There are times when people who don’t believe in God, and thus cannot be expected to knife their fellow men in the name of the Lord, can incur the hatred of believers and fall prey to their lust for murder. This was the situation on our island as the woeful fanatics of the faith mounted their trials of heretics. These were the same men and boys who during Holy Week, garbed in penitent robes and with their hoods pointed devoutly toward Heaven, accompanied the Blessed Sacrament through the town, gazing furtively at the pretty girls on the sidewalks while the ladies standing on the piously decorated balconies competed with one another in coquettish devotion to the Lamb of God. Do those guys with the hoods on really believe in God? Are those boys with the Sacred Heart on their shirts the same ones who have been tossing their Dads and Moms into wells and heaving stones on top? A moot question. Whoever loves God and the Fatherland but is unwilling to strangle Dad and Mom if they are against God and Fatherland — that person is unworthy to go on living beneath God’s benevolent sun. That’s why I am reluctant to judge the murderers of Mallorca. They simply made me uncomfortable.
When we went to Mamú’s house, she was in the company of several Christian Science ladies, and it was the day after Pedro’s visit with us in Génova. She would love to have embraced us both, but her age and her corpulence — the abundance of good food had caused her to gain weight, although her kidneys were in working order — prevented her from doing this. She told us that she had written us notes, sent out emissaries, and mobilized her chauffeur, all to no avail — we were unaccounted for. People on the street where we used to live said, “Those two? They were liquidated on the very first night!”
Mamú went into a panic. She was Jewish! It wasn’t the Spaniards she was afraid of, but the German agents, and… and… She didn’t dare to take a closer look at some of her ladies who, in addition to the swastika, had embroidered the Sacred Heart and the Fasces on their blouses. At the time in question, everyone carried with him his own talisman. Was my episcopal letter from Münster any better? I have long since forgiven these ladies. They loved Jesus, but also Hitler. They were just too feminine to feel otherwise.
In such surroundings, Mamú could not remain safe. I considered her household nanny, who was never devoted to Jesus but all the more fervently devoted to Hitler, as a particularly dangerous kind of domestic company. We urged her: “Mamú, get out of here!”
All the various countries had alerted their consulates. The foreigners were leaving the island in droves. The hotels were either empty or were requisitioned as prisons. Mallorca’s ideal climate was now in the service of the Holy War. There was not a drop of rain, and at all the places where earlier you could see bare-ass foreigners reclining on the beach or swimming, you now saw reclining or floating corpses, equally bare-ass. The banks closed their counters; foreign accounts were frozen. When a man named Vigoleis went to the savings bank to get some emergency cash — it wasn’t much, but it would have sufficed for six months at the Casa Inés — he was told that his money had already been withdrawn for the Holy War, and he was asked if he was perhaps not in favor of the Holy War. Vigoleis replied that he was a German, and a Catholic. The bank manager, whose office he reached by telling this series of lies, shook his hand warmly. Now we were penniless. I didn’t even have the fare for the tram to get me back to Génova, so I went there on foot. I had ceased to exist as a capitalist. Strangely enough, I still didn’t realize that I had no right to go on existing at all.
One look at me, and Beatrice understood right away that we were poor once again. Despite all the various faces that Heaven has granted me, I am unable to pretend. You only have to look at me when I am telling the truth to tell that I really ought to be lying. That’s when I blush. To quote St. Augustine, I am one of those stupid men who never have to take back anything they have spoken.
Bankruptcy! It was our old, familiar domestic affliction, one that we had almost got ourselves accustomed to. We didn’t go to pieces as a result. Worse yet was what I observed in Palma before making the trek back to Génova. I had gone to our old apartment to retrieve a few things. Our avenida was swarming with firearms, and those brandishing them were mostly young kids. The Holy War had evolved into a fracas involving adolescents. Cannons were set in place, and machine guns were aimed at exits and entryways along the entire street. I was halted repeatedly and asked to show my papers. I pulled out my episcopal letter of recommendation, and offered explanations. “Foreigner?” these squirts started asking. Yes, a Catholic from Germany. “Heil Hitler,” they then shouted, and let me pass. Hitler and the Pope were the two-armed General Franco’s great models. No wonder, then, that his pimply-faced minions revered them too. Moreover, the Germans had sent their special General Faupel to Madrid, where he was instructed to hold up Franco by both of his arms — which was apparently necessary. But why was there such a rattling of sabers on this particular street?
Opposite our house stood the Main Headquarters of the Blue Shirts, the Falange. For a brief moment I felt a chill in the seat of my lily-white linen pants, although it was 102 degrees in the shade of this Holy War. But I collected myself and strode quickly and proudly into our house. At the top of the stairs I ran into the woman who lived in the apartment to the right of us next door, to whom we had failed to make the customary initial visit when occupying the place. She ran down toward me several steps, grabbed my arm, and told me to open our blinds on the street side immediately: there were snipers, and closed blinds were a target. She was the wife of a Falange officer. She had informed the Falange boss that the next-door apartment was occupied by a German who had gone off on vacation to the mountains, and that she would guarantee the security of the building. But now, near twelve noon, the deadline was almost up. If by then all the blinds were not open, they would start shooting. There were just a few minutes left. I ran into our apartment, raced to our windows, and threw open the blinds. In the Blue House on the other side of the street they had already set up a machine gun on the top floor. I didn’t like this kind of punctuality. A Spaniard who is ready to shoot today instead of tomorrow — how very odd! I saluted across the street, and the kids saluted back. It was like ships passing in the night.
I packed a few books, took with me the beginning of my translation of Jerome with the intention of continuing this Pascoaes work in Génova, pinned one of my pretentious business cards to the door, turned the lock four times, stuck some clumps of wax here and there as a security measure, and left the menacing neighborhood.
Once a day, in keeping with my sound digestive regularity, I stepped out with newspaper in hand into the Princess’s cactus grove. At the same time, another man, our neighbor the sailor, whose digestion was apparently coordinated with mine, also approached the rows of cactus. This spiky venue, conducive to discreet soul-searching, was large enough to permit visitors to avoid speaking with one another if that was what they wished. But rather than wishing to avoid each other, the two of us sought each other out. The old seadog kept me informed about developments of the insurrection. I combined what he told me with events I witnessed myself, wrote some war reportage and sent my articles to foreign newspapers. To get this done we had to go to the harbor in Palma, where Beatrice made friends with sailors on foreign warships who, for a few cigarettes, agreed to deliver my letters. Evading the censors in this way was a capital offense, but that didn’t prevent us from sending off reports once a week. Apart from my sailor friend, I learned all I needed to know about the crusade against the infidels from a well-placed personage in Palma. To raise the Cross of Christ it takes people who aren’t deterred by thousands of other crosses. On Mallorca, there were plenty of people like that. And I figured that this, too, had to be reported openly.