Felipe Alfau - Chromos

They were entertaining two women: one old and quite ferocious, watching like a hawk over the other one who was very young, blonde and angelical. The old harridan was talking through much wine-swallowing and lip-smacking about what I understood was her favorite pastime: to sing the graces of her angelical daughter to anyone who would listen. The daughter sat quietly, looking more and more like a picture by a primitive, sipping ojen. Her name went well with her looks. She was the incomparable Angeles Medinaceli, La Niña de los Madroños, currently considered the best flamenco singer in Spain and on a professionally exploring trip here.

At a table between hers and ours were two men and a woman. One of the men was El Cogote, the bullfighting brother of Bejarano. The woman was the Carmen I had met at their house, still dressed in black despite the weather. The other man was a phenomenally strong and candid-looking chap, Pilarte, a wrestler turned prizefighter who had developed his muscles loading and unloading ships on the docks of north Spain and who was advertised as the man who could not be knocked out even with a sledgehammer. This was the very latest importation of the Señor Olózaga. In fact, the Señor Olózaga had brought to this country most of the celebrities gathered there that memorable day, and he had toyed with the idea of exhibiting his strongman and put his advertising to a literal test as a publicity stunt, inviting anyone to strike him with a hammer, but Dr. de los Rios had convinced him that this would not make very good publicity.

It was while pondering these things that I heard the voice coming from a table on our other side. It was pampered, sibilant, yet shrill with faked indignation:

“She ought to be thrashed! She ought to be positively and properly chastised!” The voice was speaking English and perhaps that is why it arrested my attention.

Not having heard what led up to pronouncing this sentence of corporal punishment, I turned to have a look and, of course, it was the green man.

Looking at him the place became for a fleeting moment an ice cream parlor, but looking at the two elderly ladies sitting with him, the place immediately resumed its proper aspect of some café in south Spain visited by English tourists. They were having a regular time of it, drinking dutifully from their bottles.

The green man was doing his level best to appear as if he did not belong there, which he did not. It was not that he was speaking English with the two ladies, because possibly they did not speak Spanish, but his manner, or rather, mannerisms and implied condescension and shamefaced acknowledgment of his familiarity with the atmosphere as something remembered from an assumed oppressed past and wretched childhood, intended to convey very plainly that he was slumming among reminiscences that were sweetly revolting.

He waved and winked at Bejarano and, in an aside to one of the ladies, he was carried to remark loudly: “Some Latins are disgustingly masculine.” This with no apparent connection with anything previously said: “But they can discard conventions and have a bang-up rousing good time. You bet, girlie — the time of your life!”

“Gracious!” one of the ladies exclaimed. “One can certainly get drunk in a hurry drinking this way.”

“You ought to be spanked, you naughty girl. Don’t be silly! You don’t have to swallow it that fast. Fool them. Make believe you are drinking but take little sips, stopping it with your tongue like this, see?” and he demonstrated expertly. “I believe you are pretty tipsy already. You should get a good spanking, you bad girl.”

I studied the man. He had that peculiar cast to his upper lip and over-sensitive nostrils typical of individuals of his ilk. I had heard the Moor discuss it with Dr. de los Rios. He said that perhaps not all those with such inclinations had that kind of stigma, but that he had never seen one with it who did not have such inclinations. Dr. de los Rios, as usual, had been noncommittal and I was considering it now.

The other lady was eyeing the table occupied by the strongman and the bullfighter with that daring which alcohol induces in her type. She whispered to her companions and the green man laughed with exhibitionistic squeals. I looked in the general direction of somewhere else and a prayer of thanks rose in me at the contrast.

She was all saffron and cream; an extraordinary-looking woman with titian hair and the most enormous mask-like, green, fishy eyes, surrounded by thickly blackened lashes. I recognized her from pictures and posters. So, this was Leonor Amboto, La Colombina, foremost exponent of classical Spanish dance, referred to by critics as priestess and vestal, her existence dedicated to her art, a mysterious woman without family and without love, whose life, the little that was known of it, was miraculously untouched by gossip. With her was the Señor Olózaga, a man whose past life was as mysterious as hers, but because of the conflicting gossip heaped upon it.

This inscrutable man fascinated me because, like Don Pedro, he was a prototype, but whereas the Moor gave the impression of inaccessible recesses, lost in a labyrinth alive with jutting traps, the Señor Olózaga gave the impression of inaccessible recesses locked into a solid stone structure. He was big, fat, with an Oriental countenance that justified the nickname of Chink given him by the Moor, the hair around the bald spot as white as the full droopy mustache.

To listen to all the stories and adventures for which he was praised or condemned, one would have thought that the man had lived for centuries. Everything regarding his life was confused and heresay. Some said that he had been a magnate and political boss in the days of the Spanish colonies, which he left during the Spanish-American War in order to reconquer them later on with more complex business enterprises of more or less legitimate nature. Others, that he had owned coffee and sugar plantations in the West Indies and traded in white slavery, all of which seemed to such persons very reprehensible; that he was a polygamist and had become a widower several times under circumstances that had engaged the attention of the police in various countries. Others, that he was Chinese or Malayan and had only taken Spanish citizenship for reasons of expediency. Even that at one time he had been a champion wrestler and sold out to lose his championship, thus creating a scandal that kept him away from this country several years; that he was a gambler of inconceivable skill and daring and had extended his activities to cover all world markets and create economical crises in various countries. Again, that his real name was not Olózaga but Chinelato, with other aliases, and that under such assorted names he had carried on simultaneously diverse evil activities and bold coups, that in truth, he was a sinister international figure, moving governments like chessmen and that whenever great events shook the world, one could be certain that behind the scenes was the masterful hand of the Chink.

Yet, all that remained from all this dark past splendor was this jovial, old, big gentleman with a strongman whose ambition was to compete with an anvil, a stranded winter bullfighter on his hands, surrounded by several performers he had brought to this country and who had then made good on their own, their only link with him now a fast-fading memory of dubious gratitude; a man who played at palming amateurishly poor theatrical productions on a homesick colony and whose very ownership of El Telescopio was only rumored and still in doubt. All one could see was a fat old man sitting there placidly like a Buddha, smoking a cigar, indeed with the aspect of a prosperous planter with a weakness for women and rum, but also with undying eagerness for any petty promotion, ready to jump at the drop of a coin, a man who could not help trying to use people, whose favorite greeting was: “Just in time to listen to a little proposition—” or: “The very person I was looking for. I want you to do me a little favor—”