Syndicate is doing well at the moment, and at the start of the summer Ascaso and Durruti came to ask us for money for the publishing project. We told them we were sorry, but in Paris we had already made donations to the newspaper Le Libertaire and to the International Bookstore on Rue Petit. So they had no choice but to tell us the truth: they needed the money to finance a revolutionary movement to overthrow the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. We reached an agreement: we gave them the money and in exchange they accepted our collaboration in the mission. This is why I came to Paris, to join the Group of Thirty.”
The three men sit pensive for a few moments, until the silence is broken by two regulars who come in laughing loudly, say hello and sit down at a table at the back of the tavern. While Leandro goes to wait on them, Robinsón lowers his voice and confesses:
“I didn’t just come to visit you, Pablito: I also came to ask you to work with us.”
“…”
“We need help from people like you.”
“…”
“Our future is at stake. And that of millions of Spanish people—”
“But it’s been years since you lived in Spain, Robin.”
“True, but I would like to be able to return someday without feeling ashamed to look people in the eye. Think about your mother, think about your sister: are you going to let them rot while you’re here, safe and sound?”
Pablo looks his friend in the eye, while his mind fills with images of his mother, sister, and niece, the women he abandoned to their fate when he left in exile. He thinks that perhaps yes, perhaps he’s right, perhaps the time has come to try to change things. But he immediately thinks no, what business does he have getting involved in some crazy plot? Primo de Rivera will soon fall under his own weight, and a failed coup would only serve to reinforce his power.
“In any case,” Robinsón interrupts Pablo’s thoughts, “I’m not asking you to sign up for the mission, only to help us by printing a few posters.”
“Are you going to go?”
“Yes, it seems crazy, but it’s as if I feel an internal voice telling me to go. If Spain rises up in arms against the bandits in charge, I’m not planning to stand around doing nothing. If they need me, I’ll be there. The more of us there are, the better our chances of success.”
“But is the operation ready?”
“No, goodness no, there’s still a lot to do. For now, we’re only getting ready for when the comrades in the interior give us the signal, it would be crazy to go in to liberate Spain if the people in the country aren’t ready to go through with the revolution. I don’t think the thing will be ready until the end of the year. But when the moment arrives, we’ll need to have everything well organized. So, what do you say, can we count on you?”
“I don’t know, I’d have to discuss it with old Faure, the owner of the print shop, to see what he thinks.”
“Don’t bother, we’ve already spoken with him.”
“Really?”
“Yes, he came yesterday to the back room of the International Bookstore on Rue Petit, a windowless little hovel we use for meetings. We wanted him to print an eight-page pamphlet for us called Spain: One Year of Dictatorship, which we’re planning to distribute for free among the Spanish expatriates here in Paris. A good print run, a few thousand copies. At first the old man didn’t catch on, but we finally convinced him by telling him that we’re also planning to publish a trilingual review and an anarchist encyclopedia—”
“So what do you need my help for?”
“For the revolutionary broadsides we want to print for the incursion. When we cross the border, we want to bring posters to distribute among workers and the civilian population, a direct call to revolution against the dictatorship. It’s safer to print them here than there, and the comrades in the interior already have enough difficulty just trying to hold meetings without getting arrested. But old Faure told us no way, he didn’t want to hear another word about it. That he has enough problems in France, he doesn’t need to go looking for them in Spain, and that he didn’t want to lend his press for crazy revolutionary projects. You know that since the Great War he’s become a pacifist, especially since he got to know Malatesta and published his manifesto Toward Peace. I say it’s nothing but the paranoia of an old, washed-up anarchist, because you tell me what has he got to lose publishing the broadsides if he’s going to publish the pamphlet?”
Leandro has now returned to his position in the trench behind the bar, and as he casually prepares two absinthes, he asks:
“Did I miss anything important?”
“No, nothing,” says Pablo, pensive, and when he finishes off his wine with a final gulp, he bids farewell: “I’m sorry, but I have to get back to work. The old Minerva has left me stranded and I don’t want to abandon Julianín too long with the Albatross …”
The Minerva is an old pedal-operated press that, having worked for over thirty years, is ready to retire. The Albatross is not much younger, but it is still capable of printing eight hundred sheets an hour.
“See you later?” Robinsón asks.
“Yes, of course, come find me at the end of my shift so we can go home.”
And, touching his brim with his index finger, Pablo takes leave of his two friends. In the street, night has already fallen, and emaciated specters are silhouetted in the light of the streetlamps. These are hard times in Paris, the euphoria of the Olympic Games having given way to a period of economic recession. The franc is in freefall, but the exiled Spaniards have other worries to fill their bellies. The wheel of the revolution has started to turn, and it seems intent on catching Pablo in its vortex.
II
(1896)
HE COULDN’T. FOR ALL THE MANY TRAIN voyages he would later make, Pablo could never forget that first trip between Baracaldo and Madrid. Neither the asphyxiating heat, nor the tobacco smoke that permeated the train cars, nor the terrible smell of feet that seemed to bother his father so much, was enough to undermine the fascination that this first journey produced in the boy. With his nose pressed against the windowpane he watched objects go by with dizzying speed: trees, houses, and cows; farms, hills, and telegraph poles; workers with faces furrowed by a thousand wrinkles and children running along with the train and waving at the passengers. And all of this enlivened by the uncontainable logorrhea of one of the fellow passengers in the compartment, a retired railroad crossing keeper who narrated the passing scene, telling the most outlandish stories, full of exaggerated facts and figures:
“The net weight of a train car,” he was explaining to his patient companions in the compartment, with the excitement of someone recounting the life of a famous bandit, “is thirty-six tons, and that’s when it’s empty! It has a length of eighteen meters and a height of three and a half. The beams are mahogany, holm oak, and white oak, and it is covered with paneling made of teak, a wood that comes from Northern Europe and is immune to atmospheric changes—”
“And is it true that the last car is the safest?” Pablo interrupted him, producing a look of disbelief in Julián, taken unawares by his son’s unexpected loquacity.
“Who told you that, my boy?”
“My papa.”
“Well, your papa couldn’t be more right. Do you think a gatekeeper like myself would travel in third class if it weren’t because it’s the last car?”
In Miranda de Ebro and in Ávila they changed locomotives, and Pablo was able to observe, eyes wide open, how the operators performed the process of decoupling and recoupling the cars. But what excited him most on this first trip was the loud voice of the stationmaster, who at the end of every stop would shout “All aboard!” at the top of his lungs, and the throng of passengers would push to enter the cars, hoping not to