Felipe Alfau - Chromos

This man was fantastic. He produced an idea, tossed it with extraordinary agility, making it bounce all along the gamut of his absurdity, and when it seemed that it was about to escape him, he turned it into a concept where his imponderable mind libated like a bee on a flower.

Lunarito and Bejarano had finished in the same spot and the same pose where they began and now walked away demanding wine in commercial quantities to replace the liquid contents of their systems, Lunarito fanning herself with her hand in that manner that says: catch me before I collapse. What a dance can do to a woman! The dance itself having assumed the inconsiderate significance of an impetuous lover, exhausting in his demands — Bejarano wiping honest sweat with that delighted resignation to the imposing tasks of a career that says: one does what one can, and: what I wouldn’t do to chuck the whole thing and join your ranks, happier mortals who, in your innocence, envy my wretched greatness. Both of them endeavoring to minimize the applause as one does after an informal exhibition for a friend. Why, glad you liked it. Anytime, old fellow. It is nothing and I honestly enjoyed doing it for you because you appreciate it. This time it is not for dollars, for those who don’t understand the fine points. Who would put himself out for any but you? It is only a job to be done for money, that’s all, but this is for a great cause — in this case our common love for our country. The dollars go hang. You are less talented, though more happy than I and can do nothing about it, but I can and it is all in a day’s work. No applause this time, please. Just let me have a little rest and a little wine before resuming the lifelong struggle.

All this their well-trained countenances said in the very short time it took them to blend with the embracing semicircle and attack the proffered bottles, but Don Pedro added words to his actions. By now an established behind-the-scenes commentator and master of ceremonies, he limped grandly about waving his shillelagh and diluting his comments among the fortunate:

“Look at them. Acting more tired than they are and they scarcely ate or slept until the Chink brought them to New York and I gave them their start— Well, it is the national system — these Spaniards— The moment they are out of their element, they coagulate. The Spaniard is not a Spaniard until he leaves Spain. It is Calderónian, that’s all. We will never come out of our Calderónianism, thank the devil.”

“I understood that about the national system,” put in his American vocalist, who was always saying that something was not fair. “And boy! You’ve got a system! Do Spaniards ever speak of anything but themselves and Spain?”

He looked at her with commiseration: “The poor kid — right on top of a tree. Doesn’t know what it’s all about— But of course we do. What else is there to talk about? The only things that matter, the things one knows and the things one likes, which are synonymous, with honorable exceptions of course. We Spaniards like to speak of ourselves and explain ourselves to others and even to ourselves, but so do the Anglo-Saxons and other foreigners, except that they pay a psychoanalyst in order to speak of themselves and explain themselves to him and to themselves. It amounts to buying a trained audience, and while the simple solution in this case favors the Anglo-Saxons and the others, one must admit that it is more expensive. Of course, the patient is delighted and the treatment is prolonged indefinitely. He never sees any good reason for quitting his favorite topic. We count on the politeness of our audience or don’t give a damn. They count on the business sense of their analyst and don’t give a damn.” A long swallow of wine while he held his stick poised as a warning to anyone who dared interrupt wound him up to continue:

“We Spaniards are preoccupied with ourselves as individuals and as a race. We know that we are isolated, don’t belong to the civilized world. We are in Europe but are not of Europe — half Moor, half Oriental and half I don’t know what — we have more halves than make one whole— Paradoxical, you know? That’s us. Look at me. Look at the Chink. Look at the shawls. Foreigners call them Spanish shawls — utterly confused. We call them what they are, or what they were originally anyway — let’s not overdo our national habit of splitting hairs— We call them shawls of Manila, of the Orient. There you are and that’s what we are, because we know how to use them as we know how to use the cloak. That is our country: the cloak and the shawl, the mixture of Occident and Orient, nobility and exoticism, a land of contrasts and organized inconsistency, Don Quixote disguised as Don Juan in a harem in order to deliver the odalisques, Calderón eating angulas with chopsticks because it is more castizo, adaptable and Roman Catholic, conceptualist and brachistological, traditional and cosmopolitan— So we have thirst for understanding. What can we do? We have conquered lands and want to conquer minds now that we have lost the lands and that our spirituality has asserted itself more with age — the devil fed up on flesh. We must talk of ourselves, of the fine points. That is our obsession, points, points of honor, points of view, points, points— All right, we are has-beens and this is our only consolation, the fine point which is all that remains and at any rate a has-been is better than a has-not-been or never-will-be. A good point, see? Points again.”

He checked himself and with the shillelagh to his lips signaled for silence. The table where La Niña de los Madroños sat was right in the semicircle of people and she had remained seated, her back to the table. Cáceres had hinted an invitation to her and had begun to play, and she began to sing.

“Now for the cañi,” the Moor whispered down his shoulder to those near him.

Her voice rose, hesitated purposely, holding and increasing the suspense, and then rolled down, swaying like scallops of lace, to submerge itself in a sea of olés. She sang with a coolness and absence of gestures that was the more remarkable after witnessing the exhibition of Lunarito and Bejarano.

“Do you notice the flatness of delivery and the richness of the voice?” the Moor was saying now. “Like French horns properly played, like molten gold— And positively liturgical. Like a litany where the ‘ora pro nobis’ is substituted by the olés — our chulismo and our mysticism rolled into one. That’s the point — haa — points again— an infinite system of points that would have delighted the soul of Cantor, but if he had been Spanish he would have kept his equilibrium and would have seen that it is perfectly natural for the part to contain as much as the whole — as much of nothing, that is. Sounds theological, but for that very same reason, it is perfectly clear to any Spaniard. There has always been complete understanding between God and ourselves—”

I felt the pull in my eyes and looked into the thick lenses of Fulano. There it was again, but I could still hear the Moor’s voice while I submerged.

“—the pure intonation. It is immaculate, it implies the harmony. Did you notice the passages where Cáceres was not playing? She was on her own then, but the intonation implied the accompanying chord. There would have been a number of chords which might have applied, but by her form of attack, she suggested the one she wanted. She has the perfect voice for flamenco: rich in overtones. With the exception of Dr. Jesucristo and Cáceres, of course, you don’t know what I am talking about, but no matter. It must be said — a matter of acoustics. Of all the overtones present in every one of her notes, she knows how to intensify the right ones which make the proper harmony and that is true intonation for you. She acquired that singing in church — the only proper way. That’s how she began to sing. Of course, typical, exemplifying the Castitholicism of Spain as well as the phrase of that thinker who said that the essential characteristic of our country was Jesus Christ with castanets.”