by Carlos Rojas
“You wanted to talk to me about God, Commander Valdés.”
He looks at me with eyes that astonishment widens around his bloodshot whites and inflamed irises. For the first time I dared to say his name (“Commander Valdés”), as if I or the man of flesh—I’m not exactly sure which one—had found the strength to exorcise him. Also for the first time, I realize he doesn’t want to shoot me, that this executioner consumed by cancer and delirious from lack of sleep, absolute master of the city with the authority of Queipo and Franco, a murderer who during this time has arranged and sanctioned hundreds of deaths, as Luis Rosales, almost in tears, finally confessed to me, has decided to free me from his squads and underlings for reasons that neither he nor I will ever understand. Awareness of my salvation, perhaps dimly sensed from the moment they burst into the house on Calle de Angulo to arrest me (“This son of a bitch, and may all the devils in hell give it to him up the ass, told me you did more harm with your pen that others do with a pistol”), sends me to a kind of no-man’s land where, sometimes calmly, and sometimes with irresolute apprehension, I confront the certainty of freedom.
Inside me as well, and to my irritated astonishment, the creature of flesh turns around and reacts very differently. He grows and shouts recklessly. He is seized with a coward’s delight when he believes himself safe at any price. His horror and panic, which had moved him earlier to say that he prayed for the victory of the military, now would lead him to impetuous extremes that courage cannot even conceive of. My only fear is of his audacity, for I’m aware that so much daring is nothing but an inadvertent desire for self-destruction.
“How did you guess? How did you know I was referring to God without my even naming Him?”
“That doesn’t matter now, Commander. Please continue.”
It is he who obeys, nodding, and it is the man of flesh who gives the orders and raises his voice, affected and possessed of an Andalusian accent that so many years of living in Madrid served only to confirm and emphasize, across from the impersonal speech of this man in agony.
“Are you religious?” he asks me, a not entirely unexpected question.
“I am, though I’ve never been observant since I’ve had the use of my reason.”
“I’ve always been observant but was never really religious. I went to church on Sundays because a garrison officer has certain duties in a right-thinking society. I took communion on Easter Sunday because I’d been doing that since I was a boy, in Logroño. I took the name of God, perhaps in vain, in my war speeches in Africa and took it again in Zaragoza when I wanted to persuade the two Civil Guards that the three of us alone had to subdue the Barracks del Carmen. Yet I realize now that when we put down the uprising, I forgot to thank God for our victory. Nothing more, but also nothing less. It’s not much, is it?”
“It isn’t everything. You also fought with God on your own when they gave you the simple red cross and after you saw Sánchez Mejías and me in Madrid.”
“Yes, sir, that’s true too! How did you know? You read me as if I were an open newspaper. I fought with God, that’s the precise expression. When I asked for His reasons, knowing He would never answer, I always called Him Your Excellency, as if I were addressing a case to Him, petitioning for late payments. Does it seem strange to you, does it seem comical?”
“It doesn’t seem anything. Go on.”
“‘Your Excellency,’ I said to Him in Zaragoza, ‘You know very well that few officers would have exposed themselves to this kind of courageous action without guarantees and almost without possibilities of surviving it. I recognize that if they didn’t kill me then, I owe it to Your Excellency, because getting out of that alive and escaping without a scratch when I subdued the rebels alone, with a revolver, is nothing but a miracle … ’”
“Did you stop to think that if you’d been killed, then perhaps the king would’ve awarded you the Laureate posthumously?”
“Of course I stopped to think that! I’m not a man lacking in imagination!”
“Though you can’t manage to understand your destiny on earth. I don’t understand mine either.”
“‘Your Excellency,”’—he continued speaking to the shadows—“‘You granted me life as an ironic act. To oblige me to accept that humiliating bit of charity: the simple red cross. So that once imposed, everyone could forget about me again. At this price, death followed by the eternal remembering of my name would be preferable.”’
“You didn’t have to wait that long because the war made you master of Granada. You’ve entered history through the main door, Commander Valdés.”
“I entered through a door I never wanted.” He takes a square handkerchief from his cuff and wipes the sweat from his forehead (“I have cancer and I’m dying.”) “I’ve killed a good number of men in Africa. Many more than I could count. I never attributed much importance to those deaths because they were all Moors and Moors are inferior to Gypsies in my personal code. Do I shock you?”
“I’m listening.”
“If you had seen the heads of our soldiers in Barranco del Lobo and Annual, cut off with an ax and piled in the sun for the flies, you’d understand me perfectly.”
“That’s possible, though I doubt it. Luis Rosales told me the same Moors are fighting at your side. Do they continue to cut off heads with an ax, following their customs?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised, if they’re permitted to. I was actually getting to that and I’m glad you reminded me. Sooner or later, all our reason for being can be explained in the light of this war. I never, ever believed it would take place, and therefore never imagined myself as governor of Granada. When we were preparing the uprising, we all felt certain the coup would be almost bloodless and the government would fall at a single breath, like a house of cards. Your friend Pepe Rosales was the most optimistic, perhaps because he was the most unthinking. ‘Look, Valdés,’ he said to me during the days of the conspiracy, ‘in no time we’ll be in power and then we’ll establish the National Syndicalist Revolution.’ It bothered me that a rich spoiled civilian, and especially a rich spoiled kid like him, his eyes fried by so much manzanilla sherry, would address me informally as if we were related. I tolerated it only because it was a foolish custom in the Falange. ‘Look Pepe,’ I replied, ‘this matter of National Syndicalism feels like a kick in the stomach to me. I don’t know anything about politics and I don’t understand how we’re going to prevent one revolution only to impose another. I’m in this so Spain can have peace, order, and work. In other words, so the country can move forward the right way, which is with the discipline of a barracks. Forgive my frankness, but all the rest seems like very dangerous chatter to me. If we, the members of the Falange, are going to turn into the Communists of this Spain of ours, I’ll turn in my membership card and that’s the end of it.”’
“But here there’s no peace and no order. And the only work is killing your neighbor.”
“The coup did not succeed either, in spite of Pepe Rosales’s optimism.” He shrugs. “We only have a war to the death that will last longer than I do because it will take years and I’m living on borrowed time.”
“A war that brought you the renown you pursued so intently, and with renown, immortality, though by unexpected paths. Allow me to say it again,” my other self indicates cynically. “You could say that God was ironic with you, but don’t accuse him of being unjust.”
He looks into my eyes again and persists in pressing his palms onto the desk. He seems to murmur something, his very thin lips half open and trembling. One would say that the cancer gnawing at him now follows cardiac arrest: what the old folks from the Andalusian lowlands called a soul attack when I was a boy.
“I don’t accuse Him of being unjust, because I know very well He’s lost his mind,” he mumbles in a very quiet voice.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I said that God has lost His mind and since the start of the war I’ve never hidden from Him my certainty of His madness. ‘Your Exce
llency gave me Granada, which I never asked for, and with Granada the duty to defend it against the reds,’ I’ve often prayed to Him. ‘I don’t think I did a bad job, because we took it and they haven’t taken it back. Thanks to Your Excellency, the day also arrived that I had always hoped for: the one when everyone recognized me and said my name with the same devotion as if it belonged to a rich, all-powerful relative … ”’
“Don’t look at me when you speak to God, Commander Valdés. Don’t look at me when you say these things, or I won’t be able to believe you.”
He doesn’t hear me or pretends not to have heard me. His face doesn’t change its impassive expression as his terrifying prayer continues. But he bows his head and contemplates his hands near the edge of the desk.
“‘But at this price, and if I had been consulted first, I’d never have accepted my glory,”’ he continues, his tone of voice immutable. “‘No, at this price, I’d prefer death and oblivion.”’
“What price did you have to pay, Commander?” the man of flesh asks him, as if he actually had become his confessor.
“A price too high in blood and too easy to satisfy,” he says to his hands. “The guarantee of our survival was the death of hundreds of men in three weeks. I’ve blindly given orders, and orders to shoot, and I’ve blinded myself intentionally when I was denounced for crimes committed behind my back by the Black Squads, to settle an old dispute, to carry out personal vengeance, or simply not to lose the habit of killing. Pepe Rosales burst into my office one afternoon … ” His voice breaks quietly and he shakes his head.
“What did Pepe Rosales want?”
“He moved the guard aside with a backhand slap when he tried to block his way. He kicked the door open, rushed to this desk, and began to pound it with his fist. ‘May I ask how you’ll put a stop to the murderers’ crimes? How long will you permit this rabble to dirty us all with their crimes?’ ‘Pepe, sit down, be quiet, and listen to me,’ I replied very coldly. ‘No matter how many people are killed by this rabble, as you call it, it’s less of a sacrifice than if I have to shoot someone against my will. Here there’s no time to try anyone. When I hesitate over the name of a prisoner, I consult Sevilla by phone, and Sevilla always orders me to shoot him. On very rare occasions I’ve come across acquaintances, because I never had friends and you’re not one of them. I also called Sevilla then, to tell them that on my own responsibility I was releasing the man, and no one argued with my decision. This is a war without mercy or quarter in which I would have requested any duty except executing Spaniards as if they were rats or Moors. This obligation and no other fell to me because that’s how God wanted it. I probably differ from the men in the Black Squads only in that they enjoy killing, while I can’t sleep when I think about the shootings. Yet some of us continue to meet an unavoidable responsibility, which is safeguarding the civilian population.’ Frowning, his head lowered, his rage subsided, he asked me what position suited him in Granada, realizing he hadn’t been born to be an executioner or a murderer. ‘Pepe,’ I replied, ‘the first thing you should do for the greater glory of the new Spain is to go and sleep off all you’ve had to drink today.”’
“You wouldn’t talk to God the way you talked to Pepe Rosales.”
“No, I told God that same day: ‘Your Excellency must have lost Your mind over the years.’ Just like that, just what you’ve heard: ‘Your Excellency must have lost Your mind over the years.’ I didn’t know then that I was going to die. I knew I was sick because I always had been but couldn’t have imagined the end would come so soon. When the doctor decided to tell me the truth, I came back to this office. I gave orders not to be disturbed until they heard from me again, took all the phones off the hook, and prayed again. ‘With my days numbered, I ought to reaffirm my conviction. Your Excellency has lost Your mind in Your old age and don’t know it yet. I, on the other hand, know I’m going to die and for this reason ought to tell You about it.”’
“Commander Valdés, I’m not God, only an innocent man who’s been persecuted and taken prisoner. I beg you again to tell me only the reason for my presence here and the motive for your confession.”
“I supposed you would have guessed them,” he mumbles without looking up from his hands.
“I can’t because I never imagined anyone like you.”
“Then leave. Tonight I’ll call Sevilla and tell them that tomorrow I’m going to release you. Your fate doesn’t concern me once you’ve left the offices of the Civilian Government, but I hope you know how to survive me.”
He’s telling the truth and his truth means my life. But suddenly the man of flesh understands his double inability to write from now on, and to live without being able to write. A good part of his indifference infects me on this night that resembles a stranger’s delirium, though in a certain sense it seems as distant as my earlier panic. As remote as my brother-in-law’s death as recounted by my father. (“Son, promise me you’ll be careful! Swear it to me, yes, you have to swear!”)
“You won’t release me and won’t dare to kill me either without telling me why you interrogated me personally. Or why you pretended to interrogate me, because in reality you didn’t do that either.”
“I promised Pepe Rosales.”
“That’s not enough and you know it very well.”
“Before you know it I’ll be in the presence of my Maker and I’ll respond to all his charges. The last must be the certainty of His madness in view of this war and my destiny in it, as well as my sincerity in reproving Him for it. With or without morphine, I’m almost indifferent to death, but His punishment if I’m innocent terrifies me. Even though you may not believe it, even more than honor I respect justice … ”
“Yours or someone else’s?”
“Justice! Why do you bring that up now? Don’t interrupt me or soon I won’t know what I’m saying. Look, a man who dared to call God crazy in full and absolute knowledge of his own impending death must be a lunatic. Each day I look into my eyes in the mirror when I shave, and I tell myself: ‘Valdés, you’re crazy, no doubt about it. When the hour of judgment comes, and it’s very soon now, and God looks at you the way you look at yourself in this mirror, you’ll have only one defense … ”’
“Telling him you were insane when you accused Him of madness.”
“Exactly. Then I conclude: ‘Any intelligent person in whom I confided my intention would find himself obliged to prove it.’ Very well, you’re that person. Assure me that I’ve lost my mind and I’ll die at peace with my conscience.”
“I don’t know whether your God is or isn’t deranged, because there’s no doubt we’re talking about different gods.”
“There can be only one because His power is indivisible!”
“In any case, I wonder if yours won’t ask for an explanation from the people you shot and allowed to be murdered instead of condemning you for calling Him crazy. In the final analysis, you’re dying now and men won’t be able to demand liabilities from you for those crimes. For His part God, yours or mine, must put justice above honor just as you do.”
“I’m not responsible for the death of anyone. Is it possible you haven’t understood anything? It was nothing but the will of God that decreed some shootings and permitted so many crimes. Because I didn’t understand such anomalous designs, I called Him crazy and I must be the crazy one for calling Him that. If I contend this at the trial, I’ll merely be stating the truth.”
“No, Commander Valdés, you won’t tell the truth because you agree and all your actions can be explained logically, beginning with an initial resentment: that of a man as dissatisfied with himself as he is with the world around him.”
The creature of flesh speaks wearily now. He seems about to collapse like an empty suit, and one might say he holds himself upright only by leaning his palm against me deep inside. In the center of my soul, his hand is as cold as a dead man’s.
“I thought you’d make an effort to understand me!”
“I understand you
very well. Perhaps in a certain sense we’re not as different as your God and mine are. You’re as afraid of dying as I was. Afraid you’ll cease to be without having been more than the executioner of Granada. Let’s end this farce once and for all. Return me to the room that serves as my cell, or do whatever you want with me. But don’t ask me to call you crazy because you’re not, and God, the God of either one of us, knows it as well as we do.”
“Is this your final word?”
“If I thought calling you crazy would save my life, I’d tell you that your God will exempt you from judgment because He believes you’re insane. In any event, lying wouldn’t change my fate.”
“My dear sir, you too have my final word,” he replies, hurt and angry, but not looking up. “I told you I’d talk to Sevilla about releasing you tomorrow, and tomorrow you’ll be free.”
“Valdés, I don’t doubt your word or your sanity. In any case, you made a confession to me and I owe you another. We’re both part of a drama whose reasons and outcome transcend us because it has already happened before, in a time and a world that are very remote yet identical to ours. You’re Castilian, judging by your accent, and perhaps you can’t fathom what I’m trying to tell you, but any Gypsy or Andalusian Civil Guard would understand me perfectly. When I left Madrid for Granada, a friend accompanied me to the South Station. With a certain insistence that was not exaggerated, for he also appeared in the cast of our show, he asked me to stay in Madrid where he could protect or hide me. I felt tempted to do as he asked but was struck immediately by the certainty that there could be no discrepancies with what had previously been foretold and staged. I came to Granada, knowing that here I would be arrested even though I tried to hide.”
