I should have tried to soothe him, but he held me spellbound with the power of his strange suggestion. I sat back by him with a mixture of fear and great sadness as he went on, almost in a paroxysm:
“Yes. in their shadows. they will see it then like a picture full of light and color upon a dark mirror. within the emptiness of their skull. in that dark chamber it will be reflected. and then they will see spring riding upon a white unbridled horse, with a helmet of sun melting into thick tresses over a great green robe and an infinite force of creation. They will see life, that comes to wake and drag them forth, and they will hope. One being will die and then another, but that is not the triumph of death. life goes on. Spring comes. Spring always comes.!”
The two dogs seemed to be no longer able to restrain themselves and began to howl intermittently. Garcia continued:
“In their emotion they will rise. Upon feeling the germ of life they will rise to find themselves blind, to find themselves dumb, to find themselves deaf, to find themselves dead. They will revive within four boards with their senses clogged with dirt. and then the last thing will be dead in them. then hope will be dead. They will find themselves coming back to life in a repugnant and horrible fashion, in an impersonal way. The dream of life has passed through them for the last time, leaving them a helpless heap of worms.
“And they will see spring receding and will find it again in a tree, or in a flower, or in something else. Everything is alike, all is eternal. With the same unconscious optimism life goes on, spring comes. Spring always comes. Spring. always. comes!”
Garcia sank back exhausted in his pillows. The whole room was now submerged in deep shadows and there were two dogs, two great big dogs, howling in the darkness.
VII
I returned one week after. I felt that I was calling on Garcia for the last time. Lunarito opened the door for me and then closed it carefully behind. The house was silent. At the door of my friend’s chamber I met Dr. de los Rios coming out.
“He is in very bad shape,” he said. “He may die any moment now. I don’t think he will even live until noontime.” His calm voice was more veiled than usual. I made no answer.
“Yes, there is no hope now. a whole degeneration of the system.” His clear eyes looked at me searchingly. “You know his mania, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know it.”
Dr. de los Rios looked distractedly through me, beyond me.
“Well. ” he said. He shook my hand and departed.
I found Garcia in a pitiful condition. He was breathing with difficulty. His head was thrown back on the pillows and his blind eyes were sunken.
The curtains were drawn and the room was in shadow. I looked around but did not see the dogs.
Garcia recognized my step. His intuition seemed sharpened by the approach of death. He turned his head toward me and there was eagerness in his expression.
“Did you close the door when you came in?” His voice was almost inaudible and accompanied by a whistling.
“Yes. Lunarito closed it.” He seemed relieved.
“For three days I have had all balconies and doors closed. I am keeping the enemy away. Spring has been here three days already. It has come to get me, but I do not let it enter. . I keep all balconies and doors shut. It is a real siege.
“Three days spring has been hovering around. roaming about the house, right outside the balconies, trying to push its way in. There it goes now. Can you hear it crackling? Can you hear it humming? Can you hear its reinforcements approaching? Listen. listen.!”
I remained silent. Instinctively I listened. And that moment I heard in the distance the sound of horses’ hoofs upon the pavement, they were approaching. and soon a carriage passed by the street and I heard young and cheerful voices. And then the sound of the whole city outside, the sound of life and nature.
Garcia dropped the hand which he had raised. A great relaxation had come over his countenance. He looked infinitely tired and resigned.
“Three days of this. It is no use. One cannot hold out against such a foe. Life is stronger than man. It is no use. I must give in.” He made a last effort to lift himself and turned toward me. “Let us end it now.. I am choking. Go, go open that window. ”
Mechanically I moved, I felt that every limb in me acted regardless of my will. I threw the curtains aside and a stream of light inundated the room. Then I lifted the hook and flung the window open.
Spring came in.
FINIS
Afterword
Fifty-two years ago, on June 27, 1936, I reviewed a book in the Nation. Very favorably. The author, Felipe Alfau, was said to be a young Spaniard writing in English. Spain was Republican then; the Franco revolt that turned into the Spanish Civil War began on July 19, three weeks and a day later. The charm exercised on me by Locos, therefore, cannot have been a matter of politics. And I was ignorant of Spain and Spanish. It was more like love. I was enamored of that book and never forgot it, though my memory of it, I now perceive on rereading, is somewhat distorted, as of an excited young love affair. Alfau, or his book, was evidently my fatal type, which I would meet again in Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire and more than once in Italo Calvino. But Zocos was the first. And it appears to have been the author’s unique book, fittingly, as it were. I never heard of Alfau again, though for a time I used to ask about him whenever I met a Spaniard; not one knew his name. Maybe that was because he lived in the United States, if indeed he did. But in this country I never found anyone besides me who had read Locos. Now the book is being reissued. Launched more than fifty years ago by a Farrar and Rinehart club of so-called “Discoverers,” it has been rediscovered, by what means I don’t know.
To come back to it has been a bit eerie, at least on first sight — a cross between recognition and non-recognition. For example, what has stuck in my memory is a lengthy account of a police convention in Madrid that coincided merrily with a crime wave, the one giving rise to the other: crooks converged on the city, free to practice their trade while the police attended panel discussions and lectures on criminality. Well, it would be too much to say that none of that is in Locos; it is there but in the space of a few sentences and as a mere suggestion.
The fifth chapter, “The Wallet,” begins: “During the 19— police convention at Madrid, a very unfortunate occurrence took place. Something went wrong with the lighting system of the city and the whole metropolis was left in complete darkness.” It is the power failure that offers the assembled criminals their opportunity. “It was a most deplorable thing, for it coincided with the undesirable immigration of a regular herd of international crooks who since the beginning of the World War had migrated into Spain and now cooperated with resident crooks in a most energetic manner. As if all these people had been waiting for that rare opportunity, the moment the lights went out in Madrid, thieves, gunmen, holdup men, pickpockets, in short all the members of the outlaw family, sprang up in every corner as though by enchantment.” Then: “. it came to pass that during the Police Convention of 19—, Madrid had a criminal convention as well. Of course, the police were bestowing all their efforts and time upon discussing matters of regulation, discipline and now and then how to improve the method of hunting criminals. and naturally, after each session. had neither time nor energy to put a check to the outrages. Therefore all crooks felt safer and freer to perform their duty in Madrid, where the cream of the police were gathered, than anywhere else.”