“That is true, señor. She is a rose. Her roots are in the—Ghetto.”
Kotikokura opened and shut his fists, grumbling: “Woman” from time to time.
“She is protected like a king’s treasure. My very name is sufficient to alarm all Jews.”
Don Juan resumed his walking. His shoes glittered like golden mirrors every time he broke the reflection of the sun, while his temples shone like thinly hidden ivory.
“Are the women of your country, señor, also mainly foxes and geese?”
“I have traveled in many lands, Don Juan, and have known women of all races and of all colors. Everywhere man complains against them. Woman has been compared to all creatures, wild or tamed, and still has not been explained.”
He looked at me, placing his hand upon his hip and closing a little his eyes. “Señor, from the first glance, I recognized in you a kindred soul.”
I bowed.
“You seek, evidently, as I do, the ultimate– —”
“Unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged, Don Juan.”
“Unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged,” he repeated. “That is it! This is what I have been seeking. To know what one seeks is as difficult at times as to find it. Señor, you have the lasting gratitude of Don Juan. I swear it by the sword and the cross!” He touched both.
He muttered to himself, “Unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged! But señor, I forget the seconds of Don Fernando must be waiting for me at my home. May I ask you to be my guest?” Looking up at Kotikokura, “My guests, gentlemen, for the rest of your sojourn in Córdoba.”
We bowed. I thanked him.
“The air here is stifling, putrid.” He screwed up his nose. He reminded me at that moment of an oversensitive and fastidious young woman.
Don Juan’s mansion was a neo-Moorish building, situated upon the bank of the Guadalquivir. A rectangular garden in which the flowers and trees were arranged with mathematical precision surrounded it on all sides, so that only the upper part of the house was visible when approached.
“I hate irregularity and disorder,” he told me. “I prefer to dominate nature and arrange the colors and sizes of my flowers in a harmony which pleases my eye. But I suppose this is due to my masculine temperament. I am logical in all things.”
This regularity, on the contrary, struck me as profoundly feminine. It seemed to me more like the fussiness of an old maid. Two male servants helped us with our clothing. A third one prepared food.
“Even my servants are men. I cannot endure the whimsicality of women in my domestic environment.”
The walls were covered with swords, weapons, heads of wild boars and other mementoes of Don Juan’s masculine prowess. Two small parrots screeched “Bienvenido,” ceaselessly. Several tiny birds in cages flapped their wings, warbling and whistling.
Don Juan invited me to sit at the table. Kotikokura, a large jug of wine between his knees, seated himself in front of the fireplace.
“A friend of mine,” remarked Don Juan, “a young poet, has expressed my life in a poem. This poem shall be my epitaph.
“And a thousand women were unable to dispel your gloom, Don Juan?”
“Only while their embraces lasted, and frequently not as long. A thousand women… What does it mean, señor? One obliterates the memory of the other, leaving us empty-handed. A man always says: ‘This one is different. This one’s lips will burn the flesh and touch the soul.’—But they hardly scorch the skin.”
“Woman is an attitude,” I replied, repeating my remark to Kotikokura. “It all depends upon what one seeks in her and how much one is willing to forgive in advance.”
Don Juan drank another cup. His face flushed. “I do not know what I seek in her, my friend. Love is only a method to vanquish boredom…”
“Our lives are so short, Don Juan! Have we time to be bored?”
Kotikokura grinned.
“The gods have mocked us with an unspeakable mockery, señor,” Don Juan replied, “by making the temple of Eros an accessory of the cloaca. Only drink and the caress of a thousand women can make us forget the disgust and the indignity.”
“Should not a great lover, Don Juan, overcome this fastidiousness—defeat the gods and their mockery, and discover beauty precisely where they had meant to create ugliness?”
He knit his brows and looked at me intently. “What man can do that?”
“I have done it, Don Juan.”
He smiled a little bitterly, a little ironically. “Señor, if you have done that, then you are the Supreme Lover of all time—and not Don Juan!”
I smiled. ‘How often we speak the truth unwittingly.’ I thought. Was I more fortunate than Don Juan merely because I lived longer? Had Nature afforded me such an abundance of life, such torrents of vitality, that all the dikes of ugliness were swept away, and the fresh waters of beauty flooded my being?
“Perhaps,” I said, “if our lives were stretched out for centuries, Don Juan, we might discover the secret of outwitting the irony of the gods.”
“What an incalculable boredom would overwhelm us then, señor! We might have to possess a million women—and still remain unassuaged.”
A servant whispered into Don Juan’s ear that the seconds had arrived.
The seconds brought word that any attempt to effect a reconciliation would be futile. Fernando refused to apologize. After they were gone, Don Juan waved his fist. “The idiot! The idiot! He wants to die! He has seen me engaged in many duels. I never received a scar, señor,—never! He has never fought except in play. He was always so gentle and amenable—more delicate than his sister! What mania women have for confessing! Had she kept still about it, her brother would not be dead tomorrow! Ah, let us drink, señor… The world’s a cackling hen.”
We drank one another’s health. With every additional cup, Don Juan became more melancholy. I had long ago observed that drink brings forth our true personality which, like a too passionate virgin, is locked within the castle of our beings. Drink is a daring Knight Errant who climbs the tall wall and descends a rope, carrying in his arms our secret.
Don Juan was a gentle lamb, bleating sadly—not a roaring lion of love.
Don Juan sighed. “I do not know why I tell you all this, señor,” he said. “It is but the second day I have seen you. Never before have I spoken so freely– —”
“I appreciate your confidence, señor.”
The servant whispered something into Don Juan’s ear.
“No, no—not today.”
The servant seemed reluctant to go.
“Not today,” Don Juan shouted. “To the devil with her!”
The servant left.
“The amiable Countess expects me.”
He laughed suddenly. “I poisoned two dogs, bribed a half dozen servants, and nearly broke my neck climbing into her room. Besides, her husband is a favorite of the King. I jeopardized my head to go with her through the absurd motions of conjugation. Why did I risk so much? Señor, she has a beauty spot on her left breast… A tiny spot the size of a pinhead. It is really a blemish, an imperfection of the skin,—yet it promised so much!… I assure you, señor, she was not one bit different from all the others. I should have known!… She was my nine hundred and ninety-seventh.”
“Pardon me, Don Juan, but is it really possible to keep an exact record of every amour?”
He laughed. “I have an album, señor, in which I put the initials and the number of each woman with a few remarks, generally of a depreciating nature—too fat, too thin, too white, too dark, too insistent, too cold, bored me at the critical moment, reminded me of a parrot, a dog, a cat. Also the difficulties encountered—the duels fought, the husbands duped, etc., etc.”