II
Letter from Mademoiselle Lenormand
,
*
fortune-teller,
to Dolores Ibarruri, revolutionary
My cards portray ladies in sumptuous brocades, coffers, castles, and graceful dancing skeletons, not at all macabre and well suited to predict triumph and death to delicate princes and hot-tempered emperors. I do not know why they are asking me to read the story of your life, which has not yet begun and which, given the many years that separate it from this present time, I discern only through broad, perhaps deceptive, rents in the veil. Perhaps it is because, despite your humble birth, something in your destiny does partake of the nature of monarchs and lords: that profound sadness, like a fatal disease, of those who have the power to decide the fate of others, to dispose of men and women and to move, albeit for a noble end, poor human lives across the chessboard of destiny.
You will be born in the heart of Spain, in a village whose name is unclear to me, veiled in black gritty dust. Your father will plunge into the dark every morning at dawn, reappearing in the dead of night, heavy with filth and fatigue, to sleep like a rock in a bed near your own. Encased in the shell of her black dress, your mother will be silent and pious, terrified of what the future may bring. They will call you Dolores, out of Christian reverence, not realising that it foreshadows the nature of your life.
Your childhood will be utterly empty, I can see that clearly. You will not even wish for a doll, since never having seen one you will be unable to imagine such a thing, but simply cherish a vague longing for some kind of human shape onto which to transfer your childhood terrors. Your mother, poor ignorant woman, doesn’t know how to stitch together a doll, doesn’t realise that children need games, only that what they most need is food.
You will grow up with the righteous anger of the poor when they refuse to become resigned. You will speak to those the powerful think of as dirt and you will teach them not to become like your mother. You will kindle hope in them, and they will follow you. For how could the poor live without hope?
You will suffer the threats of judges, the beatings of the police, the coarseness of prison guards, the contempt of servants. But you will be beautiful, impetuous, fearless, blazing with scorn. They will call you ‘La Pasionaria,’ because of the fire that burns in your heart.
Then I see war. You will organise your people: on your side you will have the lowly and those who believe that men can be redeemed, and that will be your banner. You will even fight ideals similar to your own, because you consider them less perfect. And meanwhile the real enemy will defeat you. You will experience flight, exile, one hiding place after another. You will live on silence and scraps of bread, and at sunset the long straight roads will point to the horizons of lands as alien to you as those you are fleeing. Haylofts and stables, ditches, unknown comrades, people’s compassion — these will be your shelter.
You are dark-haired and dark-eyed, a woman of the South, accustomed to blond, sun-drenched landscapes dotted here and there with the white of Don Quixote’s windmills. You will find refuge in the great plains of the East, where the deep winter cold cracks both earth and hearts. Your voice has a resonant Latin cadence with syllables ringing like the clapping of hands: you speak a language made for guitars, for festivals in orange groves, for challenges in the arena where brave, stupid men grapple with the beast. The tongue of the steppes will sound barbaric, but you will have to use it and forget your own. They will give you a medal; every year, in early May, you will sit on a platform beside taciturn men, likewise wearing medals, to watch soldiers in dress uniform file by below, while the wind spreads the red of the flags and the thundering notes of martial anthems played by machines. You will be a veteran with a flat — reward in bricks and mortar for your heroism.
War again. Some are destined to witness death and destruction: you are one of them. In a city that will come to be called Stalingrad, death will snatch away the son you bore, the one real solace of your existence. My God, how quickly the years fly by in my cards, in your regrets! Only yesterday he was a child, and now he’s a soldier already, and dead. You will be the heroic mother of a hero; your breast will bear another medal. The war is over now. Moscow. I see stealthy footsteps crossing the snow; a pure white blanket tries in vain to blur my cards; I sense the funereal gloom that pervades the city. At the carriage stops everyone stares at the ground to avoid meeting their neighbours’ eyes.
And you too will be cautious, coming home of an evening, for this is a time of suspicion. At night you will wake with a start, soaked in sweat, unsure even of your own loyalty, since the worst heresy is to believe oneself in possession of the truth, and pride has brought down many. You will search your conscience long and hard. And where have your old comrades gone meanwhile? Vanished, all of them. You will toss and turn in your bed, the sheets will be thorns. Outside it is bitterly cold; how can the pillow burn so fiercely?
‘All traitors?’
‘Every one.’
‘Even Francisco who laughed like a child and sang the romancero?’
‘Even Francisco.’
‘Even El Campesino who wept with you over your dead?’
Yes, even El Campesino — he’s cleaning Moscow’s toilets now. And your short sleep will already be over. You are sitting on your bed, eyes fixed on the opposite wall, staring into the shadows (you always leave a night-light on — you can’t bear the darkness). But what else can you do? South America is too far away, and besides, they won’t let La Pasionaria leave the friendly confines of Russia.
So you decide you had better cling to your ideals, make of them an even stronger faith, stronger and stronger and stronger still. And then after all, time is passing. Slowly, very slowly, but all things do pass. Men pass away, and suffering, and disasters. You too will almost be ready to pass away, and that will be a source of subtle, secret comfort. The meagre bun of your hair will turn white with age and grief. Your face will be dry, ascetic, with two deep hollows. Then your king will die too. You will take your place beside the coffin in the middle of the square, you will stay there day and night, always wholly yourself, silent, inflexible, your eyes always open, while a huge crowd files mutely by the embalmed corpse. Priestly, statuesque, carved in flint — ‘That is La Pasionaria,’ people will think when they see you, and here and there a father will point you out to his son. While all the time, to stop yourself giving way to the panic and longing which have carved out tunnels in your soul, the hands in your lap will be twisting and twisting your handkerchief, until you tie it into a knot (how strange, why are you stroking that little round wad?). And in your mind you see a room that time has borne away, a bare iron bed and a tiny Dolores, frightened and sick, with feverish eyes, calling plaintively, ‘Mamaita, el jugete. Mamaita, por favor, el jugete.’ And your mother gets up from her chair and makes you something like a doll, knotting together the corners of her brown handkerchief.