Felipe Alfau - Chromos

“None.”

“I am glad to hear you say that and I am inclined to grant your wish conditionally. For one thing, your original proposition would involve an injustice because if all sinners were rerouted to heaven hereafter, they would go absolutely unpunished and the sinners brought from hell would feel that this was not fair. Remember that you are now outside of Spain and everybody insists on fairness. They would feel this because they had already been punished, if only partially, and you may not know it but I do: that those who deserve to go to hell are very exacting in demanding equal rights and cannot tolerate the thought of anyone getting away with more than they do. I am sure that they would claim some compensation. The fact that this would be eternal glory for both, thus obliterating any differences in the limiting case, would not lessen their irritation before that limit was reached. Every time a scientist has suggested that according to that illusory second law of thermodynamics I started the universe a certain time ago, the first question that pops up in the human mind is: Why not before? But never why not after? There is that quality of the definitive about the past in human terms that carries a tremendous weight and conviction with men, and while there is a general saying that one should not look a gift horse in the mouth, your countrymen have another saying: Once a blow has been delivered, not even God can remove it. No, that would not do, but I will find a solution and, looking at the other aspect of the matter, what a soul is worth must be carefully evaluated. You have quoted yours at nothing and I like you for that. I am going to let that stand because I know that you want your pride to be crushed and I am going to send you to hell at first for nothing. That will make your gesture greater — no reward. However, with your suffering there, the value of your soul may increase and, remaining there an eternity, who knows but I? So go to hell, be happy there forever after your own fashion, and I will find a solution.”

As he sank forever, he saw the Almighty smile an inscrutable and wise smile, but what His solution might be is beyond all human understanding. Then his whole universe was flames where he was lost — an endless holocaust where he would burn in eternal glory.

I was saved by the entrance of Tia Mariquita; that is, the wife of the Señor Olózaga. She made her appearance carrying in tow her eternal companion, a poor, tall, lanky, and run-down actor with a face somewhat contorted by his desire to cast it in a dramatic gesture. He was an institution in the Spanish theater and no performance was complete without the Tia Mariquita and him. They moved solicitously from table to table, declaiming and playacting, exchanging bits of dialogue which they had well memorized, and presently they were ministering to Lunarito and Bejarano.

“Look at them, and what a pair!” This was Don Pedro again. “He should be holding up her train, except that it is too short and the sight might frighten him. Look at their teamwork. Probably trying to enlist the services of Lunarito and Bejarano. Hope they don’t have the audaciousness of approaching Cáceres for one of their theatrical phantasmagorias— But look at the approach. It is inimitable. The attempt at the grand manner and only succeeding in making everyone feel like a client. And the Chink insists that he has no interest in El Telescopio— But look at them. The eye of the master fattens the horse.” The pair had reached our table, but Don Pedro carried on: “How is business, your highness? Not bad? That is the main thing. This one will place El Telescopio on the top of New York’s gay spots. I might even move my band here.”

The Tia Mariquita clasped her hands, laughed with rolling eyes, extended her arms in delighted reproach: “This Don Pedro, this Don Pedro. He says such things—”

“That’s it, that’s it, and we are near the Bowery.” He sang in English: “The Bowery, they say such things and they do such things in the Bowery, the— Come on everybody. Hey, you,” to his English vocalist, “—Bowery. ” He swung his shillelagh, conducting, and all at the table joined him in chorus: “I’ll never go there anymore.” His laughter shook the place: “Did you hear that? Tia Mariquita, no one is coming here anymore — no more business.”

“Well.” The elongated actor had got hold of the backs of two chairs and was leaning over: “This is fine. We were so Spanish a minute ago and now we go into English. Well, I for one do not understand it and have enough with the language of Cervantes. I hope you enjoyed the little Spanish interlude we had a while ago, especially after the very illuminating explanations which probably did not let you hear or see anything.”

The actor resented English. He imagined that his ignorance of it had closed the doors of the American stage to him and that while Don Pedro basked in Anglo-Spanish fame, he had to wait for some bedraggled Spanish play in order to show his wares.

Don Pedro bent forward: “You know?” This in a stage whisper. “This mountebank, this desiccated strip of ham must have been listening all the time and we did not see him because he was hiding behind her skirt as usual, but now he is shooting at me by elevation. He thinks I don’t notice it, but I can see every one of his little words. They are ham actor’s words, cut out of paper and well chewed, and they dart in a little stream of harmless pellets — their graph is of the form. ” he gave the equation in x and y , “very elementary, but after all, coming from him— You people think that you are sitting at a table, but you are really standing on an axis like bored ordinates and he and I are at zero values, see? We are nothing and that is what bores you. But I am going to depress the equation and shoot straight at him.” His voice came out of the whisper: “You are a fool and like some actors nothing but a wastepaper basket full of discarded roles.” Tia Mariquita had moved away with unusual show of discretion. “Now, you mangy lapdog, run along, you know where, and be sure to pull the chain as you jump in.”

The actor’s face was more contorted than ever and as red as its professional pallor allowed: “Why, you fake, you inconsiderate and insulting fake! You think that you can go about saying what you please with your crazy x ’s and y ’s and everyone must bow—” He was incoherent with rage: “Your highness, your highness— Who is the actor now? You wine-drinking devil, you confounded fraud. I am as Spanish as the next one. More Spanish than some Moors who stayed in Spain in disguise, you—”

With deadly calm the Moor let him splutter to a finish: “And I say that you may be Spanish — every country has many things, you know?” The Moor’s hand moved in a devastatingly insulting gesture: “But you are a fool and a moocher. Go away or, by the beard of the Prophet—”

“Me a moocher!” the actor screamed as one who has been slapped with the culminating outrage. “ Mee a moocher!” He moved threateningly and the Moor, still sitting, raised his shillelagh. The two men who were sitting in front of the actor stood up and held him. The green man had jumped to his feet and backed away in alarm, but his two companions looked on with contentment, declining to be surprised by anything that took place there. The actor was bellowing: “He called me a moocher, did you hear? Will somebody please hold me before I lose my head?”

“His head— Let him come, boys. I am ready for him. Let him come and I will wrap this precious stick like a turban about that pumpkin he passes for a head. Perhaps I did not give him enough the last time and he wants more of the same — the little puppet has ambitions. Let him come.” But the two who were restraining the actor managed to take him away. He cried over his shoulder: “You are mad and evil. You are Satan,” and the Moor, gloating diabolically between swallows of red wine, a veritable reincarnation of Dracula, repeated as a parting shot: “Moocher.”