by Pete Ayrton
Hemingway had just told a story about his first return visit to Spain after the civil war. Everyone laughed. Some years later, when Leidson read The Dangerous Summer by Don Ernesto, he found a very different version of that same story. A less interesting one too. In the book, which chronicles the bullfighting season of 1959 and the hard-fought and inevitably bloody contest between Antonio Ordóñez and Luis Miguel ‘Dominguín’, the account of Hemingway’s journey to Spain is given a rather solemn slant. There’s even a touch of megalomania about it.
In the printed version, which is more flattering to the narrator, the policeman on the frontier at Irún recognised Hemingway at once and stood up to greet him, congratulating him on his novels, which he assured him he had read. That’s a little hard to believe though. It doesn’t seem plausible that in 1953 a policeman working for the dictatorship would have read, and enjoyed, Ernest Hemingway’s novels.
In May 1954, however, in El Callejón, Hemingway told another version of the same story. Another version of his return to Spain. It was both more believable and more skilfully crafted. After all, one should expect from a novelist, not only a modicum of truth, but also a degree of narrative skill.
During the idle post-prandial chatter in El Callejón, Leidson heard an earlier version of that story of Hemingway’s return, according to which, when the policeman checked Hemingway’s passport, he commented: ‘Hey, you’ve got the same name as that American who fought on the side of the reds during our war... ’ He had looked up when he said this. And Hemingway retorted: ‘I have the same name as him because I am that American who fought on the side of the reds during your war... ’ The policeman took a step back. His eyes grew black with rage. Impotent rage. A Yankee was a Yankee, untouchable, regardless of whether he had fought on the side of the reds, the whites, or the Devil himself.
Everyone laughed, and someone else told an anecdote from the same period.
Later, Hemingway returned to the subject of the civil war.
‘“Our war”,’ he muttered. ‘You all say that, as if it were the only thing, or, rather, the most important thing, you have in common. Your daily bread. Death, that’s what binds you together, the old death of the civil war.’
Leidson was on the point of saying to Hemingway that death was perhaps not the only thing the Spanish shared in their almost eucharistic memory of that war, their war, but also youth, ardour. Although perhaps death is just one of the faces of ardent youth.
Or the other way round, who knows.
But on that occasion, he said nothing. The others, however, did not hold back. The Spaniards at that lunch all had something to say. The war, our war: their youth. They had all taken part in that struggle eighteen years before. But not all of them had fought on the same side. However, none of them seemed as convinced of their reasons, or of their idealised acts of unreason, as they doubtless had been in 1936, when they were convinced enough to risk their lives.
Domingo Dominguín, so Leidson gleaned, had fought with the nationalists. With a Falangist militia. He was wounded early on in the war. Another of the guests, older than Dominguín, a former banderillero who had been a close friend of Dominguín’s family, had fought on the side of the reds. He made affectionate fun of Dominguín and his remote Falangist past. He alluded with gentle mockery to his adventures in the field hospital. All the little nuns had fallen in love with him, said the banderillero, and the impudent monkey had had his way with them right there, at his leisure, lying on his bed of pain.
Everyone laughed and continued drinking.
It seemed to Michael Leidson that, for these men, the passions of the past were no longer a cause of conflict between them. At least not in the same way. Those who had fought with the nationalists – Dominguín, to look no further – seemed profoundly disenchanted. They now seemed more left-wing, more radical even, than those who had sided with the reds, and had a certain propensity to criticise the excesses and the errors of their own side.
It was then, amid the hubbub of crisscrossing conversations, that Domingo Dominguín told the story of that long-ago death.
He spoke without taking his eyes off Hemingway or Leidson. He told them the story above the noise of the other guests’ anecdotes, guffaws and exclamations. He told them about that death because they were outside it, outside the experience. That is, outside the blood of the civil war, on the other side of the memory of that blood. Although still close enough to be able to understand the bloody message from the past – Sterile? Repetitive? Absurdly heroic? Unjust? Necessary?
Hemingway was warming a glass of brandy in his cupped hands, listening intently.
On 18th July 1936, said Domingo Dominguín, on a farm in the province of Toledo, the farm workers, when they heard about the military uprising, had killed one of the owners. The youngest of the brothers. The only liberal in the family, too, according to the villagers. But death does not always choose her intended. Not knowingly at least. That person is simply her intended.
Even though it was the cause of everything, the death itself was the least of it. There were so many deaths at the time. The interesting part came later. Every year, in fact, since the end of the civil war, the family – the widow and the dead man’s brothers – had organised an act of commemoration each 18th July. Not just a mass or something of the sort, but a real, theatrical ceremony of atonement. The farm workers would reenact the murder, that is, they would pretend to reenact it. They would arrive mob-handed, armed with rifles, to kill again, ritually, symbolically, the owner of the farm. Or someone who took his part. A kind of allegorical religious drama, that was what it was like.
The farm workers would plunge back – or would be forced to plunge back – into the memory of that death, that murder, in order to atone for it one more time. Some, the older ones, had perhaps taken part in the original death, however indirectly. Or had witnessed it. Or had been told about it by someone or remembered it personally. The others, the majority, were too young. But each year, they found themselves submerged in that collective memory and made to feel that they were to blame. They were not the murderers of 1936, but the ceremony, in a way, made them accomplices of that death, forcing them to take responsibility for it, to bring it back into the present, to bring it alive again.
A baptism of blood, you might say.
By perpetuating that memory, the farm workers were also perpetuating their condition not only as the vanquished, but also as murderers. Or as the children, relatives, descendants of murderers. They were perpetuating the awful reason for their defeat by commemorating the injustice of that death which treacherously justified their defeat, their reduction to the ranks of the vanquished. In short, that ceremony of atonement – which used to be attended by some of the provincial authorities, civil and ecclesiastical – helped to make sacred the very social order which the farm workers, rashly no doubt – fearfully too, one imagines – had thought they were destroying in 1936 when they murdered the owner of the farm.
No one said anything when Dominguín finished his story. The silence that had been there, in the wings, so to speak, had grown perfect, transparent, dense. Michael Leidson closed his eyes and tried to imagine the landscape, the faces, the ritual of atonement. Hemingway took a long swallow of brandy and muttered something, a single sibilant syllable: ‘Shit.’ Yes, shit, he couldn’t have put it better.
This was two years before, more or less, in El Callejón.
Jorge Semprún was born in Madrid in 1923. His father was a liberal politician who served from 1937 as the Republican government’s ambassador to the Netherlands. After the war, the family went into exile in France and Semprun studied at the Sorbonne. During the Nazi occupation of France, he was active in the Resistance, arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and sent to the Buchenwald camp. Not surprisingly, for Semprún the Civil War and the camps were the events that shaped his life and his writings – a powerful blend of the imagined and the true. ‘I believe ardently that real memory, not historical and documentary memory but living memo
ry will be perpetuated only through literature. Because literature alone is capable of reinventing and regenerating truth. It is an extraordinary weapon...’ This extract is taken from the fine (as yet untranslated into English) 2004 novel Twenty Years and a Day, which refers to the sentence given to political prisoners in Franco’s Spain. A reconstruction of the murder of a landowner by peasants at the outbreak of the war, the book shows the power past events still have over the present. From 1953 to 1962, Semprún, using the pseudonym Federico Sánchez was an important organizer of the clandestine activities of the Communist Party in Spain. He was expelled from the Party in 1964 for his critical views. Semprún died in Paris in 2011, buried in a Republican flag.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to the translators – Peter Bush, Nick Caistor, Margaret Jull Costa and Wisiek Powaga – who gave me both invaluable advice on previously untranslated material on the Civil War and their excellent translations. To Sebastiaan Faber, Civil War historian, for generously sharing his time and knowledge. To the members of the IBMT (International Brigade Memorial Trust) who on trips to Spain were a rich source of insights. To John Davey, for his perfect blend of editorial support and criticism. To all those at Serpentₑs Tail and Profile who have made this book – Ruthie Petrie, Hannah Westland, Nick Sheerin, Peter Dyer, Sue Lamble, Ian Paten and Valentina Zanca. To Caroline Pretty for her heroic work in tracking down the rights holders. And to Sarah, Carla and Oscar, who, once again, helped me see the relevance of the past to the present.
PERMISSIONS
Every endeavour has been made to locate the copyright holders of the texts included here. Please could any copyright holders we were unable to locate get in touch with Serpent’s Tail.
Extract from De Gernika a Guernica: Marcas by Bernardo Atxaga is included by permission of Margarita Perelló.
Max Aub, ‘Enero sin nombre’, Cuentos ciertos © Max Aub, 1955, and Heirs of Max Aub.
‘The Clash’, from The Forging of a Rebel by Arturo Barea © Granta.
‘The Civil War (1936–1939)’, from My Last Breath by Luis Buñuel, published by Jonathan Cape, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited. From My Last Sigh: The Autobiography of Luis Buhuel by Luis Buñuel, translated by Abigail Israel, translation copyright © 1983 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
‘Las Minas de Teruel’ by Pere Calders is included by permission of Edicions 62 S.A. © Heirs of Pere Calders, 1938.
Extract from Soldiers of Salamis © Javier Cercas 2001, English translation © Anne McLean 2003, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Extract from The Sleeping Voice by Dulce Chacon, translated by Nick Caistor, published by Harvill Seeker, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited.
‘The Villages are the Heart of Spain’ by John Dos Passos, from Esquire, 1937, reprinted by permission of Lucy Dos Passos Coggin.
Extract from Ma guerre d’Espagne à moi by Mika Etchebehere © Éditions Denoël, 1975.
‘An Episode from Natural History’, from Things Look Different in the Light by Medardo Fraile, translated by Margaret Jull Costa, published by Pushkin Press.
Extract from Le Fils de la Nuit by Antoine Gimenez, published by L’Insomniaque, 2006.
Extract from The Cypresses Believe in God by Jose Maria Gironella, translated by Harriet de Onis, translation copyright © 1955, copyright renewed 1983 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Extract from Forbidden Territory and Realms of Strife by Juan Goytisolo, reprinted by permission of Verso.
Extract from La Ligne de Force by Pierre Herbart © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1958.
‘Laughter in Madrid’ by Langston Hughes, reprinted by permission of The Nation.
‘Portrait of a Rebel General’, from Spanish Testament by Arthur Koestler, reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop Ltd.
‘To Albacete and the Clearing House’, from A Moment of War by Laurie Lee, reproduced with permission of Penguin Books, and with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of The Partners of the Literary Estate of Laurie Lee, copyright ©The Partners of the Literary Estate of Laurie Lee, 1991.
‘El Traidor’ by Curzio Malaparte, English translation copyright © 2013 by Walter Murch, from The Bird That Swallowed Its Cage, reprinted by permission of Counterpoint.
‘Careless Rapture’, from L’Espoir by André Malraux © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1937.
‘El Maestro’, from El arrepentido by Ana María Matute © Heirs of Ana María Matute, 1967.
‘Second Defeat: 1940 or MS Found in Oblivion’, from Blind Sunflowers by Alberto Mendez © Arcadia Books.
‘Two Memories’, from Looking Back on the Spanish War by George Orwell (Copyright © George Orwell, 1943), reprinted by permission of Bill Hamilton as Literary Executor of the Estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell.
‘Donde se trazan las parejas de jóse Requinto y Nicolás Nicolavich ... ’ by Francisco García Pavón is included by permission of Editorial Destino © Heirs of Francisco García Pavón, 1965.
Extract from Red Spain by Ksawery Pruszyński, reprinted by permission of Maria Boni, Stanislaw Pruszyński and Aleksander Pruszyński.
‘Butterfly’s Tongue’, from Vermeer’s Milkmaid: And Other Stories by Manuel Rivas, published by Harvill Press, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited; copyright © 1995 and 1998 by Manuel Rivas, English translation copyright © 2000 and 2002 by Jonathan Dunne, published in 2008 by The Overlook Press, New York, NY, www.overlookpress.com. All rights reserved.
‘Tarda al cinema’ (‘Movie Matinee’), from Vint-i-dos contes by Mercè Rodoreda © Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
‘We Came for Games’, from Savage Coast by Muriel Rukeyser, copyright © 2013 by the estate of Muriel Rukeyser, reprinted with the permission of ICM and with the permission of the Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of The Feminist Press at the City University of New York www.feministpress.org.
Extract from Uncertain Glory by Joan Sales, reproduced by permission of Quercus Editions Limited, copyright ©Joan Sales 1971, English translation copyright © Peter Bush 2014.
‘Le Mur’, from Le Mur, Jean-Paul Sartre © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1939. Translated by Lloyd Alexander, from The Wall and Other Stories, copyright © 1948 by New Directions Publishing Corp, © 1975 by Lloyd Alexander, reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
‘Antinomy’, from Sicilian Uncles by Leonardo Sciascia, © Leonardo Sciascia Estate. All rights reserved. Handled by The Italian Literary Agency, Milan, Italy. Published in Italy by Adelphi Edizioni, Milano. Reprinted by permission of Granta.
Extract from Veinte años y un dia by Jorge Semprun © Tusquets Editores, 2003.
Extract from The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge, published in English by the New York Review of Books and reprinted by permission of the estate of Victor Serge.
Extract from La fiesta del oso © 2009 by Jordi Soler.
Extract from The Ravine by Nivaria Tejera, reprinted by permission of the State University of New York Press © 2008, State University of New York. All rights reserved.
Extract from Death’s Other Kingdom by Gamel Woolsey, reprinted by permission of Eland Publishing Ltd © Estate of the late Gamel Woolsey 1938.
¡NO PASARÁN!
Pegasus Books, Ltd.
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Copyright © 2016 by Pete Ayrton
First Pegasus Books hardcover edition September 2016
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ISBN: 978-1-68177-216-5
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