Читать книгу The Anarchist Who Shared My Name - Pablo Martín Sánchez - Страница 20

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“From Paris and Soissons new details have been received regarding the purchase of weapons in France. A few weeks ago, the police were informed that a Spaniard who worked as a barber in Amiens had made an agreement with various workers employed in the Red Zone in the recovery of war materiel, negotiating with them the purchase of any weapons and ammunition they might find. Two Spaniards were detained; their stated names were Serrano Blas and Rodríguez Juan, and they declared that they acquired these munitions in order to sell them on the black market in Morocco. However, the police believe that these individuals are working for Spanish revolutionary forces.”

El Pensamiento Navarro, 16 November 1924

TODAY IS THURSDAY AFTERNOON, AND IN Marly, Pablo is recovering from three days of hard work. Torrential rains have destroyed the small dock on the pond, inundated the better part of the garden, and torn away some of the house’s roofing tiles, causing leakage indoors. Luckily, by Tuesday it was already starting to clear up, and Pablo has had a few rainless days to fix the damage. Also, the work has helped him keep his mind off what happened on the train, although he hasn’t been able to resist the temptation to go into town every night to see if he hears anything. But the name Vivancos doesn’t come up in any conversation or in any newspaper, so no news is good news, as his father used to say. It is already starting to get dark, and Pablo, after bathing in the pond and changing his clothes, walks down the road toward town with the idea of calming the rumbling in his stomach. He’d like to eat something hot and have a good glass of red wine—back home he would have called it “tinted wine,” vino tinto, which goes to show that reality depends on the lens through which you view it. What Pablo doesn’t know is that this metaphor will soon come back to haunt him.

Madame de Bruyn’s bistro is full of people at this hour, mostly workers who have finished their work day and are making sure to get in some elbow exercises before they go home to find dinner ready. Most are crowded around the bar, trying to stretch out the best moment of the day. But at the back of the place there are two large wooden tables, with benches on both sides, where a few diners with no one to make them dinner at home are stuffing their faces with the delicious fare that Madame de Bruyn serves for a song.

One such dish is this gargantuan hochepot the waiter has just placed in front of Pablo: a stew of various meats and vegetables, identical to the plates in front of the two guests sitting opposite and talking enthusiastically. At first, the typesetter pays them no mind, busy as he is allaying his stomach’s urgent complaints, but as his hunger subsides, his brain starts working and a few words filter in through his ears. One of them is “Amiens.” Another is “police.” And when the term “anarchistes espagnols” is muttered, Pablo almost chokes.

The two diners don’t know all the details of the story. All they’ve heard is that yesterday afternoon near Amiens the police thwarted an illegal arms deal, catching two men in flagrante delicto trying to buy a war arsenal from a couple of workers from Reims. When they were arrested, they claimed that they wanted the weapons to sell them as contraband in the war in Morocco, but the police suspected that it was more likely part of a plot hatched by Spanish anarchists. In this, they are onto something: the two men detained near Voyennes, on the road between Amiens and Reims, are Juan Rodríguez, aka “El Galeno,” and Blas Serrano, his constant companion, assigned to the task of obtaining weapons for the revolutionary expedition.

The fatal outcome was set into motion last week, when El Galeno received Pablo’s handoff of the letter assigning him the task of procuring weapons. Within a few days of setting about the task, he found the first offer—a Belgian war salvager had just found a German cache near Damery containing several rifles, cartridges, and grenades in decent condition. They were prepared to sell the rifles and grenades at the requested price, and would throw in the cartridges for free since some were damp and the powder was probably bad by now. Rodríguez contacted Vivancos and they decided to make the buy immediately so as not to lose this great opportunity. So Vivancos traveled to Amiens on Monday to pass El Galeno the money, an operation that the police very nearly thwarted and which only succeeded because Pablo happened to be on that train. Some people thought that the gendarmes’ intervention was not a coincidence, and the rumor gained momentum yesterday afternoon, when a patrol unexpectedly showed up at the planned site of the swap.

The meeting had been planned for seven o’clock in the evening. Rodríguez and Serrano were leaving Amiens in a meat truck, a rattling Renault. They arrived half an hour early at the meeting place near Voyennes. The salvager, a man of few words, so blond that he looked like an albino, arrived twenty minutes later. With a gesture he invited them into the truck, and they accompanied him along a dirt road leading into the woods. Soon they reached a house in ruins. El Galeno and Blas Serrano exited the vehicle and entered the house behind the albino, who lifted a few planks from the floor and opened a trapdoor to the cellar. Down there, in crates, there were over one hundred Mauser rifles, several dozen grenades, and a few boxes of ammunition. They assessed the inventory by flashlight and handed over the corresponding money. Without saying a word, the three men started loading the truck. It took several trips. When they stepped out of the house with the final load, the police were waiting for them, pistols drawn.

Pablo still doesn’t know the whole story, but he leaves his stew half-eaten and asks for the check. The diners’ conversation has ruined his appetite, because he suspects that the arrests in Amiens have a direct relationship with the Committee of Anarchist Relations, and more specifically with the man on the train to whom he has passed an envelope and a briefcase in the past two weeks. Pablo doesn’t know what the former said, or what the latter contained, and he still doesn’t even know the name of the man with the medical bag, but if it turns out that he’s one of the two who have just been arrested, and he ends up singing, Pablo’s future looks very dark indeed. The police took his information on the train, and it’s possible that his name is already circulating around the commissariat. But one needn’t be so pessimistic! It’s also possible that the man from the train won’t squeal, that he’ll take the fall. Because, as the two diners at Madame de Bruyn’s bistro said, the arrested men claimed that they wanted the weapons to sell on the black market in Morocco. You’ll just have to wait until tomorrow, little Pablo, when you get back to Paris and can learn more about what has happened. For the time being, though, everything seems to indicate that the authorities are hot on the heels of the revolutionary movement.