Felipe Alfau - Chromos

“Good night, little masters, and may God repay you for contributing to the milk for an old man,” and he departed in yet another direction, merging into the shadows with furtive greatness, the wineskin held against his breast like a kidnapped child.

“Well!” exclaimed Garcia, coming to life with elation: “shall we move on?” He bounded along triumphantly and I tagged along somewhat contritely. At last I forced myself to say:

“Of course, I knew all the time that he would return. Never doubted it a moment. Once a Spaniard. ”

Garcia allowed me to come abreast of him and held my shoulder in a generous clasp: “I am glad to hear that, because I am ashamed to confess that I doubted.”

Again he had scored and then we both laughed and walked on very happily.

We crossed west and took the subway uptown. During the ride Garcia entrusted to me the last pages of what he had written on his story of the family, but had not read because of the interruption of our comments and the closing of the restaurant. He told me to look them over the next day or even that night if I wanted to stay up a little later. I got off with him at his station, which was the one before mine, and I suggested that we sit on the park side and smoke one last cigarette, but he said he was in a hurry for a bath. When we reached his corner, there was indecision and we only waved our departure without speaking. If I had mentioned seeing him later, this would have created compulsion, and if I had said good night, it would have acknowledged his weakness. So I walked the rest of the way home slowly. Then I noticed the roll of pages in my hand which I had been holding absently. I should have realized when he gave them to me that he was going home to stay and had decided on a reconciliation, but with the noise in the subway, one can’t think very clearly. Anyway, I was glad I had said nothing.

I crossed the street and walked alongside the park still conscious of Garcia’s manuscript in my hand. When I came to a bench, I sat down and began to thumb the pages. I did not want to go home yet. It had been a long winter and now one could not get enough of the outdoors. Also I felt well-disposed toward Garcia. He probably wouldn’t be around for a couple of days, then would call to ask peremptorily where had I been and invite me to come over to his house for dinner and to meet some of his landlady’s friends and perhaps her very young niece from Pennsylvania who was supposed to come for Easter and looked like my conception of a Valkyrie. All plain and merry people with whom I would have — what the devil! — a rousing good time, shoveling under the nose, as we say, and gulping Rhine or May wine with happy unconcern for the fine points of libation, out of sweeping pilsner glasses.

It was with these cuddling thoughts that I decided to go home to read the pages in my hand, at first carelessly and then gathering detached attention.

This part of the story described a trip that Serrano took with that Clotilde Bonafé, during which time he left Julieta without explanation and without money, and then it elaborated considerably on the obstinacy of her love for this undeserving and libertine character, harping strongly on the pathos of a woman abandoned with her ill-nourished children by her husband, a woman who has seen this thing coming and blames herself for loving him more the worse he treats her and for this passion which consumes her and drives her mad. The manuscript went in for much abnormal psychology and stormy emotionalism, leading to some more risqué passages on which my sight bounced along to something else, or had to digest without an opportunity to voice a protest Garcia must have had this in mind when he left the pages with me. Then the story said something about Paco gambling, contracting debts, mortgaging and eventually losing all his property, and wound up with a moralizing discourse in which he was pictured as a man who, having risen to an important and respectable position in society, falls prey to his vices and slowly but surely sinks to the lowest depths of moral and financial collapse, dragging down his household with him.

I found myself in disagreement with much of that section: its inconsistency, its presuming to lay bare and dissect what goes on inside the soul, or the head, or the heart of a woman, a thing which to me has always appeared pedantic in the extreme whether it applies to women, men, or animals, and a task to which, in my opinion, Garcia did not show himself equal, but rather dogmatic and scarcely qualified by his record. His cursory treatment of the subject, the masochistic delusions, the bait of salacity under the guise of pseudoscientific analysis and many other things. This section was corny, all right, and I suspect that this time it was not intentional. However, there was nothing I could do about it and I continued. Then I came to an amusing passage where Paco, having reached the nadir of depravity and spiritual callousness, tries to gamble with La Torre for his wife’s favors without bothering to consult her and La Torre answers:

“No, Serrano. My women I don’t win and I don’t even earn. They must come to me of their own accord, preferably without my deserving them, and also preferably without the official knowledge of their husbands. Don’t forget that I am a caballero.”

Garcia had succeeded in making Serrano even a worse brigand than La Torre and, in doing so, had made up for some of the latter’s failures and disclosed a saving grace of innocent self-deception, both La Torre’s and Garcia’s. I read on:

It was at that time that Paco called on the Count of X. with the obvious purpose of obtaining money from him.

He betook himself one good day to the Count’s residence at Recoletos, where the old man lived with his daughter Laura, both of them lost in the immense mansion which to all appearances housed a regular army of servants rather than the masters. It was one of the most lavish places in Madrid. The main staircase alone was a masterpiece and worth a fortune. The banister had been designed by a great sculptor of the time and represented a waterfall in which cherubs rolled and swam with foaming joy.

Paco ascended the staircase appraising its value and was led by consecutive servants to a small library in the rear of the building where he found the Count buried in a huge Spanish chair, the lower part of his person wrapped in a llama blanket and his feet resting on a merino skin dyed red. The Count was reading with all the comfort of a priest. Upon the table there was a silver tea service steaming aromatically.

The Count was a very old man with a magnificent head of white hair which was neatly combed. His white beard melted and faded into a white muffler submerged in the folds of the blanket He had a penetrating gaze and all the traces of being ill-tempered.

With a hand he waved the servant away, always looking at his book, and then he regarded Paco with the tail of his eye: “I knew you wouldn’t be gone long.”

“Splendid! That eliminates the element of surprise, which is generally somewhat upsetting.”

“No. Some surprises are very soothing, as for instance, if you had decided not to see me again.”

“I had, but the decision has abandoned me completely. It is fortunate, for I see I come in time to inquire after your health. You seem to be ill. All these blankets, mufflers and steaming tea. These are bad signs at your age. Hmm— you are a very old man, and you had better be careful.”

The Count was always irritated at being reminded of his age: “Old, you say? Don’t worry. I will live longer than you would like.”

Paco whistled and sat down: “And how is my dear Laura?”

“She will probably be down soon. That fool servant always advertises everyone who comes here all over the house.”