Blind Sunflowers Read Online Free PDF Page A

second, real death. This took place some time later, when he blew his brains out with a rifle seized from a prison guard.
    ‘Are these soldiers I can see looking so drooped and bored in front of me the ones who have won the war? No, they simply want to return home, and they will not do that as victorious fighting men, but as people for whom life is strange, people who are absent from their own worlds, people who will slowly turn into vanquished flesh. They will fuse with those they defeated; the only difference between them will be the stigma of their warring hatreds. Just like the defeated, they will come to fear the true victor, the one who defeated the enemy army and their own. Only a very few of the dead will be seen as protagonists of the war.’
    The fever, hunger and self-disgust he felt must have consumed all his thoughts and memory. He scraped together his last remaining strength, crawling on all fours because he could no longer even stand, and slowly approached the guard house, oblivious to the soldiers’ astonishment and repulsion as they watched this scarecrow slouching towards them.
    Choking back his sobs, he said:
    ‘I’m one of you.’

Second defeat: 1940
    or
    Manuscript found in oblivion

 
    This text was found in a cabin in the mountains of Somiedo, on the borders of Asturias and León. Also discovered were the skeleton of an adult male and an infant’s surprisingly well-conserved naked body, laid on some cloth sacks stretched out over a palliasse. They were covered in a wolf skin and the fleece of a mountain goat, as well as wild boar fur and dried moss. The two bodies lay side-by-side, and were wrapped in a white bedspread, ‘as if in a nest’, according to the official report. The bedspread was as clean as the rest of the room was dirty, foul-smelling and wretched. The dried but still stinking remains of a cow missing its head and one hoof were also found. In 1952, while I was searching for other documents in the Civil Guard General Archive, I came across a yellow envelope with the letters NN (no name) written on it. The envelope contained an oilskin notebook, consisting of a few ruled pages. The contents were written in a neat, flowing hand. On the first pages, the handwriting is large, but it grows progressively smaller, as if the writer had more to write about than would fit into the book. Comments apparently added later are occasionally scribbled in the margins. This is obvious not only because of the handwriting (which as I said becomes progressively smaller) but also because they clearly reflect very different states of mind. I have nevertheless included these comments on the corresponding pages. A shepherd came across the notebook on a stool, under a heavy stone that could not have been put there by accident. A leather satchel, an axe, a bed-frame with no mattress and two pottery bowls on the cold hearth were the only other items listed in the civil guardsman’s report. A simple black dress was hanging from the ceiling. There were no other signs of life, although the report states (and this is what encouraged me to read the notebook) that a phrase had been scrawled on the cabin wall: ‘Infamous flock of nocturnal birds.’

    The text of the notebook is as follows:
Page 1
    Elena died giving birth. I was unable to keep her on this side of life. To my surprise though, the boy is alive.
    There he is, unravelled, shivering, lying on a clean cloth alongside his dead mother. I have no idea what to do. I don’t dare touch him. I think I am going to let him die with his mother. She will know how to look after an infant’s soul. She will teach him to laugh, if there is a place for souls to laugh. We will not get over the mountains to France. Without Elena I have no wish to reach the end of the journey. Without Elena there is no way through.
    How does one correct the mistake of being alive? I’ve seen so many dead people, but I haven’t learned how one dies!
Page 2
    It’s not right that death