Antonio Molina - In the Night of Time

Ignacio Abel didn’t see the changes, subtle at first, and not only in matters of wardrobe. His brother-in-law’s explanations, vague as always, were beginning to have a political tinge, an element of hysteria. The same people controlled everything in Spain. To accomplish anything, one had to submit to the political directives of a few intellectuals who meddled in magazines, newspapers, and the theater, and the teaching in university lecture halls was so dominated by Soviet agitators that classes were not worth attending. And women were renouncing their femininity. Some went to the university in berets and mannish jackets, and argued louder than men, never taking the cigarette out of their mouth. How long would it be before they shouted, “Children yes, husbands no,” the way they did in Russia? Once again, Víctor fell victim to his own idealism, unaware of the price he would have to pay if he fully embraced the ideas he was preaching, the doors that were already closing because of his life decisions. Disillusioned by the hostility he found in literary cliques, he’d stopped frequenting the gatherings in Altolaguirre’s printing house or those refined Sunday teas at the home of María y Araceli Zambrano, increasingly attended by suspicious-looking people. Others wanted it both ways: he gave himself body and soul to what he believed, especially since going to the founding meeting of the Falange at the Teatro de la Comedia, overwhelmed by the eloquence and gallantry of José Antonio Primo de Rivera. That man didn’t talk like a politician, he talked like a poet. Nations in their moments of crisis were moved not by political leaders but by poets and visionaries. That his brother-in-law sometimes appeared in a blue shirt seemed as inconsequential to Ignacio Abel as his former enthusiasms for the black cape and wild hair of a bohemian and the absurd workers’ coveralls worn by the young university gentlemen of La Barraca. The political manifestoes he now left behind after his visits were as florid and vacuous as the literary magazines he’d read with the same devotion a few years back. He stopped wearing rings on his fingers and reclining on the sofa smoking cigarettes. Now he’d become expert in motorcycles — as soon as he had a steady job he’d begin saving to buy one — and he brought his nephew Miguel photographs of soccer players and cycling stars, talking to him of sports about which he suddenly knew everything. He walked now striking his heels harder on the floor and combed his hair straight back, revealing the bony structure of his skull and the progress of the hair loss he inherited from his mother’s family, the bald Salcedo heads immortalized in oil portraits and daguerreotypes for over a century. He began to laugh in sonorous guffaws, to shake hands in a virile fashion, obliquely curving his palm downward. He sat at the table with his shirtsleeves rolled up, wielding his knife and fork with a soldier’s severity, forearms darker now, tanned by outdoor exercise, by the marches and sham military maneuvers he attended on Sundays in the Sierra, to which he promised Miguel he’d take him sometime, without his father knowing, he said, lowering his voice in a conspiratorial tone. When he came in and walked along the hallway the others could hear the heels of his boots resounding and smell the oiled leather. The children got up from the table without asking permission to run to greet him, and Adela got up too and followed them, containing the joy awakened in her by the surprise appearance of her brother, overcoming the silent censure of Ignacio Abel, who remained alone at the dining room table with the dishes served and the soup growing cold. Among the privileges of a brother was appearing unannounced at his sister’s house.

“Brother-in-law, you don’t need to pretend. I know you don’t like my ideas.”

“What ideas? It’s uniforms, isn’t it? Uniforms are more important than ideas, considering the love all of you have for them.”

“Who are ‘all of you,’ may I ask?”

“All of you. Red shirts, blue shirts, brown shirts, black shirts. Aren’t there some in Cataluña who wear green shirts? The golden age of the tailoring industry. Did you people make a pact with the Communists so they’d wear the light blue shirts and you’d wear the darker ones? Not to mention the boots, the leather straps, the neckerchiefs, the parades marching in step, the flags.”

“Papá, the uniforms are pretty.”

“You be quiet, girl, when adults are speaking. Do you play at wearing uniforms now in the schoolyard? Do you play at singing anthems and attacking one another with clubs and sticks when you meet on the street?”

“Ignacio, that’s no way to speak to your daughter.”

“You have to be retarded to put on a uniform for fun, for theater. To play at armies.”

“Brother-in-law, don’t say that, we’ll get angry.”

“I’ve said it and don’t take it back.”

“I’ll bet when you see the Socialist Pioneers marching down Calle de Argüelles on Sunday when you come back from the Sierra, you’re not quite so irritated.”

“I feel exactly the same shame. The same revulsion. Everyone the same, marching in time, clenching their fists, clenching their teeth. I don’t care about the color of the shirt. I don’t like children praying like parrots with their hands together, and I don’t like raising fists and singing ‘The Internationale’ in the same tone you’d use for ‘With Flowers for Mary.’ Decent people don’t hide behind a uniformed crowd.”

“When you get like this, it’s better to leave you alone.”

Adela, who feared his silence so much, was more frightened now of his cold rage, spoken with a conscious effort not to raise his voice and not to look in anyone’s eyes.

“I don’t think that’s a bad idea.”

“It’s a matter of generations, Adela.” The esthete suddenly became philosophical, speaking with an unfamiliar tone of equanimity, repeating the verbal food that nourished him. “Your husband’s a very intelligent man but he’s from another day. I know that and pay no attention. You have to be young to keep up with a time that struggles to be young, as José Antonio always says. You’re right about one thing, Ignacio, and it’s that ideas change just like clothes. There are people who still wear an old-fashioned frock coat, a beard, high shoes, a pince-nez. They’re still in the days of the horse and carriage and don’t know we’re in the age of the automobile and the airplane. I don’t blame you, you’re from a different time. We’re in the twentieth century—”

“Extraordinary.” Ignacio Abel stood, sending away with an authoritarian gesture the maid who was carrying in the dessert tray. “Now it’ll turn out I’m old-fashioned and you’re progressive. This is extraordinary.”

“Old-fashioned or progressive, left or right, they’re all anachronistic concepts, brother-in-law. You’re either with youth or with age, with what’s born or what dies, with strength or with weakness.”

“Uniforms are a fairly old-fashioned style.”

“What’s old are uniforms with decorations and crests, the ones used to indicate the privileges of powerful men! Now our uniform stresses equality, over and above individualistic stupidities and effeminacies. The worker’s shirt, the loose, practical clothing of the athlete, the pride of everyone beating with the same heart!”

“And the pistols?”

“To defend ourselves, brother-in-law, because we’d be peaceful people if they hadn’t declared war on us. We salute with an open hand, not with a clenched fist. An open hand for everyone, because we don’t believe in parties or classes. The boys who’d go out to sell our newspapers were shot down by the Communists until we learned to shoot too. This degenerate government attacks our headquarters and locks up Falangists while it lets the red militias do whatever they please.”