Blind Sunflowers by Alberto Méndez Page B

squad was diminishing. They had heard that a lot of the men kept on the fourth floor ended up in jails at Dueso, Ocaña or Burgos. That is why the second-floor prisoners thought constantly of the passage of time, of it crawling by as slowly and painfully as it liked, so long as there might be another week, another day, even another hour for them. That was the reason why they all tried to go unnoticed, as if they had been absorbed into the filthy grey of the walls of their collective cell.
    In the early months, before the cold got into their bones, there had always been someone who would cling to the bars of the window thatlooked out over the yard and shout ‘Long Live the Republic!’ as the men from the fourth floor were led out to the trucks at first light. Farewell comrade, farewell brother. We will avenge your death! But little by little these gestures faded out, became as subdued as the early morning light.
    The next day, Juan Senra was not called to appear in court. Others went, and none of them came back. Juan could eat the lukewarm broth twice more. He helped delouse a smooth-cheeked youngster who was scratching his head so much it was full of sores. If you carry on like that you’ll end up bald, Juan told him. The lad said something about a skull that Juan Senra did not understand, but he smiled anyway as though he had got the joke. Somebody told him that Sergeant Sánchez had a nit comb, so Juan borrowed it and started carefully combing the boy’s head. In return, the youngster showed him a photo of his girlfriend.
    ‘She’s a good-looker, isn’t she? She’s from Segovia, but she came to Madrid to work as a maid, and as you can see…’ He gestured in a way that was both suggestive and rude.
    Their conversation was interrupted because someone called Juan to the barred door at the cell entrance. A first sergeant, stooped by fear and toothless from hunger, handed him an opened envelope. It was the letter Juan had written to his brother before appearing in court. It was being returned open and censored.
    ‘You can’t send this letter. You’re lucky – you have the chance to write another one.’
    ‘Who says so?’
    ‘The army chaplain.’
    Apart from ‘My dear brother Luis’ and ‘Remember me, your brother Juan’, everything else had been crossed out, including the phrases where he talked about the cold, his poor health, how kind and gentle their mother had been, or the poplars in the avenues at Miraflores. There was no room for anything human. It was as if they could not permit him to say goodbye.
    He went back to the boy with nits, made a joke about his bad handwriting, and went on with his task.
    Juan looked down at his hands, which were finding it so difficult to penetrate the lad’s tousled hair. How on earth had they once been capable of precisely tracing the glissando to bring out the spirit of Bach in the music? Chilblains had destroyed their agility. All they were goodfor was clutching the nit comb. Even so, he patted the top of the boy’s head affectionately. The lad made no attempt to avoid contact. They started talking again.
    The boy was called Eugenio Paz. He was sixteen, and was born in Brunete. His uncle owned the only bar in the village, where his mother served. Despite being the owner’s sister, he treated her like a dog, even though she cooked and cleaned the bar with selfless devotion. She kept it as clean as driven snow! And in a miserable village like that! When war broke out, the youngster waited to see which side his uncle was on, and chose the opposite. That was how he came to swear allegiance to the Republic.
    He looked like a boy who would never grow old. There was nothing angular or sharp about his suntanned features, and it was as though the grimy shadows of the prison could not touch him: he seemed immune to all sadness and severity. Soft and round, he was of medium height; when he spoke, he pursed his lips, as if he were already sorry for what he was about to say. Yet