IN Barcelona, during all those last weeks I spent there, there was a peculiar1 evil feeling in the air — an atmosphere of suspicion, fear, uncertainty2, and veiled hatred3. The May fighting had left ineradicable after-effects behind it. With the fall of the Caballero Government the Communists had come definitely into power, the charge of internal order had been handed over to Communist ministers, and no one doubted that they would smash their political rivals as soon as they got a quarter of a chance Nothing was happening as yet, I myself had not even any mental picture of what was going to happen; and yet there was a perpetual vague sense of danger, a consciousness of some evil thing that was impending4. However little you were actually conspiring5, the atmosphere forced you to feel like a conspirator6. You seemed to spend all your time holding whispered conversations in corners of cafes and wondering whether that person at the next table was a police spy.
Sinister7 rumours9 of all kinds were flying round, thanks to the Press censorship. One was that the Negrin-Prieto Government was planning to compromise the war. At the time I was inclined to believe this, for the Fascists10 were closing in on Bilbao and the Government was visibly doing nothing to save it. Basque flags were displayed all over the town, girls rattled12 collecting-boxes in the cafes, and there were the usual broadcasts about ‘heroic defenders’, but the Basques were getting no real assistance. It was tempting13 to believe that the Government was playing a double game. Later events have proved, that I was quite wrong here, but it seems probable that Bilbao could have been saved if a little more energy had been shown. An offensive on the Aragon front, even an unsuccessful one, would have forced Franco to divert part of his army; as it was the Government did not begin any offensive action till it was far too late — indeed, till about the time when Bilbao fell. The C.N.T. was distributing in huge numbers a leaflet saying: ‘Be on your guard!’ and hinting that ‘a certain Party’ (meaning the Communists) was plotting a coup14 d’etat. There was also a widespread fear that Catalonia was going to be invaded. Earlier, when we went back to the front, I had seen the powerful defences that were being constructed scores of miles behind the front line, and fresh bomb-proof shelters were being dug all over Barcelona. There were frequent scares of air-raids and sea-raids; more often than not these were false alarms, but every time the sirens blew the lights all over the town blacked out for hours on end and timid people dived for the cellars. Police spies were everywhere. The jails were still crammed15 with prisoners left over from the May fighting, and others — always, of course. Anarchist16 and P.O.U.M. adherents17 — were disappearing into jail by ones and twos. So far as one could discover, no one was ever tried or even charged — not even charged with anything so definite as ‘Trotskyism’; you were simply flung into jail and kept there, usually incommunicado. Bob Smillie was still in jail in Valencia. We could discover nothing except that neither the I.L.P. representative on the spot nor the lawyer who had been engaged, was permitted to see him. Foreigners from the International Column and other militias20 were getting into jail in larger and larger numbers. Usually they were arrested as deserters. It was typical of the general situation that nobody now knew for certain whether a militiaman was a volunteer or a regular soldier. A few months earlier anyone enlisting22 in the militia21 had been told that he was a volunteer and could, if he wished, get his discharge papers at any time when he was due for leave. Now it appeared that the Government had changed its mind, a militiaman was a regular soldier and counted as a deserter if he tried to go home. But even about this no one seemed certain. At some parts of the front the authorities were still issuing discharges. At the frontier these were sometimes recognized, sometimes not; if not, you were promptly23 thrown into jail. Later the number of foreign ‘deserters’ in jail swelled24 into hundreds, but most of them were repatriated25 when a fuss was made in their own countries.
Bands of armed Assault Guards roamed everywhere in the streets, the Civil Guards were still holding cafes and other buildings in strategic spots, and many of the P.S.U.C. buildings were still sandbagged and barricaded26. At various points in the town there were posts manned by Civil Guards of Carabineros who stopped passers-by and demanded their papers. Everyone warned me not to show my P.O.U.M. militiaman’s card but merely to show my passport and my hospital ticket. Even to be known to have served in the P.O.U.M. militia was vaguely28 dangerous. P.O.U.M. militiamen who were wounded or on leave were penalized29 in petty ways — it was made difficult for them to draw their pay, for instance. La Batalla was still appearing, but it was censored30 almost out of existence, and Solidaridad and the other Anarchist papers were also heavily censored. There was a new rule that censored portions of a newspaper must not be left blank but filled up with other matter; as a result it was often impossible to tell when something had been cut out.
The food shortage, which had fluctuated throughout the War, was in one of its bad stages. Bread was scarce and the cheaper sorts were being adulterated with rice; the bread the soldiers were getting in the barracks was dreadful stuff like putty. Milk and sugar were very scarce and tobacco almost non-existent, except for the expensive smuggled31 cigarettes. There was an acute shortage of olive oil, which Spaniards use for half a dozen different purposes. The queues of women waiting to buy olive oil were controlled by mounted Civil Guards who sometimes amused themselves by backing their horses into the queue and trying to make them tread on the women’s toes. A minor32 annoyance33 of the time was the lack of small change. The silver had been withdrawn34 and as yet no new coinage had been issued, so that there was nothing between the ten-centime piece and the note for two and a half pesetas, and all notes below ten pesetas were very scarce.13 For the poorest people this meant an aggravation35 of the food shortage. A woman with only a ten-peseta note in her possession might wait for hours in a queue outside the grocery and then be unable to buy anything after all because the grocer had no change and she could not afford to spend the whole note.
13 The purchasing value of the peseta was about fourpence.
It is not easy to convey the nightmare atmosphere of that time — the peculiar uneasiness produced by rumours that were always changing, by censored newspapers, and the constant presence of armed men. It is not easy to convey it because, at the moment, the thing essential to such an atmosphere does not exist in England. In England political intolerance is not yet taken for granted. There is political persecution36 in a petty way; if I were a coal-miner I would not care to be known to the boss as a Communist; but the ‘good party man’, the gangster-gramophone of continental37 politics, is still a rarity, and the notion of ‘liquidating’ or ‘eliminating’ everyone who happens to disagree with you does not yet seem natural. It seemed only too natural in Barcelona. The ‘Stalinists’ were in the saddle, and therefore it was a matter of course that every ‘Trotskyist’ was in danger. The thing everyone feared was a thing which, after all, did not happen — a fresh outbreak of street-fighting, which, as before, would be blamed on the P.O.U.M. and the Anarchists38. There were times when I caught my ears listening for the first shots. It was as though some huge evil intelligence were brooding over the town. Everyone noticed it and remarked upon it. And it was queer how everyone expressed it in almost the same words: ‘The atmosphere of this place — it’s horrible. Like being in a lunatic asylum39.’ But perhaps I ought not to say everyone. Some of the English visitors who flitted briefly40 through Spain, from hotel to hotel, seem not to have noticed that there was anything wrong with the general atmosphere. The Duchess of Atholl writes, I notice (Sunday Express, 17 October 1937):
I was in Valencia, Madrid, and Barcelona . . . perfect order prevailed in all three towns without any display of force. All the hotels in which I stayed were not only ‘normal’ and ‘decent’, but extremely comfortable, in spite of the shortage of butter and coffee.
It is a peculiarity41 of English travellers that they do not really believe in the existence of anything outside the smart hotels. I hope they found some butter for the Duchess of Atholl.
I was at the Sanatorium Maurin, one of the sanatoria run by the P.O.U.M. It was in the suburbs near Tibidabo, the queer-shaped mountain that rises abruptly42 behind Barcelona and is traditionally supposed to have been the hill from which Satan showed Jesus the countries of the earth (hence its name). The house had previously43 belonged to some wealthy bourgeois44 and had been seized at the time of the revolution. Most of the men there had either been invalided45 out of the line or had some wound that had permanently46 disabled them — amputated limbs, and so forth47. There were several other Englishmen there: Williams, with a damaged leg, and Stafford Cottman, a boy of eighteen, who had been sent back from the trenches48 with suspected tuberculosis49, and Arthur Clinton, whose smashed left arm was still strapped50 on to one of those huge wire contraptions, nicknamed aeroplanes, which the Spanish hospitals were using. My wife was still staying at the Hotel Continental, and I generally came into Barcelona in the daytime. In the morning I used to attend the General Hospital for electrical treatment of my arm. It was a queer business — a series of prickly electric shocks that made the various sets of muscles jerk up and down — but it seemed to do some good; the use of my fingers came back and the pain grew somewhat less. Both of us had decided51 that the best thing we could do was to go back to England as soon as possible. I was extremely weak, my voice was gone, seemingly for good, and the doctors told me that at best it would be several months before I was fit to fight. I had got to start earning some money sooner or later, and there did not seem much sense in staying in Spain and eating food that was needed for other people. But my motives53 were mainly selfish. I had an overwhelming desire to get away from it all; away from the horrible atmosphere of political suspicion and hatred, from streets thronged54 by armed men, from air-raids, trenches, machine-guns, screaming trams, milkless tea, oil cookery, and shortage of cigarettes — from almost everything that I had learnt to associate with Spain.
The doctors at the General Hospital had certified55 me medically unfit, but to get my discharge I had to see a medical board at one of the hospitals near the front and then go to Sietamo to get my papers stamped at the P.O.U.M. militia headquarters. Kopp had just come back from the front, full of jubilation56. He had just been in action and said that Huesca was going to be taken at last. The Government had brought troops from the Madrid front and were concentrating thirty thousand men, with aeroplanes in huge numbers. The Italians I had seen going up the line from Tarragona had attacked on the Jaca road but had had heavy casualties and lost two tanks. However, the town was bound to fall, Kopp said. (Alas! It didn’t. The attack was a frightful57 mess — up and led to nothing except an orgy of lying in the newspapers.) Meanwhile Kopp had to go down to Valencia for an interview at the Ministry58 of War. He had a letter from General Pozas, now commanding the Army of the East — the usual letter, describing Kopp as a ‘person of all confidence’ and recommending him for a special appointment in the engineering section (Kopp had been an engineer in civil life). He left for Valencia the same day as I left for Sietamo — 15 June.
It was five days before I got back to Barcelona. A lorry-load of us reached Sietamo about midnight, and as soon as we got to the P.O.U.M. headquarters they lined us up and began handling out rifles and cartridges59, before even taking our names. It seemed that the attack was beginning and they were likely to call for reserves at any moment. I had my hospital ticket in my pocket, but I could not very well refuse to go with the others. I kipped down on the ground, with a cartridge-box for a pillow, in a mood of deep dismay. Being wounded had spoiled my nerve for the time being — I believe this usually happens — and the prospect60 of being under fire frightened me horribly. However, there was a bit of manana, as usual, we were not called out after all, and next morning I produced my hospital ticket and went in search of my discharge. It meant a series of confused, tiresome61 journeys. As usual they bandied one to and fro from hospital to hospital — Sietamo, Barbastro, Monzon, then back to Sietamo to get my discharge stamped, then down the line again via Barbastro and Lerida — and the convergence of troops on Huesca had monopolized62 all the transport and disorganized everything. I remember sleeping in queer places — once in a hospital bed, but once in a ditch, once on a very narrow bench which I fell off in the middle of the night, and once in a sort of municipal lodging-house in Barbastro. As soon as you got away from the railroad there was no way of travelling except by jumping chance lorries. You had to wait by the roadside for hours, sometimes three or four hours at a stretch, with knots of disconsolate63 peasants who carried bundles full of ducks and rabbits, waving to lorry after lorry. When finally you struck a lorry that was not chock full of men, loaves of bread, or ammunition-boxes the bumping over the vile64 roads wallowed you to pulp65. No horse has ever thrown me so high as those lorries used to throw me. The only way of travelling was to crowd all together and cling to one another. To my humiliation66 I found that I was still too weak to climb on to a lorry without being helped.
I slept a night at Monzon Hospital, where I went to see my medical board. In the next bed to me there was an Assault Guard, wounded over the left eye. He was friendly and gave me cigarettes. I said: ‘In Barcelona we should have been shooting one another,’ and we laughed over this. It was queer how the general spirit seemed to change when you got anywhere near the front line. All or nearly all of the vicious hatred of the political parties evaporated. During all the time I was at the front I never once remember any P.S.U.C. adherent18 showing me hostility67 because I was P.O.U.M. That kind of thing belonged in Barcelona or in places even remoter from the war. There were a lot of Assault Guards in Sietamo. They had been sent on from Barcelona to take part in the attack on Huesca. The Assault Guards were a corps68 not intended primarily for the front, and many of them had not been under fire before. Down in Barcelona they were lords of the street, but up here they were quintos (rookies) and palled69 up with militia children of fifteen who had been in the line for months.
At Monzon Hospital the doctor did the usual tongue-pulling and mirror — thrusting business, assured me in the same cheerful manner as the others that I should never have a voice again, and signed my certificate. While I waited to be examined there was going on inside the surgery some dreadful operation without anaesthetics — why without anaesthetics I do not know. It went on and on, scream after scream, and when I went in there were chairs flung about and on the floor were pools of blood and urine.
The details of that final journey stand out in my mind with strange clarity. I was in a different mood, a more observing mood, than I had been in for months past. I had got my discharge, stamped with the seal of the 29th Division, and the doctor’s certificate in which I was ‘declared useless’. I was free to go back to England; consequently I felt able, almost for the first time, to look at Spain. I had a day to put in to Barbastro, for there was only one train a day. Previously I had seen Barbastro in brief glimpses, and it had seemed to me simply a part of the war — a grey, muddy, cold place, full of roaring lorries and shabby troops. It seemed queerly different now. Wandering through it I became aware of pleasant tortuous70 streets, old stone bridges, wine shops with great oozy71 barrels as tall as a man, and intriguing72 semi-subterranean shops where men were making cartwheels, daggers73, wooden spoons, and goatskin water-bottles. I watched a man making a skin bottle and discovered with great interest, what I had never known before, that they are made with the fur inside and the fur is not removed, so that you are really drinking distilled74 goat’s hair. I had drunk out of them for months without knowing this. And at the back of the town there was a shallow jade-green river, and rising out of it a perpendicular75 cliff of rock, with houses built into the rock, so that from your bedroom window you could spit straight into the water a hundred feet below. Innumerable doves lived in the holes in the cliff. And in Lerida there were old crumbling76 buildings upon whose cornices thousands upon thousands of swallows had built their nests, so that at a little distance the crusted pattern of nests was like some florid moulding of the rococo77 period. It was queer how for nearly six months past I had had no eyes for such things. With my discharge papers in my pocket I felt like a human being again, and also a little like a tourist. For almost the first time I felt that I was really in Spain, in a country that I had longed all my life to visit. In the quiet back streets of Lerida and Barbastro I seemed to catch a momentary78 glimpse, a sort of far-off rumour8 of the Spain that dwells in everyone’s imagination. White sierras, goatherds, dungeons79 of the Inquisition, Moorish80 palaces, black winding81 trains of mules82, grey olive trees and groves83 of lemons, girls in black mantillas, the wines of Malaga and Alicante, cathedrals, cardinals84, bull-fights, gypsies, serenades — in short, Spain. Of all Europe it was the country that had had most hold upon my imagination. It seemed a pity that when at last I had managed to come here I had seen only this north-eastern corner, in the middle of a confused war and for the most part in winter.
It was late when I got back to Barcelona, and there were no taxis. It was no use trying to get to the Sanatorium Maurin, which was right outside the town, so I made for the Hotel Continental, stopping for dinner on the way. I remember the conversation I had with a very fatherly waiter about the oak jugs85, bound with copper86, in which they served the wine. I said I would like to buy a set of them to take back to England. The waiter was sympathetic. ‘Yes, beautiful, were they not? But impossible to buy nowadays. Nobody was manufacturing them any longer — nobody was manufacturing anything. This war — such a pity!’ We agreed that the war was a pity. Once again I felt like a tourist. The waiter asked me gently, had I liked Spain; would I come back to Spain? Oh, yes, I should come back to Spain. The peaceful quality of this conversation sticks in my memory, because of what happened immediately afterwards.
When I got to the hotel my wife was sitting in the lounge. She got up and came towards me in what struck me as a very unconcerned manner; then she put an arm round my neck and, with a sweet smile for the benefit of the other people in the lounge, hissed87 in my ear:
‘Get out!’
‘What?’
‘Get out of here at once!’
‘What?’
‘Don’t keep standing88 here! You must get outside quickly!’
‘What? Why? What do you mean?’
She had me by the arm and was already leading me towards the stairs. Half-way down we met a Frenchman — I am not going to give his name, for though he had no connexion with the P.O.U.M. he was a good friend to us all during the trouble. He looked at me with a concerned face.
‘Listen! You mustn’t come in here. Get out quickly and hide yourself before they ring up the police.’
And behold89! at the bottom of the stairs one of the hotel staff, who was a P.O.U.M. member (unknown to the management, I fancy), slipped furtively90 out of the lift and told me in broken English to get out. Even now I did not grasp what had happened.
‘What the devil is all this about?’ I said, as soon as we were on the pavement.
‘Haven’t you heard?’
‘No. Heard what? I’ve heard nothing.’
‘The P.O.U.M.‘S been suppressed. They’ve seized all the buildings. Practically everyone’s in prison. And they say they’re shooting people already.’
So that was it. We had to have somewhere to talk. All the big cafes on the Ramblas were thronged with police, but we found a quiet cafe in a side street. My wife explained to me what had happened while I was away.
On 15 June the police had suddenly arrested Andres Nin in his office, and the same evening had raided the Hotel Falcon91 and arrested all the people in it, mostly militiamen on leave. The place was converted immediately into a prison, and in a very little while it was filled to the brim with prisoners of all kinds. Next day the P.O.U.M. was declared an illegal organization and all its offices, book-stalls, sanatoria, Red Aid centres, and so forth were seized. Meanwhile the police were arresting everyone they could lay hands on who was known to have any connexion with the P.O.U.M. Within a day or two all or almost all of the forty members of the Executive Committee were in prison. Possibly one or two had escaped into hiding, but the police were adopting the trick (extensively used on both sides in this war) of seizing a man’s wife as a hostage if he disappeared. There was no way of discovering how many people had been arrested. My wife had heard that it was about four hundred in Barcelona alone. I have since thought that even at that time the numbers must have been greater. And the most fantastic people had been arrested. In some cases the police had even gone to the length of dragging wounded militiamen out of the hospitals.
It was all profoundly dismaying. What the devil was it all about? I could understand their suppressing the P.O.U.M., but what were they arresting people for? For nothing, so far as one could discover. Apparently92 the suppression of the P.O.U.M. had a retrospective effect; the P.O.U.M. was now illegal, and therefore one was breaking the law by having previously belonged to it. As usual, none of the arrested people had been charged. Meanwhile, however, the Valencia Communist papers were naming with the story of a huge ‘Fascist11 plot’, radio communication with the enemy, documents signed in invisible ink, etc., etc. I have dealt with this story earlier. The significant thing was that it was appearing only in the Valencia papers; I think I am right in saying that there was not a single word about it, or about the suppression of the P.O.U.M., in any Barcelona papers, Communist, Anarchist, or Republican. We first learned the precise nature of the charges against the P.O.U.M. leaders not from any Spanish paper but from the English papers that reached Barcelona a day or two later. What we could not know at this time was that the Government was not responsible for the charge of treachery and espionage93, and that members of the Government were later to repudiate94 it. We only vaguely knew that the P.O.U.M. leaders, and presumably all the rest of us, were accused of being in Fascist pay. And already the rumours were flying round that people were being secretly shot in jail. There was a lot of exaggeration about this, but it certainly happened in some cases, and there is not much doubt that it happened in the case of Nin. After his arrest Nin was transferred to Valencia and thence to Madrid, and as early as 21 June the rumour reached Barcelona that he had been shot. Later the rumour took a more definite shape: Nin had been shot in prison by the secret police and his body dumped into the street. This story came from several sources, including Federico Montsenys, an ex-member of the Government. From that day to this Nin has never been heard of alive again. When, later, the Government were questioned by delegates from various countries, they shilly-shallied and would say only that Nin had disappeared and they knew nothing of his whereabouts. Some of the newspapers produced a tale that he had escaped to Fascist territory. No evidence was given in support of it, and Irujo, the Minister of Justice, later declared that the Espagne news-agency had falsified his official communique.14 In any case it is most unlikely that a political prisoner of Nin’s importance would be allowed to escape. Unless at some future time he is produced alive, I think we must take it that he was murdered in prison.
14 See the reports of the Maxton delegation95 which I referred to in Chapter II.
The tale of arrests went on and on, extending over months, until the number of political prisoners, not counting Fascists, swelled into thousands. One noticeable thing was the autonomy of the lower ranks of the police. Many of the arrests were admittedly illegal, and various people whose release had been ordered by the Chief of Police were re — arrested at the jail gate and carried off to ‘secret prisons’. A typical case is that of Kurt Landau and his wife. They were arrested about 17 June, and Landau immediately ‘disappeared’. Five months later his wife was still in jail, untried and without news of her husband. She declared a hunger-strike, after which the Minister of Justice, sent word to assure her that her husband was dead. Shortly afterwards she was released, to be almost immediately re-arrested and flung into prison again. And it was noticeable that the police, at any rate at first, seemed completely indifferent as to any effect their actions might have upon the war. They were quite ready to arrest military officers in important posts without getting permission beforehand. About the end of June Jose Rovira, the general commanding the 29th Division, was arrested somewhere near the front line by a party of police who had been sent from Barcelona. His men sent a delegation to protest at the Ministry of War. It was found that neither the Ministry of War, nor Ortega, the chief of Police, had even been informed of Rovira’s arrest. In the whole business the detail that most sticks in my throat, though perhaps it is not of great importance, is that all news of what was happening was kept from the troops at the front. As you will have seen, neither I nor anyone else at the front had heard anything about the suppression of the P.O.U.M. All the P.O.U.M. militia headquarters, Red Aid centres, and so forth were functioning as usual, and as late as 20 June and as far down the line as Lerida, only about 100 miles from Barcelona, no one had heard what was happening. All word of it was kept out of the Barcelona papers (the Valencia papers, which were running the spy stories, did not reach the Aragon front), and no doubt one reason for arresting all the P.O.U.M. militiamen on leave in Barcelona was to prevent them from getting back to the front with the news. The draft with which I had gone up the line on 15 June must have been about the last to go. I am still puzzled to know how the thing was kept secret, for the supply lorries and so forth were still passing to and fro; but there is no doubt that it was kept secret, and, as I have since learned from a number of others, the men in the front line heard nothing till several days later. The motive52 for all this is clear enough. The attack on Huesca was beginning, the P.O.U.M. militia was still a separate unit, and it was probably feared that if the men knew what was happening they would refuse to fight. Actually nothing of the kind happened when the news arrived. In the intervening days there must have been numbers of men who were killed without ever learning that the newspapers in the rear were calling them Fascists. This kind of thing is a little difficult to forgive. I know it was the usual policy to keep bad news from the troops, and perhaps as a rule that is justified96. But it is a different matter to send men into battle and not even tell them that behind their backs their party is being suppressed, their leaders accused of treachery, and their friends and relatives thrown into prison.
My wife began telling me what had happened to our various friends. Some of the English and other foreigners had got across the frontier. Williams and Stafford Cottman had not been arrested when the Sanatorium Maurin was raided, and were in hiding somewhere. So was John Mc-Nair, who had been in France and had re-entered Spain after the P.O.U.M. was declared illegal — a rash thing to do, but he had not cared to stay in safety while his comrades were in danger. For the rest it was simply a chronicle of ‘They’ve got so and so’ and ‘They’ve got so and so’. They seemed to have ‘got’ nearly everyone. It took me aback to hear that they had also ‘got’ George Kopp.
‘What! Kopp? I thought he was in Valencia.’
It appeared that Kopp had come back to Barcelona; he had a letter from the Ministry of War to the colonel commanding the engineering operations on the eastern front. He knew that the P.O.U.M. had been suppressed, of course, but probably it did not occur to him that the police could be such fools as to arrest him when he was on his way to the front on an urgent military mission. He had come round to the Hotel Continental to fetch his kit-bags; my wife had been out at the time, and the hotel people had managed to detain him with some lying story while they rang up the police. I admit I was angry when I heard of Kopp’s arrest. He was my personal friend, I had served under him for months, I had been under fire with him, and I knew his history. He was a man who had sacrificed everything — family, nationality, livelihood97 — simply to come to Spain and fight against Fascism. By leaving Belgium without permission and joining a foreign army while he was on the Belgian Army reserve, and, earlier, by helping98 to manufacture munitions99 illegally for the Spanish Government, he had piled up years of imprisonment100 for himself if he should ever return to his own country. He had been in the line since October 1936, had worked his way up from militiaman to major, had been in action I do not know how many times, and had been wounded once. During the May trouble, as I had seen for myself, he had prevented fighting locally and probably saved ten or twenty lives. And all they could do in return was to fling him into jail. It is waste of time to be angry, but the stupid malignity101 of this kind of thing does try one’s patience.
Meanwhile they had not ‘got’ my wife. Although she had remained at the Continental the police had made no move to arrest her. It was fairly obvious that she was being used as a decoy duck. A couple of nights earlier, however, in the small hours of the morning, six of the plain — clothes police had invaded our room at the hotel and searched it. They had seized every scrap102 of paper we possessed103, except, fortunately, our passports and cheque-book. They had taken my diaries, all our books, all the press-cuttings that had been piling up for months past (I have often wondered what use those press-cuttings were to them), all my war souvenirs, and all our letters. (Incidentally, they took away a number of letters I had received from readers. Some of them had not been answered, and of course I have not the addresses. If anyone who wrote to me about my last book, and did not get an answer, happens to read these lines, will he please accept this as an apology?) I learned afterwards that the police had also seized various belongings104 that I had left at the Sanatorium Maunn. They even carried off a bundle of my dirty linen105. Perhaps they thought it had messages written on it in invisible ink.
It was obvious that it would be safer for my wife to stay at the hotel, at any rate for the time being. If she tried to disappear they would be after her immediately. As for myself, I should have to go straight into hiding. The prospect revolted me. In spite of the innumerable arrests it was almost impossible for me to believe that I was in any danger. The whole thing seemed too meaningless. It was the same refusal to take this idiotic106 onslaught seriously that had led Kopp into jail. I kept saying, but why should anyone want to arrest me? What had I done? I was not even a party member of the P.O.U.M. Certainly I had carried arms during the May fighting, but so had (at a guess) forty or fifty thousand people. Besides, I was badly in need of a proper night’s sleep. I wanted to risk it and go back to the hotel. My wife would not hear of it. Patiently she explained the state of affairs. It did not matter what I had done or not done. This was not a round-up of criminals; it was merely a reign19 of terror. I was not guilty of any definite act, but I was guilty of ‘Trotskyism’. The fact that I had served in the P.O.U.M. militia was quite enough to get me into prison. It was no use hanging on to the English notion that you are safe so long as you keep the law. Practically the law was what the police chose to make it. The only thing to do was to lie low and conceal107 the fact that I had anything to do with the P.O.U.M. We went through the papers in my pockets. My wife made me tear up my militiaman’s card, which had P.O.U.M. on it in big letters, also a photo of a group of militiamen with a P.O.U.M. flag in the background; that was the kind of thing that got you arrested nowadays. I had to keep my discharge papers, however. Even these were a danger, for they bore the seal of the 29th Division, and the police would probably know that the 29th Division was the P.O.U.M.; but without them I could be arrested as a deserter.
The thing we had got to think of now was getting out of Spain. There was no sense in staying here with the certainty of imprisonment sooner or later. As a matter of fact both of us would greatly have liked to stay, just to see what happened. But I foresaw that Spanish prisons would be lousy places (actually they were a lot worse than I imagined), once in prison you never knew when you would get out, and I was in wretched health, apart from the pain in my arm. We arranged to meet next day at the British Consulate108, where Cottman and McNair were also coming. It would probably take a couple of days to get our passports in order. Before leaving Spain you had to have your passport stamped in three separate places — by the Chief of Police, by the French Consul109, and by the Catalan immigration authorities. The Chief of Police was the danger, of course. But perhaps the British Consul could fix things up without letting it be known that we had anything to do with the P.O.U.M. Obviously there must be a list of foreign ‘Trotskyist’ suspects, and very likely our names were on it, but with luck we might get to the frontier before the list. There was sure to be a lot of muddle110 and manana. Fortunately this was Spain and not Germany. The Spanish secret police had some of the spirit of the Gestapo, but not much of its Competence111.
So we parted. My wife went back to the hotel and I wandered off into the darkness to find somewhere to sleep. I remember feeling sulky and bored. I had so wanted a night in bed! There was nowhere I could go, no house where I could take refuge. The P.O.U.M. had practically no underground organization. No doubt the leaders had always realized that the party was likely to be suppressed, but they had never expected a wholesale112 witch-hunt of this description. They had expected it so little, indeed, that they were actually continuing the alterations113 to the P.O.U.M. buildings (among other things they were constructing a cinema in the Executive Building, which had previously been a bank) up to the very day when the P.O.U.M. was suppressed. Consequently the rendezvous114 and hiding-places which every revolutionary party ought to possess as a matter of course did not exist. Goodness knows how many people — people whose homes had been raided by the police — were sleeping in the streets that night. I had had five days of tiresome journeys, sleeping in impossible places, my arm was hurting damnably, and now these fools were chasing me to and fro and I had got to sleep on the ground again. That was about as far as my thoughts went. I did not make any of the correct political reflections. I never do when things are happening. It seems to be always the case when I get mixed up in war or politics — I am conscious of nothing save physical discomfort115 and a deep desire for this damned nonsense to be over. Afterwards I can see the significance of events, but while they are happening I merely want to be out of them — an ignoble116 trait, perhaps.
I walked a long way and fetched up somewhere near the General Hospital. I wanted a place where I could lie down without some nosing policeman finding me and demanding my papers. I tried an air-raid shelter, but it was newly dug and dripping with damp. Then I came upon the ruins of a church that had been gutted117 and burnt in the revolution. It was a mere27 shell, four roofless walls surrounding piles of rubble118. In the half-darkness I poked119 about and found a kind of hollow where I could lie down. Lumps of broken masonry120 are not good to lie on, but fortunately it was a warm night and I managed to get several hours’ sleep.
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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impending
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| a.imminent, about to come or happen | |
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conspiring
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| 密谋( conspire的现在分词 )； 搞阴谋； （事件等）巧合； 共同导致 | |
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conspirator
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| n.阴谋者，谋叛者 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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rumour
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| n.谣言，谣传，传闻 | |
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rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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fascists
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| n.法西斯主义的支持者( fascist的名词复数 ) | |
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fascist
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| adj.法西斯主义的；法西斯党的；n.法西斯主义者，法西斯分子 | |
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rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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tempting
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| a.诱人的, 吸引人的 | |
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coup
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| n.政变；突然而成功的行动 | |
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crammed
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| adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式) | |
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anarchist
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| n.无政府主义者 | |
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adherents
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| n.支持者，拥护者( adherent的名词复数 )；党羽；徒子徒孙 | |
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adherent
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| n.信徒，追随者，拥护者 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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militias
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| n.民兵组织，民兵( militia的名词复数 ) | |
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militia
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| n.民兵，民兵组织 | |
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enlisting
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| v.（使）入伍， （使）参军( enlist的现在分词 )；获得（帮助或支持） | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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repatriated
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| v.把（某人）遣送回国，遣返( repatriate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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barricaded
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| 设路障于，以障碍物阻塞( barricade的过去式和过去分词 )； 设路障[防御工事]保卫或固守 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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penalized
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| 对…予以惩罚( penalize的过去式和过去分词 )； 使处于不利地位 | |
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censored
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| 受审查的，被删剪的 | |
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smuggled
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| 水货 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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aggravation
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| n.烦恼，恼火 | |
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persecution
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| n. 迫害,烦扰 | |
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continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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anarchists
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| 无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
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asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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peculiarity
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| n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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bourgeois
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| adj./n.追求物质享受的(人)；中产阶级分子 | |
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invalided
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| 使伤残（invalid的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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tuberculosis
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| n.结核病，肺结核 | |
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strapped
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| adj.用皮带捆住的，用皮带装饰的；身无分文的；缺钱；手头紧v.用皮带捆扎(strap的过去式和过去分词)；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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54
thronged
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| v.成群，挤满( throng的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55
certified
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| a.经证明合格的；具有证明文件的 | |
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56
jubilation
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| n.欢庆，喜悦 | |
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57
frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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58
ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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59
cartridges
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| 子弹( cartridge的名词复数 )； （打印机的）墨盒； 录音带盒； （唱机的）唱头 | |
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60
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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61
tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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62
monopolized
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| v.垄断( monopolize的过去式和过去分词 )；独占；专卖；专营 | |
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63
disconsolate
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| adj.忧郁的，不快的 | |
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vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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pulp
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| n.果肉，纸浆；v.化成纸浆，除去...果肉，制成纸浆 | |
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humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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67
hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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69
palled
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| v.（因过多或过久而）生厌，感到乏味，厌烦( pall的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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70
tortuous
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| adj.弯弯曲曲的，蜿蜒的 | |
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71
oozy
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| adj.软泥的 | |
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72
intriguing
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| adj.有趣的；迷人的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的现在分词)；激起…的好奇心 | |
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73
daggers
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| 匕首，短剑( dagger的名词复数 ) | |
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distilled
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| adj.由蒸馏得来的v.蒸馏( distil的过去式和过去分词 )；从…提取精华 | |
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perpendicular
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| adj.垂直的，直立的；n.垂直线，垂直的位置 | |
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crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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rococo
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| n.洛可可；adj.过分修饰的 | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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79
dungeons
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| n.地牢( dungeon的名词复数 ) | |
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moorish
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| adj.沼地的，荒野的，生[住]在沼地的 | |
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81
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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82
mules
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| 骡( mule的名词复数 )； 拖鞋； 顽固的人； 越境运毒者 | |
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groves
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| 树丛，小树林( grove的名词复数 ) | |
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cardinals
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| 红衣主教( cardinal的名词复数 )； 红衣凤头鸟（见于北美，雄鸟为鲜红色）； 基数 | |
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jugs
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| （有柄及小口的）水壶( jug的名词复数 ) | |
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copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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hissed
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| 发嘶嘶声( hiss的过去式和过去分词 )； 发嘘声表示反对 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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furtively
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| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
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falcon
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| n.隼，猎鹰 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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93
espionage
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| n.间谍行为，谍报活动 | |
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94
repudiate
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| v.拒绝，拒付，拒绝履行 | |
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delegation
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| n.代表团；派遣 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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livelihood
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| n.生计，谋生之道 | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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munitions
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| n.军火，弹药；v.供应…军需品 | |
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imprisonment
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| n.关押，监禁，坐牢 | |
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101
malignity
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| n.极度的恶意，恶毒；（病的）恶性 | |
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scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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104
belongings
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| n.私人物品，私人财物 | |
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105
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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106
idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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107
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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108
consulate
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| n.领事馆 | |
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consul
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| n.领事；执政官 | |
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muddle
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| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
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111
competence
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| n.能力，胜任，称职 | |
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112
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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113
alterations
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| n.改动( alteration的名词复数 )；更改；变化；改变 | |
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114
rendezvous
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| n.约会，约会地点，汇合点；vi.汇合，集合；vt.使汇合，使在汇合地点相遇 | |
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115
discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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116
ignoble
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| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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117
gutted
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| adj.容易消化的v.毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的过去式和过去分词 )；取出…的内脏 | |
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118
rubble
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| n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾 | |
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119
poked
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| v.伸出( poke的过去式和过去分词 )；戳出；拨弄；与（某人）性交 | |
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120
masonry
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| n.砖土建筑；砖石 | |
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