“I want to work in that library,” said Judith, but Van Doren had no time to listen. He moved his large hands with their pink manicured nails and pushed up the sleeves of his sweater as if impatient to begin work on his imaginary library, to dig the foundation, level the uneven terrain, lay rows of red bricks or blocks carved from the gray stones found in the forest.
“I didn’t invite you here today for you to say yes, to make a commitment to me,” Van Doren said. “You have many things to do, and so do I. Dr. Negrín has told me that this year will be particularly difficult for all of you, because he promised to inaugurate University City next October. Difficult, if you’ll permit me. Almost impossible.”
“Have you visited the construction site?”
Before answering, Van Doren smiled to himself, like someone who hasn’t decided to reveal completely what he knows, or who wants to give the impression that he knows more than he does.
“That’s one of the reasons I came to Madrid in the first place. I’ve visited the site and consulted plans and models. A magnificent project, on a scale that has no equal in Europe, though its execution is slow and perhaps chaotic. I liked your building very much, of course, the one designed exclusively by you. The steam power plant, if I’m not mistaken.”
“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.”