Fernando Royuela - A Bad End

Francisco Franco Bahamonde, Caudillo de España by the grace of God, was a corpse stricken by phlebitis who only breathed thanks to a ventilator, a paltry scrap of flesh with tubes everywhere and cables hanging from his nostrils like latter-day umbilical cords frantically attaching him to this life in a foiled bid for immortality. While he was dying, One-Eyed and I totted up the proceeds from our thieving and splashed it on a twilight drop of wine or anisette, as the mood took us, and, if that mood was the horny kind, on the ladies, too — never the pricey ones, only the sort who work with the tips of their fingers or the edges of their mouths; after sorting his setup with the nun, One-Eyed was always up for a little body-to-body contact — shady ladies on the Calle Jardines or Montera, frequently beset by gastrointestinal odors and itching with thrush. We were fond of various dirty dives for alcoholic pleasuring, where lovely gobs of wine stained the sawdust crimson; however, the haunt that Slim undoubtedly preferred was La Copa de Herrera, on the Calle Carnero. Señor Antonio, an easygoing old fellow with a gleaming baldpate and built like a farmer, poured us a crystalline anisette, when he was in the mood, one he received from the Sierra Morena in raffia-wrapped glass bottles. After a hard day’s grind, we’d sit in front of the altar of our glasses, and when we felt like it, we’d take the plunge in that bitter alcohol that so loosened One-Eyed’s tongue. While he was drinking, Slim did business with the locals who came there to give him his percentage or trade in tip-offs that he sold on to the highest bidder in the upper echelons. One day, he was tipsier than usual and told me about one of the latter. “Dwarfy, I’ve heard that Franco is dead and gone. They’re only waiting for November 20 to tell the country, so the date coincides with the execution of José Antonio.” Slim belched solemnly. “I’m kept in the know,” he continued mysteriously, “by an important guy in the hierarchy of the Movement who I’m on good terms with, by the name of Esteruelas, and you’ll soon get to know him. We’re going to do a little job for him. I can’t give you any details yet, but it’s a tricky, dangerous business. We’ve got to work out a way to give him what he wants without anyone suspecting what we’re doing. It would be better if I’m not implicated, especially with the storm that’s about to hit us. You can be my messenger boy. Nobody notices you except to avert their gaze or give you alms. You’re ideal for the job.” When I heard that name, my body shivered and shook. Suddenly the memory bubbled up of the way Esteruelas had looked at me when he took Gurruchaga prisoner, and the same nasty scowl he rehearsed years later when he carted handsome Bustamante off to jug, knowing full well he was an innocent man. Slim registered my unease. “Something wrong, dwarfy?” he asked. “Aren’t you interested in what I’ve got to offer?” “Maybe not,” I replied, going cold on him. My attitude seemed to bother him. “If you don’t want to come in on this,” he said threateningly, “you’d better say so loud and clear.” He stared deep into my eyes with the relentless confidence of a man who knows he wields power, as he held out his hand to shake on it. “Are we still comrades?” I replied that we were, simply so I didn’t have to suffer the steely-sharp gaze from his single eye, although at the time I didn’t realize that my survival was at stake. “Great, dwarfy, you’re in; you just see how we’ll disinfect the fatherland against the lice now infesting it. You keep your eyes open, watch what’s happening, and take good note of everything. Difficult times lie ahead, but that’s when the valiant show their mettle. Just do what I tell you, and you’ll have no regrets.” And so I decided to go along with him, at least as long as the fun and games brought me some cash; if not, I’d soon find a way to jump ship. In any case, if the job came from so high up, as One-Eyed had claimed, there’d be no harm in giving it a spin to see if I could get a leg up, even if only for a moment. I swallowed and looked at the wall. They’d just broken off the program on the black-and-white television hanging from La Copa’s ceiling to broadcast the first official bulletin on the terminal condition of the Generalísimo. The headline breaking the news carried a black dot, as if mourning would very soon be in order.

All that mystery and big talk finally boiled down to Esteruelas having ordered One-Eyed to sniff out on street corners the movements of the leftist groups now beginning to spring up from the mud in the sewers and agitate in the shadow of the defining presence of the Spanish Communist Party. I began to understand that much as I got to grips with my spying assignment. Those at the Movement’s headquarters knew only too well that most of these little groups were involved in harmless student intrigue that was of little or no matter, perhaps sponsored by some university teacher who wanted to wreak his revenge on the poor assessment the academic powers-that-be had made of his intellectual capacities; even so, they were obsessed with keeping control and had to be up to speed with every little development. They were anxiously beginning to detect unruly activity in the industrial belt on the city outskirts that was evidently connected to unrest in the dormitory towns most impoverished by unemployment and least favored by the easy life on offer from the now-obsolete benevolent paternalist system. Getafe, Alcorcón, and Móstoles were the champions when it came to poverty, but the communist activities they’d detected amounted to little more than folkloric carnival routines, perhaps initiated on the orders of old moles blinded by cataracts, performances that never went beyond the display of confused insignia and vague banners outside first communions, weddings, and christenings every Sunday in the month of May. In his excessive drive to assert control, Esteruelas couldn’t ignore the fact that the anti-Regime rallies and demos were getting bigger and more frequent in the central areas of the city. He was afraid of street fighting and public disorder; if they weren’t nipped violently in the bud, they might spread virulently throughout Madrid. It was urgent that the poisoned limb be amputated if the body politic were to be saved, and this was now a rotten society where the cry of “freedom” was being vilely puked up, black and sweet as honey and crawling with flies. Via One-Eyed’s thousand eyes, Esteruela could keep his finger on the hidden pulse of society, anticipate movements, detect changes, and stymy agitation. The information Slim had agreed to deliver had to be a daily shot from the front line. The people really responsible for the subversive slogans spattered in acrylic on the façades of public buildings, or the political posters stuck with carpenter’s glue on tiles in metro stations, could immediately be exposed if Slim felt like it, such was his hold over these sordid territories. In exchange for privileges, back-handers, and the proverbial blind eye, Slim had pinpointed informing and betrayal as the most efficient tools of his trade. Anything went, if it led to information that then helped the police brigades to carry out their repression. He ate humble pie and toadied to those who sought his services; however, because he knew how they needed him, when he looked at them, he would curse them, and when he nodded in their direction, he would scorn them. He was a complex individual and, what was worse, an unpredictable one, and though one-eyed, he weighed up everyone else’s weak points to a tee. So in this kind of messianic project to rid the fatherland of undesirables, those of us on his payroll suddenly found ourselves working alongside others who weren’t but had been drafted into his service and were in no position to tell him quietly and politely togo and get lost.