Birth of Our Power Read online

  Eusebio leaned toward us over the white marble table, his eyes shining. He opened his thick muscular hands and said:

  “How many of us will fall tomorrow! How many! But what’s the difference? What’s the difference!”

  He repeated the same words twice over, at a loss for others. He cracked the joints of his fingers. How to find the words to express the power, the joy, the earnestness, the faith in tomorrow?

  Hardly moving his lips, Andrés said:

  “The people over in Manresa have promised some grenades. Sans, Tarrasa, and Granollérs are ready. Our pals in Tarrasa already have a hundred and forty Brownings. The Committee is negotiating with a junta of infantrymen. But what cowards these republicans are!”

  “So you’re really itching to get yourselves chopped down, eh?” Zilz broke in, lighting another cigarette.

  “What? What?” Eusebio cried. “What are you saying?” He heard well enough, but the hostile notion took a moment to sink in.

  “I said,” Zilz continued, “you can count me out. My skin is worth more than any republic, even a workers’ republic.”

  A heavy silence fell over us. Then Lolita got up stiffly. Her mouth, a bleeding pomegranate, narrows: eyes now nothing but two shadows under the horizontal ivory of her forehead.

  “Let’s go.”

  A few feet away I heard a shuffling of chairs at the table of informers.

  “Good-by, then,” Zilz said. “I’m staying.”

  We went out. Lolita, in front of us, moved rapidly through the crowd, silent, her head—with its stubborn rebel forehead—high. Andrés said what we were all thinking.

  “The ego-anarchist poison. People like that, you see, don’t risk their necks any more except for money.”

  Lejeune’s clothes were cut from British cloth; he wore silk shirts and underwear, and Mitchell felt hats, black or gray according to the season. The air of a well-established businessman, a frequenter of fine restaurants. Thickset in the face, through the shoulders and waist; graying at the temples and in his thick mustache; his eyes a colorless gray as if fatigued, yet alert, never lax. Discreetly, their attentive gaze, without flame or color, scanned every face in a group, every shape around him in a crowd. Lejeune usually sat in cafés in such a way as to take advantage of all the mirrors’ treacherous possibilities while presenting to others only the view of his well-shaved neck. He preferred establishments that had a back exit, and there, certain corners where you could almost disappear from sight, back well into a wall, behind an open newspaper. His insignificant name was known only to a few of us; his past to no one. Certain comrades remembered having called him “Levieux” fifteen years earlier in Paris and London. Then he disappeared. Had he been mixed up with the legendary Jacob of Amiens?3 Had he been a counterfeiter? A convict who had “done” eight years? That’s what people said: he said nothing himself. Insurance broker (doubtless a “front”), owner of a traveling circus, wholesaler of “Parisian goods,” he lived extremely well. The rare guests to his bachelor apartment used to wonder at a testimonial signed by the queen, for philanthropic services to the Red Cross. (“That’s a prize! It really impresses my respectable visitors. It cost me three hundred pesetas; and I came out five hundred ahead of the game by setting up a lottery. And if the wounded in Morocco are being robbed, it’s those señoras who are to blamer) We ran into him once in the cafés accompanied by an incredible little Andalusian, ageless, olive-skinned, skeletal, dressed like a footman in distress. “My secretary,” said Lejeune. (A pause.) “He can neither read nor write, but he’s marvelous at looking after horses.” Jovial, without being vulgar, he enjoyed reading good books.

  We left the Liceo together: the enchantment of the Russian ballets was totally in keeping with the magic of the nights in this city. In a blue paseo (boulevard) overlooking the glowing hearth of the city and the deep blue of the harbor—somewhere, suspended between sea and sky, the narrow linear beacon of a lighthouse scanning the horizon at regular intervals—we took leave of two charming, perfumed young ladies who know nothing of our real identities and would not have understood our language. Bourgeois china dolls—Mercédès the blonde, Concepción the brunette—with tiny graceful hands designed for the piano, tiny souls suited for prattle, tiny bodies (in time lascivious) made for the leisure of villas. These graceful creatures of another human species, strangely confined, imprisoned by money as are so many of our people by poverty, amuse us like figures in a ballet; we can anticipate their gestures, their speech, even their inner moods, like the movements of a dance … They let us hold their hands, and sometimes their waists; they possess, these delicious mannequins, the suppleness of the human animal in its first bloom of youth, and firm breasts sheathed in white silk. When we were alone we returned to our real faces; our real thoughts returned to us.

  Lejeune came to a halt on a street corner. Shiny automobiles slid along the asphalt, leaving a phosphorescent trail behind them—in our eyes.

  “I’ll hit the banks,” he said. “There are bound to be a few days of disorder, you see. So, I’ll hit the banks. My revolution will be over quickly. I don’t believe in theirs. Monarchies, republics, unions—I don’t give a damn; you understand? Get myself killed for a bunch of sanctimonious, honest, syphilitic homo sapiens? I’m not so dumb. You only live once. If you shoot the Jesuits and the generals, I won’t be distressed; but I won’t go out of my way just to watch. I’d much prefer, you see, to walk that exquisite, brainless little Mercédès home again. If you take a beating, a few bastards who escape the firing squads will always find enough at my place to get themselves over the mountains or across the ocean; I’ll write you in at the head of the list. Of course, that won’t stop you from saying afterwards that I’m a coward. But don’t worry about it. Just don’t ask me for more. Nada más! That’s it, old boy.”

  The night dragged on; yet we weren’t the least bit tired. He continued his soliloquy.

  “You see, nothing is real except you for yourself. Me for myself. I am alone, just like you. Close your eyes: the stars disappear. You might love a woman to the point of wanting to kill yourself for her: but you still wouldn’t feel anything when she had a toothache. Alone. Alone. We are all alone. It’s awful when you think of it! And life goes on, old boy, life goes on … I’m getting gray. I’ve got high blood pressure. What do I have to look forward to? Ten years? Fifteen? Not even that many. See, I might almost envy Concepción or Mercédès—or that twenty-year-old bruiser.”

  (A brawny soldier passed by along the street.)

  “Death is nothing; it is life that is ineffable. How extraordinary to be here, to breathe in this coolness, to feel yourself moving, desiring, thinking, and to discover the world all around you! For the past fifteen years I’ve never been separated from this little toy (he opened his palm wide, uncovering a triangular object of blue-black steel). “Seven bullets ready at any time. The last one for me. With that certainty, no one is freer than I. When that decision has been made once and for all, you become strong. And wise. I love life, my friend. And I have only my own life. I only risk it to save it. I only fight for myself.

  “I have three forms of wealth: women, animals, and plants. My happiness is to walk in a garden where the plants are hardy, the flowers opulent. I crave plants that cry out, that bleed, that sing. And palm trees. Have you ever thought what a palm leaf is? It’s strong, supple and firm, full of sap, calm like the stars. There’s life. My happiness is to stroke a horse. You put your hand on his muzzle, pat him gently on the chest, and he looks at you like a friend. You’ll never have a better friend. (Have you ever noticed how the flesh of animals is charged with electricity?) My happiness is women, all women: I don’t even know which give me more pleasure, those I look at or those I take … What do you want me to risk all of that for? Go ahead and fight: I’ll hit the banks and then it’s off to Brazil!”

  3 (1879–1954) The “Robin Hood” of French anarchy, who stole only from the Church, the Military, and the wealthy, and gave most of the proce
eds of his daring exploits to anarchist welfare funds. His specialty was to make monkeys out of magistrates and to escape from prisons (including Devil’s Island). He furnished the model for Maurice Leblanc’s famous character, Arsène Lupin. —Tr.

  FOUR

  Arming

  I HAD NO ANSWER FOR HIM. FAITH, CERTITUDE, ABSURDITY—THEY DON’T need an answer. “All the old poisons of Paris flow through your veins, my friend. Good night.” … Sometimes, under a light gray sky, the Seine brings strangely opulent iridescences to the slick surface of her still, green waters: pearl-gray, purple, rainbow-hued, opalescent blotches that poison her. More than anyone else—since I had seen them kill off the strongest of the strong—I was conscious of certain imponderable poisons, synthetic products which combine bourgeois temptations with a natural love of life, intelligence and energy with rebellion and poverty … Oh happy counterfeiters, carrying your bundles of “merchandise” stuffed in your left pants’ pockets, your right hands resting casually on your Brownings! You surely would never have been willing to fight for the Comité Obrero (Workers’ Committee). But cornered in a dead end with prison the only way out, you died—valiantly—shot down by the cops. That ending was, for you, inevitable … after the squalid fights … the unspeakable anguish under the eye of the shopkeeper whose sharp looks peel the gold off the phony coin … the unavowable murders on the outskirts of town … the double crosses you perpetrated against each other—free men, outsiders, proud of being “neither masters or slaves,” of living according to reason in the cold, clear light of “conscious egotism” … Gangs of rebels, born to adventure, the gray autos carried you off to the guillotine—five thousand francs sewn in your pants’ lining, three clips of ammunition (twenty-one bullets, nicely pointed and explicit), and: “We’re nobody’s fool any more.”—“We no longer believe in anything.”—“We will carve out a new life for ourselves.” But one of the boys, who didn’t believe in anything either, found it even more convenient to make blood money on you and sold you out to fat policemen—cash on the line.

  No, I much preferred the very different truths held by El Chorro, Eusebio, and a few thousand other comrades who, at every hour, were crossing and recrossing the teeming city, running secret errands.

  “Come along,” the Mexican said to me, late one afternoon under a reddening sky. You’re going to have a good laugh.”

  The muscles of his massive, square-chinned face were twitching with imperceptible laughter. In a cloud of red dust, we crossed the Gracia quarter: houses, white or red, doors half-opened onto the extraordinary cool, blue shade inside. Not a soul in sight. In the middle of a sweltering, deserted market place the murmur of a fountain mingled with a monotonous female voice: “A-a-a-i-o …” A young gypsy was squatting in a narrow triangle of shade, rocking her child to sleep. Red earth, shimmering with heat, dull buzzing of glittering green flies around the squatting young woman, copper flesh of a ripe breast, and the heavy sky where great fiery waves were unfolding invisibly.

  Merciful shade gave us back the power of speech. We were climbing a hill.

  “You know what’s really great?” El Chorro said, “is waking up with the birds in the early morning out on the sierra. The mountains are purple, and the night has fled across the forest. You recognize the birds’ songs. You hear the movements of the animals going to drink. The dew sprinkled on the leaves like diamonds. The sun appears and warms without burning …”

  “Will we take the city, El Chorro?”

  “No sé! coño!” (“I haven’t the foggiest notion!”—followed by the foulest obscenity). “What we need is a man, a real man. Five thousand men, ten thousand men without one man, and all is lost. One they will follow and obey; one they can love. One leader, and I’d answer: ‘Yes.’”

  We arrived. “You’ll have a good laugh!” El Chorro cried out once more. He led me toward a tumbledown shack built right against the rock on the side of a hill. Our only vista a vegetable patch down below. My companion slapped his thigh joyfully and, pushing open the swinging door, we entered. A young woman seated before a second door rose to meet us. Through a hole the roof, a wide ray of orange sunlight fell across her skinny brown shoulders. She smiled. We passed through that ray of red gold, that smile, the shadow, another swinging door …

  At first I had trouble making out several squatting forms hovering around a curious low-slung machine. Factory girls. Then I recognized Jurien, lying with his elbows on the ground, a cigarette between his lips. “Salut!—Salut!—Salut!” A huge laugh spread silently across El Chorro’s face in the shadows. He pointed to the young women, workers from a nearby factory (just, by chance, next door to an army barracks) and to the curious machine whose familiar mechanism Jurien was checking:

  “Madre de Dios! Those foxy bitches have stolen a machine gun!”

  “That’s what I was telling you,” he added, his voice dropping. “All we need now is one man.”

  I marveled at the Castilian language, which by calling a man un hombre enabled me to hear une ombre.4

  A taxi stops in a narrow backstreet, in front of an ordinary-looking shop window: Café Valenciano. Two gentlemen in traveling clothes get out, carrying heavy suitcases. A young man wearing a cap is smoking not far off. The driver pulls away slowly.

  A few moments later the door of the little café opens, letting in four workmen in sandals, caps, overalls. “How are you, Vincent?” says one of them to the owner, who is leaning on the bar.

  “Fine, go on in.”

  One by one, they pass into the back room. Andrés greets them, notebook in hand.

  “The San Luis factory,” says the first. “Twenty-seven. Then the Canadiense: eighteen.”

  “Very good.”

  The man from the San Luis factory turns back toward the café and calls out, “Gregorio!”

  Gregorio comes in. In a corner of the room, under a window with muslin curtains, José Miro, tall and wiry, his resolute face set off by black eyebrows and metallic eyes, brusquely opens a suitcase resting on a table and full of the blue-black reflections of somber metal. José’s pale hand plunges into that heap of black steel and pulls out a Browning. He counts out three clips.

  “Take it.”

  Gregorio takes the gun and the three clips from the edge of the table. His chest is constricted with emotion. He can’t think what to say. “Gracias,” he finally murmurs. Andrés, José, and the man from the San Luis factory look at him attentively. But already, the next man is being called in.

  “Benavente! …”

  At times José Miro walks up to a young man, looks him in the eyes, and says: “Every bullet belongs to the Confederation …”

  One man from the Canadiense is missing. Andrés and Miro stare at each other. The leader of the group, suddenly worried, searches his memory.

  “Eighteen, you said.”

  “Si, si. Eighteen.”

  One didn’t show up. One got lost on the way. The street, however, was still safe. The patrón vouched for it. But one weapon remained, useless, at the bottom of an empty suitcase, its bluish reflection mirroring the anxiety on three faces. The specter, as yet unacknowledged, of betrayal was already in the air …

  “My God!” cries the delegate from the Canadiense. “Quiroja didn’t come. His wife is having a baby.”

  “Then give him this,” says Miro, “for the baptism.”

  The empty suitcase clicks shut. The specter disappears. The patrón brings in several glass porros (decanters) filled with a red wine so thick it is almost black …

  Workers stream out through the dazzling city toward their homes in the poor quarters, their steps lightened, shoulders thrown back with a new feeling of power. Their hands never tire of caressing the weapons’ black steel. And waves of pride and strength flow from that steel into their muscular arms, through the spinal column to those precincts of the brain where; by a mysterious chemistry, that essential life force we call the Will is distilled. A man carrying a weapon (especially if he has been disarmed for a lon
g time, and especially in a modern city where possessing a weapon, secret and dangerous, always assumes near-tragic implications) is boosted by the dual awareness of the danger he is carrying and the danger he is running. The gun, restoring his primordial right, places him outside the written law (the law of others). In the busy crowd along the main arteries these workers, who had always felt degraded by the contrast between their sloppy old suits or overalls and bourgeois dress, pass expensive restaurants they never enter, luxurious cafés from which strains of music emanate, shop windows with astonishing displays of objects so beyond their means as to be not even tempting: leathers, silks, chrome, gold, pearls. Here they encounter the women of that other race, sheathed in precious fabrics, their complexions colored by good health and luxury as by a soft inner light. Here they encounter well-fed men with relaxed faces, haughty, superior looks under broad felt hats. The workers caress their Brownings and move about, already like lean wolves creeping unseen into a fat and peaceful flock, contemplating the boldest of assaults.

  Once they enter the slum streets where they feel at home, their exuberance brings them together in talkative groups. Now and then the weapons glisten in the palms of their powerful hands as they feel the virile heft of sleek metal or hold them out nervously at arm’s length. It becomes a kind of game to load and unload them: that is how Juan Bregat of the mechanics’ union killed himself.

  They don’t have much reason to ponder over the value of their lives, these people. Never will they escape from these shacks (which stink from cooking oil and bedbugs), from the factories (where their bodies and brains are drained each day), from the stifling slums, from the swarms of kinds with their dirty, matted, lice-infested hair. Never will the young charms of the novias (fiancées) survive the effects of hunger, the hospital, the dirty wash, the warmed-over meals, the oppression of whitewashed walls. Never, never, never. Only by force will they break out of the closed circle of their fate. And tough luck for those who fall by the wayside (losing nothing of importance anyway). The others, the victors, would open the way of the future. What kind of future? The more thoughtful quote Reclus, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Anselmo Lorenzo with feverish enthusiasm. But what need is there to think so much? Any future would be better than the present.