Felipe Alfau - Locos - A Comedy of Gestures

‘Yes, Señor Chinelato, it was fortunate that you came today. Tomorrow my fever is due at this time and I would have been deprived of this pleasure.”

The Black Mandarin seemed distracted. Either he was listening to the music or thinking of the times when other men more important than the one sitting before him had come to him shaking with fever and hardly able to walk, because The Black Mandarin had never been known to postpone an interview in order to accommodate a man.

Don Esteban was carrying on the conversation:

“Yes, this periodic fever is very annoying. That is my daughter playing.”

The Black Mandarin shut his fan as if closing a cadenza of the melody.

“Señor Bejarano, for some time I have tried to discuss with you a matter which you have most persistently put off.” His Spanish was quite perfect. There was not in his pronunciation a single l instead of an r . It rather sounded like that of a Latin American. “Today I have come to get a definite answer. I have come to ask you for the hand of your daughter.”

Don Esteban missed two strokes with his fan and then went on without answering. The Black Mandarin followed the fan with his oblique, frozen eyes. Don Esteban counted five strokes and then said:

“Señor Chinelato, I appreciate the honor and I feel sure that my daughter will appreciate it, too.” There was a slight mockery in the voice of Don Esteban. The music had ceased in the other room. “Señor Chinelato, you do not understand.”

The Black Mandarin did not choose to understand.

“Of course, Señor Bejarano, there must always be some objections in a question of this nature. after all, it is the fashion.” The Black Mandarin was cynical, perhaps slightly insulting. Don Esteban continued to fan himself placidly.

“Señor Chinelato, I do not doubt that you are aware of that overrated intuition in women which is supposed to make up for all the other spiritual qualities they lack. Well, do not think for a moment that I am taking the liberty of talking for myself. My daughter told me this morning that in the eventuality of your honoring us with a call and a proposal, she authorized me to refuse in her name. Otherwise, Señor Chinelato, I would have referred you to her.”

From the other room now came the notes of the Rondeau Capriccioso of Mendelssohn.[8] The scintillating phrases chased each other in a gay, humorous manner.

The Black Mandarin straightened up:

“But what are the objections, Señor Bejarano? Undoubtedly your daughter has been a little hasty. I am an influential man, I have position. To speak very frankly and without flattering myself, I can say that I am a very desirable catch. Decidedly your daughter has not thought of my influence and position. ”

“Señor Chinelato, it is unnecessary to prolong this painful situation further. I thank you in my name and in that of my daughter, and do believe that I regret to be compelled to refuse the first thing you have asked of me since I have had the privilege of knowing you.”

The Black Mandarin was beginning to lose his patience. There were reasons why a man like himself should not expect this refusal and should act so persistently. He said:

“But I am willing to wait. I cannot hope to be accepted by your daughter immediately, although I do not see why I shouldn’t. But let us grant that some people need time to make up their minds. All I ask is to be allowed to call on your daughter, to talk to her, to see her. and hope like a man in love and a gentleman.”

“It is useless, Señor Chinelato. you do not understand. you do not seem to want to understand. You see, Señor Chinelato? My daughter is white.”

Although The Black Mandarin was sitting with his back to a shaded window and his features were in darkness, Don Esteban saw his eyes sparkle. There was a long silence during which The Black Mandarin looked at his hands and his powerful chest swelled. A wind of savagery brushed his mind in forgotten visions which came back with irresistible clearness. In his mind he saw the front of a house illuminated by the red glow of a bonfire and a white man fighting Chinamen, and then he heard clearly the screams of a woman and he felt a lash on his bare back and saw himself at the oar in a convict ship. His chest sank and swelled again and his eyes, now frozen, descended once more upon his hands.

Don Esteban continued:

“I am infinitely sorry to mention that fact but. ”

The Black Mandarin made a motion with his closed fan in the air a conventional gesture of forgiveness to his interlocutor which his expression denied. In the other room the music sounded again. After a short pause the theme of the Rondeau had reappeared rolling on the keyboard as the laughing echo of a comic phrase alternating with ample chords, too persuasive, too impertinent. The Black Mandarin rose.

“I expected this much from a man of your type, but I am surprised that you should fail to realize the convenience of my proposal to both your daughter and yourself. You are just a fool clogged with old-fashioned ideas and prejudices.”

Don Esteban put his pay-pay down and also rose.

“Señor Chinelato, I believe I have exceeded myself in politeness. Now I must beg you to spare me the unpleasantness of your presence.”

The Black Mandarin picked up his hat from the settee.

“I have also exceeded myself in patience if not in politeness, Señor Bejarano, and let me tell you that I am well aware of your situation, a situation which you have refused to better though holding a position which enabled you to do so, and that now with a stupid racial prejudice you are turning out a man in whose veins circulates the blood of the highest dynasties, a man who could have saved you from utter ruin and made your daughter happy.”

“Make my daughter happy? Señor Chinelato! I may be a fool but not to that degree. Even if my daughter were to accept you, even if the racial prejudice did not exist, all of which is going too far in a hypothesis, I would refuse, sir, I would refuse. Don’t I, as well as everybody else, know your past history? I could ask you: what became of your first wife, and your second wife? Señor Chinelato, you are mad if you even dream that I could thrust my only daughter into the hands of a man like you. Undoubtedly you are not in your right senses.”

The mocking phrases of the Rondeau had broadened now into a deep melody only to return abruptly to their jesting play.

“No, I am not. I have not been since the first day I saw your daughter. Yes, I have been mad, I have thought of nothing else, and no matter what a man may have been, is he to be denied the right to be in love? I have come here full of sincerity and the best sentiments. I have come to lay my fortune, my honor, my name, everything I have at the feet of your daughter, and I meet with insolent mockery, with an insulting attitude and even my race is thrown in my face as a stigma. ” His hand tightened and the fan fell to the floor, broken like a crushed, withered flower.

“Señor Chinelato, I repeat that you do not understand, that you refuse to understand. ”

From the other room came stridently a false note and the music was interrupted. Then the merry phrase was resumed with difficulty, like a badly told joke, more offensive in its awkwardness. The Black Mandarin said:

“I understand, sir; fortunately, I have regained my senses. This is not the first time that you have displeased me. I have been entirely too lenient with you but, by Christ! I will run you out of this country.”

Don Esteban Bejarano y Ulloa was inimitable. He bowed slightly and said in a suave manner:

“I am very sorry that I cannot oblige you even in that. I have already presented my resignation. My health is impaired by this climate and I am returning to Spain with my family. Good afternoon, Señor Chinelato.”