by Pete Ayrton
He kept on chewing his words, with something like distraction. He certainly talked to keep himself from thinking. He smelled of urine like an old prostate case. Naturally, I agreed with him, I could have said everything he said: it isn’t natural to die. And since I was going to die, nothing seemed natural to me, not this pile of coal dust, or the bench, or Pedro’s ugly face. Only it didn’t please me to think the same things as Tom. And I knew that, all through the night, every five minutes, we would keep on thinking things at the same time. I looked at him sideways and for the first time he seemed strange to me: he wore death on his face. My pride was wounded: for the past 24 hours I had lived next to Tom, I had listened to him, I had spoken to him and I knew we had nothing in common. And now we looked as much alike as twin brothers, simply because we were going to die together. Tom took my hand without looking at me.
‘Pablo, I wonder... I wonder if it’s really true that everything ends.’
I took my hand away and said, ‘Look between your feet, you pig.’
There was a big puddle between his feet and drops fell from his pants-leg.
‘What is it?’ he asked, frightened.
‘You’re pissing in your pants,’ I told him.
‘It isn’t true,’ he said furiously. ‘I’m not pissing. I don’t feel anything.’
The Belgian approached us. He asked with false solicitude, ‘Do you feel ill?’
Tom did not answer. The Belgian looked at the puddle and said nothing.
‘I don’t know what it is,’Tom said ferociously. ‘But I’m not afraid. I swear I’m not afraid.’
The Belgian did not answer. Tom got up and went to piss in a corner. He came back buttoning his fly, and sat down without a word. The Belgian was taking notes.
All three of us watched him because he was alive. He had the motions of a living human being, the cares of a living human being; he shivered in the cellar the way the living are supposed to shiver; he had an obedient, well-fed body. The rest of us hardly felt ours – not in the same way anyhow. I wanted to feel my pants between my legs but I didn’t dare; I watched the Belgian, balancing on his legs, master of his muscles, someone who could think about tomorrow. There we were, three bloodless shadows; we watched him and we sucked his life like vampires.
Finally he went over to little Juan. Did he want to feel his neck for some professional motive or was he obeying an impulse of charity? If he was acting by charity it was the only time during the whole night.
He caressed Juan’s head and neck. The kid let himself be handled, his eyes never leaving him, then suddenly, he seized the hand and looked at it strangely. He held the Belgian’s hand between his own two hands and there was nothing pleasant about them, two grey pincers gripping this fat and reddish hand. I suspected what was going to happen and Tom must have suspected it too: but the Belgian didn’t see a thing, he smiled paternally. After a moment the kid brought the fat red hand to his mouth and tried to bite it. The Belgian pulled away quickly and stumbled back against the wall. For a second he looked at us with horror, he must have suddenly understood that we were not men like him. I began to laugh and one of the guards jumped up. The other was asleep, his wide-open eyes were blank.
I felt relaxed and over-excited at the same time. I didn’t want to think any more about what would happen at dawn, at death. It made no sense. I only found words or emptiness. But as soon as I tried to think of anything else I saw rifle barrels pointing at me. Perhaps I lived through my execution twenty times; once I even thought it was for good: I must have slept a minute. They were dragging me to the wall and I was struggling; I was asking for mercy. I woke up with a start and looked at the Belgian: I was afraid I might have cried out in my sleep. But he was stroking his moustache, he hadn’t noticed anything. If I had wanted to, I think I could have slept a while; I had been awake for 48 hours. I was at the end of my rope. But I didn’t want to lose two hours of life: they would come to wake me up at dawn, I would follow them, stupefied with sleep and I would have croaked without so much as an ‘Oof!’; I didn’t want that, I didn’t want to die like an animal, I wanted to understand. Then I was afraid of having nightmares. I got up, walked back and forth, and, to change my ideas, I began to think about my past life. A crowd of memories came back to me pell-mell. There were good and bad ones – or at least I called them that before. There were faces and incidents. I saw the face of a little novillero who was gored in Valencia during the Feria, the face of one of my uncles, the face of Ramon Gris. I remembered my whole life: how I was out of work for three months in 1926, how I almost starved to death. I remembered a night I spent on a bench in Granada: I hadn’t eaten for three days. I was angry, I didn’t want to die. That made me smile. How madly I ran after happiness, after women, after liberty. Why? I wanted to free Spain, I admired Pi y Margall, I joined the anarchist movement, I spoke in public meetings: I took everything as seriously as if I were immortal.
At that moment I felt that I had my whole life in front of me and I thought, ‘It’s a damned lie.’ It was worth nothing because it was finished. I wondered how I’d been able to walk, to laugh with the girls: I wouldn’t have moved so much as my little finger if I had only imagined I would die like this. My life was in front of me, shut, closed, like a bag and yet everything inside of it was unfinished. For an instant I tried to judge it. I wanted to tell myself, this is a beautiful life. But I couldn’t pass judgment on it; it was only a sketch; I had spent my time counterfeiting eternity, I had understood nothing. I missed nothing: there were so many things I could have missed, the taste of manzanilla or the baths I took in summer in a little creek near Cadiz; but death had disenchanted everything.
The Belgian suddenly had a bright idea. ‘My friends,’ he told us, ‘I will undertake – if the military administration will allow it – to send a message for you, a souvenir to those who love you... ’
Tom mumbled, ‘I don’t have anybody.’
I said nothing. Tom waited an instant then looked at me with curiosity. ‘You don’t have anything to say to Concha?’
‘No.’
I hated this tender complicity: it was my own fault, I had talked about Concha the night before, I should have controlled myself. I was with her for a year. Last night I would have given an arm to see her again for five minutes. That was why I talked about her, it was stronger than I was. Now I had no more desire to see her, I had nothing more to say to her. I would not even have wanted to hold her in my arms: my body filled me with horror because it was grey and sweating – and I wasn’t sure that her body didn’t fill me with horror. Concha would cry when she found out I was dead, she would have no taste for life for months afterward. But I was still the one who was going to die. I thought of her soft, beautiful eyes. When she looked at me something passed from her to me. But I knew it was over: if she looked at me now the look would stay in her eyes, it wouldn’t reach me. I was alone.
Tom was alone too but not in the same way. Sitting cross-legged, he had begun to stare at the bench with a sort of smile, he looked amazed. He put out his hand and touched the wood cautiously as if he were afraid of breaking something, then drew back his hand quickly and shuddered. If I had been Tom I wouldn’t have amused myself by touching the bench; this was some more Irish nonsense, but I too found that objects had a funny look: they were more obliterated, less dense than usual. It was enough for me to look at the bench, the lamp, the pile of coal dust, to feel that I was going to die. Naturally I couldn’t think clearly about my death but I saw it everywhere, on things, in the way things fell back and kept their distance, discreetly, as people who speak quietly at the bedside of a dying man. It was his death which Tom had just touched on the bench.
In the state I was in, if someone had come and told me I could go home quietly, that they would leave me my life whole, it would have left me cold: several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of being eternal. I clung to nothing, in a way I was calm. But it was a horrible calm – because o
f my body; my body, I saw with its eyes, I heard with its ears, but it was no longer me; it sweated and trembled by itself and I didn’t recognize it any more. I had to touch it and look at it to find out what was happening, as if it were the body of someone else. At times I could still feel it, I felt sinkings, and fallings, as when you’re in a plane taking a nose dive, or I felt my heart beating. But that didn’t reassure me. Everything that came from my body was all cockeyed. Most of the time it was quiet and I felt no more than a sort of weight, a filthy presence against me; I had the impression of being tied to an enormous vermin. Once I felt my pants and I felt they were damp; I didn’t know whether it was sweat or urine, but I went to piss on the coal pile as a precaution.
The Belgian took out his watch, looked at it. He said, ‘It is three-thirty.’
Bastard! He must have done it on purpose. Tom jumped; he hadn’t noticed time was running out; night surrounded us like a shapeless, somber mass, I couldn’t even remember that it had begun.
Little Juan began to cry. He wrung his hands, pleaded, ‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.’
He ran across the whole cellar waving his arms in the air then fell sobbing on one of the mats. Tom watched him with mournful eyes, without the slightest desire to console him. Because it wasn’t worth the trouble: the kid made more noise than we did, but he was less touched: he was like a sick man who defends himself against illness by fever. It’s much more serious when there isn’t any fever.
He wept: I could clearly see he was pitying himself; he wasn’t thinking about death. For one second, one single second, I wanted to weep myself, to weep with pity for myself. But the opposite happened: I glanced at the kid, I saw his thin sobbing shoulders and felt inhuman: I could pity neither the others nor myself. I said to myself, ‘I want to die cleanly.’
Tom had gotten up, he placed himself just under the round opening and began to watch for daylight. I was determined to die cleanly and I only thought of that. But ever since the doctor told us the time, I felt time flying, flowing away drop by drop.
It was still dark when I heard Tom’s voice: ‘Do you hear them?’
Men were marching in the courtyard.
‘Yes.’
‘What the hell are they doing? They can’t shoot in the dark.’
After a while we heard no more. I said to Tom, ‘It’s day.’
Pedro got up, yawning, and came to blow out the lamp. He said to his buddy, ‘Cold as hell.’
The cellar was all grey. We heard shots in the distance.
‘It’s starting,’ I told Tom. ‘They must do it in the court in the rear.’
Tom asked the doctor for a cigarette. I didn’t want one; I didn’t want cigarettes or alcohol. From that moment on they didn’t stop firing.
‘Do you realize what’s happening?’Tom said.
He wanted to add something but kept quiet, watching the door. The door opened and a lieutenant came in with four soldiers. Tom dropped his cigarette.
‘Steinbock?’
Tom didn’t answer. Pedro pointed him out.
‘Juan Mirbal?’
‘On the mat.’
‘Get up,’ the lieutenant said.
Juan did not move. Two soldiers took him under the arms and set him on his feet. But he fell as soon as they released him.
The soldiers hesitated.
‘He’s not the first sick one,’ said the lieutenant. ‘You two carry him; they’ll fix it up down there.’
He turned to Tom. ‘Let’s go.’
Tom went out between two soldiers. Two others followed, carrying the kid by the armpits. He hadn’t fainted; his eyes were wide open and tears ran down his cheeks. When I wanted to go out the lieutenant stopped me.
‘You Ibbieta?’
‘Yes.’
‘You wait here; they’ll come for you later.’
They left. The Belgian and the two jailers left too, I was alone. I did not understand what was happening to me but I would have liked it better if they had gotten it over with right away. I heard shots at almost regular intervals; I shook with each one of them. I wanted to scream and tear out my hair. But I gritted my teeth and pushed my hands in my pockets because I wanted to stay clean.
After an hour they came to get me and led me to the first floor, to a small room that smelt of cigars and where the heat was stifling. There were two officers sitting smoking in the armchairs, papers on their knees.
‘You’re Ibbieta?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where is Ramon Gris?’
‘I don’t know.’
The one questioning me was short and fat. His eyes were hard behind his glasses. He said to me, ‘Come here.’
I went to him. He got up and took my arms, staring at me with a look that should have pushed me into the earth. At the same time he pinched my biceps with all his might. It wasn’t to hurt me, it was only a game: he wanted to dominate me. He also thought he had to blow his stinking breath square in my face. We stayed for a moment like that, and I almost felt like laughing. It takes a lot to intimidate a man who is going to die; it didn’t work. He pushed me back violently and sat down again. He said, ‘It’s his life against yours. You can have yours if you tell us where he is.’
These men dolled up with their riding crops and boots were still going to die. A little later than I, but not too much. They busied themselves looking for names in their crumpled papers, they ran after other men to imprison or suppress them; they had opinions on the future of Spain and on other subjects. Their little activities seemed shocking and burlesqued to me; I couldn’t put myself in their place, I thought they were insane. The little man was still looking at me, whipping his boots with the riding crop. All his gestures were calculated to give him the look of a live and ferocious beast.
‘So? You understand?’
‘I don’t know where Gris is,’ I answered. ‘I thought he was in Madrid.’
The other officer raised his pale hand indolently. This indolence was also calculated. I saw through all their little schemes and I was stupefied to find there were men who amused themselves that way.
‘You have a quarter of an hour to think it over,’ he said slowly. ‘Take him to the laundry, bring him back in fifteen minutes. If he still refuses he will be executed on the spot.’
They knew what they were doing: I had passed the night in waiting; then they had made me wait an hour in the cellar while they shot Tom and Juan and now they were locking me up in the laundry; they must have prepared their game the night before. They told themselves that nerves eventually wear out and they hoped to get me that way.
They were badly mistaken. In the laundry I sat on a stool because I felt very weak and I began to think. But not about their proposition. Of course I knew where Gris was; he was hiding with his cousins, four kilometers from the city. I also knew that I would not reveal his hiding place unless they tortured me (but they didn’t seem to be thinking about that). All that was perfectly regulated, definite and in no way interested me. Only I would have liked to understand the reasons for my conduct. I would rather die than give up Gris. Why? I didn’t like Ramon Gris any more. My friendship for him had died a little while before dawn at the same time as my love for Concha, at the same time as my desire to live. Undoubtedly I thought highly of him: he was tough. But it was not for this reason that I consented to die in his place; his life had no more value than mine; no life had value. They were going to slap a man up against a wall and shoot at him till he died, whether it was I or Gris or somebody else made no difference. I knew he was more useful than I to the cause of Spain but I thought to hell with Spain and anarchy; nothing was important. Yet I was there, I could save my skin and give up Gris and I refused to do it. I found that somehow comic; it was obstinacy. I thought, ‘I must be stubborn!’ And a droll sort of gaiety spread over me.
They came for me and brought me back to the two officers. A rat ran out from under my feet and that amused me. I turned to one of the falangistas and said, ‘Did you see th
e rat?’
He didn’t answer. He was very sober, he took himself seriously. I wanted to laugh but I held myself back because I was afraid that once I got started I wouldn’t be able to stop. The falangista had a moustache. I said to him again, ‘You ought to shave off your moustache, idiot.’ I thought it funny that he would let the hairs of his living being invade his face. He kicked me without great conviction and I kept quiet.
‘Well,’ said the fat officer, ‘have you thought about it?’
I looked at them with curiosity, as insects of a very rare species. I told them, ‘I know where he is. He is hidden in the cemetery. In a vault or in the gravediggers’ shack.’
It was a farce. I wanted to see them stand up, buckle their belts and give orders busily.
They jumped to their feet. ‘Let’s go. Moles, go get fifteen men from Lieutenant Lopez. You,’ the fat man said, ‘I’ll let you off if you’re telling the truth, but it’ll cost you plenty if you’re making monkeys out of us.’
They left in a great clatter and I waited peacefully under the guard of falangistas. From time to time I smiled, thinking about the spectacle they would make. I felt stunned and malicious. I imagined them lifting up tombstones, opening the doors of the vaults one by one. I represented this situation to myself as if I had been someone else: this prisoner obstinately playing the hero, these grim falangistas with their moustaches and their men in uniform running among the graves; it was irresistibly funny. After half an hour the little fat man came back alone. I thought he had come to give the orders to execute me. The others must have stayed in the cemetery.
The officer looked at me. He didn’t look at all sheepish. ‘Take him into the big courtyard with the others,’ he said. ‘After the military operations a regular court will decide what happens to him.’
‘Then they’re not... not going to shoot me... ?’
