Читать книгу The Anarchist Who Shared My Name - Pablo Martín Sánchez - Страница 19

VI

(1900–1904)

“SEE, I DO HAVE A HEART!”

After his discovery, Pablo had returned to Robinsón’s hideout to show his friends that he wasn’t a vampire.

“Only, it’s on the right. Can you guys keep it a secret?”

Angela and Robinsón both kissed their thumbs, ceremonially tucked between their index and middle fingers, by way of promise. Then all three walked home in silence, saddened to think that they would soon be separated.

“Don’t worry,” Pablo said, trying to cheer them up as they parted ways, “we’ll see each other again soon, I promise.”

Indeed, he was true to his word; the Martíns would return to Béjar many times. In fact, from then on, every time Julián had to inspect the south of Salamanca, he went out of his way to make sure they spent a few days at Don Veremundo and Doña Leonor’s inn, knowing that Pablo had forged a strong friendship with the innkeepers’ son. So, after that life-changing Christmas, Pablo managed to keep the fires of friendship and true love burning. Like a bellows, every new encounter stoked the bonds between Pablo, Robinsón, and Angela, despite Rodrigo Martín’s attempts to keep his cousin away from the two “suckers,” and despite the changes inevitably taking place in the boys as they approached adolescence. The first time the Martíns returned to Béjar, Robinsón was no longer wearing his leg brace, although he was still noticeably limping, and Angela was half a hand taller, and from this new height she carried on observing everything with those big, sparkling eyes. At the next encounter, Robinsón had learned to smoke cigarettes and Angela to play the flute—so while the former was practicing his inhalations, the second was working on her exhalations, and torturing her friends with her efforts to emulate the Pied Piper. On another occasion, Robinsón had abandoned his adventure novels for books on the natural sciences, was diligently practicing the art of drawing, had taken up the hobby of raising silkworms, and had a water spaniel named Darwin. For her part, Angela had developed a new way of speaking, interjecting a “tay” between every syllable, and when she saw Pablo she said: “Hetayllotay Patayblotay, it’stay beentey suchtay atay long-tay timetay.” At a subsequent visit, inspired by history’s first Tour de France, Don Veremundo had bought a bicycle and Robinsón had become an avid cyclist, because when he rode a bicycle no one noticed his limp. Over a couple of days, he taught Pablo to ride, as well as Angela—though hidden from her parents and the parish priest, who had condemned all indecent women who would put a bicycle seat between their legs. The last time the inspector and his son arrived in Béjar astride Lucero, in February 1904, Angela’s breasts had grown, and so had Robinsón’s mustache, though he was in no hurry to shave it, preoccupied as he was with becoming a vegetarian, a fashion that was timidly starting to catch on in Spain.

“I don’t want to eat animals anymore,” he explained to his friends. “Did you know that there have been people who didn’t eat animals throughout history? Pythagoras, for example. And Jesus Christ himself! But my parents force me to eat it. They say I’m growing and I’ll end up scrawny if I don’t eat meat. One of these days I’m going to get away from here, and then they’ll see, mark my words.”

“I’ve heard,” Angela interjects, “that there are places where people eat human flesh.”

“That’s called cannibalism,” said Pablo, playing the know-it-all. “Not long ago, an English ship wrecked on an island in the South Pacific, and the cannibals killed the whole crew and ate them with potatoes. So if you’re gonna become a vegetarian, Robin, I think I’ll become a cannibal.”

“Laugh all you want,” said Robinsón, whose facial hair was on its way to being worthy of his nickname, “but I read in Blanco y Negro that meat isn’t good for your heart.”

“What do I care, since I don’t have one …” Pablo replied, and all three laughed at their shared secret.

“But do animals have feelings?” Angela asked, intrigued by the topic.

“Of course they do!” replied Robinsón. “Humans are descended from frogs! Do you know that a fish in a fishbowl can die of sadness if it’s forced to live alone? But all you have to do is set a mirror next to the bowl, and it will be happy—”

“No way!” said Angela and Pablo in unison.

“I swear it’s true!” Robinsón protested.

When Pablo left Béjar on Lucero’s back for the final time, he had just turned fourteen, and the old mule was suffering beneath the load, which was growing heavier every day. Julián had already warned that sooner or later they would have to put an end to this itinerant life and settle down in Salamanca with Mother and little Julia, and find Pablo a job that would help contribute to the family’s expenses, because tough times were ahead. In nearby Valladolid there had just been an altercation between the Civil Guard and a group of women who were protesting to demand “bread and work,” which ended with the forces of order firing on the crowd, resulting in several women injured, two dead, and an increase in the proletarian resentment against the Benemérito Instituto.

But things took an unexpected turn for the Martíns when, on the road from Béjar to Ciudad Rodrigo, they were caught unprepared by a terrible storm. The sky suddenly darkened, and the purple clouds fiercely discharged all their ammunition, with terrible timing—just as Pablo and Julián were crossing a desolate scree field, without even a measly tree for shelter. The inspector kicked the old mule, but Lucero just brayed indolently. Soon, they thought they saw a distant light, and they made their way toward it, abandoning the main road. However, the surging waters of a creek cut off their way. Julián tried to look for somewhere to cross it, but the storm doubled down its forces and he could barely see farther than twenty or thirty yards.

“Hold on tight,” he said to his son, and he whipped Lucero to prod him across the current.

The mule resisted at first, with prophetic stubbornness, but he finally gave in to the whip’s insistence. The creek was rising by the second, and at the deepest point the water reached Lucero’s crop. A lightning bolt lit up the sky and struck quite nearby, to judge by the swiftness and volume of the thunder. The frightened old mule tried to rear up, lost his balance, and the torrent swept him away, taking Pablo and Julián along with him.

“To the bank! Get to the bank!” shouted the inspector, but his son’s leg had gotten stuck in one of the stirrups and the current was taking him downstream with the mule. Julián reached the far bank just in time to see Pablo’s terrorized face lit up by a flash of lightning as the water swallowed him. The father ran alongside the torrent, hoping to see his son’s head emerge again, while the sky went on wringing itself like an inexhaustible sponge, and Lucero brayed and kicked, trying to resist the force of the deluge. Suddenly, the stirrups came loose from the animal’s body and, after a few moments of uncertainty, Pablo managed to come to the surface.

“Over here!” shouted Julián, stepping back into the deluge and stretching his hand toward his son. As Pablo reached the riverbank, the old mule ran out of strength and was swept away forever. Father and son collapsed in an embrace beneath the rain, bodies still tight with fear, and bid farewell to that companion who had traveled with them to every village in Salamanca.

“We came this far, Lucero,” Julián mused as he watched the mule disappear from sight. And they carried on toward the distant light.

The rains lasted a whole week and caused flooding in much of the country. Some towns were literally submerged beneath the waters, many harvests were lost, several boats sank in the Cantábrico, and the press called the storm a “horrendous national tragedy.” By the time the storm had abated, Julián had already rented a tubercular little shanty on an anemic back alley of Salamanca (to use the sickly adjectival style that Miguel de Unamuno used to describe the urban complexion of the city), where the whole family would soon settle in. He sent Pablo to Baracaldo, and during the Easter vacation they made the move. Of course, he would have to continue traveling from town to town, inspecting schools all over the province, but at least he would have his loved ones nearby and a home to return to from time to time, as well as the two months of the year that he had to spend in the provincial capital in order to inspect the more than fifty schools in the city and its outskirts. He was also thinking toward the future, sure that, with the new trend in automobiles, any day now he wouldn’t need the mule to get from town to town. And he wasn’t all that wrong.

Pablo was the one who had the hardest time adapting to the situation. They had been eight years of itinerancy, eight years of continuous pilgrimage, eight years of wandering from place to place. Not just any phase, it was a phase of formation, in which the child discovers the world and turns into a person. The adventure on the Castilian Plateau had not cured the boy’s anosmia, of course, but it had caused him to grow up like a nomad, and now the sedentary life caught him off guard. Of course, he did enjoy the daily company of his mother and little sister Julia, the familial warmth and the comforts of a decent home, but his happiness was bittersweet, because deep down he missed the travel and freedom of life on the road. Also, Béjar now seemed very far away, although the actual distance was only seventy kilometers. And Béjar meant Robinsón. And Robinsón meant Angela, and her big brown eyes. But there was no time for lamentations: within a few days of moving to Salamanca, Pablo found a job at the newspaper El Castellano, which at that time was directed by the blind poet Cándido Rodríguez Pinilla. His job: errand boy. His hours: from three in the afternoon to midnight, seven days a week. His salary: one peseta per day, plus a hot meal. But before starting work, he asked his father for money for a train ticket to Béjar to say goodbye to his friends.

He arrived at the station at midmorning and crossed the city at a full sprint, climbing the steep grades toward Calle Flamencos. At the door to the inn he encountered Don Veremundo, enjoying the spring Sunday and calmly smoking a cigar.

“Well, who do we have here?” muttered Robinsón’s father. “And what about Don Julián? He didn’t come with you?”

“No, sir, this time I came alone,” Pablo responded, panting from exertion.

“I say, little man,” he smiled and blew a smoke ring, “you going to stay a few days?”

“No, I’m headed back to Salamanca this afternoon. We have a home there now, with my mother and sister.”

“Yes, so I’ve heard. But I suppose you didn’t come here to chat with me … Everyone’s at mass, including Roberto and the Gómez girl.”

“Thank you, Don Veremundo. Have a nice day,” said Pablo, and he took off running toward the church of San Juan. When he arrived, the most impatient of the faithful were starting to exit the church, including Robinsón and Doña Leonor. The moment they saw each other, the two friends leapt on one another and began punching each other’s backs, as if in a boxing match. But in mid-embrace, the inspector’s son was left paralyzed: Angela emerged from the church, along with her family. Their eyes met and Pablo’s heart skipped a beat. Robinsón turned around just in time to give Angela a signal before her cousin Rodrigo noticed him: he brought his two index fingers together, forming an inverted V, and said to Pablo, “Come on, let’s go.”

“What about Angela?”

“We’ll see her at the hideout, don’t worry.”

Half an hour later, the three were reunited in the tree house.

“So I don’t know when I’m going to be able to come back,” Pablo was saying, after explaining his new situation. “But I’ll write to you, you can count on that.”

“What address are you going to put on the envelope? Roberto Olaya’s hideout, first door on the left?” Robinsón joked.

“So you’re going to be a journalist?” Angela asked, with admiration.

“Who knows?” Pablo replied mysteriously, unaware that he was going to spend more time with a broom than with a pen in his hand.

“I’m going to be a spelunker, like Robin,” said Angela.

“That’s impossible,” said Robin.

“Why?”

“Because there are no woman spelunkers.”

“Well, I’ll be the first, you’ll see.”

And so they spent the rest of the morning making future plans, as a person ought to do when they have their whole life in front of them.

“Alright boys, I have to go home to eat,” Angela finally said. “What time does your train leave, Pablo?”

“Six thirty.”

At six thirty, Angela was at the station to say goodbye to her vampire. When the train started rolling, she walked along outside Pablo’s car, while Robinsón remained standing on the platform waving his hat with enthusiasm.

“Angela,” said Pablo, sticking his head out the window.

“What?” she asked, adjusting her stride to keep up with the train, which was gaining speed with every passing moment.

“I’ll come back for you,” he said, as she started to run. “Will you wait for me?” he added desperately, as the train left Angela behind, her eyes sparkling for the last time in the distance.

The last thing Pablo saw was the way she stopped at the end of the platform, nodding her head in affirmation, her arms now fallen against her body, unaware that a wise man once said that while the wind carries words away, gestures are the devil’s affair, and that there can be more difference between two silent yesses than between a yes and a no uttered aloud. But what wise men say is not always true.

AT THAT TIME, SALAMANCA WAS A city in the grip of vice and poverty, with narrow, winding streets, squalid tenements often lacking running water, inhabited by people and animals in unsanitary cohabitation, with scant light and an outdated sewage system, all of which made the provincial capital one of the places with the highest mortality rates in all of Spain. Salamanca was publicly known as Little Rome or Little Athens for its monumental buildings and its famous scholastic past, but in private it was known as the City of Death, because of the periodic outbreaks of smallpox, diphtheria, or influenza, in addition to the frequent violent deaths that scandalized the populace and filled the pages of the newspapers. It’s no wonder, then, that the editors of El Castellano were besieged with the most horrifying stories imaginable, although the city’s newspapers, under pressure from the ruling class, had agreed to undertake a campaign of hygienic and moral sanitization.

Pablo started working in the middle of April of that year, 1904. The first day, before he left home, his mother kissed his forehead and tried to cheer him with the worn-out refrain that work gives a person a sense of dignity. But the Martíns’ firstborn did not take long to understand that, while it’s true that work brings a sense of dignity, it also brings a sense of mortality: on his very first day on the job, he would meet two peculiar people who would suddenly launch him into adulthood. If he had read Freud, who was in vogue at the time, he would have been able to put names to these people: the first would have been called Thanatos, the second Eros.

With the maternal kiss still wet on his forehead, Pablo departed from home, crossed the train tracks, and reached Alamedilla Park, one of the most disreputable spots to be found in turn-of-the-century Salamanca. The office of El Castellano was located on the main floor of number 28, Calle Zamora, next to the Plaza Mayor. Stepping through the door, Pablo was taken aback by the great hubbub and the asphyxiating tobacco smoke, which irritated his throat and eyes. The center of operations was a large space full of tables, chairs, wastepaper baskets, and spittoons, presided over by a stuffed owl mounted at the corner desk, monitoring everything with bulging glass eyes. There were about ten people in the room, talking, smoking, writing, or typing. For a moment, no one noticed Pablo’s presence.

“You, boy, come here,” he finally heard a voice calling him. Through the thick smoke, a bald man with a tawny face beckoned him closer.

“My name’s not ‘boy,’” said Pablo as he approached the man’s desk, making a ploy for respect.

“Ah, no? Then what is your name, might I ask?”

“Pablo. Pablo Martín.”

“Very well, Pablo Martín, listen up: from now on you’re going to forget your name. We’re going to call you ‘boy’ around here, you got that, boy?” the man barked, his cigar swinging up and down with each syllable. His eyes were red and his pupils were dilated as if he had taken belladonna.

“Understood,” the newcomer finally replied, resolving to compromise with the new authority. After all, it wouldn’t do to get fired on the first day.

“That’s what I like to hear. Alright, now take this article to the printer. You know where that is, don’t you?”

Pablo shook his head.

“You’ll have to pay attention.”

“I’ll show you the way,” said a female voice from the next desk over.

The bald man turned toward his colleague, a curvy woman with her hair coiled like a snail upon her head: the director’s secretary.

“If you wish, Obdulia. But don’t get distracted. I know your ways,” said the man, winking at her.

“You’re such a swine,” Obdulia replied. Rising from her seat, she motioned to Pablo to follow her.

“Thank you,” said the boy as they exited the office.

“No, thank you,” Obdulia replied offhandedly, winking. Apparently winks came cheaper than day-old bread around here.

The print shop was located on the same street, Calle Zamora, in a cramped basement with no natural light occupied by two old Marinoni machines working at full tilt. The scene was completed by a plate, a guillotine, a stereotype, a glazing machine, several rolls of paper, galley prints, proofs, casts, and a diminutive man in coveralls with inkstained hands. Obdulia introduced the two of them, shouting over the noise of the machines. Pablo gave the printer the article, and then he and Obdulia made their way back to the writing office, where they found some of the writers in a heated discussion:

“No, damn it, it’s not my turn today,” said one.

“Mine neither. Last night I got stuck with the mess at the brothel,” said another.

“I’ve been on the beat all week,” said a third.

“So let’s draw straws and be done with it,” said the one with the dilated pupils, grabbing four pencils from his desk. “Whoever draws the shortest one has to go.”

But it was he who drew the short pencil.

“Fine,” he said, disappointed. “But I’m taking the boy.”

And that is how Pablo came to gaze into the face of Thanatos. At the bottom of the river Tormes, near the Roman bridge, two corpses had just been found in a state of putrefaction, their feet lashed together and attached to a small anvil. When the representatives of El Castellano arrived, the Civil Guard were trying to disperse the onlookers, who were clogging the bridge trying to get a closer view. At the center of the action, a little boat equipped with a winch was raising the bodies of a man and a woman.

“Suicide or homicide?” the journalist asked a guardsman after identifying himself as a writer for El Castellano.

“We don’t know, we don’t know,” the officer replied.

“Surely it was a suicide. The way things are these days, people prefer to die with their lungs full rather than live with their stomachs empty. Write that down, boy,” he said to Pablo, tossing a pebble into the river. But Pablo wasn’t listening, hypnotized as he was by the two bodies swinging in the air. Although they were in an advanced state of decomposition, there was no doubt that they belonged to a young man and woman, practically adolescents, to judge by their clothing. And the most curious thing was that they appeared to have died consoling each other, as rigor mortis had left them locked in an eternal embrace. Suddenly, Pablo had a vision of Angela and he felt an acute fear of never seeing her again. At that moment, he promised himself that one day he would return to Béjar to marry her.

But the day’s emotional trials were far from over. As they made their way back to the newspaper office, night had already fallen and the electric lamps recently installed in the city center gave it an unearthly appearance like a theater stage. Pablo and the journalist arrived at Calle Zamora, but they stopped in front of number 11, at the door to the Casino de Salamanca:

“Come on, let’s have a drink before we go back to hell,” said the writer.

“I don’t have any money,” replied Pablo.

“Don’t worry, it’s on the house. Manolito! Two cognacs!”

“Right away, Don Ferdinando!” shouted the waiter.

This is how Pablo learned the name of the writer with the dilated pupils.

“Here, boy, a toast to your first day on the job, and your first pair of corpses. Cheers!”

“Cheers,” muttered Pablo, lifting his cup, and he let the golden liquid burn its way down his throat.

“Of course,” Ferdinando warned him as they left the casino, “watch out for Obdulia. She has a thing for youngsters.” And he emitted a cackle that echoed against the paving stones.

Back at the office, Pablo soon found out that what he said was true. Obdulia kept staring at him in a manner that anyone with more experience would not have hesitated to call lustful. She lowered her eyelids and shot looks at him through the cloud of cigar smoke. He could be emptying a wastepaper basket, or grinding coffee, or filling an inkwell; always in the corner of his eye he was aware of the persistent gaze of the voluptuous secretary of Don Cándulo, the blind poet who directed the newspaper from his home. When the clock at City Hall rang nine, the writers stood up in unison, as if spring-loaded, and leapt for their hats and coats to go to dinner.

“Boy, you stay here with Obdulia. If any urgent news comes in, you come tell us,” Ferdinando said to Pablo. “We’ll have the waiter wrap up our leftovers for you.” He let out another of his cackles.

“Don’t take it the wrong way,” Obdulia said once they were alone. “Deep down they’re not bad guys, you’ll see. Why don’t you come over here and tell me about your afternoon?”

Pablo approached and started to tell her about the suicides of the river Tormes, but soon the woman pressed her finger to his lips and hushed him. Then she caressed his face, his neck, and his head. She stood up and dragged him to the back of the room, where a green glass door led to the “Management Office,” as indicated by the large gothic letters meticulously painted on it. The last thing Pablo saw before disappearing through the door was the glassy eyes of the stuffed owl, which appeared amused to see Señorita Obdulia up to her old tricks. “Come along, my little pepper sprout,” whispered the secretary, in a tone attempting sweetness but which left Pablo feeling only dazed, “I’m going to teach you how to manage a newspaper.”

Without turning on the light, she closed and locked the door and led her prey to the sacrificial altar. Then, as if in a dream or a nightmare, Pablo found himself fondling two extraordinary breasts, while a viscous tongue entered his mouth and turned it to an aquarium full of fish. His taste buds discovered the metallic flavor of a stranger’s mouth, and his undershorts were suddenly too tight. A hand slid into his trousers and pulled out his virginal telescope, crowned by a red, swollen glans that appeared to be watching everything with a Cyclopean eye. A petticoat fell to the floor, sighs caressed the air, a wooden table creaked under the strain, and Pablo found himself being absorbed by a mythical creature, half jellyfish and half woolly goat. Finally, he found his body erupting as an electric shock ran from his feet to his head. He bit his tongue to keep from shouting out loud, and his strength abandoned him like Samson after his haircut.

Outside the door, breathing on the windowpane, Eros looked on, buckling with laughter.