night, I had gone to the Tempus Fugit, it is quite likely that you, dear reader, would be holding a different book in your hands right now, instead of mine.
The information that the woman with the mischievous smile had found in the civil registry was correct: it was the Pablo Martín Sánchez I was looking for, born quite a while before what was stated in the chronicles of the time (a generalized error, which there will be time enough to explain). In addition, the woman’s grandfather put the word out at the community center, and got some results. One of the elders of Baracaldo who met every afternoon to play the card game mus knew someone from a nearby village who had a cousin whose father had been in France during the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, participating in some of the secret meetings where they plotted to overthrow the regime. The man had died a few years before, almost a centenarian, but his son still remembered some of the stories he had told. The problem was that he lived in Boston, Massachusetts, and I could not afford the luxury of traveling all that way to interview him; the most I could do was write him a letter, which never received a reply. But the elders of the community center refused to give up; excited by this story that seemed to give them back the energy of youth, they kept putting the word out all over Baracaldo. The woman with the mischievous smile sometimes went to see them and kept me informed of their progress, amused by the stories that these “geriatric bloodhounds,” as she called them, were telling her. So I barely had to do anything; they cast the net all by themselves, and one fine day I received word that they had found someone who could tell me a lot about the story: a niece of Pablo Martín Sánchez, over ninety years old and a notorious misanthrope, who lived in a senior citizens’ home in Durango, about thirty kilometers southeast of Bilbao.
You might think, dear reader, that I ought to have felt overjoyed at that moment, but I must confess that all I felt was fear. Yes, an inexplicable fear, a vague fear. Fear of looking into the story only to learn that it was boring, fear of finally speaking with this niece and having to accept that there was no story there to tell, fear of discovering that my namesake the anarchist had been an insignificant person or a second-rate delinquent who signed up for the Vera mission with petty intentions. For a moment I thought about staying home and forgetting the whole thing. But my curious side ended up winning over the cowardly part that was holding me back, and I undertook another trip, this time to Durango. On a cold but sunny Saturday at the end of January, I went to the Uribarri retirement home. They made me wait for a few minutes and then accompanied me to the garden, where the niece of Pablo Martín Sánchez was waiting for me on a bench, half dozing. Her head barely emerged through the collar of the thick green coat she was wrapped in, which gave her the curious appearance of a tortoise sleeping in the sun. The nurse gently rubbed her shoulder, and the old woman stretched her neck out toward us, unhurriedly opening her eyes behind thick glasses. She scrutinized me for a few moments before smiling. From her shell emerged a wrinkled hand gleaming with a strange, T-shaped ring, and she extended it to me in a friendly manner, saying, “Teresa, at your service.” Without pause, she continued in the same soft voice: “Please, do sit down.”
This encounter inaugurated a series of visits that extended into the following autumn: the first Saturday of every month I went up to Durango to listen to Teresa, the niece of Pablo Martín Sánchez, and the woman to whom I owe at least half of this book, because practically everything I know about the life of her uncle up until the moment he decided to enlist in the revolutionary expedition comes from the inexhaustible fountain of her memory, which was sparkling clear at first, although it grew foggier with each of our sessions. And thus, completely giving the lie to the misanthropic reputation some had pinned on her, she offered me, in nearly perfect chronological order, the story of the life (or what she remembered others having told her about the life) of her uncle the anarchist.
The last session was scheduled for All Hallows’ Eve. At the previous visit the nurse had informed me that Teresa’s health had been worsening a lot recently, and that the efforts of memory that my visits required might be harmful. I went to the home in the early afternoon, with a box of chocolates in my hand and a knot in my stomach. I was seized by a strange mixture of sadness and relief; sadness at the idea of putting an end to these pleasant meetings, and relief at being about to complete the puzzle of a story that would turn into a book. The life of Pablo Martín Sánchez had turned out to be one of the most fascinating I had ever heard, and the old woman had promised me that at our final meeting, she would tell me one “last surprise,” smiling mischievously and half-closing her eyes behind her thick glasses. But when I asked for her at the reception, the unexpected news of her death struck me such a blow that I feared I would lose my balance. Despite her age and her declining health, I had believed her to be indestructible. “She died last week,” they told me, “Peacefully, in her sleep.” They regretted not having been able to let me know, but they did not have my telephone number. I thanked them and left the residence home, with the box of chocolates in my hand. Crossing the threshold, I heard someone say my name. I turned around. It was the nurse, with an envelope in her hand. On the back, it said “For Pablo.” “We found it in Teresa’s bedside table,” said the nurse. “I think it was for you.” I looked in her eyes, and I don’t know why, but all I could manage to do was hug her. Probably because I couldn’t find any words.
On the street, I sat down on a bench and opened the envelope. Inside, there was an old photograph, very well preserved, as though someone had kept it carefully for a long time. It showed three people: a handsome man, a dark-haired woman, and a teenage girl, embracing each other and leaning against a stylish delivery truck from the 1920s, which showed that the phenomenon of advertisement had already arisen: visible over their heads was a drawing of a large cow’s head with earrings, along with the brand name: “La vache qui rit.” Studying the picture, I discovered that this man was the same one I had seen in the National Historic Archive, on one of the anthropometric files compiled by the police after the Vera incident: none other than Pablo Martín Sánchez, my namesake the anarchist. I did not recognize the mother or the teenager, but I supposed they were his sister and his niece, Teresa herself, although she looked nothing like the old woman who had opened up the bounty of her memories to me. Upon returning the photograph to the envelope, I discovered that there was also a scrap of paper, on which she had written, as if at the last minute: “Thank you for everything, Pablo. My uncle would have laughed out loud if he knew he would end up being the protagonist of a novel.”
The least I can do is dedicate this book to Teresa, and offer her my gratitude for having made it possible for you, dear reader, to bring to life once again the story of her uncle the anarchist.
PART ONE
– 1 –
Today, the only Spain is a cynically materialistic one, which thinks only about vulgar, immediate concerns; it doesn’t believe in anything, doesn’t expect anything, and accepts all the wickedness of the present moment because it lacks the courage to engage in the adventures of the future. The land of Don Quixote has turned into the land of Sancho Panza: gluttonous, cowardly, servile, grotesque, incapable of any idea outside the range of its blinders.
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
Una nación secuestrada
THE STORY BEGINS WITH TWO LOUD KNOCKS at the door of the printing office that employs Pablo Martín Sánchez, who, startled, upends his composing stick and scatters to the floor all the letters he’s aligned for the title of the next issue of the weekly Ex-Ilio: “Blasco Ibáñez Stirs the Conscience of Spanish Immigrants in Paris.”
We find ourselves in the French capital, in the year 1924, at the start of a rainy autumn that has not washed away the memory of the summer’s successful Olympic Games featuring swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller, Hollywood’s future Tarzan. The sun came out unexpectedly today, Sunday, October 5, but now it is already sinking; Pablo was concentrating on his work when the knocks at the door disturbed his concentration. His employer is a small, dilapidated press called La Fraternelle, located at 55 rue Pixérécourt, in the middle of Paris’s Belleville neighborhood. This is one of the most lively working-class areas of the city, and the one with the most Spaniards. Pablo is employed as a typesetter, but in reality he also does the work of an editor: he corrects, designs, and lays out all the Spanish