Felipe Alfau - Chromos

The house has remained behind, frightened, hollow, like a freshly dug grave. The tree has been pulled by the roots, leaving a frozen, stupefied wound, like a gaping mouth.

They all sit benumbed in the silent room, empty, palpitating with memories, and all of a sudden they all stand. A broken cry of help has pierced their ears, followed by a deep crunching thud. It is the last appealing cry of one who sinks in the ground forever.

The funeral procession went down the Street of Bailen and then turned to the left. At their right, far below, past the royal palace, stretched the Prado, sprinkled with thirsty, dark green shrubs in a sea of dry ground.

They descended a steep dismantled hill, where the trees growing in all directions and in strange positions seemed to have gone mad, and then they took the dusty, scorching road to the cemetery.

It was for what followed that Garcia had prepared his grand epilogue and apotheosis on the farm, with far-reaching philosophical considerations about Spain and its people in particular, transcending to the world and humanity in general.

I suggested that it was better to leave that out and end his story with that funeral march to the death of a fool. Being in turn inclined to philosophize, I mentioned that it was good to let the reader collaborate and that, as he had once said, the reader often put in all the good things which the author had left out and never thought of implying, that it was better to let the reader make his own generalizations and reach his own conclusions which he would, in the end, credit to the writer: “Who knows, Garcia, but that the reader might have a happier idea than the author could ever conceive? Happier for him at any rate?” And I believe that Garcia was convinced.

That had taken place only last night.

The music of Cáceres inundated my ears. It had been gaining the upper hand over my reveries and now was master and held me in its grip again. It suddenly burst upon my consciousness and woke me up. I found myself standing in a semicircle with all the others. We were all like somnambulists, closing in, suctioned, hypnotized by the prestidigitations of Cáceres as if we were all seeking to be carried through the round hole of the guitar, back to the womb of our mother country.

This was a strange sight. It suggested mass hypnosis and the un-European quality of Spaniards — that man in the center with his musical conjurations, holding this people at his mercy, prisoners in the net that he wove on the loom of his guitar — and he was merciful. He saw their nostalgia and with a quick modulation, he struck a few chords which commonly finish many Spanish tunes.

Before we recovered and could burst into superfluous acclaim, he was speaking in his soothing voice: “Why so solemn, everybody? This is an occasion for gaiety and there are good dancers present.” His hand moved as if stirring a vat: “Go ahead; I will play for you.” And he took a short sip of manzanilla.

The Moor’s voice boomed: “To dance to the music of Cáceres is something for which every dancer should live and then die right after.” He swept the glass from Lunarito’s hand and gently propelled her into the patio. There Bejarano was already poised, regarding her under converging eyebrows, his back arched, his jaw and lower lip protruding defiantly, ready for her, and he met her like a bullfighter meets a bull.

Much has been said about the sexual implications in dancing, but the Spanish dance implies the bullfight, its stylization and synthesis. One could say that the bullfight is the apotheosis and ultimate, complete realization of Spanish dancing.

Like two confluent spirals, they circled and flowed along the increasing rattling of Lunarito’s castanets to a spot in the common center, face to face, as a wave comes to a crest. They froze a moment and then melted and boiled into the dance. It was a furious exhibition of bristling, eloquent, gesticulating motion, of proposition and answer, a complete argument with inevitable conclusions, but self-contained in the world of dancing where the subject was movement and the answer and resolution given in dancing terms.

These two were dancing as I had never seen them dance before any other audience. They were dancing up to the great Cáceres and for their own people and also with rivalry for La Colombina and Miguel Pinto. They whirled and clashed brutally, like two gamecocks in a fight to the finish, their heels hammering like pneumatic drills. I don’t know what all this proved, but it certainly was convincing.

Through the pandemonium of enthusiastic comments, music and dancing, I could hear Don Pedro talking to no one in particular, spawning his ego-eccentric philosophy. He was everywhere, tapping shoulders with his stick, calling attention to fine points, a self-appointed arbiter and interpreter extraordinary, conducting the whole performance in his imagination. He sipped Lunarito’s drink, which he had appropriated, and juggled it with stick and cigarette, waving his arms and all miraculously without mishap:

“Look, but look, you fools! No one should miss this. Don’t you notice? Lunarito and Bejarano are expressive dancers, not interpretive as Pinto and La Colombina, and that is the right thing, the truly racial. Spanish dancing is expressive, not interpretive.” He went on without regard for the feelings of anyone, but the Moor’s enthusiasm carried him at a clip where he could get away with anything and cause no offense. The impact, if any, was too swift to be apprehended. “But notice now — anyone who is not deaf or blind. Expressive dancers? nothing. Expressive music, that’s all. It is the great Cáceres who is expressing himself through them.”

He was right. Cáceres was controlling this dance. No one could dance with such violence and fury without scattering himself in pieces. Lunarito and Bejarano moved spasmodically as if shaken by an invisible hand, but the Moor’s words had exposed the hand; it was the authoritative, imperious hand of Cáceres that moved them, that made them dance up to a great tradition, like marionettes controlled by the strings of his guitar, making it literally a command performance.

“It is quite simple. With our people the prophecies are always fulfilled. Now you know why we are all here. Could you want a better reason? And remember the ellipse of which I spoke before? Now the two foci, Dr. Jesucristo and myself, have approached and merged into the common center of Cáceres and his guitar. We have disappeared and no longer exist. You think you see us, but you don’t. What you see is our reflection mirrored in the center of Cáceres and his guitar and the ellipse is now a circle generating through the perspective of Lunarito and Bejarano, terpsichorean families of confocal conics. The celestial qualities of Dr. Jesucristo and my musical genius, both embodied in Cáceres.” The conceit of the man was boundless. “But talking of celestials, where is the Chink? I know that he is here even if we cannot see him. He would not miss this music and dancing, but where does he come in on the equation? Is he an integrating factor, or the constant of integration? Of course, he must have been the one who drew the ellipse in the beginning, or perhaps it was a four-dimensional ellipsoid that he projected and this is but a section of it and he is in the other dimension. However, see? Everybody in a circle. This is a segment, of course, the one that lies on the real plane of El Telescopio. The rest runs outside into the imaginary plane of New York, but the perimeter is a string of pearls and Lunarito and Bejarano are sliding on it. That is what sounds like the rattling of castanets and heels. You don’t know what it’s all about, but it does not matter because the string is growing tighter and is going to choke all bad Spaniards. Now you know why we are all here— Boo!”