The Anatomy of a Moment by Javier Cercas

Author:Javier Cercas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 2011-01-24T16:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

ALL THE COUPS OF THE COUP

The image, frozen, shows the left wing of the chamber of the Congress of Deputies: on the right are the benches, completely occupied by parliamentarians; in the centre, the press gallery is packed with journalists; on the left the Congress table, in profile, with the speakers’ rostrum in the foreground. The image is the usual image of a plenary session of the Cortes in the first years of democracy; except for two details: first, the hands of the ministers and deputies are all visible on the armrests in front of their benches; the second one is the presence of a Civil Guard in the chamber: he’s stationed in the left corner of the central semicircle, facing the deputies with his finger on the trigger of his automatic assault rifle. These two details destroy any illusion of normality. It is thirty-two minutes past six on the evening of Monday 23 February and exactly nine minutes earlier Lieutenant Colonel Tejero had burst into the Cortes and the coup d’état had begun.

Nothing essential varies in the scene if we unfreeze the image: the Guard armed with the automatic weapon keeps watch to the left and right, taking little steps hushed by the carpet of the central semicircle; the parliamentarians seem petrified in their benches; a silence broken only by a murmur of coughing dominates the chamber. Now the angle changes and the image includes the central semicircle and the right wing of the chamber: in the central semicircle the stenographer and an usher stand up after having spent the last minutes lying on the carpet, and the Secretary of the Congress, Víctor Carrascal – who at the beginning of the coup had been caught by surprise directing the roll-call voting to confirm Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo as the new Prime Minister to replace Adolfo Suárez – stands stiffly under the speakers’ rostrum smoking; as for the right wing of the chamber, all the ministers and deputies remain there, sitting in their seats, the majority with their hands visible on the armrests, the majority of them still. Adolfo Suárez does not belong to this majority, and not only because his hands are not in sight, but because he does not stop moving in his seat; in reality, he has not stopped moving since the firing ceased and General Gutiérrez Mellado returned to sit beside him after his confrontation with the Civil Guards: restless, he’s been turning around to his left, to his right, looking behind him, he’s lit one cigarette after another, he’s crossed and recrossed his legs unceasingly; now he has his back to the chamber, looking at the group of Civil Guards controlling the entrance, as if he’s looking for someone, maybe Lieutenant Colonel Tejero. But if that’s who he’s looking for he doesn’t find him, and when he turns around again he sees, at a Civil Guard’s gesture, Víctor Carrascal is ceding his place under the podium to an usher and, with a cigarette in one

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