The Anarchist Who Shared My Name

by PABLO MARTÍN SÁNCHEZ

  A burst of applause resounds in the room, and no bailiff dares repress it. Apparently the claque is not just for the theater.

  “I cannot help but regret, Your Honors,” defense attorney Matilla begins, “that the prosecutor has neglected to respond to the fundamental argument made by this defense—”

  “The defense attorney has the floor for his counterargument,” the president of the tribunal interrupts him, not having heard that Don Aurelio has already started his speech.

  “Eh, thank you, Your Honor. I was saying that it is regrettable that the prosecutor has not seen fit to respond to the allegations made by this defense and has insisted on basing his accusation on reasons of moral delinquency. In any case, I would like to make it quite clear that I did not ask for acquittal and neither did I assert the innocence of the accused. What I said was that based on the case files it is not possible to deduce sufficient evidence, nor even indications, on which to base the imposition of a punishment so serious and so irreversible. Because the fundamental question still cannot be resolved conclusively: Who actually killed the guards? Could it not have been the rebels who also lost their lives in the gunfight, or perhaps Bonifacio Manzanedo, who is still recovering from his injuries in the hospital of Vera?”

  The prosecutor again makes an ostentatious gesture of disdain from his desk and observes how the public reacts to the defense’s words. In the last rows he notices his wife, who waves to him with her fingers.

  “And it is not true, Your Honors, that the defense sees the case through rose-colored glasses of benevolence, but through the crystal-clear lens of conscience. And it is also not true, gentlemen of the tribunal, members of the public, that the defense maintains the innocence of the accused, for the simple reason that it is not known if they are innocent or not, just as it is not known if they are guilty or not. But what I do know is that it is my duty to ask for and require sufficient guarantees of the manifest guilt of the accused in case the tribunal decides to apply the ultimate punishment.”

  Don Aurelio Matilla takes a dramatic pause, leaving the room in expectant silence, slowly looking around at the faces of the public, and then at the members of the tribunal, and concludes:

  “Your Honors, I would finish by asking for mercy for these poor, unhappy men, if I were convinced of their guilt. But as I am not, all I ask for is justice.”

  And he sits back down, convinced that his argument was irreproachable.

  “Very well, gentlemen,” the president Don Gabriel Orozco stands, seeing that the defense attorney has completed his speech, “if no one else has anything to add, we will proceed to suspend the session and start deliberations.”

  “One moment, Your Honor,” the prosecutor Noriega stands, “I would like to speak one last time.”

  “What does he say?” Don Gabriel asks General Picasso, lifting his trumpet.

  “That he wants to say a few final words,” says the general, bringing his lips close to the instrument’s bell.

  “I really don’t see the need, Mr. Prosecutor,” the president says, a bit irritated, “But I grant you one minute.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President. I only wanted to remind the members of the tribunal, and also especially the members of the public, that in case any of the accused are condemned to the death penalty, Article 2 of the Penal Code could always be applied, seeking the government’s pardon.”

  Even the furniture in the room, accustomed to hearing the greatest barbarities, appears to tremble before such a subtle display of cynicism. Two hours have passed since the start of the hearing, and Don Gabriel Orozco declares the end of the session, as the first flakes of snow begin to fall on Madrid. The Superior Tribunal of War and Marine will have eight days to issue a sentence.

  XXIII

  (1923)

  THAT NIGHT PABLO DREAMT OF THE bare breasts of the beautiful Nyla and woke up thinking they were living together in an igloo. But the dream would unravel quickly. As soon as he saw the newspaper hawker surrounded by a half dozen passersby, he knew that something serious had happened.

  “Page 18, sir,” the urchin said, handing him El Liberal.

  Pablo opened the newspaper with a sigh and a premonition. “Late Breaking,” he read in the second column, and below, in large, menacing letters, the fatal question, “A coup d’état?” A rhetorical question, in truth, because the answer followed, in the form of a manifesto issued at two in the morning by the captain general of the Fourth Region, Don Miguel Primo de Rivera. “To the Country and the Army,” the Marquis of Estella started his harangue, in the baroque prose that would be a hallmark of his junta: “People of Spain: A moment has arrived, more feared than hoped (because we would have preferred to live forever in legality and let it dictate Spanish life in perpetuity), a moment to gather our yearnings, to attend the calamitous duty of every man who, loving his country, sees no other path to her salvation than by liberating her from the professional politicians, from men who for one reason or another offer us a picture of misfortunes and immoralities that started in ’98 and that threaten Spain with the looming prospect of a tragic and dishonorable end.”

  Standing there on the street corner, Pablo read the first sentence and turned to stone. Then, still reading, he started to walk slowly, dragging his feet with the caution of a boxer in the ring, making little leaps, swallowing saliva, shaking his head when he came across phrases such as: “This movement is one for men: as for any man who does not feel his full masculinity, let him sit in a corner and make no disturbance while awaiting the good days that we are preparing for the country.” Or: “We do not want to be ministers, we feel no ambition other than to serve Spain. We are the Somatén, of legendary and honorable Spanish tradition, and as such our motto is: ‘Peace, peace, and peace.’” And after the pompous prattle came the key part, where the devil showed his horns: “Declaring ourselves to be in a state of war in every region, the captain general or his deputy will dismiss all of the civil governors and entrust their duties to military governors and commanders. Places suspected of being centers of communist or revolutionary activity will be occupied, as will train stations, jails, banks, electric utilities, and waterworks, and all suspected and known criminal elements will be arrested. Otherwise, citizens should go about their lives, normally and peacefully.”

  When he finished reading the seditious proclamation, Pablo’s mouth was dry and he was as pale as death. He stopped pacing, lifted his head, and arched his eyebrows. His legs had carried him back home, cleverly. Must be a reason, he thought, and he decided not to go to the factory. In the end, if the coup prospered, the repression of syndicalists was more than assured.

  “What’s going on?” his mother asked as he entered.

  But Pablo did not have the strength to respond; he merely left the newspaper on the table, open to page 18, and prepared himself to wait at home for the situation to develop. That same night the doorbell rang, and the room filled with a silence thick enough to cut with a knife.

  “Who is it?” Julia finally asked, her voice trembling, as Pablo ran to the hiding place and disappeared behind the clothing in the armoire.

  No one answered.

  “Who is it?” Julia asked again, more firmly, but the only response was the sound of footsteps going down the stairs. Ten minutes later, Pablo came out of the hiding place like a mole from his molehill, and this time no one dared to smile.

  They could barely sleep that night, and Pablo stayed at home again the next day, waiting for his sister to return from work with a good supply of newspapers. The ABC arrived from Madrid with front-page photos of the mustached leaders of the military uprising (Primo de Rivera, Cavalcanti, Saro, and Berenguer), while La Libertad carried the headline “Total crisis. The King accepts the resignation of the Government,” and La Correspondencia de España left no room for doubt: “Primo de Rivera, President of the Council,” reporting on the inner pages that the trade unionists were starting to flee Barcelona.

  “I am afraid that they are showing us the way,�
� Pablo murmured, thinking about exile, and María looked at her son and could not keep two hard, curdled tears from falling on the table with a slapping sound.

  Reading the newspapers put Pablo in a state of deep consternation. General Primo de Rivera had decreed martial law and constituted a Military Directory, arguing that the “professional politicians,” as he called them with unmistakable disdain, had brought the country down a deadend road, and that it was vital once and for all to get rid of the stains of administrative corruption, separatist nationalism, and revolutionary terrorism. No one failed to see that this coup camouflaged another, more devious intention: to avoid the investigation open against various military officers (implicating even His Majesty Alfonso XIII) for the disaster of Annual, where the Spanish army had suffered one of its most shameful defeats at the hands of Abd el-Krim’s troops. Of course, the anarchist and communist comrades had not stood idly by, and had even sent a note to the press informing them of the creation of an action committee against war and dictatorship. But the syndicalist movement was not having its best days, especially in Barcelona, where the military governor, Don Severiano Martínez Anido, and the top police chief, Don Miguel Arlegui, treated it with a policy of brutal repression, putting on the final touch one month before the military uprising by incarcerating the top tier of Barcelonan anarchism. And now, to add insult to injury, there were rumors that the new Directory planned to reward Anido and Arlegui for their vigilance by appointing the former minister of governance and the latter general director of public order. The message was clear: iron-fisted repression against union activism was the order of the day.

  That night, as the Martín Sánchez family was eating and discussing the consequences of the coup, someone came to the door again, this time knocking rudely instead of using the doorbell. Pablo hid in the dressing room again, and Julia again asked “Who is it?” receiving the same terrifying response: dreadful silence.

  “Tomorrow, I’ll open it myself,” Pablo sneered as he came out of his hiding place, “and let God’s will be done. I’m tired of hiding like a lizard.”

  But the next night no one rang the doorbell or knocked on the door. They only slid a sheet of paper through the mail slot, scrawled with threatening words: “We know who lives here, and we don’t want scum in this building. This is your last warning.” Apparently the obsession with cleanliness preached by the tyrant had seeped into the neighbors’ household.

  “Sons of bitches!” shouted Pablo, opening the front door.

  But there was no one on the landing.

  THE PRIMOGENITOR OF THE MARTÍN FAMILY tossed and turned all night, and the first rooster’s call made him jump from bed. From the bottom of a trunk, he rescued the satchel he had bought in Paris during the Great War, filled it with a few articles of clothing, and left the house without a sound, leaving a brief note on the kitchen table:

  It’s better if I don’t stay here. I’m going to try to cross the border and wait for the situation to clear up, which will surely be soon. Spain can’t let this barbarism triumph. I love you infinitely, Pablo.

  P.S.: Burn this note as soon as you’re done reading it. I’ll write to you from France signing “Aunt Adela.”

  A tense calm was breathing in the railway station. The crowd was smaller than usual and those who were there were trying not to look one another in the eye, so as not to see the deer-like fear of the refugee shining in each other’s pupils. At the end of the platform, Pablo thought he recognized a fellow member of the Sindicato Unico, with a beret pulled down to his eyebrows and his shirt collar turned up like the ears of a stalking dog. But both of them acted as if they didn’t know each other, and they boarded different cars of the train to San Sebastián. Pablo poked his head into the first compartment and pulled it out again: it was empty, and he preferred not to travel alone. He stuck his head in the second and took it out again: a priest did not seem like the best company either. He finally ended up taking a seat in the third, where there were three people, apparently a family: an old man with a gray mustache, who was peeling a banana with extreme care; a woman (probably his daughter) with an enormous wart between her eyebrows, where the bridge of the nose backs up for a running start; and a child with blond hair (probably the grandson) playing with a tin soldier. They appeared completely distant from the country’s situation:

  “Do you know how to divide a banana into three equal parts?” the grandfather asked the child.

  “No,” responded the grandson begrudgingly.

  “Then watch,” the man whispered like a sorceror, and he stuck his index finger in the tip of the banana, pressing downward until the fruit opened like a flower with three identical petals.

  “Hello,” murmured Pablo, interrupting the show.

  “Hello,” responded the family in unison.

  And the train started off with a doleful whistle.

  Pablo got off in San Sebastián and took the Topo, the narrow-gauge electric train that would take him to Hendaye, on the other side of the border. Ten years before he had crossed it on foot, in the middle of the night, with the help of smugglers and the company of Vicente Holgado, whom he had never heard from again since they said goodbye in the port of Buenos Aires. But this time was different: Primo de Rivera had opened the doors of Spain to let the rats out, following the old refrain that says if the shit will sweep itself away, we can save our brooms. And if some of them decline to leave, there will be plenty of time to chase them out, such as that library rat Miguel de Unamuno, rector of Salamanca, who would dare to call the general’s manifesto “troglodytic” and who would sooner or later be exiled to the inhospitable Canary Island of Fuerteventura.

  Even so, Pablo’s heart started to beat full speed when they arrived in Irún, which would be the real trial by fire. They were required to get off the train with their luggage and to pass through customs, where a carabinier looked through their suitcases and a gendarme asked for their papers. Pablo greeted the first in Basque and the second in French, while they rifled through his satchel and scrutinized his passport, and seeing that he had lived in France during the Great War, the gendarme gave it back to him with a look of sympathy. Five minutes later, Pablo was again aboard the Topo, ready to cross the border, seated next to a pair of French newlyweds whose honeymoon had been interrupted by the military uprising:

  “Je t’aimerai toujours,” the man was saying, dressed like a musketeer from head to toes in black cap, scarf, and cape.

  “Contente-toi de m’aimer tous les jours,” she replied, in a game of words that Pablo would have appreciated if he hadn’t been preoccupied with getting across the border as quickly as possible.

  Setting foot on French soil, the first thing he did was write a postcard, with the image on the front showing a beach filled with children in bathing suits and ladies with parasols:

  Dear family, I have been getting confusing news from Spain, it seems that the Marquis of Estella has taken the reins of the nation. Is this true? Oh, it was time someone dared to bring some order to our godforsaken country! When I get back we will celebrate the good day that has dawned for our dear homeland, but for the time being I will keep enjoying my vacation here in the South of France, where the sun shines with divine radiance. A kiss to you from the coast of Hendaye, Aunt Adela.

  He sighed with resignation, stuck a stamp in the top right corner of the postcard and slid it into a mail slot, which swallowed it with the eagerness of a Venus flytrap.

  PABLO STAYED NEARLY A MONTH IN Hendaye, waiting for the situation to clear up on the other side of the border and chaining himself, like a shipwreck victim to a floating trunk, to the rumors that were going around amongst the exiles:

  “Have you heard about the letter Blasco Ibáñez wrote to Lerroux?” someone asked, and they all gathered around to find out what the celebrated novelist had written at his Côte d’Azur estate to the founder of the Radical Party. “Seems Blasco was planning to do a world tour, but he wrote to Lerroux offering to cancel the trip if they need him in
Spain.”

  “And did Lerroux reply?” asked someone, impatient.

  “Yes, of course, he told him to go see the world if he wanted, but to stay in contact, because they are planning to take advantage of the coup d’état to flip the omelet one more time and proclaim a Republic.”

  However, the floating trunk soon proved to be rotten, and the drifting shipwrecked men would end up drowning with their naïve dreams: in the middle of October, the Sindicatos Unicos of Barcelona published in El Diluvio an open letter to all workers announcing the indefinite suspension of their activities, while the UGT and the Socialist Party dropped their pants and accepted the dictator’s deal. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Pablo, and he had no choice but to accept the fact that the Military Directory had taken power. He decided to move to Paris, because although Primo de Rivera would continue to claim that the situation was exceptional and transitory, he saw from a distance that there was no plan to stir the pot anytime soon. Doubtless in the capital he would have more avenues for finding work than in the cities of the Midi, where there was an ever-growing population of exiled Spaniards looking for work. On the last postcard written from Hendaye, Aunt Adela told her family that she had fallen in love with a wealthy Parisian businessman, and that she was going to live in the City of Light.