Felipe Alfau - Chromos

“What are you standing there for? What do you want? What are you staring at?” But she did not holler at them as she always did when they went into her heredad. She talked as if she were choking. So she cried again and told them: “Go away and leave me in peace.” But the kids did not go away as they were no longer afraid and they wanted to see a woman who had had the worst thing happen to her. So they stood there for a while until they saw Begoña coming along.

Begoña did not notice the kids, because he never did, but when he passed his wife he stopped watching her and she covered her face again and began to sob louder. He said nothing though, and only shrugged his wide shoulders. Then he took out a key from his pocket and dropped it on the ground at her feet, so when she saw this through her fingers, she cried even louder yet, but Begoña went on his way walking in that manner of his that the kids tried to imitate because it looked like a Cabo de Gastadores on parade and he went on to his house that was past the other end of the park. After a while, la Euscarra picked up the key and followed her husband.

The kids, having nothing more to do there, decided to go back to the tavern of the Gorriti but when they arrived, almost everybody had gone. Chapelo was still there eating percebes and joking with el Gorriti who did not answer because he was very busy sewing the wet leather cover on a ball and he had to be careful because this was a difficult job that must be done right and nobody else could make balls like el Gorriti.

La Nescacha was putting things in order and then she finished because she said that she was going home and therefore the kids went along with her because, although they had never found out where she lived, it was somewhere else and they still had time before supper for the walk. So the kids walked one on each side of la Nescacha and she had her hands on their shoulders. After a while she saw the other kid was carrying the knife and she said: “What have you there?”

And he said: “That is the knife la Euscarra brought to kill you with, but it belongs to me now.”

“And to me also,” added little Garcia, so the other kid said: “All right.”

La Nescacha laughed, which sounded very pleasant and clear, everything being so quiet all around: “You give me that knife,” she said, “and maybe I will have a collection soon with all these wives who want to kill me and they only talk behind my back and then do nothing because women are like that.” She took the knife from the kid: “You chavales must not have a knife. When you grow up mavbe you will have to fight and then you must do it like men, like me. You don’t understand these things now, which are important things, but you will understand them when you are older,” and she kept the knife.

But the kids understood and besides they did not mind because this was vacation time and this made them very happy and now they never had to go to school and they could play forever and the summertime went on and on. They understood better than the grown-ups because they were still that age when they could even understand eternity and they did not mind anyway because la Nescacha was their friend and she had so much courage and she also gave them anis biscuits with wine and balls to play with. She was a fine girl, la Nescacha.

After that, she said good night and “until we meet again,” which would be the next day and they also said good night and went home for supper. It was dark already.

We were walking home this night; Garcia and I, after seeing a performance of the Spanish Theater and we were commenting about it.

Now, this Spanish Theater in New York, at least at the time of which I speak, was a living and dying monument to the tenacity of Spanish traditions. It had had countless starts under different managements and usuallv performed once a week on Saturdays or Sundays. At present it was run by a very complex character, a Señor Olózaga who was also rumored to own El Telescopio Café, although I have never succeeded in tracking down these rumors.

Señor Olózaga was very vague in his dealings and spoke little of himself or his past. Everything about him was hearsay. I even doubt that he was Spanish, but one doubts so many things. It was known that he had managed bullfighters in Spain and a couple of Spanish prizefighters in this country who had made out rather well for themselves and for him. He seemed to have a finger in every Spanish activity which might yield a dollar, but this last venture of the Spanish Theater appeared to be doomed to financial failure. Its artistic failure had been achieved since its inception. His wife, the Señora Olózaga, better known to the Spanish colony as Tia Mariquita, had a part in every play and it was said that he had taken over the Spanish Theater more as a means to indulge her weakness for the theater. She fancied herself quite the great actress, this Tia Mariquita, and she maintained to have played in Spain on the professional stage, before large audiences, who went delirious with applause and acclaim at her performances and every night turned the stage into a florist shop. She also affirmed that she had performed before the king and queen of Spain by royal command and before tumultuous South American audiences and she reeled off names of cities, like Madrid, Barcelona and Buenos Aires, all scenes of her triumphs, and also the names of famous actors and actresses, such as Morano, Valverde, Vico, Lamadrid and Guerrero and Mendosa, all of whom had considered her their dearest friend and greatest trouper ever. She did not keep her dates and places straight, though.

When I had first seen this Tia Mariquita in New York, some time before this, she still wore her hair dyed a bright red color and wore plenty of thick makeup and flamboyant clothes. All in all and for some reason, she had managed to look like a cross between a masquerader and a cockatoo. Now, however, she had finally let her hair go a dissolutory shade of white but the theater gave her a pretext for the heavy makeup which she applied like a mud pack and she had resigned herself to character parts which of course she claimed were the hardest to play and called for the truly fine histrionic points. It was not a matter of posturing prettily on the stage like an ingenue. This was real art.

The performance we had seen that night was really bad. I don’t know why every time this theater presented a play it had to do it in that obviously stagey, artificial and stilted fashion of the end of the century. Perhaps it is a gesture of defiance and intended to assert and illustrate the changelessness of Spanish things. Also they played always the same old plays over and over again, which were even then quite old-fashioned and besides everyone knew by memory: early comedies and dramas by the Quintero brothers, Estremera, Vita Laza and others and the most daringly modern would be something by Benavente or Muñoz Seca, but they immediately made up for this by going classical with something of Calderón or Lope de Vega in all of which they were dismally inadequate. The audiences were also, with few exceptions, of the type that lives in the past, or as we say in Spanish, likes to stew in its own juice. Garcia was somewhat of this type. Strong inclination to relive the past and he is the one who had got the tickets and had persuaded me to accompany him.

The performance which had been given with impunity that night and which we had witnessed in impotent silence, had been one of Don Juan Tenorio . As every educated person knows, this is a great drama that has had many versions in as many languages and this being addressed to educated persons, I need not go into a description of it, but many scholars whose opinions carry a great deal of weight have classified it as one of the fundamental and basic dramas of our civilization. One can say without qualification that we saw that night the worst version of it and the contrast between the drama and its performance was something that would have tasked the equipment of the most eloquent assailant of human misdemeanor. But what tops all is that the Tia Mariquita, in order to build a better character part for herself, had changed whole sections of the play and contributed her own. She had carried her shameless irresponsibility and colossal gall to the point of collaborating in Don Juan . This was the limit.