Reasons of State (24 page)

There was a long pause, charged with menacing possibilities. Then, in a calmer tone:

“Gentlemen, let us get to work.” The secretary opened the meeting by describing what had happened, the exact time, circumstances, etc. Captain Valverde, Chief of the Judicial Police, had already begun his investigations. Because of the inauguration of the Capitol, the presidential guard had yesterday been transferred to the Great Hemicycle, and it was true that the palace itself had had insufficient attention, the key posts being left to soldiers who were inexperienced in such duties. However, no one except the domestic, personal, and confidential staff had entered the building after the changing of the guard.

“Apart from that,” observed the President, “the bomb which exploded here was not one that could have been brought in someone’s pocket. It must have been under the bathtub itself for many hours, with its mechanism set to go off at the appointed time. This wasn’t the work of some amateur using nitrobenzene, gunpowder, or picric acid; the bomb was made by someone who knew his job. The expert says that the smell of bitter almonds, which is still noticeable, is a sign of technical skill.”

These were the possible hypotheses: the RAS (Revolution of Anarchists and Syndicalists), who had for months past been scrawling their initials on the walls of the city with invisible hands; or perhaps Doctor Luis Leoncio Martínez’s supporters might be more active than was realised—they had been agitating lately with some skill, it must be admitted, and gaining followers in the city and provinces; students, possibly, because students always got mixed up in rioting and bloody-mindedness (and why shouldn’t we close the University of San Lucas this very day?); Russian nihilists (“rubbish,” murmured the President); members of Samuel Gompers’
American Federation of Labor (“that’s absurd”) who had recently carried on revolutionary activities in the north of Mexico.

“And then there’s Red Literature,” said the Minister of Education.

“That’s it: Red Literature,” said the others as one man. But the Chief of the Judicial Police saw no relation between that morning’s incident and the circulation of books such as are published by the Biblioteca Barbadillo, called
The Pleasures of the Caesars
, which he had been shown recently, containing reproductions of Roman cameos wherein the Emperor Octavian was to be seen laying hands—and how!—on his daughter Julia, while in another Nero appeared doing things he couldn’t describe here out of respect for the company.

“That’s not what we’re talking about; pornography does no harm to anyone, after all,” said the Minister for Education. “We mean books on anarchism, socialism, communism, workmen’s Internationals, revolution—
Red Books
: that’s what they’re called everywhere.”

“Don’t let’s digress, gentlemen; don’t let’s digress,” said the Chief of Police, somewhat peevishly. The problem was simpler. As everyone knew, certain printed leaflets were in circulation, full of insults against the government, and written in an unmistakably Creole style—calumnies, of course, but the sort of calumny in common use among some sectors of the opposition. Not nihilist, nor anarcho-syndicalist, nor of the “as the gentleman says, but I don’t understand English” description. Our enemies were, quite simply, politicians in disguise, who were trying every way they knew to stir up feelings and overthrow the government. They’ve been watching us, they are all around; and now, with last night’s business, they have declared open war. And now that it was war, we would reply with war, he said, laying his pistol on the table.

“But if there is to be war, we must know where the enemy is,” remarked the President.

“Leave that to me. I know where to begin. I’ve already got some names on my list. I’ll read them if you like …”

“Better not, Captain. I’m quite capable of being too lenient to some. I trust you entirely. Carry on. At once and forcibly. We understand one another.”

“A mistake would be disastrous, however,” put in Peralta.

“
Errare humanum est
,” concluded the Head of State in
Petit Larousse
Latin. And to cheer up his ministers, who were still looking worn out with anxiety and their late night, he sent for some bottles of cognac: “Just this once,” he said, filling a glass.

“You’ve got every justification,” chorused the rest.

The masons and plumbers were beginning to arrive to repair the bathroom, bringing tiles, blow lamps, and tools.

“Anyway, look into this business of Red Literature,” said the Head of State to the captain, but in the tone of someone who doesn’t consider the matter of great importance.

“Don’t worry, Señor. I have people trained for that sort of thing,” replied the other, taking his leave with the praiseworthy haste of someone who is eager to get to work.

“We shall pull in a fine haul of pro-Germans today,” said Peralta.

The people of the capital were treated to a strange and unexpected performance at about two in the afternoon that day. It was the hour when employees went back to their offices, the hour of dessert in restaurants, or of drinking under the awnings of cafés—the Tortoni, the Granja, or the Marquise de Sevigné—installed as a great novelty in imitation of what one saw in Paris, so the streets were full of people. And in these crowded streets there suddenly appeared, preceded by small cars—Fords, naturally—with their sirens screaming,
some Black Marias, like cages on wheels, with fierce-looking policemen standing on the back steps, rifle in hand. It was soon learnt that these sinister vehicles, recently acquired by the government, were being used as substitutes for the earlier prison cars—“bird cages” as they were called—hitherto used to pick up drunks, thieves, and homosexuals. At the same time, unusual activity was noticed among the city police. Motorcycles going to and fro. Sudden appearances, now here, now there, of detectives, quickly spotted as such by their obvious attempts at “not attracting attention,” and dressed in a commerical traveller style mixed with that of Nick Carter, which left no room for doubt. And all the time those sirens went on calling to one another, stridently, disturbingly, from district to district, over the roofs and terraces, causing a panic among the pigeons fluttering between the modern buildings.

“Something’s up,” people said in surprise. “Something’s happening.”

And a great deal was happening, a great deal was in fact happening that day, which was becoming more and more overcast, with warm drizzle falling, hour by hour. At half past two in the afternoon the Vice-Chancellor of the University was explaining in a lecture the nominalism and voluntarism of William of Occam when the police burst into his classroom and took him and all his pupils prisoners for holding a demonstration. Continuing their task of subjugating the Faculty of Humanities, they carried off eight more professors with kicks and shoves towards the new prison cars. Tired of hearing him call upon their century-old rights and autonomy, Captain Valverde threw the Chancellor into the fountain in the central court, along with his mortarboard and gown—attributes he had tried to use to gain the “invaders” respect.

At three o’clock, under orders from Lieutenant Calvo, the chosen expert, the authorities occupied several bookshops
where cheap editions were on sale of such books as
Red Week in Barcelona
(a tract about the anarchist Ferrer),
The Knight of the Red House
,
The Red Lily
,
Red Dawn
(Pîo Baroja),
The Red Virgin
(a biography of Louise Michel),
Le Rouge et le Noir
,
The Scarlet Letter
(by Nathaniel Hawthorne)—all examples, according to the expert, of
red literature
, revolutionary propaganda, to a large extent responsible for such incidents as had happened at the palace last night. The books were thrown into lorries and dispatched on their way to the rubbish incinerator, built a short while before on the outskirts of the town.

“Take
Little Red Riding Hood
while you’re about it,” shouted one of the booksellers, beside himself with rage.

“You’re under arrest, you joker,” said Lieutenant Calvo, handing him over to one of his agents.

Then—it was about five—they began on private houses: police rained from heaven, ran over roofs, jumped onto patios, entered kitchens, broke down doors, crept under beds, searched wardrobes, turned drawers upside down, and opened trunks, while women wept, children screamed, and old women cursed, a patriarch raged from his wheelchair, and a consumptive, near to death, declared that the Head of State was the son of a drunk and that his late wife Doña Hermenegilda, so often described as a saint, had worn herself out accommodating the organ of a young officer of hussars, famous for his exceptional proportions.

So night fell, amidst confused rumours of arrests, detentions, disappearance of “subversive elements,” German spies, and pro-German socialists, yet the pulse of the city’s normal activities seemed unchanged. The advertisements for Vino Mariani, Gyraldose, and Urodonal turned on their lights, bells rang in the cinemas, while—in cafés and bars—people vainly turned the pages of the evening papers, which mentioned everything except what they were looking for. The Black
Marias seemed to be taking a rest from their rounds. As it was a Thursday, the Fire Brigade Band played the march called “Sambre et Meuse,” the ballet from
Samson and Delilah
, and several bullfight
pasodobles
in the bandstand in Central Park. The streets in the red light district—San Isidro, la Chayota, el Mangue, Economia, and San Juan de Letrán—filled with clients. But on the stroke of eleven there was a sudden, violent invasion of brothels, gambling dens, bars, and halls where people danced to violin and guitar. Everyone who couldn’t prove that he was a public employee or a soldier was piled into military lorries—sometimes without his clothes—and carried off to the old Central Prison, whose cells, corridors, and courtyards were already crammed with people.

And when dawn came, Terror reigned in the city. The arrests continued. The Black Marias went their rounds again. But in spite of the terror, when the Mayorala Elmira was cleaning the little library of the Council Chamber that afternoon, she found, behind a copy of Cesar Cantú’s
Universal History
, a suspicious-looking tin of animal crackers, which turned out to be a crude home-made bomb. It was defused in time by one of the palace guards, apprentice to an expert.

“We’ll have to tighten the pressure,” commented Peralta.

With age and the hardening of his arteries, the Head of State’s eyes—he would never wear spectacles, as he didn’t need them for reading—had acquired the strange defect of eliminating the third dimension. He saw things, whether near or far, as flat images without relief, like the stained glass in Gothic windows. So every morning, just as if they were figures in a Gothic window, he looked at the Men of Regulation Colours—this one in blue and black, the next in white and gold, and the third in a buff-coloured tunic—who told him about the work they had carried out the day before, their night spent in police stations and prisons, barracks and
cellars extracting words, names, addresses, and information from people who didn’t want to speak. And their accounts of ducking and racking, hanging and violence, their catalogue of pincers, truncheons, braziers, and even corncobs—these were for women—called up visions from hagiography, the downfall of the damned, illustrations of torture, all transferred to a large stained-glass window opening onto the remote splendour of the Tutelary Volcano. With a “Thank you, gentlemen,” the first stained-glass window broke, eliminating the blues, whites, and yellows of the original image, while in at the other door to take their place in the second window came the Listening and Looking men, the Watchers, the Hearers, the Hypocrites, the masters in maieutics, virtuosos in heuristics, who not only brought information extracted by skill, snatched in flight, half understood, of some guilty remark picked up at a diplomatic reception, a bar counter, in the warmth of a bedroom—they were everywhere, they entered without being seen, Guests of Glass one day, Guests of Stone if more acceptable, insinuating, snooping, often charming—but were in fact Watchers of the Watchful, Observers of the Cunning, recorders of everything invented, plotted, and schemed, even by the collaborators, familiars, and associates of the Head of State himself, thanks to his Exalted Protection. As he listened to these people of his, who had their eyes to the keyhole and their curiosity on the alert, he realised (sometimes with annoyance, sometimes with amusement) what diverse and picturesque transactions were going on behind his back: there was the business of a bridge built over a river that wasn’t shown on any map; the business of the Municipal Library without any books; the business of the stud animals from Normandy that had never crossed the ocean; the business of the toys and alphabets for kindergartens that didn’t exist; the business of the Peasant Women’s Maternity
Homes, to which peasant women naturally never went, since for centuries they had been in the habit of giving birth on a broken stool, pulling on a rope hanging from the ceiling with their husband’s hat on their head so that they should get a boy; the business of the kilometre stones that were still only painted boards; the business of pornographic films sold in Quaker Oats tins; the business of the Chinese Charade (“
jeux des trente-six bêtes
,” as it was called by Baron Drummond, who introduced the Cantonese lottery of numbered animals to America), managed by the brigade of the National Police for the Repression of Illicit Games; the business of Erectyl, a Korean liquor containing mandragora root, the “stallion liana” from Santo Domingo, powdered tortoiseshell and extract of Spanish fly; the business of the slot machines—three bells, three plums, or three cherries gave you the jackpot—owned by the Chief of the Secret Service; the business of birth certificates
ad perpetuam memoriam
for those “
interdits de séjour
” and Frenchmen from Cayenne wanting to become our compatriots; the business of consultations with astrologers, fortune-tellers, palmists, card readers, horoscopes by correspondence, Hindu mystics—forbidden by law—who all had understandings with the Minister of the Interior; the business of the Verascopes of Love, tolerated in fairs and amusement parks, and owned by Captain Valverde; the business of Catalan postcards—less refined than the French, said those in the know—run by Captain Calvo; the business of “Lucky Sheets for Newly-weds” (“
Draps bénis pour jeunes mariés
” [
sic
]), manufactured in the Marais in Paris and designed for the trousseau of every Christian bride.