Antonio Molina - In the Night of Time

“It’s almost not a building. It’s a box for holding machinery and controls. It’s not operating yet. Who showed it to you?”

“Phil isn’t going to answer that question,” said Judith. Van Doren gave her a quick smile, a gesture, approving, not without flattery, what she’d said. He was a man who liked above all to know what others didn’t know and to have privileged access to what was unavailable to the rest. Ignacio Abel didn’t like Judith calling him “Phil” again.

“It’s a cubic block and yet looks as if it emerged from the earth, was part of the earth,” Van Doren said. “It’s a fortress but doesn’t seem to weigh too much, this vigorous heart that pumps hot water and heat to the city of knowledge. One wants to knock on that gate in the wall and enter the castle. One sees immediately that you’ve worked with competent engineers. And that aside from your German teachers, you must admire some Scandinavian architects, I would assume. Was it difficult to have your project accepted?”

“Not too bad. It’s a practical construction, so no one pays much attention to it. There was no need to add volutes or Plateresque eaves or to imitate El Escorial.”

“A terrible building, don’t you agree? Compatriots of yours who are very proud of it took me to see it last week. It was like entering a sinister set for Don Carlo. One feels the weight of the granite as if it were the hand of Philip the Second in an iron glove. Or perhaps the hand of the statue of the Commendatore in Don Giovanni. ”

Van Doren burst into laughter, looking for Judith’s complicity, then turned to Abel, completely changing his tone.

“Are you a Communist?”

“Why do you ask?”

“ Checking up on me, ” Judith said quietly in English, visibly irritated. She stood and went to the window, uncomfortable because of what seemed to be the beginning of an interrogation for which she perhaps felt partially responsible.

“Some of your classmates and professors at the Bauhaus were. And I think you’re a man who likes to get things done. Who has practical sense and at the same time a utopian imagination.”

“Do you have to be a Communist for that?”

“Communist or Fascist, I’m afraid. You have to love big projects and immediate, effective action, and have no patience for empty talk, for delays. In Moscow or Berlin your University City would be finished by now. Even in Rome.”

“But probably it would make no sense.” Ignacio Abel was aware of Judith’s gaze and attention. “Unless it was like a barracks or a reeducation camp.”

“Don’t repeat propagandistic vulgarities that are unworthy of you. German science is the best in the world.”

“It won’t be for very long.”

“Now you’re talking like a Communist.”

“Are you saying you have to be a Communist to be against Hitler?” Judith Biely said. She was standing by the window, angry, serious, agitated. Van Doren looked at her, not responding. The one he stared at intently was Ignacio Abel, who spoke without raising his voice, with the instinctive diffidence he felt when he expressed political opinions.

“I’m a Socialist.”

“Is there any difference?”

“When the Communists came to power in Russia, they sent the Socialists to prison.”

“The Socialists shot Rosa Luxemburg in Germany in 1919,” Judith said. The discussion produced a somewhat histrionic comic effect in Van Doren.

“And when the Fascists or the Nazis win, Communists and Socialists will end up together in the same prisons, after having fought so much with one another. You cannot deny there’s a certain humor in that.”

“I hope that doesn’t happen in my country, and we’ll inaugurate University City on time with no need for a Fascist or Communist coup.” Ignacio Abel would have liked to end the conversation and leave, but if he left now, when would he see Judith again?

“I like your enthusiasm, Ignacio, if you’ll permit me to use your first name. I’ve heard you ended your lecture eloquently, with a revolutionary declaration. Judith didn’t tell me this, don’t blame her. I’d be delighted if you called me Phil and if we used informal address with each other, though I know we just met and Spain is a more formal place than America. I like it that you don’t seem to care about staying on the margins of the great modern currents, politically speaking.”

“They seem horribly primitive to me.”

“I visited the Soviet Union two years ago, and I’ve traveled extensively through Germany and Italy. I believe I’m a person without prejudices. An American open to the new things the world can offer. An innocent abroad, as Mark Twain, one of the great travelers of my country, put it. We’re a new nation compared to you Europeans. We feel sympathy for everything that’s a valiant break with the past. That’s how we were born, breaking with old Europe, putting an end to kings and archbishops.”

“We did that in Spain just four years ago.”

“And with what results? What have you brought to completion in this time? I drive through the country and once I leave Madrid I see only miserable villages. Skinny peasants on burros, goatherds, barefoot children, women sitting in the sun picking lice out of each other’s hair.”

“You’re exaggerating, Phil,” Judith said. “Señor Abel’s feelings may be hurt. You’re talking about his country.”

“About a part of it,” Ignacio Abel said quietly, furious with himself for not leaving, for continuing to listen.

“You waste your energy on parliamentary battles, on speeches, on changes of government. You say you’re a Socialist, but inside your own party you’re fighting! Are you a Socialist in favor of the parliamentary system or a participant in the uprising last year to bring the Soviet revolution to Spain? I had the pleasure of meeting your coreligionist Don Julián Besteiro last year at a diplomatic dinner, and he seemed a perfect gentleman, but I also thought he was living in the clouds. Forgive me for speaking frankly: part of my work entails looking for information. We have a good deal of money invested in your country and wouldn’t like to lose it. We want to know whether it’s advisable for us to continue working and investing money here, or would it be more prudent to leave. Is it true that new elections will be held soon? I arrived in Madrid last month and the papers were full of photographs of the new government. Now I’ve read that a crisis has been announced and the government will change. Look at what Germany has accomplished in the same time. Look at the highways, the expansion of industry, the millions of new jobs. And it isn’t a question of racial differences, of efficient Aryans and lazy Latins, as some people believe. Look at what Italy has become in ten years. Have you seen the highways, the new railroad stations, the strength of the army? I also don’t have ideological prejudices, my dear Judith — it’s simply a practical question. In the same way I admire the formidable advances of the Soviet five-year plans. I’ve seen the factories with my own eyes, the blast furnaces, the collective farms plowed with tractors. Ten, fifteen years ago, the countryside was more miserable and backward in Russia than in Spain. Just two years ago Germany was a humiliated nation. Now once again it’s the leading power in Europe. In spite of the terrible, unjust sanctions the Allies imposed on it, especially the French, who wouldn’t be so resented if they were not also incompetent and corrupt—”

“And the price doesn’t matter?”

“Don’t the democracies pay a horrifying price as well? Millions of men without work in my country, in England, in France. The breakdown of the Third Republic. Children with swollen bellies and eyes covered with flies right here on the outskirts of Madrid. Even our president has had to imitate the gigantic public works projects of Germany and Italy, the planning of the Soviet government.”