Fernando Royuela - A Bad End

The presence of Esteruelas in Slim’s holy of holies wasn’t a routine exchange of data, nor was it a mere courtesy visit, on the contrary, it was down to a matter crucial for the future of Spain, or so he then thought, and as later seemed to transpire.

The eagle eyes, attentive ears, or silent lips we’d posted throughout the city over the last months had proved futile when it came to anticipating what was really lurking round the corner. We knew that some of the flats rented out in the area of Lavapiés, in one way or another, acted as a base for that motley, unwelcome rabble, as we saw when the time for the pact came. These activists frequently changed their hideouts, either because they were burnt out or flat-broke and couldn’t pay the running expenses of rent, electricity, and telephone, though expenditure on water was never their problem. Night and their pitch-black habits sometimes reached us in dull, hesitant whispers, and, like a nightmare fading away, their visits left traces of their creeds on walls in the shape of hammers and sickles or letter As corseted in the enclosed circles of anarchism, though someone always recognized and observed them from a street corner, a doorway, or a night watchman’s cubbyhole. We possessed loads of information about places, individuals, and slogans, but everything pointed to the fact that we’d not picked up on something really crucial.

A high-up in the Spanish embassy in Paris had been informed by third parties that Santiago Carrillo, no less, the bête noire of Paracuellos, was planning a secret trip to the Spanish capital. It seemed intolerable that Satan’s most vile offspring should dare set foot in Madrid, and that profanation had to be aborted at any price, if only out of respect for the memory of the dead. If the message from Paris was correct, Santiago Carrillo was preparing a visit in spring. It seemed most likely he would use his presence to reinforce the hidden strength of the clandestine Spanish CP and try to endow it with strategies in keeping with those times that were a-changing, with a view to creating a flexible structure able to bring under its umbrella of influence every other communist groupuscule floating off the beaten track in the barren wastes of Leftyland. Only unity in struggle could guarantee success, and the establishing of a workers’ republic was what they should all be aiming for. Esteruelas believed that the arrest of Carrillo, apart from being a legal obligation and moral duty, would be a hugely efficient symbolic deterrent and would bolster the Regime. On the other hand, if Carrillo managed to stroll freely around the Puerta del Sol and talk to the rabble awaiting him, it would be reported in the international press, echoes would career off the walls of the fatherland, and those same walls would be irrevocably fissured, the credibility of the system would be undermined, and, given the manifest bungling by the police, the scum would seize the streets and provoke the death rattle of forty years of peace like a knife slitting the throat of a whimpering roebuck. “That bastard won’t have the balls to show up in Madrid, but if he does, we’ll catch him for sure. So, One-Eyed, you must keep your eyes wide open and keep you ear to the chatter in the gutter and pick up on all the jabber. Stick your lugholes up that crew’s asses if need be to find out what they’re plotting. Don’t spare any means, and risk your hide more than usual. I’ll be hovering in the background in case you need anything. Any movement, any sign, any comment, however minute, may be of use. The moment you dig something up, let me know. Got that?” Slim excitedly ruffled my mop of hair, as if he were lovingly stroking a cuddly toy and calming his nerves. Esteruelas clapped a couple of times to order Señor Antonio to bring us the bill. “Two hundred and thirty-five,” he mumbled from behind the bar. The inspector extracted from his wallet one of those green one-thousand-peseta bills where the faces of Ferdinand and Isabella occupied a fuzzy area between the excrescence of loot and the excellence of fame and glory, which he placed on the table like a snooty donation, or a tip delivered with contempt. Slim picked it up and handed it to Señor Antonio. “Give the Señor Inspector his change,” he told the old guy in a rather sarcastic tone, emphasizing much to his own amusement his Señor Inspector to upset Esteruelas yet again and show him once and for all that wielding power was about style and not rank. “Keep the change, old man,” Esteruelas insisted, “you’ll need it when you’ve lost the strength to put water in your wine, and as for you, Snow White,” he went on, addressing me, “you watch the witch doesn’t get out of jug and come to return the poisoned apple you handed him. I wouldn’t want to find you beaten to pulp on some street corner. We’ve got far too much scum to see to every day without having it spring up shaped like a dwarf.” Slim stood and looked intrigued, not knowing what that warning was all about, but he said nothing. He simply accompanied Esteruelas to the door, and watched him walk off in the direction of the Plaza de Cascorro, that hero of the fatherland who, selflessly risking his own life, showed how valiant he was by burning Cubans alive with kerosene. It was still raining outside.

The twister of necessity triggered by political instability and the economic crisis attracted to the Trinitarians a mixed fauna of beggars, driven there from different ecosystems of poverty. Out of Christian charity, the nuns welcomed them with shocked horror. They planted mattresses in every nook and cranny of the Mansion, adapted areas set aside for the special activities of the closed order to give shelter to the needy, and with ant-like diligence supplied whatever the institution was lacking. The portions of grub diminished to a thin layer of gruel on the plate, and coexistence soon became unsustainable. The lines of the hungry began to form systematically outside the entrance day after day, several hours before lunchtime, and at night the dearth of cots meant people were packed together at close quarters in intolerably smelly conditions. Despite the effort made by a number of nuns, who took advantage of the situation to try to dislodge Slim from his privileged perch as a resident in perpetuity, neither the availability of his or my quarters was ever threatened, though that didn’t mean we didn’t face real inconvenience at mealtimes. One-Eyed had earned his commodious boudoir in the Trinitarian Mansion by flexing his scrotum, and nothing apart from death would ever snatch that away. Quite frankly, it wasn’t only down to him; Sister Marta was equally keen to see his haven kept secure, though such requirements weren’t that essential, for, as we all know, the tinder of carnal pleasure will spark wherever the land is most parched. Nonetheless, that procession of emaciated souls newly released from jail began to undermine Slim’s authority and credibility in the Mansion in terms of the ragamuffin horde that constituted his original base, and there were mini-confrontations that augured nothing good. We’d enforced a decree of our making, namely that every newcomer should pay a contribution depending on their immediate travel plans: that is, a high amount if they were only en route elsewhere, or a small percentage if they were intending to settle and adopt thievery as their way of making ends meet. We maintained our established criteria and started to demand the usual tithe from the new sewer crop, but results were very disappointing, since they either took no notice or said yes and then didn’t cough up. In the end, precedent began to rule the day, and most people exonerated themselves from any payment; when so many rebel against a set state of affairs, there’s little one can do that doesn’t involve bloodshed.