Birth of Our Power (6 page)

(“And I didn't give a shit, you understand? I didn't give a shit,” you said. “To die here or elsewhere, like this or in any other way—it was all the same to me. All equally stupid … But that stench was choking me.”)

Then the ruined villages, the demolished towns, the leveled forests—hazy memories of news photos. And more corrosive, more intoxicating than anything—gnawing, abrasive—the language of the maps. Since childhood, maps had given me a kind of vertigo. I used to study them. I learned them by heart at the age of twelve, with a desperate and obstinate desire to know every country, every ocean, every jungle, every city. Desperate because I knew in the back of my mind that I would never go to Ceylon, never go up the Orinoco in a dugout canoe, or the Mekong in a gunboat: this desire filled me with a dull ache. Now the serene voices of the maps spoke a terrifying language. Artillery barrages on the Yser and on the Vardar, on the Piave and on the Euphrates; Zeppelins over London, Gothas over Venice. Blood on the Carpathians and blood on the Vosges. The defense of Verdun, that incredible mass grave, the crushing of Rumania, the battle of the Falkland Islands, the Cameroon campaign. Every ocean—where the child's hand had traced the shipping lanes—was a watery grave.

How then to live in this city, stretched out along the gulf, adorned in the evening with a million lights, like an odalisque asleep on the beach; how to live here with the acute awareness of the absurd torture Europe was undergoing? I don't know why, perhaps because of Jurien (who no longer thought of it himself), I was obsessed by thoughts of the sentries in the trenches, of silent soldiers dug into their holes—taking up as
little room in the earth as the dead—with only their eyes alive, watching a mournful horizon of mud and barbwire (and, of course, a fleshless, rotting hand sticking out of the ground) in that narrow band of earth that belongs to no one, except to Death: no man's land. Identical in their silence, on both sides of the trenches, under helmets scarcely different, dented by the same explosions, protecting the same gray cells of the human animal at bay … Sentries, brother sentries, stalking each other, stalked by Death, standing watch night and day on the boundaries of life itself, and here
I
was, strolling in comfortable sandals under the palms of the plaza, my eyes dazzled by the festive Mediterranean sunlight; I, climbing the paths of Montjuich; I, pausing before the goldsmiths' windows of the
calle
Fernando, flooded by light in the evening as if by a motionless fountain of huge diamonds; I, following the Miramar path cut into the rock above the sea; I, living as that city lived, without fear, invincible, sure of not having my flesh ripped open tomorrow.
I
possessed these streets—these
ramblas
—loaded to excess with flowers, birds, women, and warm masculine voices.
I
had my books;
I
had my comrades. How was this possible? Wasn't this somehow horribly unjust, incredibly absurd?

It was mostly after nightfall, when the city abandoned herself to the pleasures of life—her cafés crowded, certain of her narrow streets transformed into rivers of light, streets where men and women pair off, leading each other on endlessly, couple after couple so closely intertwined that their walk seems an impudent, delicious prelude to clinches in stuffy rooms along streets haunted by sighs until dawn; when we strolled up and down the
ramblas
in groups, our heads held high, filled with the music of ideas—it was then that I was tortured by the remorse of not being a sentry myself, of being, in spite of myself, so careful of my own blood, of taking no part in the immeasurable suffering of the masses driven to the slaughter … a feeling sharpened by a revulsion against the blithe felicity of this city.

We suffocated, about thirty of us, from seven in the morning to six-thirty at night, in the Gaubert y Pia print shop. Skinny kids, naked under their loose smocks, went back and forth across the shop carrying heavy frames, their thin brown arms standing out like cables of flesh. At the back of the shop, the women were folding away—sweating, lips moist, looking at you with dark-eyed glances that seemed almost to caress you
as you passed by—repeating the same motions seven thousand times a day to the rumbling of the machines. The movement of the machines was absorbed in their very muscles. I set up type on the composing stick, fatigue mounting in my body, overpowering from three o'clock on, in the hottest time of the day. Toward four o'clock, mechanical concentration falters, and like one in prison, I am assailed by fantasies originating from the secret folds of the brain. To no avail, I cross the shop floor to get a drink of water from the
canti
—the leather flask you hold in both hands above the head, so that a hard stream squirts into your mouth like a fountain. The corrugated iron roof gives us little protection from the implacable sun.

It was at those times of day, when the boss, el Señor Gaubert, had turned to face a visitor in his glass-enclosed office, that my neighbor Porfirio would tap me on the shoulder with a finger hard as a stick:

“Hé, Ruso!”
(Russian)

Tall, brittle, with nothing on under his blue overalls, Porfirio had the broad, dark, pock-marked face, the face of an intelligent ape. His black mouth was lined by horrible yellow teeth that seem broken, but his grimacing smile, spreading from ear to ear, was fraternal. In actual fact, he wasn't really a comrade, not even a union member (only two of us were union men out of thirty printers and typographers at Gaubert y Pia's, but the others had as much solidarity as we did—we knew it as well as they); bull-fighting was his only interest. His eyes were black as charcoal.

“Hé!
Ruso! Que dices de la revolución?”
(“What have you to say about the revolution?”)

The dispatches from the newspapers came one after another, offering a welter of surprising details about the great Petrograd days. I can still see Porfirio, intoxicated as if by drink, with the
Vanguardia
spread out in front of him tinder a lamppost, rereading aloud in a delirious voice an article relating how, at the call of a non-com named Astakhov (almost completely unknown in Russia) the first regiment went over to the insurgent masses in a Petrograd street … “Magnificent!” said Porfirio in a voice made hoarse by emotion; and with a gesture he called our shop mates together as they emerged from the factory. The folders Trini, Quima, Mercédès, Ursula joined our group, their shoulders suddenly thrown back, their faces suddenly serious as if stiffened by a chill, bracing wind.

Through him I learned what inordinate hopes were rising in the poor neighborhoods of the city. It was during the noon break at work. I
was walking along a deserted street without a patch of shade and thinking vaguely how life could be as searing, as naked and as empty: Sahara. Porfirio caught up with me. I could tell immediately from the bounce in his step, the lively animation of his features, that he had something extraordinary to tell me.

“D'you know?” he said. “The strikers in Sabadell have won their fight.”

He turned on his heels, stopped short, and faced me, his hard hands on my shoulders.

“You know,
Ruso,
it's our turn next! We're going to win too—in another battle. You'll see,
amigo mio,
you'll see!”

He wouldn't say more: probably because he didn't know any more. It was then nothing but a confused rumor, a vague readiness in the factories and shops. Roughly, Porfirio yanked a hunk of bread out of his pocket and took a hefty bite out of it with the side of his mouth. He was too poor to eat in restaurants, but would grab a few bites in the street before taking a refreshing twenty-minute nap on a bench in a nearby park.

I continued along my way with a quickened step, my heart pounding. I entered the little Ventura restaurant (where a few of us ate under the sharp, cordial eye of the fat
patrón,
an old anarchist, who had once “done” five years in the presidio) with a burdensome guilt lifted from my shoulders: I too awakened to high hopes. Sentries! Sentries! In this city we will accomplish our mission, a better one than yours!

FROM THEN ON WE LOOKED AT THE CITY THROUGH NEW EYES.

Nothing was changed in appearance; but the workers' power surged through the city like new blood injected into the arteries of an old organism. Only those in the know could detect the feeling of excitement in the faces, movements, voices, pace of the city. Voices strayed from their normal patterns: sudden outbursts would follow murmurings among the groups seated at the Café Español. This enormous room was extended indefinitely by mirrors framed in heavy gilt and by terraces animated with voices crackling like the wind over dry grass: it opened onto a street flood-lit by little theaters, night clubs, dance halls, and big working class bars. Some side streets, covered with a reddish dust, wind their way up toward the citadel; others, uniformly gray, cool and dank with the eerie dankness of disease, bathed in the light of naked bulbs at the end of dark corridors—where tired women and avid males copulated endlessly and at random year in and year out.

The café, crowded at every hour of the day, has tables which are—in a manner of speaking—reserved. The anarchists occupy one section of the terrace and a double row of tables inside, under the dazzling mirrors. The police informers, recognizable by their phony veneer of workers or clerks with time to kill; by their leaden, indolent, shifty hands made for playing dominoes, fastening handcuffs, or noiselessly wielding a blackjack; the police informers, with straining ears and prying eyes, form a familiar circle—not far off—at a round table. (We have an old trick we play every few weeks—of all pretending to sit down for a long evening together, and then having the waiter, a comrade, serve them burning hot coffee. As soon as the steaming cups of coffee are placed before them, we gulp down our drinks and hotfoot it out of there. Only El Chorro remains, laughing silently at the spectacle of the crestfallen faces of those “sons of bitches” who are forced to choose
between losing the coffee they've paid for, or losing their “clients.”) The “ego-anarchist” corner is full of foreigners. If an overly elegant bull-necked gentleman, one of those habitués of swank bars who traffic in white slavery, happen to find his way into our group, the unlikely attention of the police informers and the forbidding indifference of the workers scare him off immediately. He recovers his aplomb on the terrace, at the sight of some French girls sipping orangeade through long straws. A calliope fills the hall with arias from operas and love songs. Through the din of the mechanical brass band, we are able to discuss things among ourselves without worrying too much about being overheard by the informers.

Five of us were there, late one afternoon. Eusebio, a plasterer with the handsome, regular features of a Roman legionary, a bristling mustache, large, soft, brown eyes—luminous, primeval, accustomed to bright colors (but not nuances). Andrés, an editor of the Confederation paper, a thin, swarthy Argentinean with sharp, squarish features, a pointed chin, and a querulous look, held a pointed cigarette between purple lips. Lolita, Eusebio's “wife” (and someone else's), a pale, skinny factory girl with hair so dark it seems blue-tinted, sunken eyes concealing a lusterless gaze (like an indifferent caress), pale nostrils, a double fold of pursed lips as red as the inside of a pomegranate. Heinrich Zilz, his necktie carefully knotted, his face slightly flushed (for he has a yen for Lolita) was smoking with a smile on his face.

Eusebio leaned toward us over the white marble table, his eyes shining. He opened his thick muscular hands and said:

“How many of us will fall tomorrow! How many! But what's the difference? What's the difference!”

He repeated the same words twice over, at a loss for others. He cracked the joints of his fingers. How to find the words to express the power, the joy, the earnestness, the faith in tomorrow?

Hardly moving his lips, Andrés said:

“The people over in Manresa have promised some grenades. Sans, Tarrasa, and Granollérs are ready. Our pals in Tarrasa already have a hundred and forty Brownings. The Committee is negotiating with a junta of infantrymen. But what cowards these republicans are!”

“So you're really itching to get yourselves chopped down, eh?” Zilz broke in, lighting another cigarette.

“What? What?” Eusebio cried. “What are you saying?” He heard well enough, but the hostile notion took a moment to sink in.

“I said,” Zilz continued, “you can count me out. My skin is worth more than any republic, even a workers' republic.”

A heavy silence fell over us. Then Lolita got up stiffly. Her mouth, a bleeding pomegranate, narrows: eyes now nothing but two shadows under the horizontal ivory of her forehead.

“Let's go.”

A few feet away I heard a shuffling of chairs at the table of informers.

“Good-by, then,” Zilz said. “I'm staying.”