Felipe Alfau - Chromos

His landlady was fond of the beach and swimming, which is characteristic of most buoyant people, and he accompanied her sometimes, but only once did he venture into the water. No true Madrileño can swim, coming from a city in whose only river, the Manzanares, one could dive with no danger of drowning but with the certainty of breaking his skull against solid ground, or, this failing, choke to death from the dust he would raise. Garcia was no exception. That time he stepped into the water gingerly, exploringly, prolonging the agony, taking hold of the rope and submerging with a slow deliberation that was literally painstaking. A few moments after, he was back on the sand shivering, blue, frozen to the marrow and consuming quantities of hot coffee and whiskey. He could not thaw out for the rest of the day and, as these humiliations repeated on him, he would exclaim:

“Damn it again! I am going away. I swear I won’t stay another day.”

But he stayed. The next day was bright and warm and all was forgiven.

And so we were in Central Park enjoying the sun and loitering in this weather. We tried sitting on the grass but it was still damp. Since he had come to stay at my place and for a week before that, the weather had been foul and only the day before there had been an unpleasant experience.

We were walking home in the rain but it was not cold and I for one did not mind it. Also the rain has its beautiful aspects. It reduces the field of vision, lending intimacy to things, and all scenes appear imprisoned in it, as in a cage of crystal bars. People skipping along under umbrellas assume the precariousness of tightrope dancers balanced on all sides with the doubtful help of these fragile sparkling rods. A light rain is about the most discreet and charming of nature’s phenomena; it intrudes on tiptoe.

But then we saw the dead dog. The cheerful cage became a dark prison and the rain chilly and lugubrious, like the one that should accompany a funeral procession. The dog lay by the curb, stiff, swollen, his teeth bared with the final pain and horror, holding the last tragic moment, the last memory of life a terror riveted there to disappear only with him.

This upset Garcia beyond description and when we reached home, he sat by the window looking out at the rain and saying nothing.

We gave up the damp grass and contented ourselves with a bench and our conversation. Then a squirrel appeared in front of us and stood attentive as if listening to our talk. It wore a collar with a bell, and as we had never seen a squirrel in the park with a collar, Garcia surmised that it must be somebody’s pet that had escaped. Studying the squirrel I agreed because it looked very scrawny with very little fur on its tail and a hungry, forlorn look, showing that in captivity it had forgotten how to get along in freedom. We regretted having nothing to give it and commented about it. The squirrel continued to look at us, its head to one side and then to the other, almost as if it understood our conversation. Then it started to run away, only to turn and freeze into that ready alertness, and continued to watch us. One could swear that it understood Spanish. In the end, it seemed to make up its mind about us and darted away.

The spasmodic agility of the squirrel had made us restless and we decided to walk to Riverside Drive. Coming down one of the side streets and out into the drive is a classical experience and illustration of the greatness of nature dwarfing the greatness of a metropolis, and even if one has seen but few big cities, the view creates the conviction that not many of them have anything comparable to the grandiose dimensions, the proud high banks of this majestic river whose dignity and magnificence proceed deliberately, undisturbed even by the grimaces and yelpings of industrialism, whose unkempt and wounded limbs it deigns to lick with noble humility.

Garcia’s arm swept from north to south and back in silent tribute, and then he spoke and dwelt on Henry Hudson and his feelings in a great moment of exploration and imagined him at the bow of his ship improvising an ode to the beauty of nature, in the style of Garcilaso or Camoëns, to the accompaniment of La Africana ’s “Oh Paradiso!”

After he had delivered himself of this we began to watch the people passing by: the old moving slowly, analytical in their appreciation, absorbing as much of the sun’s rays as possible, and the young fast, uncritical and only aware of growing exuberance, whistling some popular tune or discussing their immediate interests; nature, happiness and generalities taken for granted.

Seeing Garcia in good spirits, I suggested a reconciliation with his landlady, but while swearing that he would never return there to resume such a debasing and humiliating existence, he observed that on a fine day like this, there was no point in going home yet and that she would in all certainty be at the beach and would not return until late. We both shuddered at the thought of anyone throwing cold water on this banquet of heat. Then he admitted that he might go home that night for a change of clothes, but to resume that relationship, never. They were too different. She liked swimming, to feel the water. He liked to look at it and he gestured toward the river.

I knew that he was happy, and relenting and to make him happier because one can never let well enough alone and in a moment of recklessness possibly induced by too much sun and panorama, I asked him about his writings. It was not long before I found myself regretting my abandon.

Without a word, and with the quiet determination of a driver who sees the green light, Garcia extracted a thick bunch of papers from his inexhaustible pocket, selected part of it, and put the rest back. Then he spoke and referred to the first part of his moving picture story inspired by the item in the newspaper we had seen together and which had culminated in the fellow Ramos finding himself in New York by some remarkable sleight of hand. He said he had that written out in full but would spare me as it had been considerably elaborated that time during our walk, and besides he was not satisfied with the section describing the feelings of the fellow when he saw the miracle happen and found himself transported from one continent to another. He said he wanted to lend the passage more power because an experience like that was not to be taken lightly and as a matter of fact, that he must lend it credence and realism as it would be so difficult to believe. Here he was again sticking to his guns and insisting that the thing had really happened. Like many persons with an overactive imagination, to put it diplomatically, Garcia suspected a confabulation of incredulity among all his listeners whose tacit incredulity became patent by virtue of being told something by him. He was creating a problem for himself that admitted of no rational solution.

I told him that I did not see how the situation could be helped because it was too late to get an affidavit from Ramos, and even if he could do that, Ramos could not get one now from the fellow who appeared in the mirror in his room in Valencia that unforgettable night and that if he had believed Ramos, there was no reason why he should not expect to be believed in turn and that if he had not believed — well then, the game was among the boobs, as we say. Anyway, if he had a good yarn, it did not matter much whether people believed it, but I did not mention the converse.

He insisted that even if a story were unbelievable, it should be presented in a convincing manner. We argued back and forth about this and about literary styles, and for a moment I thought this might get me out of listening to his reading and save me from the just deserts of my own folly, but I think he divined my intentions, or deduced them from past statistics, because he suddenly decided to go into these matters some other time and begin to read where we had left off the last time: