Uncertain Glory

by Joan Sales

  And suddenly I was in the great man’s antechamber, though I never knew how I’d got that far. The great man came out to usher me into his presence in front of everyone else waiting, and patted me on the back in a reassuring gesture. We went into his office.

  It was an imposing office, worthy of a great man; I felt awestruck. He was young and handsome, dark, strong, friendly, optimistic, dynamic and self-important. His dark eyes shone with an emotional gleam that softened their fire; it was well known that his eyes were quick to water when he was haranguing the masses, something that contributed in large part to his success as an orator, together with the quivering inflections he could bring to his voice. A magnificent baritone voice, a powerful voice that could curse and bawl or quiver according to the needs of the moment; this is a great man, I was thinking, at last a great man. I hadn’t met him till then, it was the first time I had entered his office. The walls were hung with the most famous of the masterpieces that had been created thanks to his initiative, the “Make tanks”, the “Battle of the egg”, the “And what have you done for victory?” Dozens and dozens of huge, vivid, lurid, loud posters. The moment I walked in, two impeccably uniformed young men spread the still-wet proofs of a new poster on a vast table. It showed a four- or five-year-old boy in a republican soldier’s uniform cheerfully aiming a sub-machine gun. The great man smiled at me patronisingly; he listened and spoke to me at the same time as he examined the new poster and gave instructions to his subordinates: “This red needs to be darker, it looks pale; make sure the ink is as red as possible when you start printing . . .” He smelt of eau de cologne and his half-military, half-civilian uniform was made of the finest wool and the last word in elegance. Once he’d scrutinised the new poster, he pointed to his desk: “I’m always so busy . . . but I am listening.”

  While he spoke, he continued to open letters and telegrams, consult figures and notes. Yes, he was very busy, the sheer range of his responsibilities weighed him down; but he was everyone’s mate, his highly important duties didn’t prevent him being a friend and comrade to everyone who paid him a visit. He kept saying “comrade Cruells” and treating me like a lifelong mate, when in fact it was the first time we’d met. It was equally true that each time he addressed me by my surname he had first to glance at a page in his diary where his adjutant had written my surname alongside the reason for my visit and the likely length in minutes of our exchange.

  “He’s my nephew, do you see, and I can do absolutely nothing for him. For him or for so many thousands of other proletarian children! Comrade Cruells, it’s most distressing.” For a moment he abandoned his documents, statistics and telegrams and looked at me in the warmest, most tearful way possible. “I find it most distressing. I have sacrificed the whole of my life on the altar of the proletariat and can now do nothing for the children of the proletariat who are afflicted with diphtheria. There is no serum! The frontiers are closing, foreign powers are forsaking us; we face the most serious problems. I’m working myself to death, as you can see, but we are receiving no help from the world outside. None at all! No fertilisers for our agriculture, no forage for our animals, no sulphur for our chemical industry . . . I am a chemist, comrade Cruells, and I could show you the statistics for the last few weeks: production has plummeted . . .”

  “I’m only asking you for a few drops of anti-diphtheria serum,” I mumbled.

  “But, comrade, didn’t I just tell you that absolutely nothing is getting through at the moment? They have shut the frontier along the Pyrenees; they are sinking every vessel that tries to reach our shores. They are isolating us from the outside world as if we had the plague. Ours is one of the greatest tragedies of history. In comparison, what is the tragedy of these little children? What are their tiny tragedies? Our struggle is being fought at a cosmic level; we must resign ourselves to our private misfortunes because they are the price to be paid for the redemption of the proletariat throughout the universe. He is my nephew, as you know, and I cannot stop my tears” – the great man’s magnificent eyes began to water and his seductive baritone voice wavered slightly – “but we must be manly, overcome our weaknesses, sacrifice our own selfish interests and see the big picture!” His voice now surged, heroic and energetic. “This is the advice I would give every comrade: ignore what is befalling every individual proletarian and simply consider the proletarian masses as a whole. I don’t know if you comrades at the front grasp the dangers we face in the rearguard; luckily we are here to deal with everything that comes at us. While you resist the enemy at the front, the enemy in the rearguard would stab you in the back if we weren’t here to mount a heroic challenge against them. You should know that at this very minute we are facing the greatest of dangers in Barcelona: a clerical conspiracy. Yes, indeed, there are conspirators bold enough to dare ask that we reopen the churches. And however incredible you may find this, you will see among them members of the autonomous government and ministers in the republican government. From the expression on your face I see you find that hard to believe: well, it is true enough. That conspiracy exists. Luckily, we are ever vigilant; luckily, we never sleep. Reopen the churches? All our heroism would have been to no avail! Our sacrifices, the rivers of blood we have shed, all to no avail! However, no need to be fearful, comrades at the front, no need to be fearful, comrade Cruells . . . We are here, and we will meet every threat head on . . .”

  “Comrade Cruells, comrade Cruells . . .” I felt a deep and dark desire to weep and to go for a pee.

  IX

  I called Lluís to one side; he’d not understood.

  “I imagine it’s some kind of joke . . .”

  He looked at me with hate in his eyes: “So the great Llibert . . .” He gripped my arm and dragged me outside the village. The snow had begun to melt over the last few days and our boots sank into the mud. We reached the palisade where they kept the infamous brougham; he harnessed the mule without saying a word.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Jump in.”

  He lashed the animal and it galloped in the direction of the deserted valley. Did he hope to find anti-diphtheria serum in one of those deserted villages? Apart from cursing our steed, he said nothing through the entire journey. His whip hissed through the air like a sheet being ripped. He spoke to me just once and that was to repeat with hate in his eyes: “So Llibert . . . our brilliant comrade . . .”

  The cart track climbed steeply for a couple of kilometres; when we reached the ridge, where the other abandoned valley – no man’s land – suddenly came into view, the mule, goaded by curses and lashes, launched a kind of cavalry charge and hurtled downhill; it was a miracle the old carriage didn’t fall apart on the rocky track. We reached Cruyllas past Nogueras in under an hour. I’d never travelled so far into that valley, not having set foot in it for months – not since brigade headquarters had restricted travel permissions to Picó and Lluís. There was a wood near the village and halfway up the mountain the barbed-wire fences glinted through the tree trunks as they were hit by the slanting rays of the rising sun.

  We left the brougham and mule in the church square and walked silently along the main street.

  It wasn’t a village that had been laid waste. It was intact. Though it hadn’t been bombed or razed, its inhabitants had clearly abandoned it when they discovered they were caught between two fronts close to enemy positions. Its houses undamaged, the village seemed ghostlier than Villar or Santa Espina. The rising sun spread across the snowy rooftops like honey on a slice of fresh bread and the air on the streets smelt like a large empty house. Unscathed yet empty, it made a weird impression, a body living on after losing its soul. The fact that the houses, even the humblest, were a brilliant white added to the eeriness, as if the inhabitants had decided to whitewash them just before the battles had unexpectedly forced them to depart.

  We left the village behind and climbed the slope in the direction of the fences. Lluís took long strides and I found it hard to keep up. After a quarter o
f an hour of walking between box and kermes oaks he waved me to stop; the barbed wire was a hundred metres in front.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “We pinched their cow, but they are generous folk.”

  Cowbells of every kind and size hung on the barbed wire and goat skulls and human skulls alternated on the tops of the stakes. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen skulls, polished like ivory like those, stuck on the posts of barbed wire fences. Our soldiers, like the enemy, had this custom of collecting them wherever they found them – on fields where a battle had been fought months before – and displaying them in this way. I don’t believe the intention was to make fun of them; on the contrary, it was more a homage to the anonymous dead, whether friends or enemies. The acclaim was eccentric and difficult to fathom, but I believe in their eyes that was what it was meant to be. The novelty on this occasion was that goat and human skulls alternated, something I’d not seen previously. Cardboard signs were nailed to the stake under each skull: “From the top of these pyramids forty centuries of history look down upon us”, and other such renowned sayings. I’d still not understood – though I was getting an inkling – why Lluís had brought me there, and I stared at those signs and goat skulls in amazement; he didn’t, as if they were nothing new.

  “They are his ideas,” he told me.

  “The old guard dies, but never surrenders” said another sign; the rising sun projected its rays obliquely, endlessly elongating the shadows of the posts on which the skulls seemed to grin. I discovered one that was very small, like a toy that could have belonged to an eighteen-month-old baby; it had its own sign: “Suffer the little children to come unto me”.

  Lluís cupped his hands into a megaphone and shouted. As his shouts brought no response, he started shaking the wire; some of the skulls fell and the bells tinkled grotesquely. Still nobody appeared; we could have cut through the wire and advanced. He stood in full daylight so they would see him, creating a terrific din with his shouts and the bells, like a madman. I stayed hidden among the bushes though I called out to him, afraid that at any moment he’d be hit in the guts by a stream of machine-gun fire. He didn’t even hear me.

  Finally, four sleepy, bleary-eyed soldiers in tattered uniforms appeared, clearly annoyed their sleep had been disturbed. Lluís bawled at them in Spanish, saying he wanted to speak to their lieutenant; one of the four went off and came back minutes later with a man as ragged as his colleagues. Two small golden stars gleamed on the front of his sheep’s fleece coat.

  It was Soleràs.

  “There’s no serum,” Lluís shouted at him. “Can you hear me? Cruells will tell you all about it . . . I don’t understand, a cure for diphtheria . . .”

  I was a few paces behind him and felt calmer now, but not entirely; we were still two against five. Lluís gestured to me to come nearer; I stood my ground.

  “You want serum now?” said Soleràs. “You’re such a whimsical fellow! You ask for the oddest things . . . So it is serum now, is it? Who do you want that for? For your latest bit on the side, like the eau de cologne? Don’t tell me the doctor’s wife has caught diphtheria?”

  “There is none in the whole republican zone. Cruells will tell you. It’s for Ramonet!”

  Soleràs looked at him in amazement: “Ramonet is here?”

  “They were having a quieter time here than in Barcelona. Ever since your people started dropping bombs . . .”

  “Do you mean . . .” Soleràs couldn’t get over his amazement: “Do you mean that Trini is with you as well? Did you have her accompany the doctor’s wife? She and Ramonet? Are you mad? Tell them to leave immediately! Something nasty might happen to them!”

  “I’m not asking for your advice.”

  “Something nasty might happen to them!”

  The sea breeze had swollen and gusted fiercely past me towards them; it prevented me hearing what they were saying. I could see them gesticulating and opening their mouths and when the wind dropped I could hear them again: “Something nasty might happen to them!” Soleràs repeated for the third time, shouting into the wind. “You must send them away immediately, before tomorrow!”

  “I didn’t come here to be ordered around by you.”

  “And you say I’m the madman around here! You’ll force me to tell you . . . I’ll do so later. First let’s speak about the cow. We’d persuaded you not to pinch it; you broke your word.”

  “Now’s hardly the time to remind me of that fucking cow.”

  “You’re obviously a generous man, Lluís: you’ll forgive me the cows you steal from me as magnanimously as that punch you threw my way.”

  “A fine time to bring up that punch . . .”

  “Do you think I can work miracles? Do you imagine me making anti-diphtheria serum here in the trenches? Maybe you think I make it from dry shit?”

  “And maybe you could imagine, you moron . . . If there’s no serum, the doctor will have to apply a red-hot brand!”

  Dr Puig had told us that before the invention of the serum they tried to destroy the false membranes with boiling water or better still with a red-hot brand; Goya has a painting depicting that: at the time, it was the only way to stop children suffocating . . . Goya painted absolutely everything! The sea breeze blasted away for a while and I couldn’t hear a word of what they were saying.

  “You’re always the same: you throw yourself in head-first when you want something and never stop to think; that’s why you have so much success with women . . . Why didn’t you tell me that Trini was in Santa Espina?”

  “Why do you think . . .? After the game you played with the letters . . . Bah, let’s forget that for the moment – it’s hardly the time! I’ll only punch you again like I did the other day and that’s not what’s on my mind now – I’m worried about something else. Let’s forget that!”

  From what they were saying, I assumed Lluís must have landed him one a few weeks ago. Why? I’d never find out; I’d never ever have an opportunity to ask him and now, all these years later, I really couldn’t care less. He must have had good reason, not because of Trini and his letters, but perhaps some impertinent remark Soleràs may have made about the doctor’s wife, since, as I was discovering, he was the one supplying Lluís with the bottles of cologne and packets of Camel destined for her while she stayed with us in Villar. That’s how he knew she existed and even that we called her “the doctor’s wife”, but none of that was worrying me at such a tense time.

  “Come a bit closer and I’ll let you in on a secret that’s strictly for the two of us. I don’t want Cruells to hear. Yes, it’s a secret; they could execute me for telling you, but I will tell you all the same.”

  “Can’t you see the barbed wire?”

  “Be patient. There’s a gap, the one you used to get to the cow. You pinch our cows and still want . . .”

  He disappeared, only to reappear immediately on our side of the fence. Tired of listening to a conversation in Catalan which was a total mystery to them, his four men had stretched out on the ground and seemed to be asleep. Soleràs was now whispering into Lluís’ ear and from the latter’s expression I guessed it was big news.

  “What did you think then?” Soleràs shouted. “That this would last for ever?”

  “You once told me there would never be any military activity on this front.”

  “And you believed me? Don’t act like such a fool. Men always turn out to be bigger fools than they appear; women, on the other hand . . .”

  He started whispering again; Lluís suddenly exclaimed: “You’re not trying to make me believe she’s a spy!”

  “If I am . . . I personally couldn’t care a damn! She’s trying to look after herself, that’s all I can say: she’s more clued up than you and I and everyone else. This kind of bird has it in their blood; you can’t keep track of them. But you should take precautions with a view to a possible change. A spy? What does being a spy mean? What she wants is the land and the castle; she doesn’t lose a wink of sleep over anything else. The
change, on the other hand, will suit her down to the ground; it will be like a dream come true. As if you only had to put the pot out and the partridges flew in of their own free will, plucked and gutted! Perhaps you heard that Turdy was killed not long ago in a skirmish.”

  “Anyway, Trini is bound to refuse.”

  “O man without imagination,” retorted Soleràs, “why would she refuse if it’s all about saving Ramonet? And even if there wasn’t the boy, you’re rather ingenuous to think that she and Trini wouldn’t want to meet up . . . Even if there wasn’t the boy, Trini would jump at the idea: ‘Delighted to make your acquaintance, senyora.’ I find it incredible that you understand so little about them: you can be sure they’re both dying to meet. They are women: inquisitiveness is in their blood. Besides, there is the boy, and they’re going to fuck him up! ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’ I suppose you’re familiar with those words; I suppose you saw the sign . . .”

  Soleràs took a deep breath, as if he wanted to fill his lungs in order to exclaim with all his might: “The whole universe isn’t worth the life of a single child!”

  And he continued without pausing, in a matter-of-fact tone: “Turdy was another matter. The great Turdy was tumbled some time ago. His death was a devious business, of course – a death that stinks to high heaven. An enemy bullet? Obviously! Any bullet that penetrates our head must be considered by definition to be an enemy bullet, particularly if it goes in through the nape of the neck. Yes, I can assure you it hit him in the back of the neck. This lady is really clued up, believe me. You are an innocent abroad and think they are less worthy of a romantic novel than they really are. She will do whatever it takes because she is grateful to you. You did her a big favour and she doesn’t hold it against you; it’s the first time I’ve met such generosity. She is magnanimous and more scheming than ever, set never to leave the castle come what may! She’ll become the lady lording it over that whole area. They are already talking about her in these mysterious terms: ‘A great dame, from the oldest branch of the princes of Aragon, orphaned by a hero and widowed by a martyr.’ A legend is beginning to spring up around her. So what do you think? That this is beside the point? That you’re no longer interested in the lady of the castle? That you’re only interested in anti-diphtheria serum? My dear fellow, have you still not understood what I’m saying? I’ll see to it: you’ll find some in her castle. I couldn’t be more explicit! Not everyone wants to becomes a legend, believe me, and nowadays you can go a long way with a little bit of legend and that’s the kind of person who will soon be dividing up the cake. What about us lot at the front? Yuck! They’ll all avoid us like the plague. Poor Lluís, you’re in cloud cuckoo land, more or less as I am. Yes, more or less, because however hard you try, don’t delude yourself: it’s not easy to turn into a right bastard . . . No, it’s not! There’s always a learning curve.”