Clothes make the man — and they make for hostility, too. In Mulet’s tertulia the politicking now became hot and heavy, opinion clashing against opinion. As far as internal Spanish problems were concerned, I stayed out of these quarrels, explaining that I had even less comprehension of such matters than the members of the Cortes themselves. But when the subject of the Third Reich came up, I leaped willingly into the fray.
After Pedro disappeared like a thief in the night, we sat for a long time at the edge of the well and listened. The constellation of Orion was still up there in all its eternal glory, but the night sounds were different. That is, they now had a different meaning. There were gunshots. We heard shouts, children whimpered, dogs started barking. The night around us and below us was speaking to us, but no longer in the familiar language of island nights. Not long before this, I had translated a passage in Pascoaes’ Saint Paul about the rampaging Saul of Tarsus, a passage that the publisher Rascher’s bumbling Leipzig affiliate had taken for a caricature of the Propaganda Apostle Goebbels: “He broke into houses, took the occupants captive, convicted them, and threw them into prison. He was acting as a criminal in the name of the law.” The Disciple Goebbels was likewise breaking into houses, taking captives, and killing them in the name of Audhumla, the Primeval Cow. On the island of Mallorca, mass murder was occurring in the name of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. That is just how the flag-wavers behaved: they took prisoners and killed them by the thousands — no one has ever calculated how many thousands. The other side, the Red side, killed in the name of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. All of them were on a rampage in the name of the Fatherland. Isn’t that what it’s all about, justifying what we are doing by doing it in the name of what is nameless?
Our island was the scene of the Spanish War’s most dreadful carnage. The butchery committed by Right and Left on the mainland was nothing when compared to the Divine Scourge that descended upon the Balearics. There was no escape. Everybody on the lists was cut down. You couldn’t get through to your political allies on the other side; you were sitting in a trap. The initial salvo of the pronunciamiento caused the island to collapse into the hands of the Catholic General Staff, which proclaimed a Holy War. It was a sudden regression to the Middle Ages. The coup on Mallorca was ignited by a no doubt authentic grandee, Marqués de Zayas, who together with some accomplices was imprisoned in San Carlos Fortress for having planted a bomb at the Trade Union headquarters. He was liberated, and from that moment on he was a rampaging Saul. I have no idea whether he ever turned into a Saint Paul.
War, the Holy War Against the Saracens, as it was called on the island, had erupted. But no matter how holy a war is, no matter which side claims that God is on its side, no war can go on without gold. The contributions poured in, and whoever refused to contribute voluntarily was shot. Liturgical vessels, some of them of the high-karat variety, were melted down together with secular utensils and sent to the German Führer, who promised to deliver warplanes, weapons, and all kinds of technical assistance. The Third Reich, constantly in search of foreign trade, delivered promptly, but of course only such goods as it had no need for at home. I saw Heroes of the Iron Cross, sporting their uniform buckles with the blasphemous motto Gott mit uns, which neatly matched the maxim proclaimed by Franco: “To die in battle is the highest honor. One dies only once. Death comes painlessly, and dying is not as terrible as it looks. It is more terrible to go on living as a coward. Long live Spain! Long live Christ the King! Long live Franco!”
An old priest, well known as a preacher at the Cathedral, thought rather differently. That is to say, he had grown so senile in his service to the Creator that he couldn’t think at all any more, and that was his undoing. He mounted the Cathedral pulpit and preached. All his life long he had done nothing besides preach. He had a reputation for being a gripping speaker — a Spanish Monsignor Donders. Many thousands had already been murdered, and the killing went on like the war itself, week after week, as wars tend to do. The combatants were unable to stop. Besides, the problem of available gold hadn’t been solved; there were negotiations with representatives of worldly and celestial powers. In the midst of all this, appealing to the fateful message of Christ, Monseñor uttered the even more fateful admonition: “Thou shalt not kill!”
Two young brats, members of the Boys’ Militia in paramilitary uniforms showing genuine Mallorquin-embroidered Sacred Heart insignias with their divine shooting arrows — these two kids nudged each other and said to each other, “This is sabotage! If these people listen to him, it’s all over with God’s cause!” They screamed up to the pulpit, “Shut your trap, you old fart! It’s our turn now!”
The priest, confused as he was, made further appeals to the Lord, just as he had been taught at the seminary 60 years earlier. And lo, he had learned nothing more since then. What is more, God was apparently no longer with him. These two jerks, 13 or 14 years old, like all such little pissers the Great Hope of their Fatherland, tore him down from his pulpit, put their fists to his nose, and dragged him past the silent congregation to the Cathedral portal. The gunshots echoed down the ranks of pews. Holy Mass continued, and when it was over the Bishop blessed the Lord’s appointed executioners. In all nations and at all times, sabotage is in wartime a capital offense. During the period in question, the harried Bishop of Mallorca could scarcely keep up with all the blessings he had to perform. He blessed everything: Italian and German airplanes; Italian and German sailors; the nightly death squads; the Italian warrior Conte di Rossi; the hydrocephalic German steel helmets that not even Nazi heads could fit into; and the streets that, as in all revolutions, were renamed in the interest of posterity, whereas it seems to me that it would be smarter to memorialize heroic deeds in brain cells à la Professor Wernicke. But then again, revolutions are never smart.
The Bishop kept on blessing all kinds of things. Christians who neglected their Easter Duty were shot, including those who lost the written confirmation that was sent through the mail. Holy Mother Church prevailed. She was never as powerful as now, yet at the same time She never trembled before Her own power so much as during the Holy War on Mallorca. The killing went on out of fear. The archepiscopal prelate kept on blessing out of fear, the same Prince of the Church whom Bernanos pillories in his book on Mallorca, Les grands cimitières sous la lune. But instead of calling this man of the Church an outright criminal or a Grand Inquisitor, as I would have done, the French writer identifies him with this even more baneful appellation: Le personnage que les convenances m’obligent toujours à nommer son Excellence l’évèque-archivèque de Palma. This man was the very same fellow, His Eminence Don José, to whom my uncle in Münster had written a letter of recommendation on my behalf. When I began to notice in which direction the Mallorcan winds of danger were blowing, I fished out this handwritten missive and henceforth carried it with me at all times. It was the most helpful report card I have ever received in my whole life: Propinquus meus, oriundus ex familia vere catholica (post-1933: a-catholica) officiis catholicis semper optime satesfecit (My uncle had a marvelous way of interpreting a Catholic’s “duties”) et dignus est ut in omnibus suis studiis adiuvetur. This letter, countersigned by the exalted personage mentioned in Bernanos’ book, and with an ecclesiastical seal affixed, proved to be more effective than any bullet-proof vest. But it wasn’t the Spaniards who wanted to kill me. It was the Nazis. The two of us, Beatrice and I, were on the list of those to be executed, hand in hand as in a wedding photo.