Felipe Alfau: Locos: A Comedy of Gestures

“Naturally, when the sky is blue, the sun is usually bright.”

“El Retiro is the same as ever. You remember it. The same flower beds, the same shadowy paths. You remember El Retiro. ”

Garcia signaled me to keep quiet:

“I can feel everything, I can sense it all better than you or anyone can tell me. Stop. The day itself is talking to me. I can feel the sun, I can smell the flowers and hear the wind in the trees. I can feel everything. The day talks to the blind and it is talking to me now. Be silent, let me listen. “

And I was silent and Garcia bent his head. I saw the sun upon his broken frame, on his white head. His face was all attention, he did not move and he was listening, listening.

Suddenly he stood up and advanced. He staggered forth, his head up, the sun upon his sightless eyes, his arms stretched in front as if drawn by his eternal vision.

I followed him and remembered the first day I saw him walk in that manner, as if he could see nothing but his own inner dream. All those actions of the past pointed at this sad realization, at this day when he could see no more the thing he had loved so, the day, the light, the spring.

Garcia leaned on a big tree and felt me near.

“It is this. it is this. ”

“I understand, Garcia.”

We were silent a while. Then he said:

“Excuse me,” and nothing more.

VI

One morning in March, Lunarito came to my house. She told me that her master was very sick and wanted to see me.

When I arrived I found Garcia in bed. He was extremely thin, he looked almost like a corpse. His voice sounded weak.

“Bad friend,” he said, “I could have died and you would not have known it. I have been very sick all winter and you never came to see me.”

I protested that my occupation had kept me away and that I did not know that he was sick.

“Yes. I have been very sick and I am still more sick now. I don’t know what is the matter with me. Perhaps something wrong with the heart. The doctor says that as long as the cold weather lasts I will be all right, but then. the warm weather will soon come. you know it always comes. and I fear it.”

I remained a while with Garcia, telling him that he would recover and trying to cheer him up, but when I left him, there was hopelessness in his face. I promised to return next week.

I returned on the twenty-first of March and found Garcia looking, if possible, still worse. He was lying on the pillows and his blind eyes were fixed on a balcony that faced him. The two dogs were standing at the side of the bed as if ready to defend their master.

I sat down by him and held one of his hands; it was quite cold. Then he spoke:

“It is that fear of the inevitable. Spring is almost here now, and I know that I will die. The doctor said so, I forced it out of Lunarito.

To know that I must die, that I cannot stop that season, that it is advancing, that there is no hope. Spring and my life have become strangely blended. Spring has been to me like a lover. I have bound my destiny to it, it has brought me happiness and sorrow, and now it brings me death. To think that the season which brings life to all will come to kill me, to know that it is eternal, that it will go on forever and I shall not see it again. I loved it so much! And now I fear it as I did in my youth. At least if I were sure that when I die I shall be freed from the fatality of a thing that always comes, that never fails. If I were sure of eternal rest undisturbed by that distant humming of the approaching spring. ”

The two dogs stood motionless at the sides of the bed like the statues of a sepulcher, one of them almost touching my sleeve. Garcia was speaking excitedly. I tried to soothe him. He went on:

“But perhaps the dead do not rest, perhaps they wake up when a sea of dirt breaks through the torn boards of their wrecked coffin. Perhaps under the ground they will be more intimately blended with life and will feel its reactions more directly. They will have strange hallucinations, they will have vague reminiscences of their past life. They will dream that they are alive, they will dream about the sun of luminous days. Under the ground, among the roots of trees, they will feel more than ever. they will hear the fatal roar, they will hear the dreaded roar. they will hear the increasing roar of the approaching spring. “

It was quite dark now and the two animals were restless, they lifted their heads, pointed their ears and sniffed.

“Perhaps it will come from afar, like a seismic tremor, like an undulation shaking them in more plastic and intense dreams. They will hear spring coming at full gallop and then they will shudder, because they are going to witness for the first time and clearer than ever, with all its secrets, with all its charms and naked, the eternal scene of eternal life. ”

Garcia was like a man under a strong hallucination. He sat up in the bed and his sightless eyes seemed to have found at last the vision which had drawn him all his life, a vision clear and dazzling in his blindness.

I should have tried to soothe him, but he held me spellbound with the power of his strange suggestion. I sat back by him with a mixture of fear and great sadness as he went on, almost in a paroxysm:

“Yes. in their shadows. they will see it then like a picture full of light and color upon a dark mirror. within the emptiness of their skull. in that dark chamber it will be reflected. and then they will see spring riding upon a white unbridled horse, with a helmet of sun melting into thick tresses over a great green robe and an infinite force of creation. They will see life, that comes to wake and drag them forth, and they will hope. One being will die and then another, but that is not the triumph of death. life goes on. Spring comes. Spring always comes.!”

The two dogs seemed to be no longer able to restrain themselves and began to howl intermittently. Garcia continued:

“In their emotion they will rise. Upon feeling the germ of life they will rise to find themselves blind, to find themselves dumb, to find themselves deaf, to find themselves dead. They will revive within four boards with their senses clogged with dirt. and then the last thing will be dead in them. then hope will be dead. They will find themselves coming back to life in a repugnant and horrible fashion, in an impersonal way. The dream of life has passed through them for the last time, leaving them a helpless heap of worms.

“And they will see spring receding and will find it again in a tree, or in a flower, or in something else. Everything is alike, all is eternal. With the same unconscious optimism life goes on, spring comes. Spring always comes. Spring. always. comes!”

Garcia sank back exhausted in his pillows. The whole room was now submerged in deep shadows and there were two dogs, two great big dogs, howling in the darkness.

VII

I returned one week after. I felt that I was calling on Garcia for the last time. Lunarito opened the door for me and then closed it carefully behind. The house was silent. At the door of my friend’s chamber I met Dr. de los Rios coming out.

“He is in very bad shape,” he said. “He may die any moment now. I don’t think he will even live until noontime.” His calm voice was more veiled than usual. I made no answer.

“Yes, there is no hope now. a whole degeneration of the system.” His clear eyes looked at me searchingly. “You know his mania, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know it.”

Dr. de los Rios looked distractedly through me, beyond me.

“Well. ” he said. He shook my hand and departed.

I found Garcia in a pitiful condition. He was breathing with difficulty. His head was thrown back on the pillows and his blind eyes were sunken.