Felipe Alfau - Chromos

Bejarano had joined his brother in the other room. He executed some dancing steps and his heels beat a tattoo on the floor with incredible speed. It was fortunate that they lived on a ground floor, a preference shared by most Spaniards. Then he charged the cape and finished with another dancing step.

“Olé!” cried the Moor: “A bull dancing flamenco — the desideratum. One has to come to New York to see bullfighting as it should be done.”

“I think I will stick to dancing and not play the bull any longer.”

“Listen to that, Dr. Jesucristo. The fear of being identified with anything that has horns is one of our best-rooted national virtues.”

But El Cogote had not had enough. From the same sideboard, he took a muleta and estoque and made a natural pass. Then one with cambio, shifting very smoothly the estoque and the muleta from hand to hand. Don Pedro, however, did not approve of the style; he picked up his stick, stood up and went over to the other room:

“Not good enough. Here, let me have that muleta, you can keep the estoque. I’ll do it with the shillelagh. See? The natural pass is the most natural thing in the world when offered from the port side and stepping with aplomb on the ground reserved for good toreros.”

Despite his lameness, there was aplomb and such a theatrical grandness in his movements that we all knew he had made his point. Perhaps because he was a conductor and also because of his strong personality, his gesture carried more suggestion and conviction.

“And if it were not for this accursed leg that does not let me turn properly, I could show you something with the cape that would melt you.” He handed back the muleta. They continued to argue while he returned to his place at the table and leaned back in his chair:

“You see? The way you were standing, any bull would say to himself: Now there is a fine leg right in front of me. Why should I go for the muleta? Why indeed? Me for the leg, and you wind up in the infirmary if you are lucky. No, my friend. I have seen most of them since Lagartijo to modern ballerinas, divas and prima donnas like Oleares, Pintueles, Mesenguita, but I never saw one of them break one of the three fundamental laws of bullfighting and get away with it for long. Those laws are basic and includible: parar, templar y mandar. That is bullfighting and nothing else — something like with mathematics and the three fundamental laws, associative, distributive and commutative, which has always struck me as very scientifically castizo, except that in higher mathematics, which attempts to reach a little beyond bullfighting, they may not all hold at times. But you follow your rules, my boy, and then — maybe—”

“Bravo, professor,” Bejerano applauded from the next room, but El Cogote was thoroughly aroused. He wanted to show something good so he made one more pass and then the muleta fell and the estoque rose. He sighted along the blade and lunged. The estoque went clean through the back of an easy chair.

“Toreador, don’t miss the cuspidor,” the Moor chanted in English, but the scream from Lunarito rose high and stood wavering at first like a saeta, and like it descended, breaking into exclamations, invocations and appeals to the Celestial Court and was followed by pandemonium and longer recriminations.

“See what you have done. Now look at that chair, and that’s the third time. He has it in for the furniture in that room and has almost knocked all the stuffing out of it. It has gotten so that I call that furniture the ganadería.”

Bejarano strode from the room and at the door he turned: “You don’t have to show off so much. You come and plant yourself in this house and then have to go around breaking things up.” The polite veneer was peeling off fast under the heat of savage temper: “I wish you had tried that on a real one and maybe you would have lasted as long as the Catalonian— These things cost money, damn it!” His was an unprintable word: “I should think in your position you could use a little more consideration.” He went back to his place at the table and poured himself some wine.

“You don’t have to get so flamenco about it,” said El Cogote, somewhat subdued, and he placed the things carefully back on the sideboard.

“Oh no? I know where I would like to place that estoque.”

There was an embarrassing silence and we felt out of this family quarrel. Dr. de los Rios, temporizing as usual, admonished El Cogote: “If you had killed recibiendo, as this purist Moor would claim one should, this would not have happened, because the chair would not come to you.” The Moor followed this with: “Dr. Jesucristo always with the verbal cape to the feint,” and Garcia, changing the subject, said to the woman called Carmen:

“That is a beautiful rosary you are wearing.”

“I have had it quite some time. They gave it to me at the Convent—”

Bejarano set his knife and fork down with resolution: “And I suppose they also gave you at the Convent all the other valuable things: the copones, the eucharisty, everything — and to think that father went to jail for something he never did while others go about enjoying and displaying their loot.” His bitterness and repressed fury were such that everyone was surprised and there ensued another silence. Garcia’s attempt had been illfated.

“Stop picking on her, will you?” shouted El Cogote: “Always digging up the dead. Every time anyone mentions anything, off we go. So everybody has his shames in his family. What do you want us to do now, start a procession on our knees around the table?”

“Of course we all have our shames,” Lunarito was saying: “Look at my own father — and even the columnist who said something about bums’ row on the Bowery playing host to someone who claims to have sired Lunarito of the well-known team Lunarito and Bejarano — but what good is worrying?”

Bejarano had his head in his hands and was scowling silently at his salad. He lifted his head as if to say something, but then thought better of it and resumed his pensive pose. We all knew what Lunarito was referring to.

She had brought her father from Spain soon after she and Bejarano began to be successful. Dr. de los Rios knew him from Spain, and Don Pedro also knew him and considered him one of the real castizos and liked him very well. Garcia and I had never got to meet him. Everyone referred to him as Don Laureano.

The whole story was rather sordid and there should be no reason why Lunarito herself should have brought it up, except that there are some Spaniards who have the pride of suffering and delight in matching sorrow for sorrow, shame for shame, opprobrium for opprobrium, always hoping to make good and emerge someday undisputed champions, but they are always being thwarted by someone who comes up in the end with a devastating and tragic disaster that tops their best.

The life of her father in Spain had been a pretty shady affair and he would have been correctly described as a Caballero de Industria — the English translation Industrious Gentleman being scarcely accurate, to say the least. Upon his arrival, Lunarito had exhorted him:

“I hope that long vacation you spent in jail before coming finally taught you a lesson. Please do not try any of your tricks here. Remember: there are no more Indians in America, this is a different country and things here are very different.”

“Different, my eye! Everywhere they cook beans but,” he hastened to add, “don’t worry, I am retired now and don’t expect to cook up anything. I brought you up, educated you, took good care of you, and now I will let you take good care of me.”

“Well, if you want to engage in something honest, please consult the Señor Olózaga. He has lived here long and knows things well. Besides, you and he were partners before.”