”
Two plates enter, one after the other, sliding along the floor pushed by a rifle barrel and accompanied by bread crusts and rusty spoons. Still steaming on the plates is a stew of indiscernible color, holding various chunks vaguely resembling cabbage and potato, which the prisoners devour with insatiable voracity.
“You can keep the plates and spoons in your cells to keep you company,” the guard tells them, growing hoarse with so much shouting. “You shitbags are gonna start thinking we’re your maidservants. Oh, and I recommend you hold your bowels until tonight, because we only empty the latrines once a day around here. Wouldn’t want you thinking this is the Ritz.”
The prisoners empty their plates in silence, wiping them with the last little bits of bread. But while many of them are still hungry afterward, no one dares to protest, not even Leandro or Santillán, who are not used to biting their tongues. Maybe they think that it won’t do any good, maybe they’re still smarting from the rifle butts and they don’t want a second helping of kidney pain. Some try to sleep to regain their strength, but despite their fatigue, their digestion, and the darkness, few of them manage: it is a well-known fact that Morpheus does not gather those with a troubled conscience into his arms.
Not even a half an hour has passed when another detainee is brought in, under the charge of the same two young carabiniers who brought in Pablo this morning.
“You missed lunch. Should have been more punctual,” Splitface sneers at him, barely able to hide how much he enjoys tormenting the prisoners.
The new one is one of those who crossed the border with the group led by Bonifacio Manzanedo, Juan José Anaya, a baker from Madrid with a certain resemblance to Douglas Fairbanks, who just starred in the American film The Thief of Bagdad and is already a celebrity, especially after marrying Mary Pickford.
“Empty your pockets and put everything on the table,” the guard recites begrudgingly or grumpily, tired of repeating the same thing over and over and annoyed that no one has come to relieve him. “Look at Mr. Revolutionary,” he appears to cheer up when he sees the detainee put a silver cigarette case on table. “I’d like to know who you stole that from. And what’s this? Let’s see … Oh là là!” he exclaims à la française when Anaya takes from his pocket a newspaper clipping showing a photograph of the Italian anarchist Mario Castagna with a patch over his eye. But his joking mood suddenly evaporates when the carabiniers frisk the Madrileño and discover in the lining of his coat a recipe for making explosives. “Well I’ll be damned! Where should we put this son of a bitch?”
“In cell number 3, with prisoner Tomás García,” replies the beardless carabinier, after consulting some papers collected in the interrogation room.
“Put him in the hole!”
But the unexpected voice of Lieutenant Feliciano Suárez, investigating judge of the facts, leaves them all petrified:
“One moment!” he says, entering the guardroom, the stench of which turns his face to a disgusted grimace, followed by the stenographer and a short, tubby man buried under a tripod and various pieces of photography equipment. “We are going to proceed to the anthropometric profiles,” he explains snootily, “and, given the circumstances, we decided it would be better to do it here so we don’t have to bring the prisoners up and down. Any objections?”
“No, sir,” mutters Splitface, “whatever you say.”
“Understood, then. And you?” he asks the chubby little man, who has already started to unload his gear. “Can you shoot them in these conditions?”
“I guess so, if there’s no other way—”
“Then get on with it, get to work. Start with this one,” he says, pointing at the newcomer, “and then go on to the others. And you, Gutiérrez,” he finally says to the stenographer, whom he is leaving in charge of monitoring the operation, “come up and tell me when they’re done. If any other prisoners arrive in the meantime, I’ll send for you.”
Having spoken, he leaves the dungeon quickly, like a pearl diver returning to the surface after a few minutes holding his breath underwater, trusting that the photographs, once developed, will be the finishing touch on the brilliant anthropometric profiles, in which, after noting the detainees’ names and those of their parents, as well as the date and place of birth, profession, and current address, Don Feliciano will write the description that he finds most fitting for these men: “Pistoleros.”
The short, chubby photographer removes his beret and places it on the table. His fingers, marked with magnesium chloride burns, show surprising dexterity as they mount the tripod and set up the photographic camera, a German Voigtländer from the Great War. Then he takes out a leather pouch and pours some flammable white powder on a metallic strip, which has a handle and a tinder starter.
“Stand with your back to the wall,” he says to Juan José Anaya, who with his Hollywood leading man looks is the most appropriate to start the photography session, despite being in the sights of two carabiniers who would be glad to gun him down. “Very good, don’t move.”
And then, as he pushes the button triggering his Voigtländer with his right hand, he activates the tinderbox with his left, igniting the magnesium powder and producing an intense flash, which penetrates through the cracks in the cell walls, followed by a cloud of smoke and the strong smell of burnt magnesium. A few ashes float in the air, falling gently like black snowflakes.
“Very good. Turn for a profile shot,” says the portly little man, unperturbed and with unquestionable professionalism, as he reloads the film. And barely giving Douglas Fairbanks time to strike a prisoner’s pose, the camera shoots again. The plates will memorialize him with his hair smooth and short at the temples, fleshy lips, a regal nose, and pointed chin, dressed in a thick coat hiding a blood-soaked shirt.
Ashes are still floating when they put Anaya in cell number 3, without a bedroll or a blanket, and at the same time bring out his cellmate, Tomás García from Zaragoza, who appears with his hair disheveled and his lips puckered, bundled in a jacket and with a handkerchief around his neck. He is immortalized in two photos before being returned to his cage. After him, starting with cell number 1, the process continues: Vázquez Bouzas, who will pass into posterity stooping, his gaze distant, with his pencil-thin mustache and his incipient baldness, dressed in a pale waistcoat and tie; Francisco Lluch, the deserter from Asturias, with prominent jaw and nose, furrowed brow, dark suit and tie; Justo Val, a wiry, lazy-eyed laborer from Huesca, wearing an overcoat and a knit sweater, sharing a cell with Leandro Fernández, our hulking Argentine, who cannot stop himself from provoking Splitface when they take him out of his pigsty, with his preternatural cheekiness:
“If it turns out good, you’ll have to send me a copy at home,” he says to the photographer, perhaps knowing that the guard will show some restraint in the presence of Don Feliciano’s secretary.
After Leandro comes the young Eustaquio García from Soria, wh
o has caught the contagious sadness and affliction of his cellmate, the even younger Julián Fernández Revert, Julianín to his friends, whom the camera captures with his head tilted, perhaps under the weight of his pain. Then comes Pablo, more pallid than usual. After him, Julián Santillán and the two from Villalpando: Casiano Veloso, with his musketeer’s coiffure, his goatee and eyebags ever more pronounced, and Ángel Fernández, who will give the photographer his clear eyes, aquiline nose, and an unbelievable toupee that appears to be trying to leap from his head. But by this time, Pablo will no longer be in the prison, because he has suddenly fallen to the floor with the second magnesium flash.
“And now what’s got into this one?” a surly Splitface demands, approaching with disdain. “Hey, you,” he says to the beardless carabinier, “bring me a pitcher of cold water, I think this one’s fainted.”
“I told you he needs a doctor,” the youth dares to respond.
“Shut your mouth and bring me some water!” shouts the guard.
And so it is that they discover the bullet wound through Pablo’s right leg, which, although it will get him out of the dungeon to be transferred to the Hospital of Mercy, it will also end up being the straight line that is the shortest distance between his fate and the scaffold.
THE HOSPITAL OF MERCY IS AN aging, dilapidated building, located right next door to the Civil Guard barracks and run by selfless nuns who serve as nurses. It has limited resources and lacks modern facilities, but at least the rooms give onto a small garden where the song of starlings gives hope to the hearts of the convalescents. It is almost five in the afternoon when Pablo arrives at the hospital, having recovered from his fainting spell but obviously limping, in handcuffs, and in the charge of two carabiniers. Passing through the main entrance, he immediately hears bloodcurdling screams in a voice he recognizes, coming from the opposite wing of the building, like a delayed echo from the quarry of Argaitza:
“Give me a pistol to blow my brains out!” Bonifacio Manzanedo is shouting over and over, unsoothed by the nuns’ morphine or gentle smiles.
They bring Pablo through the building toward the source of the shrieking. On the way he passes various carabiniers, and one of them tries to throttle him, taking the law into his own hands; this is the brother of Pedro Prieto, the carabinier injured this morning between markers 40 and 41 when he tried to arrest four of the revolutionaries who finally managed to cross the border. Prieto survived by the skin of his teeth—three bullets hit his body: one in the thigh, another in the stomach, and a third in the left nipple, which, entering obliquely, was miraculously stopped by the tobacco tin in his breast pocket after tearing through his uniform. The carabiniers take the enraged brother away, and Pablo continues his way toward the spacious room where Bonifacio Manzanedo is howling for a pistol. It seems that they want to put all of the injured insurrectionists together, either to be able to control them better or so that they will drown together in their misfortune.
When the former typesetter of La Fraternelle enters the room, Bonifacio’s shrieking suddenly stops, but only for a fraction of a second. Their eyes meet just long enough for them to recognize each other and to tacitly agree that it is better if they do not speak. Although at this point, both of them injured by rifle bullets courtesy of Spain’s finest, they have little left to hide.
They lie Pablo down in a bed with sheets so white that he almost feels bad dirtying them with blood and mud and grime and sweat. They free one of his hands from the handcuffs only to attach the other to the head of the bed, and a guard remains to keep an eye on him. The contact between his body and the mattress, despite the hardness of the latter, appears to alleviate the pain while he awaits the arrival of Dr. Gamallo, to the background music of the wailing and lamentations of Bonifacio Manzanedo. On the wall next to the bed, an onlooking figure of Christ acts as a watchman, leaning over Pablo as though he were trying to leap down from his cross to cure all of his ills with his holy embrace.
“Good afternoon,” says Dr. Gamallo entering the room, followed by two sister nurses dragging and shuffling their feet. But before he examines Pablo, the doctor goes to Bonifacio’s bed, and without mincing words tells him the terrible news: “Listen well, Manzanedo: we have no choice but to amputate your right leg. The bullet has shattered the bone and it risks becoming gangrenous, which could kill you.”
Contrary to what you might think, the doctor’s words quiet the man down, as though the news were a form of anesthesia. Meanwhile, the actual anesthesia is in the hands of one of the nurses, in the form of a hypodermic needle about to be injected.
“This is what’s best for you,” Dr. Gamallo continues, placing his hand on the injured man’s shoulder in an affectionate farewell, as is customary. “Also, you should thank God that we were able to save your other leg.”
Bonifacio releases a sob as the nurse jabs his thigh. Dr. Gamallo then goes over to Pablo’s bed. He is an elegant man, with a friendly, intelligent look, an ample mane of white hair, and a yellowing beard. The fatigue of a long day of hard work is visible on his face—the mayor of Vera dragged him from his bed in the middle of the night to tell him that a posse of revolutionaries had entered the village and had battled the Civil Guard.
“Let’s see, what have we here,” he says in greeting, gesturing to the nuns to remove the patient’s trousers and underpants. “Well, well, it looks as though you’ve already been treated.”
Judging by Dr. Gamallo’s grimace, there seems to be an unpleasant odor emanating from the wound when they remove the dressings from Pablo’s leg.
“Mmm. So they made a poultice of horsetail, did they? Apparently your companions knew what they were doing. It’s a marvelous plant for stopping bleeding. But it was not enough. The wound is infected,” says the doctor, clicking his tongue. “Let’s see, bend your knee. That’s it. Aha. Good, good, it looks like you’re in luck. The bullet went through your thigh without hitting the bone, otherwise you’d be singing a duet with Manzanedo. Why didn’t you come sooner, good man?”
But Pablo makes no reply.
“Wash the wound thoroughly and put extra ointment on the exit wound, here in the inguinal region—the infection is worse there,” Dr. Gamallo instructs the nuns. “Change his dressings every two hours and give him morphine if necessary. I’ll come by after dinner to see if we can release him. Oh, and also treat those sores from the handcuffs on his wrists.”
The two women assent solicitously and the doctor says goodbye to Pablo by placing his hand on his shoulder, then starts to leave with the intention of going to the operating room to prepare for the amputation of Bonifacio’s leg. But before he can make it through the door, shouting is heard from the yard, and two carabiniers burst into the room dragging a man with a dirty, bloody bandage on his head that fails to hide the unmistakable romantic coiffure of the corpse-like Gil Galar:
“Ne me touchez pas! Ne me touchez pas!” he rants in French. “Je suis un citoyen de la France, moi!”
“Come on, move along, you liar,” a walleyed brute of a carabinier urges him forward. “A dog, a dog is what you are,” he says, giving him a smack.
“There, there, calm down, please,” Dr. Gamallo intervenes. “What’s wrong with this man?”
“It’s another one of the rebels, Doctor,” explains the walleyed guardsman. “We found him in Echalar, hiding in a shed. Apparently the dimwit somehow managed to cross the border, but not knowing the terrain he accidentally crossed back into Spain. Now he wants us to believe he’s a Frenchman, the dirty dog—”
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Gamallo cuts him off. “Put him in this bed over here, and I’ll examine him right away. And treat him with some decency, for God’s sake. He’s not an animal.”
The doctor goes out and then after a few minutes he returns accompanied by two men with a gurney who take Bonifacio Manzanedo away, clinging to the hand of one of the nuns, whom he begs not to leave him alone while they saw off his leg. For his part, Gil Galar continues ranting and raving in French,
trying to explain to the walleyed carabinier that he has nothing to do with the attack, that he has come from France to look for work and that he doesn’t even know these two injured men next to him. In the midst of this chaos, Pablo remains silent, as a nun treats his injury and Christ keeps looking down from his crucifix, wondering how he got wrapped up in this mess.
After dinner, with Gil Galar sedated in the bed (they had to remove the bullet that was lodged behind his ear, not without some difficulty) and Bonifacio Manzanedo recovering in the operating room, Doctor Gamallo approaches Pablo’s bed, ready to discharge him.
“How are those injuries?” he asks him quietly in greeting. Pablo answers with a question:
“Fine, thank you, but do you think I could stay the night here, Doctor?”
And although Agustín Gamallo has received specific orders not to keep injured rebels in the hospital unless absolutely necessary, either humanity or the deontological code outweighs the military orders:
“It’s fine, you can stay, I’ll write a report asking permission to keep you tonight under observation. But you should know that in a few minutes we’re going to bring Manzanedo back in here, and that Gil’s sedation will soon wear off, so I don’t know how well you’re going to sleep with two howling roommates. In any case, get some rest while you can, because I’m quite afraid you have some difficult days ahead.”
Pablo thanks him with a sincere smile, and thinks that maybe with such men, all is not lost in his dear embattled Spain. Then he notes the devoted nuns and remembers Friar Toribio, the Franciscan who cured other injuries of his so many years ago. Ironies of life, he says to himself, that the salvation of an atheist lies in the hands of the clergy. And before falling asleep, he thinks about the places he has spent the recent nights: a cemetery, a brothel, a jail cell, and a hospital.
XVIII
(1913–1914)
AFTER THE STOP IN NEW YORK, the Victoria continued southward, with Pablo and Vicente onboard making future plans. Both of them would have liked to stay in New York, but the immigration service would not have made it easy for them. So they consoled themselves thinking that Argentina was a land full of opportunities:
The Anarchist Who Shared My Name Page 39