“Is this your final word?”
“If I thought calling you crazy would save my life, I’d tell you that your God will exempt you from judgment because He believes you’re insane. In any event, lying wouldn’t change my fate.”
“My dear sir, you too have my final word,” he replies, hurt and angry, but not looking up. “I told you I’d talk to Sevilla about releasing you tomorrow, and tomorrow you’ll be free.”
“Valdés, I don’t doubt your word or your sanity. In any case, you made a confession to me and I owe you another. We’re both part of a drama whose reasons and outcome transcend us because it has already happened before, in a time and a world that are very remote yet identical to ours. You’re Castilian, judging by your accent, and perhaps you can’t fathom what I’m trying to tell you, but any Gypsy or Andalusian Civil Guard would understand me perfectly. When I left Madrid for Granada, a friend accompanied me to the South Station. With a certain insistence that was not exaggerated, for he also appeared in the cast of our show, he asked me to stay in Madrid where he could protect or hide me. I felt tempted to do as he asked but was struck immediately by the certainty that there could be no discrepancies with what had previously been foretold and staged. I came to Granada, knowing that here I would be arrested even though I tried to hide.”
“I’m very tired.” He sighs, shrugging his thin shoulders. “I don’t think I really understood everything you said, but I can’t accept your fatalism. If it were true, the staging of our drama would never end, and the war would keep repeating another identical war that occurred earlier. It makes no sense.”
“That’s what you say, though I didn’t expect you to understand. You’re too rational, and you’ll never be able to hide that from the eyes of God.”
He crossed his arms on the desk and presses his forehead between elbow and wrist. His hair, combed with a part, is thinning in the middle of his head, and long white strands, all very recent, cover his temples with ash.
“I can’t stay awake anymore,” he murmurs. “What happens now in the play, according to your premonitions? Do you grab my pistol and shoot me while I doze off? That’s what I’d do if I were you.”
“I don’t, and we can’t change our roles. In the final analysis, we’re as different as our gods.”
“Then call the soldier standing guard and ask to be returned to your cell,” he whispers with difficulty, his words enveloped in sleep. “It won’t be for long. Tomorrow you’ll go back to the Rosales family’s house. Tell the soldiers to wake me in half an hour.” It becomes more and more difficult to understand him, but I’d swear that suddenly, as he was sinking into sleep, he mumbles: “You’ve cheated me. You refused to think I was crazy and you refused to shoot me. My regards to Pepe Rosales.”
“All right,” the man of flesh agrees, perhaps disconcerted. “I suppose from now on I ought to be grateful to you for the favor of my life. But I’m not sure I’ve received it. When I left Madrid, I thought every step I took had been foreseen. Now I’m not sure about anything. Couldn’t we have moved away from what had been arranged without realizing it? Couldn’t we have insisted on improvising an outcome very different from the only one possible?”
He doesn’t argue or respond. Dozing face down on the desk, he slips into sleep like a stone rolling down a hill. Occasionally his back shudders beneath his tunic and he stifles an unconscious groan. Then he is completely motionless, and one might say he falls, fully dressed, to the bottom of an invisible ocean.
Look at him look at him look at him as you saw him so frequently on the stage of this theater of yours in hell Look even if you don’t want to see him again and very unwillingly think of him so often Look at the man of flesh in me the one who stopped being afraid in the Civilian Government building when Valdés pleaded with him to think he was crazy Yes look at the man of flesh in me who came with me to the bottom of this spiral Look at him and don’t cover your face with handkerchiefs In the elegy to Ignacio Sánchez Mejías he also asked that his face be left bare and uncovered so one might peer into his eyes as one peers into the hard air or the eyes of the anonymous corpse in a thirteen-line-poem that was the premonition of everything you see now Look at him and don’t become lost in oblique memories or verses like tangents because at that dawn everything concluded on earth absolutely everything for you man of flesh for me who am your right or your wrong side your heads or your tails and for the poems we conceived of and signed with my name You’ll never know whether Ruiz Alonso denounced you or not Whether he was confessing the truth or telling a lie when he said he had carried out the orders of Lieutenant Colonel Velasco the man without a face and almost without a name who appears and disappears in this tragedy of yours as if he had not existed You’ll never know whether Valdés called Sevilla as he had promised (“My dear sir, you too have my final word. I told you I’d talk to Sevilla about releasing you tomorrow, and tomorrow you’ll be free”) to tell them of your release You’ll never know whether Sevilla replied that he ought to kill you right away who knows why for being a red a queer a poet a Mason a Gypsy a Jew a friend of Fernando de los Ríos for having voted for the Popular Front for having asked for the freedom of Prestes or as Ruiz Alonso said to Miguel Rosales simply for having done more harm with the pen than others do with a pistol In any case and though you can’t explain it to yourself with any certainty you have the retrospective presentiment that Valdés told the truth at least in part In any case never again never no never again because everything concludes now With kicks and rifle butts they open the door to the room that serves as your cell The one with the boy’s eyes and another soldier identical to him as alike as the same image in two facing mirrors burst into your cell throw you face first against the wall and tie your hands behind your back with an esparto rope that cuts off the circulation in your wrists You shout that the governor will not tolerate this abuse that the governor has sworn yes sworn to release you tomorrow and one of them you don’t whether it was the one who tried to hit you with his rifle (“How do you dare, wretch? In my presence!”) or the other one slaps you across the mouth Your palate and tongue taste of blood man of flesh before you feel the mordant bitterness of the blow The blood tastes of India ink and shards of broken glass on frost Two identical laughs welcome your scream of pain and panic Now you would like to be Ignacio even if you’re only my right or my wrong side my heads or my tails man of flesh To be Ignacio yes because he grew up defying death (“If a broken body has to enter my house, let it be mine and not my son’s”) though he would grovel and yield in your presence like a wounded bull With shoves and kicks they take you along the corridor the stairs the lobby while you (
Je ne suis un péderaste! Je suis une tapette!“ I’m not a pederast! I’m a fairy!”) cry and pray and they disregard you Outside the strangely cold night waits for you in the middle of an August filled with indifferent crickets You fall to your knees and beg that please in the name of God they return you to your cell and allow you to speak with the governor You repeat that you had prayed for the triumph of the military and are prepared to give everything for their cause including your life A Buick as black as daybreak is waiting parked at the curb and they drag you to the car open one of the rear doors and throw you onto the upholstered seat Suddenly with the unexpected ease with which you change time or persons in dreams you think that if you hadn’t refused to drink or eat in the Civilian Government building you’d urinate now with fear and you congratulate yourself for being so prudent In the Buick are two men with their hands tied behind their backs One beside you and the other facing you on one of the folding seats Beside him on the next extra backless seat you recognize Juan Trescastro In the front are two Assault Guards one at the wheel and the other armed with a Mauser that he holds dejected or asleep Trescastro also has a pistol in his hand though now he seems to have dropped it on his lap The prisoner facing you squints when he looks at you and says your name Then he asks whether you’re the writer You nod and he tells you in a quiet, calm voice “I’m Paco Galadí This friend beside you is Joaquín Arcollas though we all call him Cabezas a comrade from the bull-ring a banderillero like me They’re murdering us without a trial because we’re Anarchists and were armed when they arrested us” Cabezas excuses himself for having to look at you over his shoulder since his hands are tied behind him Then as if you were at a picnic instead of going to your deaths he continues “I met Ignacio Sánchez Mejías and almost fought in his cuadrilla When he learned I came from Granada he told me you were a good friend of his and were a genius at writing modern ballads” “All right just shut up once and for all!” growls Trescastro “This isn’t a festival” Galadí laughs at him “They’re going to kill us and tortured us almost to death What else can an untalented rich kid like you who belongs to Gil Robles do to us? When you suffer this much blows don’t hurt anymore and bullets will be a blessing “Olé!” Cabezas agrees “Very well put! Even tied up we’re stronger than you!” The truth is that Trescastro falls silent turns around and at a signal from him the police officer starts the car You go up Calle Duquesa and cross the Calle del Gran Capitán Gradually you leave behind a Granada deserted and silent under curfew Above you the stars flicker and ignite before they go out with the first lights If anyone is watching all of you from one of those remote worlds he would feel as indifferent to your fate as you would be to the ants crushed under your feet Yet if an ant said to you “I think I feel I’m mortal just as you are” would you destroy it as they’re going to destroy you now? Granada is behind you and you enter the countryside It smells of orange blossoms and mint Frogs sing in a pond A shooting star crosses the windshield Suddenly you’re absolutely convinced you’re living a farce In spite of all appearances to the contrary these people aren’t going to murder you The presence of Trescastro a very well-known member of Popular Action supports your unexpected certainty You see him again in the Rosales family’s courtyard while Ruiz Alonso had a snack of biscuits and café con leche with the napkin tied around his neck and spilling down the front of his blue coverall like a bib looking at him with a mixture of embarrassment and contempt This man wasn’t born to kill anybody He does no more than go along on arrests like yours protected by the Assault Guards posted even on the roofs just as certain people must have watched autos-de-fé even though they didn’t have an executioner’s calling He’s with you in the Buick to prevent this mockery of an execution from becoming reality It’s all a cruel comedy staged by Valdés for your benefit At the last moment when these police officers pretend to be ready to kill you with a bullet to the back of the head Trescastro will stay their hand like the angel of the Lord and order them to take you back to the Civilian Government offices offering absurd reasons Orders received at the last moment following his call to the governor from a farmhouse telephone or simply the Dostoevskian revelation that it was all arranged as a sinister game with the three of you Galadí Cabezas and you as inadvertent protagonists “The mercy of the governor is infinite and this time he decided to give all of you the gift of life though you will spend the rest of it in prison contemplating behind bars the most devout and very military flowering of the new Spain that your revolutionary liberal Marxist Masonic and Judaizing baseness attempted to prevent under orders from Russia” In the Civilian Government building they’ll take you to Valdés again You’ll find him paler and more ashen than ever more corroded by insomnia and lack of sleep like two acids He does have cancer and is going to die very soon Precisely for that reason the savage burlesque to which he subjected you must cheer him in a particular way “You’re a man of the theater” he’ll say not looking you in the eye as usual “give me your opinion of my little farce and its direction Do you or do you not believe now that I’m insane and my derangement will be the best proof of my innocence in God’s judgment?” Perhaps they’ll carry their monstrousness even further and kill Galadí and Cabezas (“They’re murdering us without a trial because we’re Anarchists and were armed when they arrested us”) exempt you and return you to Valdés In that case it’s also possible you won’t even understand his questions those of a dying man obsessed with proving his insanity because you yourself have become a raving madman after this sarcastic Calvary when they grant you your life as a taunt The shooting star extinguished and having passed the frog pond we cross a small bridge Then the moon outlines olive groves on both sides of the highway “Where are we going?” Cabezas asks aloud looking at the countryside and not addressing anyone “This is the bridge over the Beiro” Galadí replies while Trescastro and the Assault Guards say nothing “We’re going toward the town of Víznar where my mother came from God rest her soul Granada is south of us now” He’s cut off by a chorus of barks beyond the river and the olive grove Gradually you recognize the places that the night obscured in your memory The palace of Archbishop Don Juan Manuel de Moscoso y Peralta is in Víznar A few days after Fernando Villalón summoned the souls of dead dogs to the horror of Rafael María Teresa and you the three of them came with you to Granada and you took them to Víznar along this road to admire that eighteenth-century building If in the South Station you were convinced that present past and future eventually fused in a higher reality here you had no presentiment of the tragedy and the joke that together oblige you to live now You remember very well that before the massive door studded with large nails and then in the porticoed courtyard of the palace you told them that Moscoso y Peralta Archbishop of Granada was the child of American-born Spaniards from Arequipa A nephew of his you said to the astonished surprise of María Teresa and Rafael Mariano Tristán de Moscoso had a daughter out of wedlock with a French aristocrat who had fled the Revolution That girl Flora Tristán would be the grandmother of Paul Gauguin and a sentence of hers “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!” was plagiarized with great success by Engels and Marx in the