Doctor Sutilis (Cuentos) 📚👨⚕️ | Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) – ¡Una obra única de la literatura española!
Today we bring you a unique work by Leopoldo Alas, known as Clarín, in which we explore a world full of reflection and sharp social criticism. ‘Doctor Sutilis’ is a story that invites us to immerse ourselves in the existential dilemmas of a character caught between science and morality. Throughout these tales, Alas offers us a complex vision of human reality, characterized by his profound irony and keen observation. Join us on this fascinating literary journey. Chapter 1. If you had known him eight years ago… you wouldn’t know him now. Do you see that head shaved with scissors, although the dictionary defines it only with a razor? Well, eight years ago it was a tangled ebony forest. Do you see those insignificant eyes, whose rock crystal lenses remove all expression and give a stoic serenity and irritating audacity? Well, eight years ago they were the flames of a fire that burned in Pablo’s heart . Pablo is twenty-eight years old and a stockbroker. Eight years ago, he was twenty and a dreamer by trade. At twenty, Pablo was a pagan, like the saint of his name. Gazing at the stars in the sky, the waves of the sea, the leaves of the forest, the ears of wheat on the plains, he would suddenly cry without knowing why, and he was happy amidst nameless and untold sorrows. He fell madly in love with every poppy he saw in a wheat field , and he considered himself a heartless ingrate if he forgot even one . Every time the sun set, Pablo would bid it farewell with tears in his eyes. When, on his solitary walks through the countryside, he met a shepherd who asked him for a light to light tobacco wrapped in a corn husk, Pablo would strike up a conversation with him, and as he left that stranger alone, he felt his “ heart break .” The reader will understand that living like that was impossible. All the more so since Pablo had nothing to fall on, dead or alive. One day, his uncle, Don Pantaleón de los Pantalones, coughed three times in a row in front of his nephew Pablo, who was eating one of his sides, according to his uncle’s hyperbolic assertion. The speech was on its way back, and it happened, for evil never announces itself in vain. “Pablo,” said Don Pantaleón, “this can’t go on. ” Pablo sighed. “This can’t go on,” continued his uncle, “because you’re already over twenty years old and you’re not thinking about becoming a man, that is, becoming a man in the true sense of the word, a rich man, because calling others men is a corruption of language. I see you very busy thinking about whether or not there are inhabitants on other planets, and I know you’ve written very conscientious works about the nature of beauty. All that may be very nice, very interplanetary, but it has no common sense. Imagine if I’m tightening the purse strings . What will you do from now on? Will you swallow the Milky Way, or the concept of the sublime? You’re too conceited, and you need to come down to real life to mingle with your peers. In a word, I’m going to make you a bookkeeper. This is an opportunity to say that Pablo loved Restituta with a passion unbridled , like a hurricane; without measure, like the ocean; without rhyme or reason, like Spanish politics. Restituta must have started by not calling herself Restituta. Why was that name, a past participle and almost Latin? However, this lexical inconsistency didn’t confuse Pablo. The worst thing wasn’t that Restituta was called Restituta, but that she was also called Andana. Pablo wrote very good verses; but the girl, who had read the Romancero de la Guerra de África written in verse by Eduardo Bustillo, had lost her taste for verse. Pablo was predominantly subjective, as they say at the Ateneo, in the literature section; And Restituta was fond of epic poetry, to the point of marrying a captain of hunters who was in a replacement position. On the same day that the captain asked Restituta’s father for his daughter’s hand, Don Pantaleón de los Pantalones asked Pablo for a vacant position as a shopkeeper in his cloth and textile establishment. Here are the verses that Pablo wrote on the occasion of this second event: “Love walked naked among roses and soft grass; playful breezes and breezes caressed him. At that time, there were no looms in the world, nor were animals stripped of their skins to clothe the human wolf. “Love, as you walk, reached the brambles, found the path narrow and full of brambles, thistles, and thorns; at the first steps, he shed tears of pain; but he waited for the flowers to return and suffered the wounds of the thistles with resignation. He continued walking and the roses did not reappear; the thorns of the brambles grew sharper and sharper. Love was like Saint Lazarus. Then he stopped; he sowed flax all around, not without first clearing the land; he invented the shuttle, the loom, everything he needed to make cloth; He tried walking again, dressed in a flowing tunic, but the sedentary life had made him lazy and effeminate, and the wounds from the thistles hurt more than when he walked naked. It was necessary to manufacture cloth, he made traps for hunting animals; he skinned, tanned, sheared, and dressed like a gentleman. The law of exits advised him to work hard; the industrial spirit took over love; he worked outside the country and had to learn bookkeeping . When the company name “Amor y Compañía” became respectable in all the markets, love tried to undertake the journey again, and great and pleasant was his surprise to see that the thorns, thistles , and brambles had disappeared. The road was once again lined with roses and soft grass; the breezes and the breezes caressed the traveler. Everything was back as it had been before. There was no more to it than that, as he passed by a fountain, love looked into its waters and saw that it was not himself, nor anything like it. From that day on, love seeks love and does not appear. The first thing that will surprise the reader about this poem is that it is written in prose. Is there such a thing as prose poetry, as Mr. Vidart claims? Not at all; what there is is that I have translated these verses, written in German, into Castilian prose. Pablo, who had studied a lot when he was naked, wrote his intimate poems in German with regular correctness. But after writing this one, neither in German nor in any other language, living nor dead, did he ever find consonants again, except by chance. This poetry caused a crisis in Pablo’s soul, and from that day on, he began to be a man in the true sense of the word. The gentleman with the Trousers saw with astonishment and joy that in his nephew’s accounts, the sums were a faithful representation of the sums, and that, not by chance, was a quotient greater than the dividend in Pablo’s divisions. In the daily books, there were no scratches, no rhythmic pitfalls on the margins, no Germanic sighs . Chapter 2. The captain of hunters—how could it be hidden?—was no poet; and to be a man in the true sense of the word, he lacked half a rank. On the list of captains, he was like Garibay’s soul, far from both shores, like a castaway in the solitudes of the ocean. If one looked back, one saw that good old Don Suero de Quiñones must have donned the three stars soon after the Great Captain, and if one looked ahead, one guessed that Don Suero would put stripes on his sleeve when perpetual peace was already a reality . But none of this worried Restituta at first, who, confidently like the economists, expected that the repressive causes would come to diminish the class of captains and, consequently, considerably reduce the population. Quiñones was a handsome young man, and Restituta had loved him out of corps spirit; because Restituta, deep down, was an infantry woman. She had been born to marry a captain. of the weapon. Not for a moment did it occur to Pablo to compete with a rival who had privileged jurisdiction. He gave up from the first formation in which Restituta saw Don Suero. Let it be said in honor of Pablo, Restituta had not failed to occasionally give fuel to the passion of the miserable dreamer. The girl did not want him for herself. That sleepwalker, incapable of picking popcorn in the gulf; but he had grown accustomed to seeing him suffer, languish, be silent, and weep in silence. What’s more, and this should be said in honor of Restituta, the girl used to go very quietly to Pablo’s room. (Here I must point out that they were related and lived for long periods under the same roof.) What was Restituta doing in her spurned lover’s room? Ransacking the desk drawers, taking out papers, reading them, blushing, becoming thoughtful, then bursting out laughing, putting it all away, and running away. A few days before Restituta’s promotion to captain, Pablo, by chance, saw her in her own room absorbed in the curiosities noted above. Pablo, who had just written the German poem that accompanies the autos, was on the verge of feeling amor usque ad mortem. His heart was already in his throat; But he tapped his Adam’s apple, swallowed, and things fell back into place. Restituta didn’t know that her cousin had seen her shuffling her papers. The cousin, who at other times spent weeks and months ruminating over clues, glimpses, and traces of sympathy he thought he saw in his cousin, this time didn’t want to draw any conclusions from what he had witnessed; he didn’t think about it, that is, he didn’t reflect on it, he didn’t savor it. He limited himself to recording the fact in the ledger under the letters that say ” Must.” Chapter 3. A captain of hunters has little to learn. Let’s avoid ambiguity; I don’t mean to say that he, the captain, has little to learn, because he already knows almost everything; I meant to say that Don Suero de Quiñones’s wife knew everything by heart very quickly. What happens to husbands, especially to captain husbands, is what happens to Nature: “they are beautiful per troppo cambiare.” Don Suero was handsome and varied as long as he didn’t exhaust the possible combinations of his attire: civilian clothes, uniform, dress uniform, frock coat, garrison cap, Russian, and so on. There was no more. After Restituta had had her fill of seeing all this, and it didn’t take long, she wanted to penetrate the depths of her soul. Quiñones had no depths. His soul was a casemate, bombproof and psychologically proof. He had no ideals, dead or alive: he had no other ideal than his next higher position. In the meantime, the bookkeeper read The Physiology of Marriage in his spare time, not to take Balzac’s lucubrations literally, but as an appetizer for his own reflections. If you had seen him, as Restituta saw him, with the book in his hands, his head bowed and his eyes fixed on the ground with a sidelong, malignant look, if you had seen him then bite his nails and, as if regaining consciousness, look around in fear and then return to his reading, you might have sensed the strange curiosity that your cousin felt, even if it wasn’t so vehement and mysterious in yours. Restituta’s father, Quiñones, Restituta, and Don Pantaleón, all four of them agreed on this point: that Pablo was undergoing a strange (and, as the one with the pants added, healthy) as well as unexpected transformation. The cousin’s father rejoiced at the advantages that good bookkeeping brought to his business. Don Pantaleón, it goes without saying why he was rejoiced; and Don Suero, disinterestedly, shared in the general contentment, because of that strange attraction of the abyss that poets speak of and that husbands should meditate on so much. Restituta wasn’t rejoicing; He limited himself to feeling a great deal of curiosity. But ah! curiosity is a great deal. Chapter 4. Pablo came to have a share in the profits. And he ended by taking business so seriously that more than once he was seen to argue very heatedly about commercial matters, airing what is usually called the quarter and the eighth. Don Pantaleón maintained that his nephew was a Necker, because the name Necker sounded like strong pesos to him. He confused him with Croesus. One night when she was alone at home, Restituta was tempted to return to Pablo’s room. But it is no longer possible to say the Pablo’s room, because the master of the house had given her an entire bay of the mansion where they lived. Pablo had furnished his rooms with taste and elegance. It didn’t take her cousin a few minutes to find the table, whose drawers she had once searched. Finally, she saw it in a corner, highly varnished and tidy. Every key was in every lock. She tremulously opened one and then the other, and all the drawers. What a disappointment! Those disordered papers, some short, some long, some written in Spanish, others in unknown characters, were no longer there. In their place were many very symmetrical bundles with folders, tied with a red, polished ribbon. When she signed the marriage contract, Restituta saw something similar in the municipal judge’s office. She searched everywhere, but saw no trace of those papers, which, truth be told, she hadn’t forgotten in so long. Restituta tried to remember some of the short compositions until she could remember them by heart. Indeed, on her way back home, she would say to herself : “What a verse my cousin swore when he laughed and cried at the same time!” Seeing that she couldn’t remember, Restituta thought it best to come to an understanding. And she did. She sharpened her intelligence so much, she turned over the old memories of the concepts she had learned from Pablo’s papers so many times, that at last, in her solitude, Restituta became convinced that her lord, husband and captain, was a Bedouin, she a misunderstood woman, and her cousin a man who would have understood her perfectly. Chapter 5. Pablo Soldevilla had already been a member of several municipal and provincial finance committees , and was about to be appointed deputy to the Cortes, when her first love decided to sound her out, alluding to the sorrows of the past: “Aren’t you getting married, Pablo?” Restituta said when she found herself alone with him in the garden gazebo, as night fell. “Get married? Me?” What’s said is said, cousin. Even if I said it eight years ago, it’s said. I have loved one woman, only one, do you understand? And once and for all. You know that I believe in the plurality of inhabited worlds, that I believe, as if I could see it, that my soul must live in all those stars that are now beginning to shine up there!… I warn you that they are infinite; well then, Restituta; I, who hope to live in all of them, in all of them I will continue to love the woman I loved here, on this poor and very sad earth that is becoming so dark. (And it was true that it was getting dark, and Pablo was kicking his feet on a violet plant.) They may well ask me after a million lifetimes: Aren’t you getting married, Pablo? I will always answer: what’s said is said. Restituta appreciated at its full value this piece of corrosive literature, as honest souls rightly call it. There was a pause. At last, Restituta, as if she were constantly changing her conversation, exclaimed: “Listen, since you became a merchant and a wise financier, don’t you write verses anymore? How beautiful you used to write them! It seems unbelievable; but the truth is that in the long run one cannot live without verses, good ones, that is, like yours. ” “Eight years ago I wrote the last ones; they are the only ones I retain… in my memory. ” “Do you want to recite them? ” “I wrote them in German! ” “Well, never mind; tell me the substance.” Pablo said the substance, without adding, but not without taking away, for he thought it appropriate to omit the fact that love, when it looked at its source, had not known itself. He concluded by saying that love seeks love. How thoughtful Restituta remained! “Listen, Pablo,” she said when it was already quite night, “how bitter those verses are; You seem to think, according to them, that no one wants love for love’s sake, that it needs other attractions, that it has to be clothed in a thousand requisites and take a thousand precautions so that the thorns of life don’t hurt them. –And it’s the truth: they didn’t want me when I offered a sincere, innocent love; my uncle assured me that they wouldn’t want me until I was a man … and I worked and became a man, and now, even if they want me, what does it matter to me? Because… what’s said, said… Chapter 6. Said and done. It’s not my fault. Nor are they. Restituta began to understand pure, ideal love when Nature—natura naturans—had already satisfied her first needs, when Quiñones had no more uniforms to wear, and when the gloomy shadows gave way to a little light in the beautiful girl’s mind. For Restituta was still very young when the scene in the gazebo occurred. Twenty-four years old. That’s when a woman can understand something of disappointments and enjoy that melancholic and poetic perspective of memories, from which, reader, God save your wife, if you have one. Amen. As for Pablo, it must be confessed that he behaved like a scoundrel, and a coward first. He was a coward because, since he was born a dreamer, an idealist, he had to face the disastrous consequences of his vocation and his character. He was a scoundrel because he didn’t recite his last poem in its entirety before Restituta . Why didn’t he say, as was the truth, that love had never been known when he looked at himself in the fountain? Why didn’t he confess that, holding in his arms the dream that had become reality, or that woman he had adored in his early youth… he had only felt the pleasure of vengeance and pride satisfied? And oh shame! He should also have confessed that he didn’t keep their second appointment until very late, because his duties as a broker took him to the Stock Exchange. Yes; he was cowardly, he was a scoundrel… but he was sharp, he was subtle. He heard on the lips of his uncle Don Pantaleón de los Pantalones, who was so crude, the words of wisdom. He loved the ideal and was reminded of the pain it brings. He fled from the precipice in time. If he had continued dreaming, the following misfortunes would have befallen him, at least some of them: 1. Dying of hunger sooner or later. 2. Supposing that hunger hadn’t been the stab of a rogue, his cousin would have tormented him for life, because the lure of disdain was undoubtedly what attracted her (now that she doesn’t hear it), and 3. Even if the cousin had surrendered, what bitter happiness adulterous love would have brought to the enamored soul of the poor dreamer! No, and a thousand times no. Pablo was truly converted, he lost his dreams and love, he left behind his verses and poetry, and only feigned love, dreams, poetry, verses, when his plans demanded it. He enjoyed little, it’s true, Pablo the converted, but he suffered nothing. That lover could exclaim: nothing has been lost but love. Imitation poets, who seek intimate sorrows to sing laments and publish your pains, if you find a publisher, do not despise my Pablo, do not consider him less than yourselves. He was a deserter of the ideal; he fled from painful dreams because he truly felt them… and according to what the intelligent say, when you love truly, you suffer greatly. THE WISE FLY Chapter 7. One night Don Eufrasio Macrocephalus allowed me to enter the sanctum sanctorum, into his study, which was more of a library than a cabinet; the walls were lined with thick and very respectable volumes, whose sales value would rise to a fabulous price the day Don Eufrasio closed his eye and that treasure of science was sold at public auction; for if Aristotle is worth a lot on his own, an Aristotle owned by the wise Macrocephalus would be worth much more to any bibliophile capable of understanding my illustrious friend. My purpose in visiting Don Eufrasio’s library was to check notes on any author, whose book was not easy to find elsewhere; and the scholar’s unusual kindness went so far that he left me alone in that sanctuary of wisdom while he went to some Academy to deny a prize to a certain thesis in which he was called an animal, not for the sake of calling him that, but to demonstrate that there is no solution of continuity in the scale of beings. Don Eufrasio’s library was a sheltered room, so hermetically sealed to all indiscreet air because of its infiltration, There was no recollection of anyone ever coughing there or showing any sign of a cold. Don Eufrasio didn’t want to catch a cold, because his own cough would have distracted him from his profound meditations. It was, in short, a room where a baker might well bake bread, as Campoamor says. Next to the writing table was a brazier all aglow, and at the end of the room, in an old-fashioned fireplace, oak logs burned, grumbling as they burned. A soft carpet covered the floor; heavy cloth curtains hung in the gaps, and there was no uncovered crack, nor any excuse for the cold air from outside to rush in, except by its measured steps and under the guise of gradually warming itself. I spent a long time enjoying that pleasant warmth, which I judged so alien to science, always considered cold and almost freezing. I thought I was alone, because there was no need to talk about mice in the house of Macrocephalus, an excellent chemist, a sort of Borgia of the walls. I remained silent, and so did the books; for although they told me many things with what they had written on their spines, they said it without making a sound; and only up there in the fireplace did they make as much noise as they could, which wasn’t much, because the scorched logs were already defeated. Instead of reciting the quotations I had written down, I settled down in a rocking chair near the brazier, and in sweet drowsiness I let my lazy imagination wander as it pleased, taking my thoughts wherever they might. But my imagination complained of lacking space between those walls of wisdom, which it couldn’t break, as if they were made of stone. How could I comfortably traverse those volumes that contained everything Plato said, and that cried out here, “Leibniz!” beyond, “Descartes!” “Saint Augustine!” “Encyclopedia!” “System of the world! Critique of pure reason ! Novum organum!” The entire world of intelligence lay between my poor imagination and the free atmosphere. I could not fly. “Hey!” I said to him; “seek material for your madness within the narrow confines of your own confinement. You are in the house of a wise man; does this silence mean nothing to you? Is there not something here that speaks of the philosopher’s mysterious life? Was there not, perceptible to your eyes, any trace in the air that might indicate Don Eufrasio’s thoughts, or his sorrows, or his hopes, or his passions, which perhaps, with so much knowledge, Macrocephalus possesses?” My imagination answered nothing; but at that instant I heard behind me a very faint buzzing of a very strange nature: in some way like the buzzing of a fly, and in some way like the murmur of words that sounded far away, very muffled and confused. Then the fantasy said: “Do you hear? Here’s the mystery! That rumor is perhaps from a spirit; perhaps the genius of Don Eufrasio is about to speak, some demon, in the good sense of the word, that Macrocephalus must have hidden in some jar.” On the transparent screen that almost completely covered the oil lamp placed on the table, which was very close to me, a very sad-looking fly landed, for its wings were dirty, drooping, and somewhat personae, its body very thin and colored like a fly’s wing, some of its limbs were missing, and as it walked across the screen, it seemed crippled and puny. The buzzing sound was repeated, and this time it sounded more like words; the fly was saying something, although I couldn’t make out what it was saying. I brought the rocking chair closer to the table , and putting my ear to the edge of the screen, I heard the fly, without avoiding my indiscreet presence, say in a very well-tuned voice, such as many famous actors would wish for themselves: “It happened in the supreme monarchy of Mosquea, a king who, although brave, was easily effeminated by the wealth in his heart. ” “Who’s there? Is it Hospes?” cried the shuddering little fly, interrupting Villaviciosa’s song, who was reciting so enthusiastically; and it was then that I felt, like a horrifying crash, the light brush of my whiskers against the screen on which she was strutting with all the majesty her limp permitted. “Excuse me, sir,” she continued. By reporting, you’ve given me quite a scare; I’m nervous, extremely nervous, and I’m also nearsighted and absent-minded, which is why I hadn’t noticed your presence. I was perplexed; I didn’t know how to treat this fly that spoke with such correctness and propriety and recited classical verse. “You must excuse me,” I said at last, greeting him courteously. ” I didn’t know that there were dipterans in the world capable of expressing themselves with such clarity and of memorizing poems that not many primate writers have read. I’m a polyglot, sir; if you like, I’ll recite the Batrachomyomachy to you in Greek, just as I would recite the entire Mosquea to you. These are my favorite poems; to you they’re burlesque poems, to me they’re grandiose epics, because a mouse and a frog are, in my eyes, true giants whose battles are astonishing and cannot be laughed at.” I read the Batrachomyomachy as Alexander read the Iliad… Arjomenos proton Mouson yoron ex Heliconos… Alas! Now I devote myself to this pleasant literature, which refreshes the imagination, for I have long cultivated the exact and natural sciences, which dry up all sources of poetry; long have I lived among the dust of parchments, deciphering runic characters, cuneiform, hieratic signs, hieroglyphics, etc.; long have I thought and suffered with the disillusionment that philosophy always engenders; I spent my youth searching for the truth, and now, when the best part of life is over, I eagerly seek any agreeable lie that will serve as a Lethe to help me forget the truths I know. Allow me, sir, to continue speaking without letting you interfere , because this is the custom of all the wise men of the world, be they flies or mosquitoes. I was born in I don’t know what corner of this library; My next of kin and others of the tribe flew far away from here as soon as the kind spring of flies arrived and they saw an open window; I couldn’t follow mine because Don Eufrasio caught me one day when, with other inexperienced mosquitoes, I was sucking out the brains that the poor gentleman was sweating through his spacious bald head. He hid me under a glass cup, and there I lived for days and days, the best of my childhood. I served him in numerous scientific experiments; but since the results of them weren’t satisfactory, because they demonstrated the exact opposite of what Macrocephalus wanted to prove, which was the Cartesian theory, which considers animals to be machines, the poor wise man wanted to kill me, blinded by pride, so badly wounded in that struggle with reality. But I found salvation in the very philosophy that was to be the cause of my death , for at the moment of preparing my execution, which was a pin that was to pierce my entrails, Don Eufrasio scratched his head, indicating that he doubted, in effect, whether or not he had the right to kill me. First of all, is the death penalty legitimate in the eyes of reason ? And even if it isn’t, do animals have rights? This led him to consider what right was, and he saw that it was property; but property of what? And from one question to another, Don Eufrasio arrived at the necessary starting point to take a single firm step. All this occupied him for many months, which gradually extended the time for my death. Finally, analytically, Macrocephalus came to consider that it was his right to get rid of me. But since he still had his tail to skin, or rather the synthesis needed to understand the foundation, the why, Don Eufrasio has not decided to kill me for now, and is waiting for the day when he will reach the first principle and from there descend through the entire real system of science, to finish me off without diminishing the categorical imperative. In the meantime, without realizing it, he began to take a liking to me, and finally gave me the relative freedom to fly around this room; here the warm air protects me from the fury of winter, and I live, and I live, while my companions will have died in those worlds, victims of the cold that must be out there. But, all the same , I envy their fate! To measure life by time, how foolish! Life has no other measure than pleasure, unbridled passion, Infinite accidents that come without knowing how or why, the uncertainty of every hour, the danger of every moment, the variety of impressions always intense. That is true life! The fly stopped to heave a deep sigh, and I took advantage of the opportunity and said: “That’s all very well; but you still haven’t told me how you manage to speak better than some writers… ” “One day,” the fly continued, “Don Eufrasio read in the Westminster Review that within a thousand years, perhaps, dogs would talk, and, preoccupied with this idea, he insisted on proving the contrary. He bought a dog, a hound, and here, in my presence, he began to give him lessons in spoken language; the dog, perhaps because he was a hound, was unable to learn; but I, on the other hand, began to gather all the lessons he was missing, and one night, sitting on Don Eufrasio’s bald head, I said to him: “Good night, maestro, don’t be an animal; Animals can indeed speak, provided they have a regular disposition; those who cannot are the hounds and men who resemble them. Don Eufrasio was furious with me. Once again I had demolished his theories; but it wasn’t my fault. I tried to reassure him, and in the end I believed he had forgiven me for the crime of contradicting all his doctrines, obeying the laws of my nature. Lost by one, lost by a hundred and one, said Don Eufrasio, and he agreed to my wish that he teach me learned languages and how to read and write. In a short time I knew as much Chinese and Sanskrit as any learned Spaniard. I read all the books in the library, for to read I only had to walk over the letters, and when it came to writing, I followed the new system of doing it with my feet; now I write with the regularity of fly feet. At first, I believed, naively, that Macrocephalus had forgotten his grudges; but today I understand that he made me wise for my martyrdom. He knew what he was doing! Neither he nor I are happy. We both miss pleasure late in life, and we would give everything we know for a little adventure, he from a student; I, from a mosquito. Oh! One afternoon, the fly continued, the tyrant said to me: “Come on, today you’re going for a walk.” And he took me with him. I was deliriously happy. The open air! The endless space! All that blue immensity seemed like a short distance to fly. “Don’t go too far,” the wise man warned me when he saw me leave his side. I had every intention of fleeing, of fleeing forever! We arrived at the countryside. Don Eufrasio lay down on the grass, took out a cake and other sweets, and began to snack like an ignorant man. Then he fell asleep. I, somewhat afraid of that solitude, positioned myself above the wise man’s nose, as if on a watchtower, ready to plunge into his half-open mouth at the slightest sign of danger. Summer had returned, and the heat was stifling. The remains of the feast lay on the ground, and the appetizing smell soon attracted numerous insects of many genera, which I theoretically knew from the zoology I had studied. Then came the buzzing band of midges and flies, my sisters. Alas! Instead of the joy I had expected at seeing them, I felt dread and envy. The midges frightened me with their gigantic bodies and their bombastic buzzing; the flies enchanted me with the grace of their movements, the brilliance of their wings. But when I realized that my puny figure was the object of their mockery, when I saw that they looked at me with contempt, I, a male fly, felt the greatest bitterness in life. The wise man is the most capable of loving a woman, but a woman is incapable of esteeming a wise man. What I say about women also applies to flies. What envy, what envy I felt when I contemplated the fruitful aerial games of those coquettes dressed in mourning, all with mantillas, fleeing from their respective lovers, all more gallant than I, to have the pleasure, and give it, of perhaps meeting in the air and falling together to earth in a close embrace! The unhappy fly fell silent again; its wings trembled; and after a long pause, it continued: –No greater sorrow , that I remember a happy time in misery… While I was devouring envy and the shame of having it and feeling fear, a fly, or rather an angel, swooped down and landed beside me, on the wise man’s aquiline nose. She was as beautiful as the black Venus, and her wings bore all the colors of the iris; her graceful body was green and gold; her limbs were robust, well-shaped, and moved with such seductive movements that the legs of the gentle fly were equivalent to the six feet of the Graces. On Don Eufrasio’s nose , the beautiful apparition seemed to me like Sappho leaping from Leucas. I, motionless, contemplated her without saying anything. What language could be used to speak to that goddess? I didn’t know. What good was knowing so many languages, if I didn’t know the language of love! The golden fly approached me, flew around, and finally stopped in front of me, almost touching my head with its head. I saw nothing but its eyes! The entire universe was there. “Kale,” I said in Greek, believing that language to be most worthy of the goddess with the green and gold wings. The fly understood me, not because it understood Greek, but because it read the love in my eyes. “Come,” it replied, speaking in my mother’s language. “Come to the feast of crumbs, you will be my partner. I am the most beautiful and I choose you, because love, for me, is a whim. I do not know how to love, I only know how to be grateful when I am loved. Come and we will fly together; I will pretend to be fleeing from you…” “Yes, like Galatea, I know,” I said foolishly. “I do not understand Galateos, but I warn you not to speak Latin.” Fly after my wings, and in the air you will find my kisses… Like the purple sails spread over the wine-colored Ionian waters, as Homer said, so did that sorceress spread her wings and fly away whirring through the air: “Come, come!” I wanted to follow her, but I could not. Love had made me live centuries in a minute; I had no strength, and instead of flying, I fell into the abyss, into the jaws of Don Eufrasio, who woke up terrified, pulled me out of his mouth as best he could, and did not kill me because I had not yet arrived at synthetic metaphysics. Chapter 8. The Fly of My Tale After another pause, she continued weeping: “How much shame and pain my soul found within itself, looking at the light that shone, as always, the next day! Yes, we returned home, because I had no strength to fly nor any desire to escape. How? Why? My first visit to the world of flies had brought me, “with the first pleasure, disappointment” (please excuse me if I miss many verses in the middle of my prose: it’s a habit I’ve retained from when I dedicated Germanic sighs to the fly of my dreams). Like the sick young man of Chénier, I returned to this gloomy prison, wounded by love, with no other desire than to hide and savor alone that passion that was impossible to satisfy; because I would sooner die of shame than see again the green and gold fly that invited me to the feast of crumbs and the mad games of the air. A lover who finds himself ridiculous in the eyes of his beloved fly is the most unfortunate mortal, and would surely give his salvation to be, at that moment, either as great as God or as small as an infusoria. On our way back to our library, Don Eufrasio asked me mockingly: “How were you? Did you enjoy yourself?” I answered by biting him on the eyelid: he flew into a rage. “Kill me!” I said. “Oh! I could! But I can’t; the system is not complete; subjectively I could kill you; but the foundation is missing, the synthesis is missing.” How ridiculous Macrocephalus seemed to me from that day on! To wait for the synthesis to kill, when I would have killed all the male flies and all the bluebottles in the world that would have competed with me for the love, to which I did not aspire, of the golden fly! More than the desire to see her, the terror caused by the ridiculousness won over me, and I did not want to return to the street or the countryside. I wanted to extinguish the feeling and leave love in fantasy. From then on, my favorite readings were the legends and poems that tell of the deeds of beautiful heroes and Brave ones: the Batrachomyomachy, the Gatomachy, and above all, the Mosquea, made me weep with enthusiasm. Oh, who would have been Marramaquiz, that Roman cat who, trampling over everything, including scouring pots , searched for Zapaquilda on rooftops, garrets, and attics! And that king of the Mosquea, Solomon in love, how envious I was! What adventures would I not hatch in my mad mind, in the exaltation of compressed love! Tell me to think I was a Reinaldos or a Siegfried or any other legendary figure, and I devised the plan to travel the entire world in the following way: to ask Don Eufrasio to put at my disposal the magnificent atlases he had, where the earth, painted in brilliant colors on large maps, stretched out before my eyes in vast horizons. By pretending to learn geography, I was able to roam freely throughout the world, a wandering fly in search of adventure. I made myself armor from a steel quill pen, a gilded helmet from the remains of an inkwell lid; my spear was a pin, and so I traveled across lands and seas, crossing rivers and mountain ranges, and without pausing when I came across the ocean, as the Muslim did. The names of modern geography seemed prosaic to me, and for my travels I preferred the maps of ancient geography, half fantastic, half true. For me, it was the world as Homer conceived it, and the map that this belief represented was where I usually reveled in my adventures: I went with the gods to celebrate the wedding of Thetis at the ocean, a river that circled the earth; I ascended to the Hyperborean regions , where I had my golden fly under the care of a most honorable mistress, locked in a castle. I hunted the tiny insects that used to crawl across the pages of the atlas and brought them back as prisoners of war to my beloved fly, back to the fabulous regions. “This one,” I would say to him, “was defeated by me, on the steep Caucasus, and even on its peaks the blood of the mosquito that prostrates itself at your feet runs in torrents, wounded by the powerful lance to which you lend strength, O my fly! by giving it to my arm through the soul that adores you and lives on your memory.” “All these follies, and even infinitely more, I did and said, while Don Eufrasio thought about studying Strabo and Ptolemy.” “The novel in Greece began with geography; the first novelists were travelers, and I too devoted myself body and soul to the geographical novel.” Although the pleasure of fantasizing is not intense, it has a singular voluptuousness found in no other pleasure, and I can swear to you that those months I spent immersed in my imaginary travels, wandering through Don Eufrasio’s atlas, are the ones I cherish as sweet memories, because in them, the relief I felt from my pain was due to my own abilities. To poetize life with purely interior, personal elements—this is the only consolation for the miseries of the world: it is not much consolation, but it is the only one. One day Don Eufrasio placed a large, exceptionally luxurious book on the table. It was a New Year’s gift; it was a treatise on Entomology, according to the gilded Gothic letters on the cover. The edge of the thick volume resembled a golden mirror. I flew and walked hour after hour around that magnificent monument, the history of our people in all its genres and species. My heart told me that there was something marvelous there, a gift of the imagination. But I couldn’t open the book on my own. Finally, Don Eufrasio came to my aid: he lifted the heavy cover and left me free to explore that fantastic paradise, a museum of all wonders, an iconoteca of insects, where the riot of winged flowers, which are insects to man, and angels, nymphs, dryads, spirits of lakes and streams, fountains and forests, were displayed life-size, painted in all the brilliant colors with which Nature had painted them. I eagerly scanned, intoxicated by so much light and so many colors, those superb plates, where my imagination saw heaps of plots for a thousand poems: my heart told me “beyond”; I hoped to see something that would surpass all That orgy of vivid, sweet, or brilliant inks. I finally reached the treatise on flies! The author had devoted all the attention and care they deserve: many pages spoke of their form, life, and habits; many plates presented figures of all classes and families. I saw and admired the beauty of all the species, but I anxiously searched, without admitting it to myself, for a familiar image: at last! In the middle of a plate, shining brighter than all its companions, there it was, the green and gold fly, just as I had seen it one day on Don Eufrasio’s nose , and from then on, at all hours of the day and night, inside me. There it was, leaping from the paper, grave, motionless, as if dead, but with all the reflections that the sun had when its rays kissed the delicate lace wings. Any lover who has ever stolen a portrait of his disdainful beloved, and who alone has satiated his pent-up passion there, will guess the excesses to which I threw myself, my reason gone, upon seeing in my possession that most faithful and exact image of the golden fly. But do not believe, if you do not understand this, that it was a sudden daring to approach her; no, at first I was troubled and retreated as I would have done from her real presence. A coarse lover does not respect the chastity of matter, of form; for me, not only was the soul of the fly sacred: also her figure, her very shadow, even her memory. To dare to kiss the most chaste figure, I had to resort to my eternal novels; in my imaginary dialogues, I was already familiar with my happiness as a reciprocated lover; And so, as if the enchantment of having that splendid beauty docile and faithful to the yearning gaze of my eyes were not new, without turning away from them, like one following a swoon of love, I approached, after a tenacious struggle with fear, and said to the painted fly: “I am, madam, so accustomed to everything in my love being misfortunes, that seeing you so close to me and you not fleeing at the sight of me, I move not forward for fear of undoing this enchantment of having you so near. So many thorns have pricked my heart, madam, that I am afraid of flowers; if there is deception, let me know it after the first kiss, because, in the end, it must be that everything ends in my harm.” The fly did not reply, nor did I need to; But I, instead of her, said so many tender things to myself, I was so well convinced that the golden fly knew how to scorn the vain attire of apparent beauty and to know and feel the beauty of the spirit, that in the end, with all the courage and faith that a lover needs to avoid being snubbed or unpleasant in his caresses, I threw myself upon the image of rich colors and graceful lines, and in kisses and embraces I consumed half my life in a few minutes. In the midst of that vertigo of love, in which I was loving two at once, I saw the painted fly saying to me, between kisses and between the kisses themselves, almost kissing me with the words he was saying: “Fool, my fool, why do you doubt me, why believe that the female does not know how to feel what you know how to think? Your alas personae, your difficult and seemingly graceless movements, your fear of midges, your blushing, your weakness, your silence, everything that overwhelms you, because you judge that it hinders you from love, I appreciate it, I understand it, and I feel it and I love it. I already know that in your arms I am waiting to hear about what other males more beautiful than you have never known of love; I know that in telling me your loneliness, your inner struggles, your fantasies, you will be for me as if deified by love; there will be no voluptuousness more intense than that which I enjoy drinking through your eyes all the love of a soul.” large, wrinkled and darkened in the narrow prison of your body, thin and impoverished by the fever of thinking and wanting.” And in this vein, the golden fly continued to tell me such delightful phrases that I did nothing but cry and kiss her feet, even more grateful than in love. Blessed power of imagination that allowed me to enjoy this delirium, a sublime moment of the eternity of a heaven! Finally I spoke (on my own) and I only said in a voice that seemed to sound in my very entrails: “Your name? My name is in the legend at the bottom; This is what my cold and traitorous reason said, taking the voice I attributed to my beloved. I lowered my eyes and read… Musca vomitoria. Upon reaching this point, the voice of the wise fly weakened, and it continued speaking as one hears women speaking in church at confession. I, like the confessor, brought my ear so close, so close, that had the fly been a beautiful penitent, I would have felt the perfume of her breath (like the confessor) caress my face. And she said thus: “Vomitory Fly!” This was the name of my beloved. In the text , I found her story. It was terrible. Shakespeare said it well: “These pale young men who drink no wine end up marrying a harlot.” I, a chaste fly, in love with the ideal, had as the object of my dreams the lover of decay. There where life decomposes, where chemistry celebrates those orgies of poisoned miasmas found in dunghills, in latrines, in graves, and on battlefields after the carnage, there came my fly with its golden wings, with its metallic shapeshifters, Messalina of mud and plague. I loved the vampire fly, the fly of the Vomitorium! I had placed its crystal palace in the dream regions, in the Hyperborean regions, and its pleasure garden in the Hesperides; for her I had had the most astonishing adventures that fantasy could conjure, strangling mosquitoes and other miniature vermin, without a pang of conscience! But the most horrifying thing was not the disillusionment, but that disillusionment did not bring me oblivion or disdain. I continued blindly loving the vomiting fly, I continued madly kissing its colorful wings painted in the tremendous book that told me the shameful story. I tried, if not to forget—because this was impossible—to distract my sorrow, and as one returns to a home abandoned by the madness of the world, so I returned to science, a tranquil refuge that would give me the consolation of peace of soul, which is the greatest wealth. Alas! I returned to studying, but the problems of life, the mysteries of the higher world, no longer held for me the interest they had in other days; I now saw in science only the misery of that which is unknown, the terror inspired by its mysteries; in short, instead of the calm of the just, it only gave me the calm of the desperate, the engenderer of eternal sadness. What is heaven? What is earth? What do we care? Is there an afterlife for the flies who have resignedly suffered the torment of love in life? I don’t suffer resignedly, nor do I know anything about the afterlife. Science now only gives me yearning doubt, because in it I no longer seek truth, but consolation; for me, it is not a temple of worship, but a place of asylum; that is why science disdains me. Lost in the sea of thought, each time I engulf myself in its waves, the waves disdainfully cast me ashore like an empty shell. And this is my state. I go back and forth from books of wisdom to poetry, and neither in poetry do I find the lush freshness of other days, nor in books of knowledge do I see any truths other than the bitter and sad ones. Now I only hope, since I lack the material courage I need to kill myself, that Don Eufrasio will reach the Sintética and learn, on principle, that he can rightfully crush me. My only pleasure consists in provoking him, pecking and sucking incessantly at that bald skull, from whose poisonous juices I drank, at the wrong time, the desire for knowledge, which does not bring with it the virtue necessary for such self-denial. The fly fell asleep, and upon hearing the sound of the door opening, flew to a corner of the library. Chapter 9. Don Eufrasio was returning from the Academy. He was very red, sweating profusely, staggering as he walked, and his little eyes, half closed, were flashing. I was in the shadows, and he did not see me. He no longer remembered that he had left me in his dressing room, perfumed with all the sweet-smelling aromas of wisdom. He thought he was alone and spoke aloud (apparently this was his custom), saying thus to the all-wise walls that must know so many secrets: “Wretches! They have defeated me!” They have shown that there is no reason for the animal not to speak, but fortunately they are not based on No positive data, in any experiment. Where is the animal that began to speak? Which one was it? They don’t say this, there is no full proof; I can, therefore, contradict it. I will write a work in ten volumes denying the possibility of the fact; I will discredit the hypothesis. These few drinks I drank at Phryne’s house have revived me. Hell! It’s going around in circles: am I drunk? Am I going to get sick? It doesn’t matter; the main thing is that they are missing the fact, the positive data. The animal doesn’t speak, it can’t speak. Ha, ha, ha! How beautiful Phryne is! What a beautiful person! Well, Phryne speaks! Good, but that one doesn’t count: she talks like a parrot, and that’s not the case. Phryne speaks as she loves, without knowing what she is doing; that is neither loving nor speaking. But she is beautiful! Macrocephalus took a flask from his coat pocket; In the case was a miniature: it was the portrait of Phryne. He looked at it with delight and said again: “No, they don’t talk, animals don’t talk. It would be good if I had been mistaken all my life!” At that moment the wise fly buzzed, flew up, spiraling in the air, and finally landed on the miniature of Phryne. Macrocephalus turned pale, looked at the fly with eyes that no longer threw out sparks but lightning, and said in a hoarse voice: “Wretch! Why have you come here? Are you laughing? Are you making fun of me? ” “Just as you said, animals don’t talk! ” “You won’t be talking for long, bachelor,” cried the wise man, and he tried to pick up his enemy between his fingers. But the fly flew away and didn’t stop until it had dipped its legs into the inkstand. From there he returned arrogantly to perch on the pouch. “Listen,” he said to Macrocephalus, “animals speak… and write….” And as he spoke and walked, on the Russian skin, at the foot of Phryne’s portrait, he wrote with his paws dipped in red ink: Musca vomitoria. Don Eufrasio let out the roar of a beast. The fly had flown to the wise man’s skull; there it bit furiously… and I saw Macrocephalus’s emaciated hand fall upon his weak and rickety body. The wise fly died before Don Eufrasio could arrive at synthetic philosophy. A drop of blood remained on the smooth, shining bald head, which soaked into the skin of the skull, and filtering through the bone, became a stalactite in the conscience of my wise friend. At last, he had been able to kill a fly. DOCTOR PERTINAX Chapter 10. The priest left sullenly. Monica, the impertinent and pious old woman, remained alone at the deathbed. Her owl-like eyes, through which the light of the dim lamp shimmered, cast glances like anathemas upon the cadaverous face of Doctor Pertinax. “Jewish dog! If it weren’t for the command, I would have to endure the smell of sulphur emanating from your cursed body!… Not to confess, not even at the hour of death!” This impious monologue was interrupted by an “ouch!” from the dying man. “Water!” exclaimed the wretched philosopher. “Vinegar!” replied the old woman, without moving from her place. “Monica, good Monica,” continued the doctor, speaking as best he could; “you are the only person on earth who has been faithful to me… your conscience will reward you… this is ending… my time has come, but don’t fear… ” “No, sir; don’t worry… ” “Do not fear: death is an appearance; Only individual selfishness can complain of death… I am expiring, it is true, nothing remains of me… but the species remains… It is not only that: my work, the product of my labor, the village vineyards, my property, an extension of my personality in Nature, also remain; they are yours, you know, but give me water. Monica hesitated, and finally, softening as much as flint can soften, she held to her master’s lips I know not what syrup, whose sole virtue was to upset the dying man’s judgment more and more each time. “Thank you, Monica, thank you, and goodbye; that is, see you later. The species remains; you too will disappear, but don’t mind, the species and the vineyards will remain , which your nephew, or rather, our son, will inherit, because this is the hour of great truths.” Monica smiled, and then, looking up at the ceiling, she saw in the darkness above the shining image of a drum major, with a big mustache and gallant bearing. “Wouldn’t it be a bad species that came from your puny body and your marrow consumed by heresies!” This was the thought of the old woman at the same time that Pertinax was delivering the remains of his worn-out organism to the common heritage of the species, Nature’s great laboratory. Dawn was breaking. Chapter 11. It was the hour of the suckling donkeys: Saint Peter was rubbing the knocker of heaven’s door with a cloth and leaving it shining like the sun. Of course! As if the knocker that Saint Peter was cleaning was the very sun that we see rise every morning in the East. The saintly doorkeeper, in a better mood than his colleagues in Madrid, was singing some kind of tune, very similar to the French ça ira. “Hello! It seems we’re getting up early,” he said, inclining his head and staring at a personage who had stood before him on the threshold of the door. The stranger didn’t reply, but bit his lips, which were thin, pale, and dry. “No doubt,” Saint Peter continued, “you’re the wise man who was dying tonight? What a night you’ve made me go through, my friend! I haven’t slept a wink the whole time, waiting for you to call; and since I had strict orders not to make you wait a moment! What little respect we have for you here in heaven! Well, welcome, come in; I can’t move from here, but you can’t get lost. Go up… straight ahead… There’s no mezzanine.” The stranger didn’t move from the threshold, and fixed his small, blue eyes on the venerable bald head of Saint Peter, who had turned his back to continue cleaning the sun. The newcomer was thin, short, sallow-skinned, somewhat effeminate in his movements, neat in his bearing, and without a single beard on his face. He wore his shroud with elegance and composure, and measured his gestures and movements with academic rigor. After gazing at the work of Saint Peter’s for a good while, he turned around and tried to retrace his steps, which he didn’t know how he had traveled, but he saw that he was standing over an abyss of darkness in which there were shadows as if palpable, sounds of a horrifying storm, and at intervals bursts of a purple light, similar to those of lightning. There was no trace of a stairway, and the machine by which he half remembered having brought him up was also nowhere to be seen. “Sir,” he exclaimed in a vibrant voice and a sour tone, “may I know what this is? Where am I? Why have I been brought here? ” “Ah!” You haven’t moved yet? I’m glad, because I had forgotten a small requirement. And taking a memoir from his pocket, while dipping the tip of a pencil between his lips, he asked: “Your Grace?” “I am Doctor Pertinax, author of the stereotyped book in its twentieth edition, which is entitled Ultimate Philosophy… Saint Peter, who was not clever, had only written Pertinax… ” “Well: Pertinax of what? ” “What do you mean, what? Ah! Yes; you mean, from where? Just as they say: Thales of Miletus, Parmenides of Elea… Michelet of Berlin… ” “Justo, Quixote of La Mancha…” “Write: Pertinax of Torrelodones. And now, may I know what farce this is? ” “What farce? ” “Yes, sir; I am the victim of a joke; this is a comedy.” My enemies, those of my profession, aided by the resources of industry, with theatrical effects, exciting my imagination with some concoction, have undoubtedly prepared all this; but deception will not avail them: above all these appearances is my reason; my reason, which protests with a powerful voice against and above all this farce; but covers and glitter are of no use; I cannot be defeated by such a crude trick, and I say what I have always said and have recorded on page 315 of the Last Philosophy …, note b of subnote alpha, namely: that after death the deception of appearing should no longer subsist, and it is time for the concupiscent desire to live to cease, Nolite vivere , which is only a chain of shadows strung together in desires, etc., etc. So, it’s one of two things: either I ‘m dead, or I’m not dead. If I’m dead, it’s not possible that I’m the same as I was half an hour ago, when I was alive. And all this before me, as it can only be before me, is not in representation, because I am not. But if I haven’t died, and I’m still me, this one who was and am , it’s clear that what I have before me, although it exists in me as a representation, is not what my enemies want me to believe, but an unworthy farce concocted to frighten me, but in vain, because, by God!… And the philosopher swore like a carter. And it wasn’t the worst thing he swore, for he raised a cry to heaven, and those in it began to wake up at the noise, and some blessed ones were already descending through the stepped clouds, tinged one with gold, the other with navy blue. Meanwhile, Saint Peter clutched his flanks with both hands to keep from collapsing with laughter, which was suffocating him. Pertinax grew more irritated by the Saint’s laughter, and the latter had to stop laughing and calm him, if he could, with these words: “My lord, there is no such thing as a farce here, nor is it a question of deceiving you, but of granting you heaven, which, as it seems, you have merited through good works, of which I am ignorant. In any case, calm down and go upstairs, for the people of the house are already buzzing inside, and there will be someone who will lead you where everything will be explained to you as you wish, so that you will not have the shadow of a doubt, that everything ends in this region, where the least thing that shines is this sun that I am cleaning. ” “I am not saying that you want to deceive me, for you seem to me to be a good man; others may be impostors, and you are merely an instrument, unaware of what you are doing.” “I am Saint Peter… ” “You may have been persuaded that you are; but that does not prove that you are. ” “Sir, I have been in the gatehouse for more than 1,800 years… ” “Apprehension, prejudice… ” “What prejudice or what calamity!” cries the Saint, now a little embarrassed. “I am Saint Peter, and you are a wise man like all those who come to us from there, a hooded fool with a lot of pride in your head… The fault lies with the one I know, who is not slow to admit people of note where there is a blessed need. And Saint Ignatius says well…” At that moment, the majestic figure of a venerable old man appeared in the doorway, dressed in a loose, white tunic, who, looking with gentle eyes at the choleric philosopher, said to him, while taking his thin hands, with those that held light, or at least something very dim and splendid: “Pertinax, I am the solitary one of Patmos; Come with me to the presence of the Lord, your sins have been forgiven and your merits have lifted you, like wings, from the sad earth and you have reached heaven, and you will see the Son at the right hand of the Father… The Word who became flesh. –He dwelt among us, I already know the story; but Señor San Juan, I say and repeat that this is unworthy, that I recognize the skill of the stage designers; but the farce, good for deluding a vulgar spirit, is of no use against the author of the Final Philosophy.–And the poor philosopher foamed with pure rage. The portal was full of angels and cherubs, thrones and dominions, saints and saintly men, blessed men and blessed commoners. They formed a chorus around the stranger and listened with a smile… of blessedness, to the delicious conversation that the author of the Apocalypse and the one of the Final Philosophy had already started . As Saint John explained himself in somewhat metaphysical terms, the furious thinker gradually calmed down, and with the interest of the polemic he came to forget what he called an unworthy farce. Among the choir there were two who looked at each other out of the corner of their eyes, as if encouraging each other to throw their two cents at each other. They were Saint Thomas and Hegel, who for different reasons viewed with distaste in heaven the author of the Ultimate Philosophy, a work detestable in their opinion, this time in agreement. Finally, Saint Thomas, interposing the cloak, interrupted the intruding philosopher, shouting without being able to contain himself: Nego suppositum! Doctor Pertinax turned with haughty dignity to answer as he deserved the Angelic Doctor, who, after having denied the supposition, was preparing to annihilate him under the force of the Summa Theologica that he had brought for that purpose from the heavenly library. Diogenes the Cynic, who was hanging around there, since he had been saved by the good jokes he knew how to tell in life, and by nothing else , Diogenes thought that the best way to remove Doctor Pertinax from his errors was to show him the whole of heaven, from the cellar to the attic. To this, Saint Thomas the Apostle said: “Perfectly; that is, see and believe.” But his namesake, Aquinas, was not inclined to take sides; he insisted on demonstrating that the best way to overcome the paralogisms of that philosopher was to resort to the Summa . And said and done; He was already arriving with four volumes the size of houses on his robust shoulders, a sort of very handsome porter they called around there, Alexandrito. He was indeed Alejandro Pidal y Mon, a Thomist through and through, who was in heaven for the time being and in the capacity of correspondent. Saint Thomas opened the Summa with great pomp, and the first thing he came across struck him like a stone in the eye of an apothecary. The Saint had already placed his index finger and thumb together in the form of a telescope and was beginning to stammer Latin when Pertinax shouted at the top of his lungs: “Let all the Scholastics of the world be silent where my ultimate Philosophy is! It is demonstrated in it… ” “Listen, Mr. Philosopher,” interrupted Saint Scholastica, who was a very learned lady; I don’t want to be silent, nor is it your place to come here with such swearing, and what I am saying is that there are no more classes, and that everyone comes in here.” “Madam,” exclaimed Saint Job, bowing with a tile he held in his hand and used as a brush, “madam, let it all be for God’s sake, and let us allow the worthy to enter, for there is room for all of us. I believe my friend Diogenes speaks well; this gentleman will be convinced that he has lived in error if he is shown the Universe and the celestial court as they really are. This is not to slight Saint Thomas, my good friend, God forbid; but in the end, however much the Summa may be worth, the great book of Nature is worth more, as they say on earth; the sum of the wonders that the Lord has created is worth more. And so, unless there is a better opinion, I propose that a commission from our midst be appointed to accompany Dr. Pertinax and show him the fabric of this immense architecture, as Lope de Vega said, whom I regret not seeing among us.” The respect that Saint Job deserved among all the saints, both men and women, was extremely great, and so, although he had no choice, Aquinas had to give in, and Pidal returned with the Summa to the library. A roll-call vote was taken, which took a long time, as more than half the martyrology had reached the gates of heaven. The following gentlemen were elected to the commission: Saint Job, by acclamation; Diogenes, by majority; and Saint Thomas the Apostle, by majority. The following had votes: Saint Thomas Aquinas, Scotus, and Spartero. Doctor Pertinax acceded to the commission’s pleas and agreed to go through all those magical decorations that might impress him , he said, but not his spirit. “Come on, don’t be tiresome,” Saint Thomas said to him, while he sewed wings onto his collarbones so that he could accompany them on the journey they were about to undertake. Here I am, who resisted believing in the Resurrection of the Master; I saw, I touched, and I believed; you will do the same… —Sir, replied Pertinax, —you lived in very different times; you were then in the theological age, as Comte says, and I have already passed through all those ages and have lived on this side of the Critique of Pure Reason and of Ultimate Philosophy, so that I believe nothing, not even in the mother who bore me; I believe only in this: insofar as I know myself to know myself, I am conscious, but without falling into the prejudice of confusing representation with essence, which is inaccessible, that is, outside of, as I am conscious, everything that I know of myself (and with me everything) remaining in knowing that everything is represented (and I as everything) in pure appearance, whose reality the subject only worries about knowing through new volitional and affective representation, a representation harmful because it is irrational and the original sin of the Fall, since once this appearance of desire is destroyed, nothing remains to explore, since not even the will to know remains. Only Saint Job heard the last word of the speech, and scratching the top of his head with his tile, he replied: “The truth is that you are the devil for imagining nonsense, and don’t be offended, because with those things you have in your head, or in your representation, as you wish, it’s going to cost you a lot of sweat to make you see reality as it is. ” “Go on, go on!” Diogenes cried at this. “The sophists denied movement to me , and you know how I proved it to them: go on, go on!” And they took flight through endless space. Endless? This is what Pertinax believed , and he said: “Do you think you will make me see the whole Universe? ” “Yes, sir,” replied Saint Thomas the Apostle (the only Saint Thomas we will speak of from now on), “that can soon be seen. ” “But man, the Universe (in appearance, of course) is infinite! How do you conceive the limit of space? ” “That is to conceive it, badly; but seeing it, Aristotle sees it every day , he takes atrocious walks with his disciples, and certainly complains that the space for walking runs out sooner than the disputes of his peripatetics. ” “But how can it be that space has an end? If there is a limit, it must be nothingness; but nothingness, since it does not exist, cannot limit anything, because what limits is, and is something distinct from being limited. ” Saint Job, who was already growing impatient, cut him off with these words: “Well, well, conversation!” You’d better lower your head so you don’t bump into the ceiling, because we’ve reached that limit of space that is inconceivable, and if you take one more step, you’ll break your head against that nothingness that denies it. Indeed; Pertinax noticed that there was no beyond; he tried to continue, and got a bump on his head. “But this can’t be!” he exclaimed, while Saint Thomas applied to the bump one of those coins that the pagans carried on their journey to the other world. There was no choice but to turn back, because the Universe had ended. But finite and all, how beautifully the firmament shines with its millions upon millions of stars! “What is that dazzling clarity that shines on high, higher than all the constellations? Is it some nebula unknown to astronomers on earth? ” “May God grant you a good nebula!” replied Saint Thomas; “that is the celestial Jerusalem, from which we descended.” There you have argued with my namesake, and what glitters are the diamond walls that surround the city of God. ” “So those wonders that Chateaubriand tells of, which I judged unworthy of a serious man?” “Are all a mere figment of the imagination, my friend. Now let us go and rest on this star that passes below, for by Diogenes’ faith, I am tired of so much coming and going. ” “Gentlemen, I am not presentable,” said Pertinax; “I have not yet taken off my shroud, and the inhabitants of that star will laugh at this indecorous attire.” The three ciceroni of heaven burst out laughing at the same time. Diogenes was the one who exclaimed: “Even if I lent you my lantern, you would not find a living soul in that star, nor in any star that God created. ” “Of course, man, of course!” added Job very seriously; There are no inhabitants except those on Earth: don’t talk nonsense. “I really can’t believe that! ” “Then let’s go there,” replied Saint Thomas, whose nose was already filled with smoke. And they set off on their journey from star to star, and in a few minutes they had traveled the entire Milky Way and the most distant star systems. Nothing, not a trace of life. They didn’t find even a flea on all the globes they traveled. Pertinax was Horrified. “This is Creation!” he exclaimed. “What solitude! Let’s see, show me the Earth. I want to see that privileged region. From what I can tell, all modern cosmography must be a lie. The Earth will be stationary and will be the center of the entire celestial vault; suns and planets will revolve around it, and it will be the largest of all spheres. ” “Nothing like that,” replied Saint Thomas. “Astronomy hasn’t been mistaken; the Earth revolves around the sun, and you’ll see how insignificant it appears. Let’s see if we can find it among all this jumble of stars. Look for it, Saint Job, you slow-witted one. ” “Here I go!” exclaimed the saint with the tile, sighing and placing a pair of spectacles on his ears. “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack! There I see it! There it goes! Look at it, look at it, how tiny it is!” It looks like an infusoria! Pertinax saw the Earth and sighed, thinking of Monica and the fruit of his philosophical love. “And there are no inhabitants except on that speck of land? ” “Nothing more. ” “And the rest of the Universe is empty? ” “Empty. ” “So what are so many millions of stars for? ” “They are street lamps. They are the public lighting of the Earth. And they also serve to sing praises to the Lord. And they serve as rubble for poetry. And it cannot be denied that they are very beautiful. ” “But everything is empty! ” “Empty!” Pertinax remained in the air for a long time, sad and thoughtful. He felt bad. The edifice of Ultimate Philosophy was threatened with collapse. Seeing that the Universe was so different from what reason demanded, he began to believe in the Universe. That abrupt lesson in reality was the harsh, cold contact with matter that his spirit needed to believe. “Everything is so badly arranged that perhaps it is true!” thought the philosopher. Suddenly he turned to his companions and asked: “Does hell exist?” The three sighed, made gestures of compassion, and answered: “Yes; it does. ” “And damnation, is it eternal? ” “Eternal. ” “Solemn injustice! ” “Terrible reality!” responded those in heaven in chorus. Pertinax passed the shroud over his forehead. He was sweating philosophy. He was beginning to believe he was in the other world. The absurdity of it all convinced him. “Then the cosmogony and the theogony of my childhood were the truth? ” “Yes: the first and last philosophy. ” “Then I am not dreaming? ” “No. ” “Confession! Confession!” cried the philosopher weeping; and he fell fainting into Diogenes’ arms. When he came to, he was on his knees, dressed all in white, on the throne of God, at the feet of the Holy Trinity. What shocked him most was actually seeing the Son seated at the right hand of God the Father. Since the Holy Spirit was above, between head and head, it turned out that the Father was on the left. I don’t know if it was a throne or a dominion, but he approached Pertinax and said to him: “Hear your final sentence. ” He read the following: “It turns out that Pertinax, philosopher, is a poor man in spirit , incapable of killing a gnat; It turns out that he had been providing food and a living for many years to a natural son born to the drum major Roque García by Monica Gonzalez, the philosopher’s housekeeper; “Considering that all his philosophies have caused no harm other than shortening his existence, that they were of no use, blessed be God, the thing; “We decide that we must acquit, and we freely acquit the accused, condemning the prosecutor, Mr. Ramón Nocedal, to pay the costs, and granting eternal glory to the philosopher Pertinax for the aforementioned merits.” Upon hearing the sentence, Pertinax fainted again. When he awoke, he found himself in his bed. Monica and a priest were at his side. “Sir,” said the witch, “here is the confessor you asked for…” Pertinax sat up; he was able to sit up in bed, and stretching out both hands, he cried, looking at the confessor with frightened eyes: “I say, and I repeat, that it is all pure pretense, and that a play has been made.” with me an unworthy farce. And in the last instance, what I have seen may be true; but then I swear and swear that if God made the world, He must have done it in another way. And he truly expired. They did not bury him in a sacred place. FROM THE COMMISSION… Chapter 12. He denies it absolutely; but it is no less true for that. Yes, back in the years 1840 to 1850 he wrote verses, imitated Zorrilla like a condemned man , and set to work on the daring task (later brought to a successful conclusion by a Mr. Albornoz) of continuing and putting an end to Espronceda’s Devil’s World . But the children of Pastrana and Rodríguez, who is our hero, should know none of this. He was a poet, it is true; but the world does not know it, should not know it. At seventeen years of age, this favorite of fortune in its administrative aspect really begins his glorious career. In that age of illusions, he was appointed temporary clerk in the town hall of his native valley, as La Correspondencia says when it speaks of poets and his birthplace. Pastrana’s vocation then revealed itself as a prophecy. The first serious work that this public official brought to a glorious culmination was the drafting of a document in which the mayor of Villaconducho requested the provincial governor for a pair of Civil Guards to help him conduct the elections. Pastrana ‘s document found its way into the hands and on the tongues of all the local notables. The schoolteacher had nothing to object to the elegant italic script that the document displayed; the apothecary was the one who dared to maintain that grammatical philosophy demanded that “yesterday” be written with an h, since “today” is written with an h; but Pastrana defeated him, pointing out that, according to that philosophy, ” tomorrow” should also be written with an h. The apothecary never recovered, and Perico Pastrana was appointed town clerk with a salary less than a year later. With this plausible motive, he had a black frock coat made; but it was made in the capital. Mr. Pespunte, the local tailor and bailiff of the town hall, was not offended: he understood that the secretary’s frock coat was a garment far superior to his scissors. When, at the Feast of the Sacrament, Pespunte saw Pedro Pastrana wearing the dazzling frock coat near the mayor—who was carrying a lantern, it is true, but not wearing a frock coat—he exclaimed prophetically: “That boy will rise a great deal!” and pointed to the clouds. Pastrana thought the same thing, but his thoughts went far beyond what the bailiff could have suspected, since he could neither read nor write and was therefore ignorant of what books and newspapers teach about the ambition of a town clerk. All the poetry that had once filled his heart and made him scribble on so much bearded paper had turned into an inextinguishable thirst for command, honors, and fees. Pastrana loved it all, like Espronceda; but he loved it for his own sake, with the benefit of an inventory. As the town clerk, he knew all the council’s landed property inside out, and the hidden wealth of immovable property didn’t escape him . Just as the divine Homer, in Book II of his Iliad, enumerates and describes the contingent, origin, and qualities of the Greek and Trojan armies, Pastrana could have sung the debits and credits of each and every one of Villaconducho’s residents. It was a cattle cadastre. His imagination was filled with forums and subforums, leases and emphyteusis, precautionary annotations, embargoes, and additional cents. He was friends with the property registrar, whom he assisted as a subordinate, and knew the registry books by heart. Perico went out into the fields to commune with Mother Nature. But my readers will see how Pastrana communed with Nature: he did not see the silver ribbon that divided the green, fertile plain in two, fringed by the cool shade of the stout chestnut trees that climbed the slopes of the neighboring mountains; the river was not, in his eyes, a crystal palace for nymphs and sylphs, but a farm that left abundant (rich was Pastrana’s favorite adjective), rich profits for the Marquis of Pozos-hondos, who had the privilege, for free, of fishing with his bare hands the trout and salmon that, in the shade of those rocks and branches, sought false peace and deceptive shelter in the caves and backwaters. As the crystalline waters flowed, Pastrana fixed his gaze on the waves, meditating, not that our lives are rivers that flow to the sea, which is death, but rather on the sale value of the salmon that the Marquis of Pozos-hondos caught year after year . “This is an abuse!” he exclaimed, leaving an eminently municipal sigh in the air ; and the apprentice councilor was developing a Machiavellian project that he later put into practice, as anyone who reads it will know. The paths and trails that descended through mountains and meadows in capricious turns were, in Pastrana’s imagination, nothing more than rights of way: the hedges of blackberry, honeysuckle, and hawthorn, where numerous tribes of singing birds lived, the joy of the dawn and the sad music of the melancholy afternoon at sunset, Pastrana considered the boundaries of their respective estates, and nothing more; and he smiled maliciously contemplating that seat of Paco Antúnez, which once had been tucked into a fist a good distance from the priest’s pastures, and which today, since the liberals took power, walked, walked as if it had feet, up meadow, up meadow, threatening to enter the church grounds and even the orchard of the rectory. Perico saw each mountain, each meadow, each orchard, more than where they were, on the ideal map of the land registry of his dreams; And so, a small house surrounded by a garden and an orchard with an orchard, hidden far away in the valley, the secretary looked upon, overwhelmed under the enormous weight of a mortgage and about to become fodder for a voracious bankruptcy; the Marquis’s grove (always the Marquis!), where thousands of wooden giants grew up in an immense space, between whose feet ran, not the gnomes of the fable, but very well-bred rabbits, seemed to Pastrana a mysterious personage traveling incognito, because the grove had no civil existence, it was unknown in the offices of the State. In this manner our man wandered through those hills and twists and turns, inspired by the god Terminus worshipped by the Romans, measuring everything, weighing everything, and calculating the gross and net product of everything God created. Another aspect of Nature that Pastrana also knew how to consider was that of territorial wealth as a taxable matter; He, who handled all the paperwork for the City Council, knew, from a certain topography of the land he had engraved in his head, the heights and depths of the land that lay before his eyes, before the tax authorities: that little hillock in the plain paid the State much less than the small plain of Solana, stuck in the river; which is why, according to Pastrana, the small plain was much higher above the tax level than the upright hill that belonged to the Marquis of Pozos-hondos, and that is why it paid less. In this way, Pastrana’s imagination transformed the mountain into a plain, and the plain into a mountain; and he observed that it was the poor who had their wealth in the clouds, while the influential rich had their domains underground, according to how little and poorly they contributed to the State’s expenses. These observations did not make Pastrana a philanthropist, nor a socialist, nor a demagogue, but they did open his eyes to what will be seen in the following chapter. Chapter 13. Pastrana did not do anything without a reason. Those walks through the fields and mountains later bore excellent fruit to our hero. It was necessary, he said, to take advantage (his favorite phrase) of all those administrative irregularities. The salmon was above all the target of his machinations. For several days he was seen working assiduously in the City Hall archives: Pespunte helped him shuffle through files, tie and untie, and clean the dust, since straw was impossible. The municipal papers. That work of council scholarship lasted eight days. He spent another eight registering deeds and copying matrices for notarial protocols, thanks to the benevolent protection granted him by Señor Litispendencia, the town clerk. After that… Pespunte didn’t see Pedro Pastrana for two weeks. He had shut himself up in his house, as Pespunte said, and there he spent two weeks without lifting his head. He was missed at the secretariat; but the mayor, who also professed profound respect for the secretary’s plans and work, didn’t take it for granted, and filled in for Pastrana’s presence as best he could. Anyway , one Sunday Pedro appeared in a frock coat, heard high mass , and headed to the mayor’s house: he was going to ask for a few days’ leave to go to the provincial capital. Why? Neither did the mayor ask , nor did Pespunte dare to try to guess. Pastrana took a seat in the coupe of the coach that passed through Villaconducho at four in the afternoon. The result of that trip was the following: a 160-page pamphlet in larger 4th point, 8-point type, entitled Notes for the history of the privilege of salmon fishing in the Sele River, in the Pozos-obscuros of the Villaconducho Town Council, currently enjoyed by His Excellency the Marquis of Pozos-hondos (Part One), by Don Pedro Pastrana Rodríguez, secretary of the said Villaconducho Town Council. Yes; This was the name of the first literary work by Pastrana, who in time was to write immortal works, or almost so, not only dealing with the ultimately trivial matter of salmon fishing, but also with other equally interesting works such as Hunting and the Closed Season, The Concealment of Territorial Wealth, Sources or Roots of this Abuse, How these Sources or Roots can be Blinded or Eradicated. But returning to the piscatory pamphlet, we will say that it caused a revolution in Villaconducho, a revolution that was to transcend to the inhabitants of Pozos-obscuros, we mean to say to the salmon, who from then on decided to allow themselves to be fished with due account and reason, that is, as long as the privilege of Pozos-hondos was as clear as the water in Pozos-obscuros: founded on law. Was it? Ah! This was the great question, which Pastrana took great care not to resolve in the first part of his work. It raised terrifying historical and legal doubts about the legitimacy of that generous income—”gifted,” the text said—enjoyed by the Pozos-hondos house; in the section of the book titled “Justifying Pieces,” into which the author had poured the rest of his municipal erudition, he had accumulated powerful arguments for and against the privilege; “impartiality,” said a note, “obliges us, as truthful historians and according to the well-known advice of Tacitus, to be bold enough not to keep silent about anything that should be said, but also to say nothing that cannot be proven. We suspend our judgment for now; this is the historical exposition: in the second part, which will be the synthesis, we will finally state our opinion, openly declaring how we understand this legal-administrative-historical problem of the privilege of the Sele in Villaconducho, as old scholars call it, should be resolved.” The Marquis of Pozos-Hondos, who ate salmon from the Sele River in Madrid, accompanied by a dancer from the Real, capable of swallowing the river, let alone salmon, converted into banknotes; the Marquis learned of the pamphlet and the effect it was having in his district (for in addition to salmon, he had constituents in Villaconducho). First, he went straight to the minister to demand justice; he wanted the secretary dismissed for daring to question a lordly privilege of the most loyal of the ministerial deputies; and, in addition, he asked for the seizure of the edition of the pamphlet, which he had not read, but which contained direct or indirect attacks on the institutions. The Minister wrote to the Governor, the Governor to the Mayor, and the The Mayor called the Secretary at home so that… he could draft the letter with which he wanted to reply to the Governor, so that the latter could come to an understanding with the Minister. Eight days later, the Minister told the deputy: “My friend, you have seen things as they are not, and it is not possible to satisfy your wishes. The Secretary is an excellent man, an excellent official, and a most excellent minister. The pamphlet is not subversive, nor even disrespectful to your salmon; you will receive it in the mail today, and if you read it, you will be convinced of this. Governing is compromising, and fishing is like governing; therefore, the best thing would be for you to share the salmon with this Secretary, who is willing to come to an understanding with you. As for removing him, there is no need to think about it; his popularity in Villaconducho is growing like wildfire, and any measure against this official would be dangerous…” This popularity was very true. The residents of Villaconducho were very suspicious of the fact that all the salmon in the river were falling into the Marquis’s devilish machines; but, as they say, no one dared to cast the scepter. So when Don Pedro Pastrana y Rodríguez’s pamphlet was read and discussed, his fame was unrivaled throughout the entire council, and he especially acquired friends and sympathies among the fanatics. The fanatics were the doctor, the farrier; Cosme, discharged from the army; Ginés, the retired actor; and several young men from the town, not all of them as busy as they needed to be. Pespunte, who also had rather heated ideas (as he called them), told the democrats, for the record, that the boy was one of their own, and that he had a terrible intention, and that he would say so, because men are for occasions, and “actions speak louder than words,” and that behind the privilege thing would come other bigger ones, and, in short, that they should leave the boy alone, for God would dawn and we would prosper. Pastrana let the ball roll; he didn’t let his triumphs get the better of him, and he wanted nothing more than to take advantage of it all. If the hotheads smiled and flattered him, he didn’t kick back, far from it, but he didn’t spill the beans either; and it was enough for him to maintain his benevolent inclination and officious curiosity by acting mysterious and reserved, and in this he was helped considerably by his nobleman’s frock coat, which now fitted him better than ever. But alas! Despite Pespunte’s optimistic calculations, the money wasn’t flowing that way; the exalted and their favors were, in Pastrana’s plans, nothing more than bait, and the fish that would swallow him wasn’t around; word of it was to be had through the mail. And, indeed, one morning the secretary received a letter, the envelope bearing the seal of the Congress of Deputies. It was a letter from the lord of privilege; it was what Pastrana had been waiting for since the first day he had watched from Puentemayor the waters swirl toward that backwater where the shadows of the mountain and the chestnut grove obscured the surface of the Sele. The marquis capitulated and offered the active and erudite chronicler of his lordly privileges his friendship and influence; it was necessary that in this country, where talent succumbs for lack of protection, the powerful should reach out to men of merit. Consequently, the Marquis offered to pay all the publication costs incurred by the second part of the “History of the Fishing Privilege,” and from then on he hoped to have a personal and political friend in whom he had so respectfully discussed the risky matter of his feudal rights. Pastrana answered the Marquis with the finesse of the world, assuring him that he had always believed in the solid title to his property over the salmon of Pozos-obscuros, which salmon bore in their golden livery, as the fish of the Mediterranean bear the bars of Aragon, the arms of Pozos-hondos, which are scales on a field of gold. In passing, he respectfully informed the Marquis that the large grove was very poorly managed, that all the neighbors were making firewood there, and that if it was a matter of avoiding this, it was necessary to do it in such a way that the public would not find out. Administration of the grove’s lack of economic-civil-rental existence , an anonymous estate as far as its relations with the Treasury are concerned. The Marquis, who had sometimes heard this nonsense spoken of in Congress, concluded that the secretary knew that the large grove did not pay taxes. A new letter from the Marquis, new offers, a reply from Pastrana stating that he was a pit as deep as Pozos-Hondos itself, and that he would not say a word about the grove or other estates, which the Marquis held in no less anomalous situation, that could compromise the sacred interests of such an ancient and privileged house. A few months later, the agitated crowds were speaking ill of Pastrana, whom the Marquis of Pozos-Hondos had appointed general administrator of his real and personal property in Villaconducho, albeit in the name of his father, because Pedro was not old enough to hold such a high office without the encumbrance of legal formalities. And with that, the Cortes were dissolved, and new general elections were announced. Incidentally, when he read this news in the Official Gazette, Pastrana was thinning pine trees on La Grandota, another estate that had no ties to the Treasury. A thinning useful, first of all, for the surviving pines, as the administrator called them; secondly , for the Marquis, its owner; and lastly, for Pastrana, who morally thinned more than half of the thinned pines in return for taking care of the owner’s interests that only a diligent father of a family would provide. And since he voluntarily lent the slightest guilt, he didn’t want it to be a mere joke. As soon as he read about the elections, he instinctively compared the votes with the pines and resolved, for a perhaps not-too-distant future, to thin out voters in that electoral pasture of Villaconducho. Pespunte, who had rebranded himself as Pastrana, because for unconditional admirers like the tailor, ideas are less than idols, Pespunte could not imagine where Don Pedro’s ambitious projects would lead. The only thing he learned, for this was a matter of a few days, and public and well-known, was that the mayor would not hold those elections, because he would first be removed from office. As indeed he was. The elections were held by the administrator of the Most Excellent Marquis of Pozos-Hondos, president of the Villaconducho City Council, Commander of the Order of Charles III, Don Pedro Pastrana y Rodríguez. The day before the general vote count, the second part of the “Notes for the History of the Privilege” was published ; it finally demonstrated that already in the time of King Pelayo, his close relatives, the Marquises of Pozos-Hondos, were fishing for salmon in the Sele , charged with supplying the necessary fish to all the king’s armies during the Reconquista during Lent. The following day, the nets were hauled in and the electoral pitcher emptied, all under Pastrana’s auspices; never before had the Marquis had such a plentiful harvest of votes and salmon. Chapter 14. For the regular progress of this true story, it is necessary that the reader, on the wings of his ardent imagination, accelerate the passage of years and leave quite a few behind. While the reader leaps through time , Pastrana, in his counted steps, traverses a multitude of public functions, some remunerated and others unpaid, merely honorary. Once the elections were held, it turned out that the Marquis of Pozos-Hondos was five times more popular in Villaconducho than his enemy, the opposition candidate . As a result of the Marquis’s popularity, Pastrana had to be made administrator of National Assets. A case was also opened against him for bribery and he was prosecuted for some meticulous formalities of electoral law. The Marquis would have liked to leave his administrator of votes, salmon, and property in the lurch; but Don Pedro Pastrana made the magnate fully understand the solidarity of his interests, and he emerged free and without costs from all those nets with which the law wanted to trap him. Pastrana did not He forgave the Marquis for the lack of zeal he had shown in saving him. The following year, when there were new elections for the Constituent Assembly, no less, the opposition candidate was five times more popular than the Marquis. It’s worth noting that the opposition candidate was no longer an opposition candidate, because his own party had triumphed. The Marquis was left without a district; and since the time of the monopoly was over (according to Pespunte, who had taken to the river to smash salmon-fishing machines with an axe), since there were no more classes, the people could fish in troubled waters, and that year the Marquis’s dancer didn’t eat salmon. Another year passed, there were new elections, because the Cortes were dissolved I don’t know who, but, anyway, by a troop, and then neither the Marquis nor his enemy were deputies, but Don Pedro Pastrana himself, who, once the revolution was set in motion… and the river channeled, took the reins of government in Villaconducho, and in the name of well-understood liberty, and to avoid the gentle anarchy of which the district and the salmon were falling victim, he attributed to himself the privilege of fishing and the high and well-deserved honor of representing the people of Villaconducho before the new Parliament. Chapter 15. And this was where I wanted to see him. La Correspondencia has the word: “Señor Don Pedro Pastrana Rodríguez, deputy loyal to the district of Villaconducho, has arrived in Madrid, victorious over the Marquis of Pozos-hondos in a fierce electoral battle.” A few days pass; La Correspondencia takes the floor again: “ The recently published work on The Taxes and Inveterate Abuses of the Concealment of Territorial Wealth by the deputy, Mr. Pedro Pastrana Rodríguez, is extremely notable in many ways and has received much praise from competent people.” “The renowned financial publicist, Mr. Pedro Pastrana Rodríguez, deputy for Villaconducho, has been appointed to the commission of *** . “It is not true that the illustrious member of the commission, Mr. Pastrana Rodríguez, has presented a dissenting vote on the famous question of the tobaccos of Vuelta del Medio .” “Whatever the malicious may say, it is not true that the illustrious writer, Mr. Pastrana, has acquired ownership of the Aliquid Chupatur brand, which distinguishes the renowned tobaccos of Vuelta del Medio. Mr. Pastrana is not the new owner, but his fellow countryman and friend, the mayor of Villaconducho, Mr. Pespunte.” “The bill for a railway from Villaconducho to Los Tuétanos, mountains in the province of ***, extremely rich in silver ore, has been approved. These mountains will be exploited on a large scale by a large company. It is not certain that the individual on the Commission whose influence is said to have been behind the concession of said railway is the president of its board of directors.” “The trip of the Head of State to the province of *** seems to have been decided. He will attend the inauguration of the Los Tuétanos railway, staying at the royal villa owned by Mr. Pastrana in that picturesque region.” “You cannot imagine the depth of the deep-rooted patriotism and exquisite kindness that distinguish this great financier, whose guest was His Majesty, our friend and fellow countryman, the Marquis of Pozos-oscuros, who, as our readers know, is president of the Commission charged with managing an important business in the capitals of Europe.” “The Marquis of Pozos-oscuros, having returned from his trip to foreign courts, has been appointed president of the Commission that is to present a report on the famous tobacco business of Vuelta del Medio . “Satisfactorily for the parliamentary system and its prestige, the noisy incident that arose between the Marquis of Pozos-oscuros and Mr. Pespunte, deputy for Vuelta del Medio, ended yesterday afternoon in the session . Mr. Pespunte, in the heat of the discussion, and somewhat angered by the epithet “ungrateful” that had addressed to him by the President of the Commission, he uttered unparliamentary words such as ‘dirty laundry’, ‘dirty hands’, ‘ troubled river’, ‘dry underwear’, ‘smoke the island’, ‘black people’s picnic’, ‘free prison’, ‘cook and friar’, ‘big shots’, and others no less foul-sounding. The worthy deputy of the island had to withdraw them due to the energetic attitude of the Marquis of Pozos-hondos, Minister of Finance, who declared that the honor of the Marquis of Pozos-oscuros was too high to be tarnished by certain accusations. We would be glad, for the prestige of the parliamentary system, if scenes of this kind, so frequent in other parliaments, but not in ours, a model of temperance, were not repeated.” So far, La Correspondencia. Now, a letter from the prosecutor’s office: “I am informing you, for the subsequent effects, that this prosecutor’s office has reported the first issue of the newspaper El Puerto de Arrebata-capas for its editorial article, entitled ‘Neighbors, thieves!’ which begins with the words ‘Dark wells, and very dark ones,’ and ends with ‘to jail from Congress.'” Chapter 16. EPILOGUE. The Correspondence: “ A Commission has been appointed to study the draft reform of the Penal Code, composed of the following gentlemen: President, Mr. Pedro Pastrana Rodríguez… FROM BOURGEOIS TO COURTESAN My dear Doña Encarnación: I already know that those from Pinto have told their friends around that those of Covachuelón would not go to the festivities for lack of money or for lack of love of merrymaking, as my Juan says it is called; don’t pay any attention to it, because we have already taken care of the hats, those that look like men’s hats, which are the latest fashion, according to what the dressmaker said, who is from Paris, France, so to speak; because although she was not born there nor saw it with her own eyes, her husband is of pure Parisian stock: so imagine! We’ll go, and three more of us, so, to save you the trouble of looking for a house and all that, we’ll go straight to yours, and thus you’ll save yourself the inconvenience of having to deal with innkeepers and landladies , who these days will be putting out their bad year’s stomachs and asking for a fortune for a room. I’m sending you herewith the list of the cute little things and knick-knacks that my eldest daughter wants you to have bought for her by the very day we arrive; because her only itch is that out of a hundred tongues you’ll take her for a Madrilenian; because being provincial is very coquettish, you see. And although I tell her that what is inherited is not stolen, and that the lineage leads the greyhound… and that a Covachuelón, who is descended from a hundred Covachuelones, even with the mountain air, can hold her own, in point of good taste and chic (sic) with the most prestigious courtesan, who could be the daughter of anyone; I say that, despite this, the girl wants you to have those things ready for her ; and it’s not that there aren’t those shoulder-length gloves here , because the dressmaker who has a husband from Paris sells them too; but what do you want? These young women of the day are lost because they’re not from your country. And look, Doña Encarnación, and here inter nos, as the French say, the girl is in a state of deserving, and here everyone is a nobody; there are no proportions; who knows if one of those gentlemen in the square, about whom the newspapers speak so much, will fall in love with my girl? In that case, we would stay in Madrid, which is what I tell Juan; but my Juan is so stubborn that he doesn’t want to abandon this humble destiny, unworthy of a Covachuelón, because they say it’s safe, and filthy hands. As if we didn’t know the world, Doña Encarnación, and didn’t know that this business of perks is common to all destinies, as long as there’s good will! I, to tell the truth, don’t know what those gentlemen in the square are about; but they will undoubtedly be accomplished gentlemen who beat out gold, or at least bushels of wheat, for all it is beat out. Besides this, my Juan, who has a great love for the Institutions, will not lose During our stay there, he won’t even sleep in the straws, because the Minister has offered him towers and piles; but out of sight… and thus, pressing him closely and leaving him neither sun nor shade, you’ll see how a promotion is achieved, which we desperately need, because with this very modest salary and all the help Juan wants, one cannot live; and if not, now it is clear what a disgrace it is, that in order to undertake a trip to Court, with a reduction in price and all, the family of a Covachuelón is forced to sell the silverware and some of the Covachuelones who were there. Tell them, tell those of Pinto (without telling them about the silverware), how much those of Covachuelón do and can do on the wings or for the sake (I never use this word correctly) of their love for the Institutions. A rumor has spread here that because of Moyano there were no more fiestas; That gentleman, whom they say is very ugly, and they prove it, had spoiled the show; but we didn’t believe it, because it’s impossible. God cannot consent to my daughter being left without her gentleman in the square, because that would be like being left on the street; nor should my husband rot and I rot in this dark corner; the Covachuelones aim higher, and God will dawn and we will prosper, because the ill will of the Pinto women will be of little use against the high scrutiny of Providence, which loudly calls the Covachuelón men to Court. Tell Señor Don Juan, your husband, on my behalf (what a difference between the two Juans! Yours is so docile, so rich, and so fond of his business), well, tell him to find me a ticket everywhere without wasting time: we want to see everything, what is called everything, because what are we doing? It’s not a matter of selling one’s silverware and then returning, leaving something unseen. I read in La Época that the provincials would be late to get their ballots: what would she know! La Época; as if those wasteful journalists, who are the bane of the country, had to come before us, who serve the Fatherland and the Institutions from a corner of Spain, with zeal, intelligence, and loyalty, as the liberals themselves said when they dismissed my husband. It would be a real story if Mrs. Covachuelón and her daughter were left without a ballot to see everything reserved and everything unreserved! We have to see everything: tell Don Juan so: I’m not diminishing anything. Oh, if only I were a countess, my friend! But God made us from less, and since Juan, my son, walks upright and on one foot, and does what I tell him, who knows where we might end up, and if the day will come when I see him himself a gentleman in the square, a title that sounds perfect to me, and which I can’t get out of my imagination! I won’t tire you any longer; keep yourself well and don’t forget those little errands. Your lifelong friend who wants to embrace you soon, Purificación de los Pinzones de Covachuelón. P.S. I warn you that Juan is dying for snails, and you’ll give him a pleasant surprise if you present them to him for lunch the day we arrive. I suppose you’ll go wait for us with the servants, because we’ll have a lot of luggage, and those porters mistake one of you for a country bumpkin and demand some direction. Yours, Purificación. Another P.S. I warn you that the shirts and handkerchiefs I ordered the other day for Juan must have these letters: P. Juan, which do not mean Father Juan, but that Juan is Purificación’s husband, as you know. A Covachuelón could not put simple initials on his shirts like anyone else. Expressions to your Juan from you. Pura. Pajares, February 1. My dear Visitation: When this reaches your hands, your poor Pura, your good friend, will be buried alive, with I don’t know how many kilometers of snow on her head. We have been caught in the worst snowfall of the century in the middle of the pass, and we cannot go back or reach our blessed town, which I wish we had never left. The mail is carried by pedestrians; I have offered the earth and the Moor for a pedestrian, and for me to be weighed at the newsstand, to reach my destination as a certificate, no matter how much the stamps cost: impossible! I was forced to give up my project, and here I am lost on the road like a letter from Posada Herrera. My Juan, that good man, does nothing but stamp his feet, blow on his hands, and exclaim from time to time: “Cursed be my luck! Henpecked!” As if he weren’t the cause of all our troubles! Imagine, Visit, that the first thing Juan does as soon as we arrive in Madrid is catch pneumonia. It’s true that for more than twenty-four hours he concealed it so that I wouldn’t be inconvenienced and could see the festivities; but God grant you happy festivities! I wanted to be everywhere at once, as is natural in such cases; for that, it’s necessary to run a lot; well , Juan didn’t give way. that this hurt, that that hurt, and he wouldn’t budge. We took a carriage for the three of us. The coachman grumbled and said some rude things to me about whether I was four-footed, and Juan… what do you think! He didn’t break anything. That contraption started moving, and after four steps the horse… fell dead. Juan was furious because I blamed him ; you fight with a man like that. Anyway, we went back home, and Doña Encarnación, with an officiousness that gave me a bad feeling, declared that Juan was sick and that he should go to bed; and he went to bed, and the doctor came and said that my husband had pneumonia. You see how everyone was plotting against me. Goodbye visits to the Minister, goodbye promotion, goodbye staying in Madrid! Add to this that Doña Encarnación, who is a very conceited brat, had bought nothing but monstrosities for my daughter, all tacky and fashionable in Year 8. Purita kicked up a fuss and blamed her father, who is indeed the one who has led us to these difficult times of being provincials and having to be guided by the envious people of Madrid. We asked Don Juan for tickets: if you want! He hadn’t been able to get a single one, and yet he threatened to resign from his post, but he didn’t resign: why would he resign, if these Madrid bureaucrats don’t know what dignity is! But you might say, and rightly so: why would your Juan need anyone to beg for tickets for his wife? It’s true, and in that you sound like Saint Teresa; But Juan, nothing, in his bed, complaining as you will, preparing to die well and without thinking about banknotes, or knights in the square, or promotions, or all that which brought me to court at an inopportune moment. In short, Visita, we haven’t seen anything, except for the illuminations, what brave illuminations they were; and it happened that Covachuelón’s family walked around without a head (because his head was bad in the lung), walking through those little squares and streets of God, like any other, like fools, rubbing shoulders with the common people and having to leave the sidewalk to those who carried it, even if they were the sons of the executioner. Classes and ancestry are not respected here, and one’s parchment and rank are unknown on one’s face. Don’t think the commotion was as great as they say, and I can assure you that I didn’t shout “Long live” anything, because that’s no way to treat people. Do you remember that Don Casimiro whom we barely got elected to the House of Representatives , thanks to small shops and confiscated sausages? Well, be amazed! Don Casimiro, who had a stack of tickets to everywhere, drove by us without greeting us, in a very elegant carriage, and I don’t know where that idiot got it from. And they say that conciliation takes root and that this will last; just look at this conciliatory stance, and don’t even think that such a shabby and haphazard Ministry has any signs of taking root! After seeing so much farce and so much shamelessness, I had no choice but to watch, and I wanted to return to my homeland. The very day Juan’s illness reached its peak, according to what the doctor said, I picked Juan up by the feet, dressed him, covered him, and hid him between five blankets. I initiated the crisis myself, and we boarded the mail train. Juan, docile for the first time in his life, became good on the way, or at least concealed his evil; and here we are with you. the snow up to my neck, in a place that has no name on the map; I was furious, Purita desperate to get a share, and Juan stamping his feet on the ground, blowing on his knuckles and muttering with each step: “Damn my luck!” If one day I get home, and sell the silverware, and gather some money from Juan’s hands, which he rudely calls filthy, and put that money to interest and get a regular income to get by… I swear, Visita (so much do I abhor conciliation), I swear that I resign from Juan’s destiny and declare myself illegal. Purification. THE DEVIL IN HOLY WEEK Like a lion in his cage, the devil yawned on his throne; and I have observed that all powers, on earth as well as in heaven and hell, have a great fondness for the majestic and solemn display of their prerogatives, no doubt because vanity is a natural and supernatural weakness that fills the worlds with its winds, and perhaps moves and rules them. The devil yawned from hunger for mischief, which he lacked at that time of year, and it was Holy Week. Just as a comedian dies of starvation at this time of year, so the devil expired from boredom; and the inventions of his courtiers were not enough to amuse his mind, which was dejected and saddened by the absence of villainy, infamy, and other feats of his liking. As he yawned and grew bored, an idea suddenly occurred to him, as if his own, extremely diabolical; And since His Majesty does not sin in inferis by being irresolute, giving a leap like those of apes, but much larger, he jumped out of his realm and remained in the air very close to the earth, where he is a beloved and well-liked guest for his frequent visits. This was the idea that occurred to the devil, for at that time mother earth was beginning to swell with the onset of fruition, his cravings turning into flowers that filled everything with aromas and joyful colors, sometimes thrown into the air and becoming the wings of butterflies, sometimes attached to the mysterious cocoon and becoming the petals. The devil understands well what spring is, for before being a devil he was an angel and was called beautiful light, which is the light of dawn, or the sad light of evening, which is the light of melancholy and of nameless aspirations that seek the infinite. What the devil knows about tricks, let Saint Anthony and other blessed men tell you, who struggled with fatigue and sweat amidst the temptations of the evil enemy and the ineffable and austere delights of grace. It is clear that nothing is comparable to the heavenly attraction, not even remotely, and that dreaming of such comparisons is a mortal sin; but it is also true that, apart from God, nothing is as powerful and lovable, in its own way, as the devil; everything in between is dull, lukewarm, and of lesser value, whether good or evil. For every great heart, goodness, unless it is supreme, which is God himself, is worth less than evil when it is supreme, which is the devil. Seeing the spring blossoming in the buds of plants and in the teeming blood of young animals, the devil, a great connoisseur of natural inclinations, said to himself, “This is mine.” Although he fears and flees, the devil does not wish evil upon God, and much less does he ignore His omnipotent power, His wisdom, and His infinite love, which do not reach him, for a mysterious reason, whose secret the devil himself respects, more reverently than some Christian apologists. And so, looking at the sky, which was all blue in the East and adorned with light amaranth clouds in the West, the devil said with a plaintive but not spiteful tone, whatever the pious women may say, who even murmur and slander the devil; I say that the devil said: “Lord, I avail myself and profit from Your own work: You were, and only You, who produced this marvel of springtime in the worlds, in a divine inspiration of sweetest and expansive love, which men who are religious in an ascetic manner will never understand; and what is spring, Lord? A warm and very long kiss that the sun and the earth give each other, face to face, face to face, without fear. Poor mortals! The wicked, those who know something of the truth of good living, are in my power, and the good, those who turn their eyes to You, Eternal God, loving You, sideways, not with their whole soul; they do not understand what it is to kiss from the front and face to face, as the sun kisses the earth, and they tremble, hesitate, and enjoy lukewarm delights, more conceived than felt; and perhaps the pleasure they feel in the temptation with which I moisten their lips is greater than the praised joy of mystical swoon, half sickness, half good desire… The
devil understood that he was getting entangled in his speech, and suddenly fell silent, preferring actions to words, as wicked men are accustomed to do, who are more active and less talkative than good-natured people and those fond of speech. His infernal Son smiled with a smile that would have made any man who had seen him tremble with terror; and several angels who, on their way back from the world, were flying past those brown clouds where Satan was hidden, instinctively changed their direction of flight, like a flock of doves that fly dizzy in a different direction when they hear the crash of a shot as it resounds through the air. The devil looked at the angels with contempt, and immediately turning his eyes to the earth, which was gliding at his feet like the water of a stream, he left that the Mediterranean had passed, which at that time flowed eastward beneath it, and when it had Spain beneath it, it dropped onto the plain, and as if by a spring, with the shock of the fall, the devil’s height, which had been leagues, was reduced to a mere kilometer. The sun was setting in the distant lands, and its fiery colors were reflected in the devil from the waist up, giving him that Mephistophelean hue we usually see him with in operas, thanks to the Drumont lamp or the flares. The Lord of the Abyss placed his right hand over his eyes and looked around, and at first he saw nothing , but then he distinguished on the other side of the sun something like the point of a lance reddened by fire. It was the weather vane of a very distant tower. After walking about twelve paces, the devil saw himself very close to that tower, which was that of the cathedral of a city. Very ancient, sad, and aged, but not lacking in stately airs and majestic elegance. He stretched out at full length on the bank of a river that flowed at the foot of the city (as if recounting the history of his land with the complaints of its murmur), and craning his neck somewhat, in a violent posture, Satan was able to look through the cathedral windows at what was happening within. It is worth noting that the inhabitants of that city did not see the devil as he really was, but partly in the form of a mist that lazily crept along beside the river, and partly as a low, black cloud threatening a storm that was moving in the direction of the cathedral from the outskirts. It is true that the cloud had the shape of a strange bird, like a stork with a nightcap; but not everyone saw this, and the children, who were the ones who best determined the cloud’s resemblance, did not deserve anyone’s credit. A very young acolyte , who had gone up with the bell-ringer to ring the prayers , He said, “Señor Paco, look at this cloud so close. It looks like an eaglet returning to the tower, but it has a jug in its beak; it’s come to get oil for the witches.” But the bell-ringer, without answering a word or looking at the sky, rang the first bell, which woke many swifts and owls asleep in the tower. The second bell rang, solemn and melancholy, and the birds flew near the weathervanes of the cathedral. The boy, the acolyte, continued looking at the cloud, which was the devil; and the third bell was followed by a slow, rhythmic, and deep ringing, while the other bell towers of the ancient city began to wake up and in turn yawned with the first three bells of the prayers. Night fell, the cloud turned completely black, and no one saw the glowing embers with which the devil looked into the cathedral for a few minutes. personae glass from a window that fell upon the high altar, brightly lit by lamps hanging from the high vault and by wax candles that sputtered below. The devil’s breath, entering through the window of the personae glass, swirled down to the high altar and moved the heavy black person canvas that covered the carved walnut altarpiece in those days. At the sides of the altar, two canons, leaning on kneelers, the folds of their mantles submerged in a pompous crimson cushion, meditated at times, and at times read the Passion of Christ. In the enclosure of the high altar, up to the very high gilt metal gate that closed it, there was no one else except the two canons; Behind the gate, the devout people, immersed in the shadows, listened with religious attention to the voices singing the Lamentations, the immortal threnouncements of Jeremiah. When the monotonous chant of the clergymen ceased, after a brief pause, the violins would return to their plaintive accompaniment, accompanying the choirboys , sopranos, and contraltos, who seemed to reach the clouds with the wails of the Miserere. It was as if they were singing in the air, that the winged notes hovered in the vault, and then suddenly, flying, flying, they rose until they vanished into space. Then the voices of the violin and the voices of the schoolboy treble took flight together, playing, like butterflies, around the flowers or the light, and now they descended one after the other until they touched close to the ground, now, also chasing each other, they flew off in rapid flight through the high rosettes of the windows, through the ashen curtains and the colored glass. Silence fell again; near the high altar, a light was extinguished, one of several placed high on a wooden triangle supported by a painted walnut pole. Then, like suppressed laughter, but laughter emanating from wooden mouths, a few clicks could be heard; sometimes the clicks formed a series, the laughter was cackling; they were the cackling of the rattles that the children hid, as if they were forbidden weapons prepared for murder. The incipient mutiny of the rattles faded as the heavy, resounding, and mournful chant of the choirboys resounded once more through the wide nave . The devil was still up there, cheering mightily, and filling the temple with a sticky, stifling heat. When he heard the uncertain, restrained prelude of the rattles, he could not contain his laughter, and his jaws and tongue moved in such a way that the faithful said to one another: “Could it be the big car in the tower? But why are they playing it now?” A canon, while wiping the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief of grass, said to himself: “That Perico is the devil, the very devil! Well, he didn’t start playing the big car in the bell tower!” And all it was was that the devil, not Perico, but the real devil, had laughed. The canon, who was sweating, looked toward the altarpiece and saw the black person canvas moving. He turned his eyes to his companion, deep in thought, and said in a very low voice, without moving: “What can it be? Can’t you see how it’s moving?” The other canon was very pale. He didn’t sweat, not even in the heat inside. He was young; his features were handsome and boldly outlined; his nose was perhaps too long, too steep over his lips, and too fleshy; although sharp, it had very wide nostrils , and the canon was breathing heavily through them, like the devil above. “It’s nothing,” he replied without taking his eyes off the book in front of him; “it’s the wind that penetrates through the glass panes.” At that moment, all the faithful were thinking the same thing and looking in the same place; they looked at the altar and the moving canvas, and they thought: “What can this be?” The lights of the raised triangle also moved, leaning from side to side around the wick, and shone more and more redly, but as if enveloped in an atmosphere that made combustion difficult. The old canon became lethargic or asleep; the same dullness of the senses seemed to invade the faithful, who They heard, as if in dreams, those in the choir singing with lazy rhythm and hoarse voices. The devil continued to exhort through the window of the personae. The young canon was wide awake and felt an itch he could not control at last; he passed a hand over his eyes, searched the registers of the book, arranged the folds of his mantle, made a thousand movements to entertain the longing for he knew not what that was entering his heart and senses; he breathed with unusual force, raising his head very high… and at that moment the schoolboy, ascending to the clouds with his treble voice, began to sing again. That voice , to the ears of the restless canon, was of a strange nature, which he imagined to be so, at that very moment when he was struggling with his anguish; that voice was of a very soft, tenuous, and whitish substance; It drifted through the air, and as it collided with its waves, which carved it like the finest chisels, it took on graceful curves that seemed, more than lines, subtle and vague ideas, sighing with enthusiasm and love. Finally, the fine work of the air waves on the mass of that voice, which was, although very delicate, matter, produced, as a marvelous product, the contours of a woman who were not fully formed into a precise shape; but who, resembling all the curvaceous features of Venus, did not cease to be nothing, but were becoming everything at times. And depending on the notes, whether high or low, the canon saw those lines that are symbols in women of the highest ideality, or those others that take their charm from being the incentive of more corporeal appetites. Every low note was, finally, something turgid, and then the canon closed his eyes, buried his head in his chest, and felt a fire pass through the swollen veins of his robust neck. When the high notes sounded , the young master (for this was his dignity) raised his Apollonian head, opened his eyes, looked upward, and breathed in the fiery air with which he was poisoning himself, joyful and yearning, while slow tears rolled from his blue eyes, full of light and life. Although the student’s voice sang the Prophet’s sorrows in Latin, the master thought he heard words of temptation that in clear Spanish told him: “While you weep and moan for the sorrows of ages buried after many centuries, the swallows prepare their nests to shelter the fruit of love. While you sing in the choir of sadness you do not feel, the sap runs wild through the entrails of the plants and accumulates in the rosy petals of the flower like the blood that shines transparently on the cheeks of the beautiful virgin. “The scent of incense enervates your spirit; the countryside smells of thyme, and the hawthorn and the laurel perfume the free air. “Your cries and mine are the voice of chained desire; let us break these ties, and fly together; spring invites us; each leaf that is born is a tongue that says: ‘Come: the Dionysian mystery awaits you.’ “I am the voice of love, I am the illusion you caress in your dreams; you cast me from you, but I fly in the silent night, and many times, fleeing in the darkness, I entangle my hair in your hands; I kissed your eyes, which were full of tears you shed in sleep. “I am the beloved, who calls you for the last time: now or never. Look back: do you not hear me approaching? Do you want to see my eyes and die of love? Look back, look at me, look at me!…” Of course, it was the devil who was saying all this, and not the choirboy, as the choirmaster thought. The voice, as it sang “Look at me, look at me!” had come so close that the canon thought he felt a woman’s breath on the back of his neck (according to his own imagination, it was that kind of breath). He couldn’t help turning his eyes, and with horror, he saw behind the gate, almost touching the golden bars with her forehead, a woman’s face, from which emanated a gaze divided into two rays that came straight to strike him in the uninhabited places of his heart. The choirmaster stood up, unable to contain himself, and instinctively walked in the direction of the gate. closed. No one was surprised by this, because at that moment another canon came to relieve him and knelt before the prie-dieu. That image peeking out between the bars was that of the judge (as Doña Fe was called, because she was the wife of the town’s highest-ranking magistrate ). The magistrate knew her well, and even knew quite a few of her sins, since she had told him about them; but never until then had he noticed the utter beauty of that person’s face. It is clear that the magistrate, without the devil’s tricks, would never have thought of looking at that devout lady, famous for her virtues and deep piety. As the canon, not knowing what he was doing, was approaching her, a gentleman of elegant bearing, dressed with elaborate wealth and taste, and no more nor less handsome than the magistrate himself, for he resembled him as much as a drop of gold, approached the judge, knelt down beside her , and putting his head close to the ear of a child whom the lady also had kneeling on her lap, said something that only the child heard, and which made him smile with the utmost mischief. The mother looked at the knight, and could not help smiling in turn when she saw him place his lips on her son’s thick, curly hair, saying: “Beautiful archangel!” The child, cautiously and behind his mother’s back, took from the folds of his garment a rattle of enormous size, because it was a rattle, and without further ado, as soon as he saw another light of those in the triangle go out, he drew a circle in the wind with the noisy machine and gave a horrifying beginning to the revolution of the rattles. The moment indicated by the ritual for the children’s uproar had not arrived, by far, but it was already impossible to stem the torrent; The cornered fury broke out , and from every corner of the temple, like the cries of the Eumenides, discordant sounds, previously stifled, issued from the wooden jaws , finally breaking through the narrow prison and filling the air, in a desperate struggle with one another, all against the eardrums of the scandalized faithful. And the loudest and most horrifying clamor was the laughter of the devil, who held the judge’s son in his arms and said to him between laughs: “Good, bravo, ha, ha, ha, play; that’s it, ra, ra, ra, ra!” The child, proud of the revolution he had started, handled the rattle like a sling, and cried frantically: “Mama, Mama, I was the first! How nice, how nice! Ra, ra, ra!” The judge would have liked to be serious, like a stern mother; But she couldn’t, and she remained silent and looked at the beautiful archangel and the knight who held him in his arms; and she heard the clatter of the rattles like the sound of spring rain, which refreshes the air and the soul. Because precisely on that day this lady had felt a great craving for something extraordinary, without knowing what; something, in short, that wasn’t the district judge; something that was out of order; something that would make a lot of noise, like the kisses she gave to the archangel with the long hair; even more, like the beating of her heart, which leaped in her chest asking for joy, madness, freedom, fresh air, love… rattles. The magistrate, who had gone with his fellow chapter members to dam up the flood of the uproar, but in vain, pretended, also in vain, to resent the irreverent devilry of the boys, because his conscience told him that this revolution had broadened his spirit, had opened he knew not what valves that he must have had in his chest, which at last breathed freely, joyfully. The magistrate did not think about the judge again, nor did the judge look except with a mother’s gratitude at the knight who resembled the magistrate, whose back she had looked at that night before the knight entered. The other devotees, who had been indignant at first, finally let the devils have their way with them; there was freshness and joy on all their faces; it seemed to everyone that they were awakening from a lethargy; that a weight had been lifted from their shoulders, that the atmosphere had been previously filled with lead, sulfur, and fire, and that now with the noise, The air was filled with breezes, with a fresh breath that rejuvenated and cheered souls. And ra, ra, ra! ra! the boys played like desperate people. Perico rattled the tower’s rattle, and the devil laughed, laughed like a hundred thousand rattles. The truth is that the devil had a plan of his own; the judge and the magistrate were on the verge of losing themselves, at least deep down in their intentions. But, since the devil enjoys mischief most, as soon as he instilled in the judge’s boy the temptation to play the rattle at an unseasonable hour, he completely forgot everything else, and leaving the souls of the just in peace for that night, he rejoiced like a child in the temptation of the innocent. When Satan, at dawn, enveloped by dark clouds, returned to his royal palace, he found the angels of the previous day on the air . They heard him talking to himself, rubbing his hands and still laughing aloud. “He’s a poor devil!” said one of the angels. “And he laughs!” exclaimed another. “And he laughs in eternal damnation…” And they all fell silent and went on their way, heads bowed. DOCTOR ANGELICUS Chapter 17. Had Pamfilo ever been a child? Was it possible that those sunken eyes, I don’t know if sunken or deep, full of goodness, but sad and dull, had once echoed the joyful dreams of childhood? That mouth with pale, thin lips, which never smiled for pleasure, but only for resignation and bitterness, had ever laughed frankly, sonorously, resoundingly? On that wrinkled, downcast forehead, devoid of hair, had blond curls or black people ever floated over a brow of rosy hues? And her shriveled, bent body, heavy-moving, graceless, and ailing, was it ever slender, light, supple, and healthy? Euphemia, considering these problems, concluded by thinking that her noble husband, her wise husband, her highly erudite other half, had been born fifty years old and had fifty ailments, and that he knew what it was like to play the top and write love letters, just as she understood the thousand pieces of wisdom her other half spoke to her in a loving and passionate voice. But in any case, Euphemia loved her husband dearly. It is true that at times she forgot her love, and had to ask herself: “Who do I love?” “Ah, yes, my husband!” her conscience would answer after a more or less long lapse of time. This was because Euphemia suffered from distractions. But by virtue of a syllogism, in the form of an enthymeme, to be brief, Eufemia convinced herself as often as necessary, and it was very often, that Pánfilo was the most beloved man on earth, and that she, Eufemia, was the woman from whom this Pánfilo had sucked out the little sense that God, in His inscrutable designs, had granted him. For senses, Pánfilo. He was the most sensible man in Spain, and on this point Eufemia admitted no argument. She didn’t yet know that, just as carboniferous soils are indicated on the surface by certain plants, for example, the fern, brains are a subsoil that is usually indicated on the surface by another plant, which produces inkwell wood, as the author of the Gatomachy said. Eufemia knew nothing of this, nor did it cross her mind that her husband might seem too sensible. It must be admitted. Euphemia assumed that her husband knew everything there was to know, because that was quickly learned; but so what? To be the world’s greatest scholar is nothing more than this: to be the world’s greatest scholar. In public, Euphemia was on good terms with her husband: she saw that everyone highly valued Pamphilus’s wisdom, and she used and abused this advantage God had granted her, giving her as her eternal companion a man who no longer had anything to learn. But inwardly, which Euphemia also shared, she saw that his unconditional admiration was nothing more than flatus vocis (not that she thought it in Latin, but what she thought was something like this): because from her earliest childhood the good woman had professed affection for countless things; but she had never found it a great merit to have the ability to be informed about everything. Chapter 18. One May afternoon, Dr. Don Pánfilo Saviaseca was sadder than a sack of sadness leaning against a wall. Well! He had grown tired of studying that afternoon. The sun was so beautiful, and the earth, and everything! He was reading Kant; he was pondering whether the perception of the self is or is not a priori analytical knowledge. This was in the Retiro, in the most secluded part of the Retiro, if I may say so. Pánfilo was sitting on a mossy bench. So… what are we left with?… is our knowledge of the self analytical, or is it not? This is how he was meditating at the moment when a very cute little greyhound came to rest her thoracic extremities on The Critique of Pure Reason. It was reality, the science of the future in the form of a dog, descending upon the wise man and calling him to a positive outlook on things. The greyhound wasn’t alone. A silvery voice was heard shouting: “Merlina, here! Merlina, eh, Merli… Excuse me, sir, these dogs… they don’t know what they’re doing. But, Merlina, what’s this?”… etc., etc., etc. And, finally, Eufemia, her aunt, who was very keen to marry her off, and rightly so, and Don Pánfilo talked and thought together. It turned out they were neighbors, and since the girl didn’t have a fiancé, nor did she have one from anywhere, and since Don Pánfilo had convinced himself that the “I” cannot live without the “you” for it to become the “you,” and that it’s better to be ” we” than “me” alone, there was a wedding, not without her aunt, who had plotted it all, shedding a few tears. Eufemia was a beautiful blonde. But there was nothing unusual about her, except for her cousin, who was nothing like a general, for he was an Ensign in the Engineers, an attached man, of course. Don Pánfilo, once determined to be a faithful and loving husband, racked his brains, those enormous brains of his, to find anything unusual about his Eufemia; but he didn’t realize that the cousin was the only thing about Eufemia worthy of attention . He had never thought of his cousin Héctor González, who was the Ensign; but from the moment he saw her married, he felt so deeply wounded by love that he took the opportunity to denounce the tyrannical laws that forbid cousins from courting their cousins, even if they were married. But why had Eufemia married? No, Hector was not a man to shrink from obstacles of this kind. He had read too many bad books for such a setback to frighten him, an associate of a medical staff. He made plans that any adulterous novelist in France would envy, and prepared to begin the novel of his life, which until then had run monotonously between guards, formations, and pronouncements. Chapter 19. In the meantime, as an orator I know says, in the meantime, Pamphilus thought only of finding the quid divinum for his wife, without it occurring to him to hit upon the crux of the difficulty. And just as Don Quixote finally discovered that this, and no other, was the significant name that suited the height and quality of her feats, Pánfilo understood that Eufemia was distinguished by a very delicate taste, which inclined her to the most spiritual and sublime, to the quintessence of nameless affections, whose mysterious nuances will never be translated by the Fine Arts, nor by the most profound harmony, nor by the most inspired lyric poetry. Let us listen, or rather, let us read Don Pánfilo: “Strange and sublime dreams sometimes pass through the soul, divinations of heavenly truths, amorous yearnings, which are not, however, like blind passion, but like light that were in love with heat: for all this is what Eufemia, my little wife, feels and understands with marvelous intuition. She knows how to ignore the appearance of things, to rise to the ideal region, which, although ideal, is the most real of all. Why does she love me, if not for that? Because she reads in My eyes, sad and extinguished, the fire that consumes me from within. One day she asked me: “If I hadn’t loved you, what would you have done?” “What?” I answered. “First, cry a lot, want to die, and stare up at the stars. Looking at them, I would think many things; I would remember my childhood, my mother, my God, whom I adored as a child, whom I forgot as a young man, and whom I seek as an old man; and thinking these things, I wouldn’t forget you, no, that’s impossible; but, mixing with them all, placing yourself above them all, seeing very clearly, as I would see, that the distances of this world, both in space and in time, as in forms, as in feelings, are apparent, and that everything ends up coming together, understanding each other and loving each other, seeing this, I would console myself, and, resigned, I would begin to study a lot, a lot, to love a lot and hope a lot, and be sure of coming closer to you in the end, I don’t know where, nor do I know when, but someday, in some place, wherever God would wish. “When Eufemia heard me speak thus, she didn’t reply; but she closed her eyes and remained feeling and thinking all those ineffable things that pass through her soul in some moments of ecstatic contemplation. When she awoke from her rapture, which could have lasted well over an hour, she gave me a sweet smile and embraced me; but she said nothing. What could she say? She had understood me, she had penetrated the sublimity of my love: that was enough. “That afternoon, her cousin González came to fetch her to go to the Casa de Campo. She didn’t want to go, but finally she consented to a suggestion of mine, and said goodbye to me as if she were going to the other world. On that unforgettable day, our souls were so united that any separation was extremely painful. “My Eufemia’s soul is pure ether. How I love her! She inspires in me the good spirit I need to continue, without fainting, in the formidable task I have undertaken; I want to put an end once and for all to all pessimism; I want to put in its place and in its true form the dignity of life, the perfection of creation, and the evidence with which the purpose of all that exists is presented to my eyes, a real purpose despite constant progress and infinite variety. I’m going now to wait for Eufemia, who must be returning with her cousin from the bullfights. Taking her to the bullfights has been too much of a challenge; but since I reprimanded her the other time for not being more polite to González, this time the poor thing anticipated what she considered my wishes. If she doesn’t return fainting!” The quoted words are an excerpt from an unpublished diary. Chapter 20. The fact is that the cousin had declared his love for his cousin. He had also spoken of loves that begin in heaven and continue on earth; from the beyond and from something unknown, mainly railing against the current civil law and unequal marriages. That Euphemia loved Pánfilo should not have been questioned, and it wasn’t. Euphemia wouldn’t have allowed it, for whom it was axiomatic: first, that her husband was a wise man, and second, that she loved him like the apple of her eye. Seeing that the dogma was unalterable, Hector tried to undermine morality, acting like a wise man much greater than his cousin. The woman is always a bit Protestant: she thinks that fides sine operibus is worth something, and that by dint of believing a lot, one can compensate for the defect of sinning a lot. “Your husband is a wise man, agreed; But what of it? – This is what the cousin said, and it was like reading into the aforementioned inner self of Eufemia. – Suppose you fall in love with another man who only knows what God gives him to understand, will your husband’s wisdom be enough to avoid the inevitable? Eufemia had nothing to answer. From hypothesis to hypothesis, the cousins arrived At the bridge that separates innocent Eve from sinful Eve. Chapter 21. We left Doctor Pánfilo between San Marcos and the bridge. It was a May afternoon. Pánfilo was writing the last page of his work, which was to be immortal and was entitled: Eufemia. Investigations into the dignity and rational purpose of human life. Applied Endemonology, based on a rational architecture of psychic biology, especially prasology. A ray of sunlight, coming through the window, fell on the paper the doctor was scribbling. He wrote this: “… Such has been the author’s purpose; to demonstrate with arguments taken from living reality that the predominance of happiness is already observed today in our civilized societies, without needing to resort to the probable, but not necessary, hypothesis of ulterior sanction from other, better worlds. The philosopher must, indeed, resort to experience, but not by focusing his examination solely on his own individual experience; for the impassioned testimony of one who laments particular misfortunes means nothing; there is another experience, which wise and well-ordered moral and civil statistics can provide us with, and in it each person, and even more so the philosopher, will be able to see what they want of their own fortune…” When he reached “fortune,” the philosopher felt his paper being shaken. It was Merlina, the little greyhound from my story, who had climbed onto the table and was strutting arrogantly over The Investigations into Dignity, etc., etc. Pánfilo stopped his work. A very sweet memory, the most cherished of his life, brought tears to his eyes. The doctor owed his own, individual happiness to Merlina, without the need for endemonologies or biological architecture, simply by chance, by an indiscretion on the part of the dog, as Euphemia put it. Enraptured by this memory, the doctor spent a long time running his left hand over Merlina’s back. The little greyhound allowed herself to be loved. But suddenly she jumped; she jumped from the table to the window, and rested her front paws on a flowerpot. Her ears perked up, and Merlina howled with signs of impatience. She seemed to want to throw herself out the window. The doctor rose from his armchair to see what was causing such an impression on his little greyhound. In the garden, inside the gazebo, Héctor González and Eufemia Rivero y González were acting out the climactic scene from Francesca da Rimini. Pánfilo heard the click of… The reader can imagine what kind of clicks are used in such cases. The author of the Investigations instinctively stepped back, collapsed into the armchair, and hid his head in his hands. When he regained consciousness and opened his eyes, he saw before him, on a white piece of paper, some words that seemed to him to be written in rose-colored ink. He read: “…everyone, and even better the philosopher, will be able to see that, whatever they wish of their own fortune…” Pánfilo took up his pen with great parsimony and concluded the paragraph: “… humanity, as a whole, prospers and is happy on this earth, aware of the progress and the good end that awaits all creatures at last . For those who know how to elevate themselves to this contemplation of the general good, as the most important even for their own interest, it can well be said that heaven begins on earth.” Pánfilo had finished his work, the work of his entire life, the one that had worn out his brain and eyes. He certainly sensed something strange in them; he looked everywhere, and that flattering hue he saw in the ink dominated all objects. Poor doctor! The disease whose symptoms he had not recognized had set in : color blindness. From that day on, Pánfilo saw everything through rose-colored glasses. NOTE: Pánfilo, in Greek, means “one who loves everything.” Which in Spanish means: He who bets more, loses more. As for Eufemia, she continued to live convinced: first, that her husband was a wise man; second, that loving him was her obligation. The dogma was always the same: only the discipline had been relaxed. THE GENTLEMEN OF CASABIERTA But these gentlemen of Casabierta have no private life! This explains what happened to them to Don Eufrasio Paleólogo, president of the Villapidiendo Casino, a great reader of newspapers and a born voter of the lord of Casabierta, also a born candidate for the presidency. Villapidiendo Provincial Council. Well, sir, Paleologus came to Madrid on some common business, or the commons, as he thinks they are called; and of course, right away, that is, as soon as he had his boots polished at the Puerta del Sol, next to the Imperial Palace, he went to the house of Mr. Casabierta. He came in! “The gentleman isn’t here… Yes, I know; but the lady is certainly here .” “Sir, what do you know?” “Well, you should know that you’re dealing with an educated person who reads the newspapers and has Almaviva’s articles collected in a volume… The lady gets up at nine; she takes her toilette—you don’t know what that is—until ten; she has a snack, which consists of a glass of dry sherry, and verses by Grilo, soaked in the sherry.” At eleven, he receives her in the green drawing room, which has a Pompadour console, a Regency fireplace… by Espartero, and many plates up there near the ceiling. As if I could see you, man, as if I could see you. Come on, let me in.—This way, sir, this way.—No, sir, I’m fine; those close to me enter through here: she will receive me in her light chocolate-brown boudoir, a serious color, proper for a well-read lady who is also detached from the vanities of the world. What do you imagine, man of God, that in Villapidiendo we don’t know Spanish-style French and entering the boudoir through which those close to us enter, and in French like them? Indeed, Paleólogo, who was a Carlist and an emigrant, knows his little French, and what he doesn’t, he learns from Almaviva, Ladevese, Blasco, Asmodeo, and other writers of the Institute. He is a modern mayor , with the appearance of Luján the mayor; but as refined as Sardoal when he was in the City Hall. Well, or finally, as the Italians used to say in the Comedy, Paleologus is already seated opposite Mrs. Casabierta. “Casabierta isn’t home. She’s gone…” “Yes, I suppose he’s gone to get his shave; it’s precisely time. ” “Yes, sir; the barber used to come to the house…” “Yes, I know; but ever since he cut off that little bit of your ear the newspapers talked about… you rogue barbers! There are no more classes… and what beautiful verses your little ear of yours, I mean, your little daughter of yours, the blonde, Pilarita, wrote about the piece of her deceased father’s ear, the piece, I mean.” “Do you know them?” “Here, I know them by heart… five newspapers published them! And tell me, what’s become of him?” “I think he’s in Córdoba.” “The piece of ear?” “No, sir, Grilo; I thought you were talking about Grilo, who was the one who improvised the girl’s verses . Well, it’s all the same to me; and what about Grilo? Well, he ate here yesterday. But didn’t you say he’s in Córdoba? Well, that doesn’t change that. Doesn’t change that? (And this Almaviva, who doesn’t explain these things!) And your corny eye, madam? So robust. The salon chronicles haven’t mentioned him for days. He’s a very modest corny eye! It’s fashionable to be modest, but to say it, because otherwise it’s as if he weren’t going away. And how did the eels from Lake Tiberias sit with you on Wednesday? What! Do you know we ate eels on Wednesday? Yes, madam, from the newspapers. Eels don’t have a private life. By the way, madam, is it true that Truchón’s widow has had a setback? “No, sir; she’s had a son, but no one knows.” “Excuse me, madam, I knew; but I thought it was something else, that is, something else. The one you’re talking about was reported in the newspapers in the most discreet manner. In Villapidiendo, no one noticed more than I, and that’s why they didn’t understand that little blurb that said: ” Truchón’s widow has had to take to her bed. We’ll be glad if the interesting widow recovers soon.” They say she showed great courage during the crisis of her illness, or as the classic said: “In that difficult time of Lucina…” That’s why I know she gave birth without incident, because I know mythology and I know the widow.” “Have you treated her?” “Not mythology, nor the widow either. But I read; Something is known, and I have seen so many chronicles with transparent allusions to his transparent graces and customs… that something has become transparent. (Pause.) Oh, madam, happy is the honorable mother of a family who can give birth, to the press, so to speak, as many children as she wants! All the literary pages of the newspapers were devoted on Monday to your baby. How is it, how is the doll?–Very beautiful!–And is it true that it has that intelligence that the newsvendor Begonia says?–Well, I believe it, and more.–How salty was Ricardo Flores, the one who signs Cardoenflor (to imitate Fernanflor, whom I don’t like because he talks little about salons), how funny was Ricardito telling you about the pranks of your baby during the baptism ceremony.–He’s funny, but he slanders the boy.–Yes, he says that before he was made a Christian he had a face in church as bored as a dog or as a freethinker.–The newsvendor doesn’t know that children don’t enter church until the demons have been cast out of their bodies.–But the best are the verses of Cigarra, the little one next to the baptismal font. I know them by heart: In the baptismal font, the whole Jordan is reflected, the priest wets your ear , and you are now free from evil. The sacramental act kills the sin in your breast , and your being opens, regenerated like an Alexandrian rose, to divine faith, since the Minister of the Navy has taken you from the font, accompanied at the moment by a most august godmother. “A beautiful verse! Isn’t it?” “Not a tenth, exactly, madam.” “Well, I know, it’s the friar’s dozen,” a new kind of tenth of thirteen verses, which Cigarra invented so that the Minister of the Navy and the most august godmother would fit in. You see, with one more or less verse, we wouldn’t be badly raised.” “There’s no doubt about it; and it’s better to have too much than too little.” “Apropos of verses, Mr. Paleologus. You’re going to get me out of a tight spot.” Here at home we’re going to perform a comedy, but we’re missing a character. Would you be so kind?… “Madam, I’m only a character in Villapidiendo…” “No matter, do you want to create the role of Cocupassepartout?” “Madam, it’s a lot of creating, but if there’s no other Cocu… I’ll do it, the way they do those things in Villapidiendo.” “Oh, thank you, thank you!” “Of course, do you know French? An indispensable condition.” “But what, are we going to perform in French?” “No, sir, in Spanish, it’s a translation by Fois Grass, the Bombo correspondent in Paris… and you see, you have to master French… to pronounce the Gallicisms correctly.” “And what’s the name of the comedy?” “Wait… it’s called…” “Ah! I know, I read it yesterday in the papers, it’s called: What Young Daughters Dream of, it’s a Musset execution.” Well , you can count on me. Of course, will the newspapers talk about the rehearsals? “I certainly will, man; they’ll talk above all else…” Paleologus took his leave. It was eleven fifteen. He knew from the newspapers that it was time to inspect Bebé’s lactation. If the reader likes, we’ll return to visit the Casabierta family with the president of the Villapidiendo Casino, and perhaps see the Fois-Gras comedy… if we can manage it. Output from ffmpeg/avlib: ffmpeg version 4.4.2-0ubuntu0.22.04.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2021 the FFmpeg developers built with gcc 11 (Ubuntu 11.2.0-19ubuntu1)
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Isn’t that right?–Not a tenth, exactly, madam.–Well, I know, it’s the friar’s dozen, a new kind of tenth of thirteen verses, which Cicada invented, so that the Minister of the Navy and the most august godmother could fit in. You see, with one more or less verse we wouldn’t be ill-bred.–No doubt about it; and it’s better to have too much than too little.–Apropos of verses, Mr. Paleologus. You’re going to get me out of a difficult situation. Here at home we’re going to act a comedy, but we’re missing a character. Would you be so kind?…–Madam, I’m only a character in Villapidiendo…–No matter, do you want to create the role of Cocupassepartout?–Madam; It takes a lot of creating, but if there’s no other Cocu… I’ll do it, like they do those things in Villapidiendo. Oh, thank you, thank you! Of course, do you know French? An indispensable condition. But what, are we going to perform in French? No, sir, in Spanish, it’s a translation by Fois Grass, the Bombo correspondent in Paris… and you see, you need to master French… to pronounce the Gallicisms correctly. And what’s the name of the play? Wait… it’s called… Oh! I know, I read it yesterday in the newspapers, it’s called: What Young Daughters Dream of, it’s a shooting by Musset. Well, you can count on me. Of course, will the newspapers talk about the rehearsals? I certainly do, man; they’ll talk up the market… Paleologus took his leave. It was eleven fifteen. He knew from the newspapers that it was time to inspect Bebé’s breastfeeding. If the reader wishes, we will return to visit the gentlemen of Casabierta with the president of the Villapidiendo Casino, and perhaps see the comedy of Fois-Gras…, if we can manage it. THE OWL-POET NATURAL HISTORY “Sir, a gentleman wants to speak to you. ” “What are you like? ” “He looks like an employee of The Undertaker. ” “Ah! I know who you are: it’s Don Tristán de las Catacumbas. Let him in.” And Don Tristán de las Catacumbas entered, whom I know from having bought several coffees without milk for him. He is tall, gaunt, bushy-browed, has a parted beard like Our Lord Jesus Christ, has black person hair, black people eyes, a black person suit, and black nails. The only thing that isn’t black person are his boots, which tend toward red. He shook my hand, funereal as only he can; the handshake of the Stone Guest. There are men who squeeze your hand like a door slamming shut and grab your fingers. It’s their way of showing affection. Don Tristán speaks little, but reads a lot. He is an unpublished poet, a living voice; if you ask him how many editions of his poetry he has had, he answers with the smile of a disillusioned dead man: “None! I don’t print my verses: I do nothing but read them to chosen souls.” For him, chosen souls are all those who want to hear him. Calculating the number of times he has read his verses, Don Tristán says, using a special trope, which consists of mistaking the listener for the reader who buys the book, that his Echoes from the Grave has reached a print run of nine thousand copies. He means he has read them nine thousand times to nine thousand martyrs of condescension. “Well, Mr. Clarín, you know how I have written another book of poetry and I have come to read it to you. ” “The whole thing?” –And true; yes, sir. But it has four parts; we will read one each day, and we will finish in four sessions. I want to know your opinion of you, because although epitelluric criticism matters not a fig to me, because I have my thoughts set on high (and he pointed to the ceiling), as this time I might be encouraged to commit my work to print, if a My uncle, to whom I have already dedicated a funeral dirge… “Ah! Well, you can count on it. ” “What? ” “That your uncle will die of you. ” “I think so; for he was saying that if your uncle gratefully lends me a few coins, I will print the book; and in that case I hope you will treat me as I deserve. I ask for nothing more than justice. What I want is for you to absorb this poetry and not speak without understanding. The best thing for this is for me to read my verses myself and make you pay attention to their transcendental thoughts. ” “Do you know?… The barber is waiting for me… I have a three-day beard. ” “Ah! Do you shave?” exclaimed the man from the Catacombs with an accent of compassion… Let the barber wait… Listen to the first part at least. The book is entitled The Eternal Requiem. First part: “Idyll of the Underground.” –I warn you that the subsoil is the domain of the State… –The subsoil here is that of the cemetery. The second part, which we will read another day, is entitled “Will-o’-the-Wisps”; the third, “Responses of My Lyre,” and the fourth, “Rhymes of Mourning.” I warn you that I dispense with form. –You do well; if I were you, I would dispense with everything, even the mother who bore me… –I dispense with form and go to the bottom. –Yes, I know; to the bottom of the grave. You are the mole of poetry… –Beautiful phrase! Now listen… First part: “Idyll of the Subsoil.” Chapter 22. The worms came to devour his heart of slime; they gorged themselves inhumanly on his blood, and the poison killed them. –How is it? –Serves them right. Who tells those little worms to be inhuman? –This thing about calling irrational beings inhuman isn’t my thing; I’ve seen it from a poet who reads at the Athenaeum. –No; I’m not complaining. You see: what do I care? I’m not a worm. –Let’s continue. Chapter 23. They were taking her to be buried… –Like the Constitution. –They were taking her to be buried in a very wide coffin, the one they carry all the dead in that neighborhood. The corpse was moving with the bumps it made. I found them on the road. –Hold back, I told them, the pace. The vehicle isn’t full; there’s still room for both of us. Take me too, I’ll pay the fare; it’s not long from here to death, the trip won’t be expensive… –And they buried you? –No, sir; all that’s just talk. Chapter 24. They exhumed his corpse, took it to the pantheon… –Would those have been the progressives?… –Silence! In the humble cemetery only the grave remained, and in the hollow of the grave I buried my heart. Now listen to IV. And he read me all the possible Roman numerals; when he finished the first part , I smelled of death. –What do you think ? All in all… –I think you should wait for some solemn occasion to publish your Eternal Requiem … for example, it would be very topical on the day of judgment… –That’s very late… –Well, when the Necropolis is inaugurated… –Sir, the barber is waiting in the anteroom. –Tell him to go, this gentleman has already shaved my beard today … DON ERMEGUNCIO OR THE VOCATION OF THE NATIVE
When and why did people start talking about Don Ermeguncio in the newspapers? Nobody knows; I can only assure you that I always heard him called a distinguished man of letters. The first time his significant name rang in my ears— he was already famous, by the way—was on the occasion of a competitive examination for a chair in Psychology, Logic, and Ethics. Yes; I saw him in the Gazette; he was last on the list of judges. Don Ermeguncio de la Trascendencia, author of works; Don Ermeguncio was, then, already an author of works. Those were the times when the Krausists ruled. At that time, everything It was divided into a general, a special, and an organic section. Don Ermeguncio had written a report on the art of removing snails from orchards; and a general Anthropology Society awarded him a second prize for his work, which was divided, of course, into a general, a special, and an organic section. I don’t know why an Anthropology Society was after snails; but I will note one fact. Another time, Trascendencia was awarded a natural rose, which had to be sent to Madrid from Alicante. He had won it in a contest for writing an ode in free verse, about the influence of public libraries on the general advancement of culture. Of course, the ode was also divided into a general, a special, and an organic section. It was mainly for these two works that the Gazette called Don Ermeguncio de la Trascendencia the author of works. First, the sun was missing for Don Ermeguncio to stop attending the classes of all the professors who had been or were about to become ministers. He was already a doctor; but he loved science so much! Ever since he became a judge of competitive examinations, Trascendencia believed himself ripe for consideration, without prejudice or overestimation, as an important man, a member of the class of scholars, a subclass of philosophers. But Pavía came along, and Don Ermeguncio’s philosophical system dissolved like Congress. That political crisis coincided with an economic crisis for Trascendencia. Events caught him without a penny. He understood that there was no way to get any use out of philosophy in the new situation. At the University, the concept of anything was no longer discussed; in the newspapers, everything became about personalities, vile, low-level politics. “Let’s apply philosophy to real life, to the activity of temporal interests; in a word, let’s do a philosophy of history.” And on the recommendation of a former minister, he joined an editorial staff as an editor of philosophical and political collections and a reviewer of books and theaters. His articles were titled “Essential Politics,” “Political Formalism,” “More Principles and Fewer People,” etc., etc. But no one read them, not even the proofreader, who let all the typesetters’ prejudices slip in instead of Don Ermeguncio’s. Once, the editor spoke of the infinite goodness of God, and the typesetters included the infinite goodness of Díaz, producing a kind of anthropomorphism that Transcendence was very far from professing. These errors drove him to despair, but his grief was pointless, because no one read his articles. “It almost bothers me,” he said to himself, “to be paid for such useless work; because the country isn’t ready for this fundamental policy.” The wretched Transcendence newspaper was unaware that in that editorial office no one was paid. Any editor who demanded a salary was thrown out for insubordination. “What!” exclaimed the editor, “do you think we’re rolling in gold here? That we live on subsidies? No, sir; we’re playing for it clean.” Neither clean nor dirty, because there was no wheat. Don Ermeguncio had to convince himself that in Spain the journalist is usually as philosophical as the first when it comes to not getting paid. “And for this,” he shouted, eating his elbows, “for this I abandoned my speculative work and my poetic visions!” And he sighed, thinking of his anthropology studies and his ode to influence. Thus he spent a long time, waiting for the age of harmony, as he called the first pronouncement that would bring his people, and smoking borrowed cigarettes. Yes, borrowed, because Trascendencia, with his hunger, felt a craving for sucking that was far beyond his budget, and he had to throw himself into the shipwreck of an immense floating debt of curly tobacco. It was a consumer loan that his admirers gladly made him, to whom he promised to repay with interest when he went to the Philippines to wrest public education from the clutches of the friars and to settle the tobacco issue. Don Ermeguncio went to the Café de Paris after eating (the others), and he went there because he saved half a real… for his friends. On the other hand, on paper He spent them the earth. But what did it matter, he knew so much and was a close friend of Don Pedro and Don Juan, people who addressed him informally! One of his tobacconists, as he jokingly called them, offered him a canonry one night: paid correspondence for a provincial newspaper. The paper was called El Faro de Alfaro. Despite the cacophony of the title and the corny writing, Trascendencia accepted the twelve duros a month and the daily letter on politics, science, arts, agriculture, and especially anything related to the interests of the country, such as insulting the provincial deputies for their slowness, etc., etc. In addition, there was a lot of talk about the Ateneo, new releases, and jokes, always ending with le mot de la fin, like the Paris newspapers. Trascendencia understood the mission of the conscientious correspondent in a very different way ; But he had to compromise, and forgetting that he carried within him the author of the ode to influence, and the judge of the opposition exams, he began to write his first letter to the editor of El Faro de Alfaro. The first difficulty he encountered was that he didn’t know where Alfaro was, or if it was a seaport, a very common ignorance among Spanish philosophers and writers. His friend, who was from there, and therefore knew, informed him of everything, and also told him that the one who had to be given a firm grip was the mayor; because calling him a brute from the village wasn’t funny; but saying it from Madrid was something he would believe himself. Anyway , Don Ermeguncio began: “Mr. Editor… ” But what was he going to say to an editor who asked for fresh news about everything: the Stock Exchange, Congress, and so on, even fresh news about fresh fish? Transcendence knew nothing about anything. He lacked decent clothes to go where news is fished for; He didn’t know anyone, and if he asked anything, he was sure to be fooled. “But what does it matter to these people to know the gossip of Madrid? Isn’t the gossip of their own town enough for them? How much better it would be for them if I spoke to them about the advances in psychology, which now turns out to be pure monism (this was years ago), and if I gave them my opinion on the religion of animals, an opinion I had just acquired in the Revista Positiva!” But there was no remedy; it was necessary to submit to the demands of vulgar concern, and Trascendencia invented a system: copy the Diario de Avisos for the section on material interests, and La Correspondencia for the section on moral interests; but what he copied from La Correspondencia he quarantined, and with such a plausible motive he let the playful muse of jokes do her thing. What jokes in Trascendencia must have been, for not even he found them funny ! As for the word “la fin,” he copied it alternately from Charivari and Figaro. Another very serious difficulty for Don Ermeguncio was that he never knew how to begin talking about what he should. Some forged documents had been discovered; for the letter to the Faro de Alfaro began thus: “Mr. Editor: Man is a compound of soul and body; hence, he is intimately linked with nature and has economic needs; the proper sphere of economic activity in the State is what is called public finance…” and so on. By the time he got around to talking about the documents, the letter would have filled up. The time to collect arrived. He turned it over, and the letter returned protested. The Faro de Alfaro had died. The subscribers didn’t want a newspaper that knew nothing about Madrid, but rather that everything real is rational and vice versa, according to Hegel. Transcendence turned its eyes to the theater. It was necessary to regenerate the decadent drama and get some trousers, because his jobs were falling apart. Finally, he got paid in the theater. He wrote a play titled… Prejudices Against Prejudices. The impresario from the Español asked Don Ermeguncio: “What does this mean? You mean: ‘Prejudices against prejudices,’ and even then it’s not very clear. ” “Go on! The usual! No, sir; prejudices against prejudices, I want.” say. “Well, then, say it yourself; but it won’t be in my theater where those prejudices you mention, which I consider to be prejudices to me, will premiere. ” “I’ll change the title of the play.” And he took it back to the theater: now it was called Antithesis of Life. “Leave it there,” said the impresario. And there the antitheses rotted. Don Ermeguncio de la Trascendencia, who until then had believed that evil is accidental in life and due only to our finitude, began to give himself over to all the devils of hell, although he didn’t call them by name, because he didn’t believe in demonology or angelology. What he was sure of was that he had been born with the worst luck in the world. “Undoubtedly, I am not of my century. Happy is Señor Núñez de Arce who is of his century, as he says in his verses; not I, I shouldn’t have been born until the age of harmony arrived.” One of those poets who pursue the ideal, and along the way, a peaceful turn, eventually get their turn, even if the ideal is unattainable. But I get nothing. Ermeguncio made his last effort. “I’m going to write,” he said to himself, “an immortal work of philosophy; I’ll take it to a publisher, and if he pays me, I’ll eat it, and if not, let him deal with the final verdict of history.” And said and done. He began to fill pages and more pages of philosophy, and when he had written two thousand pages of ascending research and another two thousand of descending ones, he presented himself to a publisher who was then publishing The Latent Thinker, translated into Chinese. The publisher was very crude. This is nothing unusual. He had always had a very strange criterion for the works of human ingenuity being written. He had been a schoolteacher, and no one could persuade him: the best writer is the one who writes best. This was what Sánchez, the editor, thought, though he dared not say so, for the general opinion was quite different. Don Ermeguncio presented him with his reams of ascending and descending philosophy , and he was already afraid that Sánchez would throw them at his head when he noticed that the conscientious editor opened his eyes and mouth, as astonished as a Torío supporter could be, who no longer expected to see a gallant italicized script in his remaining life. Sánchez laid his back-and-forth philosophy on the table with the respect with which a priest leaves the ciborium in the tabernacle, and opening his arms, he closed them after he had them between them, and he squeezed, as he pleased, the distinguished author, the writer of writers, the writer with the finest handwriting he had ever known. “This is writing, this is writing, and the rest is stories!” exclaimed Sánchez; this is pure Torío, Torío without any mixture. You preserve the good tradition; you are my man. This will not be printed like any other book in block letters; This will be preserved in lithography; this must pass into immortality as a calligraphic monument. And you, illustrious young man, the cream of the penmen, the best writer in the world, you will have a house and a table, and money in your pocket, and the moon, because I am taking you into my service; you will be my secretary, or rather, my clerk. Transcendence hesitated between killing that man, incapable of understanding his system, or accepting the position he was offering him. And being a true philosopher for the first time in his life, he said: “I will be your clerk.” “But swear to me that you will preserve these profiles, these features, this holy and pure tradition of Torío… ” “I swear it.” And Ermeguncio lived happily, collected his salary immediately, and never suffered hunger or philosophy again. At last, he had followed his vocation. He was born to be a clerk. REALIST NOVEL Notes from the wallet of a suicide: “–I have come to Z… to bathe and to resurrect the dead poetry of the heart. I have taken thirteen baths, a fatal number, and today I decide to stay in the water. I have taken the sheet as if it were a shroud; I have put on the knitted underwear as if it were a shroud. As I passed under the balcony of the I saw the famous Doctor Sarcófago leaning on the parapet. He was smoking peacefully in his dressing gown, wearing slippers as loose and as un-Christian as his conscience. They were Berber slippers. The doctor greeted me with a smile. “Stop it, stop it!” he shouted, “I’ve already told you.” “I meant to say that the bath wouldn’t last long.” “A shocking bath , isn’t it?” “Yes, a shocking one.” “That’s right. A shocking bath!” “I’m writing in the bathhouse. That is to say, in the chapel. I’ve just finished smoking a cigar from the tobacconist’s and reading a back issue of La Correspondencia!” The sky is cloudy, it’s raining, it’s cold, the water is as if asleep, the waves are beating on the filthy beach over piles of filth. This looks like a public washhouse. Everything is sad, insignificant, dirty. There is Don Restituto, with water up to his neck, although it only reaches his knees; but his wife, Doña Paz, is at his side, better still on his ribs, and Don Restituto, a miserable Atlantean with a salary of 8,000 reales, bears on his shoulders the immense sorrow of his other half. A leonine half. And what does this matter to me? Nothing. And yet, Doña Paz’s presence disturbs me, and my desire to die is more vehement contemplating this canonical and civil copulation that is called marriage in the world, and in the home is the exploitation of man by the hysteric. Doña Paz has hysteric, the last ratio of the machorra. Machorra! A rude, sarcastic word, approved by the Dictionary. In Madrid, Don Restituto is my subordinate. I earn a little more than he does; I am his boss. And I am single, I neither smoke nor drink. Don Restituto would drink, smoke, if he had money and didn’t have Doña Paz. My subordinate and his wife came to the baths with me by one of those terrible coincidences that life is full of. Bored with Madrid, dying of heat, dreaming of the poetry of my youth, I got into a first-class carriage, forgetting all the prosaic things in life, yearning for the ideal. Suddenly the door opened. “It’s full!” I was about to shout. And it was true; the world, and even more so the carriage, was full of the ghosts of my dreams. What did I need a traveling companion who probably had that railway clock called the Guide, which in Spain only serves to convince oneself that no train arrives anywhere on time? A traveling companion who would bid me good afternoon and then look at me smilingly, as if announcing a friendship that was about to begin right there (because people who travel little believe in the friendships of travel and seek them out). The first thing that appeared was a suitcase, one of those our grandparents used to travel on the back of a poor horse. Then a deck of cards entered the carriage; then a basket, then two baskets, then a ham in a jacket, that is, wrapped in white canvas, like a violin; then a blanket so long that it hadn’t even entered the whole thing before it threatened to break the glass of the opposite window. I protested vigorously, trying as best I could to escape this anonymous attack. I still didn’t know what kind of barbarian was invading it. Then I heard a weak voice say: “Excuse me, gentlemen…” “Go to hell! Let’s see, a station employee, the chief, a civilian, anyone , help!” “The chief is coming.” “This can’t go with you; it’s not for personal use or necessary for the journey.” “Yes, sir, that’s right; I mean, I don’t need any of it, but my wife does.” “How he suffers from hysterics!” “Hysterics!” I exclaimed. “Then you are Don Restituto?” “Oh, my dear boss!” cried the subordinate upon recognizing me; and he gave me an embrace, and Doña Paz came over; and since I went through everything, the station master did not object, since there were no other passengers, to the carriage of the hysterics’s wife’s bulky necessities . “If I had been able to send Doña Paz to a van, I would have maintained my right, but once she had been admitted, the least of it was consenting to the packages, which in the end were not hysterical.” “And God bless me, what a journey! Between husband and wife, they made my bile rise.” Revolution. How much pusillanimity in her husband and in her! How many abominations! Don Restituto had to take off her boots and put on her slippers, and because she didn’t try to hide the ankles of her other half from my profane eyes, Doña Paz scolded him in a low voice, intending for me to hear, and told him that this lack of conjugal modesty gave her a bad feeling; because it indicated little love or excessive trust; what if it weren’t for the fact that one is the way one is! Don Restituto asserted that I was nearsighted , but Doña Paz insisted that I had seen something. “I swear to God I hadn’t seen anything.” Night fell; Don Restituto was sleeping. Doña Paz sighed. Using the pretext that she got dizzy walking backwards to the machine, she sat down next to me. And the Lord let me fall into temptation. Doña Paz is ugly, she’s not young; but I wanted to test that virtue. The first attempt was rebuffed with a sneer. The second, which was to be the last and forever prove the chastity of that hysterical lady—alas, the second attempt—was a failed crime! Doña Paz, perhaps outraged by the lack of conjugal modesty, as she said, of that husband, took cruel revenge. She did in her own way what that queen of Phrygia who shared the throne with the wise Gyges did. But I neither killed Don Restituto nor consummated what I still don’t know if it could be consummated. But Doña Paz was no less unfaithful for that. Ridiculous and terrible adventure! “And I had loved like Werther; I was born for the ideal; but alas! as they say at the Madrid Athenaeum, ideals are dead: now only hysterical women remain for me. There is no torment comparable to my torment; my conscience is tortured by a crime that made me sick of all pleasure.” I recall with disgust and shame an adventure that cast the mire of dishonor upon the gray hair of a good friend. Poor Don Restituto! Now the wretch calls me, telling me to run and bathe by his side. Suggestions from his wife! I’m going to take revenge and avenge him; I’m going to give that Messalina of Posta Street a real scare. This is my plan. I swim alongside her, I invite her to a swimming practice under my auspices; she accepts without fail; I lead her by the beard to where it will cover us, I fake an accident, I sink to the bottom, and she… I ‘m not responsible. A dead man is not responsible for anything. If she perishes, it’s not my fault, or if it is, it’s a fault that honors me. Unfortunately, there will be no shortage of people who will arrive in time to save her; she, without knowing it, must float like a cork. At least in all domestic disputes he has always remained on top like oil. “Here I come, Don Restituto, I’m running to save you, to free you, if I can, from your Doña Paz and your sins. And I’m also granting you a promotion. What do I want with destiny? I, who dreamed of glory, find myself reduced to being the boss of a Don Restituto! You will be the boss from now on, honest man, you will rise, you will have those five thousand reales that are missing so that your water can reach the salt water. Tomorrow they will say of me that I was cowardly enough to kill myself, that I committed a crime. No; I performed a work of charity, I gave immediate promotion to a civil servant who has twenty-five years of service and just as many years of hunger. Life has been made for the Restitutos who wait twenty-five years for a promotion and bind themselves with an indissoluble bond to the hysterical cattle. Yes, Doña Paz is the likely woman! She must have had her fifteen years too, although it seems unbelievable. Who knows if my Carlota, who was like a sylph, who walked in such a way that her steps seemed like the fluttering of an angel’s wings—a phrase that occurred to me to write in that sonnet that I didn’t think to send her—who knows if she too… will have a Don Restituto under her nails at this time, if she too will have suffered or will suffer hysterically!—Oh, the woman who does not die of the interesting consumption of youth, fatally becomes Doña Paz!—Here I go, here I go, Don Restituto—He calls me to death; yes, he can do it, he is my victim, although he doesn’t know it; here I go, yes, let the waves of the ocean wash away the disgrace of your honor. Thus end these notes, which he left with notorious imprudence in the the unwary criminal’s coat pocket. In the account book “for the use of Doña Paz Cordero de Cabra” on folio 20 we read the following: Butter 12 eggs 20 Haceyte 6, and below: “I called him, if I called him, but he didn’t know it, a woman like me can’t show her love without dishonoring herself and her pet. At fifteen I had seen and called him, he hadn’t noticed me, because he was in love with Carrlota and her dreams above all: land, dreamer, he had ambitions to go very high, and I couldn’t call his attention. He left our town, dog my love stayed with me, every day he grows bigger, sadder, dog as big as ever. I’ll never hear again talking about the dog here in the corral with his memory bibia, bibia Heterosexual. My mother was dying desperately to leave me alone and poor, Restituto was a governor, good and breastfeeding and I gave him my hand without love, as I could go to the orphanage. In this marriage I did nothing but grow and grow and acquire a very bad, capricious, and wayward temper, because of my inner sadness and the poverty of my husband’s spirit; another husband who was not my husband, had made a wife of me, he, Restituto, made a sultana, a fierce, dissembling, cruel, evil, evil yes. Many years passed and I returned to see my Hamor, the Chief of Restituto was in the office. He didn’t remember me! As if he had never seen me and I who saw him every day at all hours in my Halla! But I don’t say anything to him, as if I didn’t know him either. I saw few times, Restituto would love him very much and tried to bring him home as much as I could; I saw the Dog on the train, at night, when I felt the Fire of Government close at hand, driven mad by his presence and by I don’t know what scents that came from the field that the train crossed and even I think by sighs that came down from the stars that shone so brightly, I could not help but approach him and sigh and he took my hand and spoke to me of Love and His Love and that Night of Great Sin, was the only Happy One of my Life. Let the Whole World Know. After that, he did not speak to me again; he saw me in the vain, it is known that I was for him nothing more than a pastime. That is why he killed me. Let the Whole World Know and my husband, goodbye Restituto.” The Hippodrome correspondent wrote to his perfumed magazine the following: “We too have had our drama in Z…, or rather a tragedy . Thanks to this, there is something to talk about. Mr. X…, known in Madrid for his affable manner in the most distinguished circles, has been the hero. In a bathing suit, if a suit can be called a pair of very simple knitted underwear , he came out onto the beach and entered the sea bound for eternity. Mrs. V…, wife of a modest employee, was bathing with her husband, and as Mr. X… passed near her, he gave her a resounding kiss on the forehead, just as it sounds, and with a hysterical laugh fell senseless into the waves. Mr. V… rushed in vain to save his not very chaste wife; with the force of a paroxysm, the robust lady held her not at all athletic husband, and meanwhile the bitter waves, with that cold impassivity of nature, dragged the unfortunate couple. Both would have perished had not Mr. X… been nearby, and he was able to pull Mr. V… out onto the sand, where he left him before he could regain consciousness. Mr. X… threw himself back into the water; those present, all people from Madrid, let him do so: they believed that this time he was going to save the lady… but he was seen to disappear among the bitter waves, and neither Mrs. V… nor Mr. X… returned to the sandy beach until the tide brought two corpses hours later.” When Don Restituto read his wife’s confession in the account book , he exclaimed: “I forgive you!” Afterwards, he thought about it and said: “And I forgive him too. In the end, I owe him my life! If it weren’t for him, I’d drown in the sea or… in my dear wife.” THE PERFECT WIFE Don Autónomo, who celebrated his birthday in September, because that month is the month where Saint Autónomo falls, and as the Golden Legend tells it; Don Autónomo Parcerisa has just eaten sumptuously surrounded by his wife and children, Very satisfied, everyone happy, joyful. There was no happier family in the world. They lived in a mediocre, if not golden, home, at least made of silver-gilt, which allowed them, on days when the ringing was loud, to throw the house out the window, symbolically, of course; that is, without paying a single ounce of extraordinary expenses, the rest being safely tucked away in the safe, in the bank, and in the coffers of the Equitativa, where Don Autónomo had insured himself. Serafina was a seraph; there was no more angelic woman: she was the perfect wife of Fray Luis, but in the modern style, with somewhat less devout customs, for if not, she would no longer have been the perfect wife today. No prudishness, expansive, joyful virtue; a constant sacrifice of her selfishness to the interest of her husband and children, but without any apparent effort, with divine grace. She seemed like a woman like any other, and she was the best of all. She didn’t assert her fidelity (and she was very beautiful and highly coveted) as a merit: this pretension would have seemed to her a kind of adultery. Just as it never occurs to anyone in a society of distinguished, noble, rich, and extremely refined people that one of those dukes, or generals, or ministers might steal a silver candelabra, for example, and no one thinks about the possible theft—but an infinitesimal possibility, so to speak—it never crossed Serafina’s mind to be unfaithful to her Autónomo in thought, word, or deed. And since there was no way to reprimand him for anything, to scold him, she had never reprimanded him; they had never quarreled. The table was unbroken, and marital peace was unbroken. From all of this, over the years, Autónomo finally concluded that things couldn’t go on like this, that it had to end somehow . This was precisely what he was thinking about that day, his saint’s day, after dessert , when the children were already saying goodbye to their father because bed was calling them. They all went to bed without complaint, even though they were sure their mother wouldn’t have denied them permission to watch over them for a while. They wanted it… but no, why? Their mother had shown them that it was harmful, and besides, it would have upset her, even if she didn’t let on: nothing, nothing, off to bed. “Good night, Papa. ” “Good night, my children, good night.” And Don Autónomo continued thinking: “Look here. Now I would very gladly go and play a little tresillite at the casino. I always lose, it’s true, but so what? It’s not much and I have fun. But I’m not going, impossible. If
I announce that I’m going out, she’ll laugh just as much as if I said ‘I’m going to bed,’ which is what she likes, because she knows it’s good for me to get up early, for my stomach and for business… Who gives her a quiet upset without great remorse? But… the truth is that today… my saint’s day…” Nevertheless, he decided to muster a bit of energy that wasn’t necessary, and standing up, he exclaimed: “Come on, girl, give me… the candlestick, I’m going to bed.” And he lay down, he lay down like a child. And as soon as he saw himself between the sheets, he felt like he was in prison, like he was in the stocks, and he cursed himself, because there was no reason to do so against his wife. “I’m going to jump out of bed! I’m jumping! Who’s stopping me?” And he didn’t jump for that very reason, because it was his right, because no one was stopping him; and his little wife would have happily handed him his clothes and, smiling, would have lit the street for him. He fell asleep protesting against his wife’s excessive virtue, which, being a saint, forced him, in order to avoid terrible remorse, to be, at least, the blessed Autonomous. And days and days passed, and always like this. In short, he ended up with all his vices eradicated, incapable of the slightest prank, which would have been a terrible ingratitude toward that holy family in which he saw himself with his resplendent halo. “But, sir, I wasn’t going to be a saint; this is by force. This isn’t the perfect wife, this is the pluperfect one!” And little by little, his mania grew to the point where, in his own way, he hated that woman, whom he would adore on his knees, so as not to displease her, for he was winning heaven. And from one thing to another, he ended up buying a manual printing machine, and he shut himself up in his house, printing on cards, flyers, hand -kissing notices, etc. , the same words, but few. And then, at night, he would take them to the post office and spend five minutes pouring paper into the lion’s open mouth, stunned by so much correspondence. He had bought the book of one hundred thousand addresses and had sent to all the newspapers in the world, or at least to many of them, to the agencies, to the lawyers, bishops, deputies, consuls, judges, mayors, bankers, etc., etc., the same news, which mattered equally to all of them: nothing. The judge on duty, who also received it, was the only one who paid any attention to it. The notice she received read as follows: “I’m killing myself because I can’t stand my wife.” And indeed, Autónomo did indeed commit suicide. No matter what they did, the terrible catastrophe couldn’t be hidden from Serafina; and the worst part was that, due to the immense publicity the suicide had given to the news, it didn’t take long for the saintly wife to find out what caused his suicide. Her husband was killing himself because he couldn’t stand her! Common sense led the public en masse, aware of the qualities of the virtuous lady, to declare that the man had gone mad from pure domestic bliss. Only in this way could the absurdity of killing himself because he couldn’t stand the perfect wife be explained. However, a certain confirmed bachelor, a friend of the deceased, said: “Autónomo’s death hasn’t been expunged for all its philosophy. He wasn’t crazy. What he did was leave us an example with his death.” The philosophy of this suicide is this: “I kill myself so I can’t stand my wife.” But his wife is the best in the world. Therefore… the best of women is unbearable. What must the others be like! And what must marriage be like! This Autonomous Man is the redeemer of celibates. THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE “AVENGER” (CORRESPONDENCE) Chapter 25. My friend: although I live far from the hustle and bustle of the world, I never fail to learn from the newspapers about the most interesting public events, particularly those that concern contemporary literary life, which you know how much it attracts my attention, because of the great social value I attribute to its manifestations. Well then: I have read the monologue of Teresa, the avenger of Sellés, and I have seen that the public did not find it implausible that a woman of that class, of that life, could speak so well and think so profoundly. The success of Teresa de Sellés encourages me to publish, through you, if you accept the commission, this kind of prose Heroideas that I am sending you enclosed. These are, as you will see, correspondence between a true avenger and this humble philosopher, as you and other friends call me, perhaps to mock my interests. My avenger is wiser than Teresa; she is even pedantic and very fond of psychology, as is evident in those papers. I have kept these letters because, although they seem to me to have a certain literary flavor (and pardon my immodesty, as far as mine are concerned), I did not believe until now that the public would find credible this kind of almost idealistic Camellia ladies, twisted and convoluted in spirit, but not repentant and perhaps not in love. And that such a woman exists is evident: I have known her, I have seen her, in the flesh, and so that you may know her as well, in spirit, I leave the floor to her. Read, and if you like, publish. Yours, The Philosopher. Chapter 26. Sir… philosopher: please excuse me, first of all, for not calling you by your name. Ferdinand has not wanted to tell me, either in your presence or alone: you have not wanted to be less mysterious either; so I respect… by force, the incognito, and I call you by the nickname your friends have given you. But let it be known that it is by force, not because I wish to use with you a familiarity to which I have no right and to which You certainly haven’t given me any excuse in the short time (as Mambrú says) that I have had the honor of meeting you. Besides, for my own pleasure, even if I could legitimately speak to you jokingly, in a festive style (Mambrú), I wouldn’t do it today, and I confess that I would gladly call you my esteemed Don… Pepe, for example, or Pepe or Juan or whatever, plain and simple. I’m not in the mood for jokes. Besides (and that’s two of them), my hand trembles when I write. For me, the situation, or the moment, or however you call it, is solemn. I am writing, perhaps for the first time, to an honorable man; for I am inclined to believe that you are one, indeed, not just because of appearances, not because they call you a philosopher, and Fernando says that you have a lot of talent, but you don’t live in reality; These would be, in any case, indications of your honesty, but they are not enough: I believe you to be an honest man based on other signs I observed during the aforementioned period in Mambrú. “And what is an honest man?” you might ask. “How do you think that for the first time you are writing to an honest man, when so many letters… you must have written to Fernando… and to the Baron of X and to Paquito H and… etc., etc., etc., etc.!!!” “Well, you should know, Mr. Philosopher (for I prefer you called me my dear Don Andrés, like my father) that neither Fernando nor the other lost souls are honest men to me. What then is an honest man? The same as an honest woman. Dishonorable men are those who have dealings with women… who have dealings with those men: no more, no less. Do ut des,” as Mambrú says, although I don’t know if that’s appropriate. This doesn’t mean that I think Fernando is bad, no; But it’s not the same. I’m not an honorable woman either, and I consider myself good. You see, I’m quite frank and don’t play the demi-monde. Ah! No. Long live Spain! If I were a woman of letters, I wouldn’t speak like those suspicious ladies I’ve seen Duse and Tubau perform: I’d speak like Celestina, which is a comedy, or a conversational novel, that Fernando read to me and I liked very much… But let’s get to the point. You are an honorable man, or so it seems to me, and this news inspires in me a strange respect (at times, when I’m joking, crazy, if I remember you… laughter escapes me inside) and… if I have to be completely frank… when I noticed the way you had of not looking at me, I was overcome with a strong desire to make you look at me and admire me… and desire me. All this has happened, it weighs on me, and that’s why I’m telling you (and please forgive my lisp). You didn’t look me in the eye for more than a very brief moment, which shouldn’t deserve the name of a lapse. You too must remember. You’re the only man who’s entered this house since I’ve been living with Fernando, whom I never knew had even the slightest intention of deceiving his friend and depriving him, more or less completely, of the quasi-conjugal fidelity of your Nila. But you did something else: you took the portrait that was on the console, as Trini says. Fernando, who lies when necessary, and yet is almost as much of a thinker as you, swears up and down that he didn’t give you the little painting, and since I’m sure you were the one who took it, that the painting disappeared when you left the house; since it’s impossible that it was the thief born without you (I won’t admit of any discussion on this), it turns out… that… that you stole the portrait of Miss Elena, Fernando’s sister who died. It’s not likely that you would dare to take the painting without asking for it. But I do believe that it wasn’t Fernando’s intention to offer it to you. It was you who, since you didn’t offend me by wishing for my infidelity, mistreated me without telling me, warning Fernando that his sister’s portrait looked bad in the house where we lived together. (I’m sure you took it with you; because Fernando didn’t believe it. I searched him as soon as you left, and he couldn’t throw it away when he went out on the street, and I can attest that it’s not there at home. You have it.) He says that you were somewhat platonically in love with his sister Elena, and that’s why… It’s not that. It’s that you believe that I shouldn’t have that young lady’s portrait in my house. I thought there was no sin or offense in that; that it was enough that I had not thought it prudent, for fear of what people might say, just for that reason alone, for not a single shred, any memory of the poor deceased… of the other deceased, to enter the house. Be that as it may (Mambrú), I say, no, be that as it may, I accept your superior judgment; but it seems to me that if instead of meeting Christ, the Magdalene meets you, the Repentant Ones will be left without a saint of their devotion. In short, if you wish… give us back the portrait (unless you swear to have loved that young lady). Since you, although a philosopher, do not know everything, nor understand everything, you do not know, you do not understand the role that little picture played in the house. It was the object of a kind of domestic cult, our household gods, our penates, or whatever you may call it: something like a censer full of the good smell of honesty, of dignified, noble intimacy. Fernando and I, who are sometimes like madmen, have insisted that love conquers all (or the crowbar), and we’ve come to imagine that we are… not husband and wife, for that’s unnecessary, and Fernando says that one has only one wife, but something that, without being marriage, nor wishing to imitate it, and without ceasing to be love, is something else, also worthy in its own way, not honorable, but something else, perhaps better, up there, in high metaphysics. Anyway, Fernando will explain this to you, if you talk about it, better than I can. And don’t believe it, if I got down to it, I too could analyze with the scalpel of criticism (pure Mambrú) these quibbles of the soul in its relations with its environment. (I repeat , pardon the jokes: I don’t master the style: it leads me to it, and out of the habit of always speaking jokingly, I write in this manner… when I would like to write to you like the prayer book.) So, will you return the portrait to us? In case you refuse, I’ll send you that package via Petra: it’s a scapular of my mother’s, which I’ve almost always carried with me. Now I realize that if Miss Elena’s portrait gets dirty while it’s on a console table in the living room, this memento of my mother, blessed in addition because it touches the Holy Christ of the Chains, gets dirty by being exposed to the touch of Fernando, who is as… as corrupt as this servant. Either return the portrait and accept the sentimental and supersensible quibbles of our arrangement, or let both remain in the possession of the honorable man. And, I’ll say more (Mambrú), if you return the portrait to us… as a favor… and for some reason, because that other thing is more serious, more… religious, more… of the soul, keep, if you wish, in any case, the memento of my mother that I’m sending you via Petra. Your Afma. ss y aqbm, Nila.–The envelope is sent without address because I don’t know your name or where you live… (Petra knows… but she doesn’t say so; she was Fernando’s wet nurse; she’s sworn in… Trivialities of semi-marital life. Fernando is like that. He says it’s a joke not to let me know who you are… He lets me write to you… on this condition: that I’m not to see him again, nor am I to know where you are, or what your name is.) Petra also says it’s a joke and laughs heartily. Deep down, I’m flattered to be a bit of a prisoner… and with spies. Fernando doesn’t read my letters: he says it’s enough for him to read what you answer me… if I allow him. Petra can’t read. I can tell you whatever I want, keeping up the joke; but you’re sure to tell me only what you should. It’s a diversion like any other, and Fernando grants me one in exchange for the theater. The trouble is that you’ll soon tire of this comedy. But… don’t fail to answer me, at least this first one about portraits, as Sancho would say. (Eh? How erudite!) –Okay. Chapter 27. My dear friend: it is my duty, although it pains me, to break at the first opportunity the charm of the mysterious, and in its way picaresque, novel that you had plotted and whose first chapter happens to be the skillful letter to which I reply. If in comedies everything is understood at the last, I, so that there is no comedy, declare to you that I understood everything from the beginning. Almost everything. Neither has Fernando kept my name from you, nor has he forbidden you from knowing where I live, nor has Petra been your wet nurse, nor does he distrust us, me in particular, much less you, in the sense of believing that my prose could be a salvo of gunpowder to seduce you, and that, on the other hand, my physical presence could overcome you. This is what you wanted to imply… Understood; but there is no such thing: it is a stratagem of yours: the plot of your novel. It is undone. I warn you that Fernando does not know what you have written to me; he does not know that you wanted to compose a novel in collaboration with the philosopher. I have asked him what I needed to know to ascertain that you were fantasizing, but in such a way that he could not suspect the secret purpose of my questions. It is also my obligation to warn you that between Fernando and me there is a kind of spiritual intimacy that you cannot suspect the extent of. You are very clever, you know a lot (the apparent frivolity and the falsified disarray of your letter don’t fool me either), you have read a lot of psychology… novels, and even some mystical literature. You see how well I am informed. But allow me to tell you: a woman, unless she is an extraordinary woman, a true monster, cannot reach the level men reach in these matters… when they reach them. I know you are capable of understanding much more than your letter might lead you to believe… in which you imitate certain merry ladies of novels and comedies… What’s more, I guess that if you write to me again, convinced that I have recognized the disguise, you will put on a very different one, and perhaps even decide to present yourself as a modern Hypatia. For with all that, it is unlikely that you can understand the spiritual intimacy between Fernando and the undersigned. Be careful, therefore, with what you tell me. What you and Fernando can confess, communicate in the most sublime moments of that loving metaphysics that forgives all, sanctifies all, etc., etc., has no comparison in depth, solemnity and… goodness, with what in other kinds of expansions we tell each other, that lost man, as you call him, and this honorable man, who is, in effect, in the sense you give the word. Honorable… up to a point. And so that you don’t laugh at me again, in those moments when you are not a mystic… in your own way, I’m going to tell you a story. There is a writer in Paris (a friend and something of a co-religionist of MMB , whom you know so well), who is a propagandist and, in a way, director of the neo-idealist, or neo-religious, or neo… whatever you will, movement that M. MB has spoken about so many times. Well, this writer told us in a recent article that another friend of his (not MMB), who wanted to convert to the new school or tendency, as well as being idealist and religious, said to him, somewhat alarmed: “But, let’s see, does this thing about the new ideality, about the future religiosity, mean… that one will not be able to look at pretty women ?” The quasi-mystical philosopher cheered him up by telling him that it was not a question of vows of chastity, nor of abstinence, which, out of modesty, was still left to true priests, to career priests. Well then, my friend: I am from the school of your friend’s friend . I look at beautiful women and devote no small part of my life to being in love in my own way. Love is neither sinful nor petty when one knows how to preserve its greatest charm, which is illusion. Just as Goethe, in Faust, Part II, which you read in Granada, in the Alhambra (am I aware?), has Manto say in the classic Walpurgis, *Den lieb ich, der Unmögliches begehrt* [1], I am of the opinion that impossible love is permissible… to one who, for one reason or another, should not love what is possible in a woman. I, for reasons that are not relevant, cannot permissibly love the women I meet out there, if by love is meant the attempt to possess them. (A barbaric, coarse word, although not as much as that one) which abounds in our classical poets: to enjoy it). For this reason I consecrate my amorous ideality, an inexorable, invincible force, which must be respected if poetic representation, the animator of life, is not to be mutilated, to the modest, unattainable virgins, of whom I am sure that they will not be mine. As soon as I see in them this moral impossibility that dignifies my illusion, I throw myself into it without fear, remorse or measure. I am not saying, my friend, that this is a moral perfection, far from it, nor do I propose myself as an example; I am merely declaring the expedient I have been able to arrive at to resolve, temporarily at least, this difficulty engendered by the opposition between certain social, customary laws, indispensable today, and some natural tendencies that constitute irreplaceable elements for a harmonious aesthetic life. I speak of this primarily so that you can see that I don’t lower my gaze in the presence of women, but on principle, I fall in love, in my own way, exclusively with pure women, those who are morally incapable of loving, or at least showing it, a man who cannot contract a just marriage. The impossible woman is my only amorous cliché. You already know that. So between us there is no possible flirtation; and, besides, there’s no reason to regard me as an escaped seminarian: I’m as much a man of the world as anyone… who doesn’t practice. Neither a temptation for moments of diabolical mysticism, nor a ridiculous figure for moments of relapsing Epicurism. I take real pleasure in writing all this, certain that you understand me. Which doesn’t mean that you understand everything. No, certain ties that unite Fernando and me, and of which he may have forgotten for a time, you cannot see. Your spiritual vision is subtle, but not so much. And now for something else. I don’t want to be a traitor. I know your story… to the extent that you wanted Fernando to know it. And a little further, based on certain psychological trigonometry calculations that Fernando and I performed, and later I alone, Fernando hasn’t played any tricks on you by confiding in me. You can’t imagine how far the intimacy of two true friends goes; What secrets are told when, almost materially intoxicated by mutual confessions of idealities, poetic, vaporous adventures, hours and hours pass, for example, strolling at midnight in spring, collecting along the way the perfumed emanations of the gardens of the rich (of the rich who do not enjoy this wealth of theirs, because they either sleep or watch over miserable cares far from their own flowers), enjoying those flying aromas that mock the right of property and go to flatter the senses and the spirit of their true owners, the dreamers who stroll at midnight telling each other pure ideals, scrutinizing in duet the sacred arcana of life… And one says: “I’m going to take you home.” And when they arrive, the other says: “I’m not sleepy, I need to walk more: I’m going to take you to you.” And they arrive at the house of the one who accompanied him first, who also does not want to go to bed yet. And so they come and go, and they are surprised by the song of the lark, although there are no larks, but they are surprised by the dawn and the memory of Shakespeare’s lark and that of Romeo who watches, and who, Juliet absent, but his friend present, compares with him in a delirium that, if not comparable to that of love, has an austere , ineffable poetry… that you women do not fully understand, however exquisite your psychologies may be, and even if you have accompanied a decadent poet on a journey, a quasi-pilgrimage through the land of the mystics. Yes, Nila, I know everything: I know your story… as far as Fernando knows it. Why tell it to you? That would be impertinent. To speak to you about other things, about the portrait I took with me and the scapular you sent me for Petra, I need, if I am to be sincere, to know you better, to be sure not to profane, by speaking to you about them, things as serious and respectable as the portrait of Sister of Fernando and the scapular of your lady mother. Your affmo. friend, qbsp, The Philosopher. Chapter 28. Friend… philosopher (I repeat that I do not know your name; Fernando has deceived you): I observe with a certain vanity that you are much more diffuse and disorganized than I am when you write: you begin a subject… you lose yourself in details, and farewell thread of discourse! Besides, you are also less… delicate… How few gallantries you pay me!… To speak like that to a lady is to show your nails… before filing them. It doesn’t matter. I like philosophers like that. Lovers, not. Note that I hardly spoke directly at all about our impossible flirtation, and you… you hardly speak of anything else, even if it is to deny its possibility. But let’s get to another matter. To what matters to me today. I say today because another day, when I am more free, we will talk about something else. I’ll leave for later the matter of your love for me in German, the matter of naive women, your fondness for young girls (a sign of old age). (Now I’m the rude one, aren’t I?) Don’t pay any attention to me. I understand you… a little (as far as a non-remarkable woman can understand) because… auch ich war in Arcadien geboren: (I was also born in Arcadia) (Schiller), and I also know German and I knew how to love in German. I too was, if not a philosopher or a close friend, then a pure woman, an impossible virgin (and yet, there were those who could). But that’s what we were getting at, before the parenthesis. We were getting to my story. So you know it? Are you sure? You know the one Ferdinand told you; but is that my story? That’s the question. The first thing I demand is that you tell it to me… Because… it may very well be that I don’t know it. Or because Fernando hasn’t told you the same one I told him… or because I’ve forgotten the story I told Fernando. Let’s see. Come on, the one you know, and then I’ll spill the beans… if it suits me. Say what you know, child. Your friend and colleague in pedantry, Nila. There’s no postscript today: you don’t deserve it. NOTES: [1] I love him who desires the impossible.–(Editor’s note) MEDAL … OF A SMALL DOG Don’t you know the one from Casa-Pinar? Well, there’s nothing else to be seen around here! She’s the swallow that really makes summer. As soon as August appears, Agripina Pinillos, daughter of the widowed and papal marchioness of Casa-Pinar, appears . She’s a swallow that doesn’t come from Africa, unless Africa begins in Pajares. She comes from the Campos region or something like that: it’s high life… from the land, and, by all accounts, from Toro. Every summer she appears with a protest that never leaves her lips, namely: that by God’s miracle she’s not in San Sebastián or Ostende or Corls… that is, at Señora Cánovas’s. She still shakes hands the way they did back in the eighties, that is, like someone kicking with their front oars. If it weren’t for fashion, that idol the Greeks never knew, the woman from Casa Pinar would be a perfect beauty. She’s not Venus Urania, she’s Venus… snob. Yes; she represents snobbery… of coastal shipping. Because she doesn’t leave our shores. She wants to be more of a model than a statue. Between Phidias and the best couturier in Paris, she wouldn’t hesitate: she’d put herself in the couturier’s hands. When she sees herself naked, she despises herself. And she becomes the peacock again, satisfied with her feathers, when she dons the ridiculous bathing suit and puts on the hat that turns her into a full-fledged patache, or the ignominious cap that makes her look like a bottle of essences. Do you want the lady from Casa-Pinar to greet you, since you have the honor of knowing her and being indebted to her lady mother, for example? Well, you aspire in vain to such a privilege… if you wear a waistcoat to the spa. It is necessary, for Agrippina to honor you with more than an imperceptible nod, that you present yourselves in white cloth shoes with patent leather semicircles, a garish sash, and a Churrigueresque shirt ending in a white collar of the kind that gives club as she turns around. Agripina Pinillos comes to the beach to cure I know not what humors, which seem more like fumes; but the life she leads is not one that will make her grow old. As the other said: “my cure of the waters,” she might say… my cure of the winds. And it is not because of what the air gives her, but because she sacrifices everything to the hurricanes of vanity. She gets up at twelve because she stays up late, and goes all dressed up to Las Carolinas at the precise moment when one cannot take a step in the corridors. Some days, when there are many spectators without vests, she gives herself a bath of sand and malice. She uses a lifeguard, who, since he does not wear a vest, does not deserve his contempt. At dusk you will see her at Thermopylae on Corrida Street, giving “the elbows that Messalina gave” in the narrowness of the sidewalk, in front of Columbus. At night, as we know, in the Catacombs of Dindurra, that is, at the Teatro Comíque, he doesn’t resemble Lara’s because there isn’t even enough air there. In short, the woman from Pinillos doesn’t breathe all day. She lives off the air in her head. Does she love? Yes, she loves, according to her gender (cotton), a young man, also a wheat farmer, who has a suit for every hour of the day. What am I saying, every hour? The clothing of this seven-month-old could replace a sundial, because it changes as the sun rises and falls through space. Look closely and you’ll see that Juanito Pinabete y Conífera’s hat isn’t exactly the same at eleven as it is at a quarter past eleven. But alas! Pinabete is destined to disappear from Agrippina’s rag heart. Because a fully armed lieutenant has just arrived, who has as many suits as Juanito, plus the uniform he puts on at the last minute to dazzle Agripina with all its cords, embroidery, and crests… And Pinabete doesn’t have a uniform; which makes him sigh, exclaiming: “If only I were… even a fireman!” To finish: Said in honor, or in dishonor, depending on how you look at it, of Agripina of Casa-Pinar. Since there is nothing spiritually human in this woman, let us confess that there is something human, depending on the matter. Because Xuaco, the handsome young man who bathes her, is very attached to this parishioner, and he knows that the women of Casa-Pinar don’t give tips. Paca Blanco is also from Castile, from the same town as the one from Pinillos. She bathes there, towards the last huts of the Sultana. Upon reaching the water’s edge, she resembles a Dantesque figure, with her long, dark coat, of deep and beautiful folds. She is tall, slender, made of alabaster; she doesn’t bathe with a hat, a cap, or a cap; the sun burnishes her black person bun, like a doorknob, the radiant helmet of a village Minerva. Her eyes, like ripe blackberries, are visible from a distance; and up close, the few times they gaze slowly and with fear, they are a surfeit of delights, a Camacho wedding of sweets for the soul. Paca is the daughter of a wealthy farmer who lives, not poorly, but modestly. Paca is not a young lady, nor does she earn. Her sovereign beauty predates the division of classes. She bathes at sunrise. She doesn’t work as a lifeguard. She doesn’t go to the bathing resorts, she doesn’t go to the theater. Lots of beach, walks along Santa Catalina, and when there are big waves or large ships are leaving, a little time for contemplation, leaning against the high wall of the pier. Paca fills her eyes, serious and dreamy, with the poetry of the horizon, as if waiting for something from far away that will bring her good fortune. She almost never laughs; but if a wave leaps over the wall and refreshes her face with salty stings, like a caress, she wipes her pink cheeks, smiling a little. At night, with her father, to take in the fresh air, to listen to Begoña’s music, from afar, from the darkness. She doesn’t have a boyfriend; she has no love. But she has something better: she’s waiting for them. One would say she’s bored at the baths. And that’s not the case: when she’s there in her Castile, contemplating the plain of land, she remembers with sad love the plain of water; what she felt and dreamed on its shore. It’s true that now, on the shores of the ocean, she vaguely remembers longs for his beloved plains of Castile. EDIFYING DIALOGUE CHARACTERS: The Evangelical Chapel.–The Cathedral of Covadonga. Cathedral Choir. THE CHAPEL Closed. Why don’t they open me? Out of fanaticism. THE CATHEDRAL Some columns sticking out at ground level. Why don’t they take me from my foundations? Why don’t they build me once and for all? Why don’t they cover me, at least, to protect me from the elements? Out of greed, out of indifference. THE CHAPEL Like the pine of the North sighed for the palm tree of the South, we can love and understand each other, oh Catholic cathedral! You from your twists and turns in Covadonga, I from this desert of Madrid… THE CATHEDRAL I won’t say as much. No impossible coalitions. You complain on your own, and I’ll lament on mine. We are not sisters. Non possumus. We are a contrast. THE CHAPEL As you wish. But from our antithesis emerges an eloquent harmony. They won’t let me open up, and I’m already built. They’ll let you in without any problem, but they won’t build you. If it weren’t absurd, one could say that the one who loses is God, who has two fewer temples. THE CATHEDRAL In other centuries, truth be told, they wouldn’t let you open up either, and they would even dare to tear you down; but, on the other hand, they would build me in a short time, with enthusiasm, to the voice of living and ardent faith. THE CHAPEL Today there is enough fanaticism to render me useless and little faith to raise your walls, your towers. Of religion, they have been left with the worst, with intransigence. THE CATHEDRAL Yes; it cannot be denied that faith is lacking and there is fanaticism. But there are still fanatics worse than ours. The unbelieving fanatics. The fanatic with dogma has that excuse, dogma; but what is left for the impious who is not even tolerant? THE CHAPEL Are there any of those in your country? THE CATHEDRAL Many. They are heretical inquisitors, relatives of apostasy, or worse than all: intransigent sectarians of denial, zealots of superficial impiety, henchmen of atheism. There is a Spaniard, grandson of a hundred Christians, who has given up his religion for four clichés… with four hundred Gallicisms! THE CHAPEL Perhaps they constitute the majority among the two. The old-fashioned fanatics want no worship but their own; as if their god were the sun, not the Eternal Spirit, they tolerate other rites and other religious ceremonies in the shadows , but not in the light of day. They worship Phoebus and fear that his worship will be profaned! THE CATHEDRAL Modern fanatics cannot conceive of building a cathedral in Covadonga at the expense of the entire nation, as a patriotic work, as a grandiose monument commemorating the first feat of the reconquest, the first miracle of Spanish valor in its centuries-long struggle against the followers of Muhammad. “Why a cathedral?” they cry. “And freedom of worship? And rationalism? Why should we who never hear mass build a cathedral?” “Because history wants it! Why shouldn’t you build a mosque in Covadonga, nor a pagoda, nor a cold, anodyne, abstract monument like the Dos de Mayo, which would be equivalent to forgetting at least half of what Covadonga represents? Don’t you want to make Covadonga a Lourdes? Perfectly; But if you do not want others, even little by little, to do that, hurry up and do something else, a national work, a great historical memory; and since History is what it is and not at the whim of each individual, Covadonga, whether the negative rationalist likes it or not, has to represent two great things: a great patriotism, the Spanish patriotism, and a great faith, the Catholic faith of the Spanish, who fought at Covadonga for their faith and their country. A cathedral is the best monument on these cliffs, altars of the country. THE CHAPEL You speak like a book. And those new fanatics are as irrational as the old ones, who deny me the right to life because, calling me I, a Christian, and no one will deny me that name, display on my façade a cross and a sign that says: “Christ, Eternal Redeemer.” What ’s wrong with that? THE CATHEDRAL They’ll think you’re being cynical. THE CHAPEL The sign of the cross, isn’t it always holy? Or do those orthodox fanatics want to resemble the impious Strauss, who in his Confessions goes so far as to declare that the cross disgusts him? THE CATHEDRAL With the State Constitution in hand, they show you that you have no right to the cross on your façade… THE CHAPEL This is how the Sadducees argued when they wanted to prove to Rome that Jesus undermined the Jewish constitution… THE CATHEDRAL On the other hand, if the new fanatics triumph, they’ll draw up another Constitution to declare that in Spain, any zaquizami in which an extravagant dreamer fancies displaying a cult of his own invention… and perhaps of his own industry… represents as much as I do. Some constitutions deny history, others deny philosophy… But in the end, only your opponents harm you, those who see in you the symbol of abomination. But I am abandoned by all, those who should be my friends as patriots and those who should be my friends as patriots and believers in my Church. Many years ago, a holy bishop, an eloquent and virtuous man, full of humility and faith, came from the Levant, a country very different from these misty mountains of mine. He, son of the sun, of the clear and diaphanous Mediterranean atmosphere, fell in love with these damp and dark places because of the singular charm of these mountains, sacred to Christians and patriots. The holy bishop’s idea was to build a cathedral here on these Dantesque twists and turns, and he used his own assets to carry out the initial necessary work. The faith and patriotism of others should have helped him turn his noble idea into reality… But Spain didn’t understand the grandeur of the purpose. What should have been a national enterprise became a matter of purely provincial interest , because Covadonga is not only part of Asturias, it is part of Spain. THE CHAPEL And hasn’t this illustrious aristocracy, whose leading ladies have declared such harsh war on me, given their money, lent their influence to raise your walls and make your naves a sanctuary worthy of the great religious and Spanish idea you represent? THE CATHEDRAL Those illustrious ladies, whose combined titles seem like an index of the history of Spain, have not remembered me… nor the origin of their greatness. The more illustrious those great surnames and those great titles, the closer they draw to me. There is no Castilian nobility purer, greater than that which has its origin near these sources, these waters that cascade down that torrent below… THE CHAPEL So all those ladies who have gone to beg Sagasta not to open the door to me… THE CATHEDRAL They all ignore that a modest priest goes around Asturias from door to door begging for alms to build me little by little and with the least possible expense, without the architectural magnificence that I deserve… I should be the spontaneous, simultaneous and unanimous work of all the fortunes of Spain, and I am nothing more than humble proof of the charity and provincialism of a few Asturians… What more? The centenary of Christopher Columbus and his discovery has just been celebrated, and everyone has thought of Granada, no one remembered Covadonga. I do not dispute whether those illustrious ladies and those distinguished bishops who ask the State not to allow your opening are doing well or wrong. What I am saying is that much more urgent than preventing others from opening their temples is to build our own. CHOIR OF CATHEDRALS What does a Protestant chapel matter in this land where we are legion? We are a forest of Christian towers! But many of us are in danger of ruin! Let the Giralda be saved! Let the magic lantern of León shine, that sublime inspiration of stone! Build in Covadonga, not a poor, affected and rickety basilica for their misery, but a glorious reflection of our greatness! The faith of León, of Burgos, of Seville, of Granada, was saved in Covadonga! THE EVANGELICAL CHAPEL Oh, sublime choir! Oh, sublime religion of Jesus!… You alone could inspire these ideal hymns of stone!… Lowering their voices, because they are taking Segura prisoner. Christus redemptor æternus! A CANDIDATE He has the face of a beggar; he begs with his gaze. His hazelnut-colored eyes, restless, fearful, follow the movements of the one from whom they expect something, like the eyes of a wise monkey to whom sweets are thrown, and who, devouring some, waits and covets others. That face isn’t repugnant , though it reveals moral misery, scant refinement, no neatness, because it expresses all this, and more, in a classic way, with features and drawings of the purest artistic realism: it’s our Zalamero, for that’s his name, a poor man by Velázquez. He seems like a model made specifically by Nature to represent the professional beggar, tanned by the sun of idlers in church porches, on the edges of roads. His misery is peasant; it doesn’t speak of hunger or lack of light and air, but of poor food and severe exposure. He isn’t pale, but terrified; he doesn’t show the outlines of bones, but folds of soft, flabby flesh. Just as his eyes move, begging for alms and stalking prey, his mouth ruminates incessantly , with a movement of the lips that seems to conceal the absence of teeth. And yet, yes, he has teeth, black people, but strong ones. He hides them like someone hides his weapons. He is a shameful carnivore. When he is alone or among people from whom he can expect nothing, the impatience in his gestures transforms into an expression of humble melancholy without picaresque dignity, without ceasing to be sad. There is no honesty in that expression, but there is something that deserves forgiveness, not for its baseness and villainy, but for its sorrow. Anyone, when contemplating him at such moments, is reminded of Gil Blas, Don Pablos, Maese Pedro, Patricio Rigüelta; but like the latter, all these characters have a rustic tinge that makes this mixture something worthy of a picaresque eclogue, if such a genre existed. Zalamero has been a deputy in several legislatures; he knows Madrid like the back of his hand, inside and out; he participates in all kinds of circles, no matter how high-ranking; he has his clothes made by a renowned tailor, and yet, he walks the streets as if they were the alleys of his remote and poor village. Zalamero’s trousers have knee pads the same afternoon he wears them for the first time. Out of an instinct of taste, of which he is unaware, he always wears brown, and in winter the cloth of his suits is always furry. The pockets of his jacket, into which he often thrusts his big hands, look like saddlebags. No one knows why, Zalamero always brings crumbs in those deep, dirty pockets, and the worst thing is that, distracted, he picks them up between his tobacco-stained fingers and puts them to his mouth. With such manners and demeanor, he rubs shoulders with the most ostentatious figures, and everyone pays close attention to him. “He’s a clever bird,” they all say. “Zalamero, a clever lad,” the more reputable ministers repeat. He fascinates with his solicitude. The least observant sees in him something symbolic; he is a personification of the genius of the race in what is most miserable about it: in servile, begging, and boorish laziness. “I’m a friar,” says Zalamero himself, “a modern friar. I’m from the order of parliamentary mendicants.” Always with his sack on his shoulder, he goes from ministry to ministry begging for pieces of bread to exchange in his village for influence, for votes. He has handed out more jobs, worth twelve thousand reales or less, than an entire family whose father is the leader of a party or a faction. For him, there’s no such thing as hard bread; he’s open to anything; in any combination, he’ll settle for the worst; the worst, but with a salary. His employees go to the Canary Islands, to the Philippines; they’re almost always screwed; but they come back, and they usually come back with their kidneys covered and grateful. “What career have you followed, Mr. Zalamero?” the ladies ask him. And he answers, smiling: “Madam, I’ve always been a simple public figure. ” “Ah! Were you born a deputy? ” “A deputy, no, madam; but a candidate, I believe. ” “And have you given many speeches in Congress? ” “No, madam, because I don’t like to talk about politics.” Indeed, Zalamero, who follows any conversation with pleasure and interest, yawns as soon as politics is discussed, grows sad, with his characteristic face of melancholic misery, and falls silent while suspiciously looking at the previous speaker. He doesn’t believe that any man of talent has what are called political ideas, and to speak to Zalamero about monarchy or republic, democracy, individual rights, etc., etc., is to show him that he is either stupid or that he is treating him with little confidence. Political ideas, creeds, as he says, have been invented for imbeciles and so that newspapers and representatives have something to say. It’s not that he flaunts political skepticism. No; that wouldn’t count for him. He belongs to a party like everyone else; but it’s one thing to humor the sovereign people, to play a role in the comedy in which everyone accepts theirs, so as not to be out of tune, and quite another thing for distinguished people in good society to talk about ideas that no one believes in. Zalamero, in the midst of confidence, declares that he has become a public figure… out of laziness, out of pure inertia. “By letting go, by letting go,” he says, “I found myself becoming a deputy. I never liked to work; I always had to seek the company of idlers, of those who hang out in the public square, in the café, thronging the streets at hours when busy people are nowhere to be seen. What was I to do? I became fond of public affairs: I found myself involved in the affairs of the idle, the unemployed, in elections. I was an elector and a vote-chaser, like a gambler. When I knew enough, I voted for myself. The progress of my science consisted in seeking influence ever higher up. I have arrived at this synthesis: everything is done with money, but at the top. The higher up and the more money, the better. He who is not rich does not cease to handle money; for this there is the third party of the great shameful contracts. The money of others, in the comings and goings that I devised, has served me as if it were my own.” While many figures are working hard to secure a district, and today they come out here, tomorrow they go to the hills of Úbeda, Zalamero has his election secured forever in the quiet electoral garden he cultivates by fertilizing his land with all the manure he finds along the roads, in the garbage dumps, wherever there is fertilizer of any kind. Although he acquaints himself with duchesses, great men, illustrious nobles, distinguished millionaires, courtiers and diplomats, deep down Zalamero despises them all, and is only happy and only speaks sincerely when he goes out to tour the district, and in a tavern, or under the trees of an orchard, before the landscape that his eyes have seen since childhood, he drains the jug of cider or the glass of wine, yawns without dissimulation, stretches his arms, and in the moonlight, with the poetic suggestion of the silver rays that incite confidences, exclaims in the tender and husky voice of a classic beggar, addressing one of his intimate villagers, agents, electors, his children: –…And then, God willing, like others who have arrived, I can become a minister… and since I am not ambitious, I swear to God that I will be content with the thirty thousand reales of my severance pay; Yes, the thirty thousand… here, in this land of my parents, in the village, under these trees, with you… And Zalamero is truly moved and sighs because he has spoken from the heart. Deep down he is like the water carrier who collects pennies and dreams of the little land. Zalamero, the courtier of the parliamentary system, the poor man of the Court of Miracles… of the conference hall: the representative mendicant, does not dream of grandeur, does not want to plunge the country into a fist, impose a creed. What creeds! To be a minister for eight days, keep thirty thousand… and go back to the village. He is as Cincinnatus as a Flatterer can be. He does not want to be a burden to his country. “If they had given me a career, I would be something today. But what can a man like me aspire to but to be a minister out of retirement when old age no longer allows him to work… the district?” THE TRAGICOMEDY CONTRIBUTION IN FOUR SCENES SCENE ONE Pinares Station. At dawn. The countryside covered in frost. Very cold. The train stopped in front of the platform. Some third-class passengers run to the cafeteria, where bad but hot coffee is being served. Many blow on their hands, others stamp their feet, others pace around while their coffee is being prepared. The few and poorly dressed station employees are extraordinarily active. It’s that in a luxury car, in a break, are traveling high officials of the Company and a minister, the one from the Treasury. A 3RD CLASS PASSENGER Sick, olive-colored, very weak, dressed in a very light suit; he approaches, walking and talking with difficulty, the station master, who is passing by in a great hurry. Would you do me a favor? THE BOSS What’s up? 3RD CLASS PASSENGER How many minutes will we be here? THE BOSS Didn’t you hear? Five. 3RD CLASS PASSENGER But as they were saying… that today… some gentlemen had gotten off who have something to do outside… and they would wait for them… I was thinking… THE BOSS That’s none of your business or mine. The boss disappears without hearing the excuses of the 3rd CLASS PASSENGER, who fears having offended that character. 3RD CLASS PASSENGER To another station employee. May I know how long we’ll be stopping here? THE CLERK Phew! At least a quarter of an hour. Didn’t you see that those gentlemen got off to see the bridge works? At least a quarter of an hour. THIRD-CLASS PASSENGER With a happy and grateful expression. Thank you very much, thank you very much… But are you sure it’s at least a quarter of an hour? THE CLERK
With the boss’s humor: Man, do you want a mortgage? He leaves. THIRD-CLASS PASSENGER No, sir, thank you… Excuse me… Just the word… Fifteen minutes! Oh, yes, I’ve made up my mind! My God, give me strength! With great difficulty, breathing heavily, he heads towards… what cannot be said. He reads: Ladies… Not here! He takes a few more steps with great difficulty. He reads: Gentlemen. He hesitates; shows great discouragement. There’s nothing more… Yes, this must be it. He disappears. Three minutes pass. A bell rings. A VOICE Gentlemen, passengers, get on the train! The break passengers have already taken their car. Apparently, they’re in a hurry. One of them addresses the stationmaster, who stands to attention. THE CHARACTER: Yes, yes; right now. Give your whistle. The minister is feeling ill, and we must get to the city as soon as possible… The employee in question speaks in a low voice to the manager and points to the place where the third-class passenger has disappeared. The manager makes a gesture of annoyance and shrugs. The character withdraws from the window. The manager waits a few seconds. The employee and some passengers, who were running toward the train, signal, as if urging someone to hurry, in the direction where the third-class passenger has disappeared. THE CLERK: Come on, man, hurry!… You’ll be left on the ground… A TRAVELER : The train’s leaving! The whistle blows. It ‘s leaving!… That poor man!… He can’t make it!… He’ll fall!… It’s up to you. He runs into his car. THE EMPLOYEE But what’s wrong with him? The train starts to move. A 3RD CLASS TRAVELER appears, almost crawling, with one hand on the ground and the other holding his clothes. Livid, terrified, he speaks in a voice very weak; he wants to get to the moving train. Help! Please!… Help me, help me! I can’t, I can’t!… He touches the step with one hand; a station attendant and the previous employee rush toward him to hold him back. THE EMPLOYEE : Reckless!… Wretch!… The train is dragging him down, it’s breaking him up!… 3RD CLASS PASSENGER : For God’s sake!… Up!… I want to die there… in Cardaña… next to my father… There’s so little left!… Help, up!… MANY VOICES : Impossible!… Those inside and outside want to help him. A small door opens, several hands are extended. It’s all useless. The train continues, the 3rd class passenger falls senseless into the arms of the station attendant. All the windows, including those in the break, are full of heads. Useless curiosity. The train disappears. VOICES ON THE TRAIN Who is it? Who could it be? OTHER VOICES They say it’s a soldier from Cuba who’s come sick… SCENE TWO Cardaña. The station. Very cold. Very few people on the platform. An old man in his eighties, leaning on crutches, exhausted, leans against an iron column and looks anxiously toward the Pinares side, where the train is going to arrive. The train arrives. No one gets off. “One minute stop!” a voice shouts. Immediately a bell rings, then a whistle, and the train starts moving. THE OLD MAN My God! What’s this? No one, nothing… Has he fallen asleep? No, impossible. He’s not coming. Where has he stayed? He was supposed to arrive now, without fail… Sick, sick on the way!… My Nicolás, Nicolás!… Nothing; It’s not coming… and the train is already moving away… It’s not coming… it’s not coming!… My God!… THE STATION MASTER What’s that, Mr. Paco? What’s the matter with you? Have those bossy gentlemen already thrown you out of your house? THE OLD MAN No… it’s not that now… It’s not the house… It’s my son… Nicolás, who ‘s coming back from Cuba, very ill, falling apart… and he was supposed to arrive on this train… and nothing! THE CHIEF Calm down, man; he’ll come tomorrow. THE OLD MAN No, no; my heart is in turmoil!… Today, today, was today!… Something happened to him on the way. THE CHIEF Go on, you’re the rigor of misfortunes. But what about that? Is it true that they sold you the orchard and the shack for being a bad payer, for rebelling against the commissioner?… Ha, ha! You, Mr. Paco, always so… factious. But don’t you know that whoever doesn’t pay the tax… pays it anyway ?
THE OLD MAN I couldn’t pay . I abandoned my poverty to them! But they haven’t kicked me out of my corner yet… Nor will they! I want my bed in my hut for my son, who’s coming sick from Cuba… THE CHIEF But they’ve sold him the hut, he has nothing of his own there but the bed!… You say so, you abandoned everything. THE OLD MAN Getting irritated. Yes; I abandoned it because I couldn’t pay quarter after quarter… They asked me for a fortune… An injustice… As long as I could work, I paid reluctantly, but I paid; now, alone, crippled, useless, without work… I barely eat… and I have to pay… With what? Damn! My house, the garden!… They took it, well; now it belongs to someone else… Damn! But if Nicolás comes sick, where will I put him? By God! In my hut, in his house! THE CHIEF Judgement, judgment, Mr. Paco. You don’t mess with bosses. Don’t do anything foolish. And get out, this place will be left alone, and I’ll go upstairs. THE OLD MAN Leaving the station for the village. My God! But where is my son? Sick!… Abandoned on the road!… Dead, maybe dead! SCENE THREE The afternoon of the same day. A deserted village street in front of Mr. Paco’s shack. The mayor and two ill-looking men, dressed in town clothes, but in shabby clothes, approach Mr. Paco, sitting at the door of his house. THE MAYOR Hey, Mr. Paco, this is over! Patience and everything, it’s over. MR. PACO What do you mean, Mr. Mayor? THE MAYOR That these gentlemen have come to take possession of what belongs to you. That this house no longer belongs to you. That you have allowed the Treasury to seize your property and, without interfering in anything, disregarding the law, as if it didn’t have to be complied with, you have watched without moving as, step by step, as justice demands, all the requirements were met to leave you on the street… And now that it belongs to someone else, to this gentleman who accompanies the commissioner, whom you know… MR. PACO Yes; too much. THE MAYOR Now that you don’t have more than a few pieces of furniture inside, and you don’t want to take them out, nor are you going somewhere else with the music… and that’s not in order. You should have paid on time. MR. PACO I didn’t have the means. THE MAYOR That’s not my responsibility. Nor this either… Let’s be clear: these gentlemen are appealing to me, because, hereby, and for lack of a better… bidder… that is, I am the public force, so to speak. You’re executed; the law has no more to do… unless you want to be literally kicked out… MR. PACO Dare you, Mr. Mayor!… THE MAYOR No, not me. You’re a poor old man. But the Civil Guard will come, since you’re so stubborn. This gentleman has already been here three times. You’re right to complain that you haven’t been let out of here in due time. Out of pity, everyone has turned a blind eye until the last moment… But this is the time to go. You have as much right to be in this house as in mine. For reasons of public order, let’s put it that way, I’ve come to give you a final warning . This gentleman is tired of putting up with you… So, either you leave the door free… or the guards will come and there will be violence! MR. PACO : Let an army come! Let them kill me… I’m not moving from here. I’m waiting for my son… for Nicolás… he’s very sick… My God! If he comes! Where shall I lay him? He’s coming from Cuba… falling apart… My bed is yours… there, in that corner where he was born… where we will both die embracing… in our house, where his mother died… in my hut… mine, despite all the contributions in the world. I don’t pay, because I can’t… but my house is mine! THE COMMISSIONER : Mr. Paco, this house belongs to this gentleman, who acquired it from the State in the manner stipulated by law and with all the relevant requirements; you’ve been here for a long time, and that’s more than enough. You ‘ve raised your arm. If you hadn’t been stubborn… if you had paid… MR. PACO Somber, as if deranged. This house is for my son… There, in that bed, we’ll both die… arm in arm… If he comes! If he hasn’t died on the way! THE NEW OWNER Nothing, nothing; I’m no good at seeing these things. Let the law be upheld in every way. I’m leaving and I’ll return when force has left my property free of encumbrances… With God, gentlemen. THE MAYOR Wait. Come on, Uncle Paco, the heat is getting to my nostrils. There are no civilians worth anything here anymore: I’m the mayor… and I’m more than enough… Make way… or I’ll take you to jail… MR. PACO Brandishing a crutch. I’ll die here beating up whoever comes near… If we both die… in there, in that bed, take it all. Take us for alms to the holy cemetery… and everything is yours. But my heart tells me, you wretches, that if I abandon the hut before he comes… he won’t come; he’ll have died on the road, on the boat, between the wheels of the train, what do I know! If his bed is waiting for him in his hut … in the corner where he was born… he’ll come, yes, he’ll come… I pray to God on my knees! He kneels, trembling, his hands on the ground. Solemn silence. Those savages remain silent in respect, relative to the misfortune and the old man’s prayer. SCENE FOURTH AND FINAL The strident noise of a country cart ‘s wheels is heard . An oxcart, driven by a villager and escorted by two civilians, appears along the alley that leads to the front of Mr. Paco’s hut. Inside the cart is a long bundle covered with a gray canvas. A CIVIL GUARD Here it is, gentlemen. Doesn’t Mr. Paco Muñiz de la Muñiza live here? THE MAYOR There he is… They’ll arrive in good time, guards… I am the mayor of the town, and this man… THE GUARD Wait a bit, Mr. Mayor. The fact is… MR. PACO As if illuminated by a revelation upon seeing the cart, he heads toward it, without leaning on his crutches, which he throws away; he lifts the gray canvas, discovers a corpse, and, amid screams, embraces the dead man. “Nicolás! My son!” My Colasin! THE VILLAGER To the mayor. He died on the road. He’s a soldier from Cuba who was coming because he was sick. He got off in Pinares… he couldn’t get on the train… and he was dying. He begged that out of charity he be brought to Cardaña… to die in his house, next to his father… MR. PACO Getting up angrily, like a madman. Wretches, leave me what’s mine! I’ll pay, I’ll pay! Aren’t you robbing me because I didn’t pay?… And that son? And that life? Mayor, there’s the contribution! Bury it for me! With clenched hands he points to the dead man. CURTAIN VERY SLOW THE FROG He was fifty years old but seemed seventy; a frock coat that didn’t look like one, the color of the public street, the gray that collects in the gutter like a patina; a sparse, flowing beard, the color of the frock coat; three or four teeth; a shirt, and deeply rooted political, sociological, and even philosophical and theological convictions. He had learned to read back in Cuba during the other war, as a volunteer in a provincial battalion; and now he read newspapers and more newspapers, leaning against the pillars in the porches of City Hall. He always read on loan, because he spent his little money on liquor and tobacco. He was a construction laborer, but he almost always resigned. He wasn’t happy with the way the world was going. When he was young, the blame for all the evils lay on the gold of reaction; now it seemed that the enemy was “the infamous bourgeois.” “So be it,” Frog had said to himself; and, as before the obscurantism and the budget-grubbing, now he cursed the bourgeois, the drone in a frock coat. And yet, out of an invincible fondness, he always wore a frock coat, admittedly due to the munificence of some hated bourgeois. He was the most popular drunk in his town, and all social classes found Rana amusing, seeing in him, perhaps, the last representative of a famous generation of popular losers, who were, in a way, the pride of the city for their wit, for the original and highly comical traits of their excited imaginations. Rana, despite his dissolving ideas, his anarchist bala rasa (pure alcohol), had no enemy, not even among the clergy, whom he despised with Olympian serenity. However, his theological lucubrations more than once made him fall asleep in caution, by form more than by substance. When the local press stressed the need to prosecute blasphemy, Rana was not spared the rigors of the white terror. But he emerged from prison without abdicating a single one of his principles; And that same night he returned, as drunk as the day before, and as entrenched in his impious denials and scandalous imprecations. A lover of keeping up with the times, he had renounced being a republican, since the young men on the corner of the Town Hall laughed at politics; and he was an anarchist, but a dissident, because those of this opinion had solemnly expelled him from their flock, under the frivolous pretext that he indulged in drunkenness and was the laughingstock of the bourgeoisie, accepting tips, clothes, and other humiliations from them. But the Frog, weaving his heels and looking up at the sky, with whom he spent the day conversing, for it was his custom to say everything to the clouds, to that God, disdaining to speak to miserable mortals, the Frog, I say, forgave his coreligionists because they didn’t know what they were doing, and gave them smiles of contempt exactly equal to those he deserved from the high and low clergy. Besides not being in agreement with the creed (so he said) of his party, regarding drinking, he also protested against displays of cosmopolitanism, because he was a patriot for life of Chilindraina! and had risked his life in a hundred battles for the… that thing about the homeland: in short, “Long live Spanish Cuba!” shouted the Frog, who on this subject brooked no jokes or novelty. Well, the republic was a… myth, that’s it, a myth…, but in that… of the homeland, they shouldn’t touch Carlos Más (Marx), nor Carlos Menos, nor Carlos Chapa…, because Rana, wherever he was seen … had been a volunteer for the heroic battalion of the Purísima (praise be to her), added Rana, who was only at odds with the male element of the Sacra Familia; and that was just lip service. “There were a thousand of us,” he preached enthusiastically in the middle of the square, “there were a thousand of us when we were going up the road to Castilla: one hundred and four of us returned from Cuba… The rest were all dead… some by one, some by another… all dead! Long live anarchy and debauchery! Fire and fire for the bourgeoisie… but whoever touches me in… well, in Spanish Cuba, let him get along with this priest, speaking badly, with Rana, distinguished veteran of the provincial battalion of the Purísima, praise be to her… I’m… getting married at such-and-such a police station.” And if a policeman passed by there, Rana would be arrested for blasphemy. One very cold December morning, Rana left the shack where he slept very early, and after the usual routine of wiping his eyes, he headed for the Northern Railway station , stepping on the hard frost, blowing on his fingers, and muttering to the rotten clouds. The lyrics of what he wanted to say weren’t very clear, but the tune was this: wailing against the cold, against hunger, against the infamous bourgeoisie, and against the lack of patriotism of the bishop, the mayor, the governor, and other obscurantists—I mean, bourgeois. Rana had read in a local newspaper the day before that that morning, fifteen volunteers would be leaving for Cuba on the first train on the Northern Railway in La Coruña. A week earlier, the city en masse had bid farewell to an entire infantry battalion that had left there for the war, amid shouts of patriotic enthusiasm . The soldiers had been treated to cigars, cold cuts, wine, a distribution of pesetas, and large doses of brotherly affection, inspired by love of country. It was all right. El Rana was the first to applaud this display. But now… “What I feared!” he exclaimed as he stepped onto the platform, where they let him in after the fourth or fifth blasphemy. “What I feared! Not a soul! Death to the bourgeoisie! Down with the existing system!… Not a soul!… Be Daoists for this!… Of course!… The poor fellows are volunteers; like me, like El Rana, back in my good days… They are Queso, Piniella, the Marquis, Viruela, Viruso, El Troncho… a mere few, the dregs, that’s it, the dregs of the sovereign people… A cleansing, eh? Say it, you infamous bourgeois !… A cleansing!… Say it clearly! And Frog, talking and walking, headed for the lonely bar, where he ordered a glass of brandy, at the same time placing a few small dogs on the counter, but without taking his hand off them. This gesture was a formula obliged by his scant credit. It meant that he had the means to pay; not that he would pay for sure. As the barmaid looked at him with a certain sneer and was in no hurry to serve him, Frog, with a frown worthy of the Eumenides, confronted the poor girl and overwhelmed her with a hundred blasphemies and imprecations. “What was being doubted there? His good faith as a payer or his love for the… that thing about his country?” “Did he or didn’t he have decorum? Did he or wasn’t he right? Neither the bishop, nor the mayor, nor a rat, had come to ‘see off the fifteen Daoists’ who were going to die for Spain, like the most corrupt general or cadet…” He drank two or three glasses; he left some coins on the counter, picked up others, and still talking to himself, he went over to the group of volunteers, who were also blowing on their hands, kicking their teeth and stamping their feet on the ground, forming a group near the train, now ready to leave. “Hey, Rana, we’re missing five cents!” the barmaid shouted, not too embarrassed . The Frog shrugged his shoulders and, with a generous gesture, exclaimed, “For you!” and joined the group of volunteers, where he was not unwelcome. Cheese shook his hand effusively and said, “Good for the Frog! Long live the patriots of the Immaculate Conception. ” Praise be to her. But the rotten bishop, why doesn’t he come today to give blessings? And the mayor, when will he leave the puros and the vivas?” “Because you are the dregs, Cheese! This is a cleansing… Hunger sweeps you away, it throws you to die, to the sewer, to the undergrowth, to need… And, of course… the young gentlemen, the bourgeois… don’t get out of bed when the City Hall sweepers sweep…” The truth was that there were no officials at the station, nor many curious onlookers or patriots. Almost none. There were, yes, ragged women , poor children who cried or laughed, the pieces of their hearts covered in rags, left behind in the town by those boys who went… they didn’t know why… to die probably… to suffer for the… that is, for the homeland. The Frog didn’t explain himself well–because blaspheming isn’t arguing;–but he saw things clearly: what was passing through the spirit… of wine of that distinguished drunk, translated from the alcoholic mists of his conscience into common language, was this: “A thousand are not worth more than fifteen.” Those lads weren’t to blame for being so few. It wasn’t worth saying that the people had only just become enthusiastic a few days before. In these cases, tiredness is of no use. That snub to the dregs of the population, who went of their own volition to die for Spain, was an ingratitude, a cruelty. The volunteer is no less than the soldier who serves the king because it’s his turn. There they are equals; but in the act of extracting the volunteer has more merit. And it was not worth thinking that Queso, the Marquis, Viruela, were thrown out by misery, for not fighting hunger, for giving bread to their mother, or their wife, or their children … “No; He had seen something… but without the other, without that… that thing about the homeland, they wouldn’t go. Why didn’t they go somewhere else, where there was money, but no danger, a bad life? Why didn’t anyone think of going to exchange the misery of their homeland for the secure bread of other distant adventures, by sea or by land? In short, deep down, Queso was going through the same thing that had happened to him, to Rana, in his time. What was Spain? What was the homeland? He didn’t know. Music… Riego’s anthem, the troops passing by, a speech that was only half understood, scraps of patriotic phrases in the newspapers… Pelayo… El Cid… The French coup… El Dos de Mayo… Rana, like other comrades, confused time; I didn’t know if what happened with Pelayo and Covadonga had happened shortly before what happened with Daoiz or at the same time … But, anyway, it was just… long live Spain! and what comes from within comes from within… and, anyway, in a fit of… I didn’t know what, but happy, very confident, he had enlisted… and there he had gone, mingling with many honorable people, being as much as they were, insofar as he was a volunteer; and he had fought well, and he had forgiven, back in the war, the Spaniards from here, the reactionaries (today bourgeois) who had gone to see off the Purísima battalion on the Castilla highway, and who were saying, while they accompanied the volunteers: “And besides, what a cleanup! The battalion is taking the Rana, it’s taking Grasshopper takes Tarucos… took him… Yes, he took them; there were hardly any more losers left in the town; and most of them had left and hadn’t returned… What a clean-up! Among many very sensible, blameless poor people, the city’s mischief, it was true; drunks, gamblers, blasphemers, the scandal in the small squares… But there they were all the same, all willing! And Frog and Tarucos weren’t just going for the ranch and whatever might jump out; no, sir… they were going for a hunch, for Riego’s hymn, for the Moors and the Mambises… and Pelayo and the French… and, in short… like the others… Lightning bolt for the bourgeois! What a clean-up, eh? Oh! “If only you could see the street sweepers dying in the bush!” The chief’s whistle sounded. Doors closed, there were hugs, kisses, tears, nervous laughter, and wild shouts. Suddenly, a sad silence fell. In that silence, the voice of the Frog suddenly sounded, haranguing, with no one paying attention to him anymore: “Let’s see, where are the people? Where are the bourgeois, where is the bishop? And those pesetas, gentlemen of the Provincial Council? And those cigars, Mr. Mayor?” And, excited by his own speech, the Frog, as the train started, had a generous inspiration. He took one of the cheapest packs, not yet half full, from the inside pocket of his road-colored coat , and with a gesture of sovereign arrogance, began to throw cigarettes at the windows of the cars that were already moving… “Here, Cheese; here, Smallpox… here.” you, Troncho… Long live Spanish Cuba! –Long live the Frog! shouted the volunteers who were already leaving… Long live the integrity of the homeland! –That’s it! That’s it!–shouted our man–long live the ingratitude of the homeland! I’m getting married at such-and-such… and he blasphemed horribly, until a guard put his hand on his shoulder, saying: –Shut up, Frog, if you don’t want to sleep on Tuesday where you sleep on Sunday… Frog stared at the guard with great contempt, and, without blaspheming, exclaimed: –Hey, you, tell the bishop… that he is a… defector… and that long live Spanish Cuba! VERSES OF A MADMAN My servant presented me with a card that said: TEOPOMPO FILOTEO DE BELEM and below, in smaller letters: ULTRATELLURIC ESOTERIC POET and below, in even smaller letters: Ecce-Homo, 13, attic. “Send him in, send him in,” I shouted, “that Ecce Homo of ultra-telluric Belem.” And a few minutes later, a man appeared who was perfectly suited to represent His Excellency’s most amusing president, Vital Aza. He had a family resemblance to all those wandering troubadours who wander around singing the Marseillaise and showing their elbows. He was the image of romanticism, as its enemy, classicism, would gladly dress him. He wore his long hair, his noble, irreplaceable long hair, with simple audacity. For a toga pretexta, he wore the well-known summer coat, long, gray, threadbare, as it should be. Out of charity and good taste, I didn’t want to look at his boots. I suppose he was wearing trousers, but I’m not aware of their color or cut. In any case, after just a few words, that pale man (of course ) had made me forget everything material, everything sensible. He had smiled, he had made Reverences, he had crossed himself twice quickly, had affectionately run his hand over the back of a porcelain cat that I keep next to my writing table and had spoken to me, without letting me interfere, of Buddha, of Lao-Tseu, of the Ethiopian that Renan describes to us, I believe in Saint Paul, and who is meditating on the Gospel in his own way; of Verlaine, of Caran d’Ache, of Saint Augustine, of Socrates’ rooster and of Saint Peter’s rooster… When I was about to tell him that I was feeling dizzy, the good man was no longer there ; but his spirit remained in the form of a green notebook, about a hundred leaves long, gilded at the edge. I opened it and read on the first page: Stamens and Pistils. The handwriting was clear, the t’s very large. I turned the page and read: DEDICATION Although you may not believe it, Your Honor, although I seem a heretic, Christ loves me. Another page, and I read: PISTILS I am the round amoeba, the feminine one, of faith and hope and jelly. In a note it says: I warn the reader, a person and uneducated person, that he should not laugh at what he does not understand. Another page: STAMENS Although I know that I am completely crazy, because I tell everything just as it was, even the doctor himself has cured me the times when I do not say what I feel. PISTILS When I have a hope in a dream, I thank God for it without a mortgage; for the poet is the mother hen who does not want to hatch Sancho Panza. Another page: STAMENS There is always an imposture in speaking clearly; one cannot be clear without lying… he sees obscure and something strange; he wanders, loves and raves… PISTILS Out of holy chastity, thought should not baptize its inventions: notions are bastard, after birth, bearing a surname. Another leaf: STAMENS It was in the dark: on my chest I felt a hand; in the sadness of my poor bed, the Sovereign God visited me. It was the hand of light; caress of the Infinite, silent reward, mystery–mother. I weep in spirit for the delight that the Father grants to the miserable, sweet Bohemian . And since then, always in the dark, I feel the hand on my chest; but its touch grows harder, a terrible weight sinks me into the bed. But the hand, which is now lead, amidst pain, without knowing how, always caresses. The strong passion that oppresses so much is always delight. Now around me the whispers of foolishness name death… while the winged hand of Justice tears me from my inert body! Another leaf: PISTILS I spend the whole night counting thousands of stars, and if the sky is cloudy, I begin to sing the count. This is what man does in life, if he loves God and hopes in God; enjoy the happiness that passes… and past… singing remembers it. STAMENS It must be a surprise in heaven for the endlessly innocent saints, to see one and another batch of atheists arrive in droves , unwittingly sanctimonious. PISTILS When in the depths of the cold abyss thought ceases to see God, as it goes to curse me for being impious, charity, in a shudder, with forgiveness, returns to me the feeling that an angel smiles at my side. CAMPOAMOR PISTILS She writes verses in the ashes; she draws from the dust, from the worms, and from the nothingness, which glides, wind without air, through vain forests of hollow stems, a vein of reed, she draws the idea of her songs; bitter marrow from sad bones; without hearts, sighs; kisses without lips; she draws the reeds from the skeleton; the appearance of nakedness of the grave; From the depths of noble rhyme he draws mystical sarcasms that cause revulsion… Perennial passion signs in the sand when the full sea reaches the dunes, and with the faint rays of the moon he signs the pacts of fortune; he sees the cobwebs of the brain and is moved by the shrews that he sees the logic of the Infinite in palimpsests of the unwritten… NÚÑEZ DE ARCE STAMENS As God brought the world from nothing, from there he also brings poetry… He writes with perfect symmetry; and thus, he has for a plectrum… the plumb line. He trusts everything to the law of gravity. Tired of reading nonsense, incoherences, perhaps congruent in the depths of a sick brain, I threw away the notebook with boredom… and I did not return to think about the mad poet… until he appeared to me in person the next day: “I’ve come to collect my Pistils…” he said, smiling with pity. “There they are; you see that I haven’t separated them from the stamens.” Don Teopompo picked up the notebook, kissed it, made the sign of the cross over it, and put it under his arm. And without further ado, without saying a word, without asking me anything, he bowed and turned away. I could not contain myself. The pride of that person revolted me; it irritated my self-esteem. “But man,” I exclaimed, “didn’t you come to know my opinion? For me to tell you? ” “Oh! Not at all. I show my verses to all the common men of letters who will receive me. It is an offer. I have imposed this penance on myself and I am fulfilling it throughout the world. Some mock me, others even insult me; Others, the most tolerant, remain silent… and I continue. We must kill the old man, the one of vanity, the one of success, the one of applause, the one who wants to be admired without being understood. –But even if it is not out of vanity, but out of love for your ideas, you will want to make propaganda, found a school… –Ah, sir! The school is founded. It is the school of flatulence. This poetry, with the cerebral weakness it reveals, is the child of hunger… –So you… for money… for a lot of money! Perhaps you would renounce the school, this poetry?… –Oh, it could be so much money! –What do you call a lot? –That depends on the historical moment. –At the present moment… –Enough money is five duros. The wound was slight; I freed art from a contagious school, and even today, because of my conscience as a critic, I proudly display the scar of the 25 pesetas. NEW CONTRACT FAUST (erwachend).–Bin ich dem abermals betrogen?… (GOETHE.– Faust.) FAUST Waking up. What is this? Deceived again? Was it all a dream? Have I not seen the devil? And all the rest… Good heavens, what things I have dreamed!… And Margaret, my Gretchen?… A dream too? Was what I dreamed true, because everything is over, and this alone is not over? Did I love? Do I love Gretchen? Oh… no!… I love love. I love the shadow of the night. All a dream… Therefore I have not sold my soul to the devil… Therefore I am free… Oh!… what… happiness? No! I am as I was. Why am I not glad? I am free. Yes; but for what? Back to the drawing board… Ah, Philosophy, Jurisprudence, and Medicine, and, unfortunately for me, Theology. I’ve gone into all of this in depth… etc., etc., etc. In short, what you know from Goethe, or at least from Gounod’s opera… We’re refreshed. Back in the world! And how the world is! So many new or renewed philosophies; that is to say, the clouds of yesteryear, returning with new electricity!… Oh, the anguish of thought!… Nausea of syllogism, introspection, neurasthenia!… Happy are the foolish pseudo-philosophers who assert that nothing can be known about the depths of things… and yet call themselves wise; they, at least, rest on their formulas and nomenclatures; on his hypotheses and relativisms as if on a pillow of Panurge’s sheep’s wool… You know what the devil knew, that Mephistopheles I dreamed of, who said… MEPHISTOPHELES Speaking from a phonograph on the table. I don’t possess omniscience, but I know many things. FAUST Sitting up in fright. Oh! What’s this? Again!… Hallucination… Repeated dream… Fixed idea… MEPHISTOPHELES At the phonograph. You don’t know if you’re dreaming or not; you can’t distinguish reality from dream… That’s what human science has come to, not knowing whether one is asleep or awake… Ha, ha, ha! FAUST That laugh… I’ve heard it before… Yes… Where?… MEPHISTOPHELES At the opera, at Mephistopheles’ serenade… Let’s see, finish. Is it true that I’m here, or not? FAUST I don’t know… I don’t know… MEPHISTOPHELES Ask Kant… FAUST He doesn’t know… MEPHISTOPHELES Ask Spencer… FAUST Che!… He knows too much. He says he’s sure that a reality is before him… MEPHISTOPHELES And isn’t that the latest fashion? FAUST Look, these brand-new metaphysicians Pointing to a magazine, prove to Spencer that what he’s sure of is that he sees reality as a certain thing… but that it is not so, he’s not. MEPHISTOPHELES So we can’t understand each other; can’t you answer what I’m actually talking about? FAUST I don’t know whether I can or cannot answer. MEPHISTOPHELES Not even that. Oh, human science! FAUST There is no other, and at least it’s loyal. MEPHISTOPHELES Listen, leave the metaphysicians; take that other magazine, read that scientific article, not a philosophical one; its author knows things like the devil, relatively speaking. Look what it says: that “waking is distinguished from sleep in that during sleep we are unaware, being shut off from the rest of the universe, and in waking, the consciousness of the particular object of attention is accompanied by that of its relations with others”… Reflect… What do you see? FAUST Oh, yes! The consciousness of others accompanies me in a discrete, not continuous, relationship; I see concomitant phenomena of consciousness within myself… But the proof doesn’t seem certain to me. MEPHISTOPHELES Something else. Who am I? FAUST The devil. MEPHISTOPHELES Do you believe in the devil? FAUST No. MEPHISTOPHELES Well, he believes… quia absurdum. FAUST Let’s suppose he’s there… MEPHISTOPHELES That’s the sure thing. It all ends there. To will is to recognize; our philosophers of today already say so … FAUST But how can they be wrong… MEPHISTOPHELES To begin again? Don’t beat around the bush; believe, while we understand each other. First comes living, then philosophizing. I have come to a matter of law; a contract; and these serious matters require a positive metaphysics; without fas there is no jus. Though it be wrong for me to say it, without God there is no justice. Have faith until you sign. FAUST What is it, selling your soul? But then this is a fixed idea! I am delirious… MEPHISTOPHELES No, do not be afraid. It is not that now. Unhappy man, what would you rather be able to sell your soul! A sign that you believed in it. But since you are honest… by inheritance, by evolution, why don’t you dare sell what you do not know whether you have or have not? FAUST What do you want then? MEPHISTOPHELES Another thing, Faustus, which would you prefer, to know or to enjoy? FAUST To know. Now to know. Truth or dream, what happened to us the other time has given me a warning. I am convinced of it; At the bottom of what I am, which I don’t know what it is, I know there is pride. My pride rejects empirical enjoyment, the life of phenomenon after phenomenon, an eternal race; endless sensation, through the inexhaustible… Hell of tiredness and boredom and humiliation! Infinite step by step! Oh, no; much is as valuable as little: only the whole is valuable. I want the absolute. The absolute or nothing. I don’t want to feel, without knowing why, or for what purpose. I want to see if enjoyment is a childishness unworthy of me. The truth will tell me what is best for me. Before having the absolute truth, I cannot rationally know what is preferable. Therefore, it is preferable, in order to choose the truth. Why are you laughing, Mephistopheles? MEPHISTOPHELES You will know when you know the absolute truth. Here is the contract: although modern psychology does not admit those classical and innocent symbols that place feeling in the heart and intelligence in the brain, you and I, like the jurists, will use a metaphorical and backward language. FAUST Explain yourself. MEPHISTOPHELES By the devil’s art, my dear, you will have science in your head and intelligence in the heart, feeling, if you prefer to enjoy, to love, your brain will gradually lose vigor, and your whole life will pass into the heart… If you prefer, as you say, above all, to know the truth, the absolute truth, clairvoyance will gradually enter your brain, conscience will tell you the last intimate secret of reality…, but the heart, which will gradually provide juice to the brain so that it can see clearly, will gradually dry up; it will become like a stone. In the end, you will not feel, you will not love. Choose. FAUST I have already said it. MEPHISTOPHELES Well said… and done. The enchantment begins. Forgive me if the apparatus of witchcraft is the same as always: worn-out decorations from an oft-repeated comedy of magic. Hell is old, ancien régime; we continue to use boiling oil, toads and snakes, bats, rats, monstrosities… That is why nightmares remain as they were in the Middle Ages. He no longer hears me… he meditates… he dreams… Oh, devil, what forgetfulness! I didn’t force him to sign before… Will he sign after? Ha, ha, ha! What a mistake! Didn’t I believe I was the Mephistopheles of the Opera? Sign for what purpose? The contract will be perfected by the force of events… By doing what he wanted, he has already done what he will later in vain want to undo… FAUST Coming to himself. Oh light! Oh light! All clear… All evident… How many worlds the idea gives! What a procession, what a sacred theory of systems… the philosophical systems of billions of solar systems… And all without fatigue, without boredom; all prepared by all… not one useless thought . Holy Harmony! And at last… the truth, the principle, the absolute rule… I already know everything! And in everything, what simplicity! Sacrosanct, simple, humble simplicity! What can be the secret of the universe? A novelty? No! Even the sentimentalists had said so. Mephistopheles, don’t you know? No; you, being convoluted, twisted, and relativistic, won’t know. The secret of reality, the core of being, the first motive is love. To love, to feel, that’s all. Absolute science tells us nothing more: feel, love… Let’s see, the heart, Mephistopheles, come on, the heart! You’ve stolen it from me, come on; there was no pact; I didn’t sign anything! My heart!… MEPHISTOPHELES There it is, between your chest and your back. FAUST Ah, yes, here it is! A stone! MEPHISTOPHELES What does it matter? You already know everything; you even know why I used to laugh. FEMINISM Jesús Murias de Paredes was a native of the town of his surname; but that horizon was narrow for him, as he said in an elegy, without taking into account that Murias’s horizon, despite Paredes’s, is quite wide. He meant that in Murias, one couldn’t be a poet without making oneself ridiculous and arousing the suspicions of the civil, ecclesiastical, and military authorities. The priest considered him a heretic, the mayor a vagrant, and the corporal of the Civil Guard an advance guard. They didn’t like him. Furthermore, in his hometown, he was starving. He had no job or subsidy; he had nothing but a lyre, and that person; at least, that’s what thousands and thousands of passages from Murias’s unpublished poems said. A twist of fate, which it’s not worth recalling, led him to Valladolid. There, the horizon was broader, but the hunger was the same. In a newspaper whose main mission was to keep track of the grain market, they accepted his verses, which were published between barley and rye, so to speak. In other words, the section that was supposed to remain fallow, because the newspaper was written in three sheets, was left to him. What they didn’t do was pay him. That was all there was to it. What he did manage to do was get a printer on Cantarranas Street (it seemed like an allusion) to publish some of those poems in a collection that looked like Fleury on the outside. Poor paper, and a rough, yellow cardboard cover, like that of Astete. The book was called Ecos del Pisuerga (Echoes of the Pisuerga). Well, it was as if he had thrown the echoes into the Pisuerga. Nobody noticed. He didn’t give up, and he collected another portion of inspirations and printed them in another book of doctrine with this one. Title: Echoes of the Esgueva. You might say: that’s implausible! If he didn’t pay for the printing because he didn’t have the money, how could he find a printer who would pay for the second printing? There are people like that in Valladolid. Since Zorrilla was from the province, as soon as they see a poet there, whether local or not, some say: “I’ll hit you again! Another Don José!” And they protect him. The man from Cantarranas saw in the figure of Murias and even in his sweet name—the sweet name of Jesús—a guarantee of success, according to the printer’s favorite phrase. Jesús looked like a consumptive, the value of his hair, unkempt and dirty brown ( all the colors of his body and clothes were dirty); he wore a thick beard… from the shame of his few hairs; few and ill-matched. In short, that ‘s what poets were like, or shouldn’t be, according to the bookseller and printer, and he was sure the boy would make him money, as soon as some critic from Madrid took his hand, one of those priests whom Don Nicomedes Niceno—the printer and publisher—considered more like Merlins the more they were beaten. To tell Niceno that such a critic “wouldn’t marry anyone” was to name him a fetish he would henceforth adore. He decided to send his protégé to Madrid—which has the exclusive right to priest-critics— not so that critics would marry him, but so that they wouldn’t reject him before meeting him. Then, a small, bilious, short-sighted, uncontested lawyer who wrote about criticism and everything God created in prose and verse, in a satirical role, was beginning to attract some attention. Satire! Satire attracted him like the abyss to the printer of Cantarranas; he, an optimistic man, didn’t feel capable of having satirical hearts in his life; but, even with a certain native horror of the genre, he felt seduced, as if by a vertigo of humor, by writers who employed irony, even of the least degree; and if they reached sarcasm, like Achilles before the corpse of Hector, Don Nicomedes enjoyed a voluptuousness that he confessed to be diabolical. Although he was incapable of harming anyone, and although all verses and prose with academic spelling seemed fine to him, as soon as he saw a writer mistreated by a satirical critic, he would outlaw the intruder and, without any compassion, see him in the clutches of the sardonic, sarcastic, and caustic ogre, or tobacconist, as Blasco’s The Neighbor Across the Street would say. Don Nicomedes did not hesitate. He paid for the trip to Jesús Murias, who had a chronic cold that prevented him from breathing, let alone inspiration; he gave him a few rooms for the inn; he loaded his saddlebags with copies of Echoes of Both Rivers , and gave him a letter of recommendation for Mr. Simple, as the corrosive critic was called. Whose letter was it from? From Niceno himself. It read: Illustrious Aristarchus: I don’t know you. I have no need of you. I’m not asking for favors. I’m asking for justice… And so on, all in a curt style, a mania Niceno had acquired, like a plague, while correcting proofs of a work by Henao and Muñoz. Jesus presented himself to Herod; that is, Murias presented himself to Sencillo at the editorial office of El Erizo. He greeted the Minos before him with one of those greetings that Figaro called, in such cases, deaf; and he greeted precisely thinking of Figaro and that adjective, and trying to avoid all gauchería (as he told himself, because he used voluntary Gallicisms even in his dreams). We will see later that Murias’s specialty was French… and its consequences. Sencillo replied to Murias’s greeting without looking at him, and continued writing at the table he had all to himself. For now, he didn’t open the letter. Murias wasn’t offended. He thought he would do the same when he became famous: he thought he would show off by not even noticing the beginners who stood before him. Five minutes passed and Murias coughed, without meaning to. Sencillo raised his eyes and said: “I’m with you. I can’t interrupt this now…” Come on, thought Jesús, he’s got some poet on the grill and he’ll be afraid that someone will get him. burn. The newspaper editor, who was watching the scene from his office, since the door was open, stood up, not without conquering his prose, and approached Sencillo’s desk. He knew the critic, knew how he played things, and removed all the thorns he could. There, El Erizo was Sencillo; the editor, Mr. Eufemio de Pérezbueno, was the least harsh possible. He was a big-bodied Soria native and very well-educated. He wore a dressing gown and slippers from Tangier. Phlegmatic, a man of the world… well-educated, he didn’t believe in bad writers, because he believed them to be harmless… I’m not saying there aren’t any, he said, but it’s the same as if there weren’t. To cut a long story short: Murias left there with many hopes, thanks to Pérezbueno’s kind words. Sencillo barely heard the metallic sound of his voice, but Don Autónomo had given him his word that Sencillo—Scalpel in the cloister… critic—would talk about the Echoes of all the rivers and canals of Castile and Aragon that came his way. Years passed; at least that’s how they seemed to Murias, although they were only days, and Sencillo said nothing about Echoes or resonances. Murias dared to stand in front of him again at the table. The director wasn’t there. Jesús coughed, involuntarily, from pure consumption; Scalpel looked at him, fixed him up, and ordered him to sit down. The poet of the day roasted, Scalpel turned to Jesús and asked him, without spitting venom, what he could offer him… Murias, stammering, alluded to the Echoes that were in the drawer on the right… if he remembered correctly. Scalpel looked for Scalpel and missed… a case of sweets he had put there. A row between the critics and the doorman. The doorman blamed an editor. Quel giorno più non… There was no more talk of Ecos that day. The next day, there was. The editor was there. The book appeared… under a leg of the table. It was acting as a cover. Bisturí hadn’t even looked at it through the cover. Murias began to observe the critic more silently. But increasingly humbly. Bisturí finally noticed that guy who came for weeks and weeks to demand that he be grilled if he deserved it, but that people should talk about him, and who demanded it by putting his face to all the slights. Jesús Murias hadn’t yet said anything about the book Sencillo when, by dint of his acquaintance and familiarity, he was almost like one of the family. Almost convinced that Ecos wouldn’t have an echo, he began to entertain another hope… thinking that he needed to feed himself. Niceno’s money was gone. Jesús aspired to be a meritorious guest in El Erizo. Pérezbueno didn’t look kindly on the favored collaborators. But there was no place. There was nowhere to put a pin or a Gallicism in the newspaper. A certain crooked editor—who was the one who ate the priest’s candy with spikes—seriously proposed that Murias join El Erizo’s staff in the … strips section. “I could write them; not paste them, of course.” Murias didn’t throw an inkwell or anything at the crooked editor. He didn’t accept the job. But he did accept another one offered to him by the editor. He went as a columnist to the Senate tribune. “Do you want me to be caustic?” “Be the pepper of the Zaragoza rabble…” The next day, that poet called the respectable speaker of the Upper House an animal; he ironically doubted the honesty of three victorious generals and made pornographic allusions to the most august of things. Sure imprisonment for the entire editorial staff if that was published. The Hedgehog continued without scrutinizing the printing law as he had until then. And the Senate chronicles signed by Archilochus came out every day. “My prose iambs,” he called the chronicles, talking to his friends in Fornos. “But, man,” someone asked Pérezbueno, “how does poor Jesús get away with it, Archilochus, if his Senate chronicles are anodyne, innocent?” “Oh!” exclaimed Don Autónomo. “What anonymous names can they be! If you could see them! Cantharides, insults, slander, iambs in a row…” The thing is that when I correct his proofs I take out his ideas (Historical). Nothing remains but what he copies from an extract from an agency. But he is a sucker. And poor Murias endured this and endured hunger, because God gave him a salary! When Jesús was already what is called the editor of El Erizo , although on trial… of proofs, and without eating a bite, Bisturí finally deigned to speak of the Ecos de Entrambasaguas . And Bisturí said in El Erizo : “Now we will see whether or not I am truly impartial. The author is a friend, a companion… well, for that very reason he is owed the whole truth…” And the truth was worthy of the Yangüeses who beat Don Quixote. Murias stayed in bed for a few days, because he felt physically battered. Not a bone could be recognized healthy. He didn’t go back for El Erizo, and, in bed, he received a letter from the Patron of Cantarranas, Don Nicomedes, which said, among other things: “We were mistaken. You’re not lyrical. Scalpel has put the edge on the wound. Perhaps you are epic. But just in case, let’s try something else. Count me in. Do you want to translate a twenty-five-volume dictionary of theology? It’s the language of Fenelon. Five duros per volume.” “Fine, I’ll be epic,” Jesús said to himself, resigned. “I’ll translate the twenty-five volumes. And this is the first stop. The remaining ones will be covered in the second and final chapter of this story, torn from reality. ” MANÍN DE PEPA JOSÉ Manín de Pepa José, if he had been born a gentleman and had studied and written for the newspapers, would have been an aesthete. But in Llantones, a rural parish near Gijón, Manín was nothing more than a slacker, not worth the crumb he ate… when he ate it. His mother, Pepa José, that is, a Josefa, wife of a José, was widowed in her middle age, and although the farm she rented appeared in the deed to be owned by Manín, José’s heir, the one who ruled the roost was the mother; only she was counted on. Lean, tall, with a fierce gaze, feverish activity, and manly gestures, she was an eagle at work, at taking care of the estate, and her servants and laborers walked on one foot. Only Manín, the only son, enjoyed the privilege of the benevolence of that woman who didn’t give a morsel of bread without some service being paid for it. But Manín was something else; she worked so hard for him and for him. He was n’t strong, he showed no aptitude for farm work, and his mother had dreamed of making him a priest. But he, quite content with working little and whenever he wanted, didn’t go in for the singing of Mass. He loathed work… but so did asceticism. He liked the joy, the noise, the dancing. He was a piper by hobby, and of notable skill. With the bagpipes, he softened his mother’s temperament, that fierce one; he enchanted her with those shrill warbles of the chanter and the asthmatic notes that issued from the deep depths of the bellows. When Pepa was deafening the neighbors for half a league around with shouts, scolding a servant or pestering a debtor, and the imprecations of that bread-carrying Eumenide echoed in the chestnut grove surrounding the farmhouse, Manín, playing the Altísimo Señor or the Praviana on the out-of-tune, melancholy bagpipe, would gradually calm the fury, attract it, and finally soften it. Manín was a dreamer by trade, a true dreamer. A joyful dreamer, who sought solitude to savor the memories of festivals, of pilgrimages, of joyful dances, full of stormy, horrifying yells, the expression of centaur hysteria. Manín didn’t know that yelling yells was Celtic; he considered it to be a way of neighing of the village youths. And he neighed too, mostly to himself. If the world were always about courting, dancing the prima dance, shooting the cachorillo to solemnize the procession, playing the bagpipes at the sung mass on the day of the feast! And then, by the moonlight, by the clattering above, accompanying a young girl, and throwing the presona at the door of his house until near dawn! And then, alone, on the border, or at siesta time, feeling the breeze filled with beloved, familiar scents, reclining his body on the shaved grass, and daydreaming, chewing sweet memories; like the cows, sitting in the shade, chewing their food! But life wasn’t like that. With his mother gone , what would become of Manín? And Pepa was growing old and suffering from ailments brought on by the excessive work. She felt mortally wounded and trembled for the future of that son, incapable of managing the estate. It had already been whispered around the village that the master, if Pepa died and Manín was left alone, would not let him continue with the lease, because in the hands of such a landlord the property would lose much. Pepa saw her son’s only salvation in marrying him off to a woman like her, who would wear trousers, work, and manage the farm. Rosa Francisca de Xunco was the girl she desired. She was like her, an ant with wings for greed. She was the daughter of a neighbor who had always envied Pepa José’s farm. Rosa married Manín without even looking at him, thinking only of being in charge there, where Pepa had so much power. They were both equals; but for that very reason, they were incompatible. They were two queen bees; one had to succumb. Like a kind of tacit pact, a condition of the marriage was that Rosa wouldn’t have to obey anyone for long; Pepa was unnecessary, if the agreement was a treaty. Pepa knew this well. She admired Rosa, saw in her the future protector, and also tyrant, of her Manín; and she hated Rosa for needing her, and she envied her the succession she had to leave him. But Pepa died soon after. Rosa Francisca took her place, and everything continued as before: the servants walked, the farm prospered, and Manín played the bagpipes, daydreamed on the sidewalk, and missed, a little, his mother’s harsh but true affection. Rosa certainly didn’t spoil him; she despised him; she constantly forgot him; but she let him eat without hardly doing any work. Manín also felt, in addition to his mother’s absence, the absence of amorous adventures: the days of snoozing, the courting on Saturday nights, until Sunday dawn, were over. What could replace that sweetness? A game of skittles? He tried… but it didn’t please him. Montaigne found neither in gluttony nor in any pleasure a worthy substitute for love: he understood the old people who consoled themselves with good drinks, but he couldn’t replace love with drunkenness. Manín, if not for something as delicate as frolicking and effusive with a beautiful girl, eventually found a certain charm in glasses of frosted anise, malvasia, and rose. Sweet liqueurs were the substitute for flirting for that hard-bitten epicure. He went to the markets of Gijón and there he indulged himself, drinking to his heart’s content in a café, among the nobility, aniseed, rose, Malaga, and the like. A lot of sweetness, and seeing candles, and imagining the world less bad than it actually was… And home to sleep, hearing contemptuous words from that Rosa, who was his tyrant, but also the protection his mother had left him. They had a daughter. It cost Manín many insults. Rosa would have liked a son. There wasn’t one. Work kills, apparently. While Manín remained fresh and vigorous despite his years, Rosa began to decline; a premature, precipitous old age finished her off… and she had to think about the same thing that Pepa José had thought one day. If she died, who would the farm go to? The new owner, the son of the other man, wouldn’t leave it in the hands of that useless wreck, Manín… And Rosa, with the same goal that Pepa had sought a wife for Manín, looked for a husband for Ramona, the daughter of Manín and Rosa. Ramona resembled her father: she was cheerful, a dreamer like him, not very active, and weak of character; she was not suitable, like her mother and grandmother, to take care of the farm. But Roque de Xuaca, the husband Rosa chose without consulting Ramona, Roque’s wife, was the most Greedy and tenacious about the work of the entire council. In his youth, while he was single, he never went to the pilgrimages for the girls, but rather for the bowling. Earning a few cents at the bowling alley, through sheer sweat, was his sole recreation. The rest of the week, instead of Sunday bowling, he had the clerk’s office, the shovel, the scythe… he wrung the cents from the earth. He married without love, with nothing but greed; determined to be the master as soon as possible. Rosa died early, and Roque began to treat his father-in-law worse than the dog, who was more useful to him by guarding the house. Manín trembled before his daughter’s husband; he didn’t think of disputing his dominion: he immediately accepted his role as a useless burden. He couldn’t work truly , he didn’t know how; less and less. Despite his good appearance, Manín felt old inside, very weak, every day more in need of protection, of being cared for, of being left to his poor devil’s hobbies of sweet drinks, of the joyful excitement of liquor… But Roque wouldn’t consent to even what Rosa had tolerated out of contempt. Roque de Xuaca was brutal, coarse, cruel. He had Ramona in his grasp, and Manín’s poor daughter, always sick, didn’t dare defend her father. Not even Manín complained to Ramona, for fear that her husband would mistreat her if she defended her father. Roque attempted the impossible: to force Manín to work truly, profitably and consistently. Manín only had the strength of will… to oppose such attempts, new in his life and sure to fail. He wouldn’t work like everyone else, no matter how much Roque ordered him to do. He could starve him to death, or with a club; But making him spend the day bent over breaking up clods of earth was impossible. But the man from Xuaca didn’t give up. He refused to have a slave in Manín to save him a servant, but he didn’t give up on getting the most out of the poor old man . Like a brat, he was forced to take the cattle to pasture, he was the ploughboy on the border, and he was employed in other easy, simple, but annoying tasks for an old man. And, of course, his rations were cut short. Gone were the good drinks, the donkey rides to the village, the bites of soft bread, the fresh, clean clothes; he was even thrown out of the warm, spacious room he occupied in the new house and forced to live in the old shack on the farm, a rifle shot away from his daughter’s house. For Roque, his father-in-law was less than the least day laborer. Manín felt isolated, besieged by hunger; He wanted to kill him with boredom, loneliness, deprivation… Malaga, rose, maraschino! Memories of lost good! Not a single drink in a year. Borona, beans, water… a little milk, not much… and the rest was sadness, cold, loneliness, boredom… What Roque couldn’t overcome was Manín’s fondness for the delights he was depriving him of. He dreamed of them, he thought of nothing else. The deprivation of those material pleasures, of good drinks, of good bites, made him give an exclusive interest to such things; all his voluptuousness, which before spread itself into so many delights, love, music, the vague poetry of dreams, dancing, cheerful conversation… was now reduced to palate indulgences, which he couldn’t obtain, and which he desired more strongly every day. When his attachment to such coarse appetites was reproached, Manín became moved with infinite self-pity, and, like an elegiac Anacreon, he tried to demonstrate that a poor old man who could no longer enjoy other pleasures was owed good drinks and good bites, just as respect is owed. But Roque treated him worse every day; he reduced him to the condition, almost, of a beggar. Ramona died in a difficult birth. Roque, certain for some time that he would be left with the hunt, dressed as a black person, in winter clothes in August, before the body left the house. He put on a hard, contrite face, with a sour grimace, and received the priests and the relatives and neighbors who came to the burial and the funeral. With serious kindness, without taking his grief to extremes, without forgetting his duties as master of the house to the guests, but without neglecting for a moment his role as a widower who must have been deeply distressed inside . He responded to the consolations of the signature with sighs, and silently repaid with gifts the philosophical and religious maxims with which the guests tried to mitigate the pain he was feeling . No one remembered Manín; but he came from his exile in the old cabin without being summoned, and no one thought of throwing him out , just as they didn’t throw out the dog, which went in and out of the mortuary alcove . Manín was, more than afflicted, stunned, disoriented. What would become of him? Some, the few who didn’t know the contempt with which the poor old man was regarded in the house, offered their condolences and tried to console him as well. These consolations made Manín think a little about what was happening to him: he was losing a daughter, Ramona, his only child… His character as a father demanded that he feel a moral sorrow, deep… deeper… Manín felt an invincible laziness to suffer. He understood that if he insisted on becoming tender, on afflicting himself, imagining fine things like in the past when he ate and drank well and had warm blood, he would achieve something, he would succeed in tormenting himself, remembering Ramona’s childhood, distant caresses… but all that could be excused. Manín sighed, murmured phrases of resignation mixed with others of pain… but he resisted, deep inside, letting his imagination wander into the black people fields of sorrow. Besides, if he thought about Ramona, he had to think about himself , about how he was left… and that was indeed serious, terrible, something positive, urgent, the sickness of a living person, not of the dead, who are no longer… No, no; No thought of the pain that awaited him… Through his sense of smell, Manín began to separate himself from all those imaginary sorrows to which the priests and neighbors who spoke to him of the dead woman invited him. From the kitchen, very close by, came smells that were positive delights in the form of hope that could almost be tasted. He entered the kitchen. The great funeral feast was being prepared, the inevitable village banquet . The xenru, the son-in-law, Roque, was involved in everything; the dignity of the household demanded that sacrifice: good food and many priests collecting the food. By showing himself generous and not for a moment losing his sour expression, which he believed to be of sadness, Roque proved what he owed to his role as a widower better than with phrases that never occurred to him. On such a day full of worries, he didn’t think directly about the deceased even four times. Besides, nothing had actually happened there: he was already the master; he would continue to be so. Manín, while the clergy and the other mourners carried out all the due diligence for the body (that’s what everyone called Ramona’s corpse), stayed at home around the pots, and when the funeral procession returned from the distant church, the poor starving man already knew what to expect. On the main table, the clergy’s table, there were two soups, two stews, three starters, rice pudding , coffee, cheese, wine, and liqueurs. He had seen four long-necked bottles on the battered plate. Those were the liqueurs. He couldn’t read and couldn’t tell from the labels what was on the contents, but he had no doubt that some of it would be sweet. Manín was growing impatient. The clergy and lay brothers who had come to bury his daughter, his Ramona, and to sing her a resounding gorigori were taking a long time to return . What if the rice pudding burned? And the soup? Wouldn’t the soup be lost? If he had dared to interfere in the kitchen, he would have advised the venerable María Xuanón, the great cook of the region, not to put in the rice and noodles so soon, because the lavishly sung funeral masses are very long. Manín stood, like a watchful rooster, at the top of the saltadera, between the quintana and the slab, to get a head start on events, to have a better view of the road, and to see when the first gentlemen who were to return from the church and the cemetery would appear . From his forehead, so as not to be dazzled by the sun, Manín spotted the first group, a compact group of black people; then another, even larger, and another and another… They were returning like a flock of crows that is dissolving. How little hurry they were in! How much hypocrisy! Manín thought in his own way. “They’re coming with lead feet to hide their eagerness to get their hands on the slices! They all seem overwhelmed by grief, and they’re feeling only hunger. ” When those from the first group reached the saltadera, Manín let the path clear. Most of them were villagers who knew him well; two or three who were from the town offered their condolences again and shook his hand. Manín grunted with gratitude, but somewhat embarrassed, as if fearing that this honor might not be his, in the eyes of his son-in-law, the widower, and this might cost him his seat at the table. Roque arrived with the last group, with the parish priest, the archpriest, and other clergymen. He didn’t deign to look at his deceased father. Among the mourners, it was already noticeable that the sad event that had brought them together and fed them that day was beginning to become an old and tired topic. The lay element displayed more hypocrisy or more care for form; commonplaces that should have served as consolation but didn’t were still repeated; their faces wore a contrite expression. The clergy were less likely to conceal their indifference, and this frankness of unconscious selfishness has something relatively endearing about it. Burying their neighbors was the job of those good parish priests and chaplains; that’s what they made a living from; so it wasn’t something to mourn about. Furthermore, without realizing it, the priests displayed, among the villagers, a certain air of superiority, as well as of caste, or at least of class. They talked and joked in the presence of the clod-rippers with almost the same freedom they used at their festive gaudeamus, when they were all churchgoers. The jokes and liberties of the rural clergymen might not have been in the best taste, nor funny, nor proper; but they were innocent, almost childish. They violated certain rules of clerical civility, if one may say so, that the presence of a bishop, for example, would have required. But whether those somewhat untidy manners offended God is far from certain. Roque, back from the funeral, was a different man. He was thinking exclusively of his guests, not of the deceased. His sour expression softened; his winter black person suit remained, serving as a reminder of the social role the widower played. To serve the priests well, and those of the town, and the rest as best he could, this was the sole concern of the man who was going to remain with the farmstead that he had, in fact, owned for so many years. “Gentlemen, to the table!” said Roque in a solemn and somewhat funereal tone, standing in the middle of the corral door, where many priests were examining the cows and the yearlings. “Holy word!” dared to say a chaplain, pockmarked, small, lively, who boasted of being mischievous, frank, and as worldly as the synods allowed. They all went up to the dining room, improvised in the upper room, narrow, dark, and poorly painted yellow and green; a luxury introduced by Roque, who was ambitious and aspired to sybaritism, there, for when he had saved enough. The archpriest occupied one head of the table, and the parish priest of Llantones occupied the other. He said, “Here’s Jove, here’s Puao, here’s Contreces, here’s Granda…” And so he indicated a chair to each of the priests, designating them by the name of their respective parish, if they had one. To the right of the archpriest, Manín sat; to the right of the parish priest of Llantones, Roque sat. Manín would have felt a melting pride if he had been able to appreciate that having a seat was an honor. But he didn’t think so highly of himself when it came to pomp and vanity. His inspection of the pots and pans had assured him that there was plenty of food, even for the poor. He didn’t attach importance to the place, but to the fact of being seated at the table. Where mattered little. “Don Manuel, cheer up! We must eat, for crying out loud!” said Don Primitivo, the smallpox priest, who was standing near the stunned Manín. “Yes, sir; indeed. We’ll eat… what can I do?…” He was about to sigh, but he stopped because he considered it an excused and repugnant hypocrisy. His Ramona, who would see him from heaven, or from purgatory, would certainly approve of his conduct; besides, with her, with her daughter, he had no reason to be complimentary: she knew full well that her father had not eaten anything fine, priest food no less, for many years. How could his senses not be pleased? The steaming soup smelled so good! The table was so white, the bread seemed so soft, the wine so warm and generous… Who said pity!… I mean, pity , of course; But then, then… at another time, another day… many days… yes, damn it, many days!… more every day, perhaps… Damn it! Well, he wasn’t going to think about that black person, sad thing!… “Rice or noodles… Manín?” asked the archpriest. “Rock it to me, rock it to me,” replied Ramona’s father with the humility and candor of a dove. He meant that they should give him noodles and rice. Manín ate, devoured; with both cheeks; he gobbled it down quickly, like a dog or cat raiding a pantry, looking suspiciously at his son-in-law between bites . Roque was very busy with his attentions as a master of the house who wants to entertain his guests. That’s why, thought Manín, he let him eat whatever he wanted. The deceased’s father smiled from right to left, looking at everyone with an expression of gratitude and tenderness, as if to say: Thank you, gentlemen; thank you for admitting Ramona’s wretched father, may he rest in peace, to this well-set table, where he will bear the brunt of a bad year, of many bad years! The first glass of good Toro wine greeted Manín’s body as if with it he had been anointed king and emperor of earthly happiness . What things of affection, of warm, familiar intimacy, full of sweet memories, the grape juice spoke to him as it trickled down his throat! The first stew came, the fresh pot full of delicacies, such as good chorizo, ham, chicken giblets, and rancid bacon, and Manín let Don Primitivo fill his plate, until it became a pyramid, with all those delicacies for the stomach. The conversation was beginning to liven up. There was no longer any reserve, no hypocrisy of any kind, not even on the part of the lay element, who had previously feigned a certain sorrow. Just as no one remembers the saint during a celebration, now no one remembered the deceased, whose eternal health that gathering of lukewarm Christians was feasting on. They talked about the harvest, the latest competition called by the bishop, and the Masons; but genuine joy, though not shameless or boisterous in its manifestations, didn’t show until the jokes began. The wine seemed inexhaustible to Manín, and like wine, the stories; he believed those priests were conjuring up from the bottom of their glasses all those stories that always ended with a joke, that everyone laughed at, and that he didn’t understand most of the time, but that he also celebrated with a laugh and a drink. The stories mostly concerned the clergy; usually the hero was a famous priest from La Parada, whom Manín admired and envied, like Caesar did Alexander. If only he had been a parish priest! What drinks, what food, what feasts! The blood sausage came, with the beans, the llacón, and the cider. Mother of God, what memories of Olympic bliss those smells awakened in Manín’s guts ! Yes, in his guts; because they were memories, sensations, the delight of a palate dazzled by evocations of distant gluttony; the association of ideas, and even more, of voluptuousness; the sentimentality of gluttony… what did poor Manín know! But it was a delight, stomach and heart shared in the delight… Youth, abundance… the past… his mother, his wife… his daughter… his reveries!… Manín loosened the shabby belt that held up his trousers, wiped the sweat from his forehead with his napkin… and He downed a glass of red wine in one gulp. Roast beef, a duck, stuffed zucchini… all of this was passed around the table, and Pepa José ate everything for about four people; and on the way, he drank about six… Undoubtedly, the world seemed different to him now: he wanted to think and missed what he didn’t know was called logic; he wanted to feel, and he felt strange things, illogical ones too; for example: he forgave his son-in-law and hugged him, in his mind, and when he remembered Ramona, it didn’t hurt him so much inside; instead, he saw her as if she were in the center of the earth, dying of laughter and happy to see her father so well fed and on the way to getting so drunk that you’d sleep for two days… Manín, without fear of his son-in-law or the archpriest, began to talk loudly, and told dirty stories, and philosophized in his own way about the communion of saints and the forgiveness of sins. He said what he wanted, no one was there for him. The poor fellow believed everyone was as excited as he was; he couldn’t tell that he was out of tune, that the others’ joy was restrained, expressive without clamor, above all, without imprudence, without sentimental paradoxes… He couldn’t see any of that; he stood up, spoke, cried, hugged everyone right and left… and when the time for liqueurs arrived, clutching the bottle of aniseed, sticky and sweet, he sang in his own way, in assorted prose, an elegiac eclogue, invoking the right to enjoy the present, that orgy, which for him was the feast; and he struggled to combine, with incoherent words, pain and joy, his certain misfortune and his fleeting delight, with no less poetry, at bottom, and no less incomprehensible to the common people, than Shelley when he tried to harmonize the love of two women at the same time in the Epipsychidion. Roque let his father-in-law run amok, go off-key, become unsettled, scandalized… It suited him… Those gentlemen could already see it; they were witnesses: it explained why he treated his deceased’s father like a dog… If he was allowed to eat and drink well, he would go completely crazy… The scandal was enormous. “Roque was right: his father-in-law was impossible.” The opinion in the surrounding villages was unanimous. At the funeral meal, no one, not even those most indifferent to the mourning in the house, had overstepped their bounds. They had tried, as always, to entertain the family, telling jokes, livening up the conversation, but all with a certain tact, without straying from the appropriate tone… and he, Manín, the father of the deceased, had gotten drunk, and had sung dirty songs and had cried… wine and cider… Horror! Some months later, neither Roque, nor the parish priest of Llantones, nor the archpriest, nor any of those very restrained diners remembered, not even in their short prayers, poor Ramona, who ate dirt. What was sometimes still talked about was the scandal that Manín had caused about Pepa José at the meal for his daughter’s funeral… Manín returned to his miserable hut, to his life as a sheepdog; Decrepit, eating like an anchorite… drunk on tears, memories, need… full of self-pity… and seeing the world as empty, hostile, with him because that daughter who seemed rude and was like the air, like the light, like the heat no longer cared for him… He needed her, with the longing of an old sick man… and she didn’t come, didn’t return, couldn’t return… Manín longed for a remedy that he didn’t know how to find, in his limited reach; the remedy he wanted was suicide, but he couldn’t find it. Animals don’t usually commit suicide, although they suffer greatly at times. Manín was like an old, rotten, helpless nag… that didn’t know how to commit suicide. Perhaps he was dozing, with the fixed idea-pain of his Ramona… who wasn’t there, in Llantones… at the farmhouse… to pity the poor old man, and give him air, light, warmth… life… that life that neither left nor stayed; that he had and didn’t have… For his delirium of sorrows, Ramona’s absence was the dead sun, and he, Manín, naked, in the street, shivering from the cold… with fear, with thirst, with hunger!… FAN-ALBUM Or the other way around, a fan-album, as you like. Mrs. Frondoso had one, famous throughout Madrid. By the time this faithful history of true events begins, the album of verses and drawings was already quite discredited, and the fan-turned-album was the height of kitsch. But Mrs. Frondoso had read in Pepita Jiménez that the essence of kitsch lay in the excessive fear of appearing so; and she would have thought herself more kitsch than all the kitsches put together if she had refused to have verses put on her fans, considering that this kind of gallantry had been overused, that it already reeked of the world, but that it didn’t reek of her. And in the circle of her acquaintances, or rather, in the Cupid-like court that surrounded her, the ridiculous and impertinent thing to do was to complain about the antiquated mania. “So-and-so, you have to make me something for the fan,” Mrs. Frondoso would say to any new friend introduced into her chosen circle; and so-and-so took care not to repeat the commonplaces that were rife against literary fans, and he promised to write, and he did write, and he tried hard. Wow, it was easy to distinguish oneself among those fly-like legs that filled the country in the wind album! Ayala on the right; Campoamor above; Núñez de Arce, with his Excelsior, below ; Manuel del Palacio to port…; Echegaray far away… There were no unknown forms, nor completely idiotic amateurs; all the signers were true poets, or at least bright young men, or handsome men, or illustrious politicians, or celebrated journalists, or distinguished comedians. Let it be said quickly, because it will be known. Mrs.
Frondoso loved a lot; And her husband, secretary of the Círculo, railroad advisor, and successful stockbroker, had been nothing more than one of the first links in a golden chain with which she voluntarily bound her heart. She was rich, still beautiful, very frank, very well-educated, let’s say; very affable, very natural, not at all prudish. Her husband was a very likeable and influential man, a friend and relative of great people, some of them from the select aristocracy… All of Madrid knew that Julita Medero, or in French, as they called her, Julita Frondoso, was… the Prodigal; and yet, not only the fourteen wicked ladies at court, according to Father Coloma’s statistics, but also dozens of blameless ladies from the most cultured and distinguished society, compromised with Julita and patted her on the back, whenever she wanted, which wasn’t all year round. Because there were times when she was rarely seen among the people of her world, and then she either disappeared or went to less distinguished places with other ladies, also rich and of high standing… but a little removed from the company of the more scrupulous families. Frondoso returned to her own whenever she wanted, and no one feared that she would bring with her the plague that those other families might have given her. Julita owed this privilege to many things. In part, to her balanced, cheerful, and unruffled humor; to her sympathetic, cordial demeanor; to her singular attractiveness, which was such that many times the same people who ought to have been jealous, because of their respective husbands, fell in love with her, in pure friendship . Frondoso took a particular delight in winning over a friend… and his wife at the same time; and she often succeeded. No one spoke ill of her… in detail. It was
generally acknowledged that there was no way to get at her, because that was obvious; but… nothing more. No one commented on her adventures one by one, nor was there any talk of her current lover; no one followed her steps. She had the great worldly virtue of not causing scandal. A certain beneficiary of a cathedral, a friend of hers, had once said in her presence: “If you cannot be chaste, be cautious”; and she had turned this phrase, worthy of Cicero, into a moral dogma. Secret, always secret. No one had proof that could be used in court of what was a common conviction. “Concretely, nothing is known,” was repeated everywhere . Well, that was corny and out of place: talking about Julita’s adulteries. Adulteries! Jesus, what an ill- timed and scandalous curse word… when it comes to Julita Frondoso! Friends, protégés, that’s what that lady’s lovers should have been called. They weren’t her admirers, but rather her admired ones; it was she who admired them. Her specialty was… the dish of the day; the man the week’s newspapers were talking about… that was the seducer… the one Julita tried to seduce. Frondoso’s at times seemed like the natural flower of a contest. She was awarded the prize to the most excellent versifier, or the deputy with the most smooth talk, or the swordsman with the most courage and art. She never made it to the bullfighters. But she did make it to the ministers. A young minister seemed charming to her, if he wasn’t a fool. Generally speaking, she preferred the fine arts, including literature. A poet was the best, and anything else that was closest to him, right away. He entered painting through naturalism before literature. At the time of this lady’s last glimmer of beauty, realism was beginning to be fashionable in Spain; and she embraced it in the visual arts, bestowing her favors upon Pablito Fonseca, a landscape painter of the natural school. His specialty was cows sitting on the grass. Pablito didn’t have two brains; but his cows were pieces of reality put on canvas. They made you want to milk them. For a few weeks, some wags called Frondoso’s cow Finojosa’s cow. You can now understand why. But, my friend, when it comes to novels, “my favorite Feuillet!” Julita would say; and, to be honest, what she truly liked was the crime serial, with a mystery in each issue of the respective periodical. A daughter who was without a father for a number of weeks, and who perhaps found three or four…; that, that was what enchanted Julita. If she finally fell in with the more or less naturalistic novel, it was thanks to the firm character and harsh genius of Ángel Trabanco, a predominantly descriptive lyric poet, who scorned plots , fables, and in poetry and in novels wanted to see the real world painted by himself, by the world, not by the adventures of the human puppets who trod on it and profaned it. With all his bad temper, Trabanco, if he wanted to win Julita’s heart, or at least rent it for a while, had no choice but to go through the Caudine Forks of the fan-album. There was one blank corner, and there, in very small handwriting, the ill-tempered descriptive poet had to paint in about twenty verses, a model of conciseness and artistic force, The Old Mill. It was a mill tired of grinding, in ruins inside and out; The old miller, the worn-out citole… Truly and sadly magnificent ! “That mill is me,” said the woman from Frondoso. No protests were availed; she insisted it was her, and she was amused to have a new customer for the old mill of her heart… Ángel endeared himself more than others, because he was domineering, distrustful, wild, said Julita. He convinced her that the poor woman had very bad literary taste, and made her read the novels of the Goncourts, which bored her, and those of Balzac and other well-known masters, which she couldn’t finish without falling asleep. But he couldn’t make her give up the fan-album. That record of more or less fleeting notables continued to be Julita’s obsession ; the lovers varied; the obsession was always the same. Since it was said that those poetic and artistic fans were the records of the martyrs, that is, lists of Julita’s lovers, she thought it appropriate to warn Trabanco that there was a notorious exaggeration in this supposition. “Listen,” she said to him one day, “the dislike you have for the illustrated fan, as you say, is not because you believe that all these gentlemen have been my friends, just like you… I swear to you that I never had anything with Zorrilla, nor with Campoamor, nor with Pepe Luis… ” “No; if it’s the new Parnassus I fear. ” “I am frank, you already know that; a French comedian, who was a close friend of mine, back in Paris, told me that Molière, in a comedy that called L’Etourdi, justified the brevity of love: the briefer the strayings, the less bad they will be. And Frondoso’s wife, with a moderate pronunciation, always repeated when speaking of this: If our spirit is not wise at all times, The shortest mistakes are always the best. “And you can’t complain, Nero,” added the pleasant matron; ” I’ve loved you for a century.” And it was true; Frondoso’s wife had grown accustomed to her poet from the old mill, and there was no sign of thunder coming on her account. But the bard was called to his village, where a beautiful young woman was waiting for him, who had loved him for many years, and who had just inherited something more solid than descriptive poems. Trabanco spoke clearly. Julita tried to dissuade him; He advised him to stay in Madrid to become truly famous; this, in Julita’s language, meant: to become a political figure with his kidney covered. She promised to help him with her husband’s influence and other influences she had… They agreed to discuss it on the train, leaving Madrid together, she for France and he for his town… If she convinced him in a few hours… they would continue to France together… Frondoso’s wife didn’t see Trabanco either at the station or on the train. She didn’t see him again for many years. She forgave him, she wrote to him; he answered two, three times; after that, no letters. Julita forgave this too… and a few months later, Trabanco was, in her eyes, a promising young man, who had cut short his career by marrying a naive village girl. And they remained friends. More than twelve years passed, thirteen or fourteen; Frondoso’s wife continued living in Madrid, and Trabanco in Barcelona, in Seville, abroad for some periods; He never went to Madrid except in passing. Very occasionally, Ángel would read in the newspapers something about the social gatherings of Señora Frondoso; according to the salon reviewers, the charm of that house was Luz, that Bebé that illo tempore Julita spoke so much about; the slender and precocious girl he had seen very few times, always from a distance. One afternoon, on one of his rare trips to court, Trabanco was talking with several friends, politicians and writers, in a small group on Carrera de San Jerónimo. At that time, Trabanco was many things before he was a lyricist. With his wife’s money, he had made very healthy deals in the cork industry; cork and its market were one of the most important concerns of the gray-headed poet with large crow’s feet around his eyes, always energetic and dreamy. Cork had led him to the study of certain very practical economic questions; From these matters, he had, by association, traveled to politics, and was currently a candidate for deputy to the Cortes, as pigeonholed as any other. But he continued to be a poet and saw the world through its veneer of artistic beauty; from time to time, he published a very elegant volume of verse, with beautiful engravings. He wasn’t tormented by the high or low sales, as he had been in the past; the corkboard allowed him to remain calm on this matter. He gave away many copies, visited many editorial offices, and Trabanco’s verses were widely discussed, without anyone taking any interest in denying his poetic talent, which neither rose nor fell. Whenever there was a vacancy for a position at the Hispaniola Academy, there was no shortage of critics who singled out Trabanco, without scandalizing anyone. And nothing more. This was his entire glory. As can be seen, Trabanco had not truly achieved fame, as Frondoso would have hoped, and perhaps would have achieved it if he had not separated himself from her and the court. Anyway, that afternoon, when the conversation in the group was at its most animated, two very well-dressed ladies, both tall, one old and the other very young, dazzling with freshness and beauty, passed by that group, which parted to leave the sidewalk free. “Ibáñez!” exclaimed the elderly lady, stopping and extending her hand to a handsome but very worn-looking young man who was part of the group. “Lady… Luz…” “You’ve forgotten me… And you, Luz, scold him… ” “Don’t believe it. Tomorrow itself… ” “Yes, always tomorrow… ” “Tomorrow without fail you have that in the box; isn’t it your turn tomorrow at the Español? ” “Yes, yes; but are they already made? ” “Yes, madam, yes. They’re worthless… but… ” “Oh! That’s modesty… Oh, Trabanco! You’ve been here… how long… ” “Yes, madam; fourteen years at least… ” “Yes, fourteen… ” “And this is it? ” “Luz… ” “Baby? ” “Yes, Baby… Has she grown, eh?” And Luz, smiling, simple, natural, much more natural than Trabanco’s verses , looked at and greeted with a handshake the former lover of that mother of whom she knew nothing bad or suspected. The conversation between the ladies, Ibáñez and Trabanco, continued. Ibáñez was also a poet, but of another generation… literary, although a little younger than Trabanco. But Ibáñez was fashionable, somewhere between mystical and diabolical, and he had much more appeal with the ladies than Trabanco had had in his prime. Besides, he lived almost always in Paris or London, and this refreshed his reputation like salt. What Julita Frondoso, a respectable, well-preserved old woman, asked Ibáñez for was, in fact, some verses for a fan for Luz. Luz also had a fan-album, or rather, her mother had one in Luz’s name. The arrogant young woman, a Diana figure, was pure, noble, and energetic; if she flirted, it was through methods that had nothing to do with literature or fans. But Trabanco, upon hearing about the album, looked at the haughty, tranquil virgin, and for a moment feared that the daughter’s album, suggested by her mother, was a symbolic record, like that other fan on which he had written: “The Old Mill”… For the rest, Trabanco and Frondoso’s wife looked at each other and smiled, like two old acquaintances who remembered nothing of intimacies and tenderness… Even Trabanco, as a poet, gave a certain tinge of philosophical nostalgia to their shared reminiscences… but Frondoso’s wife, absolutely nothing, seemed to remember nothing; that is to say, she remembered everything, but as if she didn’t. They had had their love nest in a house they saw across the street, for Ángel lived there, and Julita visited him there. Trabanco remembered, looked at the house, at the balcony of his study… Also, by chance, Frondoso’s lady looked there… but without thinking of anything remote, thinking of Ibáñez, of Luz… of the album, of the verses that Ibáñez promised to take to the theater the next day… Frondoso’s lady! Oh! A very respectable lady. Those new people knew nothing bad about such a lady; they had forgotten her happy life; she was now no one more than the most lovable mother of one of the most beautiful and elegant girls in Madrid… As for the fan-album… it was an innocent, harmless mania, which everyone continued to respect. Trabanco, watching the showy lady continue up the street, always happy… always frivolous; Without the vices that age had made him abandon, but with the mania that was like the now empty shell of vice, he thought to himself a number of things, philosophical as they come, of a philosophy neither pessimistic nor optimistic… almost comical. And he said to himself, full of ironic benevolence… “What a difference between Julita Frondoso… and Magdalena.” A REPATRIATE Antonio Casero, forty years old, celibate, doctor of Science, amateur philosopher, from the heart of Castile, after having believed in many things and loved and admired much, had come to have sincerity as his principal passion. And for the love of sincerity he left Spain, for the first time in his life, at the age of forty; perhaps, he thought, never to return. See some fragments of a very long letter in which Casero explained to me the reason for his voluntary emigration: “…You already know my repugnance to movement, to travel, to change of environment, of customs, to any material variation, which distracts, demands effort. This defect, because I recognize that it is one, is still quite common among those who, like me, live little on the outside, and much inside, and prefer thought to action. “It is true that the history of philosophy itself offers us examples of great, very active thinkers, deeply involved in the hustle and bustle of the world, such as, for example, Plato, with his trips to Sicily, not to mention other trips and journeys, and his disciple and rival Aristotle, who was not only a peripatetic in his school at Athens, but also traveled much of the land and saw and did many things. Of the moderns, we can mention, among the very active, Descartes and Leibniz, as the most illustrious. But, nevertheless, among those of our own interest, there are more who follow the example of Kant, who barely left Königsberg in his lifetime. Carlyle, in his posthumous Journey to France , shows us the great importance he gives to the act of personal courage… of deciding to pack one’s suitcase and cross the Strait; and Paul Bourget, in his novel The Disciple , offers us the psychology of the thinker A sedentary man who suffers a terrible fate because he has to go from Paris to a nearby city. I, although unworthy, also abhor trunks, bills, platforms, inns, trains, new faces, a new life, the infinite anguish of change, in everything that concerns the needs of the miserable body and the trivialities of social life. “Many times they have censured me, and even laughed at me, I think, because I have never left Spain. I have not been to Paris! Paris! Magnificent, if only I could take my house with me, like a snail… and, of course, travel through the air. The civilized world, more or less, insofar as it deserves attention, is already the same everywhere, and what varies from region to region is what mortifies the sedentary maniac, like me, who in clothing, food, bedding, housing, and customs of ordinary life, cannot tolerate variations. I feel like a brother to the Chinese person, to the Hottentot; but how they must sell the broth out there! France is like the homeland of my spirit; but I believe they give me chocolate there !… “…And, despite all that, I emigrate; yes, I’m leaving; I’m leaving Spain. I resign. “Yes, I resign, believing myself unworthy of it, my active Spanish magistracy . I, that after thinking and feeling many things in this life, in which I have reflected and felt so much, now I have as my deity sincere simplicity, humble ingenuity towards myself; I do not want, as Bacon would say, idols of the cave, nor of the theater, nor of the forum, nor of the tribe; my idol is sincerity. Austere, bitter cult; but noble, serene! “Well, my friend, delving into my spirit, looking face to face at my most intimate feelings, I have come to convince myself that… I do not feel the homeland. No, I do not feel it as one should feel; the same thing happens to me with painting: I say that I do not feel it, because I compare the effect it produces on me with that which it causes on others, and with that which I experience in the presence of good music, poetry, architecture, and I see its obvious inferiority. The homeland is a mother or it is nothing; it is a bosom, a home, it must be loved, not for a plus b, not because of the effect of sociological theories, but as one loves parents, children, home. I do not love Spain like that; I have convinced myself of this now upon seeing our national misfortunes and how little, in short, I have felt them. No, do not try to console me for this intimate disappointment by telling me that almost all Spaniards are in the same situation. It is true, but That’s their problem; let them emigrate too. Yes, I know that most, not counting those who have printed their patriotic sorrow in a multitude of editions, have strictly speaking seen things pass by as if the struggle between Spain and the United States were res inter alios acta. “The same observation, deep, bitter, merciless, but sincere, that I have applied to my intimate feelings, I have been able to make about myself. Let’s not talk about the selfish Franks, military or civilians, who because the law, undoubtedly deficient, did not demand a direct sacrifice of them, either of their person or their property, viewed with the least concealed indifference the catastrophes that were sinking us; let’s not talk about it either of the hypocritical patriots who, by profession, must daily employ tons of elegiac commonplaces to lament the pains of the homeland they do not experience; but if only they were there! I have closely observed those who have fought for Spain, who have risked their lives defending it, and have deserved glorious laurels… That same one, who would have died in his post of honor… did it all more for honor than out of real, sonly affection for Spain. You only had to hear him recount our misfortunes, which he had seen up close. No, he would not have spoken like that of the misfortunes of a mother, of a son. Without realizing it , and utterly free of hypocrisy, it was clear that the joy of noble pride, for his valor, his skill, his brilliant campaign, had more influence on his soul than the sorrow for what Spain had lost. That defeated hero had achieved no less glory than triumph could have given him; ” Furthermore, I feel little Spanish. I believe in the national genius; I don’t know what it consists of precisely; but in certain moments of pragmatic history , and more so in the popular traits and in certain things of our great saints, poets and artists, I guess a background, still poorly studied, of spiritual greatness, of strong originality. It is in Saint Teresa and in Cervantes that I guess more essential characteristics of that genius. But… all that is so hidden and obscure! On the other hand, the national qualities, or rather, the acquired vices, jump out at me, they hurt me with their shrill and unpleasant tones, which repel and offend me. This predominance, almost exclusive, of external life , of color over the figure, which is the idea; of the crystallized formula over the spiritual juice of things; This servility of thought, this blindness to routine, and so many atavistic miseries contrary to the natural nature of social progress in truly modern countries, disorient me, discourage me, irritate me… and I’m leaving, I’m leaving. Needless to say, I don’t believe in regenerations or in patriotic Geraudeles… Neither do I deserve to live in Spain, nor is Spain to my liking. I don’t feel capable of sacrificing for it what every homeland deserves; I have no right, therefore, to be sustained by its soil, protected by its law. It hasn’t given me what I would have most wanted: a solid intellectual and moral education, which would have spared me this farce of semi-wisdom in which we intellectuals live in Spain. You can’t imagine how my sincere love, now my faith, suffers from this pretense of science pinned down with pins that the poor preparation of our youthful studies forces us to maintain. I see my reflective power, my intuitive faculties, my judgment, and my experience as far superior to the means of solid instruction at my disposal, allowing me to utilize these faculties in society. If I were not Spanish, but French, English, or German, I would not have to lament such a shameful deficiency. Being one-eyed in a land of the blind can be no consolation except for the selfish and vain. I would like to have two good eyes in a land where there were neither one-eyed nor blind people. To be one of the crowd, in Athens… “…One cannot believe in regenerators, because the raw materials for all regeneration are lacking. I emigrate; I do not believe in Spain, nor should it expect anything from me. When we lost the fleets, when Santiago surrendered, I felt a little sick from the upset… Yes, a little; I soon recovered, more content with this pride of truly loving something for the country, than saddened by the irremediable misfortunes… For the loss of parents and children, one feels something stronger, deeper: the pain for the absence of the mother is not sweetened by the awareness of filial tenderness; on the other hand, when I felt that I loved Spain something more than the vociferous patriots, I surprised myself enjoying a certain intimate joy … And then, how quickly I began to forget the losses, the “National shame!… No, Spain; I do not deserve you. Neither my spirit, made foreign by reading French, English, and German books, understands you well, nor am I, in short, a good son. I will be the prodigal son … who never returns.” But he came back. I ran into poor Antonio Casero at the Puerta del Sol, getting ready to board a bus that would take him to… the bullfights, to some kind of bullfight. He was returning from England, Germany, and France, sad, wasted, skinny. “I feel,” he told me, “as if stunned. I’ve reached that skepticism of behavior, a thousand times more anguishing than that of intelligence. I don’t know what to do! I don’t know where to be! I fled Spain, as you know, with great effort, not to get away from it, but to change, to move. You know the reasons I had for emigrating. But outside of Spain, I didn’t know how to live either! My homeland was more deeply rooted in my gut than I thought! The climate, the color of the sky, the landscape, its shape, the way of eating, the way of speaking, the strangeness of public interests , the lack of caring about anything that surrounded me; the customs, which seemed irrational to me because not be mine; everything repulsed me, offended me; everything was ice and harshness, a kind of enemy magnetism that harassed me everywhere. I even breathed worse. Perhaps the most spiritual part of my being remains foreign, but everything in me that is earth, human clay, which is the most, alas! is Spanish and cannot live outside the homeland. No, I cannot live in Spain… but neither can I live outside. And in such a conflict… I return, I abhor Spanishness, but from now on I am called Vicente, and I am going where the other Spaniards are… to the bullfights. Natura naturans. After all, what would become of Spain if all her ungrateful children, who do not love her enough, emigrated! It would be deserted. DOUBLE TRACK Within a year of becoming a deputy and an adopted Madrilenian, Arqueta was already famous enough for everyone to know an epigram that none other than the leader of the most important minority in Congress had deigned to dedicate to him. –“That Arqueta,” he had said, “not only does he not have easy words, but he has no words at all. ”
Arqueta already knew that; he had never intended to go after Demosthenes, nor was that the path; but having a difficult word didn’t hinder him, and not being a man of his word served him well. Of course, this last defect brought him enemies, since the victims of that shortcoming hated and insulted him; but he was already careful to ensure that it was always those who had fallen who could verify the complete accuracy of the epigram… of the minority. Had he never broken his word to the President of the Council of Ministers or any other president of something important? Ah! Well, there was the trick. The point was that many times he had to sail close-hauled; some tacks had to be taken in a direction that seemed to distance him from his objective, from the port he was seeking, but that zigzag was bringing him closer, closer, and with each change, of course, some fool had to be left with his mouth open. An orator, no! Most of the countrymen Those of his who had been expert pilots of parliamentary cabotage had been swift with their words… and quick with their hands. Correctness! Trust in correctness and don’t rush! In the conference room, in the corridors, within the committee, in the ministerial offices, Arqueta was an eagle. How the doormen respected him! They smelled a future personality in him. Moreover, although Representative Arqueta didn’t expect his advancement from the legislative power, he was going for the big shot, that is, the executive power. He grabbed onto the skirts… of the wife of the Minister of Finance and declared her a good catch; the Arquetas and Conchita Manzano, the minister, had met at a spa in the North. Conchita was a ham who tried to prolong the autumn of her life well into winter. Better. Arqueta already knew that he wasn’t going to be given honey on flakes; he was content with honey, with nougat. At the spa, although the treatment was very… trust, Arqueta couldn’t possibly know for sure if the minister was one of Father Coloma’s fourteen wicked ladies. In Madrid, trust grew, due to the respect he had for the deputies for Polanueva, and the minister shared the intimacy of his wife’s friends. Juana became Concha’s confidant, who had something to tell her; and the minister, Medianez, made Arqueta his favorite, who was charged by His Excellency with not keeping a word, whenever it was convenient to give one to someone and take it back without him returning it. The kind of services Arqueta provided Medianez were all of the kind Mariano liked, behind the scenes; they concerned what cannot be spoken (Arqueta’s delight!), and those ties were the kind that only death can break; and perhaps not even death, because the likelihood is that they will find themselves in hell. Arqueta, when convenient, was director general, undersecretary, and a host of other things, some without an official name or explicit salary. Despite the purity that Polanueva attributed to the kind of relationships that linked him to the public man, he placed his principal trust in the delights of the domestic home… of the public man. When Arqueta was able to affirm, in his own mind, that Conchita Manzano was one of the fourteen, that was when he breathed a sigh of relief. His people rose and fell several times, and Arqueta came to see himself with sufficient merits to enter a combination, to be a minister, even if it was temporary… he would know how to take advantage of the season, even if it was temporary. He encountered a hierarchical inconvenience : being a minister, he was as much as his godfather, and that was not well-suited. But it so happened that circumstances made Medianez perfectly suited to preside over a transitional ministry, a small-time ministry, without high-level ministers; but which could be as long-term as they wanted. And there he was. President Medianez, and he, Arqueta, in Fomento or wherever God served… why not? That way, the categories continued to be respected, since the president remained the boss, the master… Why didn’t he enter the candidacies Medianez prepared in case he was called? He had always attributed Conchita’s skirts to the decisive force when it came to influencing Medianez’s mood and making him serve Arqueta’s interests in a serious case. Now he had to press on this side. “What love can do!” thought Arqueta. Everyone says, and it’s true, that Medianez knows how to wear his pants with dignity; that he’s not one of those politicians who let his wife govern. Indeed, I notice that Conchita doesn’t usually impose herself on her husband; rather, she fears him rather than commands him… and yet, in everything concerning my affairs, it’s like silk! I ask for a treat, Medianez gets angry, Concha hesitates… I push, she sacrifices, I ask, I beg, I insist, I command, and… achieved! “Now the commitment is serious. But we must give it our all. Medianez sees me as little minister; he has a thousand commitments… It doesn’t matter, I will win!… Let’s push.” “Don’t you think I should push?” he would say to his wife. And Juana, without hesitation, would reply: “Well, it’s clear! Push! ” She also continued to cultivate the friendship of the woman from Medianez and that of the minister himself; but, it’s clear that, given what was happening, and which his wife, naturally, didn’t know, Arqueta didn’t think it was proper for Juana to push as well; apart from the fact that whatever he couldn’t achieve, his poor little wife would achieve even less. The minister swore that she was perpetually hounding her husband to give a ministry, if he formed a cabinet, to poor Mariano, who was the man they trusted most. “But, don’t deceive yourself, say what you will, I don’t have as much power in Medianez as you think. He listens to me when he thinks I’m right.” That’s what the minister spoke to her lover in private; but he wouldn’t give in; he insisted, insisted; push that You will squeeze. It was the case that, by one of those combinations so common in backroom politics (the one that Mariano liked), Medianez was playing into the hands of that leader of the opposing party who was reciting epigrams against Arqueta. Medianez’s leader didn’t want transitional ministries; the enemy did, because he wasn’t nominated to enter the government; he needed to divide his adversary, discredit an intermediate Cabinet, and arrive in time and as a prepared man. Medianez and Arqueta saw the game clearly, but since the opportunity was unique for Medianez to become president of the Council, they were determined to buy those radishes, which were passing by, and whoever falls. What Arqueta didn’t know was that the leader of the opposing party, who was helping Medianez rise to the presidency, was setting his conditions for the future Cabinet personnel and had declared that Arqueta was not persona grata. Medianez concealed from his friend the battles he was waging with that lord in order to force him to compromise with the representative for Polanueva, whom he wanted at all costs to bring with him to the Cabinet he was going to preside. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the crisis came, and it was laborious; there were solutions galore; high-level ministries and petty ministries… and finally, oh joy! A ministry arrived that was “stillborn” according to the competitive examinations, but it was born, which was the main thing: the Medianez Ministry . And Arqueta was entering Public Works! What a scene, Arqueta with the minister, when she learned he was on the list of ministers! Concha was very happy, of course; but much more worried. She couldn’t get over her astonishment. She was sure she hadn’t gotten her husband to say anything about making the good Arqueta a minister. But, anyway, it was a fact. With his wife, Mariano was less expansive, because he had certain qualms of conscience, albeit very slight… In the end, it was because of marital infidelity that he landed in the coveted chair… Poor Juana! But, what the heck, since she wasn’t in on the secret and saw herself as a minister, she must have been overjoyed too. She was certainly overjoyed. She was radiant with joy. She was the one who ordered the uniform on the fly, or she pulled it out of nowhere, suddenly, depending on how quickly it was ready. At eleven in the morning they were going to be sworn in, and by ten Juana had already dressed her husband, with her own hands, in the gleaming gold uniform he was about to wear for the ministerial career. The house was filled with friends. And, oh, the height of honor and kindness! At ten-thirty the couple received a notice from Medianez saying: “Wait for me: I’ll come get you in my carriage and personally congratulate Juana.” Tears began to fall upon reading this. What a triumph! The new president, Medianez, arrived, also in uniform, although not as brand-new as Arqueta’s. That house was a Babel. Arqueta… had a moment of weakness. Everyone told him he looked very handsome in his uniform; but the fact was that, to avoid appearing fatuous, he hadn’t been able to look at himself in a mirror as he pleased, dressed in uniform. And it was the dream of his life! He had to confess that his happiness would not have been complete that day if he hadn’t been able to take two minutes to contemplate himself alone, as he pleased, in the mirror, adoring his own ministerial image. In his study, where better! There where he had dreamed so much of success, he wanted to see it reflected in that mirrored wardrobe that had so often invited him to trust in the exploitation of the physical. Nothing easier, amid the hubbub of the crowd that filled the house, than to eclipse himself for a moment… Without anyone missing him, with the caution of a thief, Arqueta headed for his study. He crossed the office; the door was half-open… opposite was the wardrobe in whose clear glass he wanted to contemplate himself. Devil! Before the laws of physics allowed Arqueta to see his reflection in the mirror… he saw in it, quite clearly… a minister’s uniform. It was the president! But he wasn’t alone; in the mirror Arqueta also saw the image of Juana the Plump… with whose rosy cheeks Medianez made the President without portfolio, the same thing he, Arqueta, had done the night before to the less fresh cheeks of the president’s wife. Arqueta took a step back. He didn’t enter his office… He entered the other one, the one presided over by Medianez; that is, he also presided over Arqueta’s office, apparently… but, in short, it means that, rejecting the initial impulse to throw everything in the wind, he decided to sacrifice himself for the sake of the country. He first thought of tearing open the uniform that was burning him, or must have been burning his body, like the tunic of… he couldn’t remember who; but he didn’t tear anything… and five minutes later he arrived in Medianez’s car at the latter’s house, where other ministers and many important politicians were waiting. There was the protector of the new situation, the one with the epigram, who was going to enjoy his surreptitious triumph. Arqueta noticed that the nobleman was looking at him and greeting him with a mocking, perhaps contemptuous, smile. There was more. He noticed that in a group surrounding the illustrious leader of the minority, the jokes the man with the epigram was telling in a low voice were being celebrated with great laughter… And he, Mariano Arqueta, was being watched out of the corner of his eye. He could only hear this, said by the protector of the ministry in a loud and solemn voice: “Sic itur ad astra!” General laughter. “Yes,” Arqueta thought, “that’s just me; the one who ascends to the stars like that… is me!” And he turned red. “Arqueta,” the caustic leader of the minority shouted at that moment, addressing the new Minister of Public Works: “Arqueta, the slander is already targeting you. ” “What! What are they saying? ” “That you’re not going to swear… but to promise on your honor. Absurd, isn’t it?” Slander!… THE OLD MAN AND THE GIRL An old man, precisely… no. But compared to her, yes; he could have been her father. That was enough to separate the two of them by an abyss of time; and the same as them, her mother and the world, which let them wander together alone in theaters and promenades, without mistrust or suspicion of any kind. He was her mother’s cousin, and she, considering that, as children, they had been somewhat sweethearts, concluded that leaving her daughter in the care of this contemporary of hers offered no danger, nor could it give rise to malice. They lived like that for years and years. If you want to imagine what he was like, remember Sagasta, not as he is now, naturally, but as he was back then, in the days when he said he was going “to fall on the side of freedom” … without breaking a fibula, back then. Don Diego had more correct features than Don Práxedes, but he had the same elegant, charming melancholy. His hair was still black, with a hint of gray in just one curl above his right temple. In that hidden curl lay a singular , graceful sadness that harmonized mysteriously with his gaze, somewhere between mocking and loving, somewhat tired and sad, with the resignation that piety and experience bring. He dressed tastefully, in keeping with the elegance befitting his age. She… was as pretty as you might imagine. Brunette or blonde, it doesn’t matter. Sweet, serene, with a balanced mood, that’s for sure. They were returning from the Retiro on a September afternoon, at the end of the day. They had been at an open-air social gathering, surrounded, while occupying chairs, by half a dozen adoring followers, whom Paquita never lacked. They were all young, very select, and mellow, as they said then, from the finest society. They weren’t Senecas, nor had they roasted the butter. One by one, isolated, they weren’t cloying. All together, they seemed like repeated echoes of the same insubstantiality. It was difficult to distinguish them, despite their physical differences. Paquita, upon reaching the Puerta de Alcalá, took the arm of her harmless friend, who was a little worried, somewhat moved, but not with sad thoughts. “But, you see, I must be condemned to perpetual infancy? ” “How babies? Eduardo is already at least twenty years old, and Alfredo is nineteen . ” “You see what cocks!” “And what do you want with your cocks?” They both fell silent. Don Diego knew only too well that Paquita didn’t like being young. They had spoken of this a thousand times, to the great satisfaction of his very sarcastic friend, who, as the girl’s street tutor, had known Paquita for several of her sweethearts; he seemed to be her confidant in such cases. But that girl’s innocent loves always lasted only a short time and delved almost nothing into her spirit. Out of vanity, curiosity, and to please her mother, who wanted relationships that were serious and would secure a secure position for her daughter, Paquita allowed these amorous flirtations; but, strictly speaking, she had never yet been “what is called in love.” Don Diego knew this too; and she repeated it to him often, almost proud of her way of feeling , and she told it again and again to her friend and mentor, like someone insisting on a charitable act. In so many years of intimate life, of constant familiarity, never had a word passed from Don Diego’s lips that Paquita could have mistaken for the audacity of a pretentious gallant. On the other hand, their life together was filled with eloquent silences; and in the indispensable contacts —walks, theaters, churches, dances, etc., etc.— there had never been any dishonest gestures, not even insinuations that the young woman could have misled, she had enjoyed unconfessed delight on both sides. Paquita noticed that lovers changed, and the old friend was always the same. Without telling each other, they both knew that the other was thinking this; that this nameless contract of their strange friendship was much more serious than the fleeting, almost childish, infatuations of the girl. They both knew something else: that Paquita held Don Diego’s spick-and-span conduct in high regard , and that he had never, neither with the excuse of his immense desire nor with the excuse of any insidious occasion, succumbed to the temptations that his close and continuous acquaintance made him suffer. Never the slightest misconduct… and yet, even the most ignorant could point to coldness and apathy as the cause of that sublime prudence . He and she remembered the kisses that, when Paquita was a little girl, a very little girl, she had given to the good gentleman, and that had ended, never to be repeated; and Don Diego had been the first to renounce, without any explanation, of course, such a privilege. “Why did you quarrel with Periquillo?” the old man once asked the girl. “Because he insisted that I spend hours on the balcony watching him walk down the street, and I didn’t want to… because I was bored.” And the two of them laughed heartily, thinking about Paquita’s singular way of loving her lovers. That afternoon, Don Diego returned very happy, inwardly, because at the open-air social gathering in the Retiro, he had displayed his wit, with great naturalness and modesty, at the expense of those poor seven-month-olds. Paquita had admired him, flashing sparks of suppressed enthusiasm from her eyes; he had clearly noticed. That was why he returned so satisfied… and with a diabolical temptation, which he had faced a thousand times, but which he had always resisted… and which now he didn’t think he could resist. They arrived at the Prado, and Paquita decided to sit there again. The afternoon, now approaching dusk, was delightful; and the girl declared that she was sorry to go indoors so soon, to miss that twilight, that sweet breeze… They sat, very alone, without a living soul to notice them. They spoke with great warmth, both very happy, without knowing why, their eyes looking into each other’s eyes. “What are you thinking about?” asked Paquita, seeing Don Diego suddenly lost in thought . “Hey, Paca… Who in the world, besides your mother, is the person you trust the most? ” “Who would that be? You. ” “Well, then…” and Don Diego began to say things that left the girl astonished. He talked a lot, with great passion and many circumlocutions. We are in more of a hurry and have fewer qualms, and we have It was necessary to say everything in a few words. It went something like this: Don Diego proposed that they play a game that was a delight, but one that only two people of opposite sex could play if the game was to be fun, and that they should trust each other completely. It was necessary that they give each other their word, each confident that the other would keep it, not to draw any practical consequences from the game; for that is why it was a game. The point consisted in mutually confessing, without reservation, what each one thought and felt and had thought and felt about the other; the bad, however bad , the good, however good. And afterward, as if nothing had been said. She must not be offended by the unpleasant, nor take advantage of the pleasant. Paquita was as red as a fiery roe; she was feverish; she had understood and felt the profound and malicious moral, that is to say, immoral, voluptuousness of the game the old man was proposing to her. Everything had to be said, everything that had been thought, at any time, anywhere, about that friend; all the scenes that imagination had drawn up, making him appear as a character… Paquita, after appearing purple, went pale, stood up , tried to speak, but couldn’t. Two tears welled up in her eyes. And without looking at Don Diego, she turned her back on him and walked slowly toward her house. The frightened old man, horrified by what he had done, followed his poor friend, but without daring to join her, trailing behind, like a servant. He didn’t dare speak to her. Only when he reached the door of her house did he dare say: “Paquita, Paquita, what’s wrong? Listen: What’s wrong? What have I done to you? What will Mama say?” She, without answering or moving her head, slowly shook her head in the negative. No, he wouldn’t talk: his mother wouldn’t know anything… But when he reached the stairs he broke into a run, went up as if fleeing, hurriedly knocked on the door of his house, and when it was opened he disappeared, and quickly closed the door, leaving the wretched Don Diego outside. He went out into the street, stunned and ashamed, and when he saw two members of the order on a corner, he was tempted to say to them: “Take me to jail, I am a criminal; my crime is one of the ugliest, one of those whose hearing must take place behind closed doors, out of respect for modesty, for honesty… ” GEORGE DIALOGUE, BUT NOT PLATONIC “What about new books?” Jorge asked me, sighing as if distracted, having stopped thinking about me and what he had asked me. He was pale, dark-eyed, sleepy-faced, and in a bad mood. I looked at him intently and intently, and, lending a certain malicious intent to my words, I replied: “I have just seen that Carlos Groos, you know, the learned German who published Die Spiele der Tiere (The Games of Animals) in 1896, is now publishing Die Spiele der Menschen (The Games of Man). ” “Yes; I remember now. The Games of Animals… There is no other game than that. Because… brave animals are all those who play! ” “Man, don’t play with the word… ” “I know it’s ugly to play with your mouth… And, strictly speaking, it’s forbidden… See the article… ” “I’m not saying that. You’re playing with the word; because animals… ” “Yes; I understand you now. It’s about animals… not humans. Well, Mr. Groos is slandering them. Animals don’t play. Only man plays, and he is the only metaphysical being and player. It’s an effect of that blessed evolution. What can I do!” I wanted to correct myself, to give up the vice… but… impossible… It’s a matter of heredity… of race. I read it in Ihering, in The History of the Indo-Europeans Before Their Separation. It’s disconsolate. Our patriarchal and bucolic, remote ancestors… were inveterate gamblers. They killed time, the monotonous time of that dull life, without variety, without new emotions, playing and playing… And this, generations and generations… You see! Who can do more than the habit ingrained in inheritance?… Shepherds… and gamblers… –Enough with the prehistoric and Darwinian excuses… You haven’t understood me, or you haven’t wanted to understand me… or everything tastes like something that tickles your fancy. The game Groos speaks of isn’t that; it’s play as entertainment or recreation, as the Dictionary says, in which the only purpose is the distraction itself… –As for the Dictionary. Those who speak ill of that academic book don’t recognize its great merit. It’s a book of morals… At least , it almost converted me. You’ll see what happened. One day, seeing myself mired in the rogue game, unable to help it, convinced that any attempts at amendment were useless, I wanted to know at least how the vice that dominated me was academically defined, and I went to the Official Dictionary and read: “Game, pastime, recreation, that which is done in a spirit of joy and solely for amusement and amusement.” That wasn’t it; my game wasn’t a pastime, nor joy; It was hell!… I continued reading: “Recreational activity subject to rules, in which you either win or lose.” The part about exercise didn’t satisfy me, because you get so little exercise spending twelve hours propped up on the green baize! And “you win or you lose” isn’t accurate, because many times it remains… a gamble, neither losing nor winning. If the banker hits with nine and I do too… I neither lose nor win. And if I leave the Casino with the same money I came in with… I neither lose nor win. “To give it greater incentive,” the Dictionary continues, “ some money is frequently risked there.” Academicians must be stingy with that way of speaking. “It deserves disapproval,” the Academy continues , “when the profit or loss can be significant; when gambling out of vice or when the player’s objective is not to have fun or entertain himself, but rather to make someone else’s money his own.” Reading this, I felt all the blood rush to my face; I was dying of shame. What an unexpected lesson the official lexicon was giving me! How much I had read against gambling! But never had that slap of morality slammed into my face. Tolstoy, with his maniac’s morals, combating wine, tobacco, military service, and work in the same way as gambling, had never made me blush. Whenever gambling was attacked as a vice, I apologized with the decency that vicious people can have. Gambling seemed diabolical to me, but noble, playing like a gentleman, of course. How many sophistries I had invented to excuse my vice! I had found analogies with a thousand things, bad, but not shameful. Just as illegal love is sinful, but not sordid, not base, gambling seemed to me incompatible with the orderly economic life of society… but not infamous, not vile, not petty; unrelated to greed , to theft. Jesus, theft! And suddenly the Dictionary , bang!, slapped me in the face… I hadn’t noticed! People went into gambling to take other people’s money… It was true; that’s what they went for. The same as usurers and thieves… to take other people’s money … against the owner’s will as well; because no one has the will to lose. Is one’s own money at risk in exchange? The miser also risks his health, his life; the usurer risks losing what he’s borrowed, and the thief… going to jail. Yes, there’s no doubt about it; that’s what gambling is: wanting to take other people’s money. Would you believe that gambling disgusted me ? I saw in myself a sin of the vile kind from which I had always believed myself free; a sordid sin, of injustice to one’s neighbor, of a repugnant psyche… (Pause.) “So what?” “Well, nothing. I didn’t play… for a long time. ” “A long time, huh? ” “Yes; Several weeks! —But how did you return to sordid, to vile things, to what… (sorry, you said it) resembled robbery?… —You see. I did the math. According to my calculations, I had lost much more money than I had earned. They still had a few thousand duros on me over there . I was going for revenge. I was going for what was mine. This wasn’t gambling, and I wasn’t taking other people’s money… but my own. —Well, yes; you had made a sign to the coins and the bills, and when it wasn’t yours you won… you returned them. –You know that money is considered a fungible thing… –So then?… Besides, your debtors (!), that is, those who had beaten you, were the same ones you were beating? –That argument has less force than the one used to astonish me the rogue reality… –And it was?… –That those gentlemen, who weren’t the ones who had beaten me… beat me too. (Again pause.) I felt sorry for poor George. I didn’t want to bother him with new virtuous observations so easy to find. It’s so easy to fight vices from the sidelines when you don’t have any! –Gambling!–continued the gambler.–The philosophers don’t know what it is. Montaigne, who has spoken of so many things, so many vices, doesn’t have a single chapter dedicated to gambling. Montaigne spoke of what he knew, of what he had experienced. Renan complains that philosophers haven’t taken love entirely seriously, and their true philosophy remains unfinished. And it’s true. And the reason must be that philosophers don’t usually truly fall in love. The same thing happens to them with play. The aesthetics of play! It exists; but it’s not the one those new books talk about… As if play… isn’t play… it has nothing to do with play, in that other sense of endless purpose that Kant already spoke of. The same word shouldn’t be used for such different things. A very widespread opinion among aestheticians is that art… is play. Schiller, in his famous letters on the science of beauty, following Kant, admirably develops the theory… –Yes; and now the aesthetics of a positivist tendency, or rather, the one that studies beauty and art in their psycho-physiological aspect, follows the same criterion. Spencer, as is well known, also accepts the theory of the art of play… –And it has been said that play is an excess, a shadow of life… the same thing that has been said of love. Renan once asked Claude Bernard about the mystery of love, and the great physiologist told him: “No, there is nothing simpler than love; it is life that is left over…” So love and play are plethora, that which overflows… –Play, according to this Groos we were talking about, is a natural exercise of the sensory and motor apparatus, of the faculties of the spirit (intelligence, that is) and of the feelings, with a focus on pleasure… Activity for the pleasure of activity itself, that is play… –How different it is from the other game, from my game! The gambler does not seek pleasure… and in that many who see things from the outside are mistaken… He seeks profit; only he seeks it in the spicy, mysterious, inexplicable form … of luck. Luck! I’m about to say that the gambler is a passionate metaphysician who closely and with interest interrogates the metaphysical mystery with every move… Is there a law? Is there no law? Is it chance? What is chance? Does Providence interfere in these things? To what extent does the calculation of probabilities serve?… And then… a terrible thing! What ultimately binds me to the game, even by philosophy… I mean, by sophistry, is… that life is a game. Only those who aspire to nirvana, to apathy, to abulia, can say they are not a gambler. The rest, they all play. Life and death are a way of cornering the bank. Every heartbeat is a stroke of luck, a card played; every time I breathe, I can lose or win my life… Wealth or misery… a game…; merit… a game. Where does my talent or my stupidity come from? Where do the Jewish and the Christian, the nines or the face cards, come from? From the mystery, from the horrible fifty- fifty…, from the abyss called odds or evens, heads or tails… “This… or that.” In that or, in that dilemma lies the symbol of the game… and of existence… I’m going home now…; my children, my insides, are they sleeping… or dead? Who knows! They are sleeping; good! How beautiful! How innocent! But tomorrow? The future, the card they will be dealt… the life that awaits them… What can I do to achieve their future happiness? All my calculations, my foresight, my cares, my savings—a useless scheme! My hopes… illusions like the superstitions of a gambler… At the bottom of the great question of free will, of liberty and grace, of freedom and determinism, of the philosophy of contingency, which today gives its name to a school, what is seen is the crux of the game… No; the game, mine, is not fun, it is not a joke, it is not disinterestedness, it is not a purpose without end… It is just the opposite: interest, profit, selfishness in the struggle with fate… the same as the unholy life, which is the life of almost everyone. Great men, heroes, said Carlyle, take reality, the world, seriously. They are not dilettants. The same as the gambler. Chance for me or against me… This is his idea, always serious, always with an end, always self-interested… –However, in the game, not yours, the other one, the game for the pleasure of the activity, one arrives, according to our author, at what he calls the pleasure of evil, to play with one’s own pain. Furthermore, there is Aristotle’s catharsis, the pleasure of the calm after the storm. –No, it doesn’t matter. Nor is there any affinity between games and gambling. The player does not seek the pain of gambling, which is great, for the pain, for the pleasure of knowing that it is a sought-after, desired pain: no, because he knows well that passion dominates him and that this pain is not voluntary; and furthermore, he tolerates the pain for the hope of winning, not for the pleasure of being able to triumph over it. As for catharsis, it has no application… Because calm never comes for the player. Everything is a storm. After winning… he wants, needs to win more. He is a wandering Jew, he never stops his ambition. –Groos also speaks of war games, those of the pleasure of fighting, of defeating an opponent… –There is no affinity between games and gambling in that either. In La Traviata, the tenor plays to beat a rival… That’s music. The real gambler doesn’t want So-and-so’s money, he wants money; in gambling there are disputes, but there are no rivalries, no personalities, no grudges: there is no enemy but the opponent. Luck, profit, loss. Those are the categories. –Well, Groos says literally that bets are war games, and games of chance are intellectual bets. For him, gambling has three elements: the pleasure of winning, which grows with the importance of what is risked, without profit per se being the object of the game; the pleasure of strong excitement, and the pleasure of fighting… –Yes, parlor pistols, wind pistols. That game exists… the old women’s lottery… and even more! No; In a true game, those childish emotions aren’t felt ; what’s wanted is money, profit, and it’s wanted through the gambler’s only means: luck. Heads, if we’re playing heads; evens, if we’re playing evens… and not for the sake of guessing, but for the sake of winning. Luck, interest, that’s all. The intense excitement! That ‘s no incentive, even if the gambler thinks it is. It’s a punishment, a curse of the game, like remorse, the shame of losing afterward. Disabuse yourself; the game… is no joke. It’s like life, it’s like metaphysics… Rational life wants to penetrate the mystery to know its destiny, because it fears and wants to wait, to be happy… The gambler, the same. To be or not to be, that is the question… To come or not to come… that is the question. To be ready; that’s what the gambler does. And that’s what he does who doesn’t renounce the contingencies of reality. Either be a saint… or play… SYMPHONY OF TWO NOVELS[2] (HIS ONLY SON.–A MEDIAN SON). Chapter 29. Don Elías Cofiño, a native of Vigo, had made a decent fortune in America from the book trade. He had begun by founding political and literary journals, which he wrote with other enthusiasts of what they called the cultivation of the muses. Cofiño believed himself to be a poet and political writer until he was twenty-five; but several disappointments And a little hunger, along with many other hardships, made him sharpen his inner senses and get to know himself better. He convinced himself that in literature he would never be more than a discreet reader, an enthusiast of what was good, or what seemed to him to be, and an imitator of whatever excited him. Furthermore, he understood that one didn’t go to Buenos Aires to practice Espronceda or Pablo Luis Courier (who were his idols), and that his jokes and hidden ironies, almost copied from Courier and Figaro, weren’t well understood by those new people. In short, he stopped writing newspapers and discovered with great satisfaction his latent aptitude for commerce. He imported French, English, and Spanish books; he studied the tastes of the American public, flattered them at first, and later “tried to rectify and channel them”; he corresponded with the best publishing houses in London, Paris, and Madrid, and in a few years earned what no Spanish writer had ever earned. And determined to become rich, he continued his endeavor with determination, and didn’t stop until he was a millionaire. The death of his wife, a beautiful American, daughter of an English father and a Spaniard, a poet in both Spanish and English, took away from the good Cofiño his desire to continue working; he transferred his business and, with his millions and his only daughter, seven years old, returned to Europe, where he divided his time and money between Paris and Madrid. The education of Rita (as the girl was called, in memory of Don Elías’s deceased mother) was Cofiño’s main concern, and he wanted for his daughter all the graces of Nature and all the charms that the art of raising angels who will become young ladies can add. The loving father tried various educational systems; he was never satisfied, nor did he find anywhere, although he paid dearly for them, sufficient guarantees for the material and moral health of the idol he had fathered. If she spent a whole year in Madrid, she would eventually renounce her Madrid education, saying there were no teachers worthy of her daughter in the Spanish capital. She would uproot her house and move to Paris, where she seemed happier with her education; but after a few months, her patriotism began to protest, and she feared that Rita would become more French than Spanish, which would be like being less of a daughter of Cofiño. In these comings and goings, the years passed, and she spent a lot of money; and when she believed the education of her long-dressed angel was complete, she settled in the Spanish court, where they spent the winters. She divided the summer and part of the autumn between Vigo and a delightful villa that the wealthy bookseller had bought near Pontevedra on the banks of the poetic Lerez. Don Elías, if not all of his millions, still retained some of his millions, and if he lost some of his capital in a journalistic venture he embarked on, through a kind of palingenesis of vanity, he still came away, besides clutching his head, with about two hundred thousand duros intact and the determination not to get involved in bad business ventures, however flattering they might be for his self-respect. More powerful than he was was his fondness for literature, which was becoming irritated again with the approach of old age, obliged him to seek the company of writers, and not always for nothing. His first vanity was Rita; Slender, white, discreet even in her gait, elegant, moving with the apprehension of wings on her shoulders, looking at everything as if it were the blue sky, serious and sweet, with nothing more than a bit of bitter irony on the tip of her tongue for evil when it was ridiculous, and for ignorance when it fell to the man constantly obliged to know what he claimed to have by heart. But Cofiño’s second vanity, a little less strong, was the friendship of great writers. When he was still poor and edited newspapers, Don Elías had a more difficult taste; he was frightened by the idea of swallowing them like fists, of admiring the bad for the good; but now, well-being and age had made him more benevolent and partly spoiled his palate. He already considered great writers those who were no more than average, and even some who, after careful consideration, They would probably be bad. He, who didn’t need anyone, just to be a friend of notables, flattered the very people he usually fed; and he courted more than one of his parasites with a humility unworthy of his character, which was haughty in other matters. To the academics, he praised their dictionary and their purism, and the parsimony of their literary life, and with them he spoke of Greek lines, classical chastity, and models. With the revolutionary authors, he explained things differently, and spoke ill of bookworms and the “cold conventions of pseudo-classicism.” To the young, he conceded that outdated idols had to be replaced; to the old, that art would die with them. And poor Don Elías did this to be on everyone’s good side, to be everyone’s friend, and because experience had taught him that the food of this kind of god is gossip, and that on their altars, more than incense, the blood of a man of letters slaughtered alive on the altar is valued. The former bookseller could be forgiven for all this, because his goal was not base, nor even self-interested. But what was unforgivable was his insistence on marrying Rita off to an illustrious man of letters, or at least one on the way to becoming one. Rita deserved it for her beauty as a slender blonde, a blonde with a soft Andalusian hue , mixed with others of an angel and a serious woman; For her thorough, discreet, and timely education , for her candor, for her somewhat ashamed talent, and for the treasures of domestic virtue that her entire appearance betrayed, from the way she kissed a child to the way she folded a mantilla, she deserved, for all that, and for her healthy, though not fabulous, fortune, a suitor worthy of a dream, a large one, something like a minister, or a banker, or at least an honorable and handsome man. But Don Elías demanded from every possible suitor the status of a literary man, and one quite well known. Chapter 30. Augusto Rejoncillo, legitimate son of a legitimate marriage of Don Roque, a magistrate of the Supreme Court, and of Doña Olegaria Martín y Martín, deceased, became a doctor of both laws at the age of twenty, a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences at twenty-two, and a doctor of philosophy and letters at twenty-three. But from the moment he took his first tassel, he began to make a name for himself and to be secretary of everything, and to ask to speak at the Academy of Jurisprudence, and to say, “I understand, gentlemen,” and “I have it for myself.” And it wasn’t that he had it for himself, but rather that he wanted to have it, retain it, and save it for his old age, which is why he and his father were crazy about it; and as soon as a new political party was formed, Rejoncillo was one of the first, very clean, very handsome (because he was handsome, showy), in a tight-fitting frock coat, a shining hat, and gloves with thick , red stitching. There was no one like him for stirring up trouble or for electoral manipulation. He had made more tables than the most accredited cabinetmaker, and anyone who wanted to be president of something had only to ask him. He was a contributor to several newspapers, but he confessed that he hated the press; he preferred the platform. He went to the newsrooms on behalf of the weekly boss (that is, the leader of the party or the faction in which Augusto was active that week); he carried drums written by the same boss or by Rejoncillo, but always inspired by the boss. For this purpose, and to request seats at the Real or tickets to a dance, he would often appear at the newspaper offices, leaving early because he was annoyed by humble journalists, especially those who boasted of being literary figures. “He also wrote,” but not in print, on paper that cost many pesetas; he wrote petitions and other litigation speculations. He was an intern in the home of a famous lawyer, who was also the head of a group in Congress and the president of two boards of directors for railroad companies. As much as he despised literature, he respected and admired the Rejoncillo forum; not as an “ultimate” goal, as he said, but as preparation for politics and to help with expenses. He planned to become famous as a politician, and in this way gain clients as a lawyer; and once he was a lawyer with lawsuits, to take advantage of this to gain political standing. This was the usual course of action, and Rejoncillo never did anything but the usual course of action, which was the best course of action. Only he did it with great drive. Of course, Rejoncillo’s shoving was formidable; if, in order to occupy a position that suited him, he had to attack a poor fellow citizen perched on the edge of an abyss, for example, on the edge of the viaduct on Segovia Street, Rejoncillo didn’t hesitate for a moment, but he would elbow, or at least kick, the obstacle in the stomach, and remain as cool as Segismundo in Life is a Dream, saying to himself: “By God, it could have been!” So that his conscience wouldn’t bother him, he had, in due time, become skeptical of those who are dissembling, who are the most charming. A skeptic who held to his opinions, followed the trend, and defended everything stable, everything old, everything that “could become government, in short.” At a political-literary tea party, Augusto met Cofiño and his daughter. Rita had gone to such a party because the lady of the house was as much a politician as her husband, or more so, and had invited her friends. Cofiño had accepted the invitation because the politician was also a man of letters. There were toasts, and Rejoncillo, neat, uptight, serious, with shirt cuffs that gave off radiance and radiated rays of whiteness, spoke like an educated tooth puller, imitating the style and judgment of the master of the house. He was all the rage. His was the speech of the evening. How well he managed to treat arid political and administrative matters with picturesque imagery and other rhetorical devices, so as not to bore the ladies! He spoke of the warmth of home in order to insult the Minister of Finance; he demonstrated that the tax equivalent to that on salt conspired against that cornerstone of the social edifice called the family; and once within the family, he performed prodigies of eloquence. Why was France lost? Because of the dissolution of the family. Why was Spain preserved? Because of family life. He eulogized the mother, praised the grandmother, extolled the father and son, and even had pathetic outbursts in support of the faithful and long-standing servants. Well, all of that was to be destroyed in an hour (an hour, he said) by the Minister of Finance. In short, the only viable ministry would be the one formed by the master of the house. According to rumors, Rejoncillo was a lover of his wife. Augustus’s triumph was solemn. The next day the newspapers were all over him . The owner of the teahouse made him his secretary. And he, learning that a young woman, Rita, who had applauded him a lot that night, was rich, decided to take over that place and had himself presented at Cofiño’s house. Chapter 31. Antonio Reyes was a tall, thin, blond young man with glasses. He coughed a lot, but gracefully, with the kind of modesty of a chronically ill man tired of bothering the whole world. This way of coughing and his fine, sharp, and trimmed golden beard had caught Rita Cofiño’s attention at the social gathering of a certain literary marquis, where Don Elías took her from time to time. “The one with the cough,” she called him to herself. While a multitude of poets recited verses and the audience applauded, and people talked loudly, laughed, and shouted, amid the din, Rita noticed Reyes’s cough, and she felt more and more sympathy for the boy, and more and more desire to treat him for that cold that he seemed not to think about. She didn’t know why, but Cofiño’s daughter found in that dry coughing sound something familiar, something worthy of attention, something much more interesting than all those rhymed complaints with which the poets lamented between two candlesticks, as if the gathering could improve their lot and fix the wicked world. Agapito Milfuegos read chaotic poems, from which it emerged that the universe was a malicious joke invented by God to mortify him, the miserable Agapito. Restituto Mata complained in sonnets. statuesque images of a girlfriend from Tierra de Campos, who had left him for a farmer; Roque Sarga lamented the loss of faith in heroic ballads (not as heroic as those who listened to him), and Pepe Tudela sang of electricity, the discovery of the microscope, and radiant matter. Antonio Reyes coughed. Rita never spoke to Antonio at that gathering. A few months after she had noticed him, the interesting cough ceased . “And Reyes?” someone asked one night. “He’s gone to Paris,” they replied. “Who is this Reyes?” Rita asked her father when she returned home. “Antonio Reyes?” “An eccentric, a lazy bum, a young man who’s worth a lot, but who doesn’t want to work. I mean… he reads… he knows… he understands…; but nobody knows him. Now he’s gone to Paris to be a newspaper correspondent, a political correspondent… anything … to earn a few bucks…” I mean, not the chickpeas, because he won’t eat them there… It’s a shame; all right, all right…; he understands, he reads a lot, he knows all the modern stuff…; but he doesn’t work, he doesn’t write. He’s very proud. Besides, he’s sick; didn’t you hear him cough? A chronic catarrh… and tapeworm; on top of that, a tapeworm… I think he’s a gourmet… and that he eats a lot… He’s a skeptic, a thinking stomach. Rita didn’t see Reyes again, nor hear from him, for a long time. Chapter 32. “From four to five, don’t forget; on Friday…” said a woman’s voice, vibrant, sweetly imperious; and a short, slender hand, covered in a white glove, that rose up her arm, vigorously shook another long, slender hand. Regina Theil de Fajardo was saying goodbye to Antonio Reyes, reminding him of his promise to attend her Friday afternoon get-together. She got into her car, which disappeared into the shadows; And Reyes, who had ratified his promise by bowing his head and smiling, remained standing between the tram tracks in the mud. The smile remained on his face, but it had a different color; now it expressed a complacency somewhere between melancholy and malicious. The whistle of a tram approaching head-on, a fiery red eye in the middle of its black stain, forced Reyes out of his reverie. In two leaps, he was on the sidewalk and up Calle Alcalá toward the Suizo. It was a May night. It had rained all afternoon with lightning and thunder, and the storm said goodbye, murmuring in the distance, like a grumbling dog that reluctantly obeys the voice that commands silence. Enjoying Madrid took to the streets on foot or by car, eager to savor its ordinary nocturnal pleasures. After a long, boring afternoon spent between walls, one breathed in the fresh air with renewed delight , and with haste and childish eagerness one sought out the long -awaited and cherished spectacle, the café corner, which is almost a property, the social gathering, in short, the delightful and dear custom. Antonio Reyes entered the Suizo Nuevo and approached one of the tables closest to the street. “Everyone’s left,” said Don Elías Cofiño, who was waiting for him reading La Correspondencia, upon seeing him. “What took you so long? Do you know about Augusto? ” “Which Augusto?” asked Reyes, distractedly taking off a glove, still smiling at his thoughts. “Which Augusto could it be? Rejoncillo. ” “What’s the matter?” said Antonio with a sullen expression, like someone avoiding an inappropriate conversation. “They’ve finally made him undersecretary!” “Bah! ” “It’s a scandal! ” “Why?” –What do you mean, why? Because he doesn’t have enough merit… I don’t deny him talent… He’s an orator… He’s brave, bold… He knows how to live… Just mention his History of Parliamentarism, in which it turns out that the best orator in the world is the Marquis of Cenojiles, the husband of his beloved… Antonio, who had had a face of sour face since he heard the news that scandalized Cofiño, bit his lip and felt the blood run from his face to his chest. –Don’t talk… nonsense– (he muttered between anger and disdain).–No “They are worthy of your repeating those slanders of personae and envious people. Regina is incapable of… ” “Of disrespecting the Marquis? ” “No… I’m not saying that. Of loving Rejoncillo. She’s a woman of talent.” Don Elías shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t want to argue. He didn’t believe Regina was incapable of loving just anyone. He had known every lover! But that wasn’t the point. What Don Elías wanted to demonstrate was that Rejoncillo didn’t deserve to be Undersecretary of Overseas Territories, at least for now. ” “But do you think he has enough political stature to be Undersecretary?” Reyes answered with a gesture of indifference. He wanted to imply that he didn’t like the conversation, no matter how insignificant it was. “Has Celestino been here?” he asked, to talk about something else. “Poor thing! Yes. ” “Has he complained about the blow? ” “He’s a saint. He doesn’t say anything; but that devil Enjuto started the conversation; He asked him if they’d made him come on stage last night … and he blushed and said yes, through gritted teeth, as if he were ashamed of the audience’s applause. The truth is, Juanito’s article is unrelenting; it’s implacable, but no one can move it, he’s right; the drama is bad, dog, and deserves nothing but contempt and jokes… “Well, you applauded the opening night…” “I’ll tell you: the impression… well, the first impression… isn’t bad; and since Celestino is a friend, and the audience was enthusiastic…; but Reseco has dotted the i’s. Now that one has talent!” Reyes’s expression soured again. He shook a glove on the table and stood up. That night Don Elías was unbearable; he talked nothing but nonsense. “There was no worse beast than the literature aficionado.” Unable to help it, and after a yawn, Antonio said: “Dry… ps!… in the land of the blind.” In Paris, Dry would be just another of those spirited boys; here he is the terror of fools and Celestinos. Don Elías admired this Reseco, although he did not like him; but Reyes’s opinion, coming from Paris, of living among fashionable writers seemed very respectable to him. Yes; Antoñico, as he called him in front of people to indicate the confidence with which he treated him; Antoñico frequented the brasseries in Paris, where notable Parnassians, illustrious pseudonyms of the petite press and some of the major newspapers, would drink coffee, beer, hot chocolate, or absinthe ; Antoñico had been a Parisian correspondent for a widely circulated newspaper, and the disdainful tone with which he spoke in his letters about certain French and Spanish celebrities had startled Don Elías, gradually making him lose his regard for those mistreated celebrities whom he was scorning. Cofiño had always been somewhat soft-hearted when it came to opinions; but the years had turned him into wax put into the fire. Any book, play, speech, article, or whatever else excited him easily; but a contrary opinion expressed boldly, with frank contempt and a hint of mocking and disdainful superiority terrified him and made him see colossal talent in the one he censured in such a manner. He stopped admiring the book, play, speech, or whatever it was and submitted to the tyrant, the critic who had subverted his ideas and dedicated idolatrous worship to him, as long as there was no better bidder: another critic stronger, more mocking, more disillusioned, and more disdainful. Don Elías vaguely understood that Reyes disliked, at least that night, talking about Reseco and talking about Rejoncillo; and since the current events of the day were the one’s undersecretary’s office and the beating the other had given poor Celestino, and Don Elías rarely talked about anything except the literary news, or at least the political news of the cafés, theaters, athenaeums, and small squares, he thought it best to keep quiet and adjourn the meeting. And he stood up as well, asking: “Are you coming to Rivas? ” “To the premiere of Fernando? Death first. No, sir, I have things to do.” “I’m sorry. I… have to go… Fernandito ‘s zarzuelas bother me …; but I have to go…; it’s a commitment… Besides, I have to pick up Rita, who’s in the box of…” (Don Elías became a little upset, remembering what he had said before), in the Cenojiles box. “With Regina? ” “Yes, with the marchioness… So, you’re not coming?” Antonio hesitated. “No,” he said, after thinking it over for a long time; “no…; I have to do…; perhaps… there… at the end, at the hour of triumph. ” “Or of the whistling… ” “Bah! It will be a triumph… There are nothing but triumphs now! See you tomorrow or see you later…” Chapter 33. Reyes longed to be alone with his thoughts; to resume the pleasant visions that had accompanied him from Cibeles to the Suizo; but, strangely enough, as soon as Don Elías disappeared, he felt worse, less free, more upset. He remembered that when he was a child, having fun singing alone or reciting, if an importunate person interrupted him for a moment, he would return to his shouts and songs without pleasure, with displeasure and somewhat embarrassment, until he abandoned his games and burst into tears. He felt a similar impression now: that fool Don Elías had knocked him off his feet; he had made him tumble from pleasant illusions that flattered his vanity, his senses, and perhaps something of his heart, to the boulders of the daily chronicle; he had fallen headlong into Rejoncillo’s undersecretaryship and his alleged love affair with Cenojiles’s wife; and then, from one folly to another, he had bounced back onto Reseco’s article…; and… “that a fool could have so much influence on his thoughts!” Antonio set off down Sevilla Street toward Príncipe Street, determined to forget all that and return to the sweetest thought (yes, sweetest, even though, flirting with himself, he would like to deny it) of his almost certain, certain relationship with Regina Theil. But nothing; the flattering thoughts didn’t return; those personae threads of the novel he had already begun to weave, unwittingly, as he walked up Alcalá Street weren’t tied together. Instead of humorous and spicy adventures, the abstract image of Rejoncillo’s undersecretary’s office appeared before his eyes and the wet, gleaming flagstones in places; it was vague, confused, sometimes in the form of half-erased block letters, just as one might read in La Correspondencia; other times in the form of a luxurious, somewhat worn armchair, it was hard to tell if it was satin, leather , or what structure… and maybe, bang! A small rejoncillo dressed in a tailcoat, with a large, gleaming breastplate, leaping from one to another through the offices of La Correspondencia until he finally arrived at his own undersecretary’s office; or else greeting many gentlemen in a room that was just like the lobby of the Principal, despite being a room. “He wanted to tell himself he was daydreaming, and that the dream, despite his vigilant will, insisted on being stupid, crazy!” And Reyes stopped before the gleam of the spoons next to the Meneses window. As if obeying a suggestion, he stared helplessly at those white reflections. There was no reason to take a step forward or back, and he stood motionless before the light. He didn’t know where to go: now it occurred to him to remember that he had no plan for that night: a quarter of an hour ago he would have sworn he wouldn’t have enough time for everything he had to do before going to bed, for all the fun he was going to have…, and it turned out there was no such thing; that he had no plan, that he hadn’t thought of anything, that he had nowhere to spend time, to forget those silly thoughts that were stuck in his head. Why wasn’t he happy now? Why had that optimism, which almost like a pleasant buzzing in the ears, or rather like a symphony, had accompanied him up Alcalá Street, now turned into mortal spleen? “Let’s be clear: am I envious of Rejoncillo?” And Antonio smiled so much that any passerby might have thought he was making fun of Meneses’s silver. “I envy Rejoncillo!” The thought seemed so ridiculous, his pride so strong that, as if all those passions that had him rooted to the spot had become an electric shock, Antonio automatically turned around, started walking toward Carrera de San Jerónimo, walked down it, crossed the Puerta del Sol, turned up Calle de la Montera, and entered the Ateneo. He found himself, without knowing how, in those sad, dark, smoky corridors: the heat there seemed like a heavy paste floating in the air, swallowing and sticking to the stomach. Without knowing how either, without realizing that his will intervened in his movements, he reached the newspaper room, went to the end of the table, and sat down, determined to look at nothing but foreign papers, at least colonial ones, which certainly wouldn’t mention Rejoncillo’s undersecretaryship. It seemed unbelievable to him to find himself scanning the columns of a collection of Navy Diaries. Then he picked up Le Journal de Petersburg…, which was nearby. There , in a correspondence from Paris, they were discussing the latest poems by a French writer he knew. This consideration was a light tonic. Reyes went over to the Spanish newspapers; from the middle of the table, blurred copies of La Correspondencia could be seen here and there ; they had something of a stinking oil pastel, fresh from the oven. He couldn’t help himself; he did what everyone else present did: he picked up La Correspondencia. On the second page, in the middle of the third column, was the news, more or less as he had seen it on the damp, shining flagstones of Sevilla Street. There were Augusto Rejoncillo and his undersecretary; it was, indeed, the Undersecretary of Overseas. The appointment was a fact; no protest, no; a fact: the decree had been signed. “What a country!” Reyes began to think, without realizing it; he, who from very early on had boasted of absolutely despising the country and not remembering it at all. “What a country!” “Everything is lost; but this is too much! This is nauseating. Who wants to be anything anymore? A deputy, a portfolio… what would all that mean to self-respect? Nothing… worse, an insult… How could it flatter me to be a minister… when Rejoncillo had previously been an undersecretary? There’s no need to seek anything from this angle anymore; politics is no longer a career for a man like me; it’s a humiliation, a filthy backstreet; we must take seriously this stoic resolution not to want to be a deputy or a minister, or anything like that, out of dignity, out of decorum.” And in Reyes’s mind, the fleeting and brilliant idea of becoming the leader of a new party exploded, which he called in French, inwardly, the Zutista party, the party of “no room for deliberation, the party of the annulment of politics, the anarchist party of the aristocracy of talent and distinction.” Yes, politics had to be killed, turned into a trade for artisans, given to shoemakers, to those who could neither read nor write: a politician was a rude man, with a soul of wood, limited in ambitions and tastes, an unpleasant being. Zutismo or Chusismo, abstention, had to be proclaimed; people of taste, talent, a noble and delicate spirit had no need to govern or be governed. “We will go to Congress to close it and throw the key into a well,” he planned to say in the party program. Of course, in Reyes’s case, these attempts at grand resolutions were flashes of enthusiasm, or rather fireworks to which he attached no importance. He let his imagination build those palaces of smoke as it pleased, and then remained impassive, determined not to interfere in anything. However, the idea of the Zutista party was beautiful, although unrealizable. Above all, it had served to elevate him, in his own eyes, “above those miserable undersecretaries and Rejoncillos.” “No, he didn’t envy that buffoon; of this he was… sure.” But thinking about it, being irritated by the foolishness of the ministry that made such an appointment, He was already unworthy of Antonio Reyes; the man who carried in his head the plan for that novel, which he never finished writing because he despised the public who would read it. In the newspaper room, there began a certain movement of chairs and a murmur of low conversations. The members were going to the public lecture hall. The shouts of a janitor sounded in the distance, saying: “Moral and Political Sciences Section! Moral and Political Sciences Section!…” Chapter 34. Cervantes’s plaster head, covered with dust, yawned on a wooden column, immersed in shadow; And Reyes’s eyes, fixed on her, wanted to wrest from her the secret of her infinite boredom with that life of perpetual academic discussion, where the puny offspring of a century ruined at the height of its years spent what little bad blood they had warming their heads, ranting and yelling over a thousand useless words and distinctions that the good Cervantes had never heard of in his lifetime. Above all, the section on moral and political sciences (Reyes thought what the pale and dirty bust must be thinking of) was something to turn one’s stomach to a statue that didn’t even have one. It was bad to hear those gentlemen squabble over whether to deny Christ’s divinity or grant it to him; it was also bad to put up with them when they talked about the ideals of art, of which he, Cervantes, had never known anything. But everything was less detestable than the political and sociological discussions, where everything in Madrid that was stupid and enlightened inanity dared to ask for the floor and shout its nonsense, sometimes retrograde, sometimes advanced like a major pioneer. Those associates, Reyes thought, were divided into right and left, as if their native cretinism didn’t unite them all in one great party, the party of invisible goiter, of intellectual nihilism. Yes, they were all one, and they believed they weren’t; they were all moles, determined to see clearly in the most arduous questions of the world, the practical questions of common and united life, which cannot be posed with any probability of success until hundreds and hundreds of auxiliary and preparatory sciences have been formed, developed, and perfected. Meanwhile, and until truly wise men, from a very distant future, very distant, perhaps even never, took up this subject, it was ventilated with formulas of historical or philosophical vain by all those anemic souls, even more despicable than practical, empirical politicians; because the latter, in the end, were pursued by a real interest, by a passion of their own, certain, ambition, however base. The wretch who, in our times of intellectual chaos, dedicates himself to abstract politics, to the social sciences, seemed to Reyes the genuine representative of human stupidity, irremediable, in which he believed as in a dogma. And if Antonio still despised those who passed for wise men in these matters, how would he feel before those good gentlemen and beardless young men, who there for the thousandth time repeated the most common theories of one school or another! Years ago, before he left for Paris, the social question was discussed in the section of moral and political sciences as a whole, and they debated whether there would be one or not. The gentlemen opposite, those on the right (Reyes sat on the left, near a balcony hidden in the darkness), ended by asserting that there would always be poor people among you, and with another five or six texts from the Gospel they considered the question resolved. Those on the left, on the occasion of these quotations, denied the divinity of Jesus Christ; and to the great scandal of some members who were very fond of order and of attending all the sessions, they passed from one section to another improperly; but it didn’t matter, it was already known that it was always going to happen there, and the president, expert and tolerant, did not veto the quotations of a Krausist with demagogic tendencies, who “with all due respect to the Nazarene,” treated Christianity as a schoolmaster’s jacket, denying that He, Fernando Chispas, owed her anything (he owed it to the patroness), because what was good about Christianity he owed to Platonic philosophy, to the wise men of Egypt, Persia, and finally, everywhere, but not to his own efforts. From one to another, the entire dogma, all morality, and all discipline were discussed. A gentleman who spoke three or four times a year in all the sections, would rise up to reproach the religion of Jesus, as he had been doing for the last eight years, to reproach it for placing thieves on altars and forgiving great criminals for a single sign of contrition, being at the bottom. And he would quote The Devotion of the Cross, scandalized by the lax morality of Calderón and the Church. Then, on the right, a Catholic Hegelian emerged, almost always a state councilor, a great master of the philosophical blur. “He stood up,” he said, “to channel the debate, to elevate it to the pure realm of ideas.” And he attacked Immanuel Kant (as he called him), Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, the four philosophers everyone cited at this time, expounding their respective doctrines in a few words. The Krausists from all walks of life countered, filled with a philosophical-theological anointing, like a trained bulldog: and with studied preterition they cited the entire world, except for Krause, the teacher, finding the cause of so many errors that, in effect, mar the history of human thought, in the lack of method, and above all in each person’s failure to begin or to reason from the first day it occurred to him to reason, from the self, not as a mere thought, but in all that is in reality… All this was years ago, before he, Reyes, left for Paris. Now, remembering such skirmishes, and contemplating the present, he felt a certain sadness, which was produced by the romantic perspective of memories. In those famous discussions , in which Christ paid for everything, there was at least a certain freedom of the imagination; at times those follies were moral ideals at heart, not entirely foreign to the natural suggestions of practical morality; in short, he recognized in them a certain goodness and a certain poetry, which perhaps was due to the fact that it was not possible for that to return; Perhaps they had no more poetry than that which memory sees in all that is dead. Now positivism was the king of discussions. Orators from both the right and the left stuck to the facts, clinging to them like limpets to rocks. This wasn’t philosophy; it was an article from Paris, the Question of the Fifteen, or the graphic riddle called “Where is the Shepherdess?” Gentlemen who had never seen a corpse spoke of anatomy and physiology, and anyone might think they spent their lives in the amphitheater breaking bones, knee-deep in human entrails, warm and bleeding. There was a theoretical carnage there. The same words of physiological technicality came and went a thousand times, with almost no one understanding them; the individual was the protoplasm, the family the cell, and society a tissue… a tissue of nonsense. Antonio, deeply satisfied because he understood all that was ridiculous in that bacchanal of free-thinking foolishness, got up from his blue armchair and went out into the corridors, leaving a quack who had learned from Letourneau’s textbooks that incoherent mass of problematic and almost always insignificant data speechless . “Fools, all fools!” he thought, and a wave of rosy water bathed his spirit. He no longer remembered Rejoncillo or Reseco; the sensation of an almost tangible superiority filled his soul; yes, yes, it was evident; those men who remained there shouting or listening with serious attention, some of whom had a reputation for talent, were far inferior to him, incapable of seeing the comical aspect of such disputes, the hereditary foolishness that loomed in them. Such a passion for insubstantial, false ideas, with no possible application, unrelated to the serious, dignified, and noble world of mysterious reality. Arguments were also taking place in the corridors. There were some young men who, without Reyes even suspecting it, despised the disputes in the section. They also talked about philosophy, but their discussion had nothing to do with the one inside: they had ended up on the question of whether or not there was metaphysics, based on the latest novel published in France. Antonio approached the group and wasn’t pleased until he noticed some originality and force in the argument. A young man, pale, with clear, very round, dreamy, or at least distracted, blue eyes , spoke carelessly, without connecting his sentences, but with good sense and with contained enthusiasm. “Who doubts, gentlemen, that, indeed, positivism must go… I’m not saying it will be in this century, eh?” But it has to go little by little… let’s say, modifying itself, changing, to end up as a new metaphysics?… “That tendency already appears in some writers,” said another, small, blond, lively, with glasses, who gesticulated a lot, and to whom the person, the distracted one, listened with affectionate attention. The little one continued talking about ultra-modern German writers who were reviewing the philosophy of Kant, and that of Fichte, and that of Hegel to try to find in it new bases for a metaphysics that had to be constructed at all costs. Then Reyes smiled with concealed contempt, satisfied, and also separated himself from that group. At last, he had found what he wanted. ” Those were also nonsensical; they believed in metaphysical resurrections; bah! Fools like the others, like the café positivists, like the poor devils in there, although they weren’t so foolish.” He left the Athenaeum. The sky had cleared; The last storm clouds were gathering, fleeing northward; the stars shone as if freshly washed; a sensual poetry descended from the dark infinity. Reyes compared the Athenaeum to the starry sky, and the Athenaeum lost . It must have been forbidden to discuss the great problems of universal life , especially when one was an idiot. The stars, which surely knew more about these sublime things than men, remained eternally silent; they remained silent and shone. Reyes, deep down in his soul, felt worthy of being a star. He walked down Calle de la Montera. The clock on the Principal Street struck ten. A sad woman approached Antonio wrapped in a gray shawl, one hand wrapped in it and pressed to her mouth. He looked at her without seeing her, and didn’t hear what she said; but an association of ideas, of which he himself hadn’t been aware, made him suddenly remember his adventure that had begun. Regina Theil was in Rivas. Oh! Love, courtship! A gentle tremor shook his body. A cab was just a few steps away . The coachman was asleep; he woke him by hitting him on the shoulder with his cane, mounted, and said as he closed the door: “Run to Rivas!” Chapter 35. The shabby, old, and dirty sedan chair galloped up the slope of Alcalá Street, the sad, thin, white horse with fine hair. Antonio, as soon as the clatter of the rickety wheels shook his body, felt a reaction of the spirit that made him leap from the almost mystical delight of vanity flattered by its solitary contemplation to a nameless tenderness that sought nourishment in very distant and vague memories. It was a voluptuousness somewhere between sweet and bitter to force himself to be sad, melancholic at least, in those moments when satisfied pride shouted in his ears that the world was beautiful, life dramatic, he great, his father’s son. The crash of glass skipping over wood, the continuous, dull noise of wheels, sounded like a nurse’s song to her; drops of the recent storm, still sliding zigzag over the glass, took on fantastic reflections from the streetlights, and with capricious refractions, showed objects in absurd shapes. A pungent, indefinable, but very familiar smell ( he called it the smell of a rental car to himself) brought back a multitude of old memories; and he suddenly found himself sitting on the edge of another car like that one, at the age of five, between the knees of a thin man, who was his father, his father gently pressed his small body with the bones of his thin, nervous legs. How far away all that was! How different was the world that he saw in the dreams of a nascent conscience, that precocious child, from the real world, the world of now! The father’s knees were a hard pillow, but to the child they seemed very soft, smooth, the pillow of that blond head, a little too large, populated by ghosts before its time, always with a tendency to lean, to lean, to dream. Reyes attributed supreme interest to the memories of his childhood; he preserved them with a vigorous memory and with a plastic precision that delighted him; He often replayed them like the songs of a beloved poem. There was no other like that poetry of his earliest visions; from the age of six, his inner life had begun to amaze him; his extraordinary precocity had been a secret from the world; he was a taciturn child, who looked at external things without hardly seeing them. Reality, as it had existed for as long as he could remember, had seemed despicable to him; he could only be of value by transforming it, seeing other things in it; activity was the worst of reality; it was tiresome, insubstantial; results that pleased everyone repulsed him; wanting to do something well was a petty, pointless ambition of others . From all this, a constant injustice in the world toward him had emerged very early on. No one appreciated his worth; no one knew him; only his father divined him, out of love. At school, where he had set foot very rarely, others won prizes with resounding displays of childish wisdom; he would go to school, the few days he did, crying; It was impossible for him to remember the lessons he’d learned by heart; he knew them better than the others, he was sure he understood them, and the teacher always frowned, because Antonio stuttered and misspoke. At family gatherings, where impromptu children’s joke contests were held, the Reyes boy was always overshadowed by his little cousins, who jumped better, recited scenes from Zorrilla and García Gutiérrez, recited fables, and had amusing comebacks. He remembered as if they were from that instant, the cold praise, the icy kisses with which friends and relatives caressed him to please his father, who smiled sadly and always came after the others to warm his soul with a strong, tight kiss and a gentle squeeze between his trembling, bony knees. His father understood that the others found nothing funny about his son. Both of them quickly forgot , and the entire family devoted themselves to singing the praises of Alberto the devil, the witty Justo, and Sebastián the Wise, who at seven years old heralded certain glories for the Valcárcel family. Emma Valcárcel was his mother’s name. The image of that thin, sick woman, of ruined beauty, whom he had never seen in the splendor of her healthy and joyful youth, filled Antonio’s mind. This memory was a positive pain; it lacked the sad, convoluted voluptuousness of the others. “My mother!” Reyes said aloud, and he rested his head on the cold, cracked gutta-percha that lined the miserable carriage. He shrugged his shoulders, closed his eyes, and felt tears in them. The noise of the glass and wheels, louder now, resonated inside his skull; it was no longer like a nurse’s song; It took on a strange, hellish choir rhythm , similar to that of the demons in El Roberto. Thank you for joining us for this reading of ‘Doctor Sutilis’ by Leopoldo Alas. We hope you enjoyed these stories so full of depth and reflection. Don’t forget to leave your comments, subscribe to the channel, and activate the bell to continue exploring more. Classic works. We look forward to seeing you at our next literary gathering, where we’ll continue to uncover the secrets of literature.
🔴 ¡Bienvenidos a Ahora de Cuentos! Hoy les traemos una obra única de Leopoldo Alas, conocido como Clarín, con su fascinante colección de relatos titulada ‘Doctor Sutilis (Cuentos)’. A través de estos relatos, Alas nos ofrece una crítica profunda a la sociedad de su época, mientras explora temas como la moralidad, la ciencia y los dilemas existenciales. 🌍📖
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Leopoldo Alas, más conocido por su seudónimo **Clarín**, nos presenta una narrativa llena de matices, donde cada historia ofrece una mirada profunda a la naturaleza humana, envolviendo al lector en dilemas y reflexiones que perduran en el tiempo. A través de sus relatos, como ‘Doctor Sutilis’, nos invita a cuestionar los valores sociales y personales, a la vez que nos lleva a un mundo donde lo imposible y lo extraordinario coexisten con lo cotidiano.
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00:00:33 Chapter 1.
00:07:45 Chapter 2.
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00:13:19 Chapter 4.
00:15:36 Chapter 5.
00:18:29 Chapter 6.
00:21:47 Chapter 7.
00:39:36 Chapter 8.
00:55:15 Chapter 9.
00:58:40 Chapter 10.
01:01:09 Chapter 11.
01:24:08 Chapter 12.
01:32:26 Chapter 13.
01:45:35 Chapter 14.
01:48:07 Chapter 15.
01:52:24 Chapter 16.
02:29:18 Chapter 17.
02:32:48 Chapter 18.
02:35:57 Chapter 19.
02:40:12 Chapter 20.
02:41:34 Chapter 21.
02:58:23 Chapter 22.
02:58:53 Chapter 23.
02:59:29 Chapter 24.
03:35:47 Chapter 25.
03:37:32 Chapter 26.
03:47:09 Chapter 27.
03:57:01 Chapter 28.
07:07:25 Chapter 29.
07:14:34 Chapter 30.
07:20:13 Chapter 31.
07:23:12 Chapter 32.
07:31:36 Chapter 33.
07:40:47 Chapter 34.
07:53:02 Chapter 35.
4件のコメント
¡Dale like 👍, comparte 📤 y suscríbete 🔔!
Mencionaste encontrar propósito en los pequeños momentos de la vida, y eso realmente ha cambiado cómo veo mis días. He estado tan obsesionado con alcanzar grandes logros que he pasado por alto la belleza de las experiencias cotidianas. Esto se siente como una invitación a desacelerar y vivir de verdad.
Tus palabras sobre la felicidad como una elección diaria me llegaron profundamente. He pasado tanto tiempo esperando que las cosas mejoren por sí solas, pero ahora veo que la alegría es algo que puedo cultivar dentro de mí, incluso en momentos difíciles. Es un cambio de perspectiva poderoso que estoy ansioso por adoptar.
La idea de que el dolor nos moldea pero no nos define es tan poderosa. He dejado que las heridas del pasado dicten cómo me veo a mí mismo, pero tu mensaje me dio esperanza de que puedo superarlas y crear un futuro más brillante. Es una perspectiva que llevaré conmigo.