by Pete Ayrton
Cercas’ generation grew up with parents who were reluctant to talk or write about the Civil War; they wanted to spare their children its burden. As is often the case, the children rebelled and enquired.
In 2000, the sociologist Emilio Silva-Barrera created the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory as part of an attempt to find out what had happened to his grandfather, shot by Franco’s army in 1936. This grassroots movement now involves local people throughout Spain. However, its progress has been hampered by the refusal of the government to provide funds. Cercas’ later works, The Anatomy of a Moment and Outlaws, continue in this rich vein of mixing fact and fiction. In 2003, Soldiers of Salamis was made into a fine feature film directed by David Trueba.
MAX AUB
JANUARY WITHOUT NAME
translated by Peter Bush
In defeat they carry off victory
Cervantes
26 January 1939
Men have always been ones for walking, that’s why they have legs, though I’ve only just discovered air is what moves them along. They only have one small ear either side of their head, which is enough for them to run at the slightest sound; they can never stay still, or see beyond the ends of their noses, and are crazy about one thing: speed; not satisfied with wheels, they want wings. They prefer to ignore that once born, they grow roots, even if they don’t want them, that subterfuges, dodges, ruses or wiles are futile: it’s the sap, not the flesh that counts.
I was born standing. I was always tall, bigger than my age warranted; I was born somewhere in the 1880s and, as is only right, I’ve gradually broadened my trunk and my landscape. Figueras has gained in extension what I’ve gained in perspective; when it thought it had fenced me in, I beat it on high. Labourers built their encampments with their sweat and time following the lie of the land, imagining they laid bricks the way they wanted. Many years ago I even managed to see San Martín, and when they constructed three-storey flats in the Rambla to shut off my horizons, from the city-gates I already had sight of Perelada.
In my youth I saw the playboys drive the first cars past my feet. Nothing ever shocks me, I always was a bit of a know-all: I am what I am, and so what? They covered the sewers, erected telephone posts, eternal landmarks to our greatness; reapers of corn became lads who pumped petrol.
One pruning followed another: men can try to belittle our lives, it makes no odds, we’re stronger, they’re afraid of the elements and hence die, naked, they’re like flowers, but then they put clothes on! A wretched bunch. As they’re rootless, they cut back the world to sustain themselves. The wind is what counts, and they just don’t want to know. They insist on extracting seed from barren heaths, timber – life that is our death – from thicketed peaks. Foul-smelling jack-the-lads, they only live to spin yarns, call it wild oats to show off, but hide when doing so, I know because I see them; hagglers, braggarts, ass-lickers who the moment it drizzles, scurry like hens or invent umbrellas; or even turn vegetarian as if it were any use eating things one’s not made of: let them eat meat, and leave us in peace, or, if they wish, keep planting saplings in the twenty-foot, even if that only means soldiers shaft strumpets as the sun goes down, or the branches dip in the irrigation channels, but don’t let them maim us with their machetes year after year, telling us it’s all for our own good... I’m way off pole; back on track; the castle escarpments haven’t changed, they green in spring-time, as they should: a castle is a serious business. The road’s sopping, sinking and silting up with the rain; when it’s a heatwave, it sprinkles dust over the fields; they tarmacked it and it loves to parade; it should stick to milestones.
Round and about, the plain disappears in the distance: one way is Llansa, and the other the sea and opposite the sun’s early-morning gate, behind the hills hiding it from my view, Rosas. The Pyrenees are my north, and proud it’s so; they do their duty by the snow when it’s due.
They praise my memory, I know all about Napoleon from the stories people tell, and about the Carlists from my family, a great number of which they turned to ash, as their hosts suffered from the cold. Men take a long while to grow and, in any case, never move beyond the stunted stage.
(Perhaps men are wretched because they never stand still, though much more is gone with the wind.)
Last night a boy died by my foot; he died a sapling and his mother carried him on the road to France, thinking he’ll come back to life. I don’t believe in miracles. Nor do I understand why children die: dying is about drying up. Men know that only too well, and admit as much. One can also rot to death, from the worms gnawing one’s guts. Men die ravaged on the outside, faces devoured by blood and bandages, by pus, mange, lice and pain. From what I heard last night, hunger kills too. What’s hunger? The land provides all our needs. ‘Yes, whatever you want,’ said one. ‘But the day before yesterday, I don’t remember if it was Tuesday or Wednesday, whatever, they called my home. It was two a.m. The sirens had wailed; a clear night, searchlights, the whole malarkey. You know, it was to deliver a child. Off I went, scared of the ack-ack guns, and unable to light the torch with a brand-new battery Vicente had brought me from Perpignan. The child was still-born: his mother’s lack of nourishment. A neighbour helped me. “Now come and have a look at mine,” she says, when we’ve cleaned up. I curse all the way, the alarm’s over and the electricity comes back. Naturally, the famous childbirth took place by the light of candles they’d had to requisition from the whole staircase and a nearby bomb-shelter; can you imagine? The lobby was a room to pay respects; each neighbour came for their candle and ask after the woman who’d given birth. It was like a movie, kid. I heard nobody say: “Good, it’s better that way.” No, they all said: “A pity, there’ll always be a next time.” The mother was desperate. And then I go upstairs with her neighbour and look at her child, a one-year old. “This boy’s dying.” We give him a warm bath and an injection of camphor oil: “I knew as much,” the mother rasps, “he didn’t eat.” And that was that. Not a single cry of protest; not one complaint. What a people! My God, what a people!’
Men haven’t a clue what it’s like to have birds on your fingers; men and animals are like rocks, the wind doesn’t move them, they take refuge from hurricanes and cyclones, they’ve not the roots to withstand them, they’re pure stalk, they only grow outwards, if they grow inwards, it’s invisible, and I believe what I see: and that’s how I tell it. Men give you an idea of what makes a passing phenomenon: they’re like storms or better, as they like to say, they are tormented. In their view, the seasons don’t exist and it’s irrelevant whether it’s spring or autumn; life doesn’t spring from man but from his surroundings, they’re merely mirrors to the world and defend themselves against their inferiority, invent dreams, would-be seed-corn, flints sparking on the air: for starters, they can’t tell a beech-tree from a lime, a banana-tree from a chestnut, let alone a cherry from an orange tree. The human condition is a sorry affair; if they want to make their mark, they must die in the attempt; blood is a shocking sort of sap, and men always seem to be spurting forth; they only know how to bear fruit in pain, and as for blossoming like flowers, they should be so lucky. Don’t you go comparing a hen with an almond tree.
27
‘Did you ever think we might lose?’
‘I don’ think note. I can’t think note. I’d chuck it all in but I ain’t got note to chuck in.’
A world passes down this road with ears, and without a tongue, and has emerged out of nothing, swept along on a southern breeze that bottles it up in Figueras; the road to la Junquera is like a funnel. Suntraps have become garages. The city is brimming with cars and trucks, a stream of black blood bubbling from a hundred wounds night-time has inflicted. A half-dead world walking on two legs as if it had but one, a world that only knows how to walk yet knows that walking solves nothing, walking simply to prove to itself that it’s still alive. They flee their shadows not realising that night alone can solve that problem, they walk and light bonfires when darkness falls; their
shadows are reborn with fire. The world has aged in forty-eight hours. A very, very old man comes by, in mourning, like all old Spaniards. Mourning becomes winter. One woman says: ‘Look at him, so old and scared of death.’ They walk. The first brightness of day blows up from the sea. The road is full of trucks, customs police, soldiers, cars, assault guards, old people, torn newspapers, old people, petrol tankers, three cannons abandoned to my right, children, soldiers, mules, old people, wounded, cars, wounded, women, children, wounded, old people. Opposite me, a woman crouches by a fence crying, showing her legs in cinnamon-coloured stockings, and, around the top, thighs the colour of almond blossom, weeping her heart out. Nobody stops, everyone with their tiny stretch of the road on their shoulder.
‘The government’s to blame.’
‘The communists are to blame.’
‘The CNT is to blame.’
‘The republic is to blame.’
One child is alone, with an umbrella.
‘Where’s your mother?’
‘In France.’
‘Where’s your father?’
‘Dead.’
He’s by himself, still as a small island, in the thick of it, creating eddies.
People come, go, walk, pass by, move, stretch, peer, slip, wear out, wither, age, die. By dint of all that walking, everything comes to an end. Women are more burdened than men; nobody helps anyone. The soldiers, guns adrift, seem determined, but don’t know why.
‘So, where are you from?’
‘From near Bilbao. Wi’d been in Barcelona fer a year with an ’ouse an’ all. An’ all bought fer new, near El Siglo. Bedspreads, crockery, the lot. An’ wi’ve left the lot. Now it’s git on the road agen. It’s disgustin’. The Catalans are to blame.’
He stops, gasps, switches the bags strapped to the right of his waist to the other side.
‘Disgustin’. An’ there ain’t no help from a soul, not a soul.’
A voice: ‘Would you like them to take in their carriage.’
‘Yer all cowards. If I could, if I could... ’
There are thousands of carts; the horses manage, effortlessly, the weight isn’t much, the bulk is: the burden of the people fleeing is large, but not heavy. Mattresses take up space, cages are mostly air, rabbits and hens need space to move. Wooden beds act as sides for the carts; pots and pans travel in big vegetable baskets. They’re not covered waggons rolling across the plains, they’re rural carts with broad metal rimmed wheels and screeching axles that have never left the farm. The bags of goods underneath hang over the sides like big bladders; a cart transforms into a swaying bunch of fruit; a rope or lone animal pulls it along, snout down, mane and coat caked in filth, withers and flanks scratched, hocks bleeding, fetlocks and hoofs like clods of earth. When the road jams up, stopping brings no respite, is only cause for impatience; jerky movements bite into backsides, send everything flying. Then some animal lifts its head and looks, collar tinkling: the heavens in its eyes. There’s no space on the cart for anyone, lest an old woman has turned into a black, prostrate item; neither reins nor straps guide the beast, nor a bit pulled right or left, the crowds carry it along; each cart is a world with its satellites in tow on their way to the French frontier. Every burden is different; no cart is like another, but they are all the same.
A plane takes off from San Martín’s field.
A soldier: ‘One of ours.’
A one-armed man: ‘We called La Gloriosa the Invisible Air-force.’
A woman is pulling two boys along, a black scarf on her head, an enormous sack above that, each boy’s carrying his sack on his back.
‘What’s the point of fighting anymore? Can’t they see we’ve lost? What’s the point? So more can die?’
And she walks on.
One man: ‘Who told you to come? Stay here.’
The woman can’t turn her head, presses her parched lips together, and walks on.
Thousands cloaking the road, with their coarse blankets, except those on crutches, or those huge, wire-covered artefacts, arms on their backs.
‘Hey, where you going, Eiffel Tower?’
More lame than one-armed, and more one-armed than wounded in the head. I’ve seen one-legged children on crutches, it’s an unpleasant sight. A grey-haired, skinny-faced paraplegic is being pushed along in an old wheel chair, under a bonnet; he clutches a piece of pink oilskin to his knees, in case it rains.
Cars stop, move ten metres, stop, jam the road, people in the distance bunch together.
A guard, with his rifle: ‘This is what they want, but they won’t get their way.’
Horse-faced, a week-old beard, messy hair, hat on the slant, blackened teeth. A girl speaks to him.
‘’Ow on earth could this ’appen? What went wrong?’
‘What went wrong? Well, do you reckon they’re throwing out crusts? Or what? More artillery, then tanks, and more and more planes. It’s appalling, and don’t those damn planes shit death.’
Someone else joins in.
‘The worst are the mortars; for every one we’ve got, they’ve a hundred. If you decide to shoot, they fry you alive; you end up not shooting.’
The girl: ‘An’ changing sides.’
The guard grips his gun with both hands: ‘Just repeat that.’
The girl: ‘An’ changing sides.’
‘And what about you?’
She shrugs her shoulders and keeps on walking. The other man says: ‘They ran us ragged. It’s a miracle we got out.’
And joins the previous fellow.
A water tanker overtakes against the flow, they look at it in surprise. Shout at it.
‘They’ve disembarked in Rosas.’
‘Lies. I’ve just come from there,’ comes a reply in Catalan.
Blasting its klaxon it clears a path through to the control post. The men’s faces are serious, wrinkles furrowed deep by the dust. You have no idea what a human face is like. I agree there’s nothing like it. Everything’s boxed into such a small space: fire, land and water, all that they’re made of, giving them an unmistakable air.
A black car, republican flag flapping, judders along, adding to the racket, trying to overtake everyone else. Its irritable klaxon ratchets up the hue-and-cry: the
‘Kid.’
‘Luis.’
‘Pepe.’
‘Come on.’
‘Hurry up,’ that one doesn’t hear because they’re making one hell of a human furore that rises to the surface like birds swift of wing. A customs policeman goes over to that headstrong car, then moves away respectfully and addresses those forming a wall, explains things I don’t catch. An assault guard intervenes.
‘Not even Christ will get through.’
‘But...’
‘Not even God. If we’re goin’ to be stuck ’ere, then every sod is goin’ to be stuck with us.’
The fellow shouting is sallow-featured, with greasy ear-locks. People stand still or twitch like a mangy tail. The guard is angry, releases the catch on his gun.
‘I said no one is gettin’ through, if I’m not. Either the control post lets me through, or if they catch me, they catch the lot of us.’
He’s sweating.
‘Not even God is gettin’ through, and if anyone tries it, I’ll shoot.’
Get through, get through, get through... A voice: ‘The control post is only carrying out orders.’
‘What bloody orders? They must be customs police. Anyone who tries it on is a dead duck, I swear to God.’
As he sees he’s losing ground, that people reckon he’s crazy, he shouts: ‘The government made a run for it tonight.’
A plumpish young man inteijects.
‘That’s not true, they’re in a meeting in the castle.’
‘And what do you know about the price of eggs?’
Vayo gets out of the car.
‘What’s the problem?’
‘Nobody’s gettin’ through if I’m not.’
‘And where are you going?’
; ‘To join my company.’
And where might that be?’
‘I don’t know.’
A group grabs the young fellow and shoves him aside: ‘It’s the minister.’
‘So fuckin’ what?’
‘He’s going to La Agullana, to his ministry, and then he’ll come back.’
‘Nobody’s gettin’ past!’
But he slumps down on the slope, feet in the muddy ditch, eyes dead tired, chin sunk into his chest, hand gripping his musket. The minister gets back into his car and drives through.
I’ve never seen so many people together, so many old folk or so many dressed in black. A woman with a blanket keeps repeating: ‘My papers are all in order, my papers are all in order... ’
A uniformed man stops a car, brandishing a pistol.
‘Official Mission.’
Another: ‘French Embassy.’
Another: ‘Cuban Embassy.’
Finally, he climbs on to the running board of another ‘Official Mission’. The road is jet black at twilight, as if night arises there, they walk past, brushing my foot, thousands in flight, a line that’s not aligned, some helping, and others brusquely rejecting appeals for help. Masses of wounded.
‘The major came to tell us: “We can’t guarantee the evacuation of the hospital, all those who can go under their own steam should leave.’”
‘I’ve come fromVallarca. How about you?’
‘I don’t know.’
Some can’t take anymore, some say as much, one lies down.
‘If I’m going to die, this place is as good as any.’
All this hubbub:
‘When?’
‘What?’
‘Luis, is it very far?’
‘Luis.’
‘Rafael.’
‘José.’
‘Come here.’
‘Get a move on.’
‘Luis.’
‘Luis.’
And kids bawling, vehicles hooting and changing gear, others starting up. Now it starts to drizzle. Two people are walking along under the same blanket.
