Iberia

by James A. Michener

  Their words tore at the hearts of the befuddled audience, for they spoke of patriotism, love of home, fidelity to old beliefs. The zarzuela swept over Spain, and choruses everywhere sang this chant of the repatriated ones. I have seen it only twice, but when that entr’acte curtain falls, now old and dusty, and when the defeated soldiers reiterate their faith, something happens.

  At last I look upon you, famous Ebro—

  today you are wider and more beautiful.

  How I wondered if I would ever see you.

  After long absence, how happily I look upon you;

  only on your banks can I really breathe again.

  Once more I tread the soil of Zaragoza;

  there is the Seo and there the Pilar.

  For the fatherland I left you, woe is me,

  and with longing I always thought of you there.

  And today, mad with joy, ay madre mía, I am here.

  Very bitter waters are those of the sea;

  I learned the reason when I went away.

  So many sorrows sail over the sea that

  they make it bitter from so much weeping.

  Ay, my Aragonese maid, I have not forgotten you.

  I return to your side, full of faith,

  and I shall nevermore leave you.

  The strange thing about this chorus is that the music, which falls into three parts, is as inventive as the words are moving. One naturally compares it with Gounod’s ‘Soldiers’ Chorus,’ from which it was probably copied, but the zarzuela is better. One feels that Gounod and his librettist said, ‘Let’s have a good chorus as the wooden soldiers come back.’ In the Spanish version a group of defeated real men have come back to a specific city and the difference is tremendous.

  By common consent, the masterpiece of zarzuela is a work bearing the curious three-part title La verbena de la Paloma, o El boticario y las chulapos y celos mal reprimidos (The Fiesta of the Virgin of the Dove, or The Apothecary and the Flashy Dames and Jealousy Ill-repressed, 1894). I do not find the word chulapa in any of my dictionaries; it is Madrid slang for tarts, hot numbers or, as I indicate, flashy dames. The genesis of this satisfying work helps explain why it is so loved by Madrileños.

  There was a poet in Madrid who had such bad handwriting that when he wrote his zarzuelas the print shop sent him, by means of a young man who worked as typesetter, an extra set of galleys for his corrections, and on the Eve of the Virgin of the Dove this young man arrived at the poet’s home in foul humor. When the latter asked what was wrong, the boy gave a distraught account of his love affair with a girl who was ‘as precious as an ounce of gold,’ except that she kept playing around with a dirty old apothecary who gave her such presents as a lace shawl and a silk dress. When the poet asked the young man what he proposed doing about it, the latter said, ‘For one thing, I’m going to tear the verbena apart in a way they’ll remember forever.’

  The poet said later that on this clue alone he visualized a complete zarzuela, which he dashed off in the space of a few days, having the additional good luck to find a composer who inclined toward grand opera. At the first performance the audience realized that they were seeing the kind of work which comes along once in a generation. Curtain calls lasted for half an hour, and both the poet and the musician were carried through the streets till dawn. The excitement has not even now subsided, for La verbena is accidental perfection.

  It is hardly what you might expect. The scene opens with a city character discussing aimlessly with a lecherous apothecary the merits of various laxatives: ‘Castor oil isn’t bad if you take it in capsules, but purgative lemonade isn’t worth a damn.’ Slowly, speaking a wonderful Madrileño argot, the various actors wander in, an untidy lot, some of whom appear only briefly. There is a haunting moment as a young singer advises the crowd that since she has no mother, do not look for her at home; her home is in the streets. Briefly a night watchman appears, almost too drunk to negotiate but willing to explain to two policemen the government’s attitude on the social question. From within a building a disembodied voice summons the watchman with the name ‘Francisco!’ to which the latter reacts in a variety of ways, all to the most delicate night music. Belatedly the main action is set in motion by the apothecary, who is over seventy but who finds pleasure in keeping two girls simultaneously, one blonde, one brunette, and in scandalous song explains the advantages of doing so. The two girls appear and also Julian, the young man who loves the brunette. The girls’ aunt is a bawdy old witch with a voice like a bullfrog which she exercises frequently. In desultory but enchanting action the zarzuela develops, broken frequently by songs bordering on opera, until the emotional climax is reached in an unexpected and natural way. Susana, the brunette, and Casta, the blonde, are on stage with their apothecary, and Julian, without looking at Susana, begins to sing softly:

  JULIAN: Where are you going with Manila shawl? Where are you going with Chinese dress?

  SUSANA: To show myself off, to see the fiesta, and afterwards home to bed.

  JULIAN: And why didn’t you come with me when I begged you to so much?

  SUSANA: Because I’m going to assuage in the drug store all that you’ve made me suffer.

  JULIAN: And who is this lad so handsome you’re going to carouse around with later?

  SUSANA: A fellow who has vergüenza, pundonor, and all a fellow needs to have.

  JULIAN: And what if I just took a notion That you shouldn’t go arm in arm with him?

  SUSANA: Why, I’d go with him to the fiesta anyway and then to the bulls at Carabanchel.

  JULIAN: Oh, yeah?

  SUSANA: Yeah.

  JULIAN: Well, we’ll see about that right now.

  The words are sung to the hesitating music of youth; Julian becomes all young men bewildered by love, Susana is the timeless flirt, yet there is something typically Madrid about the duet. It is one of the highlights of the zarzuela, not pyrotechnical in its music but perfect in its style.

  What happens? Nothing much you could put your finger on. Julián wrecks the verbena, is arrested, released on the pleas of his neighbors and wrecks the verbena all over again. The closing words of the zarzuela are uttered by a policeman: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please don’t cause any further scenes at the Fiesta of the Dove.’

  If one were to arrange in order of artistic merit the four popular forms that appeared at the end of the last century, it would be zarzuela, operetta, music hall and minstrel show, with little constructive to be said for the American entry. It is strange, therefore, that in spite of the zarzuela’s excellence it has not traveled well to other countries. It has been too specifically Spanish, and sometimes too Madrileño, to be appreciated abroad, except of course in the Spanish countries of Latin America, where it still evokes a powerful nostalgia. It is not presented much in Spain any more, although most large cities will offer a short season now and then, but modern young Spaniards would no more think of bothering with zarzuela than American university students would with a minstrel show. On the other hand, zarzuela seems to have a vital life on records; from time to time on the good-music radio stations in America zarzuelas are played late at night, and if La verbena is offered it is worth staying up to hear.

  In the years when zarzuela flourished, an attractive custom grew up in Madrid, which is still observed. In the narrow streets and alleys clustered throughout the district of the Teatro de la Zarzuela were small bars specializing in tapas (hors d’oeuvres) set before the public on long rows of dishes from which one more or less helped himself. Today on the Calle Echegaray, named after the dramatist who won the Nobel Prize in 1904 and whose brother wrote zarzuelas, a taxi can barely pass because of the crowds who come and go from the dozens of tapa bars.

  There is a long bar behind which two men in traditional aprons serve cold beer and other drinks. Upon the bar have been arranged some two dozen open dishes crammed with a wild variety of tidbits tastefully arranged and accompanied by glasses of toothpicks, which are used to spear the goodies. The tapa place th
at I have frequented for many years offers dishes in four categories: first comes the seafood—the anchovies, eel, squid, octopus, herring, shrimp, salmon, five kinds of sardines, five kinds of fish; next come the boiled eggs, deviled eggs, egg salad, potato omelets cut in strips, vegetables, onions, salads; third are the cold meats in great variety, including meat balls, York ham, Serrano ham, tripe, brains, liver in a variety of styles, beef, pork and veal; and finally the hot dishes, which can be delicious. Shish kebab in hot sauce is good but I prefer mussels in a sauce of burned onions and clam broth, but there are five or six other kinds of shellfish which are about as good.

  Tapa bars, so far as I am concerned, are divided into two groups, those that serve cocido Madrileño (Madrid stew) and those that don’t. This is a heavy peasant concoction made of beans, flank beef, salted ham, sausage, onions, carrots, potatoes, kohlrabi and garlic, allowed to cook for days, with new ingredients thrown in from time to time. A good cocido, with hard bread and red wine, is a real Spanish dish.

  The traditional way to enjoy the tapa bar, however, is not to sit down for a dish as formal as a cocido but to gather a group of friends and wander leisurely from one bar to the next, taking from each the one dish for which it is famous. In this area there is one bar that serves nothing but octopus and squid, prepared in various ways, and another that specializes in shellfish. One of the best known is a very small corner place called La Gaditana (The Girl from Cadiz), which advertises ‘The largest restaurant in the world. You enter at Cadiz and leave at Barcelona,’ those being the names of the streets which form the corner.

  One aspect of the tapa bar frightened me. About half the dishes are bathed in a heavy, bright yellow mayonnaise that shimmies like gelatin when you put the spoon in. The finest shrimp, the best eggs, the fresh vegetable salad are drowned in this rich, inedible goo, but with care one can avoid it. However, if you dine with a Spaniard and he sees that your plate contains nothing but wholesome octopus, mussels and anchovies, he will insist upon slapping on a final gob of mayonnaise. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a respectable tapa.

  At my favorite bar one night a Spaniard who had learned to speak English while working the Venezuela oil fields suggested that I take in the jai alai at the frontón (court) where professional teams of Basques played this swift and exciting game. He was a nut, himself, and an ideal cicerone. ‘Don’t bother to come,’ he warned, ‘unless you enjoy gambling,’ for the major purpose of jai alai is betting, and to see gambling run wild, one must attend a Madrid frontón.

  Street in Madrid.

  ‘It starts with an act of sheer insanity,’ my oil man explained. ‘At the beginning six players appear on the court but the game is going to be two against two. So how to decide which two will play which two?’ He took me to a large board containing the names of the six players and their numbers, from one to six. Bookmakers were taking a flurry of bets which I couldn’t understand. ‘Simple,’ the oil man said. ‘At this board we bet on what the composition of the teams is going to be. Suppose you buy that ticket for Team 4–6. It means that you are betting that one of the teams will be made up of Player 4 as captain and Player 6 as his mate. If it works out that 6 is captain and 4 is mate, you lose. As you can see, there are thirty possible teams, so the odds against guessing right are thirty to one, about the same as in roulette.’

  ‘How do they determine what the teams are going to be?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t worry about that. Just pick three or four tickets here for the fun of it.’ I chose Team 1–2 and Team 3–3 and Team 6–5. ‘They’re as good as anybody else’s,’ my oil man said, and we went inside to watch the six players warming up and I was amazed at their skill. Soon they began a round robin, with Player 1 taking the floor against 2 and holding it for as long as he continued to win, after which he gave way to player 3 or 4 or 5. A large scoreboard showed the names, which were part of the fun, long Basque words like Azurmendi, Urtasun, Azcarate and Yrigoyen, and whenever one of the players approached a score of five, excitement grew. Finally Player 2 accumulated five points, and a red star was placed against his name, signifying that he would be captain of the red team. Soon Player 4 scored five, and he was designated captain of the blue team.

  At this point the round robin halted and we all trooped back to the gambling board. It was now known that the two teams would be 2 plus somebody and 4 plus somebody, but who their partners were to be would not be known till later. So bets were placed on the right possible combinations, and since my first tickets had been proved worthless I switched to Teams 2–6 and 4–5. We went back to the arena, where the same six players went at it again. The scores made by 2 and 4 did not count, for they were assured of positions, but soon the excitement grew as the other four players approached scores of five. Finally the teams were decided, 2–5 red, 4–6 blue. I’d picked the right players but on the wrong teams, so once more my tickets were no good.

  Now the game proper started and such bedlam I had not heard for years. Inside the screen and facing the audience stood nine husky men in official coats. Each carried a stock of tennis balls with one side cut away leaving a hollow, and as they brandished these balls they bellowed at the crowd, offering bets on the game between Teams 2–5 and 4–6. ‘We better bet,’ my guide said. He held up his hand, indicating by some signal that he wanted two bets on 2–5. One of the gamblers caught his eye, then looked about for someone who wanted to bet on 4–6. Pointing quickly to the two locations, he confirmed the bet, then wrote two receipts on government forms, stuffed them into two tennis balls, and with lightning accuracy pitched them long distances to the two bettors. The unit in this frontón was $6.40, of which the government took eighteen percent.

  I now had my money riding on Team 2–5, but as play progressed toward the game point of 45, my team fell behind. Then the screaming of the gamblers increased, for they offered me a chance to copper my bet at attractive odds, and this I did, but my partner was contemptuous of hedging, so the further our team fell behind, the more vigorously he backed it at generous odds and soon was in a position to make some real money if Team 2–5 pulled itself together. Sure enough, our boys drew the score to 40–38 in favor of the other team and the excitement in our part of the frontón, at least, grew intense, but in the end Team 4–6 steadied and pulled away to a 45–41 victory.

  At one o’clock in the morning the frontón was echoing with shouts, but then the games ended. ‘Damn you norteamericanos,’ my oil man growled. ‘In the old days we used to play till three or four, but you’ve ruined it.’

  ‘How can you blame us?’

  ‘You’ve preached, “All Spaniards are lazy. They take a siesta.” So the damned government wants to look modern. It’s outlawed the siesta and everything has to shut down at one o’clock. Hardly worth living in Madrid any more.’

  Soccer, known in Spain and the rest of the world as football, appears to be the kind of sport the Spanish government prefers to sponsor; it’s international, it’s modern, it’s out-of-doors, and it’s good for children, in that it can be played without expensive equipment. For a series of exciting years, Real Madrid proved itself to be the best football team in the world and Spaniards turned in large numbers to this frenzied sport.

  I have often lived in countries that played soccer, but I have never become involved; however, during my last visit to Madrid the World Cup was being contested in London and no one who read a paper or listened to radio could escape being caught up in the frenzy. Spain beat Switzerland in one of the early rounds, and there was joy throughout the city, which closed down to watch on television, but she lost to Argentina and West Germany, and there was gloom. Shortly after, the local papers featured an incident which had occurred in Mogadiscio, the capital of Somalia, where the referee, one Salak Mobarek, made a wrong call against the Public Works team, which proceeded to kick him to death. The report said that because of this action, the Public Works team had to forfeit the game, a penalty which some of my football-playing friends considered vengeful. The Madrid papers
went on to recall the number of times in recent years that referees had been killed, and since no plea was added to halt the violence, I concluded that the list was meant as a warning to the local men to watch their calls.

  One beautiful moonlit night I went out to Madrid’s Estadio Bernabéu to see what this madness was about, and long before I reached the approaches to the stadium I could see that a fair portion of Madrid’s population was converging on that spot, for I was trapped in traffic that no longer moved. I finally had to leave my cab and walk about one mile, but it was worth it, because the stadium was one of those new affairs which one enters at street level to find himself halfway up the side of a long graceful bowl set deep into the earth. The playing field was thus three flights below street level and the topmost seats about three flights above. It was huge, with something like a hundred and ten thousand seats. During the pregame period it was illuminated by the moon and a group of soft lights, which converted the grassy area into a kind of silver, but as game time approached, four rows of lights around the stadium flashed on, and daylight enveloped the field and the grass turned green. It was the most beautiful stadium I had ever seen.

  Two immortals. The tertulia has seven participants who are also members of the Spanish Royal Academy. Here famed critic Gúillermo Díaz-Plaja explains a point as Jóse Maria de Cossio listens.

  Barcelona was playing Madrid and the excitement was intense as the players ran onto the field. but as play progressed it grew. At some times all hundred and ten thousand spectators screamed at the referee, and armed police moved into position to repel those who might want to run onto the field. ‘We behave better than they do in Brazil,’ a Madrid fan assured me. ‘There they’ve had to dig a moat between the stands and the playing field, so that the wild men can’t rush the referee, even if they want to.’