Uncertain Glory

by Joan Sales

  And you stood to the right of that grotesque court, slipping on black robes that were too short for you, while others bawled: “Silence! Soleràs will accuse the king!”

  “Comrades, listen to the prosecutor!”

  The robes looked tiny on you and strangely made you seem taller and thinner, more like a rake than ever. It was useless calling for silence. You read out the accusation but your voice was lost in the clamour. Only those of us who were next to you could hear what you were saying: “We accuse you of being a king, of calling yourself a Bourbon, and being an unlucky number,” you declaimed in a monotonous litany, while wagging a finger at the oil painting. “We accuse you because others are simply Jaume Puig or Anton Rafeques, but you are Alfonso the Thirteenth and that makes lots of people split their sides. Some people call you Mr Thirteen and think they are so funny, they laugh themselves silly and slather over their chops. We accuse you, Mr Thirteen . . .”

  Those who of us who’d begun to work out what you were saying exchanged puzzled glances: what the hell were you building up to? You carried on unperturbed, still wagging an accusing finger at that king painted in oils: “We accuse you of being a short body on long legs, that’s earned you the popular nickname of Ambrose and the equally popular Long-legs; we accuse you, Ambrose Long-legs, of not letting the lovely lads of the Legion rise up whenever they feel like it and enjoying an insurrection when they fancy . . .”

  Now the few of us who could hear you were more bewildered than ever; you continued, averting your gaze: “We accuse you of having your portrait painted in this robe that looks like a winding sheet; we accuse you because your mother, the Holy Archduchess of Austria, never caused a scandal, and a virtuous queen is so boring and dashes the hard-working, honest people’s legitimate hopes of excuses to gossip . . . we accuse you above all, Mr Alfonso Thirteen, above all we accuse you of committing the most heinous of crimes, the crime a university cannot forgive in the era that is now beginning, of being neither a Hegelian nor a Nietzschean, neither a proletarian nor a superman! Quite intolerable! You’re still a Krausist – if that. Perhaps deep down you never even got as far as Krause. You thus deserve to be burned!”

  The multitude that vaguely heard the words you were mumbling interrupted you every other second with ovations and while these resounded you shut up and modestly lowered your eyes in the manner of all great orators. The only ones not to applaud were those who could actually hear what you were saying.

  When you indicated you had finished your accusation, the walls shook with the massive applause. Some students, who’d brought a ladder, were already taking down the painting; it looked huge un-hung, and we now headed en masse towards the rector’s offices, painting in tow. As the offices had those tall windows overlooking the square, we decided to pour oil on it, set it alight and hurl it out of a window. It fell on the barricade but had already come apart from its frame as it burst into flame. We poured more oil out of the window while other students defenestrated other portraits, of dead rectors or who knows what dry, boring, be-robed and be-medalled characters together with any papers we extracted from the cupboards and everything else we could lay our hands on to make a big and visible bonfire.

  We flung the windows wide open and after defenestrating everything inflammable and easy to throw down we organised tables and chairs into a barricade behind the balustrades. From our vantage point we could see the civil guards still standing to attention on the Ronda Sant Antoni pavement, on the opposite side of the square. They stood straight-backed and stiff, their hands over the ends of their rifles. Only the two officers stirred, walking quietly up and down past the line of guards who remained rooted to the spot like statues.

  “A pity my pistol jammed,” said one of the students who’d been firing from the barricade down in the square.

  “I’ve run out of ammunition,” said the other.

  “We could give them a roasting from up here . . .”

  While our frustrated sharpshooters bemoaned the divine pleasures they were missing out on, a lad ran up from the street looking very excited: “I’ve got a Parabellum!”

  The word “Parabellum” triggered a religious silence and everyone stepped respectfully aside to let him walk through. “He’s got a Parabellum,” we repeated, glancing admiringly at the newcomer: “a Parabellum . . .A Parabellum . . .” the whisper went round the crowd. They craned their necks to try to see the prodigious student with a Parabellum.

  Then you staged one of your really eccentric tricks: one of those strange occurrences that shock people and nobody can ever fathom until long after the event. It’s taken me until today to grasp what you did then.

  You bear-hugged the lad with the Parabellum and took it from him.

  “Give me that Parabellum! I’m a first-rate marksman!”

  “A first-rate marksman? First I’ve heard of it!”

  But you had already made it yours, were holding it tight and you’d knelt down at the back of the barricade of tables and chairs behind the windows and positioned yourself to take aim at the civil guards. The pistol – I can see it now – was a lustrous black with a long, polished glinting barrel and you shot non-stop. As you emptied out the spent cartridges, the lad who’d brought it knelt by your side and handed you fresh ammunition. The empty brass cartridges clattered and bounced. The rest of us looked at you breathless, full of wonder; perhaps some were deadly envious.

  Meanwhile, at an order from the officer with the binoculars, a civil guard had raised his rifle; the others kept their hands over the ends of theirs. I saw that very clearly, because I put my head above the balustrade: only one civil guard was returning your fire and he always had an officer next to him who seemed to be calling the shots. These were spasmodic and the bullets embedded themselves in the ceiling of the great hall – not right at the back, as would have happened if he’d aimed at our balustrade, but near the window, as if he were aiming the top of it. The bullets thudded softly into the plaster ceiling while you kept on firing.

  A thought suddenly struck me: Juli can’t possibly see the guards from this distance – he’s much too short-sighted!

  On our strolls down the side streets of old Barcelona I’d had plenty of opportunities to register how short-sighted you were. I knew you couldn’t tell a man from a tree more than thirty metres away and saw next to nothing forty or fifty metres away. I’d soon worked that out though you tried to pretend you had normal sight. You’d fly into a rage at any reference to your short-sightedness, at any hint that you should visit an optician and get some proper glasses. Once, when Lluís was being adamant, you bit his head off in a furious temper: “I see much better than you! Why don’t you just fuck off?” I suddenly realised the buildings on the Ronda Sant Antoni could only be a blur. So why had you grabbed the Parabellum? How could you shoot at civil guards you couldn’t see?

  Some days later we had a meeting on carrer de l’Hospital. You were our hero, the student who’d shot a Parabellum as long as his ammunition held out. Even the tough old anarchists, veterans of the struggles between the single union and the free union, regarded you with respect.

  People wanted to see and hear you. Our dining room, passageway, lobby, bedrooms, small sitting room and kitchen were crammed.

  When you began to speak, a sudden hush descended the like of which I’d never heard before; such a dense silence it was audible. You began modestly and that won more people over: “Everything we do, everything we can ever do, poor Kierkegaardians that we are, quite unbeknown to ourselves . . .” I don’t think anyone present had ever heard of Kierkegaard, but that didn’t matter: they gaped in awe. You continued: “All we can ever do is zilch compared to what the Hegelians are doing, let alone what the Nietzscheans are about to do.” None present understood this nonsense and they began to exchange perplexed glances: silence metamorphosed into stunned amazement.

  “To sum up, companions or comrades, or whatever you will, everything we are doing now, these heroic shenanigans, this glorious rumpus, this h
istoric hubbub, should have been done in 1923. I could put forward a good excuse for not doing it then, that is, seven years ago, by saying I was only eleven, a very tender age. No matter: that’s when we should have done it. Doing it now, however bitter it may be to acknowledge, however much it dents our self-esteem, is rather . . . chicken. No, companions or comrades, I’m quite happy to define myself as an extremely ’umble chicken from Kierkegaard’s coop; if anyone here thinks he is a Hegelian or Nietzschean eagle, let him cast the first egg. Even though our flight may be a modest chicken effort, we should be helping the king, who is trying to re-establish a civilian constitution and not a captain in the Legion who thinks he has a right to proclaim a republic off his own bat because he fancies one. Remember, companions or comrades: bayonets are capricious. If we let them proclaim one thing today, don’t let’s complain if tomorrow they proclaim something else.”

  People finally got your message. They understood you were attacking the military uprising in Jaca and perplexity quickly gave way to indignation and uproar. You waved your arms and shouted like a man shipwrecked amid crashing waves in heavy seas: “I’ve been to Russia and Germany! I know what it’s all about! I know what a show the Hegelians and Nietzscheans are putting on!” Your voice was lost in the tumult: people were roaring in our dining room, in our hallway and in our bedrooms. The flat seemed on the point of collapse under the torrent of screams, the stamping on the floor, the whistles and the obscenities. If I could hear you and understand what you were saying, it was because I was sitting between you and my father.

  My father gave me the biggest surprise of all. He stood up, intrepidly – I ought to add that he’d had long practice at speaking to hostile, vociferous crowds; he’d so often given an angry crowd the opposite of what it wanted to hear! With a broad sweep of his arm he calmed the waters: “Old Milmany will now speak,” people whispered from our dining room to our hallway, from our kitchen to our bedrooms. Silence fell and Father proceeded to speak softly and deliberately, as if he were weighing up his words before dropping them into a sea about to seethe at any moment.

  “It wouldn’t be right, companions – and I would beg companion Soleràs never to call us ‘comrades’, a word with military connotations that we find repugnant – it wouldn’t be right if we, who call ourselves libertarians, interrupted someone who is expressing his ideas. All ideas, whatever they may be, have a right to be freely expressed; if we don’t respect the freedom of others, how on earth can we demand they respect ours? Companions, I agree with you, I hardly have to tell you that. I agree with you that some of the things companion Soleràs has just expressed, making use of his freedom, seem a little . . . surprising, especially when expressed here, in this bulwark of co-operative anarcho-syndicalism that is the editorial office of La barrinada. I know companion Soleràs well and I know he likes to shock people with his pranks and his paradoxes. However, once that’s been said and once we’ve made allowances for the eccentric and shocking things he has said, I will be frank and confess to you – and among friends and companions, frankness is an indication of loyalty – that I am more in agreement with him than you might imagine. I don’t believe, I have never believed, in the right of might, in the rule of pistols and even less so of bayonets, and so as far as that goes I agree with companion Soleràs. Between a civilian monarchy and a military republic —”

  “What, have you turned monarchist too? That’s all we need!” interjected Cosme, his dear lifelong friend who was sitting with us on the dais. That was the detonator and once again turmoil rocked our flat.

  “I’m neither monarchist nor republican. I am an anarchist!” shouted my father, though hardly anyone heard. They were all gesticulating and yelling the coarsest of curses and grossest of obscenities. One fellow was so small he climbed up on to the sideboard so people could see and hear him. He was wailing and ranting, red in the face as if on the verge of an attack of apoplexy: “Fuck the king!”

  While everyone argued heatedly and threw insults going down the endless stairs, Lluís tugged my right arm and stopped me on the fifth-floor landing. You’ll remember how the landings in our house still have those wooden corner seats they put in buildings during the last century so people climbing up can sit down and catch their breath: our eight are big enough to take two people. Lluís sat me down beside him and those coming down rushed past us like a roaring torrent. We heard only the odd snatch: “Better Mussa the Moor|| than the King!” Cosme shouted. The flood had already reached the bottom steps and for a moment we heard your voice echoing up the stairwell: “I’d like to hear from you in a few years – a republic ushered in by a military insurrection . . .” and Cosme’s thunderous voice riposting: “Student revolts, daddy’s boys playing up!”

  But I wasn’t listening and heard nothing: I was alone with Lluís on that corner seat and he was crushing me with all his strength. The torrent of bodies rushed past, arguing and insulting, but none of that existed as far as I was concerned: nothing existed apart from Lluís. The years have passed, seven this December, and my God, disappointments have come thick and fast, but the memory of that first kiss still turns me head over heels as it did then. What couldn’t I forgive him for that moment, the most glorious I’d ever experienced?

  I sometimes tell myself that if the old Jesuit from the attic near the Arc del Teatre had baptised me, I might have felt an equally strong surge of emotion, but I’ve never felt anything so powerful and I know I never will again.

  A few weeks later the police arrested Lluís and others who met up in the basement of La extremeña, including Orfila and Bracons. As they couldn’t pin anything on them, the police simply held them in the Prefecture dungeons for a few days. After their release they told us they thought they must have been seeing visions during the interrogations: the police were familiar with precise details from conversations in the basement that only someone who’d been there could have told them. The police knew, for example, about the whole debate over the federal flag; they even knew somebody had uttered the incomprehensible phrase de cibus et veneris at some point, which they interpreted as highly important and a code standing for some dastardly mysterious revolutionary slogan. This made our heads spin – was there a traitor, a police informer in our midst? Who could it be? Today, years later, I think I can tell you that Orfila and Bracons suspected you. I should say that Lluís and I defended you: they alleged you were an eccentric young man, that your reactions were unpredictable, your ideas incoherent, and that you acted strangely. “It must have been one of us and he’s the only one who fits the bill, whatever you say.”

  It took us a long time to find out who it was and we did so quite by chance, though I don’t remember how: the informer was the old supporter of Lerroux from Extremadura, the diplodocus. It transpired that they’d done a deal some time ago by virtue of which he let his basement be used for all kinds and colour of clandestine meetings; the police never intervened – that would have cut off their source of information – but he had to report on all he heard. The man made a living from what he got selling ham and from the handouts he earned from the filth. He wasn’t a fake republican or a counterfeit Lerroux supporter, which is what we poor innocents concluded when we found out he was the informer. It’s obvious that he didn’t think the two things were at all incompatible: he was sincere when he whimpered and showed us his Phrygian cap and sword that he’d flourished during the Setmana Tràgica, sincere when he tremulously recited those harangues of Castelar or Lerroux, and sincere when he betrayed us to the filth – he was always sincere! We didn’t understand him at the time: it’s not that we understand him now, since there are things you can’t fathom by their very nature, but we have seen much stranger happenings recently! Things that really make your head spin! What if I told you that there are days when I even suspect my brother Llibert is basically a species of diplodocus . . . We young people are quick to value sincerity above all else and never grasp that some people are sincere in whatever role they play; their duplicity, rather than
lack of sincerity, is a Janus-faced sincerity – they are doubly sincere! And Llibert is unnerving: all his gushing spontaneity, his sincerity, his quivering voice are unnerving . . . This is only a very vague presentiment, a hunch that’s probably mistaken: he is possibly a much subtler, more elegant and complex diplodocus than the man from Extremadura.

  One mystery remains: how come the police didn’t arrest you or anyone else – like me, for example? Why had the owner of La extremeña told the police some names and not others? He must have been swayed by personal likes and dislikes – that’s the only explanation. He’d clearly taken a shine to you and didn’t want you to suffer: riddles of diplodocus psychology we shall never solve. On the other hand he obviously couldn’t stand Lluís and hated that inseparable duo Orfila and Bracons and their syncretic fusion of Marxism and Freudianism even more.

  You then went on to publish that long article in the Mirador, “The Rebellion of the Youth,” that we all read and argued passionately over. The whole universe seemed to revolve around us at the time.

  They paid you twenty-five pesetas, you told us, sounding cock-a-hoop: “The first money I have ever earned.” A few days later you told us: “Those twenty-five pesetas weren’t only the first I ever earned but I suspect they will be the last: the Mirador has turned down my second article in the series. They say one is enough.”

  You didn’t seem at all downcast, but in fact rather euphoric. And you added, “You wouldn’t believe who’s in charge at the Mirador. You walk into their offices and find them packed with important-looking people, celebrities, top writers and politicians, and you’d think any one of them could be the boss. Those privileged intellects and amazing talents dressed by the best tailors in Barcelona. All so ironic, so sceptical, sporting real Italian silk ties that cost a fortune and smoking Havana cigars! The glories of Catalan literature! In one out-of-the-way corner you see a skinny little man who looks as if he’s just survived a shipwreck. I won’t describe his tie because I’ve never liked talking about smut. This species of shipwrecked voyager is in charge and you feel like giving him alms, when in fact he’s the boss. And he’s really intelligent; it’s hard to keep up with him! A kind of down-at-heel Talleyrand. In those battered shoes that produce mildew when it rains and even sprout fungi, he’s the man who gives the orders in his frayed shirt, looking like someone who needs a hot meal and his frightful pockets bursting with books! He sits in a corner and listens to the others; he rarely says anything. From the little he does say you soon gather he’s one of the sharpest minds in the country, a man who has read everything, who knows and understands everything. He told me: ‘Don’t build up your hopes, young man. We only publish one article a year on The Rebellion of the Youth. Our readers wouldn’t tolerate more than one article on the subject per year. It’s an article – how can I put this? – like the one entitled The First Roast Chestnut Sellers Are Here. I could perhaps tell you to come back next year, when there are more shenanigans at the university and students are back in the news, but it’s not like the chestnut sellers: each year we must have a new person to write The Rebellion of the Youth, unlike the chestnut-seller article that can be written by the same journalist year in year out. When the subject is the rebellion of the young, we need a fresh youngster; last year’s man has ceased to be young and not even his bloody mother recognises him.’ He said that to my face, ‘his bloody mother’ . . . As I said, he’s a highly intelligent man!”