The Anarchist Detective (Max Cámara) by Webster Jason

Author:Webster, Jason [Webster, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-06-05T22:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

HILARIO BARELY MOVED as he spoke, his body still, apart from a slight heaving in his chest when he breathed. Cámara was aware of a change in him, however: something was different; he was seeing a side of his grandfather he’d never known. Something in his eyes: there was the same liveliness about them, but the spark appeared to be tempered, or alloyed.

He wondered about asking him to stop. Remembering past pain might not be the best thing for an elderly man recovering from a stroke. But Hilario wasn’t a man easily dissuaded from anything. And besides, the story wasn’t finished; Cámara wanted to know what had happened. Alicia had handed him back the photo of his great-grandfather, and it rested between his fingers. The irony that Hilario, who always shunned any brooding on the past, insisting always on the need to move forwards, should keep this with him at all times wasn’t lost on him.

Alicia sat forwards with her elbows on her knees, her attention focused entirely on Hilario and his story. The Luger now rested on the low table next to the sofa.

‘Maximiliano was interrogated, and beaten,’ Hilario went on. ‘Immediately after the war many who’d been captured by Franco were simply shot, or done away with in whatever fashion. By this time, however, 1942, there was some semblance of order to the killings, or at least they waited a while before executing them.

‘I didn’t see him, but my mother went every morning to the prison where they held him, taking whatever she could – food, clothes – to help alleviate his captivity. I don’t think any of it reached him, and she probably knew that as well, but it helped – helped her to think she was doing something, and perhaps helped by making the guards who were stealing it all be less violent towards my father.

‘But I know – she told me later – that they’d treated him roughly. A beating only – he was saved from the more vicious tortures that had been devised.

‘Before they even came for him I had decided what I would do if he were found and arrested. Although communists were seen as the main enemy, they were all – anarchists, Republicans, socialists – lumped together as “Reds”. Maximiliano had never fought, there was no “blood crime” on him – that was the kind of language they used. But an organiser, an administrator, educated, a leading member of the CNT, an anarchist – it all added up against him.

‘Perhaps if he’d told them things – given them names of others who’d worked with him, told them of their hiding places, just something, things could have gone better for him. But he would never do that. We knew – my mother and I. Back then, in the forties, people who were found, or arrested, weren’t often seen again. At best they might get life, and their family not even informed until months later.

‘So I knew what I had to do, but, well, I waited a couple of days, and then went ahead.

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