Many of you, youngsters, may have heard about the old barbería beneath the ancient bridge in Valverde, but I’m sure none of you ever got a deep cut behind the right ear, executed (I can’t find a more suitable word for the occasion) by elderly don Claudio. “What the f–k do you think you’re doing, you old bloody mommy? You think we’re in a bullfight and you want to get my ear and tail, don’t you?”
“Nnno, sirrr, Nnnnnot at all. Ppplease accept my sincere apologies,” the aged barber managed to mumble while pressing a piece of cotton, moistened in a dubious liquid, against the injury. He kept on trying to utter more assertive words, but in his stuttering he ended up shooting them out like a rusty machine gun. We had many of those on the El Ebro front. Don Claudio was more than humiliated, but I couldn’t stop teasing him. I’d just returned from the war, and at that time didn’t feel like myself anymore. Somehow I still don’t.
He looked at my uniform fiercely, and I just felt like taking revenge. “How does it feel to be on the losing side?” The old man looked down at the floor, expecting something very bad to happen with the outbreak of my wrath. Don Claudio belonged to a group of leftist supporters on the island of El Hierro. When King Alfonso XIII left Spain and the Second Republic was declared in 1931, many members of the anarchist, socialist and communist parties thought that it was their time.
They turned our traditions and all that resembled the Catholic faith or the monarchy into their shooting targets. There were beatings, lynchings; they broke crosses and desecrated graves at the cemeteries. All that we considered sacred was the target of their hate. I remember very well being spat at when coming out of church after Sunday’s mass.
I guess my family and I were “on the wrong side of history.” We went to church every Sunday, took communion, gave donations, participated in all the festivities, just like the majority of our neighbors had done for the last 5 centuries on our island. My parents were humble peasants, and we used to work the lands of well-off landowners from Valverde, who were more educated than us, read books and had very modern progressive ideas, while at the same time looking down on us, the people they considered reactionary, but still wanted to protect.
“Not so long ago, I was an anvil and you were a very tough hammer, but the tables seem to have turned. How does it feel to be an anvil yourself now, huh?” I blurted out furiously and left the barber shop without a word.
My father had taught me that during civil wars all the vindictive people, the envious ones, the jealous ones, that is, all the mediocre individuals of any town burst out like black flowers in an uncertain spring to take revenge on all the targets of their dark feelings. In the years after the war all those guys appeared out of nowhere, trying to cash in past debts they considered unpaid. But I wasn’t like them and never will be.
Nobody wins a civil war. It’s impossible. But all those who believed they were untouchable by this universal law pointed with their accusing fingers at the neighbors they envied and hated the most. Little did they know back then how much they would regret those accusations during the rest of their lives.
Of course there were acts of revenge. All the shootings, lynchings and beatings that one side suffered before the war, during the Republic, and in the war, were returned by the other side after the war – with greater ferocity. I guess the victors did nothing that the communist wouldn’t have done to us if they had won. But that was meager consolation.
It seemed that we Catholics had managed to preserve our lives, those of our families and our faith, but unfortunately we would lose all the rest. We would have to suffer a 40-year dictatorship, and, after that, the public, movie industry and culture, politicians and almost everyone else would call us fascists, criminals, far right and even worse things. None of the combatants in the Spanish Civil war were given the choice of picking sides – on either, you could get a bullet in your head if you deserted. But sometimes I have fantasized about what our lives would be like if the reds had won. How we would have managed to live under a communist dictatorship. “Extremes are bad,” said mom. “And extremes go so far that sometimes they even touch each other.”
I, personally, was fed up with the war, the killings, the absurd revenge taken and all the subsequent wicked things that went hand in hand with every atrocity. I tried to the best of my ability not to transmit this hatred to my son Edelmiro and talked to him about his granny and her teachings, which had shaped my character. She used to say, “always obey the king, respect the law and the authority and behave properly. There is more dignity in obeying than in commanding. Be humble, pray to God and work hard, pay taxes and save for tomorrow.” It doesn’t sound like Aristotle, Schopenhauer or Kant but all those basic, simple rules seem to have worked very well for me.
Of course, she said many more things. If given the choice, she preferred talking to being quiet.
Unfortunately, those rules didn’t work so well for my brother Restituto, my son Edelmiro and other members of the family.
The road to hell is paved with golden cobbles, wide, and teeming with thousands of people who follow it singing, laughing and joking, completely ignorant of their final destination. However, the road to heaven is like a winding, narrow path, full of stones and very steep. That’s what Francisco de Quevedo wrote four centuries ago in his famous work “The dreams.” I hope my beloved ones will be able to divert their paths toward better ones.
(…to be continued…)
Transadaptation Volume 6 – Meaning? – Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted
January: A Regular Train Trip – Mateusz Tymoszewski (Poland)
February: Growing Up – Adriana Uribe (Columbia)
March: Mess – Veronika Groke (Austria)
April: The Roads We Take – Svetlana Molchanova (Russia)
May: Need – Nadia Silva Castro (Brazil)
June: “Next Sunshine” – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)
July: Intentions – Narantsogt Baatarkhuu (Mongolia)
August: Planet Kyiv – Anastasiia Leonova (Ukraine)
September: Feeling like a Fool – Ulrike Bergmeister (Germany)
October: Stories of Outcast Souls – Armine Asryan (Armenia)
November: Ronaldinha – Alejandra Baccino (Uruguay)
December: Aimlessly – Krisztina Janosi (Hungary)
Background – Context
Transadaptation Volume 5: Of Flowing Vicissitudes – Life Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2024)
Transadaptation Volume 4: Material Dissent – Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2023)
Transadaptation Volume 3: Evanescent – Young Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2022)
Transadaptation Volume 2: Conceived – Childhood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2021)
Transadaptation Volume 1: In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)
Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)
L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)
From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)
Emblems and stories on the international community
Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world
Credits
Center photo: Lanzarote, Spain – The village – Yingna Cai (Shutterstock)
Left to right at top: 1. Tenerife, Spain – A day on the island – Patriot O.A. (Shutterstock); 2. El Hierro, Spain – The road – Dynamoland (Shutterstock); 3. El Hierro, Spain – Life on the island – Dynamoland (Shutterstock)
Left to right on bottom: 1. La Palma, Spain – The rock houses – Kristof Bellens (Shutterstock); 2. Tenerife, Spain – The trunk – Patriot O.A. (Shutterstock); 3. El Hierro, Spain – Rustic houses – Dynamoland (Shutterstock)
Source: The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed