Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Adrienne: The Sequel to The Book of Job


The Asturias Miners Strike of 1933

The manuscript I'm working on now is written as two parts. In part one I was drawn into a history lesson on the Spanish Civil War, the Post WWII Franco Regime and the French Resistance. These were the parents of the people in part two: where they got their start and so on.

At present a plebiscite for Catalonia's autonomy is climaxing after a century of struggle by the people of Northeastern Spain. The results of which are overshadowed by Scotland's drive that just recently failed. Over on the West end of the Pyrenees another people whose language and culture were suppressed with equal ferocity by the Franco regime is often skipped over.

I'd read Hemingway and Orwell (mostly about Catalonia) and seen several documentaries and movies that covered what had gone down during that period. It was, however, difficult to find sources about the Basque people in English.... not even documentaries. The suppression of the Basque language by Franco is partially responsible for this but what sources I did find were rich with a spirit that is skipped over by the pro-Stalinist or Marxist Anarchists of Barcelona and Madrid. The libertarian Basque nationalism that the first spark that lit the flames of the Spanish Civil War begins in Asturias and still fetsers today. Asturias is where my story begins.

From Part I: The Maquisard

Chapter 2: Asturias

A group of villagers were huddled at the side of the tracks leading into a mining town nestled between steep hills. A woman patted a young girl on the head and slipped the girl behind her skirts as the Guardia Civil ordered the group to line up. The girl scurried away and down into the arroyo behind. The woman raised her fist in the air as a distraction and a last gesture of defiance with a shout, “Viva la Revolucion!”
 A man joined her with raised fist, as did the others in the group. “Viva la…” 
The girl scurried away down into the arroyo before some of the bodies, neighbors she had known since she was born, fell after a loud volley of Mausers. Then there was then a horrible silence except for a restrained moan, a few pops and cracks of pistols. She watched from her hiding place under a boulder as the refrain from an old lullaby passed softly from her lips: “Los pollitos dicen los pollitos dicen pío, pío, pío cuando tienen hambre tienen frío.” Tears clouded her vision. It would be the last time she afforded tears to wash her face for over thirty years.
            In English the whole verse is: “The little chicks say pio, pio. pio when they are hungry... when they are cold. The hen looks for the corn... gives them food, and provides them shelter. Under her wings sleeping chicks huddle together to hasten another day!”

Sleeping… hung-over… soothed by the lullaby rhythm of steel wheels on steel tracks… chunk-cat-clack…chunk-cat-clack… chunk-chunk… Then noise: a whistle… awake… another town… steam hissed… exploded from pistons, escalated by the chatter and clamoring of another group of volunteers boarding. Alesandro peered through half-shut lids to watch the eager new ones standing in the aisle, falling against each other whenever the train jerked to a start. He’d been crammed into a seat on the wooden bench of the car, shoulder to shoulder, with young men… young or younger than he. Their voices were, from the start in Madrid, loud and boisterous… songs of the revolution… “A Las Barricades!” Bravado smothered fear and anticipation, driven by the cheers of crowds alongside the tracks. Red and black flags on la locomotora del destino chugged their cars away from the station and from the safety of homes and chalkboards of classrooms.
After this disruption of not-thought, his attention turned to the changing Castilian landscape that passed his window… images flashed by. The train wound its way towards Asturias; another country on the far side of Spain. Some aboard were CNT labor unionists, veterans of street fighting, but most were volunteers: metropolitan boys with pink hands. The propaganda posters depict men; masculine men with chiseled chins and muscled forearms, fists thrust skyward over the barricades... men, not boys… boys who hoped to be greeted with cheers and welcomed by the calloused hands of miners holding firm at the barricades of Gijón and Oviedo, they would be heroes; heroes alright, dead heroes.
The train they rode left Madrid was loaded up with untrained young and eager faces armed by little more than the enthusiasm and the naivety of youth. Only a few had seen blood from more than a scratch before and were unprepared for what awaited them in the mining towns in and above Oviedo or Gijón on the Biscay coast. From Madrid they crossed north through the heartland of Castile-Leon and into a region of rugged mountains, passed towns and stations that prominently posted the red and black flags of the Revolucion. The rails were controlled by the anarchist labor union, the CNT, most sympathetic to the cause. But, this was an irony of a civil war full of ironies that, in cooperation with the new Republic in Madrid, the same union trains, controlled by the same union, would fill its cars with experienced and hardened Moroccan troops, Regular Army troops of Colonel Yague and General Ochoa, under orders of the Generals of the Republic in Madrid, Francisco Franco and Manuel Goded, to quell the miners’ general strike that had crippled most of the country.
Next to Alesandro snored the fledgling journalist; his brother by adoption and Euskara blood.  Euskara blood knows no nation but the Basque Country of the coastline and mountains along the Bay of Biscay and the Pyrenees Range of Southern France and Northern Spain.  Their bond, however, was stronger than the fraternity of blood. Alesandro Otxoa was orphaned at five years of age by the pistoleros of the Guardia Civil. Alesandro Otxoa had been embraced and given a home near Biarritz by Marcel’s half-Basque father out of loyalty to the Otxoa family. It happened during the general strikes at La Canadiense in 1919. One of his earliest memory was that of a door being kicked in… of his father’s shouting… his mother’s cursing… screams… both taken out the door… the sound of clap-crack pistol retorts… their bodies lifeless on the street.
Alesandro took his secondary level education at the Lycée Militaire and thus had an inkling of military experience: little more experience than to know how to load and shoot a rifle, to march in drills, and to study rudimentary military history on his own in the school’s library. Therefore he felt responsible for, and protective of, Marcel, whose military ambitions were next to nil and who wasn’t supposed to be on this train in the first place.
The storm clouds forming in the atmosphere over the Second Republic of Spain were dark with foreboding: a civil war of which the life of Alesandro (Gotson) Otxoa would be entangled, from his first taste of combat in this one week in October of 1934, until his imprisonment in Carabanchel in the mid nineteen-fifties.
Alesandro was determined, and obligated by his heritage, to leave the comfort and safety of Bayonne at twenty years of age to join the CNT of the anarchist movement rising up in Barcelona. There in Madrid, as soon as he heard the news of the strike, he tried to bid farewell to Marcel over wine in a café alongside of other boys eager to become men.
“You aren’t going without me,” Marcel protested.
“There is too much going on here, Marcel. The people need your voice. Someone has to keep an eye on the political wrangling of Euro…” Alesandro rattled off his argument staccato knowing his words were falling on deaf ears.
“I won’t have it Alesandro, the hottest story in all of Spain is in Asturias.”
Taking a sip, holding the bottle to his lips without mocking, he said sincerely, “You’re an academic, Marcel. How well would you… would you be able to kill a man?”
“Ha, I can. Just as well as anyone. Hell, we are all amateurs!” he argued.

The brothers got drunk… so very drunk that Alesandro barely remembered agreeing to board the train singing what would be the anthem of the revolution, “La Rhumba La Carmella,” and chanting “¡Unidad, Proletaria Hermanos!” with the others. His stomach sick, he came to and swore to himself that he’d never get drunk again. It was an oath that he kept except for an occasional toast or to wash down stale bread. Alesandro knew from the time he awoke aboard that train he was going to keep his vigilance guardedly; for, one afternoon, his guard was down and his drunkenness nearly cost the life of his little brother.

The Book of Job Revisited is written in the recent past that prepares the way for the third book Adrienne: Part I. The Maquisard, and Part II.The Chaos of Obsession. If my reader hasn't done so yet, check out this link for the Book of Job Revisited and leave a comment... even if you hate it!
www.amazon.com/Book-Job-Revisited-Taxi-Romance-ebook/dp/B00NY2JQYC


Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Screenplay: A Taxi Romance (excerpt)

FADE IN:

EXT. HEAVEN - BRIGHT LIGHT ABOVE - ETERNAL DAY

NARRATOR
Max had read the Book of 'Job' describing heaven, the  throne of god:  white light: Angels zip about.  The Satanic entourage approaches. Lucifer steps forward, leans with one hand on the left arm of the throne.

THE LORD
(casually)
From where do you come?

LUCIFER
From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down on it.

THE LORD
Have you considered my servant 'Job', that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man, one that fears God and eschews evil?  And still he holds fast his integrity, although you moved against him, to destroy him without a cause.

LUCIFER
Skin for skin, yea, all that a man has will he give for his life. But put forth your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.

THE LORD
Behold, he is in your hands now, but save his life.

EXT. EARTH - BIBLICAL TIMES - CITY DUMP - NIGHT

'Job' sits in rags with boils over his whole body.  Job's wife, in fine silks, adorned with jewelry, approaches him, and whispers in his ear

JOB'S WIFE
Do you still retain your integrity? Why don't you curse God and die?

INT. HEAVEN - LOWER LEVEL - CUBICALS INTO ETERNITY - MORNING

Angels sit on Oriental Rugs in a Bedouin Tent of God way up on high; while, in a dingy cubical, one of an eternity of cubicles that stretch out for an infinity, several levels down, sits a lower-level angelic bureaucrat. He reads from a large screen.

ANGEL
(Mutters)
Shit, his troubles have only begun.  Max, he's no 'Job', but is alone with or without, new, or, old friends.  He has a loving family that would have nurtured him but he will disappear from their sight for several years. Like a cat, he's gone away to lick his wounds.  Hoping that everything would be back to normal someday, someday always will be after the one he's in.  And, that reality is one he lives in for over a decade.

A nasty little imp, Lucky, enters the angel's cubical.

LUCKY
Wha cha upta, old boy.

Angel cancels the page, spins around, sees the visitor is the Imp, Lucky, with a black cat, turns back to the monitor, and fakes looking busy

ANGEL
(mildly sarcastic)
Oh, Lucky!  Did the cat drag you in?  I'm busy with some new directives on venial sins.  Some are shifting, you know.  Like eating meat on Fridays and all that.  What have you been up to old boy?

LUCKY
(puffs up its chest)
Oh, I've been tagging along with the Master Satan.  You know, Numero Uno, the Big S, to and fro, and all that.  What were you reading?

Angel turns its back to the screen and scrolls down the page, comes back to Max's name, opens the file

ANGEL
(yawns)
Lookie here.  This guy, Max?  Looks like you've been at him.

Lucky peers over Angels shoulder. Angel leans away from the smell.

LUCKY
Vaguely.  Oh yeh. Just a few days ago I smacked him down a notch or two.

ANGEL
Seems okay. Pretty good guy.  Some black marks but, well, he's human.

LUCKY
He's a damned drunk.

Angel pulls out a pint labeled Heavenly Nectar from a drawer, takes a toke, and passes it to his friend.  Lucky guzzles it down until it is empty.

Lucky points to the floor

LUCKY
(seriously)
Ah!  We don't get much of this stuff down there unless one of you guys get busted, or switch sides, smuggles a case in through the back door:  know what I mean?  All we get is rot-gut.

ANGEL
(reads consul and comments)
Yes, Max has his faults, marriage on the rocks.  She dumped him and married again. No real fault of his.  He did try to mess around back then but his heart wasn't in it. Didn't have much luck there. Good to his daughter though. Pays double the going rate for support.  Volunteered at that!  He likes his work and the inmates he helps with writing poetry, painting, sculpture, and, ah yes, even a fledgling or two with novels.

LUCKY
(bitter)
Yeh, but hey, this ego-maniac.  This A-hole has some protection goin' for him.

ANGEL
Isn't this the pot calling the kettle black?

LUCKY
He has his health, his career and his wits about him.  He is a drunk but a happy drunk.  Say, give me a chance, lift that fence a bit and let me at him.  Suppose we put a case of Nectar on it.

ANGEL
Have at him if you're bored. It might be interesting to see what he is made of. I say he'll come out smelling like roses.

NARRATOR
Where's that Imp ever going to get a case of Nectar when he loses.

LUCKY
I've seen these types before.  They can be moral: all good and happy as long as they don't have to go out of their way too much for it. Let's say you let me take away his creative drive and see what happens to our happy-go-lucky chap after I'm done with him. Even the Big Kahuna won't recognize him.

Angel speaks at the screen after he watches Lucky leave

ANGEL
I've also seen cases like this before. They can't get so bad that the Big Kahuna doesn't recognize them.

FADE OUT:

FADE IN:

INT. VISION - DARK BAR - NIGHT

Bearded San Juan De la Cruz sits at a table in the back of the bar. The bar looks empty but for a prostitute at the bar, the balding barkeep and a neon Our Lady of Guadalupe on the wall.

SFX: clacking of pool balls o.s. on the break with intermittent clicks and clack of each shot

SAN JUAN
(reads under his breath)
Sluts,  Dykes,  Whores, and Saints:  These are the women I've given my heart. Madonna Saint; Hard core slut; all unavailable; no contest. I fall in and out of love with a purity and intensity that confounds me. It never fails. The more they reject this unconditional love the more I crave them. Such subservience can be depended upon.

The neon Virgin of Guadalupe comes off the wall and opens her robe suggestively.

SAN JUAN
(shouts)
Senoras de la noche oscura: Masochist!  Absolutely! Absolutely!

LUCKY
(as barkeep)
Hey, knock it off or your gone!

SAN JUAN
Okay.  Right.

SAN JUAN
(low voice)
The purity of passion and intensity is astonishing, purging. This my friends is no playground masochism of leather costumes, whips and chains.

PROSTITUTE
Say, what are you reading anyway,  PORN?

San Juan stands with the book in his hand as if a preacher

SAN JUAN
(proclaims)
This here is the Big Tent, out of the donjons, an open-air variety of being led about on a leash of unfulfilled aspirations, and submitted to the sting of the whip of labored love lost!

LUCKY
Dammit, John!  Outa here!

SAN JUAN
Such a pathetic waste of time!

NARRATOR
The old junkie wasn't so far off.  Max had found his self bouncing around in the limbo of a private purgatory for so long that he'd begun to accept that San Juan de la Cruz's condition was going to define the rest of his life.


FADE OUT: