“Are Spaniards always so romantic? I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.” He sat without uttering a word, trying to remember, to find some opening, no matter how small, in the wall which separated him from his memory of the particular contributing circumstances to this moment.
Two young blades went by leisurely, one of them, bowler hat carelessly and miraculously hanging from the back of his head, his thumbs thrust in the armholes of his fancy waistcoat He was singing:
“While strolling in the park one day
In the merry merry month of May. ”
The stare faded from Julio’s eyes which began to crease at the corners, the growing light of a smile illuminating them like sunrise.
“That’s better, honey,” Jenny said.
Garcia stopped and for a mute moment we looked at one another blankly, he because he was perhaps still turning things over in his mind and I because I had not been paying very close attention and could offer no critical comment. Maybe Garcia felt that he was wasting his time on me because he said he thought that was enough for the time being and that he would perhaps continue later. The afternoon was nearing that horizontal hour of long recumbent shadows that bind one’s path to sleep like a striped caterpillar, or lash it into lively action like a bolting zebra and when the sun reflected in windows, beats the budding electric lights into hopeless inadequacy.
After a while Garcia suggested that we go to the Armenian district for supper. His partiality to Oriental or semi-Oriental food matched his fondness for street lamps and was involved with poetic misconceptions and ascetic dreams complicated by a rebellion against his practical surroundings of sauerbraten, knockwurst and kraut which cried out for a purifying bath with a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, unleavened, and anything else on the side that aroused gastronomical curiosity. I remember his consternation when Don Pedro informed him that Omar Khayyám was also a mathematician; Garcia, for whom mathematics was absolutely unknown territory and who with the sublime authority of ignorance damned it as the ultimate distillate of the prosaic, had been shocked, disconcerted and unbelieving, considering the revelation a gross slander, and I think it was from that day that he baptized our friend Don Pedro el Cruel.
We boarded a bus and sat on the open top. All the way down to 72nd Street, the sun coming through the trees beat a tattoo of light and shadow on our faces that produced the exhilarating confusion of a shower of sparks or confetti, of a disorderly activity directed by nature toward one’s person, of buffeting flattery; and then out of that luminous gauntlet of burning swords and corridors of gold, into the gloom portals of the city where a few embers from the great bonfire outside had rolled in. A sunny corner here, a store window there, the incandescent crown of a tree at an intersection and looking up, one could see the tops of the buildings already on fire. All the way down, the shadows of the trees kept growing to immense proportions until they were the shadows of the buildings and the streets themselves were ropes of fire holding down a prostrate giant. The great conflagration would burn itself out beyond to leave a few distant sparks floating in the sky and then continue to smolder in the city lights all through the night.
This is as much as I can remember and convey of Garcia’s comments on that occasion until we reached Madison Square. There we got off and walked along the north side of the park toward Lexington Avenue.
There is something about most of the East Side, rain or shine, that lies somewhere between what we call reality and what we call a dream. It is the quality of a memory that has lain forsaken like an unattended grave. Nowhere else in New York can one find so everpresent the spirit of the has-been, of the window of a shop on Sunday inhabited only by our own reflection as we go by. It has the eerie texture of a sudden breeze on a calm day. Garcia suggested once that it seemed as if the tradesmen, the children, even the domestic animals there were saying: “I remember, I remember,” without speaking, but I think that what they are really trying to say is: “Remember me?” And “remember” is one of the saddest words.
Perhaps it is the crowded conditions that turn many of its sections into something like a junk shop heaped with faded, dusty, useless things of yesterday. Perhaps it is the bridges that trample down those parts like a fallen drunkard. Perhaps it is the proximity of the morgue or a combination of all these things, or perhaps to be cautious, this is the way it affects some people. We decided to forget all this as we entered the restaurant.
We sat through a protracted and variegated meal of morsels impaled or shrouded in leaves with innuendos of the sacrificial lamb, or even suggestive of historically famous French chefs speared in self-immolation because of royal culinary contretemps: immaculate rice, salad dressed with oil that could have come from the Mount of Olives, vinegar worthy of a scriptural sponge, and bejeweled with pomegranate grains like holy drops of blood, the end sweetened and punctuated with honey and almonds. The gastronomical lyricism of Garcia did not exclude quantity; it was rather Wagnerian.
And it was after this edifying meal, with a feeling of savory righteousness, while sipping coffee emulsion and arrack in a dining room that was emptying as fast as our bottle and while considering how Garcia would look with a long beard, that he regaled me with some more of his writing. This was about that Spanish family. He drew faster than a Western hero, and without any preamble he fanned at me:
This is the day of the week when the Sandovals are at home to their friends. The bell rings incessantly and people pour into the house shedding their hats and overcoats all over the antesala. A little graceful maid with white gloves keeps one hand on the doorknob; another one attends to the guests as they come in.
There are presentations, not as many as people because most of them know each other. The hum of conversation fills the air of the drawing room. One can’t hear anything — it is just as well — there is nothing to hear.
There is a lull at the door during which the two maids look at one another and take a deep breath. Then the bell rings again, perhaps for the last guest.
The first maid gives the door a lazy pull and then stands at attention.
A handsome gentleman saunters in caressing her cheek as he passes her. He places his coat, hat and stick in the hands of the other, looking at her intently. She is a pretty creature. He takes her by the chin and she blushes.
“Do they keep you working very hard, preciosa? You can go now and rest. I couldnt allow anyone to arrive after me.” He kisses her swiftly and with two agile leaps turns toward the drawing room. At the door he meets Fernando Sandoval talking to a group of gentlemen.
“Hola, Paco.”
Outside the two maids look again at one another: “Well! What did you think of that?”
“I think we can go now. Señorito Serrano is always the last one to arrive.”
At the door of the drawing room Fernando said: “I think you have met most of these gentlemen, haven’t you?”
“More or less. I can always stand a second introduction.”
Fernando produced a shrunken little gentleman whose face was all wrinkles when he smiled.
“I don’t think you two have met yet, have you?”
The little gentleman did not think so and extended a hand as Fernando made the brief introduction:
“Señor Ricardo Echenique: Señor Francisco Serrano. You know? Señor Echenique is a lawyer like you, Paco. Perhaps you would like to talk of your profession.”
Paco kicked Fernando’s foot very obviously and said aloud that he hardly thought so. The other man’s face shrank to the limit.