Madame

by Antoni Libera

  ‘Oh, there’s no doubt of that,’ he assured me, smiling with cold insincerity.

  ‘If I understand you correctly, you want some musical interludes – a musical background, if you prefer. In the Spanish style and rhythm, so as to give the audience a better feel for the national character of the story.’

  ‘Your talents, I see, are not only artistic but pedagogical: our own agit-prop man couldn’t have put it better.’

  ‘Thank you for your appreciation. To return to the matter at hand: it occurs to me that I might play a few Spanish themes from Bizet’s Carmen, like the Habanera, for instance, or the Toreador’s Song. Or maybe Ravel’s Boléro, transcribed for the piano? Would that suit?’

  ‘You’re in an excellent mood, I see, despite appearing to be sunk in gloom.’

  ‘I’m quite serious.’

  ‘In that case you must have lost your mind. What you’re proposing is close to sabotage.’

  ‘Sabotage! Please. No offence, but your reaction reveals some serious deficiencies in your musical education – basic deficiencies. I suspect you don’t realise what Bizet’s Carmen is. Allow me to enlighten you. Carmen is a revolutionary opera. What was opera like before? It was all myths, legends and fairytales, full of gods, noblemen and aristocrats. And what is Carmen about? The proletariat! The lowest social classes. Ordinary people, the masses. Workers, soldiers, ethnic minorities – gypsies, I mean. And you’re suggesting that using themes from such a politically correct musical classic would be an act of subversion! Really! Think what you’re saying, comrade!’

  ‘All right, all right, you can stop the playacting. You’ve had your little joke, and I trust you enjoyed it. But you won’t make a fool out of me.’

  ‘Come on, Bolly, let’s be serious,’ I said, switching suddenly to a familiar form of address and assuming a friendly, confidential tone. ‘Who’s going to know what it is? If I play the Smugglers’ March, for example, no one’s going to have a clue what it is: they’ll just think, oh, it’s some kind of march. Think about it! Don’t you know what their level is? There’s nothing to worry about: no one’s going to catch on, not even your advisory council.’

  He wouldn’t be drawn. His only concession was to accept the switch to the familiar and address me by name. ‘Is that your last word?’ he asked.

  Frustrated, determined to snare him, I tried again. ‘Be kind enough to follow me,’ I commanded, and started walking towards the music room.

  Uncertainly, he obeyed.

  I sat down at the piano and played a few bars from Joaquin Rodrigo’s guitar concerto – haunting, melancholy tunes redolent of Spain, conjuring up images of barren spaces, scorched, rust-coloured earth and stark mountains.

  ‘Well?’ I asked. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘What is it?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘Just folk music,’ I shrugged, taking my hands from the keys.

  For a long time he was silent, sitting motionless with his head bowed and his hands on his knees. ‘All right,’ he said finally, ‘it’ll do. We’ll take it. But,’ he added, wagging a cautionary finger, ‘we’ll check it out, you can be sure of that.’ And he rose to go.

  ‘Just a moment,’ I said. ‘One more thing . . .’

  ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘If I’m going to take part in this, I’ll have to miss some lessons. I’ll need a note excusing me. Otherwise, nothing doing. I’m not going to use my spare time for practice.’

  ‘It’s community work!’ he objected indignantly.

  ‘Possibly. But I’ve told you what my conditions are.’

  He turned on his heel and strode out of the room. But a few days later a boy unknown to me (his deputy, as it turned out) handed me the required note. It was stamped and signed by the Tapeworm.

  When I first turned up at a rehearsal, preparations were well advanced, in fact almost complete: only a few small final touches remained – some last-minute cuts, some changes of tempo to make sure that the thing ran smoothly. Roach was directing. He sat at a small table with a lamp, the script and his watch (a Soviet-made Polyot) in front of him; from there, pen in hand, he surveyed the proceedings. When he saw me in the doorway he beckoned and indicated the chair next to him.

  The participants in the celebration were of three kinds: orators, reciters of verse and the Exotic Trio. There was also an announcer-cum-narrator – Carl Broda, a tall boy from 10a (with English as the foreign language) – who was in a sense the most important person, combining the roles of master of ceremonies, Greek chorus and keeper of the eternal flame of memory.

  The thing began with a famous poem by Wladyslaw Broniewski. Carl made a grand entrance, took his place at the microphone and, gazing ahead with great intensity, began to intone, slowly and stressing the rs, which vibrated like a sinister drumbeat, the following:

  Republicans everywhere, as they lay dying,

  As into the gutters their scarlet blood ran,

  With bloodied forefinger, their final gasp sighing,

  Inscribed on the wall the words: ¡No pasarán!

  With each successive verse he was joined by three new performers, who at first stood silently beside him, heads bowed, and then, raising their heads in a dramatic gesture of defiance, came in as a chorus on the last line.

  On barricades built out of blood, hearts and rubble,

  thundered Carl,

  With fire and steel these words were engraved.

  Madrid’s glorious future was born of their struggle –

  at which point the first trio joined in, in chorus:

  More precious than life is the freedom they saved!

  With six performers now on stage, the indefatigable Carl continued:

  For two years oppressed by the fascist dictators,

  Its freedom by fire and steel was forged;

  A champion of liberty there was no greater –

  whereupon he paused dramatically, and the sextet roared out:

  Or more resolute foe of oppression and force.

  With the last verse the procedure was slightly modified: the chorus of revolutionary fighters, now a grand total of nine, no longer chanted the entire last line, but only the last two words, the poem’s main theme and title. As Carl reached the end, therefore, having waded his way through

  Let freedom, equality, brotherhood conquer

  The world as scarlet my poem’s wounds run;

  (regardless of how this was declaimed, it was unclear why or how the poem was bleeding, or who had wounded it) and

  As bleeding it lies, let its death make us stronger,

  (in Carl’s rendering, the last word, perhaps because he was trying to make it rhyme with ‘conquer’, came out ‘stonker’), he pronounced the words:

  In death let its message be . . .

  and ten throats roared out:

  ¡NO PASARÁN!

  a semiquaver, two demisemiquavers and a quaver. On the last syllable each performer raised a clenched fist of defiance high into the air.

  After a brief pause, Carl began his narrative marathon. The story he presented, richly encrusted with excerpts from speeches, resolutions, proclamations and appeals, was so teeming with contradictions that no ordinary mind, unfamiliar with the rules of dialectic, could wrap itself around it. Thus, although Spain’s Republic was democratic, its government (albeit legitimate) was backward and ‘bourgeois’ – which circumstance in turn did not prevent the dark forces of Reaction from immediately instigating a treacherous conspiracy against the democratic state. This conspiracy was the work of a ‘pathetic minority’; at the same time, however, almost all the forces of that ‘still half-feudal state’ took part in it. It should not be surprising, therefore, that this ‘negligible and marginal group’ nevertheless possessed a ‘murderous and crushing advantage’. But the treachery of the forces of Reaction did not stop there: their ‘crushing advantage’, it turns out, was only ostensible. In fact, the ‘bloody giant had feet of clay’; ‘its time had passed’, its ‘cause was hopeless’, and it c
ould only be ‘consigned to the rubbish-heap of history’. For this reason it was unable to foment rebellion by itself and had to seek outside aid from ‘gangs of bandits’. The eager support it obtained from Germany and fascist Italy proved so strong and extensive that it would be misleading to speak of internal rebellion: it was, in fact, a case of foreign intervention. In other words, the Spanish civil war was not a civil war at all but an ‘armed crusade of world fascism against the Spanish masses, which took the fate of their country into their own hands’.

  Western policy toward the events in Spain was both profoundly hypocritical and short-sighted. Not that this was surprising for a society based on exploitation and ruled by filthy class interest. The United States and the countries of Western Europe perceived the struggle of the Spanish masses as a greater danger than the bloodthirsty conspiracies of world fascism! Hence, like Pontius Pilate, they not only washed their hands of the whole affair but also gave their tacit support to the intervention.

  This is how the reactionary world, guided by self-interest, paved the way for criminal forces and at the same time exposed itself to the blow that was soon to fall. Everything might have ended in disaster had it not been for the Soviet Union, which immediately grasped what was afoot and rushed to the aid of the Spanish people.

  It was not as a world power, however, that the Soviet Union rendered its greatest services to the Republican cause, but as the international homeland of the workers’ movement. When voices cried out in protest in every corner of the globe, when the masses in every country expressed solidarity and declared their readiness to come to the aid of their Spanish brothers, the Soviet Union at once answered them and undertook to coordinate the action. Thus were born the now legendary International Brigades, composed of volunteers from scores of countries. Overnight, these men of principle abandoned their work, interrupted their studies, bade farewell to their families and rushed to the battlefields of Spain.

  It was a historic moment, a new, unprecedented alliance. An alliance not between states, armies or governments, but among the masses, social classes and political parties of different countries. No one was interfering in anyone else’s internal affairs (in the manner of imperialist states), for the basic issue was not an internal matter: the struggle of the Spanish masses for social liberty was not a local conflict but part of a broader process – a mortal class struggle being waged across the globe.

  This apotheosis of internationalism was undoubtedly meant to be the main message of the programme. In force of expression, however, it could not compete with the national liturgy – the ‘Polish Page’. This was also introduced by Carl, but soon the First Speaker appeared on the stage and took over, reciting the following passage from a PCP proclamation:

  The reactionary clique of generals in power made Poland notorious throughout the world as a place where workers and peasants were slaughtered on a mass scale, a country of lawlessness, oppression and corruption, where citizens were tortured to death in prisons. The reactionary clique of generals in power sullied and defamed Poland’s name, making her, in the opinion of democratic Europe, a vassal of fascist Germany, an ally of the darkest forces of reaction, barbarity and backwardness.

  The Second Speaker balanced this gloomy beginning with a more cheerful note:

  But today Poland’s fame is quite different. It is the fame of People’s Poland – a Poland fighting for liberty. Her fame has spread from the mountains and valleys and plains of Spain, where the best and the bravest of our sons, in battle units bearing the name of Dabrowski, are fighting to the death for the liberation of the people.

  As the room resounded with the echo of these glad tidings, the Third Speaker appeared on stage, spokesman for the noble-spirited Dabrowski-ites.

  We followed in the footsteps of the men who fought ‘for your Freedom and ours’, for Poland’s freedom and that of all other nations. In our Spanish struggle we were inspired by the heroes who fought first in Poland and then abroad, on the side of the Paris Commune.

  Although this grand assertion gladdened the Polish heart, it was also somewhat surprising, especially when Carl announced, in a slightly different context,

  Today the Spanish nation sees Poles who are very different from those who fought in the Napoleonic campaigns, at Somosierra, Tudela and Saragossa, where old legionaries, naïve democrats foully deceived by the tyrant of Europe, waged war against the Spanish on behalf of a lost Poland.

  A culminating moment of this part, indeed of the whole affair, was an excerpt from a speech by Dolores Ibarruri, the notorious La Pasionaria, in which she bade farewell to the Dabrowski-ites and thanked them for their generous aid. What raised it above the rest of the proceedings was not its form or its content but the figure of the orator. For it was declaimed by the school beauty: the tall, raven-haired Lucilla Rosenberg, the object of every schoolboy’s attentions and sighs. And not only theirs: older representatives of the male sex, university students and playboys, were not immune to her charms, either. Lucilla (known as Lucy to an elect circle), in a tight black dress with a huge red carnation pinned over her left breast, black pumps with stiletto heels (apparently a present from relatives in England) and a scarlet band in her splendid, tousled black mane, made her way slowly on stage, paused for a long moment and then, in her low, throaty, sensuous voice, launched into the following speech:

  You have left behind your wives, your women and children, to fight your way here, through hardships and pitfalls, through treacherous traps and snares, through borders bristling with barbed wire and bayonets, so that you could say to Spain: We have come. You are not alone.

  The effect of these words from Lucy’s lips was indeed electrifying: you forgot whom she was supposed to be addressing and why. She was Spain, and the brave fighters were her admirers, ready to abandon their families, lovers and fiancées, to throw themselves at her feet and cure her loneliness.

  I was very moved by the letters I received from your wives and your mothers, your sisters and your fiancées. Even though you are here, risking your lives – and many of you have fallen on the field of glory – they are not angry; on the contrary, they are proud. Proud that their sons and their husbands, their brothers and their fiancés are fighting and dying for freedom; that they have not turned away from Spain as she lay bleeding, but have taken up arms to stand by her side even in these difficult times.

  The grand finale approached.

  Franco was stoking the battle with the last of his reserves; the German Condor Legion, mercilessly bombarding villages and towns, was being decimated by Soviet anti-aircraft guns; the Republicans and the voluntarios internacionales, the cry ‘¡Venceremos!’ on their lips, were attacking where they could. The Palafox battalion and the Paris Commune hundreds were steadfast in their resistance to the barbarian invader; the communists, in their wisdom, were taking over the reins of government.

  And yet, despite the victories, despite the steadfast resistance, the Republic was dying. One by one, cities and whole provinces fell: Andalusia and the fortress at Alcazar, Aragon, then Catalonia, finally Madrid.

  Against the background of Picasso’s Guernica, projected by the magic lantern, the First Speaker reappeared and began the epilogue:

  When the brave guardians of freedom fall under the brutal blows of the invading force, and die abandoned and alone, in unspeakable torment, when the chorus of jackals and hyenas howls with the invader the old slogan of the Roman soldier, ‘Woe to the vanquished!’ – then we, our ears to the tombs of martyrs to the same cause, more numerous in our country than in any other, reply with the slogan brought from the cemeteries of the 1863 Uprising: ‘Gloria victis!’ – glory to the vanquished.

  At these words the Second Speaker entered and dispelled the funereal mood with a message of faith and hope:

  No, no, a hundred times no! You are not vanquished! We have faith: the victory will be yours!

  The last word fell to Carl Broda:

  The atmosphere of those days comes across better through l
iterature than through even the best historical study. But that novel has not yet been written; we must wait, as Krzysztof Cedro waited for Zeromski. To think that it was a hundred years before those cavalrymen were immortalised in Zeromski’s Ashes!

  At this point the Exotic Trio began strumming ‘La Cucaracha’, and the performers favoured the audience with a collective rendition of another poem by Broniewski, this one entitled ‘Gunpowder and Homage’. It goes as follows:

  Battles behind us and battles before us.

  Friends, what a time! A historical age!

  Gunpowder and homage – the heart of a poet

  I’d send you across the great Pyrenees!

  Thus ended our school’s celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the Spanish civil war. In its category, it scaled the heights of awfulness, for it brought together, in concentrated form, the three worst elements typical of such affairs: communist zealotry, bombast and wooden speech. The only events to rival it in ghastliness were the ritual assemblies inflicted on us for hours on end at each anniversary of the October Revolution; the other burdens we were called upon to bear, such as the annual devotions performed on National Remembrance Month, Women’s Day and, most important, May Day, were vaudeville acts by comparison.

  And yet, curiously, the story of these remote events had an effect. Somehow it managed to survive its torture sessions on the rack of official celebration in its honour, and resisted its reduction to farce. It was the one item in the whole communist hagiography that eluded the effort to make it totally ridiculous and repugnant. But the reasons for this lay less in politics than in geography. Quite simply, the Spanish story took place in the West, and moreover in a part of the West where the language spoken was the same as that often heard in film westerns, just then at the height of popularity in Poland. How could even the most radically communist-flavoured story be repugnant when it took place on the banks of the Ebro, in Barcelona or in Madrid, in Catalonia or Guadalajara, in Bilbao, Granada or Las Palmas? Also, the Spanish civil war was the subject or background of several ‘Western’ novels by writers such as Hemingway, Sartre and Malraux, who at that time, and certainly in Poland, were more than just popular or admired – they were worshipped like gods, blindly and uncritically. Their books, which were still fairly recent, having been translated only in the late 1950s, were treated like holy writ: people read and reread them, sought truth and knowledge from them and liked to model themselves on the characters, dreaming secretly of their strong, virile lives. And one embodiment of such a life was to have fought in the Spanish civil war.