Felipe Alfau - Chromos

He concentrated on me: “You should write a book about the Americaniards, somebody should, but you have not written for a long time — anyway you could not write anymore about your people in Spain — have been too long away, forgotten too much — don’t know what it’s all about and you could not write about Americans — don’t know enough — impossible ever to understand another people. I could not understand them when I first came and every day I understand them less. We meet, we talk, but neither knows what it’s all about — total confusion. My English was abominable when I arrived and every day I speak it worse — impossible; can’t understand a damn thing.”

I have it on good authority that his English was perfect, but he had nursed an invincible accent and an unassailable syntax. He continued: “To write about the Americans would be presumptuously impolite and besides the competition would be formidable both in quality and quantity. ” He waved at the public library, the proximity of which probably had something to do with the turn of the conversation, or rather monologue: “Why, between all the publishers, they put out so much that they could pump that whole structure full every year from top to bottom — yes, that should be out of the question. ”

I was about to interpolate something but he slapped the intention in midair. “Now, about the Americaniards, that is different. You should be an authority on the subject by now.”

Dr. de los Rios raised a restraining hand: “Leave this fellow alone, you infidel Moor. He wants no trouble and has been making an honest living for a long time as it is. Don’t tempt him.”

“Of course, to the rescue, Dr. Jesucristo”; this was his established rejoinder for the nickname of the Moor. “To save a soul from a minor intellectual crime,” he addressed me, “snatch yourself away from the sanctimonious hands. Don’t let him rob you of eternal condemnation and besides what indeed more shrewdly appropriate, more shamelessly opportunistic in these good old days of the Latinamericanization of the United States? In this age of good-neighbor policy, which began in the days of the tango and then fortified with daiquiris, rum and Coca-Cola and tequila, cavorted through the rumba, the conga, to wind up with the crying jag of the ay, ay, ay?” He sang it and took a few dancing steps despite his bad leg, oblivious of the perplexity of passersby and his stick pointed to the former Sixth Avenue. Then he became sober and his criticism of the Americas more pointed.

Feeling well-stocked with demagogic ammunition of irresistible clichés, I thought of mentioning the tactlessness of such comments coming from one who had been so successful, at least financially, in both continents through the frequent tours with his band and was almost ready to use even the one about if you don’t like it here why don’t you go back., which even Dr. de los Rios had pronounced unanswerable, but well I knew what his disarming answer would be: “We Spaniards reserve the patriarchal privilege to criticize, advise and even scold, by the divine right of the discoverer, the conqueror, and having staked first claim in lofty defiance of the patented rights of the Vikings with their winged helmets and immodest, though ruggedly exposed knees, which we, fully clothed, dressed formally, Christianly and uncomfortably, decline to take seriously.” Furthermore, I knew that he would blast me with his remarks on the Indian and his past and present distribution over the Americas; quoting the well-known saying that one example is worth one hundred arguments, he would deluge me with one hundred devastating examples and I, not well versed on the subject, could never find an adequate rebuttal. He had gained such confidence that the last time I fell into the argumentative trap he simply squirted through his teeth the three words “the American Indian” and I gave up.

Unhindered by my unspoken objections he went on with his paradoxical theory of a country accused of imperialism and being invaded by a pacific penetration to the tune of popular torrid music, twice imported Afro-Antillean tempos and tropical concoctions, a fanciful parallel on a soporific smoke screen of narcotics blown ahead over the Orient to gently overcome resistance and render it droolingly happy in its surrender — the devil’s own lullaby. All strange, transoceanic parallels indeed to be used as tracks on which to launch his theory of the Latinamericanization of the United States.

But is this the new conquest of the Americas, by the Americas and for the Americas? This mutual transcontinental, trans-linguistic, transracial osmosis? If so, it is a far cry from the conquistadores to these frightened hybrids, from those who knocked down the door of a new world, to those who knock at the door of a richer world, and the majority of which are lost in a subterraneal labyrinth, like slaves in a mine, to trade their machete for a dishrag, or if more fortunate, though less radical, to transform and adjust their guitar and castanets asymptotically to the afrodisiacuban rattle of the maracas. It is a far, heartrending cry from those Spaniards to these Americaniards.

And yet the Latinamericanization of the United States may be but a special case of its internationalization, as Dr. Jose de los Rios points out when he remarks that it is an even longer cry from Alexander, Phidias or Archimedes, to a modern Greek running a small shop in some obscure corner of New York, or from the proverbial Asiatic splendor to one of these Chinese laundries. No modern liner has the dignity of the Pinta , the Niña or the Santa Maria , but neither does the bullet have the dignity of the arrow, nor the airplane the dignity of the eagle. And even so, I insist that the objection is temporizing and disregards the main issue by generalizing a secondary, common characteristic. Unquestionably there is sadness in the final surrender and dissolution of any nationality that has come to less, which are most. Witness the mummies and other relics resting in museums of lands other than those where they lived. But what makes the case of the Spaniard especially sad and poignant is the obvious historical associations. I feel that this case must be considered very specially and that it has undeniable priority because after all they were the discoverers of this new world. This is what makes the irony so blatant and leads one to think even more soberly and with more melancholy, that one could have begun all this by parodying a famous speech by a famous North American, something like this:

“Twenty-score and many years ago, my forefathers came to the Americas.,” but the rest would be very different and I invite the reader to collaborate, to frame in his mind and consider carefully what might follow; the motives and the ends; one springing from idealism, risking — and perhaps succumbing to — disillusionment: “. whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure”—the other running from fate or destiny and doomed to bitter realization.

We were walking east and at the corner of the public library turned and began to walk down the avenue. The Moor changed the subject abruptly by the simple expedient of taking up the new one and suggesting with enthusiasm that we go atop the Empire State Building. He praised the building, the view from its top, spoke like a barker, mentioning that it owed its existence to a great politician whom he admired greatly and considered so castizo that he should have been born in Madrid. He said it would give me perspective to write what he had suggested: “You will see the Americaniards scurrying about below — and many others, yes sir, many others.” He said it very confidentially as one imparting the secret of the ages.

Dr. de los Rios stopped short: “Let’s not and stop importuning this fellow. First you frighten him with your ghosts of complications that beset us in an English-speaking environment and now.,” he turned to me: “Don’t sell your soul to this devil. There is still time. Don’t follow him.” He saw me weaken, waver, ready to succumb under the hypnotic spell of the Moor who stood there shamelessly making passes, exorcisms and incantations, right in front of the library, and then Dr. de los Rios was magnanimous: “All right; go and sin no more. But I will not sanction this with my presence. In fact, since we left that bench I have been debating whether to go in there and look up one or two things, which I have been intending to do for some time.” He turned suddenly and went up the steps of the library with extraordinary lightness and agility.