Mazurka for Two Dead Men

by Camilo José Cela

  Don Benigno was as straight as a ramrod, although towards the end of his life he walked with a slight stoop.

  “Coot!”

  “Yes, Don Benigno?”

  “Get into that vine there and don’t come out ’til the sweat is dripping from your brow!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Luisiño Bocelo, Coot, was a gentle, obedient eunuch who was the butt of many jokes.

  “Coot!”

  “Yes, Don Benigno?”

  “Drop your britches, I want to give you a wallop on the ass!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When Luisiño Bocelo, Coot, was in the seminary his companions used to wet his bed and afterwards he would feel the cold seep into his bones.

  “Coot!”

  “Yes, Don Benigno?”

  “Did you take bread and water to the mistress?”

  The second husband of Georgina, lame Moncho Lazybones’ cousin, also wound up kicking the bucket.

  “I’ve got to get the skids under me for I’m no spring chick any longer and in this neck of the woods you always need a man, although we may be widowed two or three times, we women should never be alone.”

  Moncho always speaks fondly of his aunt Micaela, Georgina’s mother.

  “She was always so good to me, when I was a lad she used to jack me off every night; in the past families were closer-knit.”

  Adela and Georgina are sisters but they don’t take after one another, except maybe in their fondness for wine, tobacco, and their beds.

  “What’s the point of living after all?”

  “Indeed you’re right, girl, there’s more to this life than passing on the genes.”

  Adela and Georgina love Miss Ramona to play tangos for them on the phonograph: Peach Blossom, Shanty-town Tune, and Downhill.

  “How I’d love to be a man and dance the tango roughly!”

  “What a thing to say, girl!”

  One night last year Adela and Georgina danced tangos with Miss Ramona and Rosicler.

  “Can I take off my blouse?”

  “Do whatever you like.”

  My aunt Salvadora, that’s the Casandulfe Raimundo’s mother, lives alone in Madrid and doesn’t want to hear tell of the village.

  “Nor of her relations either?”

  “Nor of her relations either.”

  On my mother’s side of the family I still have four uncles and aunts: Aunt Salvadora and Uncle Cleto, both widowed, and Aunt Jesusa and Aunt Emilita, spinsters. Uncle Cleto whiles away the time playing percussion, his “jazz band,” rather.

  “How old is he?”

  “I don’t know, seventy-six or seventy-eight.”

  Aunt Jesusa and Aunt Emilita spend their time praying, gossiping and piddling, both of them are incontinent, you see. Aunt Jesusa and Aunt Emilita don’t speak to Uncle Cleto, well, it’s not so much that they don’t speak to one another, they loathe and detest one another and make no bones about it.

  “Men should be hanged! Cleto spends his day bashing that drum and cymbals just to annoy us. And he knows the migraines we suffer!”

  My aunts and uncle live together in the same house, my two aunts downstairs, where it’s damp, and my uncle upstairs, where it’s drier. When he gets bored, Uncle Cleto throws up; he sticks his fingers down his throat and vomits his guts up wherever he happens to be, in a washbasin or behind the dresser, apparently he thoroughly enjoys throwing up. When Uncle Cleto was in Paris on his honeymoon, his wife fell ill and he left her in hospital with the excuse that sick people made him ill; he received notification of her death in a letter from the consul.

  “Poor Lourdes wasn’t long for this world, that’s for sure, well, I did what I could for her, I left her in a good hospital with everything, even the funeral expenses, paid for; that was a stroke of bad luck.”

  My grandparents were well-heeled, they owned a tannery and a coffin factory, The Great Beyond, but my uncles and aunts squandered the inheritance so now they’re stone broke and living hand-to-mouth.

  “It’s hard to say which is worse, hunger or filth; men plump for filth while we women opt for hunger, though maybe there’s the odd slut that wouldn’t.”

  The strangled vermin in the sacristan’s vineyard grow more shrivelled and putrid by the day. The half-wit from Martiñá bares her breasts to the dead fox as she munches hazelnuts.

  “Clear off, you wretched half-wit! You bring more corruption than Sodom and Gomorrah! Cover up your miserable breasts and pray to the Lord Jesus Christ or we’ll all be damned through your filthy fault!”

  One day the sacristan caught Catuxa Bainte with a stone between the breasts and blood oozing from her mouth; the sacristan nearly died laughing.

  “My God, got you nicely there! Just about mashed your lungs, too!”

  Ducking from the raft in Lucio Mouro’s millpond, Catuxa Bainte, the half-wit from Martiñá, is like a straying orphan lamb, angelic and untainted by original sin.

  “Is the water cold?”

  “No, sir, not really.”

  When a swarm of flies heaves into view you know that beneath them is the priest from San Miguel de Buciños, whose flesh must taste like honey.

  “Dolores!”

  “Yes, Father Merexildo?”

  “This wine has turned sour, you drink it!”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Dolores bends her albow and is none too pernickety about what she drinks, almost anything will do. With one arm missing, Dolores loses her balance when she gets tipsy.

  “There are days when everything goes askew, apparently there’s a heavier load on one side than on the other!”

  Father Merexildo is renowned for his bodily excesses and his rock-hard rigidity; had he not entered the priesthood, he could have made a living by displaying his natural endowments to the public at romerías.

  “Roll up! Roll up! ladies and gentlemen! and view the organ of the Antichrist! the most enormous member, begging your pardon! throughout the whole of the Iberian peninsula. Don’t shove! There’s room for everybody, have no fear that the exhibit will shrivel with the passing of time!”

  But, of course, there are certain things that priests cannot do out of consideration for the susceptibilities of others.

  “Dolores!”

  “Yes, Father Merexildo?”

  “These apples are rotten, you eat them!”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “If you ever serve me rotten apples again, I’ll shove them up your ass!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Accompanied by Crown Prince Michael, King Carl of Romania visited Belgrade. Luisiño Bocelo, the eunuch servant belonging to Don Benigno, and Dolores, the crippled maid at the priest from San Miguel’s farm, were two creatures singled out by the gnarled, sere, and shrivelled hand of wrath to be kicked around.

  “Kicks aimed right in the pit of the stomach?”

  “Just wherever they happen to land, that’s neither here nor there.”

  I must make a note to ask my cousins in Corunna for more cheroots to give to Marcos Albite. I have to repay him for his carved St. Camilo, which, chances are, will be a work of art. When we went up to the Xurés corral, Marcos Albite and I addressed one another by the familiar tú, then the war came along and a great deal happened to mess things up so now sometimes we’re close and others not; in the company of others we’re more formal and use the polite form of address but on the whole I think I feel closer to him than he does to me. I must remember to ask my cousins in Corunna for more cheroots for him. Marcos Albite is a good sort and he must get fed up in that cart of his.

  “You can hardly see the little star now, I must paint it again; green paint does very well, as everybody says, but it wears off just as soon as any other and then you have to touch it up again.”

  A record player is better than a phonograph, swankier and more up-to-date, a record player doesn’t have a trumpet, the voice comes out through little slits in the side. Rosicler has some Argentinian relations who call the phonograph a gramophone, t
he gramophone is even older than the phonograph. The record player which the Casandulfe Raimundo gave our cousin is an Odeon Cadet model. For deep, soulful music, Clair de Lune, Für Elise, a Chopin polonaise, there’s nothing to beat the piano, whereas for music for listening to while canoodling, when you let yourself be swept away, the record player is better for it is more mysterious and has more bite to it. For the Candle Waltz, which is somewhere in between, either the piano or the record player will do. The piano is small and made of lignum vitae with an ivory keyboard. Miss Ramona inherited it from her mother who played elegantly, even stylishly. One evening last winter, when they were both tired of dancing together, Miss Ramona said to Rosicler:

  “Quit jacking off that monkey, it’s all very well but it’s bad luck for he’s consumptive into the bargain!”

  “Poor Jeremiah!”

  Miss Ramona’s piano is a Cramer, Beale and Co. model adorned with two silver candlesticks; in the past folks lived better than they do nowadays.

  “But people died younger, too.”

  “I’m not so sure of that.”

  Robín Lebozán used to take chocolates to Rosicler.

  “Here, take these to keep your breasts firm and hard, firm breasts are what give me a hard-on.”

  “Shut up, you swine!”

  Robín Lebozán lends Miss Ramona books of verse. When she wrote On the Banks of the River Sar, Rosalía de Castro9 was already living in La Matanza opposite the west Depot and even closer to the River Ulla. On the Banks of the River Sar is written in Castilian whereas New Broadsheets is in the Galician tongue, though both are very beautiful and inspired. On the Banks of the River Sar was published shortly before her death, Rosalía de Castro croaked at an early age, she didn’t even reach fifty. Robín Lebozán takes it for granted that Rosalía de Castro was not born into this world in Santiago de Compostela, as the books claim, but in the town of Padrón,10 whence she was hastily removed to lessen the suffering of her mother, who had been brought into disrepute by a priest; if they had only known then that, with the passage of time, the infant girl was to become the province’s greatest poet, maybe they wouldn’t have acted so hastily and with so little foresight; why, they nearly let her die!

  “Right asses they were!”

  “Well, times were different then.”

  Robín Lebozán believes that Rosalía de Castro had a love affair with the poet Bécquer, but there’s no proof. Bécquer was more or less the same age as Rosalía de Castro but he died even younger, in fact he hardly lived at all! Miss Ramona liked Breezes from my land by Curros,11 who was from Celanova, on the road to Xurés, and was also Robin’s great uncle.

  “Maybe that’s where you get your fondness for books from.”

  “Maybe!”

  Sea Breeze by Don Ramón Cabanillas12 is very good, too, He’s from Cambados on the Arosa estuary, and he’s hale and hearty, even though we’re nearly halfway through the twentieth century; I’m delighted, for nowadays there are fewer and fewer poets around, these days there’s nothing but footballers and army types. Rosicler, too, is fairly fond of poetry. The Casandulfe Raimundo hums Sacred Heart as he shaves.

  “Don’t you know anything else?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Never mind, forget it.”

  In Rauco’s inn they serve excellent tripe, even better than their octopus. Raimundo and our cousin only spend the whole night together when they are travelling, at Easter they were in Lisbon; Raimundo always takes our cousin a white camellia when he goes to see her.

  “Here, Mona, so you know I savor you and never forget you.”

  Raimundo gives Rosicler chocolates, each to their own. Fabián Minguela—Moucho—plays dominoes in Rauco’s inn; the Carroupos are bad losers, the pockmark on their forehead flares up and they don’t mince their words. Tripe-Butcher, the father of the Gamuzos, always held that a bad loser can’t stick the course, or rather, a bad loser meets a sticky end, that’s more like it: lying in the gutter with their head split open, or up the mountain where the Zacumeira wolf roams, or somewhere, with their guts spilling from their belly. Raimundo likes to go up the mountain on horseback. Some mornings, if it isn’t raining, he rides out with Miss Ramona; Caruso, our cousin’s horse, is getting long in the tooth but he’s still as sturdy as an ox.

  “Do you think the Crazy Goat would dare mess about with the Zacumeira wolf?”

  “Christ, what a thing to say!”

  The outsider saw that Moucho Carroupo was out on his own. The fifth sign of the bastard is in the hands: they’re limp, clammy, and cold. Fabián Minguela has hands that are sort of slimy.

  “I don’t like to raise my voice but if you don’t cough up what you owe, I’ll split your face.”

  The cat in Rauco’s inn has no name but the landlady calls it pusscat and it understands. While Moucho coughs up the dough, the outsider strokes the cat and without even bothering to watch.

  “Leave the money on the table, I’ll fetch it if I feel like it.”

  Moucho had to swallow it for nobody came to his defense, nor, indeed, did he deserve them to. Fabián Minguela—Moucho—works sitting down like all the Carroupos, cobblers don’t ride horseback nor do they farm the land. Moucho is a tailor and also fiddles about with bits of haberdashery, spools of thread, celluloid and metal buttons, cotton socks, handkerchieves, and other odds and ends. The Carroupos are not from hereabouts, God knows where they hail from.

  “Leave the money where it can be clearly seen, leave the pesos and pesetas for all to see and then clear out! Bring out more wine, ma’am, if you don’t mind, that is, for I have no wish to trouble anybody!”

  On Sundays Moucho dresses his hair with Omega lotion and sports a bright green bow tie and crêpe handkerchief to match, which he fastens with a safety pin so that it can’t be pinched.

  “What a fop!”

  “Of the first order!”

  The sixth sign of the bastard is a furtive look about the eyes. Fabián Minguela would never look you in the eye. Miss Ramona’s parakeet is as old as the hills, Miss Ramona’s parakeet nibbles peanuts and recites the Holy Rosary; virgo potens, ora pro nobis, virgo clemens, ora pro nobis, virgo fidelis, ora pro nobis; there are too many virgins in that, it’s like having the nuns in the whorehouse guiding the fallen women along the straight and narrow. Miss Ramona’s four servants are as follows: Braulio Doade, 82 years of age, from Camposancos; Antonio Vegadecabo, 81 years of age, from Cenlle; Puriña Córrego, 84 years of age, from los Baños de Molgas, and Sabadela Soulecín, 79 years of age, from San Cristóbal de Cea. The parakeet is the oldest of the lot for nobody kicks the bucket over there: virgo prudentissima, ora pro nobis, virgo veneranda, ora pro nobis, virgo predicanda, ora pro nobis, there are even more virgins for you, it’s like having the Jesuit nuns breaking in lustful young lads of good family. Miss Ramona’s four servants are nearly blind and deaf as posts, some more so than others, of course, but all of them are bronchitic and arthritic; the truth of the matter is there’s not one of them worth a tinker’s damn but you can’t chuck them out without further ado to be devoured by the wolves.

  “I’m duty bound to them, I know; but what saddens me is to think that at some time or another each of these old biddies’ hearts must have leapt with joy or love, way back before independence in the Colonies, of course. How absurd it seems! The parakeet was already well on in years when he arrived from Cuba, what beats me is how he adapted to the climate here.”

  Ádega carries on the tale of the dead men, someone has to keep track of the deaths relentlessly reaping the lives of men.

  “The Bidueiros half-wit did not hang himself but was hanged, as a sort of experiment. They didn’t mean him any harm they just sort of got carried away; sometimes the Devil sees to it that, through some slip or other, someone is accidentally hanged, it’s all a matter of bad luck, the Bidueiros half-wit was hanged as a sort of experiment, they hanged him as a joke but he well and truly died, apparently they caught him unawares.”

  Roque Ga
muzo is called the Cleric of Comesaña as a joke, it was also as a joke that they hanged the half-wit from Bidueiros and afterwards they had to bury him. The clerk of the court didn’t know what to write on the form.

  “What shall I put on the form?”

  “Put whatever you like, it was a piece of bad luck, all his life the poor half-wit was dogged by bad luck and misfortune, some folks are born under a lucky star and others not, that’s all.”

  Father Merexildo Agrexán, the priest in San Miguel de Buciños, said three Masses for his son the half-wit from Bidueiros without telling anyone the whys or the wherefores.

  Chelo Domínguez bore her husband, Roque Gamuzo, six sons.

  “Did any of them match up to their father’s proportions?”

  “Well now, there have been no complaints to date.”

  Chelo keeps her sons as neat as pins, she’s very proud of them.

  “Anyway, haven’t I reason to be? Not many women have seven such manly men as Roque and the boys about the house; it would gladden your heart to see them!”

  Aunt Lourdes, Uncle Cleto’s wife, died in less than no time, she didn’t last out the honeymoon. Aunt Lourdes died in Paris for she caught smallpox from the French, who are not overly fond of soap and water. But Ádega doesn’t believe that’s what carried her off in the end.

  “That cannot be, for Miss Lourdes, God rest her soul! was born in a leap year and it’s a well-known fact that nobody born in a leap year is smitten with smallpox.”

  “Is that a hard and fast rule?”

  “As hard and fast as they come!”

  When Uncle Cleto returned, having left Aunt Lourdes behind, my grandparents, who were still alive in those days, were deeply moved.

  “Poor Lourdes! How distressed Cleto must be! The poor departed soul was useless, of course, but she might have hung on a while longer! Here at the factory we could have made her a coffin worthy of a daughter-in-law: a fine number 1 English casket in walnut with bronze fastenings. Poor Lourdes! How soon the Lord chose to call her home on high!”

  Aunt Lourdes was buried in a common grave because Uncle Cleto had paid the funeral expenses but not for the grave itself, the French are very finicky when it comes to detail and the consul said it made no difference to him; dying in a foreign country is always a slap in the face for you’re not used to their ways.