While the Moor and I disposed of a dinner for four, the conversation around the table might as well have been in Chinese for all I understood of it. They spoke in mock mysterious sentences, a frequent habit with the Moor but which seemed contagious on that occasion, and I suspected that I was being the subject of some kind of mild practical joke that concerned my quest for Garcia, particularly when the Moor said something about Spanish gestures and the national system. I felt distinctly outclassed and to regain my poise, drank considerably of some exotic wine that the Señor Olózaga was planning to market and which he praised lavishly both by word of mouth and elbow action. Everything was very polite and tranquil and the dreamlike quality that had palled the whole evening like a fog became denser and soothing so that when we left the place, I was not surprised to find the fateful Hispano-Suiza with the Cuban boy all smiles waiting to drive us home. I did not care whether I had been foolish in looking for Garcia, but on being dropped in style at my very door, decided not to look for him again.
Enough time passed after that for spring to arrive.
Then, one day I was in that section where the quiet, though gradually surrendering dignity of Brooklyn Heights is ignominiously crowded by commercialism down a steep hill to meet the lugubrious Furman ravine at the foot of Fulton Street, when I saw Garcia, the fallen bard, as he would have put it, and he was truly a bad sight. He was lying near the curb in front of a bar which might have seen younger if not better days, and he was in a state of complete inebriation: his clothes dusty and torn, his face blackened by soot and unshaven, a patch of caked blood matting his white hair. It was the regulation uniform and he would have passed the inspection of the king of bums with flying colors. He was the wounded soldier of misfortune and paladin of the scum. Next to him, and but one shade less of miserable glory, was another fellow, still upright from the waist up, who kept on shaking Garcia with that characteristic truculent yet affectionate persistence, calling to him to “get up, you. ” followed by some foul epithet. There was a dog nosing about Garcia. Probably belonged to the other man.
Garcia only rolled from one side to another and groaned his contemptuous disregard for the whole damn respectable world, while the man continued to push and pull ineffectually. There was something about the man and the animal, the suggestion of the loyal watchdog, something in this sinister scene, in the common bond of degradation uniting two outcasts, that sent a wave of pity through me that washed all revulsion away. Even at this point, Garcia, who had always aroused the protective instinct in anyone who knew him, had found someone to sit by him and try to pull him up to his slightly higher level of indignity.
I rushed to Garcia and managed to bring him up to a sitting position, but his head rolled and if he recognized me, he may not have been able to distinguish the situation from a dream. The other man smiled his cockeyed recognition of our mutual interest and patted Garcia on the back with a manner that said: “Good boy — good boy—”
Talking to Garcia and trying to make him understand was a useless task and I did not know how to take him in his condition to better surroundings, so, as usual under the circumstances, I thought of Dr. de los Rios and decided to call him up and ask him to come down and help me.
I left Garcia to the thankless ministrations of his companion and entered the barroom and there put a call to de los Rios. This was his hour of consultation, but nevertheless he said that he would be right down and to stand by Garcia, so I sat at the bar from where I could watch him, feeling quite confident that he would not run away and that the indifference of the city would let him lie there where he was, and ordered a drink and then another while waiting, and although Dr. de los Rios arrived with miraculous speed, I was feeling pretty good myself by the time he arrived. He stopped the car right in front of Garcia, and when I came out to meet him, he was already by his side. I lent him a hand and between the two of us we got him to his feet. Then despite his groans and protests, we propelled him forward and into the car. Garcia drooped in the back seat like a sack of flour. Before taking his seat, de los Rios looked around and what I saw in his face, I could not describe.
This whole thing had made me forget what I had come to this neighborhood for, and I went along for the ride and to see whether I could be of some help. I wanted to be near Garcia as much as possible after not seeing him for such a long time. We crossed over the bridge and then rode up to de los Rios’s house. There he called an attendant and I decided that I was not needed and took my leave.
A few days after this incident Garcia arrived at my place looking like a new man: new clothes, clean shaven, well-combed silky white mane and, although he had never been the picture of health, he looked much better than I had ever seen him. He made no reference to the past happenings, and even though I had not seen him for about a year, since our last recent meeting did not count, he tried to act as if we had been together the day before and nothing had happened. He was the least bit shy and I could not help quoting from Fray Luis de León: “As we were saying yesterday—”
He gave me a smile and then said that he wanted to gather his papers and things and that he had already imposed enough on me. I showed him where they were piled up and he began to rummage among them, and then I said that the occasion called for a drink and went to fix a couple, but he was too absorbed in his work and I don’t think he heard me. I handed him his drink and he took a sip absently, set it down on the desk and promptly forgot all about it. This was the old Garcia. He was drinking again like a Spaniard.
He was holding some papers in his hand and there was the enthusiasm of the inveterate writer in his face. He said that he had to get busy and work on his stories. The past experiences he considered, I am sure, a contribution to furnishing what he would operatically call his nest of memories, and he was raring to go. I could already see myself involved with translations and manuscripts and subject to litanical readings. He certainly was the same old Garcia. One can’t keep a good man down.
During the days that followed, Garcia busied himself with his writings and in particular with the second part of his novel about the family, and at that time he had not finished the first part yet to my knowledge, for he did not read the end of it to me until sometime later following a meal at the Bejaranos’ which the Moor prepared and I have recorded already. But this was the way he worked. He assaulted a story from every angle at the same time; it was a general offensive all along the front. Where a sector yielded, his forces concentrated on the attack. If a particular section of his work suited the mood of his inspiration, he labored on that, finished with it and then lay it aside to be fitted subsequently in its proper place — well, not always.
This may serve as a justification for the disorder I have allowed to invade my narrative. In order to preserve the sequence of Garcia’s stories, I have sacrificed my own. It is a good excuse anyway.
One of the first things Garcia completed was the draft for his moving picture story and immediately began to cast his eye around for someone who could make a scenario from it and to pester me with entreaties to make at least a rough translation. He wanted to ascertain up to what point I remembered the story and I told him that during his absence I had reread many of his writings because having no one to loaf with, I had more time to myself, and then he reproached me for not having translated some of his work with all that time on my hands, but I countered that one could not embark on a task like that without even knowing whether one was ever going to finish it.