The Shadow of the Cathedral

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

When they exploded bombs in the streets the "companion" Luna was the first to be surprised at the catastrophe, he was also the first to be taken to prison on account of the popularity of his name. Oh! those two years passed in the castle of Montjuich! They had ploughed a deep furrow in Gabriel's memory, a deep wound that could not heal, that made him tremble at the slightest remembrance, disturbing his calm, and making him hot and cold with terror.

The madness of fear had taken possession of society, and all laws and regard to humanity, were trampled under foot to defend it. The justice of former ages, with its violent procedure was resuscitated in full civilisation. The judge was distrusted as being too cultured and scrupulous, and a free hand was given to the petty officers of justice, ordering them to introduce afresh all the old instruments of torture.

In the darkness of the night Gabriel saw his Moorish dungeon lighted up; some men in uniform seized him and dragged him down the staircase to a room where others were waiting with huge cudgels. A young man with a soft voice, in the uniform of a lieutenant, and with the lazy manners of a Creole, questioned him as to the various attempts that had occurred months before down in the town. Gabriel knew nothing, had seen nothing. But all the same these men were your companions; but he, having fixed his eyes on high, contemplating his visions of the future, had never realised that all around him this violence was surging and germinating. His reiterated negative rendered the men furious; the soft voice of the Creole became harsh with anger, and with menaces and blasphemies they all threw themselves upon him, and the cruel hunt of the man round and round the dungeon began, the cudgels falling on his body, beat his head or his legs indifferently, pursuing him into corners, following him as with a desperate bound he reached the opposite wall, opening the way with his bent head, his back resounding like an empty box beneath the blows. Now and then the desperation of pain inflamed the victim, the lamb turned into a wild beast, and before falling to the ground, cowering like a child before superior numbers, he would throw himself on the executioners, tearing them, and trying to bite them. Gabriel kept a button from the lieutenant's uniform which had remained in his fingers after one of these revolts of his weakness.

Afterwards, his tormentors, wearied by the inutility of their violence, left him forgotten in the dungeon. A loaf of bread and some bits of dry salt cod were his only food. Thirst, an infernal thirst, racked his bowels, contracted his throat, and burnt his mouth. At first he called piteously under the door for water, but afterwards he would beg no more, knowing beforehand what the answer would be. It was a calculated torture; they promised him as much water as he wished, after he should have disclosed the names of the guilty, confessing things of which he had no knowledge. Hunger strove in him against thirst, but fearing this latter most, he would throw this salted food into a corner as though it were poison. He was delirious with the delirium of a shipwrecked man tormented with visions of fresh water in the midst of the salt waves. In his nightmare he saw clear and murmuring brooks, great rivers; and seeking freshness for his mouth he would pass his tongue over the filthy walls, finding a certain alleviation in the lime of the whitewash.

The privations and the incarceration disturbed his mind with horrible ravings; often Gabriel was surprised at finding himself on all fours, growling and barking opposite the door without knowing how or why.

His tormentors seemed to forget him; they had other prisoners to look after. The jailors gave him water, but whole months passed without anyone entering his cell. Some nights he would hear vaguely and far off through the greasy walls wailing and sobs in the adjacent dungeons. One morning he was awoke by sounds as of thunder, in spite of a tiny ray of sunlight filtering through his loophole; hearing the jailors in the corridors near, he understood the mystery. They had been shooting some of the prisoners.

Luna received as a happiness this hope of death; he would renounce with pleasure that shadow of a life in a small stone box, tormented by physical pain and the fear of men's ferocity. His stomach, weakened by all these privations, refused for many days, with horrible nausea, to receive the bitter bread and the coppery mess. His want of exercise, the want of air, and the bad and scanty nourishment had made him fall into a mortal anaemia; he coughed continually, suffering great oppression on his chest. The knowledge he had acquired of the human body in his thirst for knowing everything did not admit of his being mistaken; he would die as poor Lucy had died.

After a year and a half of imprisonment he appeared before a council of war, mixed up with a mob of old men, women, and even quite young people, all weakened and broken by imprisonment, with their skin white and thick as chewed paper, and that dazed look in their eyes that comes from solitary confinement. Gabriel hoped he would be executed. When the fiscal came to the name of Luna on the long list he stopped an instant, shooting a ferocious glance at him—this man was among the theorists. It appeared from the declarations of witnesses that he took no direct part in the deeds of violence, and that in his speeches he had always deprecated them; still it must be remembered that he was one of the principal propagandists of anarchism, and that he had delivered speeches in all the workmen's societies frequented by the authors of the attempts.

An elderly captain bent towards another member of the council, speaking in his ear, but Gabriel caught his words:

"It is on these gentlemen who make speeches that we must lay our hand, so that they may be warned not to lecture any more on Tolstoi or Ibsen, or any of those foreign worthies who advocate throwing bombs."