“Pablo,” Angela finally manages, turning her head to the teenage girl at her side. “I want you to meet … I want you to meet your daughter, Pablo. This is your daughter, your daughter Paula.”
And Angela’s sobbing finally overcomes her like the opening of floodgates long locked shut, as Pablo opens his mouth, unable to articulate a word. He looks with an astonished expression at this fifteen-year-old girl, the living image of her mother, in every way except the eyes, because the eyes are his eyes, the eyes of Pablo on the face of an adolescent. And then she stands and pokes her thin fingers through the fence, saying:
“Hello, father.”
What can Pablo say? He opens his mouth and says:
“Hello, daughter. Hello, Paula.”
She becomes curious, and asks:
“Where have you been all this time?”
And then, without letting him answer:
“Did you do it, father? Did you kill those guards or didn’t you?”
But then a bell rings in the room announcing the end of the visit. What? Already? That was over before it started, thinks Pablo. He says:
“No, of course not,” looking at the two women.
And now it is Angela who speaks again, saying to Pablo before they take him away:
“You’re still as handsome as ever.”
Pablo looks at Angela, tears come to his eyes, and he mutters:
“If I get out of this—”
“What?” asks Angela, her voice broken.
But Pablo has a lump in his throat, and the guards are already taking him away.
“… I’ll come find you,” he manages to say before disappearing through the visitation room door.
However, apparently Angela has not heard him, because she clutches the grill and repeatedly shouts “What?” as her daughter Paula tries to calm her and a prison orderly approaches to lead them out of the room. The last thing that Angela sees of Pablo is his nape, bristling with shock or fear; a nape destined to bristle again tomorrow at the mortal cold of the irreversible garrote.
Half an hour later his sister and niece come to visit him, but they are denied entry. Perhaps it is better this way; Pablo is in no condition to handle any more emotion.
At quarter to one in the afternoon, shortly after the mess trumpet, the special judge, Lieutenant Colonel Don Bartolomé Clarés arrives at the Provincial Prison of Pamplona, to officially read the three condemned men their sentence. At that very moment one of the executioners who will preside over tomorrow’s ghastly proceedings steps off of the express train from Madrid. He is escorted by the Civil Guard from the station to his room in the prison; the other arrived yesterday from Burgos. The accused listen to the judge’s words, and their hands cannot keep from shaking as they add their signatures to the statement of condemnation. His thankless task complete, Don Bartolomé Clarés leaves the prison center, while Pablo, Julián, and Enrique are led to three small cells on the second floor, right next to the chapel, accompanied by the prison chaplain, Don Alejandro Maisterrena, and by various brothers of Peace and Charity, in habits and rope belts, tasked with keeping them company during their last hours in this vale of tears built by God in barely seven days. At the entrance to the chapel, a few soldiers stand guard with bayonets.
“A scoundrel!” shouts former civil guard Santillán before sprawling on the cot of his new and final cell. “Whoever accused me is a scoundrel!”
Santillán’s cell is the farthest from the chapel. He can barely keep his hands from shaking, despite the bottle of cognac they brought him to warm up his body. The adjacent cell holds Gil Galar, his face a mess, muttering incomprehensible syllables. In the last cell, right next to the chapel, Pablo cannot shake from his mind the image of Angela and Paula through the bars. He sits down on the floor, with his back against the wall, and covers his body with a drab blanket and a plaid cap. No one knows where this cap came from, but it allows him to hide his face from unwanted gazes and concentrate on his thoughts. Now, for the first time since they arrived in prison, time starts to pass at a fever pitch for the three inmates.
Shortly after two o’clock, there is a visit from Dr. Joaquín Echarte, charged with the paradoxical task of supervising the health of prisoners, following the last-minute departure of the head medical examiner, Don Eduardo Martínez de Ubago, suffering from a poorly timed flu. Then Nicolás Mocholi arrives; he will stay with the prisoners for the rest of the day. He encourages them to receive the holy sacrament, knowing that it can help their pardon plea. Gil Galar is the first to let himself be convinced, in a sudden and final attack of faith, and he asks for the presence of Don Alejandro Maisterrena to express his sincere desire to reconcile with God. Soon, Julián and Pablo also succumb to the Christian confession—in these circumstances, it would take quite a detachment from life not to try anything that might help get a pardon. At five in the afternoon, two barefoot Carmelite nuns come to the prison and place the holy scapulars of the Virgin of Carmen on the prisoners. Gil Galar will spend the rest of his remaining hours fervently and compulsively kissing his scapular.
At six o’clock, as a dull hammering sound starts coming from the outdoors, the prisoners receive a visit from the mayor of Pamplona, Señor Nagore, who updates them on the procedures being conducted to achieve clemency, and he assures them that he will not let up his efforts for a single instant. Along with the mayor, the bishop of the diocese has come, Monseñor Múgica, whom Gil Galar previously met at the hospital in Vera, so Múgica visits Galar first:
“How are you, Enrique?” asks the prelate.
“I have made peace with God, Monseñor,” sobs Gil Galar, jumping to his feet.
“Very good, my son, very good. It takes courage to die as a Christian …”
And, as if realizing his lack of delicacy, he adds:
“But I will keep trying to obtain the pardon until the bitter end, my son; I still have one more document to file, and perhaps it will have good results. Nihil desperandum.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you. And, if not, I will go to heaven and see the angels … Oh, my God …” and he starts crying inconsolably when Monseñor Múgica leaves his cell to visit Santillán, who has polished off the bottle of cognac.
“Is there any hope?” the former civil guard asks without greeting.
“The dear departed Pope is praying for you in heaven,” is all the bishop manages to say, somewhat surprised by the suddenness and intensity of the question.
“So, all is lost, isn’t it?”
“Try to think about the sweet blessings of eternal life,” he suggests, inviting him to kiss a cross given to him by Pius X. “And leave the worrying to us. We will keep trying for you until the end.”
But Santillán rejects the invitation and plops down heavily on the cot, while the sound of hammering is now unmistakable and no one dares to ask what it is, lest their fears be confirmed.
When the prelate enters Pablo’s cell, the former typesetter only lifts his face, without taking off the plaid cap, which seems to protect him from the inclemency of terrestrial, and even perhaps divine, justice.
“Arratsalde on,” the Bishop Múgica greets him in Basque, knowing that Pablo is a native of Baracaldo.
“Arratsalde on,” responds Pablo, also in Basque, although he has little grasp of the language.
“My good friend the parish priest of Baracaldo, Don Ignacio Beláustegui, wrote a letter asking me to look into your case,” the bishop tells him, but Pablo barely makes a gesture of affirmation with his head hearing the name of the priest who baptized him. “I would like to be able to tell him that Christian sentiments have found their way into your heart, as you were taught by your pious fathers—”
“I already confessed, father,” Pablo interrupts him.
“Very good, my son, very good. Errare humanum est, perseverare autem diabolicum,” he misquotes Seneca. “I will come back to see you after dinner, perhaps by then we will have passed a hurdle for the pardon plea. But, just in case, prepare yourself t
o die as a Christian.”
“Bai, jauna,” Pablo responds, retreating back into his thoughts.
When dinnertime comes, none of the three condemned men has any appetite, so they only have coffee or eggnog, a humble treat that the Triple-P serves only on death row. The tension is growing more and more unbearable with every passing minute that the longed-for pardon does not come. The telephone rings over and over in the office of Don Daniel Gómez Estrada and the muffled bell can be heard faintly in the prisoners’ cells, renewing their hopes every time. A few brothers of Charity walk from one side to another, carrying glasses of water or cups of coffee while the brothers of Peace try to comfort the men’s spirits with kind words. At half past ten the Bishop Múgica returns, as promised, and after saying a few words of pious consolation, he shows them the crucifix given him by Pius X:
“Kiss it, my sons,” he says to each of them, one at a time, “and come with me to the chapel, and let us pray the holy rosary together.”
And the three men, more dead than alive, get up like ghosts and follow the prelate to the oratory, where the prison chaplain and a few other priests who have come together tonight are waiting for them, such as the canon Don Alejo Eleta, doctor of theology from the University of Salamanca, or the parish priest of San Lorenzo, Don Marcelo Celayeta.
“Keep it near the prisoners until the last moment,” bids Monseñor Múgica in parting, handing Pius X’s crucifix to Don Alejandro Maisterrena.
Leaving the chapel, they encounter Mayor Nagore, who has just sent—from right here at the jail—one last desperate telegram to the general director of the Civil Guard: “Behalf city Pamplona I beg Your Excellency intervene grant mercy pardon death penalty for Vera prisoners show sincere repentance.” But at this hour, the general director is probably already in dreamland, unlike the three convicts, who understandably cannot close their eyes. Especially Pablo, who receives a telegram from his mother in the middle of the night.
“Please read it to me, Don Alejandro,” Pablo asks the chaplain.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, yes, please.”
“Very well, it says: ‘Dear son: Lost all human hope, your mother, consumed with grief and prostrated before Virgin of Sufferings, begs you prepare yourself to die as a Christian, just as she taught you to live as a Christian. Do not deny this final advice from your mother. María Sánchez.’”
Pablo hides his head between his legs and lets out a hoarse, convulsive moan, as he did the day he came out of his mother’s womb. When he manages to recover, he says to Don Alejandro:
“Would you be so kind as to reply to my mother? I don’t have the strength to write. Tell her that I die as a Christian.”
“I shall,” responds the chaplain. “Anything else, my son?”
“Yes, roll me a cigarette, would you? My hands won’t stop shaking.”
Gil Galar and Santillán also write to their mothers, although the former civil guard is still holding out hope for a last-minute pardon. Around two in the morning, the doctor, Don Joaquín Echarte, examines the prisoners, not finding them any worse than is to be expected in the situation. They do seem a bit cold, and he asks that they be brought another blanket and a glass of anisette. Shortly, Gil Galar falls asleep, and when his continuous lamentations fall silent, Santillán says to one of the brothers:
“He’s at peace now, glad to be asleep. But he’ll see when he wakes up …”
At half past three, Pablo appears to suddenly regain his spirits, and he asks to speak with the special judge, Don Bartolomé Clarés, who arrived at the prison at midnight, as an unequivocal sign of the improbability of a pardon.
“I would like to say goodbye to the two friends who helped me when I was injured,” he says to Don Bartolomé.
“What are their names?”
“Leandro Fernández and Julián Fernández.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” says the judge with a circumspect tone.
And after half an hour, Leandro and Julianín appear, their eyes red, who knows if from crying or from fatigue.
“Pablo!” Leandro exclaims, unable to repress the impulse to give him a hug. But the two guards hold him back, and the Argentine curses them in every language he knows.
“Boys,” Pablo looks in their eyes, his own bloodshot as well, “thank you for everything. Say goodbye to everyone, and good luck in your trial. Better luck than I had, at least.” And he forces a weak smile, somewhere between a wink of complicity and a grotesque grimace.
“What really pisses me off,” the Argentine dares to say, “is that those bastards condemned you unjustly.”
“Maybe you’d prefer if I’d been condemned justly?” Pablo replies with Socratic irony.
An angel passes, leaving the question suspended in midair.
“See ya soon, che,” is all Leandro can say by way of goodbye.
“See you soon,” Julián repeats him, otherwise dumbstruck.
“See you never,” Pablo says, before they drag his friends away. The last thing Pablo sees is Leandro trying to writhe out of the guards’ grasp and receiving a hail of blows.
At half past four, the three prisoners are taken out of their cells and brought to the chapel, where Don Alejandro Maisterrena is going to officiate the first mass. Julián Santillán looks serene, as if he still trusts in the final coup de grace. Gil Galar won’t stop kissing the scapular, as he stares at the image of the Redeemer crowning the altar and prays with trembling lips. Pablo keeps his head down, covering himself with his blanket and huddling under the plaid cap. It is almost five when the canon, Alejo Eleta, officiates the communion mass, and the three broken-willed puppets take the communion like automatons performing a ritual repeated a thousand times.
After the second mass, the director of the Triple-P, on express instructions from the judge, goes to his office and telephones the civil and military governor to find out if he has received the pardon order, because if not, the preparations for the execution will begin. When he returns, everyone can read on his grimacing lips that the pardon has been denied. The first light of dawn is beginning to come in through the chapel window, faintly lighting the pale, overwhelmed faces of those present, who appear unable to come to terms with what is happening.
– 27 –
Some of those men, probably hoping to escape punishment, invoked my name and even accused me of statements against the Spanish troops, and of organizing revolutionary work in Paris. That was true, but had nothing to do with the Vera incident. The prosecutor of that trial asked for I don’t know how many years of jail for me and maybe the death penalty too. Blasco Ibáñez called those men dupes, said that they were a bunch of bandits. I took umbrage at that, and I stood up in their defense. Knowing that they were to be executed, I wrote a letter to the ambassador of Spain saying that I alone was responsible for what happened in Vera, even though this was not true, and asking to be tried by the Supreme War Tribunal, before they were executed. I offered to go to Madrid and risk everything. That letter was given to the ambassador. I waited in vain for his reply.
RODRIGO SORIANO,
España bajo el sable
ONE EXPECTS TO HEAR ROOSTERS to crow at dawn, but this cold morning of the sixth of December, 1924, they all appear to have been struck dumb, perhaps mesmerized by the pain of the people of Navarra as they waited to see the blood of three unfortunates fall on their soil. Even the sun seems to have succumbed to the reigning malaise, and is acting lazy, as if it wants to delay its appearance from behind the mountains and low clouds, leaving to the shadows the honor of waking up the executioners. Around the jail, immersed in a macabre silence, the early risers and mean-spirited among the curiosity-seekers are circling like buzzards that smell meat on the road to the slaughterhouse. Inside, a tragic breath spreads among the workers, guards, priests, brothers of Peace, and all those who will take part in the harrowing entourage. At six twenty-five, the judge Bartolomé Clarés gives the prisoners the order to prepare themselves for the ceremony.
&nbs
p; The execution will take place outside the confines of the prison, on the so-called Vuelta del Castillo, located next to the moat of the north wing of the prison, where the perimeter road begins. This way, all of Pamplona will be able to witness the magnificent spectacle directly. Last night the carpenters built a wooden platform with two execution apparatuses, one of which will have to be used twice. The executioners, after a frugal breakfast, have come to the place with drowsy faces, listening to the grunts of the hogs at the adjacent slaughterhouse, in a grotesque game of mirrored fates. They are the same (the executioners, not the pigs) as those who barely a month ago were tasked with operating the garrote on Josep Llàcer and Juan Montejo at the Modelo prison in Barcelona. The one from Madrid is tall and gangly, jaundiced and with the surly demeanor you would expect from a man in his line of work. The one from Burgos, on the other hand, is short, fleshy, ruddy, and cheerful, and he boasts that in his long career as an executioner he has now executed fifty-one people.
“With my system, the skin does not tear, and there is not even a drop of blood,” he says proudly to his colleague, as he takes a few pieces of polished steel from a case and sets about attaching them to the post.
The one from Madrid says nothing and proceeds to install his execution instruments on the other apparatus, while the onlookers begin to congregate.
“Smooth as silk,” says the one from Burgos, satisfied, after greasing the axle and spinning the crank. He wipes his hands on the thighs of his trousers, ready to wait for the arrival of the procession.
Meanwhile, in the chapel, the three prisoners are getting ready to march in their last parade. Standing, handcuffed, they gravely await the arrival of the warden and the special investigating judge, who will lead the procession. A line of soldiers is standing guard in the corridor, bayonets at the ready. At six fifty-five Daniel Gómez Estrada appears, recently shaved, to organize the procession. Three minutes later, with an unequivocal gesture of his cane—his throat is incapable of emitting a sound—he orders the group to depart. The silence is absolute, and only the sound of footsteps in the corridor of the first gallery lets everyone know that they have not gone deaf. At the head is a squadron of soldiers; after them, walking at a funereal pace, are the prison warden, the investigating judge, the medical examiner, and the civil and military authorities, as well as the three local residents officially chosen to serve as witnesses to the execution; then, two or three yards back, comes Gil Galar, paler than ever and with a lost gaze, supported by two brothers of Peace and the chaplain Don Alejandro Maisterrena; he is followed by Julián Santillán, remarkably calm, flanked by the two obligatory brothers and by the parish priest Marcelo Celayeta; third is Pablo, his feet dragging as he is carried along by another pair of brothers of Peace, under the watchful eye of the canon Don Alejo Eleta; finally, bringing up the rear is another squadron of soldiers. Arriving at the end of the first gallery, the group turns to the right and follows a passage that is off-limits to common prisoners, reserved for offices and bureaus.
The Anarchist Who Shared My Name Page 54