Felipe Alfau - Chromos

At any rate, I felt that I was going back to the comfortable reality of my dreams or illusions and that this idea of no motion and higher dimensions was, if anything, quite the thing for a lazy world. No effort required except to condition the mind to realize that one is there already, that one is everything one can possibly be.

And here I was sitting and drinking at El Telescopio and again listening to the Moor. I let him ride his own storm and looked around. Sitting at a table at the entrance to the patio, there was a majestic gentleman with the air of a priest in mufti, whom I did not know but assumed to be someone to be reckoned with from the reverence which surrounded him. I asked Don Pedro who the gentleman was, but he was too busy talking. I kept insisting and he kept on, and only when he was quite satisfied that he had finished, he recognized me: “Now, what was it you wanted to know?”

I changed my question. Another more peremptory one had flashed into my mind: “What is this party, this gathering about?”

“That is not what you were asking, you know? Well — one is not a fool — but anyway I’ll answer it.” The sly Svengali had been listening all the time and only feigning disattention: “This gathering you ask? Well, nobody knows. Nobody knows what it’s all about, but they all come simply to increase the total entropy of this vale of tears. Our nation has contributed more to the entropy of the world than all the other nations together — had more available energy originally than anyone else, and this is a typical Spanish situation. It was anonymous, that’s it, typical. I assume, mind you — one can only assume — that they all received anonymous invitations asking them to come today— The appeal of the mysterious, the unknown which we can never resist. Spaniards are essentially mystic — although I suspect the hand of the Chink making publicity for El Telescopio and intending to ruin it with commercialism and well-needed funds. My own mental child! El Telescopio of my soul—! So I came and asked you to come and. here we are, man. What more do you want? Have you been so long away from the land of common sense that you must know the reason for everything? Here we are all in New York, but no one knows why or cares. In Spain we know the sentiment, so we don’t have to know the reason. That’s only good for the Nordics— And to get away from that delicate topic, because you know, there are those— Well, I’ll answer your first question: The portly gentleman you see at the table by the patio is Gines Cáceres in flesh and bone. You have heard me speak about him and, for your information, he is giving a concert this coming Sunday, but don’t tell anyone. The whole city knows it already, including you, see?”

“Cáceres? You mean the great guitar player?”

“That’s him — the best”

I looked then more carefully and noticed the guitar in its case propped up on a serving table behind him, and my hopes rose. Since I had heard his records on the Moor’s machine, I had wanted nothing as much as to hear him play in person and perhaps today—

He was surrounded by some musicians and the Spanish vocalist from Don Pedro’s — I mean, Pete Guz’s band, and seeing him answering politely, kindly, drinking little, saying less, one felt that one was in the presence of greatness, as the Moor would put it, and one knew that this was no importation of the Señor Olózaga’s. This was the man who had elevated the guitar to unsuspected and yet most legitimate heights of dignity, who played the classics and all other composers of the so-called highbrow music with a good taste and responsibility never surpassed if indeed equaled. I am only repeating what Don Pedro had told me.

Dr. de los Rios had joined Cáceres at his table and from the effusive quality of their greetings, I could see that they were good friends. This only started the Moor again:

“And who else would join him but Dr. Jesucristo— It was inevitable.”

According to him, Gines Cáceres embodied all the qualities of the Spanish grandee and nobleman, the true Spanish artist. Even now he was saying:

“In Spain there is no aristocracy but only nobility, and there is a great difference, oh, yes! A great difference, if you know what I mean.” He waved his glass at Cáceres: “This one is to you, Reverend.” He could capture people’s attention with extraordinary ease and Cáceres looked over and acknowledged the toast. “Perhaps you will deign to oblige, you know, a little later.”

The affable words of Cáceres floated peacefully across: “Always glad to play for you, my friend, and the Doctor here, who also honored me with a request, and also your talented children.” He gestured toward the musicians surrounding him and he reached for his guitar. Don Pedro signaled to one of the waiters to shut off the machine but no one, except those at our table, seemed to have noticed until the music of Cáceres began to saturate the room.

This was magic. I was watching him carefully and his hands did not seem to move; yet the music flowed and sprang. It partook of the harpsichord with the vibrato of the violin, of the organ with the crisp color differentiation of the orchestra. Again I am quoting the Moor. I did not notice the deceleration and fading of the voices and it was only after a while that I realized the transfiguration of the audience.

La Colombina was leaning intensely forward, her elbows on the table, her hands clasped, and her great earrings hung motionless. Miguel Pinto had turned around and looked without seeing. The Señor Olózaga’s chair was empty, but Pilarte, the wrestler, sat with his arms akimbo and his mouth open and actually appeared to be thinking, or at least making an effort.

The faces of Lunarito and Bejarano glowed with recognition of their national instrument, and La Niña de los Madroños sat transfixed with eyes closed.

But all might as well have had their eyes closed because to see or imagine the things this music suggested or brought back, one needed no eyes. I know that they were all remembering or perhaps imagining that they were remembering, recalling some past inner triumph which towered over present outer success and failure, or only recalling some past hopes which had never been attained. I did not look at the meek man with the thick lenses. I feared what I might see there, but then I looked at Garcia and I have never seen this melancholic Spaniard look so sad, so crushed by nostalgic despair. I could well imagine what went on in his soul; his desire to recapture and relive the past, an imaginary past that might have been; his frustration and feeling of inadequacy which he shared with so many of his countrymen, his racial sadness and national regret, his love for the unattainable and for his own stories, his poetry and his romanticism, the complications of having to express his race and identity in terms of another.

Only the night before he had read to me the last part of his story of the family, a work quite wasted in my opinion, but which showed the tenacity of his Spanish consciousness and refusal to forget old ideas and sentiments. The novel itself meant nothing, but the fact that he had engaged in writing it, his self-deception in not seeing that it was a thankless task, that he was doing it at the wrong time and in the wrong place, the candid impracticability of it all, was a synthesis of his personality.

We were at my place where he had come to show me the anonymous invitation he had received to come to El Telescopio and to ask me whether I had received one also, but this was a pretext and I am sure that his elation was not due to this invitation, as he soon demonstrated.

He produced the well-known sheaf of papers and said that the first draft of his novel was now completed. He looked so happy that this was one of the few times I invited him to read.