Felipe Alfau - Locos - A Comedy of Gestures

“The other day I was explaining this to Lunarito, the girl who takes care of my room. I told her that upon awaking in the mornings, one could hear something like a distant roar, increasing as a wave that breaks in the sea. I told her that one could hear spring coming and that I have always heard it, that it comes from afar, not only in time but in space. I don’t think Lunarito understood me.

“In the mornings one can hear it more clearly, I believe, because one’s mind is just awake and more receptive. One’s senses are still half asleep and, therefore, more ready to fall under the influence of this element, so great and powerful.

“The balcony of my room is open and I can clearly hear all the noises of the city. But all these things reflect the approaching season and spring vibrates in all of them. There is a strange quality in this season which no other season has. It announces itself beforehand, we feel it in the distance. Luminous, warm days, sprouting in the middle of the winter, bringing us consolation, cheer and hope, like heralds of spring.

“And always at such a time I feel the same vagabond and willful spirit sweeping my conscience and senses, an irresistible desire to throw everything to the devil and seek adventure through the fields, throughout the world. To unite myself to the avalanche of spring and drift with it. Oh, Lord! Without worries of the morrow or unpleasant memories of the past, except perhaps those that are necessary and a bit sad, in order to lend happiness that diaphanous touch of melancholy which makes it so refined, so perfect, so poetical and so humane. And to be able to jump and roll all over the grass and find that there is an abundance of food and good drink, and all of that which I love. God! If for once things were as one wishes them to be!

“I would work almost with pleasure during the balance of the year if I could abandon myself completely to spring. This would compensate for everything. Of course, it would be much better not to work at all and do nothing but what we like, all year around, but, well. well, this season turns my head inside out. It drives me insane with pleasure. My natural dislike for all that which is holy and disagreeable rises to exorbitant proportions. I hear spring coming in the distance, I feel it, I scent it, and I am lost. I execrate everything that smacks of duty, of labor, anything that may bind me. To break all chains and bridles and lunge at full speed, ahead of the earth itself, in order to reach that place of dreams and realities, where spring is eternal.!

“But this not being possible, I must content myself with what I have and all these feelings find expression in eruptions like this letter. I must give them some outlet. But at least all of us who have feelings and an aesthetic attitude, somewhat refined; all of us who can hear spring coming in the distance, who are the chosen ones, must dedicate to it a thought every year, some kind of prayer like a tribute of thanks. We must congratulate each other upon its arrival, for notwithstanding the large crop of trouble we reap from life, we can always count on those moments of happiness, which, even if we cannot fully enjoy them, due to circumstances, at least cause our hearts to jump. And this is a great compensation, on this we can always count and it never fails. Bad and disagreeable things pass and fade, but spring always comes.

“I am writing you this because I consider it a duty to share with understanding beings we appreciate and love those things which, due to our subtle intuition, we have discovered to be fountains of joy. To try to share with others would be a disappointment, but you understand me. ”

I confess that I did not understand Garcia then, but I think I am beginning to understand now.

III

During the time I was away from Madrid, I did not have news of Garcia regularly. I received a letter from him now and then which always showed a marked decline in his mental faculties. Then I learned that he had given up his position. Some time passed and I returned to Madrid.

I found Garcia living alone in a little house with a garden in the Barrio de Salamanca.

I remember that Lunarito, his maid, opened the door and said that she was glad to see me. I asked after my friend and she told me that Señor Garcia was sick, very sick. That everybody feared for his sanity, that his mind was wandering and he was beginning to have difficulty in recognizing people.

I went upstairs and found Garcia sitting by a balcony, looking out. He seemed to recognize me immediately. He rose and came toward me with outstretched arms and embraced me fondly.

Then I noticed that he had grown fearfully old since I last saw him. He was bent. He wore his hair long as usual, but now it was completely white. Garcia had always walked without resolution as one who has lost his way, but now this characteristic was more noticeable. He almost dragged his feet and seemed to reel. And at that time Garcia could not have been more than thirty years old.

However, he spoke sensibly and with calm. He told me that a relative of his had died and left him some money and this house where he was now.

“Yes,” he said, “I am happy here. I have a garden and flowers.” He waved at the garden. “Just the kind of place I had always wanted. Peaceful like a mirror reflecting all the seasons of the year. Yes, I am happy.”

And I knew that he was not happy.

“Yes, I am happy,” he repeated as if he had read my thoughts. “You should see spring here. ”

In the quietness of that moment his last sentence went through me like a chill. Here was his mania again, here was the thing that had wrapped itself about his existence. Here was spring.

And then his mind began to wander. He spoke incoherently, in a disconnected manner. I suggested that we go down in the garden, and we went down. This was summer. There were beautiful flower beds and bushes, and the whole garden had an air of abandon which made it densely poetic.

Across the street I discovered a man watering the flowers of his garden. He saw us and waved. I asked Garcia who the gentleman was and Garcia shook his head and sighed:

“The poor fellow. He is a doctor; Dr. José de los Rios.” Garcia had assumed a strange expression. “He is. ” Garcia made a drilling motion with his finger on his temple. “You know? One of the strangest cases I have seen.”

At first I believed Garcia and did not know what to say. He was speaking with great seriousness.

“Do you know? Sometimes I have watched him from behind the curtains. He comes out to his garden and performs strange things. I saw him one day talk to the flowers and then he began to dance and all the flowers beat time for him.”

Now I knew and tried to soothe Garcia, but he was strong on the subject of his neighbor.

“He seems to have an uncanny power upon nature. He has a little cane with which he performs all his tricks and once I saw him plant the cane in the ground and the cane grew and flourished like a tree.”

I tried to distract Garcia, to change the conversation, but he insisted with that eagerness peculiar to such cases:

“Yes. Another day I saw him at El Retiro. He did not see me and I followed him at a distance. And do you know what he did? He had that little cane of his and he tapped the trees there with it. Then he produced a stethoscope and applied it to a tree as if he were listening to its heart, and then he would shake his head and approach another tree and repeat the same operation. I overtook him and arrived in time to hear him say:

“ ‘The spring is not coming this year. I cannot hear it.’

“Well, that lack of faith made me indignant. I addressed him and he seemed to be in great confusion. And then I told him that I always heard the spring without the aid of such devices, that I could hear spring in everything, yes, in everything. that he could never hear it through that apparatus and that it took a poet and not a doctor to sense the approaching of spring. I told him that he was insane to doubt that it was coming, that other things may fail, but spring. always. comes. ”