Читать книгу The Anarchist Who Shared My Name - Pablo Martín Sánchez - Страница 11

II

(1896)

HE COULDN’T. FOR ALL THE MANY TRAIN voyages he would later make, Pablo could never forget that first trip between Baracaldo and Madrid. Neither the asphyxiating heat, nor the tobacco smoke that permeated the train cars, nor the terrible smell of feet that seemed to bother his father so much, was enough to undermine the fascination that this first journey produced in the boy. With his nose pressed against the windowpane he watched objects go by with dizzying speed: trees, houses, and cows; farms, hills, and telegraph poles; workers with faces furrowed by a thousand wrinkles and children running along with the train and waving at the passengers. And all of this enlivened by the uncontainable logorrhea of one of the fellow passengers in the compartment, a retired railroad crossing keeper who narrated the passing scene, telling the most outlandish stories, full of exaggerated facts and figures:

“The net weight of a train car,” he was explaining to his patient companions in the compartment, with the excitement of someone recounting the life of a famous bandit, “is thirty-six tons, and that’s when it’s empty! It has a length of eighteen meters and a height of three and a half. The beams are mahogany, holm oak, and white oak, and it is covered with paneling made of teak, a wood that comes from Northern Europe and is immune to atmospheric changes—”

“And is it true that the last car is the safest?” Pablo interrupted him, producing a look of disbelief in Julián, taken unawares by his son’s unexpected loquacity.

“Who told you that, my boy?”

“My papa.”

“Well, your papa couldn’t be more right. Do you think a gatekeeper like myself would travel in third class if it weren’t because it’s the last car?”

In Miranda de Ebro and in Ávila they changed locomotives, and Pablo was able to observe, eyes wide open, how the operators performed the process of decoupling and recoupling the cars. But what excited him most on this first trip was the loud voice of the stationmaster, who at the end of every stop would shout “All aboard!” at the top of his lungs, and the throng of passengers would push to enter the cars, hoping not to get left behind as the train departed with all their belongings inside.

While the journey was full of emotions and discoveries, the best part was waiting for them when the train reached its destination. Night was coming on when they pulled into Madrid’s North Station, which at the moment was overrun by a multitude going from one end to the other like frenzied ants in a trampled anthill. Pablo had never seen such a large, diverse crowd. Men with frock coats and top hats mingled with withered old ladies begging for alms and boys shouting the morning newspaper headlines or selling travel blankets to the passengers going to the trains. The outside of the station was also seething, and above the froth of voices rose the shouts of the drivers of buggies, popularly referred to in Madrid at the time as simones, after their inventor. When Julián and Pablo exited the station dragging the suitcase, two of these drivers had come to fisticuffs competing for clients who could afford the luxury of hiring a cab. One was leaking blood from his nose and the other was trying to recompose the damaged burlap toupee intended to conceal his unconcealable baldness.

The Martíns ran away from the station as if fleeing the plague, got onto a streetcar, and crossed the city toward the neighborhood known as Injurias, by the river Manzanares, to stay at a humble inn that a friend in Baracaldo had recommended. They shared a bed with squeaking springs and a mildewed mattress, and fell deeply asleep beneath the watchful eye of a reproduction of the Holy Christ of Lepanto hanging somewhat askew over the head of the bed. The next morning, they got up early, at six tolls of the bell of a nearby church, and ate at the inn in silence with the other early risers, who were more concerned with keeping the cockroaches off the tables than with making conversation with the other diners. Not a bad breakfast for a fleabag hotel, thought Julián as he dipped the strange little donuts in his coffee, pastries the innkeeper had called tontas as she served them.

The competitive examination for the Primary Education Inspectors Corps was to be held at the address 80 Calle de San Bernardo, in the building of the Central High School, and that is where father and son headed: Julián, reviewing in his mind the list of the Gothic kings, in an attempt to calm his nerves; Pablo, mouth agape and feeling distressed in this city of more than half a million. Leaving the inn, they took Calle Toledo, went through the gate of the same name and arrived at the Collegiate Church of San Isidro, whose entrance was thronged with people, despite the parish priest’s attempts to get them to form an organized line. Father and son kept a safe distance, curiously observing the scene.

“What’s going on?” asked Pablo.

“I don’t know, Son,” responded Julián, also surprised by the religious fervor of the Madrileños.

“It’s for the saint,” said a voice behind them.

The Martíns spun around to find themselves face-to-face with a miniature donkey covered in roses, carnations, and geraniums. At its side, holding its lead, a flower seller smiled affably.

“They have Saint Isidore inside,” he continued explaining, “and at seven o’clock the church will open so the faithful can come venerate him. Care for a carnation for your lapel, sir?”

“No, no thank you,” Julián replied, snatching his son’s hand forcefully and making off toward Plaza de la Constitución, which a few years later would become known as Plaza Mayor.

They skirted the square via the Cava de San Miguel and shortly arrived at the Plaza de Santo Domingo, where the Calle de San Bernardo has its origin, showing that it is possible to cross Madrid by jumping from saint to saint. It was half past seven in the morning, and there was a market.

“Listen closely, Pablo.” said Julián, holding the child’s shoulders. “This isn’t Baracaldo. This is Madrid, la Villa y Corte. So be careful here. Don’t talk to strangers, don’t wander too far, and be careful for cars and horses. And, if anything happens to you, come find me at 80 Calle San Bernardo, which is the street that starts right here. I don’t know how long I will take, but wait for me in the square. If I take too long and you start to get hungry, buy some fruit at the market. Here,” he said, giving the boy a one-real coin, “Don’t lose it. And wish me luck, son.”

“Good luck, Papa,” whispered Pablo obediently, as his father adjusted his felt hat and set off for the Central High School.

The market stands were overflowing at this early morning hour, and if Pablo had somehow recovered his sense of smell for a moment, he would have felt dizzy from the mixture of odors coming from the square. He would have especially noticed the smell of roses, jasmine, and gardenias, as this market had been a flower market since the War of Independence. However, since the nearby San Miguel market was cramped, the vendors who could not find a place there had set up their stalls here, so he would also have noticed the sweet aroma of strawberries, the stench of sardines, or the sour smell of recently tanned leather. At first, Pablo remained seated at the edge of the square, watching the laziest of the vendors finish setting up their merchandise. Then he got up and walked distractedly amongst the people, following his curiosity wherever it led him. At the meat stand, the butcher was praising the color of his steaks. At the vegetable stand, the grocer was extolling the flavor of his tomatoes. At the chicken stand, the poultry dealer was celebrating the freshness of her eggs. And at the clothing stand, the vendor was saying to a customer:

“No, madam. It’s not the blanket that warms you, but you who warm the blanket! So what matters isn’t the thickness of the wool, but the tightness of the knit, so the heat can’t escape …Anyway, madam, summer is just around the corner, by God!”

Pablo continued strolling around the square, and what he saw on the other side left him even more surprised. In a small alleyway, all the vendors who had not managed to find a place in the square were crammed together in disarray. On one side, there were smugglers selling black market goods, and on the other, there were gypsies offering rosemary to ward off the evil eye, doing tarot readings, and predicting the future by reading the entrails of animals. There were also wandering vendors selling pickled beans and candies to fill children’s mouths with cavities. In addition, there were charlatans on improvised stages made of overturned fruit boxes, selling more outlandish products: miracle hair-growth tonics, cure-all potions, whitening creams, and talismans to fight trichomoniasis. Of all of them, the most noticeable was an impeccably dressed man in a top hat and spats. Perhaps it was his high, nasal voice, or his foreign accent, or the fact that he stood a bit apart from the others and had managed to gather a small group of onlookers, but Pablo felt drawn to him and walked over.

“The Lumière Cinematograph! The Lumière Cinematograph!” he shouted in an unmistakable French accent. “For the first time in Spain, the magnificent, the incredible, the extraordinary invention of the Lumière brothers: moving pictures, life itself! Can you afford to miss it, ladies and gentlemen?”

Intrigued by his words, Pablo mixed into the crowd of idlers listening to the man.

“Forget once and for all about dioramas, cycloramas, cosmoramas, kinetoscopes, and magic lanterns,” the man shouted at the top of his lungs, “and don’t be fooled by the animatograph of the Circo Parish—this invention of the Lumière brothers is completely revolutionary!”

A dog approached to sniff his spats and received a kick in the nose.

“Buy your tickets now, ladies and gentlemen, because tomorrow it will be in all the papers, and then it might be too late! Tonight we will present the first projection at the Hotel Rusia for the press, the authorities, and special guests. But starting tomorrow, from ten to noon, from three to seven, and again at eleven o’clock in the evening, just a few blocks from here, at 34 Carrera de San Jerónimo, you can see something never seen, never thought of, never imagined before. And all that for just one peseta!”

Hearing the price, the crowd dispersed. All except for one: a six-year-old boy named Pablo.

“Half-price for children …” the man muttered, dejected to see his clientele disappear.

Pablo instinctively stuck his hand in his pants pocket and felt the cold metal of a coin. The man in the top hat got down from his box and sat on it, as the ruckus of the square grew louder. If one peseta is four reales, then half a peseta is two reales, Pablo said to himself, proving that having a teacher for a father was good for something. So he still needed one more real to buy a ticket. With the same dejection as the Lumière barker, he turned around with his tail between his legs.

“Hey kid, where you going?” he heard someone behind him say. When he turned around, he saw that it was the man with the top hat. “Are you mute, or what?”

Pablo shook his head no.

“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like to see a projection of the Lumière Cinematograph,” he said with forced sweetness.

Pablo nodded his head.

“So tell your papa to give you half a peseta!” shouted the Frenchman. Clearing his throat, he climbed back up onto the box and laid into his spiel with renewed gusto: “The Lumière Cinematograph! The Lumière Cinematograph! For the first time in Spain, the magnificent, the incredible, the extraordinary invention of the Lumière brothers …”

Cheerful music started up on Calle de Leganitos, and Pablo began walking toward it, with the word “cinematograph” echoing in his ears. After walking a hundred yards, he discovered the origin of this melody: a trio of Gitano musicians were making a goat dance on a wooden chair. The one in the middle, who was tall and thin, was playing the accordion and smiling, unashamedly displaying the only tooth that populated his mouth; the other two, much shorter but equally scrawny, were playing the flute and the violin. The people passed by without paying much attention to them, although every now and again the sound was heard of a penny falling in their coin box. Pablo sat down on a bench in front of them and fell asleep to the sound of the music. When he woke up, the sun was high in the sky and the gypsy trio had been replaced by an old hobo drinking red wine. Pablo wanted to go back to the market square, but he went the opposite direction and walked along the Calle de Leganitos until reaching a large esplanade, where an enormous building under construction seemed to be trying to scrape the sky. Completely disoriented, he tried to walk back, but wound up getting lost in the intricate maze of the streets of Madrid. Realizing that he was lost, he started running from one place to another, until he collapsed in a doorway and began silently crying, with his head between his knees. Five minutes had not passed when he heard a donkey braying. He lifted his eyes and saw the same flower seller from that morning walking in the middle of the street. The man was trying to drag the donkey along, but the animal, now relieved of his load of roses, carnations, and geraniums, thought it was time for a well-deserved nap.

“Come on, you filthy beast!” the man shouted, pulling on the rein. “You can rest when we get to the square!”

Pablo rose to his feet and, guided by a premonition, took the same path as the stubborn ass and his desperate master. After five minutes he was at the Plaza de Santo Domingo. The vendors were packing up their remaining merchandise or selling at a discount the foods that would not keep until the next day, as flies, cats, and dogs prepared to have a field day on the trash piles. The man with the donkey approached the flower stand and negotiated the price of the last stocks. Pablo sat down at the same place where he had left his father in the morning and prepared to wait for him. After a little while, his father appeared, coming up Calle de San Bernardo, waving his hat and smiling broadly.

“Passed the first test!” Julián exclaimed, kissing his boy’s forehead. “Did you spend the coin I gave you?”

Pablo nodded his head yes, lying to his father for the first time in his life.

“Fine, it doesn’t matter, let’s go eat. I’m as hungry as a wolf!”

THE NEXT DAY, THE EVE OF Saint Isidore, the Martíns repeated the same routine. The previous evening, they had strolled around in the vicinity of the Plaza de la Constitución and had returned to the inn happily exhausted. They dined on a stomach-warming soup and lay down on the creaking bed, where the Christ of Lepanto again bid them goodnight. They awoke to the same bells again at six o’clock, enjoyed the same breakfast of tontas and café con leche, and again walked up Calle de Toledo until they came across the same parishioners pushing and shoving for a chance to venerate Saint Isidore. Finally, at Plaza de Santo Domingo, Julián gave his son the same lecture as the day before, along with another real in case he got hungry. He adjusted his felt hat and left Pablo at the same place as the day before, walking up Calle de San Bernardo ready to claim his post as provincial inspector.

This time, however, there was no market, and not a soul was in the square at this early hour. Even the smugglers had not shown up yet, nor had the little gypsy ladies with their sprigs of rosemary, nor the hair tonic hawkers. But the one Pablo missed the most was the Frenchman with the top hat who had announced the Lumière Cinematograph. The previous afternoon, while his father was showing him the thousand wonders of the capital, Pablo had not stopped thinking about the unthinkable, imagining the unimaginable, seeing in his mind the never-before-seen: moving photographs. A few months before, he had attended a magic lantern show in a tent in Bilbao, and it had burned in his memory its enormous projected images, with their commentary by the master of ceremonies, accompanied by festive music that appeared to put them in motion. But the Lumière Cinematograph promised to be something really extraordinary! The very word captivated him, and as his eye roamed the Plaza de Santo Domingo in search of the dream peddler, his lips could not stop pronouncing that strange and wonderful word: “ci-ne-ma-to-graph.”

An hour later, Pablo had lost hope of finding the man in the top hat. The two reales were burning a hole in his pocket, and for the life of him he could not remember the name of the street where the projections were being held. Then he saw a newsboy crossing the square, shouting:

“La Época! Buy La Época and read the news of the day for only fifteen cents!”

And like a distant echo, Pablo remembered these words: “Buy your tickets now, ladies and gentlemen, because tomorrow it will be in all the papers, and then it might be too late …” So Pablo leapt to his feet and marched with determination toward the newsboy, who was making his way out of the square. He could not have been over twelve years old, but he was already tall and sturdy, with brownish skin suggesting Roma roots. When he caught up to him, Pablo sidled up and walked a few paces alongside him.

“Hey, what’s your deal, kid?” the boy asked when he noticed Pablo’s presence. “Go on, take off. This here’s grown-up stuff.”

“Does it say anything about the cinematograph?” Pablo asked in response.

“What?” replied the newsboy, surprised by the question.

“I said, does it say anything about the cinematograph?”

“Why, of course it does! La Época explains it all!”

Resting his sack of newspapers on the ground, the boy took out a copy. The front page had an article by the writer Miguel de Unamuno, with the curious title in English, “The Last Hero,” but since neither boy yet knew who Unamuno was, they continued scanning the columns. Finally, on the third page, under the section “Public Entertainments,” they found the information that Pablo was looking for.

“Look, here it is, listen up,” said the paperboy with unconcealed pride. He began reading the announcement: “‘Starting last night, Madrid is being treated to a spectacle that is both novel and attractive. The cinematograph, otherwise known as the moving picture, is truly noteworthy, and represents one of the most marvelous scientific advances of this century. The exhibition of images and panoramic views is being held in a spacious room on Carrera de San Jerónimo, number 34, which last night was crowded with the many distinguished guests invited to the inauguration …’”

Pablo etched this information into his memory as he listened agog to the newsboy, who continued reading:

“‘The projection of animated photography onto a white screen could not be done with greater perfection, reproducing all of the movements of persons and objects in the scene. The program, which was repeated several times last night, includes ten parts, of which it is especially worth mentioning the arrival of a train at the station, a stroll along the seaside, the Avenue of Champs-Élysées, the horse races of Lyon, and the demolition of a wall. The public will be able to admire this spectacle starting today, from 10 to 12 in the morning, from 3 to 7 in the afternoon and from 9 to 11 in the evening.’ See, what’d I tell ya? La Época tells it all!”

Pablo put his hand in his pocket and heard the siren song of his two coins clinking together.

“And where is that street, the Carrera de San Jerónimo?” he dared to ask.

“Not far from here, near the head office of La Época. I’m going that way, you want me to show you?”

Pablo affirmed shyly as he memorized the name of the square where he had left his father.

“You’re not thinking of going to see the cinematograph, are you?” the newsboy asked as he gathered up his papers.

To which Pablo merely nodded his head.