A Necessary Action (10 page)

Willi Mohr was sleeping too. He had sensed rather than understood why no one had called goodnight to him from above.

He had forced himself to go to sleep. It was one of his great feats. But after a while he woke again and did something which he usually tried his hardest to avoid doing. In itself it was quite natural, but as he did it so seldom, it irritated him a little.

When he woke the next time it was light and the cat was lying asleep on his legs like a small heavy round lump of warmth. He sat up cautiously so as not to wake it.

The door opened and Siglinde came in from outside. She had just washed and was clear-eyed and bare-footed, wearing a clean green cotton dress. She had gone out so silently that he had not noticed.

‘Morning, Willi,’ she said brightly and went on out into the kitchen.

Willi looked listlessly at his pictures, yawned and scratched himself inside his pyjama jacket.

Half an hour later, Dan Pedersen came down the stairs, his hair untidy and tangled. He sighed, pulled the chair with the typewriter on it towards him, read through the last page of typescript and said gloomily: ‘O.K. Let’s go on for a while before it gets too warm.’

The keys clattered for a moment, but he stopped after only half a line, drank a little water and lit an Ideales.

‘We’ll go down to the puerto this afternoon,’ he said. ‘I feel like drinking a little today.’

Willi Mohr did not reply. He was already sitting painting.

A moment later Siglinde went out. She was going to do the shopping.

As she passed Dan on the stairs, she rumpled his hair.

She walked down towards the alley, briskly and energetically, playfully swinging her empty raffia basket.

Even before she got to the square, Siglinde noticed that something had happened.

Down the road she met two trucks packed with marine infantrymen. She had seen military vehicles before and was used to soldiers whistling and calling and throwing kisses at her, but this time they were sitting in silence, crouching on the wooden seats, their packs on their backs and their rifles across their knees. The vehicles were old and rasped noisily up round the corners in bottom gear.

On Avenida Generalissimo Franco she was passed by a rattling army ambulance with red crosses on the back doors. It was travelling fast, swerving about on the knobbly cobblestones, and then it swung round up a side-street towards the barracks.

The square was full of people, men and women, either sitting in front of one of the cafés or standing about in groups round the pump. Some of them were talking and gesticulating, but most were silent.

Siglinde bought some fish, taking her time over choosing, to get the best and the cheapest. Then she went to the bakery and on to the tienda to fetch wine and vegetables.

It all took quite a long time, as there were a lot of people in the shops, although there was very little business being done.

When Siglinde had finished she felt thirsty and went into the Central to have a café con leche. There were people in there too, at many of the tables, and she decided to have her coffee at the counter. A civil guard on a motor-cycle stopped outside, his face sweaty and his boots white with dust. He came up beside Siglinde, tapped on the counter with a coin and ordered a glass of wine.

Must be some kind of holiday or fiesta again, thought Siglinde.

Then she remembered the ambulance on Avenida Generalissimo Franco.

‘Why are there so many people about everywhere?’ she said to the proprietor, who was just blowing hot air from his expresso-machine into her milk.

He placed the glass in front of her, frowned and said: ‘There’s said to have been an accident up at the mine.’

‘Has someone been killed?’

‘Yes … it seems so …’

‘Many?’

‘They say so, yes. Quite a lot.’

‘Only Asturians,’ said the civil guard, turning to her with a smile. ‘Only Asturian labourers. No one from round about here.’

‘Why are there so many people about here then?’

‘They’re upset because the road construction work has been stopped,’ said the civil guard.

After a brief pause, he added: ‘Only for the time being … as an emergency measure, that is … in case help is needed …’

‘They lose their wages,’ said the proprietor.

The civil guard shrugged his shoulders.

‘Have you been up there, at the mine?’ said the proprietor.

‘No,’ said the civil guard curtly.

He emptied his glass and left.

‘There’s going to be an extra mass, they say,’ said the proprietor.

‘What happened? The accident, I mean?’ said Siglinde.

‘Don’t know,’ said the proprietor, throwing out his hands.

He stared absently in another direction, as if he would prefer to put an end to the conversation.

When Siglinde went back across the square, people had begun to move in towards the side-streets. In the distance she heard the church bells ringing.

Only Asturians, she thought.

It was not the first time she had heard the mine mentioned. It lay about twenty kilometres out of the town, west of the main road and in the direction of Santa Margarita. On one occasion they had driven up there and she had seen it in the distance, a huddle of stone buildings, tall constructions and a chimney. She had also seen some of the Asturians, small, soot-covered men who had appeared dragging a water-cart. Up towards the mine wound a narrow road covered with yellow stone flints.

So there had been an accident up there.

‘Only Asturians,’ said Siglinde Pedersen to herself. ‘What a country!’

In fact the following had happened:

At seven the evening before, the workers in the mine had started a strike, which during the course of the evening had taken on the character of armed rebellion. The strike was a desperate measure caused by despair and hideous need, but no less well-planned for that. Something, however, had gone wrong. The works, which consisted of a zinc mine and an old-fashioned smelting works, employed two hundred workers. Practically all of them had been forcibly moved from Asturia, and most of them had criminal records, which meant that they had belonged to illegal unions or were suspected Communists. Only a few of them had been in the workers’ militia during the Civil War. The rest were too young. Some had previously been condemned for political offences and had served long sentences in concentration camps or in the salt mines in Formentera. After being released, they had been moved to the mine to adapt themselves to society. The sanitary arrangements at the works were not without failings. The workers lived in two stone barrack buildings which had been built on one floor without inner walls and lacking drains, water-pipes and fireplaces. In each barrack lived approximately a hundred men; those who had the advantage of bringing their wives and children with them had sought to better their position by nailing up partitions of wood for themselves and their kin.

Wages were very low. For those with families, the money only just sufficed to cover their daily minimal needs for bread and dried fish. The workers’ freedom of movement was officially limited to the district; through poverty and lack of transport, it was in fact limited to the mine and the surrounding mountains. Water supplies were erratic, as there was no drinking-water on the spot, and the water that was transported there in donkey-carts was polluted and contained a high percentage of iron, so had to be boiled before it could be used. There was no doctor at the mine, but a guard-post consisting of twenty-five men.

The riot had begun modestly: three elected delegates put forward a number of demands to the management. The demands concerned certain financial and sanitary improvements. The organizers had not, however, reckoned on much progress through talks. They knew that all signs of a strike were illegal and they had been smuggling arms into the mine for a long time. Should
it prove necessary, almost a third of the workers could be armed with pistols and carbines. Supplies of ammunition however, were small and the result of the enterprise depended on a supply which should have come that same evening. At a previously stipulated place near the main road, a truck from the transport department of the mine was to have taken over a load of ammunition boxes from an arms-smuggler and then take them on to the strikers. There was a guard on the truck, but he had been bribed, and the operation looked watertight, largely because it was to be carried out in broad daylight. The main outline of the plan was as follows: If the delegation was turned away, the workers would stay in the barracks, arm themselves and be divided up into operational groups. Then they would neutralize the guard-post and take over the dynamite store. Among those who had taken part in the Civil War were several who could handle dynamite and who knew their job. The strike leaders reckoned that with dynamite and fuses, they would be able to add a certain emphasis to what were in themselves very modest demands. The threat to blow the whole works up was a very strong argument.

Everything went wrong from the start. The employers immediately had the delegates captured and locked up in the guard-post, which was so situated that it controlled the only possible route to the explosives store. The ammunition had still not yet come. The strike leaders could not stop a spontaneous demonstration for the release of the prisoners. An engineer who tried to stop the demonstrators had stones hurled at him, and to set an example, the head of the gendarmerie had the prisoners shot and their bodies thrown on to the road. All three had wives and children and this event aroused great bitterness. Arms were dealt out among the workers and three officials who had not had time to get themselves to safety were shot down.

In the small hours, the workers made several attempts to force the guard-post and get at the dynamite, but the shortage of ammunition made their arms useless. Hour after hour, they waited in vain for the truck with the cartridge boxes and hand-grenades, and at dawn they were forced to retire to the barracks and smelting works, where they barricaded themselves in, prepared to hold out as long as they could.

Despite all this, they nevertheless in some ways had some luck. Immediately before the telephone wires had been torn down, the head of the gendarmerie had been in contact with another guard-post and had had time to leave a brief message about the disturbances. The report was sent on to the civil guard regional headquarters in the town, but was totally misinterpreted and remitted to Santa Margarita.

A cabo on duty at the civil guard-post later tried to ’phone through to the mine, but could not get through. As it was not uncommon that telephone communications were unreliable, he did not take much notice. Shortly after midnight, a road patrol came into the guard-post and reported sporadic shooting from the mine. The head of the guard-post again checked with regional headquarters, who again referred the matter to Santa Margarita. At three o’clock, three men finally received orders to cycle up to the mine.

The patrol took their time and did not arrive until half-past four, just as it was beginning to turn light. Twenty minutes later, both regional headquarters and the local division in Santa Margarita were informed that the Asturian mine-workers were in a state of total rebellion. The reports implied that the guards at the mine had been killed, that the approach road had been barricaded and that red flags had been hauled up on the smelting works and the barracks.

A state of emergency was proclaimed immediately over the whole district. It was feared that the revolt might spread and orders were given that workers at places where there were more than ten employees should be sent home. At the same time there were strict orders that the matter should be kept secret. All telephone and telegraphic communications were reserved for official purposes, and a number of unreliable people were woken and arrested.

The military commander of the district, a colonel by the name of Ruiz, was put in command of the cleaning-up operations.

The regional headquarters directed all available security forces and one-hundred-and-fifty men from the marine infantry to the mine. The soldiers brought with them machine-guns and grenade-throwers and in addition requisitioned two tanks from a tank regiment some miles inland.

It was only a quarter to six when the first security forces reached the barricade of iron girders, stones and upturned carts blocking the approach road. The small group of strikers behind the barricade retreated after a brief exchange of shots. The civil guard began to pull down the barricade, while they waited for reinforcements. It was still not quite light.

During the night the strikers made yet another desperate attempt to get through to the explosive store, but they were forced to give up because of lack of ammunition. Ten men or so were killed or wounded by the gendarmes’ fire. When it was quite clear that the ammunition was not coming, or at any rate would be too late, the workers divided themselves up into three groups. The children and most of the women were taken away to a store-house, then the others shut themselves into the smelting works and the two barracks. Doors and windows were barricaded with stones. They had plenty of arms but only a few hundred cartridges.

By half-past six, so many police and regular troops had arrived at the place that Colonel Ruiz considered himself in a position to attack. He urged the rebels
pro forma
to capitulate by shouting an ultimatum through a megaphone. The reply was a few scattered shots.

The barracks were taken in turn. After fifteen minutes’ firing with grenade-throwers and automatic weapons, holes were breached in the walls and the first building attacked. The workers who had used up their ammunition defended themselves with pick-axes and iron spits and many of them were shot down.

The screams and the knowledge that the women and children were in the hands of the attackers demoralized the men in the other barrack, and they surrendered with little resistance.

In the smelting works were forty men and about twenty women, most of them young. This group held out the longest and were also in possession of most of the ammunition. The strike leaders were in charge and the red flag had been raised on the roof.