The Carpenter's Pencil Read online

  Doctor Da Barca had a clean wound. The bullet had come out the back of his neck without affecting any vital organ. “He’s lost a lot of blood,” said Doctor Soláns, “but with a bit of luck he’ll heal.”

  “Mother of God! It makes me want to believe in a miracle, a message. Even in hell there are certain rules,” the prison chaplain remarked. “Wait until the court-martial. Then they can shoot him as God intended.”

  The conversation was being held in the governor’s office. The governor was equally ill at ease, “I don’t know what’s going on at the top, but they’re very anxious. They think this Doctor Da Barca should have been dead some time ago, when the Movement started. They don’t want him being brought to trial. It would seem he has dual nationality and the whole thing could get quite out of hand.”

  He approached the office window. In the distance, near Hercules Tower, a stonemason was chiselling stone crosses. “In confidence, Father, I shall tell you what I know. They don’t care how it’s done, they want him out of the picture. Incidentally, he has a girlfriend, quite lovely to look at. A real beauty, believe me. Still. The dead who don’t die are difficult to deal with.”

  “The man’s alive,” said Doctor Soláns with strange resolve. “I took an oath and I plan to keep it. His health now depends on me.”

  During the days it took for him to recover, Doctor Soláns remained on duty in the infirmary. At night, he would lock the door from the inside. When Doctor Da Barca was able to speak, they discovered some common ground: Doctor Nóvoa Santos’s General Pathology.

  “By the way, Father,” the governor said, now that they were on more familiar terms, “what do the two of you think about Dombodán, the one they call The Kid?”

  “Think, why?” said the priest.

  “He’s been sentenced to death. But we all know he’s just a bit retarded. The village idiot.”

  10

  IN PRISON, THE BEST SIGN OF FRIENDSHIP WAS HELPING someone to delouse. As a mother would help her child.

  Soap was impossible to get hold of and clothes were washed using only water, in very short supply. It took a patient hand to remove the parasites and nits. The second most abundant fauna in jail were rats. Tame rats. At night, they scoured the bulges of dreams on the ground. What on earth did they eat? “Dreams,” Doctor Da Barca would say. “They nibble at our dreams. Rats feed equally off the underworld and the overworld.”

  The prison also had a cricket, which Dombodán had found in the courtyard. He had made a small house for it out of cardboard, with the door always open. It would sing day and night on the table in the infirmary.

  When he got better, Doctor Da Barca was court-martialled and sentenced to death. He was considered to be one of the leaders of the Frente Popular, a political coalition that was “anti-Spain”, part of the propaganda apparatus that favoured the Statute of Autonomy for Galicia, of “separatist” tendency, and one of the brains behind the “revolutionary committee” that organized the resistance to the “glorious Movement” of 1936.

  For months, those who had recently come to power were deadlocked. News of Doctor Da Barca’s case had spread abroad and an international campaign was under way for him to be granted a reprieve. The insurgents were by no means sensitive to such appeals, but in this case there was a factor that made it difficult to carry out the sentence. Since the defendant had been born in Cuba, he had dual nationality. The Cuban government was an ally of Franco, but the press there were asking for clemency in conspicuous headlines. Even the more conservative sectors were moved by the story of that man who had escaped the clutches of death with miraculous stubbornness. In the long wait, as if secret radio waves were crossing the Atlantic, the news reports peeled off details from the trial, underlining the elegance of the young physician as against a tribunal of men in arms. The version most frequently given claimed he had ended his speech with verses that had shaken the courtroom.

  This is Spain! She is stunned and badly treated

  under the brutal weight of her misfortune.

  In a well-intentioned but probably apocryphal brush stroke, given the colourful propensity for which the author of the report was famous, the doctor was even credited with a fitting invocation to José Martí to complement his plea.

  No thistle or nettle grows

  for the cruel man who would wrest

  the heart from inside my chest:

  For him I grow a white rose.

  “It was said later on he’d recited some verses and been interrupted sabre in hand, but I was there and it wasn’t like that,” Herbal told Maria da Visitação. “Doctor Da Barca didn’t recite any verses. Standing up, he spoke the whole time in a slow, deliberate tone of voice, as if restraining an eager child, which made the tribunal feel awkward right from the start. He’d only been given permission to speak as a formality. The members of the tribunal had one foot out of the hall. He began with some comments about justice which I’d say he was making up, but you could get the gist. And then he spoke about lemons and Dombodán. Dombodán was a big lad, good as bread and just a little bit retarded, one of those we call the innocents hereabouts. He was arrested with some miners from Lousame on their way to defend Coruña with dynamite. He’d joined them on the lorry and they’d let him, because Dombodán would always follow the miners wherever they went, like a mascot. He was waiting in chapel to be executed. He didn’t even understand that he was about to be killed. Doctor Da Barca didn’t say a word about himself, and I think that’s what annoyed the tribunal the most. That and the fact it was lunchtime.”

  “Gentlemen of the tribunal,” Doctor Da Barca had said, “justice belongs to the field of the soul’s forces. Hence it can appear in the most unlikely places. If you call for it, it will come. It may have a bandage over its eyes, but it will be able to listen. We cannot know for certain where it has come from, like something preceding judges, the accused and the written laws themselves.” “Get to the point,” the presiding judge said with a note of severity, “this is not an Athenaeum.” “Of course, sir. At the time of the great sea voyages, the primary cause of mortality was scurvy, more than shipwrecks and naval warfare. Hence it became known as ‘this foul and fatal mischief’. On long journeys, only twenty out of every hundred made it back alive. Halfway through the 18th century, Captain James Cook included a cask of lemon juice among his supplies and discovered that …” “I’m going to withdraw the permission to speak.” “But, sir, this is my testament.” “I don’t think you’re so old that we have to go back to Christopher Columbus.” “All that is needed, gentlemen, to circumvent hardship that has not been pronounced by any tribunal is a small provision of lemons. I have tried through various channels to obtain them, as well as bandages and iodine, given that the infirmary …” “Have you quite finished?” “Sir, as far as I am concerned, modesty aside, I should like to offer an extenuating circumstance. I have used this unexpected break from my captivity for a spot of analysis and have discovered, not without surprise on my part, a psychic anomaly. When it comes to health, even we doctors are unable to pull the wool over our eyes. My case might best be described as a slight but chronic mental handicap, the result possibly of a difficult birth or a poor diet in my childhood. Some people in the same situation, but without the same emotional support, were mistakenly thought of as lunatics and admitted to the asylum at Conxo. I was taken in by the community, who made some room for me, gave me jobs to do that were infinitely childlike, such as going to the fountain for water or to the oven for bread, jobs that might require the driving force hidden beneath my docility, such as carrying wood for the fireplace, stones for a wall and even a calf in my arms. In payment, with subtle wisdom, the people called me an innocent instead of an idiot. The miners considered me their friend. They bought me drinks in the bar, took me to festivities, and I would drink and dance as if I left work alongside them every day. Wherever they went, I would follow. And they never called me an idiot. That, gentlemen of the tribunal, is I, an innocent. Dombodán, The Kid.”
r />   Dombodán’s name echoed like a firework in the belly of the courtroom. The presiding judge rose to his feet, visibly shaken, and ordered Doctor Da Barca to be quiet, laying hand to his sabre. “Enough theatre. The trial is over. Ready for sentencing.” They would willingly have buried him there and then.

  11

  THE INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR ONCE BORE fruit. At the last moment. In response to the government of Cuba’s request, Doctor Da Barca had his death sentence commuted to one of life imprisonment.

  “In that way he had, he had made himself the prison first-aider, so to speak,” Herbal told Maria da Visitação. “He was like one of those healers who cure warts from a distance simply by reciting a couple of verses. Even when he had one foot in the grave and was waiting to be executed, he carried on boosting everyone else’s spirits.”

  The political prisoners functioned as a kind of commune. People who would not talk to each other in the street, who really hated each other, such as Anarchists and Communists, helped each other out inside jail. They even edited an underground newsletter together, which was called Bungalow.

  The old Republicans, some of them veteran Galicianists from the Celtic Cavern and Brotherhoods of the Language, with the air of old knights of the Round Table, who even received Communion during Mass, acted at times as a council of elders to resolve conflicts and disputes between inmates. There were no more outings without trial. The escorts continued to do their dirty work outside, but the military had decided that a certain discipline should also prevail in the cauldrons of hell. The executions by firing squad did not stop, but the briefest of courts martial would be held first.

  With this parallel administration, the prisoners did what they could to improve their situation in jail. They took the initiative on measures of hygiene and the distribution of food. Superimposed on the official timetable was an unwritten calendar, and it was this that effectively governed their daily routines. Tasks were shared out with such organization and efficiency that many ordinary prisoners came to them to ask for help. Behind bars, there was a shadow government, exactly that, a parliament and assembly, and justices of the peace. There was also a school of humanities, a tobacconist’s, a joint fund acting as a mutual savings bank, and a hospital.

  The prisoners’ hospital was Doctor Da Barca.

  “There were other staff in the infirmary,” Herbal told Maria da Visitação, “but he was the one who carried the burden of responsibility. Even the official doctor, Doctor Soláns, would heed his instructions when visiting, as if he were no more than a chance auxiliary. This Soláns fellow would hardly open his mouth. We all knew he was injecting himself with some drug. You could tell he was sickened by the jail, even though he lived on the outside. He never seemed quite there, stunned by wherever in the world he had come to land in a white coat. Doctor Da Barca, however, knew all the prisoners by name and medical history, whether they were political or not, without the need for keeping records. I don’t know how he did it. His head was quicker than an almanac.

  “One day an official from the military health inspectorate appeared in the infirmary. He ordered a patient to be examined in his presence. Doctor Soláns was nervous, as if he felt he was being scrutinized. Doctor Da Barca meanwhile stood back, deliberately asking him for advice and handing him the initiative. Suddenly, as he bent to sit down, the official made a strange gesture and a pistol fell out of his shoulder holster. We were there to keep an eye on a prisoner considered dangerous, Genghis Khan. He had been a boxer and a wrestler, and was a bit mad and would suddenly flip. He had been jailed for unintentionally killing a man during a display of freestyle wrestling. He had meant to give him a fright, that was all. From the start of the fight between Genghis Khan and a wrestler called the Lalín Bull, this little man, who was sitting in the front row, had been shouting it was fixed. ‘It’s a fix! It’s a fix!’ Genghis Khan had blood pouring from his nostrils, he could do that, but still this repulsive little man was not satisfied, as if the spectacle of the wound confirmed his suspicions that the fight was fixed. So then Genghis Khan went berserk. He lifted the Lalín Bull, all twenty stone of him, up in the air and threw him as hard as he could on top of the man shouting that it was a fix, who never felt cheated again.

  “So there we all were, in the infirmary, looking at this pistol like it was some dead rat. And Doctor Da Barca said, calm as can be, ‘My friend, your heart has fallen to the ground.’ Even that big lad we had the handcuffs on, Genghis Khan, was amazed; then he burst out laughing and said, ‘You got it, a bloke with three balls!’ From that moment on he held Doctor Da Barca in such high esteem that he’d walk beside him in the courtyard each day as if he were covering his back and accompany him to the Latin classes given by old Carré from the Brotherhoods of the Language. Genghis Khan started using the funniest turns of phrase. He would say that such and such was no laughing peccata and then, when things weren’t going well, we’re on the recline. And that’s how he got the name Laughing Peccata. He was well over six feet tall, though a bit bow-legged, and wore boots that were open at the front, with his toes sticking out like the roots of an oak.”

  In jail the prisoners also organized an orchestra. There were quite a few musicians, good musicians, the best from the Mariñas, which is where many dances were held under the Republic. Most of them were Anarchists who enjoyed romantic boleros, the melancholy of a luminous bolt of lightning. There were no instruments, but they played using their breath and hands. The trombone, saxophone and trumpet. Everyone reconstructed their instrument in the air. The percussion, however, was authentic. The one called Barbarito could play jazz on a chamber pot. There had been some discussion as to whether to call it the Ritz or Palace Orchestra, but in the end they decided on the name Five-Star. Pepe Sánchez did the singing. He had been arrested along with dozens of other fugitives in the hold of a fishing boat, about to set course for France. Sánchez had been gifted with a voice and, when he sang in the courtyard, the inmates would gaze at the silhouette of the city – the prison was in a dip between the lighthouse and the metropolis – as if to say, “You don’t know what you’re missing.” At times like this, any one of them would have paid to be there. In the sentry box, Herbal laid down his rifle, leant forward on the stone pillow and closed his eyes like the usher at an opera house.

  There was a legend about Pepe Sánchez. On the eve of the 1936 elections, when the victory of the Left was in sight, Galicia was overrun with the so-called Missions. These were outdoor sermons, aimed primarily at the peasant women, who gave the reactionaries most of their votes. Fire-and-brimstone sermons that told of terrible plagues to come. Men and women would fornicate like beasts. The revolutionaries would separate children from their mothers as soon as they were born and educate them in atheism. They would take away their cows without paying a penny. What is more, they would carry Lenin or Bakunin in procession instead of the Virgin Mary or Holy Christ. One of these missions was due to take place in Celas and a group of Anarchists decided to break it up. They drew lots and it fell to Pepe Sánchez. This was the plan: he was to ride in on a donkey, dressed in a Dominican’s habit, and interrupt the sermon in full flow like a man possessed. Pepe was far from sure about the whole idea and started the day with a pint of firewater. When he reached the place, riding the donkey, shouting “Long live Christ the King, down with Manuel Azaña!” and similar phrases, the friars who were due to give the sermon had yet to arrive, on account of some delay. So the crowd thought he was genuine and led him, protesting, towards the makeshift pulpit. Pepe Sánchez had little choice but to say a few words. So he spoke from the heart. He said that no-one in the world was sufficiently good to wield power over anyone else without their consent. That the union between man and woman had to be free, with no rings of any kind other than love and responsibility. That … That … That it’s no crime to steal from a thief, and dumb is the sheep that goes to the wolf for confession. He was a handsome man, and the gale tousling his habit and romantic locks gave him the magnificent air of
a prophet. After the odd initial murmur, there was silence and part of the audience, the young women in particular, began to nod their agreement and view him with devotion. And then Pepe, who was in full swing by now, as if he held the stage at the village fête, sang that bolero he liked so much.

  A girl was so brimming with happy thoughts

  she carved her name in the trunk of a tree.

  The tree was so shaken by what it saw

  it dropped a flower at the little girl’s feet.

  The mission was a success.

  Pepe Sánchez was shot one rainy dawn in the autumn of ’38. The day before, all the words disappeared from the prison. Nothing was left of them but scraps in the seagulls’ scream. The lament of a bolt being drawn. The gasps of the drains. And then Pepe burst into song. He sang the whole night, accompanied from their cells by the musicians of the Five-Star Orchestra on their wind instruments. As he was taken away, with the priest behind murmuring a prayer, he had enough sense of humour to shout along the corridor, “Heaven is ours! I’m sure to get in by the eye of the needle!” He was lithe as a willow, you see.

  “No, there were no volunteers for the firing squad that time,” said Herbal to Maria da Visitação.

  12

  TWICE DOCTOR DA BARCA CONQUERED DEATH. AND twice death almost conquered him, cornering him in the cell and hurling him on to the mattress.

  This occurred when Dombodán and Pepe Sánchez were shot.

  “He was always in high spirits, but twice he went to pieces,” Herbal told Maria da Visitação. “When The Kid and the singer died. Then, he spent various days crashed out on the mattress in a long sleep, as if he had injected himself with a barrel of valerian.”