~ ~ ~
Post-midday, vapors of the sun and frolic of puerile boredom. Catita, evil heart. There is nothing to do, nothing to think about, nothing to desire. Catita, evil heart. But now, Catita, nothing matters to me. A street lit with silence — down it go these eyes of ours, our eyes, heedless and curious children. And we are struck blind. And a whiff of a yaraví ballad with its air of the highlands brings a chill to the street. Afterwards, nothing, not even ourselves — you and I, Fernando, devout face and long pants.
Night, hairy and taciturn dogs. The dirty desire to climb trees that have bloomed with a star as a joke — a mocking, bantering, bursting star; fig tree, fig, in its autumn of shade. Afraid of the bogeyman with the face of a mother-in-law. Catita, cold bed. Streets under electric lights, a cart’s nightmare, squat houses with fabulous palm trees. And a shattered silence that is a mortal sin.
Immaculate morning with recently washed foliage. From time to time a rural breeze, which seems to come, oddly enough, from the windows, passes by carrying the sweet smell of vegetables. But this is a breeze that escapes at the first corner. And the air returns to its clear, clean, empty state. A pretty native woman with her hard, shiny, damp head of hair — a mud carving — walks along absorbed in her own thoughts, watching her own breasts bounce, tremble, bounce. A cook. Her firm and ugly calves darken her white cotton socks. She left her baby in the kitchen. And she is definitely not thinking about him now: now she is thinking only about herself, about the breasts she sees tremble, bounce. Rarefied air. The trolley cars pass in vain: nothing can be heard.
~ ~ ~
We read the Spanish, and nobody but the Spanish. Only Raul leafed through French, English, and Italian books in translations by someone named Pérez, or González de Mesa, or Zapata, or Zapater. This is how, in spite of Belda and Azorín, we had a picturesque image of world literature. This is how we learned about the life — eternal like Our Father’s — of that poor Stephen Dedalus, “a man who was interesting and wet his bed.” In this way we found out about the trick played on a good theater director by six characters, how they enticed him to write and then ended up not existing. This is how we found out about a young man who tried to be the devil’s disciple, as if the devil would demean himself by teaching. And strange names that were men — Shaw, Pirandello, Joyce — danced around on the tip of Raul’s tongue — puppets bewitched by an illiterate witch. To know ourselves. Stephen Dedalus was not Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus: Stephen Dedalus was, undoubtedly, an ambitious boy who dreamed of marrying a rich Yankee; a boy who was very intelligent and had a lot of self-confidence, so much so that he tricked a whole monastery of Jesuits. As for Pirandello’s son, he held the opinion that it was immoral of the father — a cynical cuckold — to burden a son, about whom nothing bad was ever said, with a putative mother. Ramón bit his lip. The devil’s disciple was a depraved and stubborn young man, and most likely beardless. We did not have a behaviorist concept of humanity. Joyce? An idiot. Pirandello.? Another idiot. Shaw.? A third idiot, even more of an idiot than the first two, what with his historical concept of literature, his bad jokes, and his mania for always going against the grain; and above all, so chaste, so old, and so vegetarian; and above all, Irish, that is to say, English, in spite of the Pope and Home Rule.
All of us, except Raul, were steeped in the Spanish and American moldy literary stew. For, just as on Sancho’s Island of Barataria, it is the food of canons and rich men.
Let Wilde be the stuff of the curious who commit sins out of boredom. Let’s welcome Don Jacinto Benavente’s asexual confidants, with their pointed beards, parabolic bellies, and make-believe trousers; and his fairies, who know how to behave in high society; his women, who commit adultery under orders from their confessors; his perfectly humane and useless lives; his centripetal morals; his clichéd conversations: everything of Benavente’s. And likewise with Fernán Caballero’s literature, a credulous and blessed literature with ecclesiastical license. The same with Pardo Bazán’s — literature that smells of an old lady’s closet with vague whiffs of thyme, full of sins that are never committed; such pious intentions this author has! And Pereda’s withered and uncouth literature, with his severe, somber, frowning girls that give themselves to men for the love of God. And Pérez Galdós’s practical and perilous literature with consumptives and the insane and criminals and the diseased, but whom the reader sees from afar at no risk to himself. And Maetzu’s: a table of logarithms that smells of aftershave in which everything fits as if into a handbag from Manchester; everything condensed, of course, and full of ciphers, and as dignified as an English maiden. And Camba’s literature: a railroad dialogue of a young man without family, without work, without philosophies. And Father Coloma’s, full of prudent and wary angels who constantly cling to their zithers, and courtesans with good dispositions, and advice for Catholic aristocrats. And Baroja’s digestions, and Azorín’s matinees, and Valle-Inclán’s vespers, and Zamacoa’s nights. Everything, everything, just like that, as it comes, as it falls, but without inhumanities.