“That is a beautiful rosary you are wearing.”
“I have had it quite some time. They gave it to me at the Convent—”
Bejarano set his knife and fork down with resolution: “And I suppose they also gave you at the Convent all the other valuable things: the copones, the eucharisty, everything — and to think that father went to jail for something he never did while others go about enjoying and displaying their loot.” His bitterness and repressed fury were such that everyone was surprised and there ensued another silence. Garcia’s attempt had been illfated.
“Stop picking on her, will you?” shouted El Cogote: “Always digging up the dead. Every time anyone mentions anything, off we go. So everybody has his shames in his family. What do you want us to do now, start a procession on our knees around the table?”
“Of course we all have our shames,” Lunarito was saying: “Look at my own father — and even the columnist who said something about bums’ row on the Bowery playing host to someone who claims to have sired Lunarito of the well-known team Lunarito and Bejarano — but what good is worrying?”
Bejarano had his head in his hands and was scowling silently at his salad. He lifted his head as if to say something, but then thought better of it and resumed his pensive pose. We all knew what Lunarito was referring to.
She had brought her father from Spain soon after she and Bejarano began to be successful. Dr. de los Rios knew him from Spain, and Don Pedro also knew him and considered him one of the real castizos and liked him very well. Garcia and I had never got to meet him. Everyone referred to him as Don Laureano.
The whole story was rather sordid and there should be no reason why Lunarito herself should have brought it up, except that there are some Spaniards who have the pride of suffering and delight in matching sorrow for sorrow, shame for shame, opprobrium for opprobrium, always hoping to make good and emerge someday undisputed champions, but they are always being thwarted by someone who comes up in the end with a devastating and tragic disaster that tops their best.
The life of her father in Spain had been a pretty shady affair and he would have been correctly described as a Caballero de Industria — the English translation Industrious Gentleman being scarcely accurate, to say the least. Upon his arrival, Lunarito had exhorted him:
“I hope that long vacation you spent in jail before coming finally taught you a lesson. Please do not try any of your tricks here. Remember: there are no more Indians in America, this is a different country and things here are very different.”
“Different, my eye! Everywhere they cook beans but,” he hastened to add, “don’t worry, I am retired now and don’t expect to cook up anything. I brought you up, educated you, took good care of you, and now I will let you take good care of me.”
“Well, if you want to engage in something honest, please consult the Señor Olózaga. He has lived here long and knows things well. Besides, you and he were partners before.”
“Hmm — so we were— We’ll see. I am a different man now. I have reformed.”
“I hope you have, because don’t forget that we can have you deported if we mention your jail sentence. We have influence with the police too. We have danced at many benefits—”
“So you have? Well, well — don’t you worry about your old man.”
At first Don Laureano behaved to the point of doing nothing, including nothing for his keep. Of his old habits, he had kept the most trivial ones, such as never separating from the wineskin he had brought from Spain as his only luggage and filching now and then some belongings from Lunarito and Bejarano, or perhaps a visiting acquaintance, and a trinket or two from the apartment, all of which went directly to the pawnshop. He went frequently to the park and sat in the sun with his beloved wineskin, only to return home when it was empty, just in time for supper and a refill. Sometimes he took his lunch along and bought peanuts to feed the birds and squirrels. The squirrels amused him for he had never seen them in Spain. One in particular fascinated him and they became fond friends. He even bought a collar with a bell for it and this delighted the children when they discovered it. That squirrel was a smart one and waited every day for him in order to climb on his knee or his shoulder, and then he fed it and held long, one-sided conversations with it in Spanish and got it to understand and obey many of his gentle commands, but he never took it home. He knew that Lunarito had never harbored anything more than a cat and now that she was harboring him, he had learned in his old age the value of independence. A passing observer seeing him thus, with his venerable white beard and sharing his food with the animals, would have taken him for a kindly, patriarchal, almost bucolic old man and a direct descendant from Saint Francis of Assisi.
Once while thus resting, his hand fell idly on a new green leaf torn by the wind and carried to his bench. Absently, he lifted it and found that, by coincidence, it was resting on a dried old leaf, no doubt from last year and also carried there by the wind. He contemplated this long and thoughtfully, smiling to himself. Then he let the new leaf go and took another swig from the wineskin. The squirrel settled on his shoulder and, fondling it, Don Laureano began to share his confidences in whispers with this, the only friend he had made on his own since he left Spain.
Reminiscences of his old life drifted into his mind and, with every swallow of the wine, condensed and assaulted him with visions of past and sinister splendor, of the times when he had been known in Madrid as the Prince of Beggars and the Grand Old Man of Knavery. Always shrewd and calculating, his methods had consistently avoided violence and trusted skill and, in his long and arduous career, he had but once been carried in a moment of senile, impatient greed, to the utmost limit of transgression and paid only partially a penalty he considered light for the stupidity he could not forgive himself. Quickly he passed over these gruesome details, to recall his most clever ruses and masterful strokes, swindles and deceptions. He could not remain idle long. Begging and the life of a rogue were in his blood, and old as he was, there was still battle in him.
At an advanced age, it is very difficult to change one’s personality, and regeneration is by definition out of the question. His old and less trivial habits began to assert themselves. It was inevitable. Insensibly, without apparent difficulty, he became involved with the police.
To hear the Moor tell it was like listening to a fairy tale.
One of the first things was the chlorophyll salve with which the Moor had caused so much embarrassment to the antipático man. Don Laureano heard about it and immediately took his daughter’s advice and consulted the Señor Olózaga. Together they formed a haphazard partnership to market the stuff. Out of cheap ingredients they manufactured large quantities of it and began to sell it on street corners through the so-called pitchmen. One could hear the spiel on any of New York’s corners:
“It prevents sunburn. Takes the sun out of the skin where it does the most harm and carries it inside the blood where it does the most good— Wake up to the new Sun Cult and be like a plant— Plants don’t eat eggs or steaks or salads, but get all their energy directly from the sun. Think of the money you and the missus will save in food— grow strong as an oak— No special training required; slap it on, spread it on, the more the better. It will impart a brilliant green color that will make you the sensation of the beach—” And so on, on any sidewalk.
It was unbelievable. The thing caught on and sold like hotcakes. The business grew. It sold by mail and the department stores held demonstrations on their main floors and sold tons of it. The five-and-ten stores were swamped with emerald jars. It was a colossal hoax that exploded with a boom all along the seashores. If beaches like Coney Island had looked on warm holidays like huge tracts of macaroni, now they looked like spinach noodles, or as if they had been overrun by some kind of moving plant life. It will always be remembered as the green era, and had Columbus looked upon this, one wonders what his thoughts might have been. No more red men in the Americas, but green, bright green. The Moor interpreted all this as an example of his theories about spiritual territorial conquests and pacific penetrations.