Mazurka for Two Dead Men

by Camilo José Cela

  “Where’s Policarpo?”

  “He went back to Briñidelo, apparently he got hurt.”

  The clipping is carried out any old how, nobody takes too many pains over their work, the main thing is to get the job over and done with as soon as possible. Each animal yields its pound of mane, long clean mane cut in bunches and worth as much as the carcass of a steer. The Cleric of Comesaña stared at me.

  “Around here we’re all Guxindes, well, maybe not all of us, some of us more than others; we all have gaps between our teeth, that’s how it is in our family, we’re all over seven feet tall and weigh upwards of a hundred and twenty-five pounds. Our stock is still strong and sturdy! Glory be!”

  Marcos Albite is in the habit of chewing Portuguese tobacco.

  “The spittle is the worst for it spoils it; but chewing tobacco is healthier than smoking and doesn’t burn out the lungs.”

  The colts are branded with a red-hot iron, like cattle, the mark of the Marvís family from Briñidelo is the L of the mother’s surname, Rosa Loureses, and a nick on each ear. Sickly or wounded beasts, I mean the ones that will be devoured by the wolves or perish from hunger or cold—and every year there’s over a thousand of them—aren’t even branded, what would be the point? The sturdy little dwarf chestnut ponies, although there’s the odd black or dappled one among them, that stand no more than twelve hands high, cannot be penned up because by midday in captivity they will have sickened and be pining away. When he’s tired, Cidrán Segade has a fine singing voice, apparently exercise is good for the folds of the bellows and the vocal chords as well.

  When Robín Lebozán finished writing the above, he read it aloud and then stood up.

  “I think I’ve earned a coffee and a glass of brandy. Anyway, tonight I have to visit Rosicler, I have to take her chocolates to fatten her up a bit.”

  Rosicler is a nurse, she’s great at giving injections, she’s forever giving Miss Ramona iron, liver, and calcium injections so as to pick up her strength. Miss Ramona takes Deschiens wine for anemia, debility, and fatigue as well as Fitikal capsules, an intensive tonic. Rosicler has more knacks than one, or so they say, but she’s very discreet about it all for around here there’s no need to shout your business from the rooftops. At times, when no one is looking, Rosicler and Miss Ramona dance together and gently and fondly caress one another; Wilde, the dog, lets himself be stroked, too, he’s both affectionate and obedient.

  “Don’t go, Rosicler! Stay a while longer!”

  “But isn’t your cousin Raimundo coming tonight?”

  “What difference does that make? Raimundo is well able for both of us!”

  “That’s for sure … nor would it be the first time he laid us both!”

  “Shut up, Rosicler! Don’t be such a slut!”

  “I’ll be whatever I want, Mona. And, what’s more, I don’t like you calling me a slut, just like that in cold blood.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Rosicler dined with Miss Ramona and stayed at her house until late.

  “Are you going to leave now so late?”

  “Yes; today I’m due to be unfaithful to you with Robin.”

  “You’re not just trying to teach me a lesson, are you?”

  “No.”

  Rosicler’s father was taken out to be shot in the city of Orense during the Civil War, he was killed by the lawyer Don Jesús Manzanedo who became quite renowned for making widows, truth to tell, it wouldn’t cross anybody’s mind to name their daughter Rosicler, he who plays with fire gets his fingers burnt; girls should be named after virgins or saints, not given secular names of dubious taste: Rosicler, Dawn, Aurora … well, Aurora’s alright, but Atmosphere, Venus, how ridiculous can you get! Rosicler’s father was a cashier in a bank and the poor man paid with his life the price on his wretched head.

  “Do you believe, Doña Arsenia, that things are really as he said?”

  Lázaro Codesal was killed by misfortune as well as by his trusting nature; those Moors are not to be trusted for they’re cunning in thought and deed. Nobody knows the name of the Moor who killed Lázaro Codesal while he was jacking off in the shade of a fig tree, with the image of Ádega, naked, in his thoughts, but that hardly matters. Lázaro Codesal was a dab hand at firing stones from a slingshot; he had a deadly aim.

  “Bet you couldn’t hit that pigeon on the telegraph pole!”

  “You do?”

  Lázaro Codesal would raise his slingshot and wham! the pigeon on the telegraph pole shot through the air in smithereens.

  “Bet you couldn’t hit that black cat!”

  “You do?”

  Lázaro Codesal would swing his slingshot and wham! the black cat shot off shitting sparks with its head split open.

  “You don’t think it could be the Devil?”

  “I don’t think so, the Devil hasn’t been about here much of late.”

  The line of the mountain was blotted out when Lázaro Codesal was killed, since that misfortunate day it has never been seen again, as far as I can see, it might have been carried many leagues off, maybe even beyond the Canda and Padornelo gaps on the road to Sanabria. That married man who crossed Lázaro Codesal’s path at the Chosco crossroads certainly didn’t keep his distance! My God, what a thrashing he got for his pains! Cuckolds have no call to be forward but should conduct themselves in a cautious, prudent, Godfearing manner, it’s no easy matter to be a cuckold with dignity and grace.

  “I’m going my own way; step aside there! I’ve no wish to pick a quarrel.”

  But the other fellow wouldn’t step aside so, of course, he got a drubbing and was sent packing, trussed up and blushing like a bride. Moncho Requeixo was with Lázaro Codesal in the Melilla war but he returned alive, lamed but alive and kicking.

  “I don’t know what became of my leg, I suppose they just chucked it out; I think that when a body has their leg cut off it should be returned to them, well packed down in coarse salt, to take home as a memento.”

  Moncho Lazybones’ two carrier birds, male and female, died on him on the way across the Red Sea; the Little Jesus Cured is a delicate, dreamy little fowl that is only good for carrying billets doux and the moment you take it away from its homeland it catches cold and dies of a broken heart. Blind Gaudencio came back from Mass numb with cold.

  “It’s freezing out there, Anuncia, to my mind this is the end of the world.”

  “Not at all, man, come here and climb into bed and wait ’til I fetch you a nice hot coffee!”

  It has been raining down without respite for either earth or sky for over two hundred days and nights now and the Xeixo vixen, which is already old, arthritic, and weary of life, or so they say, coughs listlessly at the entrance to her lair. If I knew how to play the psaltery—as they did in the old times, but there are no psalteries nowadays—I would spend the evenings playing the psaltery, but I can’t. If I could play the banjo, like Don Brégimo Faramiñás, I would while away the hours playing the banjo, that would be company at least, but I can’t. What I can play are the bagpipes but the bagpipes should be played outdoors, at the foot of an oak tree, while the lads hoot and cheer and the lasses wait with bated breath for night, with its sweet, swooning complicities, to fall. Since I can play neither the psaltery nor the banjo, and since the bagpipes shouldn’t be played indoors, I spend the evenings in bed messing about with whoever I can, or at times alone; but what I can’t manage is to bend right over and reach down with my mouth, I can nearly manage it, though not quite, but maybe nobody can, I must enquire. Benicia is very cheerful and never wearies but that, too, can become tiresome. Benicia makes great blood puddings and she has nipples like chestnuts, it’s a laugh to see her making blood puddings with her breasts bare.

  “Benicia.”

  “What?”

  “Reach me the paper and give me a glass of wine.”

  “Alright.”

  The frogs in the Antela lagoon are even more ancient than all the other frogs in Galicia, León, Asturias, Portugal, and Cast
ile; such historic, illustrious frogs are only to be found now in the Rivers Var and Touloulore in Provence, in Lake Balatón in Hungary and in the loughs in the counties of Tipperary and Waterford in Ireland. Our Lord Jesus Christ sprang from the dove and his mother, the Blessed Virgin, came forth from the virginal trumpet of the lily. From a frog called Liorta in the Antela lagoon nine different but related families are descended, they are: the Marvises, the Celas, the Segades, the Faramiñás, the Albites, the Beiras, the Portomouriscos, the Requeixos, and the Lebozáns; this side of the family is known as the Guxindes, there’s a strong family likeness and altogether they’re a powerful bunch.

  It warms the heart to watch Benicia pouring wine stark naked while the rain beats down upon this earth and its fretful, aggrieved, unfettered souls.

  “Pour wine over your tits.”

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  According to the Benedictine monk Arnaldo Wion in his work Lignum Vitae, Venice 1595, St. Malachy, Bishop of Armagh in Ireland, laid it out fair and square to the Sisters of Clare in his account of the popes that, God willing, the end shall come to pass in the year 2053 with the second coming of Christ: “The Antela lagoon shall be drained by man and instead of water calamity and sickness shall smite them. And when the water be dried up, man shall delve into the bottom of the lagoon in search of minerals and from that moment hence, in place of the land, starvation and death shall smite them.”

  We Guxindes enjoy squabbling at romerías, what harm is there in that?, also dancing in cloisters and graveyards, cheek to cheek when the opportunity arises. I can play neither the fiddle, the harmonica, the psaltery, nor the banjo, I can play only the bagpipes and that’s no good. Gaudencio played the accordion in Sprat’s brothel; he played waltzes and two-steps, sometimes the odd tango to keep the clients entertained, but he wouldn’t play that mazurka Ma Petite Marianne, he only played it in 1936 when Lionheart died and in 1940 when Fabián Minguela—Moucho Carroupo—died. He would never play it again.

  “So he kept the clients entertained?”

  “I believe so, Gaudencio was always a past master at scales.”

  His sister Ádega also plays the accordion but what she likes are polkas: Fanfinette, Mon Amour, and Paris, Paris.

  “The dead man who killed my old man strayed from the straight and narrow and you saw yourself how he wound up. The dead man who killed my old man was not a Guxinde, Lord forgive me! he was an outsider and that’s what we get for being charitable to tramps, when his father first came here begging alms for the love of God, if only we had well and truly clobbered him there and then, he would never have got to shed the blood of those that fed him; later on, when these matters have long since been forgotten, I won’t forget. Let others do what they like! There’s a lot of talk hereabouts so for that reason alone it’s worth bearing these things in mind. You, Don Camilo, are descended from Guxindes, or rather, you are a Guxinde, and my old man, too, and that has its price to pay. But it also brings its own reward and sense of pride, men are men until after death and we women wait and watch and pass the tale on to our children. I’m going to tell you something that everybody knows, although you don’t for you don’t spend much time here, but I let it half slip already, d’you recall? I dug up the dead man who killed my old man; one night I went to the graveyard in Carballiño to rob the grave, I brought the remains home and threw them in with the swill for the pig that I later slaughtered and ate, the hams, the chorizos, the head, and so on ’til it was done. The Guxindes were delighted and held their tongues and the Carroupos were hopping mad but said nothing either, for they knew they would be the next in line if they did; that’s God’s law and I believe they wound up leaving the area: some have already gone to Switzerland, others to Germany; as far as I’m concerned they may all perish in the end of the world or be devoured by the gooks.”

  “Have you none of that Moucho-flavored pork left?”

  “Not at all, how could I have any left now?”

  The fourth sign of the bastard is a patchy beard, Fabián Minguela is a dapper little dandy. For at least four years Fabián Minguela, the dead man who went about sowing death all over, was bedding Rosalía Trasulfe, the Crazy Goat, just for the asking. The dead man who killed Lionheart as well as Ádega’s old man, and maybe a dozen others to boot, was stroking Rosalía Trasulfe, the Crazy Goat’s ass, squeezing her tits and stirring up fights from at least 1936 to 1940.

  “And you’ll sing dumb, too, for I can dispatch you to where I sent others, not one of them ever to return, as you well know!”

  Three times Rosalía Trasulfe, the Crazy Goat, got pregnant by the dead man and on each occasion she went to the midwife Damiana Otarelo for an abortion and a parsley purge.

  “For many years I’ve struggled to earn my crust, not as a whore mind you, so I don’t want a bastard son by a bastard father.”

  Rosalía Trasulfe, the Crazy Goat, always says the same thing:

  “He trampled all over me, that’s for sure, he trampled me just as he wished, but I’m alive and kicking and I gave myself a thorough scrubbing down. Moucho was like the maggots that devour the dead, thriving only on the dead.”

  Marcos Albite’s cart is like a fairground car, all it lacks is the music.

  “I’m going to repaint it now, the little star is nearly worn away but the thumbtacks are still good; when I went nuts I didn’t care about anything but now I like things to be nice and right as rain. Green paint is nice, I know, but when it dries out it doesn’t look so good.”

  Marcos Albite has a good time in his cart, he gets a little fed up at times, for boredom would weary anyone, but he enjoys himself and there’s many another who has a worse time of it.

  “I’m going to make you a real humdinger of a St. Camilo, this St. Camilo will stop folks in their tracks.”

  We had to lug Policarpo la Bagañeira back from Briñidelo in a handcart for he was so heartsore from the business of his hand, that bite from the stallion really threw him out of sorts and he developed fever.

  “A great deal?”

  “Well, not so very much.”

  Rosa Loureses, the mother of the Marvises, wouldn’t let him leave.

  “He’s the same flesh and blood as my own sons and he’s not in the way here. He may take a turn for the worse up the mountain. You’ll have to let him sleep for at least two days.”

  “Alright.”

  The folks from the corral, the Guxindes, rather, are scattered all over Briñidelo, Puxedo, and Cela. The Marvises and Policarpo, too, stayed with their cousins; Cidrán Segade and his brother-in-law Gaudencio, who was later to lose his sight, slept at the hearth of Urbano Randín—vermin hunter, smuggler, and as cross-eyed as they come.

  “Don’t catch his eye, Cidrán, don’t you know cross-eyed folks can strike you senseless!”

  Don Brégimo lodged with blind Pepiño Requiás who let him have his bed for a peseta. Marcos Albite and Moncho went off to the Laurentinas in Puxedo while Robín Lebozán and I headed on over to Cela to see my relations the Venceáses.

  “Stay here both of you, the house is plenty big enough and it’ll be company for us!”

  The Venceáses lived with their mother, Dorinda, a hundred and three years of age and forever complaining of the cold, and with a maid who made the best coffee liqueur you could ask for.

  “What’s that woman’s name?”

  “We don’t know, the poor creature is dumb so, of course, she couldn’t tell us; she looks Portuguese but maybe she isn’t from anywhere for she has no papers, she’s been with us for donkey’s years, over fifty years now, and she wouldn’t harm a fly. In the village she’s known as the Mute, not as a nickname but just because she is.”

  The Mute made a corker of a coffee liqueur, make a note of this if you wish: fill a pot with the following ingredients: a panful of top quality aguardiente distilled from grapes, two pounds of roasted coffee beans, four pounds of candy sugar, two handfuls of walnuts, shelled, of course, and broken into pieces to release the essence,
and the rinds of two Seville oranges. For two weeks you stir it thoroughly with a hazel rod, a hundred clockwise turns at daybreak and another hundred counterclockwise at nightfall; after that you strain it through brown paper, bottle it, and lay it down for at least a year. Some folks store the liqueur in wide-necked jars sealed with wax and others don’t strain it but let it mature in an oaken barrel, it’s all a matter of taste. The Mute was delighted when Robin and I broached a bottle of her liqueur, clicking her tongue in excitement; when the Mute is happy, apparently she lets fly some long, rip-roaring farts.

  Loliña Moscoso Rodríguez—that’s the wife of Baldomero Gamuzo, well, Baldomero Marvís Ventela or Fernández, Lionheart—keeps her five children as neat as pins, you’d swear she even polished them, while the children of Rosa Roucón—that’s Tanis the Demon’s wife—and there’s five of them, too, run about bare-assed and snotty-nosed, but we’re all as God made us and you don’t buy anisette for nothing.

  “Will you have a drop of anisette?”

  “Is it time yet?”

  Chelo Domínguez from los Avelaíños, that’s the wife of Roque, representative of the blessed St. Carallan upon this earth, has a hard cross to bear through this vale of tears.

  “Count your blessings, Chelo, better a feast than a famine.”

  “So they say.”

  Chelo Domínguez is a great cook, she bakes delicious pork pasties, joints of ham that she splits into three or four chunks and browns on the open coals before braising, her tripe—beef not lamb—and brains with cutlets are something to write home about.

  “Do you think the Japanese are really so jealous?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “For no reason at all, except that I’ve heard it said.”

  Don Benigno Portomourisco Turbisqueda went through life proclaiming he would live to be over a hundred but he died at ninety after drinking more wine than his body could hold.

  “And you say that nobody ever saw him sozzled?”

  “How could I say such a thing? Everybody saw Don Benigno half seas over and don’t think he went out of his way to conceal it either!”