Felipe Alfau - Chromos

I said “so long” as a formality and left Garcia there, staring into space and looking into time.

Vacation time is the time to do as one likes but the two kids did not know what they liked to do. Maybe they wanted to do nothing but they were too young to know that and so they wandered aimlessly through the quiet of the village and Vizcaitia was very quiet that afternoon. Little Garcia, the one with the soulful eyes, took out a top and spun it. Then he picked it up as it died out. The other kid produced a sling and lazily slung a pebble against a distant tree. The pebble banked and struck the tree but he was already looking in another direction and pocketing the sling. They walked on through the afternoon toward the village park. The two kids had all the time in the world to play and they never had to go back to school and therefore they were happy to walk like that.

When they entered the park, everything was cool and tranquil under the oak and chestnut trees with their trunks submerged in pools of shadow with floating patches of sunlight. The kids heard on the other side of the park the irregular crack of the pelota against the frontón. Little Garcia borrowed the sling from the other kid, slung another pebble high and far over the treetops and he watched it go and saw it shine like a gem in the sun against the blue sky. They approached the handball court and continued to hear the crack of leather-covered ball against granite wall and this made them walk faster.

The two kids never tired of the handball game. Besides there were always a few ball players drinking in the tavern of the Gorriti who also owned the frontón and it was good to listen to their talk about the game as the kids admired the players very much. Perhaps they would be allowed to play ball at one end of the frontón against the side wall. If the Nescacha said so, they would be allowed to play. They liked the Nescacha and she was their friend. She waited on the customers of the Gorriti and she always gave the two kids wine and anis biscuits to dip and she also gave them balls to play. Once she even had the Gorriti himself make a ball exactly like the big regulation ones, but smaller for the two kids. She was nice, la Nescacha.

When they arrived at the tavern, there were several men in there. The Gorriti was sitting in his chair against the wall, but he was always there anyway. He was fat, with a big stomach and his face was purple red. He sat there all day with a very small boina on top of his head and a porrón of chacolí next to him on the floor and he had to lean over laboriously to reach it. The kids liked the way he drank out of the porrón. He held it high and the red stream dropped straight into his open mouth and into his big storehouse and his throat did not move and he did not even say “Ahhh!” like other people when they finish drinking and did not have to wipe his mouth because the chacolí never touched his lips. He sat like that all day and he looked like a wineskin propped up in the chair against the wall, and he was a regular wineskin, this Gorriti. He did not speak much but when he spoke it sounded very final, except sometimes when it sounded as if he did not speak to anyone in particular. Sometimes one could see him sewing the leather cover on a ball. During the right season the porrón held cizarra instead of chacolí.

There was the Nescacha sitting at a table with Begoña. She had very red hair and the upper half of her face and arms was laden with freckles and she had vivid green eyes, but her mouth was fresh and she showed strong white teeth when she smiled or laughed and this she did often. She was very young still, probably fifteen or sixteen years only, but she was very womanly, with fine broad hips and shoulders and full round breasts. Begoña was a professional ball player and a great one too, everybody said. The kids admired Begoña and his very easy and graceful style of playing. They tried to imitate him when they played ball holding their arm poised after striking but when little Garcia did it, he looked as if he were endeavoring to express some difficult idea and when the other kid did it, he looked as if he were thumbing his nose and the two kids were as different as that, but they never could get the gestures of Begoña just right. He intrigued the kids, this Begoña. He drank all the time like the Gorriti, but he drank out of a regular bottle. He had massive shoulders and a thick neck. He looked congested and had steel gray eyes that were always bloodshot and also a black mustache with ends turned up. He looked like a good bull of lidia.

What made Begoña more important than the others was that he had been in the army and had fought in Morocco for which he could show decorations and he had also traveled to America, to Cuba, to play the handball there, but now he had come to roost in his native Vizcaitia and he picked up some extra money here and there in the neighboring towns, particularly in Bilbao, playing ball. He never spoke about himself, however, and all the women liked him so well that once the kids heard the Gorriti speak to him like this:

“One of these days some husband will kill you. Maybe your wife will kill you.”

Begoña shrugged his wide shoulders: “And what can one do? That is life.”

“Yes, so it is,” and the Gorriti said no more and he went back to his porrón of cizarra because this was during the season of the cizarra.

Gorriti meant that when Begoña returned from Cuba he married la Euscarra who owned the house and the heredad behind the frontón and she had many gold and silver coins in a chest and had given the key to Begoña after their marriage so he did not have to play the pelota if he did not feel like it, although he still played now and then, and la Euscarra was a very jealous woman who was always quarreling with Begoña and making trouble for him and she had so violent a temper that when they quarreled she tried to strike him, but he held her and said in his gruff voice:

“Sometimes I wish you were a man. You wouldn’t do this then.”

This was strange because Begoña looked cruel and if he was standing around when the kids played ball and the ball bounced his way, he always struck it hard against the wall and sent it far and then laughed when the kids had to chase it across the park and sometimes he hit it way over the wall of the frontón and onto his wife’s heredad and the kids had to go up the stairs on the side of the park behind the public school building and walk all the way around and past the old tree of Vizcaitia on Santa Clara, to the other side of the court, and when they looked for the ball in the heredad, la Euscarra hollered at them. But Begoña was a great ball player and he had traveled and fought in Morocco and everybody liked and respected him and the kids were proud that he even hit their ball.

Lanky Chapelo was also in the tavern leaning against a wall and talking across the room to the Gorriti. His boina was on the back of his head and a lock of blond hair hung down in front and his mustache was also blond and hung but turned gently at the ends, not sharp like Begoña’s. He was the clown of the handball court and a very uneven player, but when he had one of his good days, no one could match him, everybody said. He was gay and easygoing, this Chapelo, with his fine blue eyes. He was talking to el Gorriti in Spanish and el Gorriti answered little and in Vascuence. They all could speak Vascuence and el Gorriti could also speak Spanish, but they always spoke Spanish and el Gorriti was the only one around who spoke Vascuence most of the time.

The kids only knew by sight the other three men sitting at the table next to the window.

La Nescacha looked up at the kids and said “hello,” being their close friend, and the kids said “hello,” but none of the men noticed them except Chapelo and he smiled their way and they smiled back. Chapelo sometimes played ball with them and acted like a clown, falling down or striking the ball under his leg or backhand like. Then el Gorriti called la Nescacha.