Birth of Our Power (8 page)

I marveled at the Castilian language, which by calling a man
un hombre
enabled me to hear
une ombre.
⁴

A taxi stops in a narrow backstreet, in front of an ordinary-looking shop window: Café Valenciano. Two gentlemen in traveling clothes get out, carrying heavy suitcases. A young man wearing a cap is smoking not far off. The driver pulls away slowly.

A few moments later the door of the little café opens, letting in four workmen in sandals, caps, overalls. “How are you, Vincent?” says one of them to the owner, who is leaning on the bar.

“Fine, go on in.”

One by one, they pass into the back room. Andrés greets them, notebook in hand.

“The San Luis factory,” says the first. “Twenty-seven. Then the
Canadiense:
eighteen.”

“Very good.”

The man from the San Luis factory turns back toward the café and calls out, “Gregorio!”

Gregorio comes in. In a corner of the room, under a window with muslin curtains, José Miro, tall and wiry, his resolute face set off by black eyebrows and metallic eyes, brusquely opens a suitcase resting on a table and full of the blue-black reflections of somber metal. José's pale hand plunges into that heap of black steel and pulls out a Browning. He counts out three clips.

“Take it.”

Gregorio takes the gun and the three clips from the edge of the table. His chest is constricted with emotion. He can't think what to say.
“Gracias,”
he finally murmurs. Andrés, José, and the man from
the San Luis factory look at him attentively. But already, the next man is being called in.

“Benavente! …”

At times José Miro walks up to a young man, looks him in the eyes, and says: “Every bullet belongs to the Confederation …”

One man from the
Canadiense
is missing. Andrés and Miro stare at each other. The leader of the group, suddenly worried, searches his memory.

“Eighteen, you said.”

“Si,
si.
Eighteen.”

One didn't show up. One got lost on the way. The street, however, was still safe. The
patrón
vouched for it. But one weapon remained, useless, at the bottom of an empty suitcase, its bluish reflection mirroring the anxiety on three faces. The specter, as yet unacknowledged, of betrayal was already in the air …

“My God!” cries the delegate from the
Canadiense.
“Quiroja didn't come. His wife is having a baby.”

“Then give him this,” says Miro, “for the baptism.”

The empty suitcase clicks shut. The specter disappears. The
patrón
brings in several glass
porros
(decanters) filled with a red wine so thick it is almost black …

Workers stream out through the dazzling city toward their homes in the poor quarters, their steps lightened, shoulders thrown back with a new feeling of power. Their hands never tire of caressing the weapons' black steel. And waves of pride and strength flow from that steel into their muscular arms, through the spinal column to those precincts of the brain where; by a mysterious chemistry, that essential life force we call the Will is distilled. A man carrying a weapon (especially if he has been disarmed for a long time, and especially in a modern city where possessing a weapon, secret and dangerous, always assumes near-tragic implications) is boosted by the dual awareness of the danger he is carrying and the danger he is running. The gun, restoring his primordial right, places him outside the written law (the law of others). In the busy crowd along the main arteries these workers, who had always felt degraded by the contrast between their sloppy old suits or overalls and bourgeois dress, pass expensive restaurants they never enter, luxurious cafés from which strains of music emanate, shop windows with astonishing displays of objects so beyond their means as to be not even tempting: leathers, silks, chrome, gold, pearls. Here they encounter the
women of that other race, sheathed in precious fabrics, their complexions colored by good health and luxury as by a soft inner light. Here they encounter well-fed men with relaxed faces, haughty, superior looks under broad felt hats. The workers caress their Brownings and move about, already like lean wolves creeping unseen into a fat and peaceful flock, contemplating the boldest of assaults.

Once they enter the slum streets where they feel at home, their exuberance brings them together in talkative groups. Now and then the weapons glisten in the palms of their powerful hands as they feel the virile heft of sleek metal or hold them out nervously at arm's length. It becomes a kind of game to load and unload them: that is how Juan Bregat of the mechanics' union killed himself.

They don't have much reason to ponder over the value of their lives, these people. Never will they escape from these shacks (which stink from cooking oil and bedbugs), from the factories (where their bodies and brains are drained each day), from the stifling slums, from the swarms of kinds with their dirty, matted, lice-infested hair. Never will the young charms of the
novias
(fiancées) survive the effects of hunger, the hospital, the dirty wash, the warmed-over meals, the oppression of whitewashed walls. Never, never, never. Only by force will they break out of the closed circle of their fate. And tough luck for those who fall by the wayside (losing nothing of importance anyway). The others, the victors, would open the way of the future. What kind of future? The more thoughtful quote Reclus, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Anselmo Lorenzo with feverish enthusiasm. But what need is there to think so much? Any future would be better than the present.

4
   A shadow, in French —Tr.

A SILENT BACK STREET IN THREE CLASHING COLORS: FAÇADES WHITE, PAVE
ments of reddish clay, a high stone wall casting blue shadows. The wall (the color of dead leaves) is pierced at intervals by narrow windows with ornate wrought-iron bars. Behind that ironwork flowers lie imprisoned under the cool shadow of a soldiers' barracks. The white faces of women with fat chins and calm gluttonous lips can sometimes be seen there. Peacefully, they gaze into the street with large, black velvet eyes where life seems to stagnate as in a still pond. Next to a low door over which a double escutcheon has been carved into the stone, a soldier stands watch like a living statue, his hands folded across the barrel of his short rifle. A black, three-cornered hat, a black cape, yellow leather straps crisscrossing his chest: he too, motionless, oppresses the lifeless street with his stagnant gaze. At times, when we stare at him, a stubborn black hatred is aroused in his eyes—a tiny white spark that glows and sinks into dark pools. A rough, square-cut beard hardens his features. These
guardia civils,
recruited in the old-fashioned, backward provinces, well-housed, well-fed, are perhaps the only soldiers in the city loyal to the king. On the highways they escort the convoys of prisoners traveling to the presidios. They surround the scaffold while the executioner slowly tightens the garrote around the neck of a man who is already nothing more than a gasping, terrified rag of a man. During military ceremonies they surround the Señor Governor, whose career might be shortened by a bomb—if it weren't for the bulwark of their black and yellow bodies.

Two men walking along the narrow sidewalk across the street from the sentry turn around suddenly and face him. One is thin, hard, wiry with a dark metallic look; the other, rough-hewn, dressed in a shabby gray suit, collarless, his cap pushed down on the back of his neck, slightly aslant, as certain dock workers wear them. The sentry stares at them.
A nervous impulse electrifies his limbs; his hands, already prepared for quick action, tremble on the rifle. The two men across the way, apparently peaceful, exchange glances, each has his right hand in his pocket. The situation is clear. Behind the wrought-iron grill of the nearby window, where cool clinging vines hang drowsily, a woman is looking out, her elbows on the sill. But now her lips turn pale and her pupils darken with awful premonition.

“He's recognized you,” the thin than says to his companion. “He's going to set off the alarm. The bell is right behind him. Don't move a muscle. I'll let him have it.”

The second answers quickly and quietly behind a false smile like an ill-fitting mask:

“Don't do anything stupid, José! What are you, crazy?”

The flat tone of his voice is decisive. The mask adjusts; the false smile is now real. Slowly the man in gray draws out of his right-hand pants' pocket (the sentry's hands tighten on the rifle barrel, and two pairs of fascinated eyes follow his movement with horrified interest) a silver-plated cigarette case, and opens it:

“Got your lighter, José?”

José brings out his right hand too. Relaxed, they exchange glances, a tiny white spark still burning deep in their eyes. Having lighted their cigarettes, they move on without turning around. The sentry's hands relax their grip on the rifle barrel, the plump woman heaves a long sigh from behind her high grilled window. What happened? Nothing. Why nothing of course. But what heat! Jesus, it's hot.

The perfume of flowers mingles at moments with the salt smell of the nearby sea. The two men plunge into the noisy crowd on the avenue. They enter a quiet street lined with pretentious bourgeois residences, their façades white, pink, blue, green, parti-colored, some overloaded with gilt decorations and lined up, like wealthy matrons wearing all their jewels, along the route of procession. They ring at number 12. White apron, white cap, a vague, pleasant smile tinged with curiosity, the little maid ushers them into the cool shade of the vestibule. They can imagine what they must look like: one a moving man or a contractor inspecting the water mains, the other a suspicious intruder. The taller of the two shakes off their embarrassment with an expansive shrug of the shoulders: an old habit from his days as a dock worker—shaking
off the invisible load forever weighing down on his shoulders. He darts a knowing look at the lady's maid, making him uglier than he is, with his round nose, too small for his massive rubbery face, and his sparkling goggle eyes that are a little too far apart (like the eyes of a mischievous fish, I used to think).

“My adorable child, your master is expecting us at four o'clock.”

The girl blushes a little, her lips pursed. “Enter, señor.” They find themselves in a small gray room furnished with Cordovan leather chairs and a black marble table on which there are some magazines. Out of an ebony frame, an El Greco portrait of an emaciated old man stares down at them, as if through a window, with unfathomed sadness.

“I was right not to shoot,” murmured José, surprised at the sound of his own voice, even though it was almost inaudible.

Then they notice another portrait, hung in bizarre apposition to the first, and framed in heavy gold leaf. Huge curved mustaches, enormous blue eyes, rimless glasses and ruffled hair speckled with gray: the leader of the Republican party gives the impression of seeing nothing.

“The son of a bitch,” whispers José through clenched teeth.