Villa Olímpica
Tino Orté’s father was pinched by the cops while painting No God, No Master, No King on the walls of the Poble Nou cemetery. He had the brush in his hand, ready to dip it into the bucket with the shiny black tar that Gerardo was holding, while Fabregat encouraged them and, supposedly, looked out to make sure they weren’t caught.
But Fabregat was paying much more attention to the actual painting, to the text, to his two friends’ fears, and to hurrying them along, than to the movements in the fog around them. Fabregat was the one who’d recruited the other two to fill the neighborhood of Poble Nou with anarchist slogans: “C’mon, damnit, come with me right now and we’ll make sure that by the time everyone wakes up tomorrow, they’ll be converted to anarchism.” Nobody said no to Fabregat, who always carried a pistol, was part of the union leadership, and boasted of having gotten rid of two bosses the previous month. If anybody said no, he took them for scabs and killed them right then and there.
The police didn’t come with horns and sirens, nor was it a coincidence the three men were caught. They had been looking for Fabregat, because they’d gotten a tip that he’d be there. They approached him stealthily, hidden within the shadows, and then they shouted: “Stop! Police! Hands up!” The bucket of tar spilled on the ground and over the anarchists’ feet as they raised their hands, offering no resistance.
Five uniformed police with rifles and two undercover cops wearing derbies and carrying pistols shoved them against the wall, frisked them, and asked, “Are you the one called Fabregat?” And to the other two they said: “Who are you?”
Tino’s father should have said, Constantino Orté, at God’s and your service, because the priests had taught him humility and life had taught him that the police were Catholic and would never kill another Catholic.
“So, No God, No Master, No King, eh?” an undercover cop said. “You can stop being such a fool and just go.”
Tino’s father and Gerardo thought they’d gotten a pass and smiled gratefully at the benevolence of those officers of the law and went ahead and turned their backs. Fabregat, however, knew what was really up.
“You can go now.”
They’d all heard talk about the Law of Escape, but Gerardo and Tino’s father probably thought it was an urban legend, or that it didn’t apply to them because they’d never been in trouble and that those felled by the bosses’ bullets were probably “up to something.” But Fabregat knew it wasn’t like that. Fabregat knew that twenty-three comrades had already fallen, all shot in the back, since the Law of Escape had been instituted on December 5, 1920.
The police officer repeated, “You can go now,” and Fabregat let out an anguished cry: “The Law of Escape!” And they took off running, their six espadrille-covered feet leaving a trail of black tar footprints on the sidewalks, and then there was galloping, and the sounds of guns cocking, and an endless volley of bullets that shook the neighbors who’d been hiding in the dark on their balconies and looking out at the cemetery.
Tino found out what happened from one of those neighbors who heard, and more precisely saw, everything from one of the balconies. She told him about it at the Poble Nou cemetery, the oldest in Barcelona, on the other side of the wall where his father had been painting, just as the city workers were putting his father’s coffin in the crypt where it would rest forever.
“You’re his son?” the woman asked, full of hate. “I saw what happened.” And then she told him how they were painting No God, No Master, No King and how the police shouted and the tar footprints on the sidewalk detailed the last steps of the three men before the shooting, the red blood spilling over the black tar like a symbol. The anarchists’ flag was black and red.
“Ma’am, please,” was all Tino could manage to say.
He hugged his wife Elena and stepped away from the crypt’s high walls, from the modest bouquet of flowers, from the crowd of indignant workers, from the cemetery, from the wall his father had been painting.
He didn’t want any trouble.
Tino wanted to tear off the worker’s skin that had covered him his whole life. He’d been born in Poble Nou — an area so proud of being proletariat, so poor and dirty, a cauldron of conspiracies and hate — but he’d managed to save up and buy a flashy white car from a member of the bourgeoisie who was afraid to drive, and he’d fled from Poble Nou and taken up residence in Gràcia, also a worker’s neighborhood, but cleaner, more bourgeois. When you went out on the streets, you could greet tidy middle-class people. Neither the bosses’ bullets, which pursued workers in Ciudad Antigua and in their barracks, nor the proletariat’s hunt for impresarios in rich neighborhoods, ever reached Gràcia.
That last day of August, so incredibly hot, a month after his father’s death, Tino was observing the view from his terrace, wearing an undershirt and smoking, maybe thinking about the neighbor who had seen the application of the Law of Escape from her balcony. He lived on the second floor of a building on Venus Street, between Liberty and Danger. The Gràcia neighborhood maintained its ideology in its street names. Even today, just a bit further up, there’s still Fraternity Street, and Progress Street...
The mechanic, Paco the Nut, came walking up the empty and badly lit cobblestone street from the garage where he kept his flamboyant taxi. He screamed, without consideration for the neighbors, who, because of the heat, probably couldn’t sleep anyway: “Tino! Telephone!”
A customer. His number was on a list posted at different taxi stands throughout the city. There were people who preferred to hire private drivers rather than use the big companies or the collectives.
Tino came down to the street and ran to the nearby garage. Paco the Nut and some of his relatives were playing cards, all in undershirts. The receiver was off the hook.
“We’d like to rent a car for tomorrow,” he was told. “We’d like to go to Mataró. Very early. At seven in the morning.”
Mataró is a tiny industrial town on the coast, about twenty-eight kilometers from Barcelona. It was a long trip. At sixty cents a kilometer, he’d earn at least sixteen pesetas, maybe seventeen or eighteen with the tip. A good amount to feed his kids, pay his rent, and put toward the bank loan that had allowed him to buy the taxi and get his license.
“Just come by the corner of Cortes Street and Paseo de Gràcia. We’ll be there. At seven sharp.”
Euphoric, Tino turned to the garage employees: “The car must be ready by six in the morning, spotless, and with a full tank! There’s a big tip in it for you!”
He ran home to celebrate his good luck with his wife.
“Will it be okay?” she asked him, her heart on her sleeve, always a little fearful.
“Of course it’ll be okay.”
“It’s just that you still haven’t transferred the title...”
“I’ve only had the car two weeks. It’s being processed. What do you think will happen?”
The next day, dressed meticulously in his blue uniform with a flat hat and shiny shoes, Tino Orté waited next to his imposing white Studebaker 30 HP, license number 6205, at the intersection of the two majestic streets: Paseo de Gràcia, which is like a museum with the most advanced architecture, but also an arrogant exhibition displayed by the city’s most notable families; and Cortes Street, which today is Gran Vía de les Corts Catalanes, and runs across the whole city, from north to south.
Two men approached him, one wearing a derby and the other a felt hat, both wearing suits, shirts with starched collars and cuffs, and dark ties, like businessmen. They looked very serious, as if their decisions could change the world.