The fourteen arrivals listen in silence, internally cursing the director for his air of superiority.
“If you have money, you can buy food and clothing at the concession booth. If not, you will have to be satisfied with the common mess and the prison uniform.”
Having spoken, he exits the room with an arrogant stride like an opera lead, and yet he cannot hide the limp caused by his prosthetic leg, and he leaves the revolutionaries in the hands of the administrative staff for booking. Before the morning trumpet sounds, the prisoners are led to an adjacent room where the “shearer” shaves their heads, and then to the shower station, where they are required to disrobe and bathe. Being shorn and showered, they are ready to put on the prison uniform, which feels rather like a hair shirt on their skin stripped of undergarments. The least unfortunate receive new uniforms of thick cloth, while others are given old suits of white denim with gray stripes, as thin as cigarette paper and hardly more insulating. But no one protests for fear of being put in a pine pajama once and for all.
“You can bring your coat to the cell, but the rest of your clothing stays in the depository until you leave or till someone comes to get it for you,” says one of the prison guards to Pablo when his turn comes. “But you should know, if no one comes to get it, when you leave here the moths will have made a feast of your rags. If you ever get out, that is—”
“I don’t think my old clothes are of any interest to anyone,” Pablo answers dejectedly, “except maybe for the cooks to add flavor to the mess. Do what you like with them.”
Once in uniform, the prisoners are given two stiff blankets (but no sheet, lest any of them should get the idea to tear it up and braid it into a noose), a bowl, a tin spoon, and as always, an old newspaper. Then they are each assigned a three-digit number, to strip them of any shred of identity they might have left, and they are taken to the individual cells in the third gallery of the lower level of the jail, dedicated to the most dangerous criminals. The Provincial Prison of Pamplona is built according to the latest Spanish prison design, with a panoptic structure of four radial galleries in the shape of a Christian cross, as Daniel Gómez Estrada likes to boast every time an official visitor deigns to visit the building. With this arrangement, both the common rooms and the individual cells have natural light, and Pablo’s cell, number 31, is no exception, as it borders the large courtyard, where the prisoners entertain themselves by playing soccer or betting cigarettes on impossible flea races. It is slightly more spacious than the cell at the carabiniers’ barracks in Vera, and although it’s not big enough to launch a rocket (only about six by ten feet), at least it has a wooden cot, half-hidden by a dirty bedroll of milled straw, and a latrine located just below a tiny window letting in the faint light of the courtyard. There is no running water, of course, but a full bucket in a corner serves both for the morning hygiene and to help wash detritus down the urinal, which doesn’t stop the cell from stinking of mildew and urine, although Pablo does not notice. On the damp walls are phrases scrawled in pencil and chalk, and obscene drawings scratched in with the handles of spoons.
“I advise you to do some soul-searching,” says the jailer as he removes Pablo’s handcuffs. “It’s Sunday, and Father Alejandro will be here to hear your confessions.”
Without further ado, he slams the iron door and turns the lock with a squeak, leaving Pablo alone with his thoughts, as soldiers pace up and down the corridor of the third gallery, marking the slow passage of time with their metronome steps.
The first thing Pablo does is inspect his new abode—who knows how long it will be his home? High up the wall there is a small window, its glass so dirty that it is almost opaque. By standing on the commode the prisoner can open it and enjoy a narrow slice of sky. Also, by gripping the bars and hoisting himself up, he can see the large cobblestone courtyard. On the windowsill, Pablo is surprised to find a trembling starling. The bird does not take flight. The faint light of the dawn shines into the cell and illuminates the graffiti-covered walls, and clinging to the bars, Pablo surveys the courtyard, empty at this early hour. Then he lowers himself down from his vantage and busies himself trying to decipher the shaky handwriting of the former tenants. There are phrases and sentences for all tastes and in all colors, from “Take pity on me, Lord, I beg you,” to “Fuck you all,” along with some of a more political bent, such as the following found next to the commode: “You can shackle our hands, but never our ideas.” Over the head of the cot someone has written “There are two types of men: those who choose life and those who choose death,” and, next to the door, another prisoner (or maybe the same one, who knows) scrawled his last words: “Soon they will come to take me to the garrote. I die an innocent man and all I bring with me to my grave is the memory of your face: October 31, 1921.” A shiver runs down Pablo’s spine, and he decides to quit reading. So he closes the window and stretches out on the cot, his fingers interlaced beneath his nape. The darkness turns the water stains on the ceiling into mythological monsters, continents from lost worlds, faces of unknown or forgotten people, and Pablo is transported back to a moment from his childhood, lying on the grass in the fields of Castile, looking at the clouds, his father telling him about Leonardo da Vinci and his theory of marvelous inventions that emerge from the imagination of open minds when they stare long enough at clouds or puddles, or glowing embers, or stains on walls. And so, watching the moisture stains play across the ceiling, he drifts off to sleep.
And he dreams, he dreams like one who has not dreamed in days. He dreams that the stains turn into black cloaks, and the black cloaks into civil guardsmen, which then turn into prosecutors, and then into priests giving the holy sacrament, and then into executioners, and then into coffins, which turn into pits, bottomless pits into which he will fall forever, until the end of days, amen.
Pablo wakes up falling off the cot and landing hard on the cement floor. Shortly, the prison chaplain, Don Alejandro Maisterrena, will arrive to ask for his confession, but he will be disappointed. “Don’t despair, my son, Jesus Christ and the apostles were also prisoners.” When the prisoner refuses, he will have no choice but to abandon cell 31 with some parting advice: “Try not to masturbate,” he will say with a reproachful look, “it weakens the body, and the semen falls on the ground, and turns into dust, and who knows where the dust will end up …”
And so, from the moment the priest disappears through the door until the next Wednesday, when the interrogations and pretrial procedures will start, the only company that Pablo will have will be the starling, which inexplicably lingers on the windowsill, shivering from cold or fear or nostalgia, and his only contact with the outdoors will be the daily half-hour walk around the little courtyard allotted to the prisoners in solitary confinement. But between today and Wednesday many things will be happening outside the prison, some of which will reach the prisoners’ ears despite their isolation, because news crosses prison walls like radio waves or nosy ghosts. For example, tonight Gil Galar will go on hunger strike at the Hospital of Mercy in Vera, in protest against the doctors’ claims that his head injury was caused by a pistol rather than a rifle bullet, suggesting that it was his own comrades who shot him. Tomorrow, Monday, the French newspaper Le Matin will run a statement by Blasco Ibáñez denying accusations of having helped organize the attack and calling the revolutionary movement absurd and criminal. On Tuesday, rumors will arrive that Bonifacio Manzanedo removed the bandages from his amputated leg and bled to death overnight in Vera, and the story will even be picked up by a few newspapers in Pamplona, but will be corrected in later editions: the truth is that he remains alive, but his stump is developing gangrene and will need to be operated on again. And on Wednesday morning, Enrique Gil Galar, having abandoned his hunger strike already, will arrive at the Provincial Prison of Pamplona to be admitted directly to the infirmary, where he will be examined by the doctors before being locked up in a cell on the third gallery of the lower level, in conditions of heightened security and solitary confinement,
like the rest of his comrades. Almost at the same time, coming from San Sebastián, three more detainees accused of participating in the Vera incursion will arrive, and it will be then that the pretrial procedures will begin, once the military tribunal has been set up there at the prison, presided over by Infantry Commandant Manuel González de Castejón, who will take over as special investigating judge to continue the proceedings initiated by Don Feliciano Suárez in Vera de Bidasoa; Sergeant Ortega of the regiment of Sicilia will serve as secretary.
AT SIX IN THE EVENING ON Wednesday, November 12, 1924, Pablo is brought for the third time in one day to the interrogation room, located on the first floor of the central building of the prison, from which the four galleries radiate like the arms of a stone octopus. The room’s windows have not been opened, and the air is thick with soporific smoke, through which the investigating judge emerges. At his side stands the prison warden Don Daniel Gómez Estrada, decked out in livery and wearing the falsest of smiles, which he learned at the School of Criminology under Don Rafael Salillas. In a corner, perched behind an old Underwood no. 5, the secretary cleans his glasses with his jacket tail for the thousandth time, ready to miss nary a comma of the prisoner’s statement.
“Sit down, please,” the investigating judge says to Pablo, without asking the guard to remove his handcuffs. The warden shakes his hand in parting, and he says, “You sure you don’t want to stay, Don Daniel?”
“No, no, thank you, I’ll leave you to your work,” he excuses himself, and walks out dragging his orthopedic leg and looking at Pablo like a parent reproaching a naughty child.
“First name?” asks Castejón.
“Pablo, same as last time.”
“Surnames?”
“Martín Sánchez, once again.”
“No wisecracks!” barks the judge, his friendly demeanor breaking into a threatening abruptness. “Just answer the questions, with no more comments.”
But it is the third interrogation Pablo has had to endure in the past ten hours, and he is starting to lose his marbles hearing the same refrain over and over and seeing that the sincerer his replies, the more ludicrous they seem to the judge. That is the real torture: asking the same question again and again, for hours and hours, until the prisoner’s mouth goes dry and his brain throbs, and he ends up saying anything it takes to be able to go back to his cell and drink a gulp of water and shake his head free of the endless hammering of repeated questions. Perhaps the old methods were more effective, such as tearing out fingernails with pliers or administering electric shocks to the scrotum, but they left marks and were unpleasant. Also, considering how easy it is to forge the quaking signature of these miserable creatures, who would want to get blood on his shirt just for a lousy declaration? So it is that Pablo has finally admitted to participating in the shootout at the Argaitza quarry, since the Mauser wound is indisputable evidence, but he insists that he did not fire any shots or lead any group. Nevertheless, Judge Castejón carries on with the same litany:
“What was your intention entering Spain?”
“My intention was to see with my own eyes whether the revolution had started, as they told us in France before we crossed the border.”
“Did you fire at the civil guards at the quarry?”
“No, on the contrary, I tried to prevent the shooting, by tackling one of our men when he drew his pistol.”
“You don’t need to write that down,” Castejón says to the secretary, who is pounding away at the typewriter in the corner; before Pablo can protest, the judge continues: “Were you one of the leaders?”
“No, I’ve already told you a thousand times.”
“You’ll tell me a thousand more if need be!” the judge shouts virulently, surprising even the secretary, who gives a start in his seat. “Who was commanding the excursion?”
“No one, we had no leaders.”
“But someone must have been the brains of the operation, I would think—”
“I imagine so, but I don’t know who it was. All I know is that in Paris it was Blasco Ibáñez, Unamuno, and Soriano who were spreading the idea that revolution was about to break out in Spain,” Pablo declares, knowing that none of the three have anything to do with the incursion.
“Very good, you see how you start remembering things when you really try? And if you were to see your fellow adventurers, you think you would recognize them?”
“It’s possible,” Pablo concedes.
“Bring them in, one at a time,” Castejón orders one of the two guards, initiating a sequential lineup. But Pablo will stubbornly refuse to recognize anyone, as Leandro is marched in, followed by Julián, then Julianín, and all the others, even Casiano Veloso and Anastasio Duarte, whom he resents ever since the episode in the brothel. Unfortunately, not all the interrogated men will have such nerve or such sense of loyalty. Indeed, just this morning Casiano declared that he had seen Pablo fall down injured in the skirmish, and that he considered Pablo one of the main leaders of the expedition, and Anastasio even claimed that the man with the thigh injury was one of the most merciless participants in the death of the guardsmen.
“Do you have anything to add to your statement?”
“No.”
“Fine. Read your statement and sign down here.”
“This is not exactly what I said,” Pablo replies after looking over it, with the resignation of someone who is inured to having his words twisted.
“If you don’t want to sign, we’ll do it for you, don’t worry,” says the secretary cynically, getting up from his chair with his pen in his hand.
Only then is Pablo allowed to drink some water and go back to his dungeon, where he will sleep for the last time in solitary, because tomorrow night, shortly after the bedtime bell, they will return to bring him to the interrogation room.
Pablo is surprised to find the room also occupied by the ex-guardsman Santillán, the lunatic Gil Galar, and the feeble Vázquez Bouzas, under the watchful eye of several civil guards. The special investigating judge, Don Manuel González de Castejón, accompanied by his secretary, the prosecutor, and the court speaker, gives them the worst possible news: when the review of the facts is completed, having been approved in Burgos by his honor the senior captain general of the Sixth Region, Señor Burguete, the four of them will be tried by a summary military tribunal which will be held without fail tomorrow morning, Friday, November 14, 1924. The rest of the detainees will have an ordinary trial once the summary tribunal has been completed. The secretary then proceeds to read the entire list of charges, in which Pablo figures as one of the main leaders of the revolutionary incursion and as the perpetrator of the shots that killed the two civil guardsmen, as demonstrated by the bullet wound in his thigh and corroborated by the accusations of multiple other detainees. The prosecutor is seeking capital punishment for the four accused men, and they shall have their choice of defense counsel from among a commandant of the carabiniers, a captain of Artillery, and a sergeant of the Civil Guard. The accused are informed that their solitary confinement is hereby lifted, as the law prescribes. While they must remain in their solitary cells, they henceforth have the right to maintain contact with the outside world, and to receive visits from their parents, children, or wives, if they wish. It is even possible that the press will visit the prison to ask them a few questions. May they sleep well, and may they meet God with their sins confessed.
XX
(1916–1918)
HEMINGWAY WROTE THAT WORLD WAR I was “the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth.” And he went on, from firsthand knowledge: “Any writer who said otherwise lied, so the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought.” This rang true with Pablo’s experience as a war correspondent; little by little, he found himself without paragraphs, without sentences, without words, without letters. Until, finally, he went mute. Especially after the Battle of Verdun, the famous Battle of Verdun, which lasted for ten interminable months and turned into one of the most
inhumane and useless conflicts in history. Journalists called it “the hell of Verdun” and the “meat grinder of Verdun,” but for Pablo it was always the “futility of Verdun,” because not only did it lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides, but it also left things, militarily, about the same as they were before.
The battle had started in February, when the troops of General Falkenhayn, the chief of the German General Staff, launched a massive offensive on Verdun, bombarding the city and the enemy lines for nearly ten hours straight, turning the front line into an atrocious spectacle of fire and shrapnel, where the bloodcurdling screams of the soldiers could barely be heard over the deafening sound of explosions. No mere rain of shells, it was a deluge of 1,500 bombs a minute, an incessant pounding of artillery, which the Germans—in a pique of exaggerated lyricism—referred to as Trommelfeuer, or “drum-fire.” The storm was not followed by calm, but by a surge of German infantry ready to roast any injured survivors with hellish flamethrowers, but they forgot that a wounded lion is even more dangerous: the French fought tooth and nail to defend Verdun long enough for reinforcements to arrive, and it turned into the longest battle of the war.
But Pablo would not see the magnitude of the tragedy with his own eyes until the end of the year, when the top brass of the French army realized that after nine long months of gestation, the Battle of Verdun had come to term, and they cordially opened the trenches to foreign correspondents, as if wanting to boast of their imminent, pyrrhic victory. By then, fourteen nations had dug up the hatchet of war, and the conflagration was taking on apocalyptic proportions.
The morning they left Paris started out cold and unpleasant, a morning made for staying home by the fire, not for going to look for it in the trenches. The journalists loaded onto the military vehicle at dawn’s first light, and despite the excitement of the moment, they barely opened their mouths until they were on the Via Sacra.
The Anarchist Who Shared My Name Page 43