Felipe Alfau - Chromos

During the ride Garcia mumbled persistently whether we thought it was suicide, that she was a good swimmer: “This last quarrel we had— I could not live with that on my conscience.”

Dr. de los Rios told him not to worry, that it was not suicide: “I got the whole report and it was an accident.”

“But she was a good swimmer.”

“An accident can happen to anybody. A cramp, an unsuspected weak heart, any number of things, and it is not likely for a good swimmer to drown on purpose. Don’t worry. Don’t think that way, Garcia. I assure you that it was an accident.”

When we arrived at de los Rios’s place I wanted to leave, but he nodded toward Garcia and asked me to come in for some coffee. We went in and de los Rios told Garcia that he was going to give him a sedative. He prepared it in a glass and told him to drink it. He coaxed Garcia to a couch and threw a rug over him. Garcia turned to the wall and we saw him shake with sobs. The sobs subsided gradually and then his breathing came regularly. Dr. de los Rios’s big dog came in, went to the couch and sniffed, and then he stood as if guarding Garcia. De los Rios opened one of the windows and I opened the other. The spring night air came in and it was still quite warm. I looked at the sky and although it was already paling, the stars were bright. I stood there while de los Rios prepared the coffee and thought that this would be another warm day, the kind that Garcia liked.

We did not say much as we drank the coffee. Once I said: “You knew about the affair and how he felt about it?”

“Yes, I knew that and I know Garcia.”

I was thinking that he was understanding. He may not have been sympathetic but he was understanding and tolerant. This was one of his marked characteristics differentiating him from Don Pedro. With the Moor one could discuss personal emotions and find him sympathetic and ready to generalize them into racial or national traits and even encourage and champion them, but one felt that acting these emotions, showing them to him, would have been a waste of time; they would have gone unheeded in his mad plunge after the explanatory and esoteric formula that would bring them into line within the vaster domain of philosophical generalization. He gave the impression of being personally not above or below emotion but outside of it. With Dr. de los Rios, one was aware of the Spanish characteristic which precludes intimate personal discussions, to which he seemed unresponsive, indifferent, distracted, and he even discouraged and shrugged away any rhetorical confessions or sentimental theorizing, but one felt that one could break down before him and give way to one’s feelings as one would in the embrace of a father. With the Moor, one could discuss onself. With Dr. de los Rios, one could be oneself; but thinking it over, I am not certain which one of them was understanding and which one sympathetic. I know that neither one was both.

Dr. de los Rios rubbed his eyes, then stared with them wide open, a habitual gesture with him. I moved to the door. He said that he was going to take a shower, and since he was up already and it was too late to go to sleep with all his early appointments, he would take this opportunity to catch up on some of his accumulated work.

At the door we shook hands, a thing which Spanish friends seldom do, and I said: “He will be all right, won’t he?”

Dr. de los Rios looked past me at the quiet avenue, the crepuscular opal of the park where, in this silence, the birds could be heard already: “Well,” said he. Then he released my hand and I departed.

I decided to walk across the park. The drives and pathways were violet under the fresh green trees. I looked, listened to the birds, and for once did not think about anything. When I reached my place, the light was still burning, the manuscript on the desk, yesterday still imprisoned in the room.

This day when I met Don Pedro, the Moor, he told me that he was on his way to see Bejarano and asked me to come along, and since I had nothing to do, I went with him. Bejarano was the male half of the dancing team Lunarito and Bejarano. The Señor Olózaga, the one who backed up the Spanish Theater and was said to own El Telescopio, a man with a remarkable interest in business, had brought them from Spain to New York on a brief engagement, but their dancing had soon captured popular fancy and after appearing several times with the Moor, I mean, Pete Guz and his band, they had gone into musical comedies, visited Hollywood, taken part in moving pictures and, now back in New York, were riding the crest of their success without knowing very well, according to the Moor, what it was all about, taking everything for granted in what the Moor described with one of his favorite phrases as seraphic optimism, refusing to have their style of life changed by this civilization, sincerely on the part of Lunarito perhaps, but more as a convenient pose where Bejarano was concerned, because as Don Pedro said:

“Culture does not have the merest information regarding their minds, and in the words of that Spanish philosopher, one could say that, at most, their ignorance has lagoons, but they are clever in matters of life. They may not know how to sign their names properly, but try to put anything over on them. Just try.”

They lived in a large apartment with several other transient people who came uninvited, stayed, and then left, and then there was always some Spaniard down on his luck whom they befriended and who helped with some chores and little favors.

The last time I had visited them I went there with the Moor and Garcia. I remember that when we arrived the door was open and we went right in. We heard voices in the kitchen and went along the corridor there. It was around noontime and the preparations were going on for dinner. Lunarito and Bejarano had never been able to keep servants for long and it seems that they did not like or trust any. It was a large kitchen as kitchens go here, but everybody complained constantly about the smallness of all rooms. In fact, Spaniards always find in this country a lack of space and a lack of time. One can obtain any number of gadgets which was the privilege of the very rich to have in Spain, such as automobiles, cameras, vacuum cleaners, etc., but no space or time, which is what one has plenty of in Spain.

Leaning against the kitchen door, glass in hand and an eye on the proceedings, was Bejarano. Inside was Lunarito doing something at the kitchen table and in a corner, sitting on a chair with her arms folded, was the old lady Doña Felisa. The woman practically lived in the kitchen and only left the place to go to bed. No one had ever presented her to anyone and she scarcely spoke at all but sat there looking at everything with resigned understanding and a smile reminiscent of the Mona Lisa.

Bejarano greeted us and stepped aside, pushing us hospitably into the kitchen. The Moor said: “Not late for dinner, I hope.” This was another aspect of the Bejarano menage: anyone could arrive at dinnertime and bring whomever he pleased without previous invitation. The Moor continued:

“Paella again, I bet. From the looks of things and from past experience: paella.”

“Yes, paella again,” came with lugubrious patience from Doña Felisa.

“So it is paella again,” Lunarito said, “and you seem to like it well enough. Don’t you want to eat it, Moor? It will save me trouble. I won’t have to make more.”

“Oh, to be sure. In fact, I will prepare it myself inasmuch as I and my friends are going to eat it. That will save you more trouble. Let me see what you have here. If I am going to eat it again, I am going to have it cooked right”

This precipitated a violent argument between Lunarito and the Moor, Lunarito swearing that she would not lift a finger and he could do everything by himself, including the unpleasant attending chores of washing and peeling this and that. Meanwhile Bejarano was pouring drinks for everybody, including a surprisingly tall one for Doña Felisa. Don Pedro recoiled from his: