Blind Sunflowers (6 page)

‘You can’t send this letter. You’re lucky – you have the chance to write another one.’

‘Who says so?’

‘The army chaplain.’

Apart from ‘My dear brother Luis’ and ‘Remember me, your brother Juan’, everything else had been crossed out, including the phrases where he talked about the cold, his poor health, how kind and gentle their mother had been, or the poplars in the avenues at Miraflores. There was no room for anything human. It was as if they could not permit him to say goodbye.

He went back to the boy with nits, made a joke about his bad handwriting, and went on with his task.

Juan looked down at his hands, which were finding it so difficult to penetrate the lad’s tousled hair. How on earth had they once been capable of precisely tracing the glissando to bring out the spirit of Bach in the music? Chilblains had destroyed their agility. All they were good
for was clutching the nit comb. Even so, he patted the top of the boy’s head affectionately. The lad made no attempt to avoid contact. They started talking again.

The boy was called Eugenio Paz. He was sixteen, and was born in Brunete. His uncle owned the only bar in the village, where his mother served. Despite being the owner’s sister, he treated her like a dog, even though she cooked and cleaned the bar with selfless devotion. She kept it as clean as driven snow! And in a miserable village like that! When war broke out, the youngster waited to see which side his uncle was on, and chose the opposite. That was how he came to swear allegiance to the Republic.

He looked like a boy who would never grow old. There was nothing angular or sharp about his suntanned features, and it was as though the grimy shadows of the prison could not touch him: he seemed immune to all sadness and severity. Soft and round, he was of medium height; when he spoke, he pursed his lips, as if he were already sorry for what he was about to say. Yet this was misleading, because his blue eyes stared straight into the face of whoever he was talking to, and turned even his most banal remarks into hard-hitting truths. At the same time, there was something friendly and gentle about the language he used, peppered as it was with idiomatic expressions and blasphemous euphemisms.

He took part in the war as if he were playing a game, just to stop the opposition winning. He had no ideals, and never thought of why he was taking the stand he had. And, just as in a game, he kept to the rules right to the end, acting as a sniper when Franco’s troops entered Madrid and swept all resistance aside. He harassed the enemy from rooftops so
successfully
that the victors were held in check until the third day of the
glorious
Victory. When he was finally caught, it was not for his sharp-shooting, but because he had broken the curfew imposed by the new authorities, to see his girlfriend. She was waiting for him in a dark doorway in the Salamanca neighbourhood where they had installed their passionate nuptial chamber for frantic, silent couplings.

Even so, he had been happy because for those three days of freedom he had been the one to set the rules, the one who decided who was good and who was bad, he was the one who could judge and acquit, condemn and execute, as part of an overall strategy he believed others had established.

It was only now he was in jail that Eugenio realised all this was called war, and that he, despite his ability to slide down roofs, to jump from building to building, and despite his satisfaction each time he shot an opponent, now had to learn the meaning of defeat. What hurt him most was the fact that his girlfriend was pregnant. ‘She’s such a silly goose, she probably thinks I’ve gone off with someone else…’ Eugenio concluded nostalgically.

Juan realised that in other circumstances he would have felt great affection for the boy. Now it was enough to have him for company. It was a gentle, primitive feeling among all the sticky, slimy emotions of
collective
despair. It was as though Eugenio had lost at football: he could not believe the other team were his enemies. He had lost on this occasion, but he was bound to win the return match. It was all a game of chance, with no thought of revenge or guilt. ‘I’m not a bad loser like that lot.’

The following day, Juan was first on the list. It was so difficult to get hold of a pencil and paper that he had not been able to say goodbye to his brother. This time, death seemed to him to be in too much of a hurry.

He formed a line with those whose names had been called. They were led out into the yard and put in a prison van to take them to Colonel Eymar’s tribunal. All the others were tried before him, and every one of them was condemned to death. When it was his turn, Juan Senra walked meekly into the courtroom. How can you kill a dead man? This thought suddenly gave him a feeling of pride, even though he had never been more defeated.

When he entered the room, he could see that everything was exactly as before: Colonel Eymar sat up on the dais, flanked by Captain Martínez and Second Lieutenant Rioboo. The albino clerk was sitting opposite them at his desk, still colouring in flags. But by the door there was a prematurely aged woman seated on a battered Thonet chair. She was wearing a threadbare astrakhan coat, clasped a large handbag on her lap, and followed his progress across the room with her stern gaze. Juan responded to the clerk’s sharp command by giving his name, rank and number. He stood facing the platform, trying as far as possible to avoid looking as if he were standing to attention. The colonel cut short the reading of the charges against him, and after a brief silence, asked:

‘So you met Miguel Eymar in Porlier jail…’ He made as though to search for something among his papers while waiting for the affirmative
answer, colonel sir. ‘And why do you remember him in particular among all the other prisoners?’

‘Because he was very good at doing conjuring tricks.’

‘Colonel sir!’ boomed Rioboo.

Colonel sir. But at that precise moment the colonel’s eyes were
searching
out somebody else at the far side of the room, and the look on his face was as helpless as that of an abandoned puppy. He raised his eyebrows to no one in particular, then again turned his troubled gaze on Juan Senra.

‘Why was he in jail?’

Juan had known the moment of truth would arrive, and that he would have to answer precisely this question. He felt very weak. It was hard to think straight and ignore his aching body. He knew Miguel Eymar had been arrested for crimes that had nothing to do with the war.

The charges against Eymar were for profiteering from the supply of contaminated medicines that had caused several deaths, armed robbery from military food stores, illegal trafficking of petrol and fuel, and other offences made possible by the chaos of war in a city like Madrid, where all the attention was focused on its defences.

Youngsters were dying in the trenches. Shells were raining down on the city suburbs, while the fear of losing the war and the need to hide that fear were the chief concern of so-called authority.

Miguel Eymar had also committed murder.

‘Because he belonged to the fifth column,’ lied Juan Senra. ‘Colonel sir.’

‘Because he was a hero, you bastard, because he was a hero!’ shrieked Rioboo, hoping to win the tribunal president’s nod of approval. Juan was taken aback at the way the lieutenant’s face had changed. When he was shouting at him, his eyes became bloodshot, but then in a matter of seconds, as he looked askance at Colonel Eymar seeking his approval, his anger dissolved into a look of unctuous submission. But on this occasion, a slight, almost pontifical movement of the hand protruding from its sleeve cut short his subordinate’s effusive gesture. At the same time, the colonel’s eyes were once more seeking someone else’s face at the far end of the room, and stayed gazing there for some time. The colonel’s nostrils
palpitated
as he breathed in and out. Juan could see that the hairs sticking out of them were coated in a thick, sticky substance. Could he be crying?

‘And is that why you killed him?’ the colonel asked at length. As if speaking to no one in particular, Juan Senra said he had only been a
member of the prison nursing corps. He had not arrested Miguel Eymar, had not judged him, and above all had nothing to do with his death, colonel sir.

‘I did talk to him quite often though,’ he added.

This was not true. Juan had a clear memory of who Miguel Eymar was because it was one of those cases that not even the horrors of war could erase. He had murdered a shepherd in the village of Fuencarral in order to steal his lambs and sell them on the black market. But the shepherd’s son, who was little more than a boy, had jabbed his pitchfork into Eymar’s stomach, and almost killed him. Juan Senra had attended him after he had been operated on with all the skill that war gives people who do not want to lose any soldiers. While he was recovering, Miguel Eymar offered to talk if it would save his life. He told them all he knew about the criminal gangs in Madrid, including the one he led, and also gave them
information
that allowed them to arrest many fifth-columnists operating inside the besieged city. After that, they shot him anyway.

‘What did you talk about?’ The question came from the old lady in the threadbare astrakhan coat at the back of the room. Juan turned and saw her approaching him slowly, staring straight at him. She was clutching the bag as if it were a defenceless object she had to protect.

‘For heaven’s sake, Violeta!’ the colonel pleaded. But she insisted.

‘What did you talk about?’

Juan Senra turned towards the president of the tribunal for permission to speak, and waited for a gesture authorising him to do so. The colonel waved his hand briefly. Juan was being tried for treason, but when confronted by the pain of a murderer’s mother, he found himself almost taking her side.

‘I don’t know, a bit of everything,’ he said. ‘About his childhood, his parents… things about the jail. Sometimes we talked about the war.’ These vague generalities led Juan into a long and complicated web of deceit born of this moment of pity, a prolonged lie that quickly became his way of clinging to life.

That shadowy woman, silhouetted against the light filtering in through the window, and still clutching her bag as if to stop it flying away, asked him questions with a severity that was completely unlike the peremptory curtness the judges displayed. She was not there to condemn or acquit, simply to distinguish between true and false. And perhaps to
learn. The questions emerged from her wan, unmoving lips without any trace of anguish or even desire to hear the answers.

Her harsh features and prematurely white hair robbed her of anything resembling a mother’s tenderness. Dressed in black, she looked like a parody of grief posing for the portrait of an avenging angel. And yet there was something about the intensity of her gaze, her lack of interest in anything apart from her son’s memory, the obstinate way that she pursued a lie, that made her seem almost exactly like a grief-stricken mother.

‘He had a burn that he got from a pan of boiling oil when he was a child. Where was it?’

‘On the inside of his right thigh. I know because I had to inject him with painkillers after the operation.’

‘What operation?’

Juan replaced the shepherd’s son’s pitchfork with peritonitis or something similar. By the time he had reached Porlier, Eymar had been well on the way to recovery. Once again, hoping to cast the right spell, Juan Senra sought the magic formula:

‘He was a good patient.’

And sesame! The cave opened. The shadowy woman silhouetted against the daylight like an icon of vengeance stared at him in disbelief. Everyone in the room was silent as she came to a halt between Juan and the albino clerk. When Colonel Eymar tried weakly to protest, with his ‘For goodness’ sake’, his ‘Violeta, please!’ she ignored him: she was far too accustomed to his bogus displays of authority. She wanted to hear about her son, because all she knew was that his name was third on a list of prisoners shot after the most summary of trials. Now she could find out exactly what had happened, and she would probably have
satisfied
her thirst for all the details there and then, had not a strange guttural cry that came out like a sound that does not exist in Spanish but belongs to the language of animals in pain, prevented her from asking any more questions.

She did not come up to Juan, or stretch out her arms towards him, but the two of them were suddenly all alone in the room, without judges or assistants, with no albino clerk, no guards. The light shone full on her face now, but still she remained shadowy. Eventually, she managed to pronounce the words: ‘He was my son.’

The colonel clambered down from the platform and skipped
incongruously
over to his wife’s side. They were more or less the same height, but somehow she seemed to have more substance. Colonel Eymar did his best to seem firm and in control. ‘That’s enough for today.’

Second Lieutenant Rioboo gave the order for the prisoner to be taken away, and the two lackadaisical guards who had brought him there brutally now marshalled him out. They threw him into the cell where all those already condemned to death by Colonel Eymar were waiting. Like
everyone
else, Juan said nothing.

Silence is a space, a cave where we can seek refuge but where we are never really safe. Silence does not end, it’s broken; its basic quality is fragility, and the subtle membrane around it is transparent: everyone can see through it. Juan had to bear the looks of all the others in the
second-floor
cell when to his great surprise he was returned to the place where death still required a rubber stamp.

However, due to the amount of work the victors had to get through that day, he was returned to the cell too late to eat. He picked up his bowl – or the bowl of someone who had been taken to the fourth floor to die – and curled up by the dark wall with his hunger. He tried to cope with his confusion by imagining he was a single thing – anything, but just one thing: an animal, water, a stone, earth, a worm, a teardrop, a coward, a tree, a hero… and fell asleep without having to try to find the reason why he was still alive. Everybody respected his silence. Nobody asked him anything. He conjured up impossible ideas and thought of smells and sounds while another part of his mind was dreaming of shapes and colours. He considered all these sensations as a way of learning how not to be alive. He tried to imagine what language the dead use.