“If this keeps going on, I’m going to need someone to help me at the print shop,” said Pablo to Sébastien Faure, seeing that the work was starting to pile up.
And although Monsieur Fauve grunted and cursed and tugged his mustache, the next day he sent a beardless lad named Julianín, the son of immigrants from Álava, so Pablo could teach him the job. Smart move, because the work did not let up after the thirteenth of September. The commemorative activities stretched on for a few weeks, as though the indicated date had been only an excuse to stoke up the exiles, the starting gun for a protest movement that was bound to explode sooner or later. Pablo could not attend many of those activities, because he had to spend the weekdays at Marly-les-Valenciennes taking care of the Beaumont estate. But he did manage to attend some of the major meetings, such as the one organized at the Union Local by the politician Rodrigo Soriano, attended by more than six hundred people and criticized in a ferocious article in L’Humanité titled “Anarchists and Bourgeoisie Rub Elbows,” which claimed that anarchists were nothing more than the bourgeois of the working class. But even more famous was the meeting that took place on the first Saturday of October in the Community House, with the participation of Blasco Ibáñez, who seemed to want to show Soriano—his sworn enemy—that he was able to attract a bigger crowd. Of course, on this occasion Pablo ended up attending in a professional capacity:
“Hey, you were thinking about going to the Community House tonight, right?” one of the writers of Ex-Ilio had asked him that same afternoon.
And Pablo had said yes, because he had been planning to pop in for a while after leaving La Fraternelle.
“Thing is, I have a date with a girl to see Raquel Meller tonight … You’d only have to take notes, and tomorrow I’ll come in first thing and get them, and write the article …”
It was not the first time Pablo had been asked such favors and accepted, even though Sébastien Faure absolutely forbade it. He left La Fraternelle with a notebook in his hand, ate a bite at the Point du Jour with his friend Leandro, and then headed to the Community House pedaling the old Clément Luxe 1896. The place was packed, and Blasco Ibáñez had managed to beat Rodrigo Soriano not only in quantity but also in quality: the cream of the crop of the Spanish intelligentsia exiled in Paris were all there. As soon as he walked into the assembly room, Pablo saw Miguel de Unamuno seated in a corner, in his usual posture, with his legs crossed and the toes of the top leg tucked behind the calf of the bottom leg, listening attentively to the words of José Ortega y Gasset, another illustrious intellectual who had had to abandon the homeland. A little further on, a group of renowned politicians was standing in a circle waiting for the speech to start, and Pablo was able to distinguish among them Francesc Macià and Rodrigo Soriano himself, who was grinning from ear to ear as if he wanted to prove to everyone that he had come to hear Blasco because this was no time for rivalry among peers. Pablo went to the back of the room and, passing by the circle of politicians, he could hear Macià saying in his Catalan accent:
“I already dealt with that issue …”
Just then Blasco Ibáñez took the podium and the most riled-up members of the audience broke out in cheers and applause, which would end up peppering the whole speech. When he finished talking, he came down from the stage and left the Community House like a real music hall diva, waving at his admirers. As he recorded this image in his notebook, Pablo heard someone at his side:
“You want some?”
He lifted his gaze and saw a man with a pocked face offering him a little tin of snuff.
“No, thanks.”
“Interesting speech, huh? Blasco knows how to hit where it hurts. I saw more than one person squirm to hear him criticize Spain. Some people would rather keep their blinders on, don’t you think?”
“Well, nobody likes to hear a mother insulted, even if the one doing it is a brother—even if the brother is right.”
“Yes, I think that’s exactly what it is,” the man conceded, before clarifying, in a quieter voice, “Especially if you’re an infiltrator. That’s why it’s better not to speak of certain things here. Come by afterward to the café La Rotonde and join our discussion group …”
Pablo observed the man attentively as he snorted a pinch of snuff.
“I’m sorry, I can’t. I have to wake up early tomorrow for work,” he declined the invitation.
“A shame. What’s the world coming to when not even la France respects the day of rest?” he lamented as he took out a card with the address of the Café de la Rotonde. “Come by one of these days, but don’t wait too long.”
Pablo took the card and headed toward the exit. The man’s last few words had left him ill at ease. Leaving the room, he thought he heard someone shout his name, but he didn’t turn around to make sure: he mounted his bicycle and pedaled away with all his strength until reaching his hovel on Rue Saint-Denis. Only then, arriving at home and looking at the card from the man with the pockmarked face, did he realize that there was handwriting on the back: “We need your help, friend. Contact us immediately.”
That night he had nightmares and the next morning he went to La Fraternelle in a foul mood. To make matters worse, the writer who had asked him to cover Blasco Ibáñez’s speech did not appear in the print shop all morning, and Pablo ended up having to write the article himself, swearing it would be the last time. When he finished writing the text, he lined up a set of characters and composed the headline that would appear on the first page of Ex-Ilio: “Blasco Ibáñez Stirs the Conscience of Spanish Immigrants in Paris.”
But then there were two loud knocks on the door, and Pablo jumped, overturning the tray and spilling type all over the floor.
– 26 –
The death penalty, as states apply it today, certainly originates in a spirit of vengeance, vengeance without measure, as terrible as hate can inspire, or vengeance governed by a sort of summary justice, that is, punishment as retaliation: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a head for a head.
ÉLISÉE RECLUS, cited by El Duende de la Cárcel in
La tragedia de Vera: un crimen jurídico
THE SUPREME TRIBUNAL ON WAR AND MARINE has eight days to hand down a sentence, but it only takes three to issue its verdict: on Wednesday, December 3, 1924, in the early evening, a captain of the Civil Guard departs from the offices of the Hall of Justice of Madrid and takes the train to Burgos, carrying under his arm a large binder to be given to the captain general of the Sixth Region. Few people know its contents, and at the Triple-P the defendants are biting their nails waiting for the disquieting rumors that have come across the prison walls to be proved true or false. And what these rumors say is that the verdict is unforgiving to three of them and amenable to the fourth. However, it will not be until tomorrow evening that the notice will be officially pronounced, revealing the entire contents of the sentence handed down by the Supreme Tribunal on War and Marine, including fourteen findings and seven conclusions, for a total of more than two hundred pages. Too much ink, as Pablo recently said, for a lot of balderdash and such a sad result: José Antonio has been acquitted for now, but he must tread carefully the rest of his days; as for Pablo, Enrique, and Julián, they must get ready to act in their final scene in this thankless theater known as the gallows.
The three prisoners receive the news in the attorney conference room at the Provincial Prison of Pamplona. They are taken out of their cells after dinner, the flavorless mush churning in their nervous stomachs. In the corridor of the third gallery, when they see that Vázquez Bouzas is not with them, they start to suspect that their worst fears are true. When they arrive in the conference room and find Nicolás Mocholi with bloodshot eyes, there is no room left for doubt. By his side Don Daniel Gómez Estrada smoothes his hair, shining with brilliantine.
“You can sit down, if you like,” says the peacock of a warden, with feigned anguish that only betrays the hypocrisy of his politeness.
But the three men have no desire to sit, and they re
main standing as they listen to the quivering voice of Don Nicolás:
“I won’t beat around the bush. The three of you have been sentenced to capital punishment. Tomorrow you will be officially informed of the sentence and on Saturday it will be carried out at the break of dawn.”
Mocholi’s abrupt words have a paralyzing effect, freezing the scene and stopping time for a few seconds, until Gil Galar breaks the spell, collapsing to his knees in a fit of convulsions and sobbing. But Pablo cannot hear him, because a sudden fear has taken over his senses and he stops listening to what is going on around him. He can only see. And he sees Gil Galar fall to the floor and no one go to help him up. He sees Mocholi move his lips in an appeal for calm, his vitiligo-stained hands making wild gesticulations up and down. He sees Santillán kick a chair and two guards try to subdue him, under the disapproving eye of the warden, who pounds the floor with his cane. He sees paint flaking off the walls and wet cigarette butts in the spittoons. He sees the guards’ uniforms, their bayonets, and the chinstraps pressing their jowls. He sees his own hands and the shackles binding them and his blown-out shoes and his prison uniform. And only when the guards take him out of the conference room does he begin to recover his hearing, just in time to hear Mocholi saying to Daniel Gómez Estrada:
“No, sir, the people of Navarra will not allow the blood of these poor wretches to fall on its soil!”
Don Nicolás’s vehement assertion does not allay the anguish of the poor wretches, but it does accurately reflect the state of mind of the majority of the local population. Yesterday afternoon, the most pessimistic rumors began to circulate, and the machinery to seek a pardon began to turn, emboldened by the knowledge that it had been granted two months ago to Pedro Mateu and Luís Nicolau (condemned to death for assassinating the prime minister of the government, Don Eduardo Dato), so there is no reason it should be denied this time. The truth is that there is a certain discomfort among certain sectors of Pamplona’s society, and although no one dares to justify the revolutionary attempt, there are many who would readily accept the overthrow of the dictatorship. The spectacle of the garrote, furthermore, would be the shameful culmination of a trial full of irregularities, which, to further the scorn, has ended with a severe punishment for those who voted in favor of acquittal in the first summary war trial: two months of imprisonment for the five speakers and one month of probation for the presiding judge, Commandant González de Castejón, for lack of zeal in the fulfillment of their duties. Of course, neither the president of the tribunal Don Antonio Permuy nor the rapporteur Don Manuel Espinosa, who issued dissenting opinions, were subject to any disciplinary action.
The three prisoners are returned to their cells, in tomblike silence, only interrupted here and there by the whimpering of Gil Galar. When Pablo enters his cell, he has the impression that it has shrunk. He flops onto his lousy cot and thinks about Angela, and about his sister Julia, and his niece Teresa, and his compassionate mother, and his deceased father, and he feels the need to see the sky and the stars and the constellation Cassiopeia, with its shape like an M, an M for Martín. And the prisoner in cell 31 gets up from his cot, climbs up on the toilet and opens the filthy portico, to see that the sky is still clouded over and not a single star is visible in the firmament. But what he can see is the blind starling, strangely motionless on its ledge. He pokes it with his finger and it doesn’t move: apparently death, before knocking at his door, has had the courtesy to appear at the window.
PABLO HAS BARELY CLOSED HIS EYES when the trumpet blares muster. It is seven in the morning on the last day of his life, and drops of rain are splattering on the cobblestones of the courtyard, producing a dull noise like frying food which drowns out the bustle that has taken over the prison since dawn. The guards of the Provincial Prison of Pamplona have been reinforced with forty soldiers of the Regimiento de Infantería América, perhaps in fear of an unlikely assault by the revolutionary hordes to liberate their condemned comrades, and the special forces of the Civil Guard have also come to offer their services, securing the building and the nearby streets on foot and on horseback. Also, access to the prison has been strictly forbidden to anyone not having written authorization from the presiding judge.
Beyond the prison walls, activities are more frenetic than inside, as there are many organizations, associations, and personalities mobilizing to seek a pardon for the three condemned men. The mayor of Pamplona, Don Leandro Nagore y Nagore, is at the forefront, dashing off telephone calls to the Directory and to the mayorship of the palace, and personally visiting the Bishop of Pamplona, the vice president of the deputation, and the civil governor to ask them to intercede on behalf of the prisoners. Also doing their part are the Chamber of Commerce, the Press Association, the Osasuna Sporting Association, the Red Cross, the deputation, and the Athenaeum; even the Socialist Party will, at the last hour of the evening, join in the petitions for pardon, although with limited enthusiasm, because anarchists are not the saints of their devotion, per se. But the heart of Alfonso XIII does not soften with telegrams such as the one sent by the vice president of the Regional Deputation of Navarra to the mayor of the palace:
Ruego Vuecencia hereby transmits to His Majesty the King fervent supplication of Deputation Navarra that, proving once again his noble sentiments, he grant if possible royal pardon to three unfortunate men condemned death High Council of War for reprehensible acts in Vera where two civil guards sacrificed life. With sincerest gratitude I reiterate to Your Majesties unwavering loyalty of Navarra and its Deputation. Vice President Gabriel Erro.
Up to a certain point, it makes sense that the proud Alfonso XIII would not compromise with the supplications of a handful of bureaucrats and a half-dozen bleeding-heart associations; but the fact that he also does not yield before the complaints of the Holy Church, considering the king’s strong tendency to cater to the will of the clergy, is something that not even the Bishop of Pamplona can understand. But such is the caprice of the son of María Cristina. The prelate will have no choice but to order all of the temples of Navarra to direct their prayers to Heaven for the three wretches’ pardon.
“I would like the Civil Guard to be grateful to me,” the Bourbon will say, after claiming that the garrote is more humanitarian than the guillotine or the firing squad because it does not produce a release of blood. “In consideration of the Benemérito Instituto, I decline to grant a pardon to the assassins of two guardsmen.”
But until the vile garrote starts to pierce the neck of the condemned, there will always be those who take refuge in popular wisdom: where there is life, there is hope.
Pablo does not move from his cot in cell 31, tucked into his blankets, not even when they bring him the morning’s stale coffee. In the adjacent cell, Gil Galar breaks out in an agonized litany, interrupted here and there by sudden strikes against the wall. It is not unlikely that all three condemned men are entertaining the same dark idea, as would surely happen to anyone in their situation. Pablo, in any case, cannot help thinking about the conscript who committed suicide by tossing himself repeatedly against the wall of his narrow cell; or about Jesús Vallejo, the workmate from Altos Hornos who tried twice without success. And having crossed that line, his mind gets lost in dark thoughts, wandering toward those that succumbed to the sirens’ song. And so he thinks about Mateo Morral, who shot himself in the heart. And about Leandro’s father, Don Ataúlfo Fernández, who did away with his life by putting a bullet in his temple. And about a story that Vicente Holgado told him when they lived together in Buenos Aires, a story of a faraway country where they force the condemned to choose from among ten capsules of cyanide, knowing that one of them is empty … Pablo also thinks about the possibility that people will come to watch him die in the garrote, and the very idea makes him shudder from head to toes. He wonders if the prisoners will be taken to the barber before going to the killing square, so they will be presentable when their necks are crushed. An old wives’ tale comes to mind: once upon a time, if a prisoner’s
noose broke twice in a row, he would be set free. Unfortunately, the garrote is made of unbreakable steel.
Suddenly, the door to cell 31 opens and he hears the nasal voice of a guard in the corridor:
“You have a visitor, Martín. Please come with us.”
“Who is it?” Pablo asks as the guards put him in handcuffs.
“Your wife and daughter,” responds the nasal voice, and Pablo is about to say that it must be a mistake, because he has no wife nor daughter. But then he thinks that maybe it will be his sister Julia, having come to visit him with little Teresa and having lied about her identity so they would let her in.
They go down the corridor of the third gallery and then up to the first floor of the central building, where the visiting room is located. It is a long, inhospitable room, and only the scant light from a tiny window makes it possible to discern the visitors’ faces. Two large, parallel, vertical fences divide the room into three parts: on one side, the prisoners’ section, on the other, that of the visitors, and in between, a dead zone occupied by a guard, to make sure that nothing but desperate words can cross the dense iron mesh.
But when Pablo arrives in the visitation room, it is not his sister and niece who await him:
“Angela?” he says with a thin voice that falters on its way out of his throat.
“Pablo?” Angela replies, her eyes filling with tears.
“How did you—?” Pablo starts to ask, but is unable to finish the sentence.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Angela murmurs.
“I thought—” he says.
“I thought you—” she replies.
But there are moments in life when words fail. Pablo and Angela clutch the iron mesh, looking at each other across the three-foot span that separates them, completely confused.
The Anarchist Who Shared My Name Page 53