When we rang the bell, there was some commotion inside and the unmistakable sounds of hasty preparations. The Moor began to laugh without making a sound.
The door opened and there stood Bejarano holding a broom and dust rag, an expectant smile on his dusky face: “Oh! It is you— I thought—” He motioned us to come in.
“Yes, it is only us and not the Department of Sanitation with skirts. You can relax now and put those things away.”
Bejarano laid the broom and dust rag within easy reach and went to the kitchenette, and while he was gathering bottles and glasses, Don Pedro decided to banish my wonderment at the mysterious greetings and elucidated:
The arrangement was this: Bejarano could not manage to have a cleaning woman come to fix the place. For one thing, he never knew much in advance when he would be there and even if he did, he would not go there only for the express purpose of letting her in. There were two objections to giving a cleaning woman a key. One was that she might arrive at an inopportune moment, because Bejarano never had any set hours for his gallant life; the other and perhaps the strongest reason was his gypsy nature which made him suspicious of servants and their respect for the property of others, although he did not keep anything of much value there — but that is the way he felt and consequently he had developed a subtle system. He could not come out and ask one of his lady friends to clean up things for him, but he could hint. When one of them arrived, if the place needed cleaning, he would receive her with broom and dust rag, or with a mop in hand, and the scene developed something like this:
“What on earth are you up to, darling?”
“Only trying to tidy things up a little before you came. This place gets so messy — but you caught me before I finished.” This looking ashamed.
“Now you give me those and let me do it. Why, it looks as if you had not even begun.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t think of letting you—”
“Come on. You look foolish with that apron on. You men are all alike, so helpless— A woman can do this in a jiffy. Here, let me show you.”
And the thing was done. As simple as that. Sometimes, he would be found with thread and needle, or at an ironing board he had procured: “Nothing, only this button— The laundry, you know—” or: “Ran out of shirts and I thought—” It never failed.
The Moor said that once one of his girlfriends was late and he fell asleep, still clutching the broom just in case, and he forgot the electric iron on the board. When the girl arrived and rang without getting an answer, she used the emergency key that was left under the doormat — the key he always took inside with him if he had feminine company — and she went in. She found the place full of smoke and Bejarano sleeping placidly holding the broom. She got a good fright thinking that the place was on fire and the fellow choked to death. She ran to throw the windows open, discovered the source of the smoke and disconnected the iron. Then her pity knew no limits: the poor boy asleep, exhausted from working so hard to make his apartment presentable for her and the place still looking so dirty and untidy! Bejarano, who had awakened with a start, also got a good fright that time but even this failed to cure him. It was a good system.
He came back from the kitchenette and placed two bottles and glasses on a coffee table. He had been listening to the explanations of Don Pedro with pride:
“Clever, don’t you think? It saves money too, and you know us gypsies. ”
“But, Bejarano,” I interrupted, “I should think that this method would occupy most of the time allocated for a gallant occasion and tire the girl out”
“Nonsense,” said the Moor. “Have you forgotten the spirit of Don Juan? You know — the conquest for its own sake — never the realization, the foregone conclusion. Not the concrete, but the algebraic viewpoint, and the Moors developed the science and we are all half Moors. It is the national system. The assignation is a ritual, a formality, a tribute of good manners to masculinity, as when we say to someone who admires any of our possessions that it is at his disposal; yet he would never dream of availing himself of it. The Spaniard is fundamentally ascetic, almost frigid, and never in a hurry for sex, food or money. He likes the full table, the abundant wine, yet he is frugal. If he attains power, he disdains to use it; he upholds the theory of the harem but his heart is only with one woman while his body sleeps in the serrallo, because being mystically concerned with the spirit only, he knows that no place in his anatomy is the site of his fidelity, that only the soul can be faithless. Indeed he appears boastful of his masculinity and militant for the privileges of pornocracy, but only because he is modest and practices what others should at least know: that one must not boast of one’s virtues but belittle them, be almost ashamed of them— It is Calderónian, but the national system.”
Bejarano was basking in all this and taking it as a personal eulogy. He had even assumed the air of one long misunderstood and at last redeemed. His was the manner of one who has long known the truth but prefers to let his actions and, if fortunate, others more articulate, speak for him. His smile had that smug repression one seldom sees except in the faces of cripples, which is supposed to reflect their inner satisfaction and conviction in their own indomitable courage, the only thing left to help them navigate the storms of destiny.
I could not hide my derision and the Moor, sensing that he had enlisted the undying gratitude and unconditional support of Bejarano, put on the pressure: “It is quite simple. The combination of the Moor and the Christian, and I concede that my own example might lead you to doubt, but don’t forget that I am more Moor than Spanish. I don’t think that you, or many others for that matter, understand a man like Bejarano. He is castizo. He is Spanish.”
I’d swear that Bejarano was ready to break down and sob shamelessly. He gulped his wine and choked on it but not as much as I hoped in my impotent indignation at this farce. Had the Moor been standing instead of sprawling, Bejarano would have embraced him: At last a kindred soul, redeemed at last, at last cleared, the outcast once more welcome, paradise regained!
We stayed there the length of two or three drinks and Don Pedro invited me to an early broadcast he had and then to dine with him and Dr. de los Rios. Bejarano usually had a nap at this time unless he had something he considered much better to do, and as a rule he never ate until after his show.
It was after the broadcast and while dining with de los Rios and the Moor that they decided to call on the Coello family and asked me to come along. All this happened — oh, quite some time ago, and since then I saw that extraordinary family several times and learned a few things about them. Dr. de los Rios had attended to them professionally and also as a friend, because although they were very poor and his fees very steep, he always forgot to send bills to his poor patients, especially those of the Spanish colony. It saved his conscience and bookkeeping. The Moor, who had met them through de los Rios, considered this one of the most castizo families, after their own fashion, that he had met outside of Spain, something that according to him only a Spaniard could appreciate, and he liked to drop in on them occasionally to chew the humble rag.
But this family deserves to be considered especially, and emulating Garcia, who for some remarkable reason has not written about them, I might tell their story and preface my narrative with the erudite and ominous lemma:
“Memento homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.”