Poem of the Cante Jondo Naturally most wouldn’t have been able to buy it but I typed out the poems and had them memorize many of them Why did they arrest you?” He smiles painfully with his swollen lips and adds “I would have liked to meet you under different circumstances and with more time ahead of us” Again it is Cabezas who must think it his duty to answer for the three of them “Galadí here and yours truly were arrested as dangerous Anarchists We are and very proud of it I don’t know why they’re going to kill the señor I suppose because of his prestige since fascism hates the poor and the talented” “Four days ago at about ten at night a couple of armed Falangistas not entirely unexpected appeared at my house in Pulianas” says Dióscoro Galindo González without paying too much attention to him “Through the window we saw two more who never came to the house waiting for them in a car parked by the door The first two introduced themselves very politely by the way and requested permission to search the house as they had been ordered to by the Civilian Government I had no choice and gave it to them and you’ll forgive the obligatory irony but I added that they wouldn’t find anything interesting in the house of a poor public school teacher Then one of them asked me if after the February elections and the victory of the Popular Front people hadn’t paraded past my house shouting ‘Long live the teacher and death to Barreras!’ I said all of that was certainly true even though I wasn’t responsible for what people yell on the sidewalks I didn’t say that in the electoral campaign I had spoken in public in favor of the Popular Front because they didn’t ask me that Gentlemen I was always a republican but never had a calling to be a hero or a martyr only a pedagogue If I confess all this in the presence of our honored executioners it’s because in for a thousand pesetas or a hundred ‘you can take my life from me but nothing else’ as Señor Calvo Sotelo said gallantly in Congress before he was assassinated I was always respectful of the opinions and above all the dignity of my adversaries” You alone know that tonight no one will die that Galindo González is the last inadvertent actor in the farce conceived by Valdés with you in the lead But behind the back of the civilian governor and his cancer another burlesque no less unexpected with the same cast and the Buick as the stage begins to be acted before your eyes While Galadí so assertive earlier is absorbed in his own silence and Tres-castro who shares with you the knowledge of the truth seems to waste away in the semidarkness of the night’s full moon over the irrigation channel as if through a bitter mistake he foresees that in the end he’ll be the one who is really shot dead Cabezas forgets about his imminent murder though he believes it inevitable and takes a lively interest in the story of the teacher from Pulianas “And who was the Barreras they were shouting ‘death to’ in front of your house sir?” he asks Galindo González “Probably the man who denounced me though that’s another long story I’ll have to summarize for you in a few words Eduardo Barreras was also the secretary of the Council of Pulianas and the political boss of the town When I came there two years ago he gave me a house that was little more than a stable I went to protest to the Civilian Governor himself and the steps I had taken were reported in El Ideal, which took my side though the paper is right-wing After all that the only thing I obtained was Barreras’s Hagarene hatred for in the end sick of sending petitions on papers with seals I rented the apartment they came to search four nights ago” “That’s when they arrested you?” Cabezas persists “No son not then Since apparently we’re proceeding with our drive I’ll explain everything in the order it happened When they finished their search the Falangistas told me they really hadn’t found anything compromising and would state that in their report They added that if nobody came to arrest me in the next forty-eight hours I could consider myself a free man I remember that as they were leaving one of them asked me what my political thinking was just talking you understand I replied that these details were very private and I didn’t believe it was my obligation to reveal them to anyone because what counts is a man’s conduct and not his thoughts Though you won’t believe it he said I was right” “And what about the forty-eight-hour time limit?” “It expired two nights later But fifty-four hours after the search other Falangistas came to my house this time with no courtesy or manners and arrested me with slaps in the face and shoves I’ll spare you the rest because you must know it on your own and my teeth and shirt speak for themselves After the beatings the tortures and the interrogations I had the honor to pass into the presence of Commander Valdés himself the new civilian governor of Granada the Beautiful He spoke to me for only a few moments to ask me again how I thought politically and I repeated what I had said to the Falangista in my house He replied that in any case it didn’t matter to him very much because in the city and the province all the teachers were reds Which was an idiotic point of view but a point of view though I didn’t have the guts to tell him so It’s the one act of my life I regret now” Suddenly and at the end of that speech the car coughs groans and stops coming out of a curve “Why did you stop” Trescastro yells at the driver The Assault Guard shrugs again “I didn’t stop This heap is a wreck After we left the Colony it just gave out” “Try to fix it We’re not going to stay here forever” The two Assault Guards get out and the one with the rifle leans it against one of the trees at the side of the road Another feline spark crosses Galadí’s eyes but he immediately buries himself again in his withdrawn passivity Trescastro opens the door puts one foot on the ground as if preparing to flee when left alone with us Galindo González forces a weary smile “King Canute is afraid of us Sooner or later he’ll get down on his knees and beg our pardon like executioners in the movies” Trescastro looks away and tests the ground with his foot but doesn’t respond “What are you afraid of King Canute? That I’ll strangle you with my bare hands?” the teacher from Pulianas continues “The truth is I could because as a young man I bent a coin with my fingers and the tip of an arrow with my palms Do it in the blink of an eye Before your henchman from the Assault Guard can reach his Mauser and shoot me But I’m not going to try I know that here we all have the stink of gunpowder on us including you Canute because one day you’ll pay for our murders and probably many others in front of a firing squad In the long run I’d only shorten your trip to hell I renounce so high an honor because in spite of my verbosity I don’t want to shorten my life by even a few minutes I told you before I’m not a hero and not a martyr either Just a republican like any other and a public school teacher rather sparing of speech though you may not believe that” “Olé and how well you speak for someone sparing of speech!” Cabezas says in praise Then incapable of resisting an easy joke he adds “If they let you speak Don Dióscoro they won’t hang you” “They won’t hang any of us because Canute here and his henchmen are decent civilized people” the teacher replies quickly “I’ll bet you anything they finish us off with a single very fast bullet right in the back of the neck” He gestures with his right hand as if to erase for an instant the presence of everyone except me and turning with difficulty on his artificial leg he faces me “It’s curious to speak of betting at moments like this when all I have in life is my life and all I leave to the world is reduced to my two sons who are men now and very capable of looking after themselves I never was a dreamer in any sense of the word and couldn’t have imagined a crisis like this If I’d foreseen it I think I would’ve behaved differently though I don’t know how Now I understand those French nobles Michelet talks about who on their last night and almost in the shadow of the guillotine gambled passionately with money they no longer had and goods they had lost” He smiles and nods at his own thoughts “That’s beside the point It’s regrettable we should meet here considering how much I would’ve liked to talk with you about poetry and so many other things It’s a shame there’s no other world where we could discuss them all we liked with immortality ahead of us”