Felipe Alfau - Chromos

It took place in La Castellana. It was in the spring and all the trees along the boulevard were in full bloom. It was a wonderful morning. Everything was bright, everything magnificent. There was still the novelty of seeing the Moorish soldiers parade through Madrid under the Spanish flag.

They advanced in colorful phalanxes. The Moorish infantry with their bronze chests bare, the red jaiques hanging from their shoulders and floating behind pompously, shining bright under the sun, as if the men were torches and the jaiques flamed flattened by the wind.

And then came the Moorish cavalry in all their stupendous African regalia, advancing in a tumultuous and rhythmic disorder. Wonderful horsemen, great white jaiques, dazzling white jaiques and black and white horses, clean, shiny horses and jet-black men, black and shiny faces and bright white teeth, and sound and movement and strange piercing cries and strange pirouettes. Everything against the background of fresh trees that tainted things with their greenish glow. An astounding display of savage glamour, of primitive glory.

There were the famous old Spanish regiments, all stiff and frozen with prestige. Each one was a gallant page sparkling in history, a walking page telling the story in straight lines of men. A magnificent parade with phalanxes of men and phalanxes of trees that stood as if presenting arms.

All the streets leading down to La Castellana from the Hipodromo to La Cibeles were closed. The boulevards were bursting with people whose drab mass spread far into the streets. They were on roofs, on balconies; they stood on the benches, on carriages and carts of all kinds, on top of the kioscos and clinging to the iron fences, and even the children hung from the trees like fruit

All Madrid was there to see the new soldiers swear fidelity to their country and their flag.

The Sandovals were standing in a carriage at the Plaza de la Cibeles, looking above the heads of the crowd. Everybody was cheering and waving their hats and handkerchiefs in the air.

Ahead of a large detachment of soldiers, almost isolated from the rest, a man advanced on a horse. He wore a white uniform and bright silver helmet. He had a mustache and his lower jaw protruded slightly.

When the man entered the Plaza de la Cibeles, a stocky individual wearing a cap darted out of the crowd. He seized the horse by the bridle and fired two shots. The man on the horse swayed to one side and the heel of his shiny black boot struck the aggressor on the head, knocking him to the ground; then he threw his horse over him and rode on calmly.

The scene had happened so quickly that no one had time to realize it. Other officers also on horseback closed in but their loyalty was no longer needed; the man lay on the ground still clenching the gun, broken by the horse’s hooves.

A great disorder followed, everybody rushed and some of the public wanted to lynch the man who was being dragged away by the police. Reporters ran from one place to another with the proverbial pad and pencil, but finally order was reestablished and the parade went on.

Rojelia and Trini looked on, excitement showing in their faces. Trini watched the soldiers march in tune with the pasodoble and shook her shoulders keeping time with it. Fernando had been commenting on the incident of the frustrated assassination with Ledesma and dispatched Jorge to investigate the details. Enrique looked sullenly and almost with resentment at the passing rows of soldiers. Lolita looked on distractedly and seemed to be far away.

“See there now!” Rojelia exclaimed. “The soldiers are taking the oath.”

Ledesma stood up and they all looked down La Castellana. In the middle, quite a way off, stood the small figure of an officer holding an enormous flag. It was Captain Albarran. He was calm and impassive and no one could have guessed what his thoughts were.

During those days I got a good deal of Garcia’s writings, considerably more than usual and that was not a little. I happened to be on vacation and consequently at his mercy almost twenty-four hours a day. One of the things on which Garcia and I agree is on not going to the country, and much less the seashore, for a vacation, but to spend it in New York. It is not only that we like New York in the summertime, enjoying with contented steadfastness the crises of heat waves that squeeze the stuffings out of tenements and onto their fire escapes, children playing under street sprinklers and water gushing from a fire hydrant opened by the hand of some civic-minded good Samaritan, the frequent and ephemeral cool drinks in the company of kindred sweating souls under a sidewalk awning, a sparkling vision of golden heat, of humid shadows and informality that march unhurriedly but straight to the heart; but if besides all this, one does not have to work, if one can roam about in freedom, gleefully pitying the rest of the busy population enslaved by their jobs, with the opportunity of seeing how the city looks during a weekday, what things those who are not imprisoned in offices or factories do, that they always tell us about when we return home from a day’s work, there seems to be no reason for going away.

Garcia has suggested many of these things and, in conspiracy with lack of funds, has encouraged me to stay in town and I have believed him candidly and also possibly because I want to believe him, but sometimes I suspect that he wants me around so that he can read to me and this he did during those days and even induced me to attempt some translations of his writings which I don’t think he found very satisfactory.

What followed of his novel was still in a more tentative phase and his plans were not quite definite. He introduced another character, a young friend of Jorge Sandoval, with whom Lolita, the younger sister, fell in love. Garcia’s treatment took more kindly to this new character than it had to the captain. He was described as an individual of extraordinary tranquility, very detached and indifferent for his age, who had not been very responsive to Lolita’s open advances, but had carried his circumspection to what she considered an insulting degree. I am sure that Garcia had wanted to bring these two individuals — the captain and this other boy — as the knights in shining armor, champions of equanimity and composure coming to rescue the damsels from the insane, or neurotic and abnormal atmosphere in which they had grown, and while Garcia, through no fault of his, had managed to make this new character rather simpático, which was also unexpected in view of his determined coolness, again the plot had militated against him and frustrated his ends.

Lolita, aroused by such circumspect disinterest on the part of the man she desired, had quarreled with him, grossly insulted him, and he had left her. Then she heard that his father, with whom he lived alone, had died and the boy had gone to America. Subsequently she learned that there he had become involved in some revolution, mistaken for someone else and executed without further ado.

Here Garcia became quite lyrical about Lolita’s feelings. In his absence, she realized the greatness of her passion for him. Here is part of it:

That friendship had lifted her style of love to a plane different from that of the flesh. She realized that besides a carnal passion, he had aroused a tenderness in her that was stronger now in memories.

He had been a great gentleman. With his supreme indifference he had passed over her, leaving her blood a sea of fire, and from that melting pot he had brought out newer, well-tempered feelings which pierced her soul like blades. He had taught her a new side of love and passion, a side that was stronger, more binding — a dangerous side.

And on bright days, she always imagined him, his placid face, his clean-cut features, his kindly eyes, looking from the bottom of his normal, unique soul upon the sea, and an old ship carrying him away. She could see him looking at the horizon, indifferent to everything, this strange man whose unglamorous manner was flat with the greatness of a prairie, this man, oblivious of life and death, who had passed through existence like a cool breeze, like a calm breeze, even as he had passed through her heart, bringing out a new and last flower and then, unconsciously, withering it when only a bud.