Blind Sunflowers (9 page)

The lad with nits came and sat by him. He said nothing. Juan broke off his letter, and realised he had learned to catalogue sadness, to distinguish between all the different kinds of despair, to recognise fear mixed with hate, hatred on its own, and fear in its pure state. He even knew how to spot the difference between someone who was sorry for not doing something from someone who was sorry for having done something. But the boy beside him had a gaping hole deep in his eyes that came from something Juan had almost forgotten: a sense of loss. That was probably why the two of them
began to talk in a leisurely way, gazing out at the sky beyond the bars of the window. Juan told him about Mozart – another of the defeated, and about Salieri. He talked about the scientist Ramón y Cajal – another solitary fighter – and of how clouds are formed. He went on to mention Darwin and how important the thumb was for man to become man, how it helped him climb down from trees and learn to kill his fellows.

‘But everything that took place, the Popular Front, the war, was to put an end to all that, wasn’t it?’

That freezing afternoon in a cell ineluctably disconnected from the natural flow of life, Juan did not have the strength to console him. All the effort had been useless because the starting point was wrong. Whatever you do, half the people are going to be against you. It’s a punishment. So nobody is obliged to get it right. Am I boring you?

‘What I wouldn’t give to be able to roll a cigarette!’ was the boy’s only reply.

Talking like this they somehow forgot death. Sunday passed by furtively in a city steeped in fear. After that came day after day of dawn lists and orders to appear before Colonel Eymar’s tribunal. But as time went on, there were more days of rest as well. One day there were no death trucks, the next no one had to appear before the Tribunal of Repression of Masons and Communism… and Juan was never summoned.

A few weeks later, as night was falling, he heard his name shouted out again in the corridor, and once again Sergeant Edelmiro escorted him to the dark room next to the kitchens. Inside were the fierce, hapless colonel and his wife, wrapped as ever in her astrakhan coat. As soon as she saw Juan, she handed him a jersey that had once been green. ‘It belonged to Miguelito,’ she told him, then launched into fresh questions as if their previous conversation had taken place just the day before.

She told him stories about her son. Juan responded with more lies: he remembered that once Miguel had taken off his own woollen socks to lend to a prisoner who was shivering with cold, or another occasion when he had thrown his meal in the face of a cook who had refused to give any bread to a prisoner who sang the nationalist anthem whenever anyone barked orders at him…

These stories were not entirely invented, but they were attributed to someone who did not deserve to be their protagonist. Miguel Eymar was not a person about whom anything heroic, or even defiant, could be said.
The strategy worked, as Juan Senra could tell when twice Sergeant Edelmiro was ignored as he poked his head round the door and uttered a servile ‘At your orders, colonel sir’, and at the end when colonel Eymar’s impatience spilled over in a gentle ‘Please, Violeta, it’s late’ or ‘Violeta, we only have permission for fifteen minutes’, and she opened her bag and offered him a herring roll wrapped in brown paper.

‘I’ll be back,’ she said defiantly, staring straight at her husband.

Juan put up with Eduardo López’s routine questioning, and shared the roll with the boy with nits. What made the political commissar think that some day he might be able to use all the information he was collecting? The fact that he was still alive was nothing more than mere chance, one of death’s arbitrary decisions. Besides, they had no contact whatsoever with the world outside – and yet there he was, the disciplined party man, accumulating information and analysing the prisoners’ behaviour.

Juan put a stop to their conversation with vague replies. Life smelled of herrings, and nothing could be more marvellous.

The days rolled by. March was cold and damp, as befits unlived time. Even though he found it hard to wear Miguel Eymar’s jersey, Juan was glad of the warmth it gave him through the endless nights.

The dawn lists continued, but were shorter each time. What was more encouraging still, they learned of several prisoners who had been given life sentences rather than shot.

That was almost like being alive.

Juan had another visit from the woman in the astrakhan coat and her henpecked husband. He lied once more, inventing heroic stories and events that brought a smile to pale, stiff lips nobody could ever imagine were capable of kissing. As with Sherezade, his lies bought him another night of life. And another.

And another.

Until one day when the first name on the list to appear before Colonel Eymar was the lad with nits. Juan waited the entire day for the prisoners to return. He pushed past the others to the window and shouted if anyone knew what had happened to Eugenio Paz. Nobody had any idea. That was the start of several days of an anguish that was new to Juan, like anguish piled on anguish, uncertainty added to uncertainty.

The larva-like existence in prison so quickly generates a catalogue of emotions, of memories crammed into this narrow period of time, that
prisoners are amazed that to create their earlier emotions – those beyond the prison walls, they needed an entire, intensely-lived life. In spite of this, Juan was horrified to think that, if we were alive in our tombs, we would probably end up loving the worms.

He used Miguel Eymar’s jersey to bribe Sergeant Edelmiro, but learned only that Paz was on the fourth floor, not what his sentence had been. He tried to send him a message, but had nothing left to pay for any favours. So Eugenio Paz never found out that Juan Senra had embraced him as a friend and brother.

He never knew that Juan Senra was asking where he could find the pregnant girl from Seville to tell her Eugenio was faithful and missed her so much. He never knew that Juan was worried about the way he rubbed his head raw when he tried to scratch the lice.

Then one morning, peering up at the bars of the glassless window, he heard Eugenio Paz’s name called out by the officer who read the list of those condemned to die that day. Juan made the last physical effort of his life and pulled himself up level with the window. He shouted at the top of his voice:

‘Eugenio! Don’t get on the lorry! It’s me, Juan!’

The officer’s voice went on reading out names, as though nothing and nobody could stop him. Gradually, Juan’s hands slipped from the bars and he fell in a heap on the floor. He cried in a way he no longer thought possible after living through a war. As the noise of the lorry died away outside the prison gate, an interpreter of tears, some expert translator of sobs, might have caught the fact that, in the midst of all his gasping lament, Juan had said the word ‘Farewell’. But nobody did hear him, and for two days and nights he was gripped by a lethargy that was impervious to cold and hunger as well as to any encouragement. It was as though his biology had ceased to function, as if time itself had died of sadness.

Juan knew he did not have long to finish his letter. He wrote in a neat, tiny handwriting until he had filled all the paper he had managed to obtain:

He tried to imagine how the chaplain would react when he came to censor the letter. He licked the envelope, wrote his brother’s address on the front, and handed it to the guard on duty. This was what they always did.

This was how the dead always said goodbye to the living.

On the third day, Sergeant Edelmiro repeated his name until Juan finally stirred out of his stupor. Someone helped him to the cell door. This time the two soldiers did not walk flanking him: they needed all their strength to carry him to the room where the woman in the astrakhan coat was waiting. There she was, concerned and maternal, a dark vampire concealing the slight figure of Colonel Eymar, who as always hovered in the background.

She asked if he was ill. It took Juan a long time to reply, as though he had not understood. When he finally did, it was to say: ‘I’m dead.’ ‘Oh come on, come on,’ she said, trying to encourage him. She led him over to the ledge. It will all be over one day. Juan let her lead him to sit down, but shook his head.

‘You’re young. All this will be over one day. You’ll see.’ Juan was still shaking his head softly. ‘I’ve brought you a roll.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘You need to eat, you don’t look well.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘So what’s wrong?’

Juan took a good look at these two sickly-sweet beings who were talking and behaving as if they owned him. Juan was their plaything, something that was meant to perform once they had wound him up, to move when they gave him a push, to stop when told to do so. That was why they could not understand his behaviour now.

‘The thing is, I’ve remembered,’ he said.

The woman in astrakhan made the mistake of asking him what he had remembered that made him feel so ill.

Juan told her he had remembered the truth. That her son had been justifiably shot because he was a criminal, and not a war criminal, where guilt or innocence depended on which side was doing the judging, but a common criminal, a thief, someone who murdered civilians to steal from them and sell what did not belong to him on the black market, a gang leader who had not even shown loyalty to his fellows. Thanks to him, they had rounded up a whole organisation of traitors, thanks to his tip-off they
had broken up a network that dealt in contaminated medicines. Fortunately not even being a coward had worked in his favour, because in the end he had been given a fair trial, condemned to death, and shot even more fairly by a firing squad. And he did not die a hero’s death. I – in this Juan Senra was lying – I was in charge of the squad that executed him. He shit himself, he cried, he begged us not to kill him, he promised he would tell us more about the organisations loyal to Franco still hiding in Madrid… he was scum, and died like scum. Everything I told you before was lies. I did it so that I could live, but I no longer want to live if it means I have to give you comfort. Now I want to go.

All this was like a thunderbolt, an earth tremor that took Colonel Eymar and his wife’s breath away. They listened in silence to this rapid sketch of their son, done in colours they knew at once were the colours of truth. Nobody lies when they want to die.

They did not even protest when Juan Senra walked out of the room he had been carried into, or when he ordered the sergeant outside to take him back to his cell, even though the soldier looked to the colonel for confirmation. He interpreted the glassy look in the officer’s eyes as approval, and, feeling obliged to look more professional, straightened up and roughly pushed Juan Senra along the corridor in front of him. He kept a safe distance behind his prisoner as they climbed the stairs back up to the second floor.

Juan said nothing to anyone. He did not queue with his bowl for the evening broth, but stood silently beneath the window, imagining a vast grey sky beyond its bars that had the power to abolish all sign of spring.

Two days later, his name was first on the list of those summoned before the tribunal. He was the first to appear before Colonel Eymar. He was the first person condemned to death that day. None of the threats from Lieutenant Rioboo or any of the blows in the face from the albino, flag-doodling clerk could force him to stand to attention.

At first light the next morning, his was the first name on the list of those taken out into the yard. As the lorry carrying him and the other condemned men to La Almudena cemetery emerged from the prison gate, Juan Senra thought Eduardo López would be relieved now there was no longer any reason to keep him alive. He tried to guess what arcane criteria the chaplain had used to censor the letter he had written his brother. It reassured him to think it would never be sent.

He also thought – and this too gave him a certain satisfaction – that the smug look of triumph must have disappeared forever from Colonel Eymar’s face.

He only stopped hating when he thought of his brother.

Reverend Father, I have lost all sense of direction, like a blind sunflower.
Despite the fact that today I saw a communist die, I have been defeated in
everything else, Father, and that is why I feel
sicut nubes… quasi fluctus… velut umbra,
like a passing shadow
.

Read my letter as a confession. At the end, God willing, I hope you will find it in you to absolve me, but if, as I suspect, my sin is beyond redemption, then pray for me, because even I have doubts about my contrition (such is the Devil in my flesh) although the following lines should give you a clear idea of my attrition.

Everything began when I took your advice, Father, and enlisted in our Glorious National Army. For three years I fought at the front, as part of our Crusade. I lived with glorious and terrible people, with soldiers full of ideals and others who had ignoble instincts but were drawn to God when they had to choose between perdition or Glory. I became united with them, I was one with them. It cannot be said that I was a great example of sanctity, because when confronted with so much horror instinct makes us cling to life, and it is a soldier’s duty to realise that dead men do not win battles. With my blood I helped convert Mount Sinai into a Golgotha.

Blessed are the righteous,
quoniam et ipsi saturabuntur,
for they shall be filled. I wonder, Father, if we will be filled even if we have to beg for mercy among the dead, the defeated, and the destruction of war?

Three long years spent scorning one’s own and other people’s lives eventually turn a crusader into a soldier, and God’s hosts into a warlike rabble. The life of a survivor demands something beyond life itself: the celebration of the triumph of Good over Evil is another essential part of Victory. God’s wrath may drive us mad. Father, I have known the sins of the flesh.

Flesh is like a tiger living inside man, the Anphion who by his art can move all stones, move everyone, shift even the foundations of their souls. As you know from the confessional, Father, flesh can be all-powerful. It can create the pride of sin in us, and even offer the perverse satisfaction of pleasure to a body that seeks only to die, and draw from it, despite all sense of shame, a cry of life so strong it melts the anvil on which the crusader seeks to forge his steel.

They wanted to change the course of the world, to alter the Lord’s designs. They ignored the fact that
non est potestas nisi a Deo,
with the result that we had to set the guilty on the straight and narrow. We had to glorify our Victory.

When I came back mortified by wretchedness and sin, Father, and approached the seminary in search of forgiveness, your pardon might have been more effective than the lengthy ordeal you, my masters, imposed on me. Although I had more training than almost all my colleagues, I was happy to accept the position of teacher in the infants’ section of the Holy Family school. I agreed to become a deacon in the Order of the Holy Father Gabriel Taborit, an order wholly dedicated to
teaching
.
I chose to enter this minor order so as to forget the error of my ways and regain the Light.

The Light! How it distresses me to talk of the Light now, Father. I used to speak to my pupils about the Light so as to awaken their uncouth minds:
‘Numera stellas, si potes,’
I used to say so that they would feel tiny, insignificant, in thrall. But it takes a long time for Light to penetrate darkness and pain. Oh, with what great wisdom has God created pain! In fact I now realise that what I wish to talk about is Pain, because I have learned that Light and Pain are part of the same incandescence.

It all began with a strange boy who was one of my pupils. God only knows why he caught my attention among more than two hundred and thirty children. They were all so undernourished that it cannot have been because he looked so thin. All of them were so obedient and submissive that his meekness was lost among that swarm of frightened boys who saw our cassocks as the symbol of restored authority, the spare uniform of God’s armies. Like his companions, he played in the yard at break-time; like them he was quiet when he had to line up, and paid attention in class as much as they did… but there was something about him that gradually caught my attention. The first thing that surprised me was that although he was only seven, he knew the four basic rules of reading while his
classmates
were still stammering over the grammar book, trying to join up the letters to make words they could not understand. Lorenzo – that was his name – was the only one who could read fluently.

‘Come on, Lorenzo, it’s eight o’clock.’

Lorenzo searched deep in his sheets for the shreds of his tattered dream.

‘We’ll be late for school… I’ll get your breakfast.’

Winter clung to the balconies as though trying to climb inside for warmth and the smell of chicory. Lorenzo was able to resist everything but the pangs of hunger, so he got up slowly but without complaining. He put his coat on over his pyjamas and stumbled along the corridor to the kitchen at the far end. His father, dressed but unshaven, was already in the room, trying his best to stoke the stove so that at least one plate was warm enough to heat the milk.

‘Good morning, son.’

Lorenzo’s reply was a brief grunt and a weary wave of the hand. Then he slumped onto the only chair in the room.

Apart from the iron stove, the only other furniture was a marble table set on a fretted iron frame painted metal-grey, and an imitation granite sink. A row of shiny, clean, carefully ordered pots and pans sat on a zinc shelf over the coal bunker.

The meshed window gave out onto a narrow courtyard into which daylight barely filtered. The privacy of the kitchen was protected by lace curtains and an unlit light bulb. Outside, the muffled sound of voices and a constant beating of eggs were evidence that the day had started.

‘Drink your milk.’

The rye bread did not even float. It sank to the bottom of the bowl, but Lorenzo had become so accustomed to hunger he knew how to wait for the dark, solid chunks to soak up the milk and become edible.

‘I don’t want to go to school.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Brother Salvador has got it in for me…’

Their conversation ended there, because at that point his mother, who by now was fully dressed, came in carrying his clothes. In that brisk, efficient way mothers have, she wiped his face with a cloth she had dipped in the water warming in a pot kept constantly on the stove. Then she put on his socks, took off his coat and pyjama top, and buttoned up his grey flannel shirt. She managed to do all this while Lorenzo was still drinking his milk and gnawing at the bread. She struggled to get a tight-fitting woollen jersey on over his head, then somehow slipped off his pyjama bottoms and pulled on a pair of dungarees. With all the deftness of a conjurer, she slid the braces under his jersey and did them up. As Lorenzo was finishing his breakfast, she dragged a comb across his head, trying to smooth down a tousled tuft of hair that made him look like a cartoon character in flight. The blue serge coat, worn at the elbows, and a green scarf that she wrapped round his neck and face so that only his eyes were showing, were the signal that breakfast was over.

‘Come on, or you’ll be late for school. Give your father a kiss.’

All the meekness with which he had allowed himself to be washed, dressed, combed and wrapped up warm while concentrating on his bread and milk was transformed into a wheedling grin directed at his father.

‘Dad, I don’t want to go to school.’

‘Not so loud, someone might hear you.’

‘He says Brother Salvador has got it in for him.’

‘It’s true! He’s always asking me questions… even at break-time.’

His parents gave each other a knowing look. Despite their haste, they tried not to sound too anxious to hear more.

‘What does he ask you?’

‘Well, what Mum does, and why you never come to school to fetch me… if I like books… all kinds of things.’

‘And what do you tell him when he asks about me?’

‘That you’re dead.’

I can talk about all that now, even though I find it hard to
remember
– not because my memory is failing, but because of the sense of nausea my childhood arouses in me. I remember those years as if they were a universe lived in the depths of a mirror, like something I had the ill-luck to suffer and observe at one and the same time. On this side of the mirror lay deceit, a pretend world. On the other lay what was really going on. Now, what I recall of the boy I was in those days still terrifies me, because as the years go by I am
increasingly 
convinced that, had I not been a child, nothing of what happened would have occurred.

There was a world known as Alcalá 177, and the third-floor apartment C was my land inside it. This planet formed part of a vast, ominous universe that consisted of a triangle bordered by Alcalá, Montesa and Ayala streets. A block that did not even have four sides, like everywhere else, and yet that was my universe! Of course, there were other, more distant galaxies: the streets Torrijos and Goya on one side, and on the other the dark world of the Berro Fountain and Manuel Becerra Square. This was where children who were poorer than us lived. We were linked to them by an unreasoning but
reciprocal
hatred, which could only be explained because everything had to be fought for: pavements, footballs, spinning tops, rubbers, and friends. I also remember there was an anodyne, brief passageway that led to the Holy Family School, a mansion on the corner of Narváez and O’Donnell streets. A fifteen-minute walk I must have done thousands of times on my own or with others, but which was so alien to me I cannot reliably reconstruct it in my mind. The fact is that it was only when I was back inside the triangle that I felt I was in my own world.

But of all the memories I have, the one which stands out above all others is that I had a father hidden in a wardrobe.