Felipe Alfau: Locos: A Comedy of Gestures

Again Fulano turned to me questioningly. I said:

“Yes, Fulano, I promise to do what Dr. de los Rios says.”

Fulano gripped our hands firmly. Upon his features there was the determination born from despair.

“Good-by, Fulano.”

“Good-by.”

That night Fulano was again upon the bridge of Alcántara. He had come to look for an identity in the same place where he had gone to lose one. He looked down on the dark waters of the Tajo. Yes, there it was, his only salvation.

And once more he saw Toledo covering its hill like a petrified forest of centuries. It was absurd. With all useful justification of its existence gone, the city sat there like a dead emperor upon his wrecked throne, yet greater in his downfall than in his glory. There lay the corpse of a city draped upon a forgotten hill, history written in every deep furrow of its broken countenance, its limbs hanging down the banks to be buried under the waters of a relentless river.

Fulano looked down and then knew fate and greatness; he hesitated no more; with resolution he jumped.

And in order to fulfill my promise to that unfortunate and most unimportant of all men, I have written this story. Whether I have succeeded in making a character or even a symbol out of him, or whether he will enjoy this poor revival, I do not know. I have done my best.

The story I intend to write is a story which I have had in mind for some time. However, the rebellious qualities of my characters have prevented me from writing it. It seems that while I frame my characters and their actions in my mind, I have them quite well in hand, but it suffices to set a character on paper to lose control of him immediately. He goes off on his own track, evades me and does what he pleases with himself, leaving me absolutely helpless.

I have, moreover, been particularly averse to writing this story because I intend to use in it Gaston Bejarano, my principal character, who is especially rebellious and always wants to do things of his own accord. He is quite a bad influence among the crowd and on more than one occasion has completely demoralized the cast.

However, I am now at the house of my friend Don Laureano Baez. He is not at home and I am waiting for his arrival. Not having anything to amuse me in the meanwhile, I shall set aside all scruples and begin my story:

Gaston Bejarano was returning home one night, when he met a girl.

The doorbell has rung. I believe it is my friend Don Laureano. If you will excuse me I shall proceed with my tale some other time.

Now that my author has set me on paper and given me a body and a start, I shall proceed with the story and tell it in my own words. Now that I am free from his attention I am able to do as I please. He thinks that by forgetting about me I shall cease to exist, but I love reality too much and I intend to continue to move and think even after my author has shifted his attention from me.

Well, he is quite right. I was returning home one night and was walking along upper Alcala Street by El Retiro. I don’t remember the exact time, but I know that it was quite late and that it was raining.

I walked rather fast and began to overtake a group that walked in front of me. When I was nearer I noticed that two men were following at a short distance a woman, who in the dim light appeared to be young. I regulated my pace by theirs and watched.

The two men approached the girl (for by now I was sure it was a girl). There was a short exchange of words between them which I could not hear well, and the two men crossed the street and continued to walk parallel to her.

For reasons which are tedious to explain, I felt an urgent desire to make the acquaintance of the girl, but I wanted no witness to my actions. It was, after all, my first escape into reality and I felt a bit shy. Therefore I followed her at a respectable distance waiting for the moment when the two inopportune individuals should disappear.

But I am growing impatient of waiting and as the author is not present, I shall take the liberty of upsetting the laws of logic and simply eliminate these two men.

Immediately after their disappearance, I quickened my step and began to overtake the girl. It was now raining quite heavily and she walked swiftly alongside the iron fence of El Retiro without minding the puddles, turning her head now and then to look at me. With the night and rain her figure was blurred and there was something of a vision in it, beckoning and luring, and I was afraid.

I waved at her and she stopped.

It was strange. She stood at the end of her own shadow against the far diffused light of the corner lamp post and there was something ominous in that.

For a moment I doubted whether she stopped to face an enemy or to welcome a companion. I hesitated. Her shadow pointed the way to her and I walked over its dark lane.

“Where are you going at this time, in this weather?”

What she said was not as important as the way she said it. I do not think that I can describe it. I was so surprised by her voice. She was a sweet type with innocent eyes, but there was depravity in her mouth and her voice was coarse and low, her inflection cynical.

“I am going to the corner of Alcala and Velazquez, I must meet a man to get some money from him.”

I don’t remember saying anything at this moment. She went on:

“I am late now and he probably will not be there. I will go and look around the corner anyway.”

We were two blocks from Velazquez Street now. We walked.

And mind you. It was raining all this time, but I did not seem to notice it. Everything had changed inside and outside of me. I felt no longer a character. I felt real, fearfully real, like any other human being who walks up Alcala Street on a rainy night and meets a real girl. I spoke, too, in a plain and ineloquent manner as if I truly were a human being:

“Who are those two men who spoke to you?”

“I don’t know them. They just wanted to have a good time and I told them I was busy.”

“Oh, are you busy?” I stopped. She also stopped.

“I told you I was going to meet a man at Velazquez.” She smiled in a way that started us walking again.

“You seem rather young to be out at this time meeting a man to get money from him.”

“Young? How old do you think I am?”

“Seventeen or eighteen, I suppose. ” I was sincere.

“You silly, only the other day I passed my twenty-third birthday.”

She had no desire to appear young and for once I almost doubted her reality. I liked the way she said silly .

During all this, I noticed two things:

First: I was terribly aware of the fact that her voice was coarse and low and no one will ever imagine how I liked it.

Second: Our two shadows were shrinking and gaining on us and, as we passed the light they slipped under our feet and advanced ahead, blending into one, growing larger, immense.

Half a block from Velazquez Street:

“I think you had better go on and meet your friend. If he sees you arriving with someone he might get suspicious. I will wait for you here. If he is not there come back to me.”

She agreed with such indifference that I felt that the rain, the world and I were about the same thing so far as she was concerned. For a moment I realized that in comparison with her strong reality, I had become once more a character and everything about was just the setting.

When I was alone I thought:

Why had I spoken to this girl? Was it because of the habits acquired as a character, which had left in me a strong tendency to speculate on girls who go out late at night? If she came back it was because she had not found the man. That is, she would come back without money. Now as the character I am and as you will discover by the things my author will tell you about me, I should not be interested in her, in such an eventuality. If she found the man, she would probably get the money. But in that case she would not come back. Undoubtedly she belonged, like me, to the profession. I thought of her coarse voice. But again; she was a real being and I was only a character. Had I stolen into her world of reality, or had she entered into my world of fancy? Perhaps we were only between these two worlds, and were walking together along the fascinating frontier. I knew one thing: that our destinies were bound together and that either she would have to drag me definitely into her realm or I take her into mine. Who would be the stronger: she as a real being or I as a character?