Lord of All the Dead

by Javier Cercas

  When Javier Cercas began to visit them, both women still lived in Ibahernando, in two big houses, surrounded by other big houses, which were deserted except in summer; they had been friends for a lifetime and continued to see each other every day. In spite of being two or three years younger than Manuel Mena, for some time, each had shared a desk with him in the best school in the village; both remembered it well. They remembered a damp, frosty, pokey little unlit room in the back of the church where a teacher tried to inculcate a few basic notions of mathematics, history, and geography into them. They remembered that those rudiments were enough to satisfy the intellectual needs of children destined to lifetimes of servitude, but not to pass the public exams in the capital, or only enough for them to try and then return to the village with an irreparable burden of failure and discouraging humiliation. They remembered that this educational calamity seemed natural to them, or at least it didn’t feel unusual, because back then Ibahernando was a population of serfs and an illiterate community that in its entire history had barely known the modest pride of being the birthplace of a university graduate. They remembered their teacher, a man with a thorny character named Don Marcelino, who in class parcelled out slaps, pinches, and knocks on the head and lacked not only any teacher’s qualification but also the slightest pedagogical vocation, though he did not lack a political one (they remembered he left the school as soon as the recently proclaimed Second Republic offered him the post of secretary of the municipality, around 1932). And they remembered that, in this ragged and unstimulating school, Manuel Mena was a rascal who invested his time in collecting trading cards, tormenting his classmates by singing softly and making a racket while they were trying to work, and laughing at the girls or mocking them with offensive gossip.

  Thus far the memories of the two elderly ladies converge; from this point on they diverge. Doña María Arias remembered—this is the first of the two anecdotes—that one morning, after a night of torrential rain, Don Marcelino’s students found a huge mud puddle on the way into the school, and that Manuel Mena proposed to take advantage of the mess to organise an engineering game; all the children joined in with the proposal, so during recess the whole class worked together to construct, out of mud and water, a labyrinth of dams, canals, and streams outside the door to the building. One of those children was named Antonio Cartagena. He was the illegitimate son of the village doctor and his maid, but in time his father had erased the stigma by marrying the boy’s mother and recognising his son. He was a weak-willed child without any malice; his peers made fun of him by calling him the Dodo. And that morning, once the game was finished and before returning to the tedium of the classroom, Manuel Mena decided to christen the recently constructed mud works one by one, until he arrived at the most successful or most spectacular of them and, amid the whistles and jeers of his classmates, named it the Dodo while Antonio Cartagena watched his humiliation with defenceless whimpering and the trembling lip of a mistreated little boy.

  Doña María Arias remembered that first anecdote with the indulgence of a ninety-year-old teacher accustomed to children’s cruelty; Francisca Alonso remembered the second, but she remembered it without indulgence, with the undiminished dismay of a horrified little girl who had witnessed the scene. It happened during an excursion to the countryside. Don Marcelino’s primitive pedagogy barely considered the benefits of contact with nature, and Francisca Alonso remembered her excitement and that of her peers that morning as they gathered at the schoolroom door, impatient to enjoy the novelty and carrying tortillas and sandwiches and canteens that their mothers had prepared at home. The outward route was not far, although when they arrived at their destination they were all hungry and immediately got ready to eat their picnics. That was when it happened. At a certain moment, Francisca Alonso didn’t know how or what about (or perhaps she knew and had forgotten), Manuel Mena and Antonio Cartagena got involved in an argument and were soon punching each other. It was not easy to separate them. When they were finally pried apart, Manuel Mena vented his rage, insulting his classmate by calling him a bastard, reminding him of his shameful past. Antonio Cartagena went back to the village alone crying his eyes out, and the incident left a bitter aftertaste that blighted the excursion.

  Manuel Mena couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen when he was the protagonist of that scene. A photograph of Don Marcelino’s students has been preserved from that time; actually, it must be from a little earlier, when girls and boys attended separate classes (Don Marcelino taught the boys, and Doña Paca, his wife, the girls): which explains why neither Francisca Alonso nor Doña María Arias appear in the image; Antonio Cartagena does not appear either, as he did not attend that school then. The one who does appear in the photograph is Manuel Mena. He is just behind and to the right of the only adult in the group, who is Don Marcelino. He is standing up, his silhouette stands out against the tacky cardboard backdrop, which doesn’t manage to cover the stone wall behind it, and is wearing a tight, striped, buttoned-up blazer, a white shirt with a wide collar, and a rebellious curl of fine, fair hair on his forehead; it is easy to recognise the features and slimness of the late adolescent or premature adult who appears in the only photograph of him alone that we still have, wearing his Ifni Riflemen second lieutenant’s uniform, and it is possible to discern in his direct gaze and the circumflex shape of his mouth an unpleasant glimpse of the haughtiness of a heartless brat. Apart from Manuel Mena, it is possible to recognise in that image other relatives of Javier Cercas; sitting on the floor at the bottom right, for example, wearing the same blazer and same shirt as Manuel Mena, is his uncle Juan Cercas: Francisca Alonso’s husband.

  One last observation about Manuel Mena’s childhood also pertains to that photograph. Javier Cercas’s mother was unaware of it until her son discovered it in a book about the village published just a few years ago. Cercas remembers that, when he showed his mother the photograph, she was recovering from a traffic accident, and she identified Manuel Mena and most of the boys in it without any difficulty; he also remembers that he and his mother didn’t even need to guess that they were all dead: they took it for granted. Months later, however, Cercas spent a week in the village, and one day he happened to talk about the photograph with José Antonio Cercas, the only one of his cousins who still lives there, who assured him that he was wrong: not all the boys with Manuel Mena in that photograph were dead; the second boy from the right in Manuel Mena’s row, with the black suit, black hair, and white shirt front, was still alive, he explained. Javier Cercas was startled by the news. At that time he did not yet know that his aunt Francisca and Doña María Arias had also been classmates of Manuel Mena’s in Don Marcelino’s school, and he found it extraordinary that there could still be a living witness to Manuel Mena’s childhood. According to what his cousin told him, the survivor of the photograph was named Antonio Ruiz Barrado, although everyone knew him as El Pelaor, the Shearer, and he spent long periods of time in the village, although he wasn’t there at that moment. What his cousin didn’t tell him, because he didn’t know it, was that one night at the end of August 1936, when the war had just broken out and Manuel Mena had not yet left for the front and was still in Ibahernando, the Shearer’s father had been dragged out of his house by Francoists and murdered on the outskirts of the village.

  3

  “Are you really going to write another novel about the Civil War? Come on, are you really such a dickhead, or what? Look, the first time it worked because you caught everyone off guard; nobody knew you back then so everybody could use you. But now it’s different: they’re going to beat the shit out of you, kid, right down to your ID card! Whatever you write, some will attack you for idealising the Republicans, for not denouncing their crimes, and others will accuse you of revisionism or of massaging Francoism to present Francoists as normal, everyday people and not as monsters. That’s how it is: nobody is interested in the truth; haven’t you realised that? A few years ago it seemed they
were interested, but it was a mirage. People don’t like truth: they like lies; it’s best not to talk about politicians and intellectuals. Some get nervous every time the subject comes up because they still think Franco’s coup was necessary or at least inevitable, although they don’t dare say so; and others have decided that it’s playing along with the right if you don’t say that all Republicans were democrats, including Durruti and La Pasionaria, and that not a single priest was killed here and no fucking churches were burned down…Besides, haven’t you noticed that the war is no longer the in thing? Why don’t you write a post-postmodern version of Sex or No Sex or What a Delightful Divorce! I promise I’ll make a film of it. We’ll make a bundle.”

  In November 2012 I phoned David Trueba and asked him to come with me to Ibahernando to videotape an interview I wanted to conduct with the last witness to Manuel Mena’s childhood (or with the person I then thought was the last witness), and I was still explaining who Manuel Mena was when he interrupted me with that tirade I’ve just summarised.

  I would be lying if I said it surprised me. Years ago David had adapted a novel of mine for the cinema that was about the Spanish Civil War; unexpectedly—because the normal thing in these situations is for the novelist and director to end up hating each other’s guts—we became friends. David maintained that our friendship was based on the fact that we were very similar; the truth is it’s based on the fact that we’re nothing at all alike. He had been a prodigal child who wrote scripts for television shows and films at an age when I was still playing with marbles, so, even though I’m seven years older than he is, when we met he had accumulated much more experience than me, had travelled much more than me, and knew many more people than I did. Actually, at times he resembled my father. Now I remember an anecdote. It happened at the end of the televised gala during which the Spanish Cinema Academy presents the Goya Awards every year. David’s film based on my novel had eight nominations, including best picture and best director, and, when the news was announced, David asked me to come to the awards ceremony. The request surprised me, but I accepted and went to the gala with my wife. It was a catastrophe: of the eight Goya awards the film was up for, it won only one consolation prize, for best cinematography. When the ceremony ended, David’s face was a sight: as soon as I began to sense the debacle I had been searching desperately for a consoling phrase, but in the end it was he who consoled my wife and me. “You don’t know how sorry I am to have made you come all this way for this, kids,” he said as soon as the lights came up, setting a hand on each of our shoulders. “I would have loved to dedicate a prize to you both. But as I always say: when it comes to making movies, apart from sex and money, don’t expect anything.”

  David loved to pretend to be a commercial director capable of selling his soul to whoever it took for a blockbuster, but the truth is he had never directed anything commissioned by someone else, producers considered him an ultra-intellectual director, and his films were often militantly anti-commercial. He’s from Madrid and lives there and, even though I live in Barcelona, when all the echoes of the film had died down we continued to see each other often. That was when the constituent imbalance of our friendship began to be glaringly obvious, because I didn’t stop asking him for advice and he didn’t stop giving me advice, recommending what I should and shouldn’t do and trying to sort out my life, as if he were my manager or my literary agent or as if he saw me as a child lost in a wolf-infested wood. Then, for a while, the tables turned or seemed to turn or I tried to turn them, to back him up in return. It was when he and his wife separated. Although never in my life have I seen such an amicable split, David suffered a lot because of it; from one day to the next he subsided, his hair started to be interwoven with white, he aged. I’m not sure the word split is quite the right one: the fact is that his wife left him for someone the paparazzi call a Hollywood star; he was actually something much worse: a Hollywood star who resists being a Hollywood star tooth and nail, which turns him into a Hollywood star squared, one of those guys all women rightly dream of. My friend tried to take it with the utmost dignity; in fact, my impression is that he was too dignified about it. I never asked him about the matter, because I remembered the phrase of an old actor David was fond of quoting (“I never tell my friends my troubles: let their fucking mothers entertain them!”) and because he barely mentioned it; however, the few times he did I was struck by the fact that he spoke of his broken marriage with the equanimity of a relationship psychologist, but most of all that he didn’t seem to express the slightest reproach against his wife and seemed much more worried about her than he was about himself. Until one day, while he was telling me that he’d just seen her to talk about their children, as they often did, he went to pieces and tears began to run down his cheeks. Feeling powerless to help, I let him cry; then I told him angrily that he was mistaken and it was one thing to be a gentleman and quite another to be an idiot. “Worry about yourself, for fuck’s sake,” I told him furiously. “Forget that woman. And let off some steam. It doesn’t matter. Call her a witch and him a scumbag. Come on, say it with me: Scum-bag! You see? Easy. Two little syllables: Scum-bag! Try it, you’ll see, you’ll feel much better.” “I wish I could, Javier,” he answered, nodding while trying to wipe away his tears. “But I just can’t. You don’t understand: it’s normal for the guy to be really good-looking and super-rich and even have blue eyes; of course, for you and me, it’s totally abnormal, but that’s the way it is…The problem is that as well as a son of a bitch he’s a great guy, a really good person, and a brilliant actor. How do you expect me to curse the guy?” “Well, at least curse your wife!” I shouted. “The mother of my children?” he answered, horrified. “How could I? Besides, deep down it’s all my fault: I practically persuaded her that she was in love with that bastard and should take off with him!” Anyway…after a while David seemed to begin to accept his new situation. I’m not sure my advice was much help to him, but I do know his work helped; he was doing better than ever, was writing nonstop in the press, had successfully published a novel, had successfully broadcast a television series and premiered a film, and was getting ready to shoot another one. At that time we started seeing each other frequently again and our friendship recovered its natural imbalance.

  So, after discovering, thanks to an old school photograph and a comment from my cousin José Antonio Cercas, that there was a witness to Manuel Mena’s childhood still living, I called David and, overcoming my embarrassment about taking friends to Ibahernando, asked him to go to my village with me under the pretext of needing him to film my conversation with that person; in part it was true, but only in part: the other reason was that I didn’t want to interview him alone. David’s first reaction was predictable, but I didn’t attempt to dispel his fears because I felt that it was too difficult to explain over the phone why I wanted to go to Ibahernando and talk to the last witness of Manuel Mena’s childhood (or the person I thought was its last witness) even though I wasn’t going to write a novel about Manuel Mena. His second reaction was also predictable.

  “When should we go?” he asked.

  * * *

  —

  The morning after I took part in a literary festival that November in Madrid, David drove over to pick me up from the hotel beside the Retiro Park where I was staying. It was Saturday and my friend had both his children with him: Violeta and Leo. We dropped Violeta off at a dance academy and Leo at a soccer field in the Casa de Campo, and it was noon before we left the city on the road to Extremadura. For quite a while we were talking about the film he was working on at the time, in which he told me he wanted to tell the story of a teacher who used Beatles songs to teach English in Spain in the 1960s and who, when he finds out John Lennon is in Almería shooting a film, decides to go and meet him; he had the screenplay written, he told me, and was completely immersed in finding the money and the actors to film it. Past Talavera de la Reina, near Almaraz, or maybe Jaraicejo, we stopped at a gas stat
ion, filled up the tank, and, as we were drinking coffee beside big windows overlooking the scant traffic on the highway, David said:

  “By the way, I’ve been thinking about your Civil War book.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, and I’ve changed my mind: I think it’s a great idea. Do you know why?” Intrigued, I shook my head. “Very simple: I now understand that in Soldiers of Salamis you invented a Republican hero to hide the fact that your family’s hero was a Francoist.”

  Soldiers of Salamis was the title of the novel David had made into a film. I said:

  “More like a Falangist.”

  “Okay, a Falangist. The thing is that you hid an ugly reality behind a pretty fiction.”

  “That sounds like a reproach.”

  “It isn’t one. I’m not judging; I’m describing.”

  “And?”

  “Now it’s time to face reality, no? That’s how you can close the circle. And that’s how you can stop writing once and for all about the fucking war and Francoism and all the rest of that shit that tortures you so much.” He gulped down the rest of his coffee. “You’ll see,” he added. “You’re going to come out with a hell of a book.”