When he reached Marly, he asked at the bakery for Annabel Beaumont. The elderly baker woman told him that the Beaumonts were living on a farm outside the village, near a beautiful pond where the German troops had bathed after the conquest of Valenciennes.
“Why are you looking for Annabel?” the woman asked.
“I have something for her from Benjamin Poulain.”
“Ay,” sighed the baker. “That poor boy.”
And she came out from behind her counter to point him the way.
“Wait, young man,” she said before he left, entering the pantry and then coming back out. “Bring them this loaf of bread for me.”
Pablo walked for about ten minutes with the hot bread under his arm, until reaching the Beaumonts’ farm. He could see that before the war it had been a beautiful house, with the character of the old bourgeoisie, but the four years of German occupation had taken their toll: the large garden looked like a jungle, and part of the rear eaves had fallen down. On top of the roof, a young man in a French army uniform was inspecting the damage, while a bald, stocky gentleman held the ladder for him.
“Good afternoon!” shouted Pablo through the fence.
But the greeting was drowned out by the barking of two boxer puppies, excited by his presence, and the only person who seemed to welcome him was one of those clay gnomes that had come into vogue before the war, which Madame Beaumont insisted on keeping in the garden even though the trend came from Germany. Pablo rang the doorbell and a servant came out to open the gate, invited him in and left him standing in the hallway while she went back to the kitchen, where something was burning that should not have been.
“Who is it?” came a voice from upstairs.
And then at the top of the stairs, Annabel Beaumont appeared. Because that young woman with white skin, blond hair, and long eyelashes, who was wearing black velvet slippers and grimacing with her large, bright mouth, could be no other than Annabel Beaumont, the nenette, the petite chouchoute that Benjamin Poulain had invoked over and over in his diary.
“Annabel?” asked Pablo, although he already knew the answer.
“Yes,” said the young woman, coming down the stairs, two question marks shining in her pupils. Pablo took the black notebook from his knapsack, saying only:
“This is for you. It was written by Benjamin Poulain.”
Annabel covered her mouth with both hands and came running down the stairs, tearing the diary from Pablo’s hand.
“Ah, mon cher, mon cher!” she exclaimed, falling to her knees while kissing the notebook as if it were a crucifix, tears running down her doll cheeks.
Hearing the shouting, the maid came running spatula in hand, and a powdered woman appeared at the top of the stairs, just as the stocky man and the young soldier entered the house, while Pablo remained in the middle of the hallway, a loaf of bread in his hands, enduring the accusatory gaze of four pairs of eyes:
“This is for you,” is all he thought to say. “The baker gave it to me.”
And he stretched out his arms, offering up the bread.
PABLO SPENT THE NIGHT IN MARLY, in the Beaumont’s house. When he explained to them that he had come from Paris with the sole aim of delivering Benjamin Poulain’s diary, they invited him to partake in the delicious hochepot the maid was making. It turned out that there was one empty seat, because Annabel had locked herself in her room to cry and read the diary of her dear departed Ben. After clarifying that he hadn’t gotten to know him, Pablo had no choice but to spend the evening telling the family about his experiences as a war correspondent and conversing with Joseph Beaumont, a lieutenant aviator in the French army. The young airman had been part of the famous squadron GC–12, Les Cigognes (the Storks), alongside the recently deceased Roland Garros, who between tennis matches had invented a timed trigger system allowing fighter planes to shoot across their own propellers. And the young Beaumont was very proud of that:
“Roland was a genius,” he said. “Reckless, yes, but aren’t all geniuses reckless?”
“It’s an unfortunate country that loses its geniuses because of war,” Pablo attacked.
“Better to be without geniuses than without country,” Joseph counterattacked.
“But what kind of country sends its sons to slaughter?” Pablo dug at the wound.
“And what kind of sons let the neighbor rape their mother?” Lieutenant Beaumont parried.
But it never boiled over. Quite the contrary. When the dessert course was served and Pablo confessed his intention to return to Spain, Joseph Beaumont made him an offer:
“Tomorrow I’m going to Lille, in order to fly from there to Bordeaux. That’s a stone’s throw from the Spanish border. Would monsieur le correspondant like to accompany me on my journey?”
“Former correspondent,” Pablo corrected him.
“As you like it, but you only have one minute to decide,” the aviator pressured him, standing up and taking a strange hourglass from a bookcase. It was made of two empty, sawed-off lightbulbs, joined by a twenty-cent piece. The hole in the coin let the sand (which Joseph Beaumont had collected in one of his journeys to the Sahara) pass from one lightbulb to the other. “One minute,” he repeated, turning the hourglass over.
But Pablo did not let the time run out.
IN LILLE THEY HAD TO WAIT three days until the weather conditions were propitious to start the voyage. The vehicle was a single-propeller military biplane, three hundred horsepower and three seats in the cabin: Joseph Beaumont, with his leather helmet and gloves, took the front seat; Pablo sat in the rear seat, his heart ready to jump out of his mouth; and the mechanic went to the front of the plane, adjusting a black wool balaclava.
“Contact?” he asked, standing on tiptoe and holding a propeller blade.
“Contact!” exclaimed Joseph after activating a motor switch.
The mechanic then gave the blade a push and ran to jump into the second seat, while the motor started to rumble and the wings shook like those of a newly hatched sparrow. As the biplane left the earth, Pablo couldn’t repress a shout of glee:
“Woooow!”
The wind blew in his face and stifled his nose, so he had to turn his head to breathe. From the sky the earth looked like a carpet, with its fringes of pastureland and its roads like the veins of a great multicolor leaf. The plane had stopped shaking, and if it weren’t for the cold, the wind, and the roaring of the engine—and the hole in the floor that reminded him that this machine had been designed as a tool of death—he could almost have said that flying was a gift from the gods. After a few hours, the mechanic pushed half of his body out of the hole and leaned toward Joseph Beaumont, trying to tell him something. He tried one, two, three times, but there was no way to be heard. Finally, he took off a glove, dug around in his bags, took out a pencil and paper and wrote: “We have 1/2 hour of fuel left.” The lieutenant turned his head, smiled, and gave a thumbs-up with his gloved hand. Only then did Pablo realize that his fingers were aching from clutching the plane’s shell.
In short order, they landed at the first clearing they came to. It was a military training field, outside a provincial city, not far from a popular picnic area. A sentinel armed with a rifle came to greet them and then stood at attention when he saw the three-starred war cross pinned to Lieutenant Beaumont’s lapel, but this did not prevent a crowd of curious people from approaching the plane and pestering the heroes at the helm with questions. Finally, a military truck appeared, finding its way through the crowd, and filled the fuel tank. The motor came to life again, and the plane disappeared into the sky, leaving behind a chorus of gaping admirers and an intense smell of burned gasoline.
That same afternoon, Pablo and Joseph said goodbye forever at the aerodrome of Bordeaux: the lieutenant aviator would die a few years later in the most unexpected way. He, who had plowed the skies at an altitude of twelve thousand feet; he, who had crossed enemy lines under the thunder of grenades; he, who had landed in impossible conditions, finished his days on earth
by being struck by lightning during a picnic. His sister Annabel, la chouchoute, la cocotte, la petite mimi of Benjamin Poulain, could not cry for him: during the winter she had caught the Spanish flu, which would end up burying more people than the war itself. And Pablo would not take long to find out.
In Hendaye, while waiting to cross the border, he wrote a postcard to Robinsón, telling him that he was going to live in Baracaldo. On a corner of the postcard he drew an airplane, with three passengers onboard and an arrow pointing at the third: “This is me, I’ll tell you later,” he wrote, not suspecting that it would be many years before he would be able to keep that promise. Then, once in Spain, he bought a newspaper. He opened it at random and read: “The epidemic is spreading in a fast, virulent manner. The Public Health Authority has held a meeting and decided to close all public gatherings as well as public and private schools. The flu is making great gains in rural areas. There have been many deaths in the population. Today it happened that the bodies of a father and son were driven to the cemetery together, victims of serious flu infections.” The news was from Jerez, on the other end of the peninsula, but it was worrisome nonetheless. Pablo got into the train to Baracaldo with a dire feeling of foreboding, which would be confirmed as soon as he arrived at his mother’s house and saw the Chaplain Ignacio Beláustegui coming out, the same priest who had baptized Pablo at the Church of San Vicente Martir thirty years beforehand.
“Ay, my son,” the cleric sighed, recognizing him.
And he gave him four pieces of bad news: the first, that his mother had the flu; the second, that his sister had the flu, the third, that his niece had the flu; and the fourth, that his brother-in-law had just died from the flu.
But the Sánchez line was not going to succumb so easily: mother, daughter, and granddaughter all survived the epidemic. In a certain sense, Pablo filled the void left by his brother-in-law. He moved into Julia’s house and became like a father to little Teresa. He gave his mother the care and attention he had never been able to show her. He tried to convince her to come live with them, but the good woman did not want to abandon the house where her two children had been born. He went back to work as a boilermaker, as he had done in Barcelona, this time at the foundry of Altos Hornos de Vizcaya, one of Spain’s biggest metallurgical companies. He joined the Sindicato Unico, almost as if automatically. And he even started going out with a young woman named Celeste, a friend of his sister Julia: they saw each other a few times, strolled through the central streets of Bilbao, went to the movies, and even shared a kiss, under cover of darkness and without premeditation. Life was finally starting to adjust to normalcy (or at least to what mortals generally understand as normalcy).
Then the manager of Altos Hornos was murdered, and normalcy went to hell.
– 24 –
It became obvious that the highest authorities of the dictatorship were not disposed to let the crimes go without immediate and exemplary punishment, not only the killings of the civil guards but also the opposition’s attempts to overthrow the dictatorship. The fact that the guilt of the accused was not sufficiently proven was considered a secondary matter, as was the ridiculousness of the notion that a former minister of Alfonso XIII, the Count of Romanones, a representative of the most rancid despotism of the Restoration, could have been the leader of an extreme left revolutionary movement.
JOSÉ LUÍS GUTIÉRREZ MOLINA,
El estado frente a la anarquía
“SILENCE IN THE ROOM!” THE PRESIDING judge shouts desperately. “I’m warning you for the last time, ladies and gentlemen, if I have to interrupt this session again it will be to eject you all.”
And he bangs the gavel with such fury that the head breaks off, then bounces off the presidential table and ricochets toward the bench of the accused, tracing through the air a parabola worthy of a ballistics manual. The crowd ducks to dodge the projectile, mouths agape like spectators at a tennis match, watching the object fly dangerously toward the injured, bandaged head of Gil Galar. But Pablo, seated at his side, lifts his handcuffed hands at the last second and catches the gavel head in mid-flight, provoking gasps in the audience. He stands, the guards do nothing to impede him, and he makes his way across the room to place the object on the presidential table. But before he reaches it, a bailiff blocks his way and orders him to return to his seat.
“Thank you,” rasps Don Antonio Permuy, though it is unclear if he is speaking to Pablo or to the bailiff, who leaves with the broken gavel to fetch a new one. “Let the session continue. The accused have the floor, if they wish to make any further statements in their own defense.”
This time it is Pablo who speaks first, hoping to capitalize on the effect of his gracious gesture. He stands and his voice fills the room:
“Gentlemen of the tribunal, too much ink has been wasted in this summary trial. Half of what has been said about me is untrue. The statement that I brought harm to the guards has no basis, for the simple reason that I threw myself to the ground as soon as I heard the first shots and it was then that they injured me. The man who said that I fired is a liar, and he inculpates himself, because if his accusation were true it would mean that he was at my side when the events took place and he did nothing to prevent it, and would therefore be just as guilty or innocent as me. Let the man who said that come here and show himself, and see if he can prove it!”
The two guards in charge of Pablo force him to sit down, and then it is Gil Galar who takes the floor, standing up with great effort and talking haltingly, almost raving:
“Yes, yes … Let’s find out who said that I fired at the Civil Guard … Let him come here and say it to my face … let him swear it before God if he’s got the guts … Come on, now … Who said it, eh? Let him come forward and repeat it—”
“Anything else?” asks the president of the tribunal, seeing that the bandaged head appears to have gotten stuck in a never-ending loop like a scratched gramophone record.
“No, nothing else, why bother?” responds Gil Galar in a voice from beyond the grave as he sits back down.
Vázquez Bouzas rises to speak. Even standing he’s not much taller than Pablo or Santillán are seated. He only confirms the words of Mocholi, delighted that the counsel is seeking his acquittal:
“I have nothing to add to the words of the defense counsel, which are a faithful reflection of the truth,” and he sits back down.
When it comes to Santillán’s turn, he rises to his feet, staring at the president of the tribunal, and declares in the voice of a man accustomed to giving orders:
“I want to formally protest against whoever accused me of being the inciter and leader of the group, because it is a lie and it is slander, and I want my protest to be legally processed.”
“Such protest cannot have any legal effect,” responds Don Antonio Permuy, “because the way to exculpate yourself is by proving your innocence.”
“Alright then, let the individual who accused me come here and explain where he saw me, who I was with, and how I was dressed,” Santillán insists.
The president holds a brief private dialogue with the chief auditor, before speaking for a final time:
“There are no grounds to grant the accused man’s request, because the presentation of evidence is sufficient and needs not be corroborated with further discussion following the reports of the parties. In any case, the statements of the accused will be documented in writing. This tribunal will now withdraw to deliberate. The case is ready for sentencing and the session is closed.”
Three knocks with the new gavel serve as colophon to the act, and the public starts to leave the room little by little, chatting excitedly about the spectacle. It is eleven thirty in the morning and outside the Provincial Prison of Pamplona the mercury in the thermometers has not quite hit six degrees Celsius. But the tribunal’s deliberations will take longer than expected, to the point that at dinner time the journalists are advised to go home, because it is very likely that a sentence will not come down until the end of the da
y. Some of them insist on staying, but they have to give in to reality when there is still no decision at seven o’clock in the evening. In any case, the sentence (regardless of the verdict) will not be totally firm, because it will have to be sent to Burgos to be approved by the captain general of the Sixth Region.
Meanwhile, the four accused men have been returned to their cells, where they are anxiously awaiting the result of the deliberations. It appears that Gil Galar has definitively lost his judgment (pun intended—how foreboding!), and is incessantly sobbing and calling out to God and the Holy Spirit. Pablo, in the next cell, tries to kill the time by reading the newspaper that they gave him along with the latrine basin. It is a copy of La Voz de Navarra from two weeks ago—back when he was still in Paris and planning to stay there for a long time. Who would have thought that fifteen days later he would find himself in a Spanish prison awaiting the decision of a tribunal seeking to give him “la pepa,” the prisoner’s euphemism for capital punishment? Seated on the cot, as he hears the general population cheering on their fleas in the yard, he distractedly turns the pages of the newspaper, thinking more about the trial than about what is before his eyes, but one article catches his attention: it is called “The Almanac of Omens,” and its author is Eduardo Carrillo. Pablo reads the first sentence, because it appears to describe his own state of mind: “For the past few weeks, my life has turned into constant anguish,” and he moves to the light of the small window to see better. “The one responsible is a friend,” the text goes on, “who, knowing how superstitious I am, has sent me a copy of the Almanac of Omens, with a dedication that says: ‘So you know what to expect every day, in all of the circumstances of existence, from every object and from all people.’ Because, indeed, in this book everything is predicted to torment us at all times.”
“Plate!” someone suddenly shouts in the corridor, and Pablo, so absorbed in his reading that he did not even hear the trumpet refrain announcing lunch, gives a start beneath the window.
The Anarchist Who Shared My Name Page 47