Waiting for Robert Capa by Susana Fortes Page B

party’s plans and those who still aspired to unite the revolution with poetry. It was not a trifling matter. Walking down the boulevard one afternoon, André Breton, on his way to buy tobacco at the shop next to Dôme, bumped into the Russian Stalinist Ilya Ehrenburg, just as the latter was leaving. Neither chose their words carefully. The poet took a deep breath and, on the same impulse, punched Ehrenburg in the nose with a crack that sounded as if a chair had broken. It wasn’t a premeditated act. It simply happened. Caught by surprise, the Russian didn’t have time to react. Weakened by the blow, he fell to his knees, dripping a scandalously red-colored blood over the gray pavement. Afterward, as if they were all possessed, it turned into a messy battle with everyone against everyone. There were insults; some people got up to help the wounded man, while others tried to calm the poet’s fury. They tried to lift the Russian, get him out of there, until someone shouted something about calling the police, and in that moment they all decided to walk away from the boxing match between mastiffs until the next time. A few days later, René Crevel, the poet in charge of trying to make peace between the surrealists and the Communists, committed suicide in his kitchen by opening the gas valve.
    â€œIt’s always necessary to say good-bye,” he wrote, having lost hope. “Tomorrow, you will return to the fog of your origins. To a city, red and gray, your colorless room, its silver walls, and with windows that open directly onto the clouds to which you are sister. To search for the shadow of your face throughout the sky, the gestures of your fingers…”
    That was the state of things when Gerta found herself obliged to choose between two options she didn’t like. It was no secret how dissidents in the Soviet Union were repressed, but in that small Montparnasse community, the sacred dwelling of the gods, many were unsure whether to denounce Stalin’s abuses or keep them quiet in order to preserve the unified band of anti-Fascists.
    She thought for a while, as if floating over an abyss, with the manifesto in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She wasn’t reading the words, just smoking and looking at the white fabric covering the sofa, and the shelf with the clay figurines that Ruth bought from a peddler. Despite all their efforts to convert that place into a home, it never stopped being a temporary camp: the taped-up glass on the kitchen doors, a map of Europe in the living room, the hallways lined with stacks of books on the floor, a small bottle with lilacs in the window, random photographs tacked onto the wall … André, with the sleeves of his blazer rolled up, waving good-bye from the Gare de l’Est. She missed him, of course she did. But it wasn’t something irreparable; more like a gentle sensation untangling itself imperceptibly. Without a loud roar, but with a kind of familiarity. Nothing serious. She had opened up the window and propped her elbows on the windowsill when a breeze came her way, refreshing her skin and memory: mornings spent running around the neighborhood with the Leica; André’s teachings, his way of installing himself in time without ever looking at a watch, as if it was up to everyone else to adapt to his rhythm; the day he arrived with Captain Flint on his shoulder; the false negligence with which he kept his developing liquids on the top shelf of the bathroom; his way of always showing up at the last minute with a bottle of wine under his coat and a basket of trout, fresh off the boat; the way he laughed while turning on the kitchen stove, while Chim spread out the tablecloth and Ruth removed the plates and glasses from the cupboard and arranged the silverware on the table in pure gala style. The quick carelessness in all his gestures. His arrogance at times, fused with a peculiar aptitude to be what he didn’t seem to be and