Antonio Molina - In the Night of Time

But the Paseo del Prado was dark and silent; coming upon it, with its enormous somber trees and classical façades of large columns and granite cornices, was like arriving in another city and another time, a city indifferent to the upheavals of a distant, plebeian future. Ignacio Abel went down the central walk, always alert, looking for a streetcar or taxi. Judith might be in the Atocha Station, in which case he’d have lost any chance of finding her. She also could have left by car. He paused for a moment: perhaps Judith had sought refuge in Philip Van Doren’s house; wouldn’t it be better to retrace his steps and set out for the Gran Vía? Or look for her at the pensión on the Plaza de Santa Ana? The map of Madrid expanded into a labyrinth of possible routes, points of departure. Cars filled with suitcases, their curtains drawn, were leaving on the La Coruña highway and on the road to Burgos, carrying those traveling to their long seigniorial summers in the north, fleeing the city and the nation, many of them knowing with absolute certainty what everyone else was whispering and fearing: something was going to happen, the storm that will make the air crackle with explosions, and no one will know how to predict the moment the deluge will come and sink everything. But no one can imagine what will come or predict the scale of the disaster, not even those who helped unleash it. Now Ignacio Abel was walking toward Atocha, carried along by the inertia of his baseless decision — the express about to leave, the whistle and steam of the locomotive, Judith Biely beautiful and tall on the step in her hat and dress, jumping to the platform as the train starts to move and falling into his arms. His perturbed mind became agitated in a discord of impulses and imaginings: Judith fleeing him and Madrid on this night of brilliant fires and agitated crowds, Adela and his children isolated in the summer house, searching for news in a village where the electricity went off at eleven, radio signals didn’t come in clearly, and the only telephone was in the station; and he clutched Judith’s farewell letter in his trouser pocket, hurrying among the cars driving at top speed through the Plaza de Neptuno, blowing their horns to the rhythm of the shouts of excited people jammed into the Carrera de San Jerónimo in front of the Congress of Deputies, where all the windows were open and lit though the great door remained locked. He didn’t understand what they were shouting, the word every throat repeated. What could be the physical principle that ruled the movements of the crowd, regulated its powerful currents, the overflowing energy of the flood? A group of boys splashed in the water of the Neptune fountain as they climbed the statue to hang a red flag from the trident. Reality broke into implausible images that suddenly became commonplace. Where had the weapons come from that everyone seemed to be brandishing now with an air more festive than war-like, or the luxury automobiles with labor union slogans painted on the sides, driven not by solemn chauffeurs in service caps and uniforms but by young men in unbuttoned shirts or proletarian coveralls, chewing on cigarettes and shouting as they stepped on the accelerator like horsemen launching into a gallop? But walking down the Paseo del Prado was enough to enter darkness and silence again; the faint light of the street lamps revealed the large mass and columns of the museum. He’d walked in this same spot with Judith, among the myrtle hedges and flowerbeds on the lawn, under the gigantic cedars; he’d introduced her to the Botanical Garden, sunk into a darkness fragrant with fertile soil and vegetation behind the high locked gates. Among the gardens on the paseo he saw shadows moving, lit ends of cigarettes. Bargain-priced prostitutes and poor clients looked for corners favorable to the night’s lechery. The wide ogival vault of the station emerged at the end of a dusty esplanade where the unoccupied carousel of a deserted festival turned. Lanterns and little tricolor paper flags, huts with barbaric drawings in strong colors, shooting galleries with girls who looked sadly into the emptiness or applied lipstick to pursed lips, loudspeakers over which bullfight paso dobles and hurdy-gurdy tunes played for no one. A poster announced the wonder of Siamese twins joined at the head and a turtle woman who had hands and feet but no arms or legs. Under the awning of a stand selling drinks, scowling men smoked as they grouped around a radio that broadcast military marches and dance music. The iron-and-glass façade of the station shone like a beacon on the border of the night, and beyond it extended the empty lots and last suburbs of Madrid, the faint lines of lights on the nearby rural horizon. With all their windows lit, the buildings were sheets of black cardboard outlined against the intense navy blue of a night in July.

A streetcar on fire came down Calle de Atocha, trailing a wake of black smoke above the curls of flames and flashes of blue sparks in the electric cables. Another bonfire rose above some houses, a column of smoke lit from inside by the flames devouring the roof of a church. If Judith was taking the train, he couldn’t stop her now: at the top of the station a clock showed ten minutes after ten. But perhaps no trains would leave tonight, or would leave late, trapped by the upheaval in the city. Shouldn’t he take a train too, go back to the village where Adela and his children were waiting, isolated from everything, in the house where the electricity would be turned off soon and candles and kerosene lamps lighted? Too many desires, too many loyalties and urgencies, the disassociated thought of his actions, his consciousness breaking apart like shards of a broken mirror crumbling as he crossed the waiting rooms and walked up and down platforms in the station that didn’t seem affected by the disturbance and disorder in the streets, where the night express trains were moving as indifferently as the carousel’s horses and carriages would go around at the next festival. Well-dressed people looked out the windows of the blue sleeping cars, uniformed employees pushed carts with opulent suitcases, trunks with metal-reinforced corners and stickers from international hotels. The best families in Madrid took the night express to Lisbon. He searched among the people: one by one he looked at the faces at the windows, the ones he saw walking along the illuminated passageways, those he saw through the window of the bar; from a distance he made out a figure with her back turned who for a moment was Judith, and then was a stranger who looked nothing like her. “She hasn’t left yet,” he told himself. “She hasn’t had time, she lost her courage, she hasn’t found a train ticket, if I go home now I’ll find a message from her, the phone will ring and it will be her, daring to call me because she knows I’m alone.” Three men in civilian clothes and armed with rifles came toward him. The metal of a bolt grated and the cold mouth of a barrel pressed against his chest. One of the men wore a military cap pulled down over his forehead. The one whose rifle jabbed at him had a cigarette in his mouth and blinked to keep the smoke out of his eyes. The third had a pistol in the belt worn over a threadbare jacket.

“Come on, papers.”

At first Ignacio Abel didn’t understand: who were these armed men without uniforms, why did they demand his documents so peremptorily? As it happened, he had his national identity card and his UGT card in his wallet.

“A gent with a union card.” They looked at the identification in the light of a lamp: the man holding the rifle kept prodding him with it. Up close, the weapon was an enormous thing, crude, heavy, a log with hardware. It might go off in the hands of this nervous young man, who obviously didn’t handle it with much skill, and the bullet would shatter his chest. He might die right now, without warning, on this summer night, a step away from the well-dressed travelers who looked at their watches, impatient for the train to leave for Lisbon, in an act completely disconnected from the sequence of his life, on a platform in the Atocha Station. He heard shouts and shots nearby; bullets resounded against the metal rafters and a shower of pulverized glass fell from the vault. Called by someone, the three men lost all interest in Ignacio Abel and ran out with the dramatic gestures of film characters, crouching, looking from one side to the other, their weapons in their hands.