Felipe Alfau - Chromos

“Hmm — so we were— We’ll see. I am a different man now. I have reformed.”

“I hope you have, because don’t forget that we can have you deported if we mention your jail sentence. We have influence with the police too. We have danced at many benefits—”

“So you have? Well, well — don’t you worry about your old man.”

At first Don Laureano behaved to the point of doing nothing, including nothing for his keep. Of his old habits, he had kept the most trivial ones, such as never separating from the wineskin he had brought from Spain as his only luggage and filching now and then some belongings from Lunarito and Bejarano, or perhaps a visiting acquaintance, and a trinket or two from the apartment, all of which went directly to the pawnshop. He went frequently to the park and sat in the sun with his beloved wineskin, only to return home when it was empty, just in time for supper and a refill. Sometimes he took his lunch along and bought peanuts to feed the birds and squirrels. The squirrels amused him for he had never seen them in Spain. One in particular fascinated him and they became fond friends. He even bought a collar with a bell for it and this delighted the children when they discovered it. That squirrel was a smart one and waited every day for him in order to climb on his knee or his shoulder, and then he fed it and held long, one-sided conversations with it in Spanish and got it to understand and obey many of his gentle commands, but he never took it home. He knew that Lunarito had never harbored anything more than a cat and now that she was harboring him, he had learned in his old age the value of independence. A passing observer seeing him thus, with his venerable white beard and sharing his food with the animals, would have taken him for a kindly, patriarchal, almost bucolic old man and a direct descendant from Saint Francis of Assisi.

Once while thus resting, his hand fell idly on a new green leaf torn by the wind and carried to his bench. Absently, he lifted it and found that, by coincidence, it was resting on a dried old leaf, no doubt from last year and also carried there by the wind. He contemplated this long and thoughtfully, smiling to himself. Then he let the new leaf go and took another swig from the wineskin. The squirrel settled on his shoulder and, fondling it, Don Laureano began to share his confidences in whispers with this, the only friend he had made on his own since he left Spain.

Reminiscences of his old life drifted into his mind and, with every swallow of the wine, condensed and assaulted him with visions of past and sinister splendor, of the times when he had been known in Madrid as the Prince of Beggars and the Grand Old Man of Knavery. Always shrewd and calculating, his methods had consistently avoided violence and trusted skill and, in his long and arduous career, he had but once been carried in a moment of senile, impatient greed, to the utmost limit of transgression and paid only partially a penalty he considered light for the stupidity he could not forgive himself. Quickly he passed over these gruesome details, to recall his most clever ruses and masterful strokes, swindles and deceptions. He could not remain idle long. Begging and the life of a rogue were in his blood, and old as he was, there was still battle in him.

At an advanced age, it is very difficult to change one’s personality, and regeneration is by definition out of the question. His old and less trivial habits began to assert themselves. It was inevitable. Insensibly, without apparent difficulty, he became involved with the police.

To hear the Moor tell it was like listening to a fairy tale.

One of the first things was the chlorophyll salve with which the Moor had caused so much embarrassment to the antipático man. Don Laureano heard about it and immediately took his daughter’s advice and consulted the Señor Olózaga. Together they formed a haphazard partnership to market the stuff. Out of cheap ingredients they manufactured large quantities of it and began to sell it on street corners through the so-called pitchmen. One could hear the spiel on any of New York’s corners:

“It prevents sunburn. Takes the sun out of the skin where it does the most harm and carries it inside the blood where it does the most good— Wake up to the new Sun Cult and be like a plant— Plants don’t eat eggs or steaks or salads, but get all their energy directly from the sun. Think of the money you and the missus will save in food— grow strong as an oak— No special training required; slap it on, spread it on, the more the better. It will impart a brilliant green color that will make you the sensation of the beach—” And so on, on any sidewalk.

It was unbelievable. The thing caught on and sold like hotcakes. The business grew. It sold by mail and the department stores held demonstrations on their main floors and sold tons of it. The five-and-ten stores were swamped with emerald jars. It was a colossal hoax that exploded with a boom all along the seashores. If beaches like Coney Island had looked on warm holidays like huge tracts of macaroni, now they looked like spinach noodles, or as if they had been overrun by some kind of moving plant life. It will always be remembered as the green era, and had Columbus looked upon this, one wonders what his thoughts might have been. No more red men in the Americas, but green, bright green. The Moor interpreted all this as an example of his theories about spiritual territorial conquests and pacific penetrations.

When things reached this point, the police stepped in and the Señor Olózaga went for an extended vacation, and Don Laureano, due to some technicality, got off with nothing worse than to find himself right back where he had begun.

But the pair had tasted blood and would not be discouraged. The next thing they picked up from the Moor’s fertile imagination was the idea of selling toy balloons filled with some very light gas in order to lighten the luggage of airplane travelers, so they could carry more, or even lighten themselves or anything they had to lug along. Again the police stepped in. Then the Moor sold them on the racket of peddling dehydrated water. It turned out to be bicarbonate of soda in this case. Just a pinch in a gallon of fresh water and there you are, a whole gallon of water. Wonderful when camping, or on picnics or hunting trips. Don Laureano embraced the idea with omnivorous greed and the Señor Olózaga with that indomitable optimism of every born businessman and inveterate promoter. I hear that they managed to sell some. The great Barnum would have smiled wisely. Once again they found themselves standing in front of a judge. However, it appears that there was someone by the name of O’Moore connected with the police department who claimed an archaic family relationship with the Moor. This must have helped the unholy pair on more than one occasion. The Moor had a genuine liking for them and considered them the last of a great and fast-disappearing breed.

Lunarito and Bejarano were both indignant and frightened, thinking of the immigration quota, deportation and who knows what horrors in a country they knew so little and which to them was mysterious in its methods and perhaps with a clemency beyond their reach in the strict application of its justice. There was a loud final scene with screams, tears, oaths and mutual accusations. The old man, his wineskin tenderly clutched to his breast, left, saying that he was being thrown out of his own daughter’s home like a tramp abandoned to the mercy of a strange country, and when his well-aimed histrionics failed to temper their decision to rid themselves of him and they stood in the corridor grim and adamant, in one of their most hostile dancing poses, he cursed them, swore that he would never again look on their renegade faces and stormed out banging the door.