During his leave, my father tells me that in order to love a job, you must have a thorough knowledge of it, understand its purpose, know everything about the materials you work with and respect them — their qualities and defects — as well as the hard work that went into growing and harvesting them: we’re not artists, we’re artisans, although, when all this is over, you’ll be able to go back to the School of Arts and Crafts and become an artist, if that’s what you really want. Always remember, though, that a good carpenter isn’t someone who performs miracles with wood, but someone who makes a living from it; survive first, philosophize later, or make art, but whatever you decide to do, make sure you can earn enough to live on; you also need to know the precise use of each tooclass="underline" look, touch this chair — he rests his hand on the back — it’s born of the combined labors of nature and man, it was made by people who speak and think, it took a lot of work. The furniture you make supports the bottom or elbows or hands as well as the papers and tablecloths and plates and glasses of someone, intelligent or stupid, rich or poor, but someone, who, thanks to your work, allows himself the little bit of comfort that offers him relief from the hustle and bustle and weariness of each day, just as the headboard on a bed protects sleeping bodies — whether beautiful or misshapen it doesn’t matter — during thousands of nights, it keeps you company while you sleep or if you’re ill, and it’s there, supporting the pillow on which you lay your head the day you die, so you see how important that headboard is. With a bed or a bedside table, your customer has given you access to a world no one else is privy to; more than that, you work with wood from trees that have grown on other continents and were felled by men using specific tools, the trunks of those trees have traveled thousands of miles to get here, they required the work of lumberjacks, dockers, drivers, warehouse workers, sailors, they’ve been hauled along by carts drawn by oxen or by mules, in trucks driven by drivers, in wagons pulled along by a steam engine whose boiler was stoked by a stoker, like the stokers on board the ship that crossed the ocean. When you think like that, then you begin to understand the importance of your work, not because you’re a genius, but quite the opposite, because you’re just one link in the chain, but if that link fails, it will ruin the work of all the others. Man is only his own consciousness, he makes himself. If you don’t know what you’re made of or what the material you use or transform with your work is made of, then you’re nothing. A mere beast of burden. Knowledge gives meaning to your work, makes you a thinking man, because man is what he thinks. For millions of people, work is the only activity that teaches and civilizes them. For others, it’s a form of self-brutalization in exchange for food or money. Yes, people are beginning to live a little bit better now — although this war is sure to bring back poverty — and even we enjoy a few more comforts, but we’re also less as people, the rebel generals doubtless have furniture made of rosewood and walnut wood in their houses, but they’re just mules, they don’t understand the value of work, they think a worker is a mere tool to serve them, unable to think for himself and with no freedom to decide his future, they don’t know the value of what they use, only what it costs, how much money they paid for it. Do you understand what I mean?
I nod.
The war ruined everything. I had to tell my son Germán before he went off to do his military service — doubtless to show him that I myself had fought in a great battle, but also because he would have a war of his own to fight — it will be no easy thing to keep your dignity among the fascist pigs you’ll meet in the barracks, especially when they find out who your father is. Expect the worst, I told him. When I was about ten years old, my father taught me how to carve wood, he kept me by his side while he was making some of the furniture for the house. Then he wanted me to go to school to learn more. He had chosen me. He said to Ramón: once your brother has learned, it will be your turn. I was the oldest, just as you’re the oldest now. There was an order to be followed. There wasn’t enough for all of us. At least one would be saved, and that one would have to help the others along. Once one of us is out of the water, he can throw the others the rope that will save us all. That was the agreement. I learned a few things in the months I spent at the School of Arts and Crafts, how to use a gouge for example. I don’t know whether I would have been any good, but I would like to have been a sculptor. Then the war came. The light went out. I had to abandon everything. For me, it was too late. At first, when I was in the trenches, I held fast to my ambition. I carved a few figures that I sent to my wife via a neighbor — I made my father a really beautiful key-ring, a five-pointed star with a hammer and sickle on it — they all got thrown away or buried or burned before the Nationalists arrived in Olba, because they were politically-charged images — the head of a militiaman, a fist, two crossed rifles, secular imagery, substitutes for the medallions of saints and virgins that people wore around their neck or hung on the walls before the Republic arrived. As well as medallions, I made small plates, key-rings with patriotic, revolutionary motifs. All that’s left are those little wooden figures on the sideboard, not much bigger than chessmen (a woman in profile, with her hair pulled back, a medallion showing a horse, another on which I had carved a vase of flowers). I continued making them in prison, where I would work with any piece of wood I came across; I made a chess set that kept us entertained for hours and, of course, I made spoons and forks with bits of boxwood I managed to smuggle into the cell or the block, because, at first, we weren’t even held in cells: we were all crammed into a kind of warehouse where we had to sleep taking turns because there wasn’t enough space for us all to lie down. I made key-rings and those small secular medallions that prisoners hung round their neck on a bit of string or a shoe lace: a name, an initial, a flower, a leaf from a plane tree. The political symbols had all vanished; we didn’t even think to use the symbols that had accompanied us over the last few years. It was usually the guards who gave me the wood so that I could carve something for them. When I came out of prison, though, I stopped carving altogether — I did try occasionally, I’d pick up a piece of wood, make all my preparations, but then I’d just sit staring at it like an idiot, I think it was because everything I’d lost would suddenly rise up before me. It was like reliving the whole experience. I said to Germán: Look, I may have failed, but you could be a great cabinetmaker, I can’t afford to send you to art school, as I would have liked, but I’ll show you everything I know, all the rudiments, and the rest you’ll pick up as you go along, you’ll see. Who knows, maybe one day, we’ll be able to afford to pay for some courses or you could go and become an apprentice to some master cabinetmaker. Perhaps when you come back from military service, and with your brother helping me in the workshop, we’ll be able to afford to send you to art school.
That was the first time I’d spoken plainly to one of my children about what had happened to me during the war. He gave me a hard look and said: