Felipe Alfau - Chromos

Fernando’s handling of the situation only served to make things worse. He limited himself to an avalanche of insults and oaths, offering as pitiful a spectacle as his son, if not more so.

“Is that the way you are dragging our name through the streets with that prostitute?”

“I don’t allow any man to call my woman a prostitute, do you hear?”

“And damn it! I don’t allow any son of mine to get cocky with me. If you want to settle this matter as man to man, you can forget that I am your father, but remember that I am as much of a male as the next one.”

Trini could restrain herself no longer and joined in. This was too much to miss: “Now you are going off the main track, Fernando, and losing your authority.”

“You keep out of this. Does he think he is going to scare me?”

“No, I won’t keep out. I am his mother and I also have a right.”

“I am telling you to keep out.”

“Who do you think you are? You are as bad as he, boasting of manliness! I would like to see you before a real man. If the boy is that way, it is because he takes after you.”

“What do you mean? Let me tell you that my pants are well placed, very well placed, and the only way he takes after me is in having taken a street woman seriously.”

Then the fight became general. Lolita and Jorge joined in, Trini shouted and Enrique went into convulsions.

“What do you think you are?”

“Who is master in this house?”

“He is going to die!”

“My pants are well placed!”

“You are not even half a man.”

“We are all going crazy.”

“Help, help!”

It ended as usual in ridiculous noise, the neighbors listening and people gathering in the street below. Enrique was carried to bed in a fit and the doctor was summoned. The only one who kept out of it was Rojelia. As soon as one of these quarrels began, she locked herself in her room.

I stopped Garcia to ask him whether he had nothing to say at the opening of this second part regarding good old Ledesma, the administrator of the Sandovals’ interests, but Garcia dismissed him summarily by saying that he had not changed; he was still the same good old Ledesma. I insisted that the fellow deserved a little more attention and recognition and that he, Garcia, was in fact teaming up with the rest of his Sandovals in disregarding this fellow’s many virtues and displaying ingratitude for his long and faithful services.

“Never mind,” Garcia said impatiently. “I tell you the man did not change, he let me down. What can I do? And since you are so interested, let me inform you that I have a note somewhere about showing him asleep in an easy chair during that musical soiree I mentioned and then he wakes up when it is all over and I comment that he looked the same but older, and someone asks him whether he has enjoyed his after-dinner nap and he says yes, that he enjoys dreaming, brings back the past, lets him forget the present — memories, you know what I mean.” Garcia fumbled among his papers and came up with one: “See? I even expected to philosophize on the subject and had taken this down:”

As one grows older, one prefers what has been, scarcely tolerates what is and decidedly abhors what is going to be. The greatest virtue of a thing, then, is that it has passed, the greatest defect, that it is yet to come. In one’s opinion things are bad and are growing constantly worse. Every coming event means certain disaster. Among the things that are going to be, the vision of one’s own death looms as the most execrable, tainting the horizon with the most somber and depressing hues. One sees every future event through these funereal shadows, everything appears wrapped in ominous clouds of pessimism, whether it be social changes, new ideas or even the smallest change of routine. One dislikes everything modern, everything new, including young people, because all these things represent the flow of time, because everything that enters this world is taking the place of something that is leaving it. One becomes a conservative and wants things to stay as they are because perhaps thus one will stay as one is. All because the future harbors one’s death, man’s most implacable enemy of which one only becomes emotionally aware with maturity. One lives on memories because one does not dare look at such a dismal future.

My hand went up in an instinctive gesture of self-preservation: “All right, all right, I have had enough.”

“There is more to it, but I think this will hold you. Are you satisfied? Now let me go on with this.”

In the part that followed, Garcia’s story introduced the first serious love of his heroine, but I will let him do it himself:

One afternoon, she was out on her balcony when she saw a young man crossing La Puerta del Sol.

He had all the ease and dash of an individual who shares not one single binding convention with the rest of the world, an air which, as everyone knows, commands sincere admiration.

He stopped in the middle of the street and looked up at her openly, the light shining upon his unique features, his black hat to one side, one end of his long bow tie blown by the wind over his shoulder. No character in romantic literature could do better.

Rojelia tried to look away but his fascination held her. He remained there looking up until a car that had been forced to stop almost on top of him began to honk its horn.

Rojelia smiled. Then he calmly stepped onto the sidewalk and removed his hat with an ostentatious bow.

Rojelia realized it was time to go in, but all that evening and even that night, she thought of the young man with his black loose clothes and that life-defying air, so different from the stiff, pattern-cut gentlemen dipped in brilliantine that she often met.

Garcia had cast this leading man in a role and atmosphere shamelessly suggested by La Bohéme . He lived of course in an attic, with illusory Spartan paucity of material possessions: wooden cot, working table — where the word “working” is given a very special and flattering meaning — shelves for books of course, fireplace and the irresistible added touch of a cage with a canary. A nightingale would have been more suggestive of the role of a poet, but perhaps Garcia realized that he could carry things only so far and settled for the canary.

The portera of the house, a devoted admirer of Urcola — that was the name — was responsible for the white linen, occasional flowers and the well-fed bird. She had a pale daughter who wore spectacles, read romantic novels and always looked at Urcola with the eyes of a beheaded lamb, as they say. The more one saw of Garcia’s production, the more one suspected that many of his ideas had been developed abroad and he had forgotten much of the Spain he knew. But again I will let him take over:

One day Urcola came down from his attic in excellent spirits. All morning one could have heard him whistling as if in competition with the canary. That was the day after he had seen the wonderful woman on a balcony at La Puerta del Sol. That night he had composed a poem dedicated to her entitled “La del cabeilo rojo,” meaning the one with the red hair, and he was quite satisfied with it.

At the door he met the daughter of the portera: “Good morning, bard. I see you are happy as the birds in the spring, singing to life and nature.”

Urcola assumed an afflicted aspect. The girl produced a piece of paper and her eyes were cast down, exactly upon his worn-out shoes. He bent his knees so that his trousers would cover more of them.

“This is my first poem and I want you to be the first one to read it and tell me what you think of it.”

Urcola, standing as he was, looked like a man about to spring upon his victim. He took the paper instead and read its contents: