Birth of Our Power (7 page)

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 proceeds 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.

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.”