by Carlos Rojas
“This clown Ruiz Alonso wants you to go to the Civilian Government offices and make a statement, and he has a signed order to that effect,” he says hurriedly, now when the two of us are alone in the bedroom where I’m dressing. “It will be a simple procedure, and I’ll go there with you. I assure you that tomorrow morning you’ll be back in this house.”
“But what are they accusing me of?”
“Nothing concrete. This bastard, and may all the demons in hell shove it up his ass, told me you did more harm with your pen than others did with a pistol. What bullshit! You see, I’m talking to you with absolute sincerity because it’s so absurd it’s funny. Well, you’ll be back tomorrow if not this evening. None of it makes any sense.”
“It’s a mistake … a hateful mistake.”
I repeat this several times, while Miguel averts his eyes. My voice, belonging to another man lost in the depths of my being, is made larger by an echo that is determined to fill my soul. He, this stranger inside me, is still unaware of the destiny that awaits us. I pity him for his anguish and at the same time despise him, fearing that his abject panic, ironically born of a final, mad hope, will affect the serenity that regulates my gestures and dictates my composure.
“Yes, of course it’s a mistake,” Miguel Rosales agrees. “It will be corrected immediately and we won’t stop until we’ve made Ruiz Alonso and his henchmen pay dearly for this.”
“Find your brother Pepe. He’s very influential and could set me free in no time. You will, won’t you?”
“Yes, yes, don’t worry about it, and I’ll find Antonio and Luis too.”
“But especially Pepe.”
“You, stop worrying. I’ll take care of everything.”
“Miguel … ”
“What.”
“They killed my brother-in-law Manolo. My father called this morning to tell me about it.”
It takes him a moment to recover while he shakes his head with lowered eyes, his hands clasped behind his back. I finish dressing and we go out together. Aunt Luisa doesn’t come to say goodbye. She has shut herself in her bedroom and I’m certain she’s praying for me. At the half-closed door to the staircase, Miguel has me go first as if we were going to a masquerade ball and I weren’t heading toward my unavoidable death. For a moment he takes my arm and murmurs very quietly:
“I’m sorry. I assure you I’m really very sorry.”
I believe I responded with a gesture, perhaps a look, as we began the descent to hell. The sun through the window silvers the tiles and glints on the rifles of the police posted on the terraces. The other man inside me, the one who suffers and fears so much, is silent now, shrinking into the depths of my being. Like an echo of the echo of his voice, I keep repeating that it’s only a mistake, a monstrous mistake. In the courtyard we’re surprised by the most unexpected of scenes. Beside the fountain, sitting at a small table covered by a cloth, Ruiz Alonso is having a snack of pastries and café con leche. He has a napkin tied around his neck with a bowknot to protect his blue coverall, and each time he leans forward to dip a piece of pastry, the curly locks of hair on his forehead fall to the rim of the cup. Across from Ruiz Alonso sit Trescastro and one of the unknown police who came with them in the Oakland. They seem somewhat discomfited by the snack, which the deputy himself no doubt demanded. On either side, mute and erect, Doña Esperanza and Esperancita look at him contemptuously.
PREPARE FOR YOUR TRIAL.
Ruiz Alonso stands and drains his café con leche in a sonorous gulp. He has great difficulty removing the napkin because the knot tightens in his fingers when he attempts to undo it. Finally free, thanks to the solicitous assistance of Trescastro, he wipes his mouth and sweaty forehead with a single swipe though the corners of his thick lips remain spotted with white. Only then does he turn toward me and greet me, lowering his forehead as if about to charge. (“The truth is that the gentleman, God rest his soul, always maintained a fortitude worthy of praise. That I swear to with my hand on the Scriptures. I told him he was detained but allowed him to say goodbye to the people who were sheltering him.”)
“I have orders to take you to the Civilian Government,” he says brusquely. “I’d be grateful if we make it fast because a good amount of time has already been wasted here.”
“Miguel Rosales also advises me to go with you, though all of this is a mistake, a dreadful mistake. What does the Civilian Government want with me?”
“I have no idea. I’ve only been asked to guarantee that you arrive safe and sound. For the moment I have no other mission. Will you follow me?”
“I suppose I can’t refuse.”
“Very well. Then let’s go right now.”
Doña Esperanza embraces me and Esperancita kisses me on both cheeks. Secretly she hands me her embroidered handkerchief and in a whisper asks me to bring it back very soon. She would like to give it to me but can’t because it’s a gift from her sister the nun in Rome, she murmurs in a hurried, broken voice. Trescastro has the wheel and Ruiz Alonso sits beside him. Miguel and I ride behind. As the car begins to move away toward Calle de las Tablas, the Assault Guards disperse along the Plaza de los Lobos.
“Miguel, don’t forget to find your brother Pepe right away. Pepe above all.”
“Yes, yes, I promise. This has to be cleared up immediately.”
“It’s all a mistake, a monstrous mistake.”
That man who lives inside me and at times cohabits openly with me to deny or contradict me, the one who desires men I’ll never love or loves women I can’t desire, the same one I hate for his fear and despise for his obstinate rancors, suddenly subjugates me as we cross the Plaza de la Trinidad on our way to the Civilian Government offices. Defeated, I begin to tremble like a jack-in-the-box and my teeth chatter between my jaws. (“At least I had the death I chose. The one I didn’t want for my son. You’ll die the death others impose on you because in this country of depravity and misfortune, those who don’t choose their death are doomed to be killed by imbeciles. Stupidity is our innocence.”) There is a flash of contempt in Miguel’s reddened eyes. No doubt, and in spite of himself, he believes that at the critical moment I’d go to my death singing verses to the Virgin of the Alhambra and insulting the mothers of Ruiz Alonso and Trescastro. He pulls himself together right away and takes one of my hands between his, as if he were going to read the lines on my palm.
“Whoever expedited this denunciation will answer for it,” he states in a loud voice so the members of Popular Action can hear him. “You’ll be home as soon as I find Pepe. In the meantime, try to be calm.”
“Send a blanket, please, and tobacco. I beg you. It’s August and I’m shivering with cold.”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
“And find a lawyer too. Pérez Serrabona is my father’s attorney, and he can put you in touch with him.”
“I will, I will, though it isn’t necessary. It’s less than nothing, Pepe will resolve this mess and get you out. Be calm and don’t despair.”
Trescastro stops the car in front of the Civilian Government building. On the stage in this theater of mine, August gilds the streets. Two Falangistas, their shirts undone, stand guard at each side of the entrance. In a few moments, if I continue with the evocation of the afternoon under the last skies I’ll see alive, one of the sentinels will try to hit me with the butt of his rifle. He’ll do this without anger or ill will, as he undoubtedly attacks all the prisoners as they cross the threshold. He’s almost an adolescent and has not yet tried to veil the liquid of illuminated surprise that lights the eyes of childhood. He is content to attack us with the irrational indifference of children who stone stray dogs or pursue lizards with a stick, precisely because in his eyes we cease being men and are transformed into a stupid, malignant species very inferior to lizards and dogs on the scale of the moral values of animals. It is also true that an angry Ruiz Alonso intervenes, though this is the only truth among his lies and is more a defense of his own pride than of my helplessness. “How do you d
are, wretch? In my presence!” he shouts now on the stage as he had roared then on the street.
In reality, pun intended, everything is repeated punctually and precisely even though a part of my dead man’s consciousness remains waiting for a variant, an inevitable discrepancy. (PREPARE FOR YOUR TRIAL.) Trescastro takes his leave of Ruiz Alonso and says he is going home. Miguel, on the other hand, goes with us into the Civilian Government building and shouts at Ruiz Alonso, in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, that he wants to speak with the governor in his presence. Ruiz Alonso shrugs his laborer’s shoulders in a way that is both disdainful and indifferent. Surprised, I understand that Miguel will use the name of his brother Pepe to attempt to avoid torture in my interrogations. I think of Manolo, for whom I never felt more affinity in my life (“They killed my brother-in-law Manolo. My father called this morning to tell me”), and I wonder how much he suffered until death became his desperate liberation. In the Civilian Government offices an unexpected silence reigns, interrupted only occasionally by the tread of boots or the clatter of a typewriter. And yet the building, like certain of Poe’s houses (“Tel qu’en Lui-même enfin l’éternité le change.” “You haven’t read anything by Mallarmé either? Fillet, intellectually you’re a virgin and martyr. A monster of the South, innocent and brilliant like a camellia in flames or a burning giraffe. I’ll have to go to bed with you to sow my culture in your soul”), has an invisible life of its own that is ominous and sinister. One might call it a labyrinth of facing walls that terrified hands have scratched from the floor to the edge of eternity, or a collection of surgical instruments, the treasure of a surgeon turned torturer, fallen to the ground and transformed in this mansion by virtue of a miracle in reverse, a portent of the Black Mass. I look at Miguel and understand how much he fears and suffers for me at this moment. Suddenly I also realize that the entire Rosales family must descend from a remote line of converted Jews, though I never noticed it before and they had forgotten it in another century. It’s enough to see Miguel’s face now, when anguish deepens all his features with a chisel, and it’s enough to think about the religious devotion of the entire family as well as their self-sacrificing solidarity with those who are persecuted, an apparent contradiction to their proven fascism.
PREPARE FOR YOUR TRIAL.
With no surprise, almost with the fatigued, sad indifference of someone waiting for the last inscrutable line that will close his poem, or the encounter with the man who will change the entire meaning of his existence, the inevitable difference between the past and its representation on the stage through my memories appears on a whitewashed wall in the Civilian Government building. Next to the office of the Pontius Pilate who presides over this place, at the height of the forehead of a smooth-faced soldier guarding the room, there was nothing but the stain of a good amount of damp on the day they took me there under arrest. A kind of unexpected plagiarism of a shadow puppet, improvised with the thumb, index finger, and middle finger of one hand, crossed over the wrist by the middle finger, index finger, and thumb of the other, to represent together a kind of seated rabbit. Now, on the stage, eternity copies everything in hell, including the silhouette of the young rabbit. In a manner where arrogance leaves no trace of caution, even at the moment of his victory over the Rosales family, Ruiz Alonso tells Miguel that the governor has gone to the front and today Lieutenant Colonel Velasco is his replacement. Miguel nods, not looking at him or responding, as a gruff prince would treat a gentleman-in-waiting suspected of stealing. (“This bastard, may all the demons of hell shove it up his ass, told me you did more harm with your pen than others with a pistol.”) Nonetheless, and precisely on a stage of this spiral, which Miguel could not have devised with his imagination of a Falangista singer to the Virgin, above the shadow of the rabbit rampant, and just beside the wall, some letters erupt as golden and bright as the ones that appeared on the window of the Andalucía express. They end with a great question mark that seems to be of blinding gold, as if all a summer’s wheat had melted on the scythe. In front of it, very large and well spaced, nine words ask me: WHY DON’T YOU PRETEND YOU’RE CRAZY AND BE ACQUITTED?
DESTINY
On stage the question in gold letters imprinted on the wall of the Civilian Government Building of Granada faded away. All that remained was the stain that outlined the shadow of a rabbit. Then the wall and door to the governor’s office merged, as if sinking gradually into deeper and deeper waters. Finally the set appeared, empty of memories and filled with shadows. It was then, when he turned in his seat, that he saw the stranger sitting beside him, almost elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder. He had emerged unexpectedly in the alabaster light from the passageway.
He gave a start because he never had seen anyone in the corridor or the theaters of the spiral. With no particular feeling and naturally with no distress at all, he had concluded that the dead were blind and deaf only among themselves. “I’m dreaming,” he said to himself and immediately recalled that death was eternal wakefulness if innocence was not proved at trial. (WHY DON’T YOU PRETEND YOU’RE CRAZY AND BE ACQUITTED?) Then he thought he had lost his mind: a phantom driven mad by the solitude of hell but still rational enough to be aware of his own insanity. Almost immediately he resolved that the presence of the other man, in the next seat, was not a dream or a hallucination. In silence, the stranger observed him carefully as if making an effort to recognize him.
He thought that if recollections of what had been lived and the memory of what had been imagined appeared on the stage, perhaps on the eve of the trial other phantoms would do the same in the orchestra seats. In any case, if that man was a shade of his reason or his delirium, he could not recognize him or leave his side even though no physical force kept him in the grasp of his seat.
With greater calm, almost with the cold curiosity an agnostic scientist would bring to the examination of a frog’s heart, which he had compared to God Himself in his homage to Falla or, to be more precise, at a crossroads of his irrevocable destiny, he held the gaze of the stranger and in spite of himself began to observe him.
He was an old man of indefinite age, impossible to determine, with the ambiguous air of those who stopped aging one day in their senescence. Perhaps on the anniversary of their coming into the world, or maybe at the funeral of one of their grandchildren, or possibly one morning when they woke, as they contemplated the still bluish sun of dawn and wondered whether that light and that silence might not be the only reality before which our lives passed like the images of a film moving across the back curtain of the stage. The man was also shorter than he, though at one time he may have been taller before age bent him and made him shrink. His head was completely bald from temple to temple, as rosy as a child’s above his forehead and mottled with dark spots at the temples. His eyebrows above the edge of rimless glasses with very long earpieces of thin gold were hairy, thick, and white. He dressed in black, with no affectation or untidiness, as if he simply wore mourning for himself.
For a lost instant, one of those moments that even in hell seem fleetingly suspended over the edge of a knife, he felt the temptation to touch the old man’s hand or forearm. Immediately another impulse, more complicated and difficult to explain, held him back. Almost at the same time he told himself the intruder would disappear when touched, just as his represented memories vanished when he persisted in going up on stage to put his hands on them. He also thought that knowing the stranger was alive on the spiral, old but still animate and fragile, would be the greatest of horrors when at the back of his mind he still hoped he was nothing but an apparition of his own aberration. (WHY DON’T YOU PRETEND YOU’RE CRAZY AND BE ACQUITTED?) Then, almost without realizing it and as if he had lost control of his voice, he asked:
“What are you doing here?”
“Where am I?” he replied as if he hadn’t heard him.
It was all too absurd, as Bebé and Carlillo Morla would say, shaking their southern, Chilean heads when he read them one of his surrealist pieces. H
e was afraid to experience when dead a passage added to his play, The Public, which he had entrusted to Rafael Martínez Nadal. (“If something should happen to me in this war that’s at our door, swear to me you’ll destroy the original of The Public right away.”) In a brief rush of author’s passion, over which the doors of hell or death did not prevail, he asked himself whether Rafael had carried out that request and replied he’d never have the courage to do it, just as he had expected when he handed him the manuscript. (“Precisely for that reason, because only I could suspect the importance of what I’ve written. If I die, The Public has no reason to be for other people.”) His words back then seemed grandiloquent and pretentious. But he couldn’t help identifying with one of his own mad characters in that farce, The Figure of Bell, The Centurion, The Prompter, or The Lady, when he insisted, facing the stranger:
“Do you really not know where you are?”
“No, I don’t know. But I’ve come from hell.”
He shook his bare head, too big for the shoulders reduced by age. When he moved it, it seemed ready to separate from his hunched body, and the vertebrae in his neck creaked with the sound of little bones being stepped on.
“This is hell,” he replied in a tone of anger transformed into studied indifference. Without knowing why he began to hate the intruder. He was overcome by a dark rancor toward his voice and his astonished gaze beneath ashen eyebrows.
“This is hell?”
“Yes, yes it is, and it has the form of a spiral. Each dead person is assigned a theater, and this is mine. What are you doing here?”
“Your theater?” the old man asked in a tone of amazement. “What do you mean?”