Staggered, I nodded as I listened to his account. “Well, get out! If you are unable to make the organization over which you preside come to its senses, abandon it.”
He gazed at me with a melancholic smile. “I can’t abandon a whole life dedicated to my ideals. My duty is to strive for more sober voices to prevail, even if I’m not always able to do so. Now that it seems clear that a revolution has finally broken out in Catalonia which may do away with social injustice once and for all, I’m not going to sit idly by as it unfolds. In any case, none of this would have happened if your military friends hadn’t gone and risen up against the Republic.”
“They are no friends of mine, and I have always been critical of military intervention in politics, and more so of coups and overthrows, even against this regime in which you anarchists do not believe.”
“That may be so,” he cut me off. “The issue is that there are many lists being circulated these days, and I spotted your name on one of them. You are in grave danger, Vilar. You have been singled out as a reactionary and a rightist. In the coming days, or even hours, a patrol is bound to show up at your apartment looking for you, but next time it won’t be to bring you here, rather to dump you on the side of a road with a bullet in your head.”
I was indignant.
“But I left politics years ago! And I have represented dozens of destitute workers as a public defender! How can they have me on one of those lists?”
Lacalle tut-tutted at me before explaining, as if he were bored.“You’re a member of the bourgeoisie, a well-known lawyer with a long history as a supporter of the monarchy. You’re a practicing Catholic who is well-connected with influential figures in the city, and you write for conservative papers. Little more is required for a man to be condemned to death at this time. You must escape. You must leave Barcelona, and that means today. A few years ago, under very different circumstances, you saved my life a couple of times, so I am indebted to you. Flee, Vilar. The government of Catalonia has suspended all passports and you’ll require a special permit to leave Barcelona. I’ve prepared one for you. Here it is.”
“I cannot and will not go without my family.”
“Right now it’s impossible for me to provide everyone with protection, and I have only this one for you. You have my word that in a matter of days your wife and children will receive a pass, and I shall personally see to it that they get out. But, for their sake, and if you value your life at all, you don’t have a moment to lose.”
I took the document the anarchist held out for me. I offered him my hand. He shook it vigorously.
“Thank you, Lacalle. You are an honorable man. I wish you the best.”
“And I you. Pray to God for all of us. I don’t know where the conflict that has just broken out is going to take us.”
“Weren’t you a theosophist? My God and yours are not so different. May He protect us all.”
I headed for the door, but before reaching it, I stopped and turned to ask him one last question. “What ever happened to Libertad?”
The anarchist sighed before answering me.
“After the assassination attempt she followed me into exile and we lived together for a few years in Paris. We had two children. She died giving birth to the second.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“Thank you,” he replied drily.
* * *
Once back at home I explained what was going on to my wife, who reacted with her usual composure, meeting the situation head-on.
“You must leave this house immediately. There’s no other option.”
“But I don’t want to leave you and the children.”
“We’ll look for someplace safe, and once we know that you’ve left, I’ll contact Lacalle and ask him to get us out.”
We talked about various options until I remembered Horacio Meneguetti. The Argentinean consul in Barcelona had always treated me with the greatest respect. Together we had organized some tango shows, and I had helped promote some of his country’s writers through the Casa América in Barcelona. I called him and asked him to take me in at the consulate for a few hours.
“Come as soon as possible. We don’t have much space, but we’ll put you somewhere.”
It was inconceivable that Barcelona’s telephones continued to function in that situation, but the fact was that they did.
I drove my children and my wife to her parents’ house on Muntaner Street, and left the car there. I fought to hold myself together as I said goodbye to my children, in order not to frighten them (who knew when or if we were going to see each other again!).
“Pablo, your hat and the carnation! This is no time to be walking around Barcelona as if you were headed to a cocktail party,” was the farewell I received from my wife, ever the pragmatist.
With a tinge of melancholy I left the red flower and the cocked hat and set out, with a small suitcase in hand, for the nearby consulate. Fortunately I wasn’t intercepted by any patrols, and fifteen minutes later I found myself theoretically out of harm’s way, on Argentinean soil in my own city.
Horacio Meneguetti, with his Pancho Villa–like mustache and his curly hair, was a well-read and capable man who seemed to be overcome by the circumstances. There were close to fifty people there who, like me, had turned to the consulate as a safe haven. A couple of secretaries toiled at the telephones, which were ringing off the hook.
“Pablo, we’re going to look for a way to get you out. You can’t stay here long because hundreds of Argentinean citizens are getting in touch, asking me to help them leave Spain, and I’m afraid we’re going to be overwhelmed any moment now. I have an idea. There is an Argentinean cargo shop, the Isauro, anchored in the port right now. You can take it to Lisbon.”
“Excellent! What do I have to do?”
“Embark. There’s just one problem: you don’t have papers to be on the boat, and under the circumstances, they can’t send anyone to pick you up.”
“But I have a valid pass …”
“It doesn’t matter. They’re not going to let anyone onto a vessel where they’re not supposed to be. We would place the crew of the Isauro in danger if word spread that they were boarding Spanish citizens. What you would have to do is get out down to the port, and once there, swim out to the boat.”
“Impossible!”
“Why?” my friend the consul inquired with surprise.
“Because …” My face turned as red as a tomato. “I don’t know how to swim.”
And that was the truth. Despite being a sailor’s son, I had never even learned to stay afloat. In those days fewer people were able to swim than is the case today. I realized then and there that my inability might have graver consequences than I ever could have imagined.
“There’s another possibility,” I mumbled to myself as I remembered the Count of Güell’s offer. “If I can use your telephone, I think I can still sail out of here.”
* * *
The Giuseppe Verdi cruised out into the Mediterranean with her four-thousand-horsepower steam engines propelling all three hundred feet of her through the sea.
As the ship was flying an Italian flag, it had not been seized when the war broke out. The departure had not been easy. With the vessel surrounded by armed soldiers who scrutinized my pass and gave me the third degree, I was trembling inside until the very end. But there I was, leaning on the stern railing and looking back at my city, not knowing when I would see it again, thinking of the wife and children I was leaving behind.
Someone tapped me on the soldier. I turned around to see an attractive lady in her forties draped in dazzling jewelry.
“Do you remember me?”
“María Nilo! I see that you haven’t abandoned your old ways. Did you actually walk around Barcelona, in the wake of the uprising, with that jewelry? You are truly brave.”
María smiled at me. “Yes. I was on a very brief visit for work, and my brother—you know, Ángel—warned me that Barcelona wasn’t going to be safe, so we decide
d to take to the sea.”
“A prudent decision. Well, then, tell me about your life. I lost track of you back in those years.”
The old showgirl gave me a sad smile.
“Well, what happened is that I lost my way. The vice, which you knew about, destroyed me. I couldn’t be counted on for anything anymore, and I began to do anything, no matter how low, to pay for it. I was a lost soul. Luckily a good man came along and saved me from drowning. Ernesto! Ernesto! Come here. I’m here with Pablo Vilar.”
Hearing María’s cries, the man came toward us. With a dashing air, his hair slicked back, and sporting a double-breasted blazer with gold buttons worthy of an admiral, my old friend Ernesto Vilches gave me a hug.
“Vilar, what a pleasure to see you!”
“I never imagined running into Wu-Li-Chang himself on the deck of this ship …”
The actor bellowed with laughter before María spoke up. “Ernesto helped me to get off the drug and clean up my act. In exchange I promised him that I would abandon the varietés and seedy dives. Now I work for his company, but behind the scenes, taking care of production and the wardrobe side of things. We’ve been successfully touring Spain and the Americas for years.”
“And what a woman she is!” Vilches chimed in, as if he were acting in one of his shows at the Teatro Goya. “What a woman!”
* * *
Parting with my theater-loving friends, I wandered about that deck crawling with priests without cassocks, nuns without habits, bourgeois gentlemen without hats, and aristocrats without servants. The uprising had turned life upside down for all these social types, who watched the Catalonian coast drift away with a satisfaction and relief that it’s difficult to describe. It was then I heard a vivacious laugh echo through the melancholic air with all the subtlety of a hurricane. I spun to my left and there she was, in the center of a circle of passengers. As luminous as always.
She eagerly waved for me to approach her, drifted away from her group and grabbed me by the arm.
“It’s so good to see you! I thought that I would have nobody to really talk with on this voyage.”
“I was under the impression that you were safe from any kind of threat in Barcelona.”
In recent years Isabel Enrich had established herself as the premiere patroness of the city’s cultural life. Her events attracted internationally famous figures, from Chesterton to the Count of Maeterlink, great Spanish artists visiting the city, such as Bergamín and García Lorca, along with eminent Barcelona residents such as Sagarra and Soldevila. Her talks at the Conferentia Club attracted everyone from theologians to socialist crusaders, from flamenco singers to opera divas. Rich and poor, revolutionaries and conservatives, Catalonian regionalists and Spanish centralists, monarchists and republicans … all of them came together, debated, fought, and settled their differences, with her at the center of it all. She seemed untouchable.
“Yes, I thought so too. I’ve tried to avoid partisanship my whole life, harboring hopes that if I refused to be dogmatic I could stand aside and observe the clashes between ideologies without being dragged into them. But that was wishful thinking … Sometimes I think that it’s better not to expect much from life because then, when good things do happen, you’re pleasantly surprised. Ángel Lacalle warned me a few days ago that my name was on one of those sinister lists going around. My crime, apparently, was living in a small palace, despite the quantities of money I have given to charitable causes, some of them even, as you well know, supported by the anarchists themselves. In any case, it was bedlam in Barcelona, and there was nothing to be done but flee. But let’s not talk about politics. Let’s be positive. What about your children? And your wife?”
“Pilar stayed in Barcelona. She and the children will follow me in a few days. Lacalle promised me that he would get them passes to leave the city. We are all to meet in Italy, and we’ll decide what to do there. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I’ll try to reach Paris. I’m not as fortunate as you. I don’t have anyone to wait for. Solitude is something that has always allowed me to live as I please, but it also comes with a price that seems high at times. Luckily, I dedicate little time to feeling sorry for myself. I shall move to some pretty place where I can remember the good times and recall all the beautiful things that were part of my life. Do you remember when we met on that horseback ride on the Marquess of Llobregat’s estate? Or the party at The Ritz when the infantes came to Barcelona? And those functions on behalf of the Red Cross, with their formidable and bossy marchionesses? Do you remember the streetcar strike, when you rode with me?”
“Yes, I also remember the gunmen, the civil governor who trampled on the law, and my cases as a public defender, killers degraded by poverty and ignorance, and when Lacalle and I were shot at. But I also remember when I saved that inheritance of yours thanks to the forgotten legal precept of the sacramental testament.”
“I think that there is a phrase which defines all of this. Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. Come on, you knew it by heart!
“‘It was the best of times,’” I whispered, “‘it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair …’”
We kept on talking for a good while until the coast dwindled to a thin line of gray and brown, and many of the passengers began to drift toward the ship’s restaurant, as it was dinnertime, or head for their cabins. Isabel walked off to find some friends. Thus the stern was soon half empty, with almost nobody left to look back toward that land disappearing in the distance which we were not to see again for a long time. In an instinctive gesture I reached up to my lapel to touch and smell the flower I used to wear there. But there was nothing there, so I reached into my pocket in search of a cigar.
Acknowledgments
During the different phases involved in the drafting of this book the help of my wife, Mey, was fundamental and irreplaceable, while my children, Leticia, Sofía, Víctor and Nicolás spurred me to explore a few generations back in my family’s history.
Lluís Permanyer, Paco Villar, Borja de Riquer, Rossend Casanova, Silvia Ventosa, Ignacio Aramburu, José Luis García Abril, Luis Ignacio Manegat, Fabiola de Zuleta Alejandro, Jaume Susany, Eduard Susanna, Dani Cortejo, Colonel Jesús Alberto García Riesco, and, at Barcelona City Hall, Carla Vidal and Susana Crespo helped me analyze different sets of relevant information.
Baltasar Porcel, who will be sorely missed, gave me two good bits of advice which I tried to follow. Montse Sanpere, Juan Luis Oliva de Suelves, the Viscount of Güell, the Marquess of Llupiá, and the Count of Montseny generously shared their memories—and a few documents—of other times.
Of the many related readings undertaken, the works of Ferran Aisa on Catalonia’s anarchist culture were especially useful to ascertain certain details, as was León Ignacio’s classic chronological study of the years of pistolerismo in Spain, during which union and business forces employed violent operatives and gunmen to advance their positions.
Lilian Neuman, José Enrique Ruiz Domenèc, and Dr. Juan Marí Palacín provided me with wise and practical advice on the text. Deborah Fernández and Ana Camallonga proofread the original Spanish text. On the home stretch, Emili Rosales buoyed me with his invaluable confidence and enthusiasm, as did Antonia Kerrigan and Pilar Lucas.
Though the generous assistance of Carlos Ruiz Zafón and Arturo Pérez-Reverte came as no surprise, it represented one of the most rewarding aspects of writing A Barcelona Heiress.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sergio Vila-Sanjuán (Barcelona, 1957) is one of Spain’s most well-known cultural journalists and is currently coordinator of the Cultura/s supplement of the newspaper La Vanguardia. He received a degree in History from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and later, as a Fullbright scholar at Boston University, obtained a Master of Liberal Arts. Vila-S
anjuán has published several books on journalism, and was commissioner of the Barcelona Year of the Book and Reading, 2005. His first novel, A Barcelona Heiress, inspired by real historical events and by figures from his family background, received enthusiastic reviews and is currently being translated into several languages.
1 Translated from: Pablo Neruda, “El Nuevo Soneto a Elena” (New Sonnet to Hélène), Crepusculario, 1923.
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