Felipe Alfau - Chromos

Fernando Sandoval, who was quite lively, began a conversation immediately: “Fine performance tonight. How did you like it?”

Paco, who had not paid much attention to the stage, answered absently:

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” but Fernando Sandoval did not notice the answer and went on talking enthusiastically.

Paco was thinking of the connection this young man might have with the beautiful woman and also of how he had not been noticed looking at her. Of course a man in the company of a woman like that wouldn’t notice anything else. But apparently Sandoval had followed the performance very closely by the detailed account he was giving of it. He sang, recited and jumped:

“Don’t you think the brothers Mesejo were inimitable in the ‘Jota de los Ratas’?” He sang:

“Soy el rata primero

y yo el segundo

y yo el tercero. ”

Paco thought that knowing a person like this, it did not matter whether one missed a whole performance. He brought a beautiful woman to distract people from the stage and then gave them a detailed account of the play. Fernando Sandoval was displaying an extraordinary memory for music he had heard for the first time:

“Let me see. let me see, how’s it go. oh yes!” He gave a jump that startled Paco from his thoughts:

“Cuando nos echa mano la policia

estamos seguritos que es para un dia. ”

Truly remarkable.

For a few moments Sandoval succeeded in turning Paco’s thoughts from their course. The now well-known “Jota de los Ratas” born that night came vividly to his mind in contrast to the waltz “Caballero de Gracia,” which he discovered he had subconsciously been singing in his mind. He had liked those two things in the performance and the Jota had particularly appealed to him. The gay, mocking music had all the vim and spark of Spanish roguery. It moved at a quick pace, it glorified the Ratas, the pickpockets of Madrid who guide all laws and amuse the public. In that dance of the pickpockets lived the ever-seditious Spanish race. It was broad, fast, accurate, fearless, bold, indifferent, but underneath it concealed a torrent of melancholy, of cynical bitterness. It brought back the tradition of Gines de Pasamonte, scoffing Don Quixote’s ideals; of Rinconete and Cortadillo aging prematurely in the poisoned shadow of the Patio de Monipodio; of the Lazarillo de Tormes, born with a wisdom which defies life and outwits age and experience. Listening to the “Jota de los Ratas,” pompous and sad, brilliant, shady, straightforward and crooked, one could see the magnificent gallery of Spanish rogues parade in all its glory, pass by in all its wretchedness and fade away in all its sinful earnestness into that ever-thirsty, inevitable maelstrom of forgetfulness that keeps on swallowing every typical and worthwhile manifestation of Spanish life. Gone is Gines de Pasamonte, the man who most brutally disappointed the sublime madman in life, to whom the unique hidalgo owes his conclusion that “to do a good turn to a villain is like casting water into the sea.” Gone are Rinconete and Cortadillo and with them the famous Patio, that worthy school of crookery, primitive laboratory of crime in which the masterful Monipodio presided with all the prestige and dignity of a man aged in depravity who has dedicated his life to the advancement of evil. Gone is the Lazarillo de Tormes, who led the blind through existence and therefore learned to rely on his own sight, who would have made old men lower their eyes for shame that he could see the rotten core of their souls, when after all his own soul was still pure. Gone are countless others, only a few pickpockets remain astray, but their spirit is the same in quality, their attitude the same. Listening to the “Jota de los Ratas” one felt that it was a last spark from a magnificent, extinguished cast, and it awakened something in the public, in this ever-seditious Spanish public who always is ready to aid the outlaw, to side with the Ratas, as a tacit reproach against the invasion of efficient morality, as a subconscious tribute to the great rogues who were.

The carriage bounced and Paco’s thoughts settled down once more in the present. He thought the young man quite likable despite his overflowing stupidity. With such communicativeness, he soon would find out who the beautiful lady was.

They arrived at La Gran Peña and soon were surrounded by mutual friends.

“Hello, Serrano.”

“Hello, boys.”

“Hello, Sandoval. I didn’t know you knew Serrano already.”

“Who doesn’t know Serrano?”

“Be careful, he is a real truhán.”

“And what do you think of Sandoval, our new member?”

“Fine lad, my boys, fine lad. Excellent memory for music.”

“Did you see La Gran Via ?”

“Yes, marvelous! A great success. Sandoval will tell you all about it.”

“He should. I understand that he has helped to back it. Must know it by memory from rehearsals.”

They sat at a gaming table and the noise subsided. Paco was distracted during the game but he played heavily through force of habit. Fernando Sandoval imitated him. After a while Sandoval began to lose considerably and kept it up boastfully. He was drinking too and soon he and Paco were on familiar terms. When they left the table, Fernando, who had gambled beyond what he carried, handed Serrano a note:

“Never had such bad luck before. You played splendidly.”

“You know the saying: He who is unfortunate in play is fortunate in love. There was a beautiful dark lady with you at the theater.”

“Oh! That was my sister Julieta. The other one was my wife.” Fernando laughed: “Which one did you like most?”

Paco was still holding the note in his hand and he began to smile: “That is a rather embarrassing question.” The smile spread all over his face as he slowly tore up the piece of paper. He ended in a frank outburst of laughter and the small pieces rained from his hands to the floor. He was literally caressing Fernando with his eyes and his hand found his shoulder and pressed it in a friendly manner.

Sandoval was too drunk to be offended. He took the whole thing as only exaggerated graciousness from his new friend, who undoubtedly did not want to take his money the first time they had met. They left the place arm in arm. When they parted, Paco Serrano offered to meet Fernando Sandoval the next day for an aperitif.

When Julieta Sandoval was sixteen years old, she got a special maid for her personal use, a plumpish lively blonde called Trini, not much older than her mistress. She was the daughter of a washerwoman who had worked long for the Sandoval family.

This girl seemed to give an undue importance to the relations between men and women, an importance which nowadays would seem mild, but which at that time was excessive. She apparently thought of nothing else and considered it part of her duties to her mistress to act as a matchmaker and to encourage every young admirer whose florid missives she often brought in great secrecy.

Her duties as a maid were not sufficient to keep her very busy and consequently she had a great deal of time to herself which she employed reading strange things, standing on the balcony, or carrying on conversations on forbidden subjects with her mistress.

At this point Garcia’s story took a not entirely unexpected turn for the pornographic and I halted him. I don’t want to project myself too much into this and am not averse to the grand classical ribaldry of a Boccaccio or a Quevedo, but the uncalled-for and irrelevant pornography that mars like grease spots much of our literature at the turn of the century does not appear engaging and in Spain we have coined another word for it.

I told Garcia this and it precipitated an altercation. I said that this was not even pornography but what we call in Spain sicalipsis, which is not only unnecessary but reprehensible and not only discouraged but condemned and prosecuted by the postal and other authorities which maintain law and order and that I also objected to it on the grounds of literary integrity, because it was not of the essence in the story and I found its connection, if any, entirely too farfetched: “You have thrown that in only to shock the reader.”