Coolness descended upon him and he heard isochronous steps upon a hard floor. He opened his eyes. He was holding on to the bars of his prison cell door. A guard was walking along the corridor in front of the cells.
Ramos had been leaning against the back of his chair while talking. The room was quite dark except for some light from a street lamp coming through the window and illuminating mostly the ceiling with a reddish light, but in the corner where Ramos stood, it was dark. He felt his way around the chair and sat down once more:
“And that was the time I regretted least having that power. For once I had encountered the often-dreaded pitfall awaiting my mad unconscious rush and had fallen in it, but I did not regret it. That time my recollections of the period erased were more and clearer. With time I have acquired gradually a greater capacity to recall those moments, to bring out things from my subconscious. I remembered quite clearly the scandal covering front pages in the newspapers. I remember also much of the trial. I had money and influence and hired the best defense counsel that could be had. He was a brilliant man, that lawyer. In the end he got me off with a comparatively short sentence, but it did not make any difference.” Again I heard his laborious breathing.
“But I must not hold you here any longer. You must go back to your Sociedad.” He noticed my expectancy: “No, there is nothing more. After I regained freedom I saw the downgrade of my life extending ahead uninterrupted, but even had life held something for me, I had nothing for life. Yet, I had no impatience, I knew that I was finished and kept going with the dying momentum like the hair, like the nails that grow on a corpse. I was only mildly curious. I wanted to see my life a few days before the end and I took a long chance, the longest and safest in my life. I could not lose— And here I am. Now I know the wait will not be long. It does not matter, you see? That is why your Sociedad must not bother with me. I need no help or charity now. I have all that counts now: memories. I am living over now all the moments of my life through which I passed unconsciously. They are all coming back now, emerging from the shadows with tremendous power, clear, dazzling, some horrible and some magnificent. I am sitting and resting, waiting, living and being conscious of every moment of this last and short wait.”
I knew that anything I could say was superfluous. This was final. I tiptoed out of the room shutting the door noiselessly behind and, unable to turn away from it, held on to the old banister and thus descended those dark stairs backwards, hypnotized, eyes fixed where that door should be that could not be seen.
I was on Cherry Street once more and walked away slowly, the feeling of depression increasing with every step, and suddenly I could stand it no more. I wanted to go home and almost broke into a run. Hailing a passing cab, I plunged in shouting my address. I sat tensely on the edge of the seat and in my desire to be home, shut my eyes and pounded my knees with my clenched fists.
A sudden screech of brakes and a swerve caused me to open them. The cab was standing in front of my house, and the driver was speaking to me over his shoulder and saying that it was a pretty narrow escape we had had back there.
When Garcia finished, he walked to the desk, gathered what he had read with the rest of his story and placed it in a large envelope. “It’s all yours,” he said, sending it spinning across the room to me.
Also during those days Garcia gave me several cursory descriptions of the second part of his novel, particularly the beginning. Concretely, he was not decided on how to open the second part, but he favored a family gathering that would permit him to show the younger generation of the Sandovals, with comments he expected to be of deep social significance regarding the new generation after the war of 1914 and also considerations regarding the older set of the family and the changes which time had wrought on each. The profound social comments had not yet materialized in black and white but that did not efface Garcia’s literary optimism. He also hoped to expound a theory to the effect that the nineteenth century had not really ended with the year 1900 but with the First World War. All these ambitious philosophical plans must have gotten sidetracked in his subsequent attempts, because I never found them in what he read or made me read or, if they were implied somewhere, I did not notice them.
Garcia finally settled on opening with a family gathering which, besides being a well-tried method, would permit his character studies of the members of the family and would present as the central figure the heroine of the second part of his story, who was Rojelia, the oldest daughter of Fernando and Trini Sandoval. He was all set on making it a musical soiree where the heroine played the harp, one of the accomplishments of this girl whom he wanted to describe as beautiful, proud and talented as well as discreet with lofty ideals that contrasted with the rest of her family. Also this he expected would give him an opportunity to discuss music.
Garcia had become interested in music through his association with the Moor, but his knowledge of it was sadly inadequate and he contented himself with saying very modestly that he simply liked good music. He was confident that he could get all the necessary information and facts from the Moor.
I told him that he knew the Moor disapproved of his literary activities and that perhaps he had better consult someone else.
“I know, but I will have to swallow my pride and spruce up my patience. The Moor can be approached. I can tell him, for instance, that I want to write about music but that I don’t know what it’s all about, get it? That will win him over.”
I winked my assent: “That’s the boy! You tell him that. The Moor is after all a good scout even if he — knows it.”
This encouraged Garcia, if he had needed it, to begin to read from his notes. There was a platitudinous character and physical portrayal of the heroine and a sketch of the mental vacuity of the two younger members, Jorge and his sister Lolita. It was a standard description that could have fitted any other contemporary youths. I told Garcia this but he stated that generalization of characters, making them universal, was one of the acknowledged virtues of great literature, so I let that pass and he read a description of Trini where she appeared considerably refined by maturity, a thing which was reflected by the more tasteful decorations of the house and probably tied in with the musical soiree on which the Moor was to collaborate with his learned advice. What had been once in the woman plain vulgarity was now an earthy exuberance with suggestions of nature’s nobleman, breaking at times like a geyser through the shell of acquired culture and ripe composure which held it in precarious check. Her voice had also remained a deep, rich, heartwarming contralto. These are, of course, Garcia’s own words.
He took less kindly to Fernando Sandoval. His description in this, the second part of the story, came down to that of a weakling and neurotic, but Garcia elaborated at length on the psychological and pathological aspects. He had a weakness for this sort of thing. I said that he should not commit himself in writing about things he knew so little about, but he insisted that he knew more than I gave him credit for and that anyway he would enlist the advice of Dr. de los Rios. This, I argued, was foolish, as his knowledge of de los Rios should make plain to him. The good doctor would be glad to help him in any serious problem which concerned his person, but he would never indulge such a waste of time and attempt to teach him in one easy lesson what he had accumulated in a lifetime of studies. He might tell him to read up on the subject, and even allow him to attend some of his lectures, and all this would take too long for impatient Garcia, but more probably, he would tell him to forget the whole thing or he might have a relapse and wind up once more on the Bowery.