“You couldn’t add up my troubles. Not even I could count them all without forgetting some of the most important ones.”
“ … ”
He hesitated for an instant, not knowing where to put the empty cup. You were going to take it so he could return to his complaints, but he anticipated you and placed it on the stone floor of the balcony, at the threshold and next to the blinds and white shutters. He licked the marmalade from his fingers and continued his plaint of praise and academic questions.
“You’re still young, but very deservedly famous. You have a natural talent that no one can deny without offending you. That’s why I dare to ask your opinion, thinking about my life today, yesterday, and the day before yesterday. Tell me, why are we born?”
“ … ”
“I’ll tell you why. It must be to die, though the justice of that escapes me. In any case, it couldn’t be only to suffer, which turned out to be my fate. Summing up a life as unfortunate as mine, I have to conclude that my passage through the world is a mistake, because the Great Architect can’t construct a life so badly no matter how insignificant it may be. What do you think?”
“ … ”
“I’d say I’m here by mistake and should have been born in another time. In another period in the life of my family, which on both sides is constantly enriched with famous actors and actresses. Did you know a great-grandmother of mine was the sister of the great Máiquez?”
“ … ”
“Yes, sir. Isidro Máiquez himself, who was booing one afternoon at the bullfight and met his match in the matador Costillares, who yelled at him: ‘Señor Máiquez, Señor Máiquez! This isn’t the theater! Here you die for real!’ I’ll bet you already knew the story.”
“ … ”
“In our family we’ve passed it from generation to generation since the time of my great-grandmother. Of course she premiered Don Leandro Fernández de Moratín’s New Comedy in the role of the young Mariquita. She also played Medioculo in The Oil Lamp’s Fandango, though this does not do us as much honor since it was a simple farce. I should have been born at that time and married my great-grandmother, in the days of The Comedy and The Fandango, of Máiquez and Costillares, of Goya and Moratín. I’d bet my life wouldn’t have been so unfortunate then, the bad Greek tragedy it is now. You, so brilliant a young man, perhaps can answer two questions that seem to me to be Siamese twins. Why do we come into the world and why do we do it at one, irrevocable time?”
“ … ”
The doorbell sounded again with three long rings, which you recognized immediately. It was Rafael Martínez Nadal, who had promised to pick you up precisely at one so you could have lunch together. I don’t know what ailment had covered his high skull with scabs, but it had been shaved with a razor and smeared with sulfur. Now his hair had begun to grow back, dark and curly on his elongated head with the tiny ears of a small-eared lamb. He waited patiently, leafing through a book on the sofa, while you gave a few pesetas and a letter of introduction for Lola Membrives to the great-grandson of the woman who played Medioculo. You wrote the note on a sheet of paper, sitting at your desk and looking at Picasso’s drawing of a labyrinth for Balzac’s “The Unknown Masterpiece.” The actor left, saying goodbye very ceremoniously, and Rafael continued to wait while you shaved and dressed. On the street, the two of you were greeted by a sun as bright as quicklime, and only then did you remember that you had closed the balcony and left the empty cup outside.
“I had lunch for the last time with Ignacio Sánchez Mejías in this restaurant the year he died. At this same table,” you said as soon as you both had sat down. “I have a feeling we won’t come back here together either.”
“Soon it will be two years since the tragedy,” he agreed, intentionally ignoring your presentiments. “Still, at times one would think Ignacio hasn’t died, that the goring in the bullring in Manzanares hasn’t happened yet, even though it inevitably will happen. I’m not sure if I’m clear.”
“I understand completely. On one hand I’d swear we’ll never have lunch again, here or anywhere else.” Andalusian after all, you touched the wood of the table beneath the cloth. “On the other, I’m certain that everything that happens this morning has happened before in this same place.”
He was going to respond, as he is about to do now in this theater, but you were interrupted by the maître d’ and a couple with the air of recently married provincials. The maître d’ was bringing the menus and the young people wanted to know, encore une fois, whether you’re the poet who wrote “The Unfaithful Wife.” They asked for an autograph and you signed in your delicate hand with very tall capitals, which in eternity looks to you vulgar and absurdly precious. They left, extremely moved, after shaking your hand and telling you they were teachers. Martínez Nadal ordered lunch, smiling and claiming that soon your friends wouldn’t be able to walk down the street with you because women would contend for your feet in order to kiss them, which is what happened to Joselito in Sevilla. You replied that a woman also yelled at Joselito on the eve of his death: “I hope a bull kills you tomorrow in Talavera!” The gods promptly granted her wish. Rafael fell silent, shaking his head, because they were beginning to serve the meal. You ate almost nothing, for that day you were indifferent to everything except your own fate, which you feared was sealed.
“Rafael, what’s going to happen here? If a war comes, I won’t survive it.”
“This country was always on the brink of chaos. The attraction of the abyss is part of our national character, the exact opposite of what happened with the ancient Egyptians, who, they say, abhorred a vacuum. Eventually everything is fixed with pins and glue. Blood won’t run in the river this time either.”
He lied to keep you from despair. He was as convinced as you that a feast day of crime was approaching. The only difference between you was his deep certainty that whatever happened, he would survive the slaughter.
“Our time is short and the uncertainty consumes me,” you went on somewhat irrelevantly. “A little while before they arrested him, I had supper one night with José Antonio Primo de Rivera.” Rafael almost dropped the fish forks as he looked at you, not believing what he was hearing. “Don’t be so surprised. That wasn’t the first time we got together in secret. Since it didn’t suit either of us to be seen together, we always went to some godforsaken inn in a taxi with the curtains closed.”
“But why? For God’s sake!”
“Oh, no reason! To talk about literature. He knows Ronsard by heart and is very lucid about French poetry from any period. Still, on that day he couldn’t say very much. We ate without looking at each other until I exclaimed in a loud voice: ‘If there’s a war in Spain, neither of us will see the end of it. We’ll both be shot as soon as it begins.”’ With no transition you took hold of Martínez Nadal’s arm at the edge of the table. “Rafael, I don’t want to be killed like a dog. Rafael, I could hide in your mother’s house, couldn’t I?”
He looked at you, astonished at your fear, his eyes sad and stupefied between those tiny ears and beneath the stubble of his sheep-like hair at the top of his forehead.
“Yes, of course you could hide in my mother’s house. But who would want you dead? You’re only a poet.”
“That’s exactly what José Antonio Primo de Rivera said. I told him that’s why they would kill me, for having written verses. Not for being queer and on the side of poor people. Of course good poor people, you understand. I added that this country is a republic of killers from all classes and that Spaniards exterminate one another like rats at the first opportunity history offers them. They’d shoot me for writing verses and for being incapable of defending myself. Just for that, yes sir. ‘Come and look here,’ I said to José Antonio Primo de Rivera, using one of the expressions I learned in Havana. ‘Do you know that days before the death of Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, the Gypsies in his crew said he reeked of death? If they came in here now, they’d be terrified of the stink of our mortal remains.”’