This was originally written in the author’s native Galician, and because I spent a year teaching in Galicia, I was drawn to his work. It was well described in a Guardian review as “a sincere and beautiful portrait of a brutal, ugly period in Spanish history”.
The novel is set in the early months of the Spanish civil war, and we get perspectives of those involved on both sides of the conflict. The two main characters are Dr Daniel Da Barca and the prison guard, Herbal; the latter is the main narrator, so it’s chiefly through his eyes that we see the doctor. Herbal is a conflicted character, feeling awe and respect but also hatred for his prisoner. By contrast, Da Barca is an almost saintly character, constantly looking after his fellow prisoners and seemingly enjoying the divine protection of the biblical character after whom he’s named (he’s taken out to be executed several times but a last-minute reprieve always arrives). On release he goes into transatlantic exile, returning to his native Galicia only after Franco dies.
The story is told long after the war’s end and moves back and forward in time and between alternative viewpoints. Early in the action, Herbal shot an artist prisoner in the head, doing it to save him from a torturous execution (some had their testicles cut off and stuffed in their mouths). The pencil of the title was given by a carpenter to the artist, who used it to sketch a local church porch, replacing the faces of the biblical characters with those of his fellow republican prisoners.
Herbal appropriated the pencil as a keepsake but found that when he put it behind his ear, as the artist used to do, the artist talked to him about the secrets of painting and urged him to protect Da Barca. This “magic realism” is part of the novel’s attraction, as is the story of the enduring love between Da Barca and Marisa.
The book evokes the horror and brutality of the civil war, which showed graphically “man’s inhumanity to man”, but what abides are not those things but the tenderness and humanity.
