We spoke longer about Olózaga and Tia Mariquita and then Dr. de los Rios related to me some of the businesses into which the former had gone.
Business of Señor Olózaga
One day I was sitting at a café in La Plaza de Cataluña in Barcelona. My attention, as well as that of several passersby and people sitting in the café, was attracted by a strange group that was advancing across the plaza.
There were six men dressed in a fantastic manner. They wore jackets with broad green and yellow stripes and also high hats with the same kind of stripes. They were coming toward the café.
When they were nearer, I noticed a man walking in front of them who was doing all he could to shrink within his clothes. He was literally looking for a hole in the ground that would swallow him.
At last the poor fellow dashed across and sat at a table in the café. The six men followed very seriously and sat at a table next to him and remained there silent and motionless. I asked a waiter what it was all about.
“They belong to an agency for the collection of delinquent accounts. It has been working for the last month or so.”
The agency worked as follows:
If a person had not paid a debt, the matter was placed in the hands of the agency. Immediately six men dressed in the manner described posted themselves at the door of the victim’s house. The moment the debtor came out they followed him closely. If he took a carriage, they took another carriage. If he visited someone, they waited at the door until he came out and then resumed their activities. They followed him everywhere, constantly, until the whole thing became a nightmare. The most stubborn debtor would finally give in to this persecution and, in order to get rid of this pest and public ridicule, pay his debt and be immediately left in peace. No one had been known to last out a week. The agency pocketed part of the debt, and that was the business.
Plainly the man who had sat at the café was ill at ease. He shifted on his chair and turned his back to his tormentors. People were already gathering and pointing at the men and at the debtor, and laughing.
At last the poor man rose. He approached one of the six men and exchanged a few words with him. A carriage was summoned and they all piled inside and went away. On the back of one of the men I saw plainly written in thick letters:
AGENCIA OLOZAGA
The same Olózaga, I thought, always the same imaginative and resourceful spirit, always the same public-arousing love for the colorful, always new and refreshing in his conceptions.
When I left Barcelona I heard that the agency had been dissolved by the police as scandalous, abusive and mob-gathering.
When I went back to Madrid I found Olózaga already established in another business.
The thing consisted of selling the clothes that had belonged to dead people. This idea was not original and, as a matter of fact, it had been worked often in Spain.
When a man dies in Spain (and I suppose anywhere else, for that matter) he is dressed in decent clothes. Whether he is poor or rich he usually has a nice suit of clothes, his Sunday best, generally black, to wear in his coffin. This is the psychology of the business.
The question is to get hold of this suit, and this is the technique: If the family is poor, between having lost its main support and with the expenses which the funeral entails, they are in need of funds and sometimes it is easy to buy the suit cheaply before the coffin is closed. Sometimes the price must be slightly elevated because there is someone in the family whose measurements coincide more or less with those of the deceased. But usually the man who runs the business introduces himself as the representative of some charitable organization. In an eloquent speech he points out that the suit will be used to more advantage covering the nakedness of some poor person than under the ground. That it will be an act of charity that will greatly please the deceased, that it will arouse the gratefulness of the poor on earth and of the Lord in Heaven, and that many prayers will be said for the generous soul of the dead man. Under the circumstances the family usually gives up the suit without investigating further.
However, in difficult cases it is necessary to deal with the grave-digger in the cemetery and get him to exercise his pull with the dead.
These suits, usually in good condition after a little sponging and pressing, are sold not as secondhand but as misfit, and they leave a good profit. In order to eradicate certain odors which may have clung to them, they are sprayed with a powerful disinfectant, the smell of which has come to be identified with that of death and is most persistent and insidious.
The result is that when an innocent person buys one of these misfits, expecting it to pass for a regular suit, he goes by trailing an accusing and funereal atmosphere, which his friends immediately detect with consequent mirth and irreverently sarcastic sallies.
Olózaga had gone into this business associated with a man, Don Laureano Baez, a rogue after whom the police had been for some time.
I met Olózaga one summer’s day at the street of Alcala in Madrid. As I saw him coming toward me, outlined against the setting sun, he still looked a big man, but not quite so large as before. He was dressed in a black coat with white flannel trousers, a panama hat, and carried a walking stick. His complexion was fairer now, his eyes were still as oblique and quite puffed underneath. His drooping mustache, as well as his hair, was white and not as long at the ends, and he had quite a heavy abdomen. Europe had softened him as much as Europe could, but there was still that exotic and buoyant air about him.
We had not seen each other for some time and we sat at La Elipa and there he told me about his business.
“Yes,” he said. “Everything is decadent now. Even I, who have been so active and resourceful all my life, must content myself with this petty business. In my day, there were adventure and opportunities. Nowadays a man steps out into life and life does not give him a chance to display his ability. The time for opportunities is gone. I have outlived my epoch and that is the worst mistake a man can do. I feel superfluous.”
We drank something and talked on, then we walked slowly toward La Castellana.
The Last Glow
A few days after I had seen Olózaga, Madrid was shaken by a crime in which he was involved indirectly. The whole thing came out in the papers, which were full of the accounts.
It seems that Don Laureano Baez, the partner of Olózaga, had a good-looking daughter called Maria Luisa, who was known by the nickname of Lunarito. Olózaga liked the girl and for some time had tried to come to an agreement with Don Laureano whereby the latter would let him have Lunarito for a certain amount of money. They had had several quarrels over this matter and had not been able to come to any agreement. Don Laureano wanted more money.
Then Olózaga began to gamble and win at the Casino de Madrid. He kept this up for several nights and one night when he had been particularly lucky he received a message. It was a letter from Don Laureano Baez saying that he would accept the price they had discussed and to come right away. That he would find the door open and Lunarito waiting for him.
Olózaga communicated immediately with his secretary, Cendreras, and sent him to the house of Don Laureano, following at some distance. When he arrived he saw the house of Don Laureano completely dark inside. In the street before the house, someone had built a bonfire and the whole front of the house was illuminated with a red glow.