Mazurka for Two Dead Men

by Camilo José Cela

  Moncho Lazybones puts on a falsetto voice when he does the dialogue between the women.

  “What an odd bunch women are! Don’t you think so?”

  “That all depends.”

  In the cemetery lies the source of the spring of that miraculous water which cures dizzy spells without having to tear your clothes apart and burn them, it’s better than holy water for it is blessed by God before it gushes forth from the earth, while it is still coursing through the conduits of the earth among stray moles, short-sighted earthworms, and evil intentions: it’s called the Miangueiro spring and the water, if taken good and cold, yields relief to leprous sores, it neither dries them up nor heals them but simply yields relief.

  “I think all women go straight to heaven.”

  “Well I don’t. I think that over half of them are damned and wind up burning in hell: some for being whores, others for their greed, and others for being so loathsome, there are some loathsome creatures in this world: the French and the Moors for a start.”

  It rains upon the roof of Miss Ramona’s house, around about as well, upon the windowpanes of the gallery, it rains upon the rhododendrons, the cypress and the myrtles in the garden which slopes down to the river, everything is sodden and the soil is waterlogged: three suicides in a little over ten years is not so very much: an old woman in greater pain than she can bear, a traveling salesman who gambled and lost all he had at cards (even then he was cheating), and a little lass whose breasts were just beginning to bud.

  “You and I are relations, around here we’re all related except for those weeds the Carroupos. I’ll order chocolate, if you like. Why don’t you stay for dinner?”

  When he was still alive, Don Brégimo, Miss Ramona’s late father, was a great hand at playing foxtrots and charlestons on the banjo.

  “My father was very good, I know, but he had a gift for it, I think he was half crazy, they can say what they like but I hold that tangos are far better for dancing to.”

  Zalacain the Adventurer by Pío Baroja is a fine novel, there’s a great deal of action and feeling in it. I can’t remember who I lent it to now, that’s what happens when you lend out books, you never get them back, Robín Lebozán returns books, but maybe I didn’t lend it to anyone and it’s lying at the back of some cupboard or other, this house has gone to the dogs and that’s the truth.

  “Why don’t you stay and have dinner with me? I’ve a bottle of apple brandy that they sent me from Asturias.”

  Nobody heeds the prudent onward march of the world spinning and turning as the drizzle falls with neither beginning nor end: a man denounces another man and later when he is found dead in the gutter or in the ditches of the cemetery there are few qualms of conscience: a woman closes her eyes and inserts a bottle of warm water wherever she feels like and nobody cares: a child falls down the stairs and is killed, all in the twinkling of an eye. Rosicler goes on monkeying around with the marmoset whose cough worsens by the day, it’s a bee she has in her bonnet. All the Carroupos have an odious pockmark like pigskin on their foreheads, maybe they had a wild boar for a grandfather, who knows? Blind Gaudencio plays the mazurka Ma Petite Marianne when he wants, not when he’s told to, it’s one matter to be blind and quite another not to have the will to do something. Gaudencio’s repertoire is varied, folks are full of notions and at times they don’t realize what it is they’re asking. Can’t you see that mazurka is to be played only upon certain solemn occasions? That mazurka is like a sung Mass, it requires both a time and a place as well as a certain lavishness. The accordion is a sensitive instrument that suffers when something goes against the grain, folks have lost all respect, we seem to be heading for the end of the world. Policarpo Portomourisco Expósito, la Bagañeira, is missing three fingers from one hand, a stallion snapped them off in the Xurés mountains one day when he went up to the corral with his relations. Policarpo la Bagañeira lives in Cela do Camparrón, the upper floor of his house caved in at the time his father died and three trained weasels, obedient and able to dance, escaped on him. Policarpo la Bagañeira can manage them with just the little finger and the thumb of his right hand, a body can get used to anything. From time to time Policarpo goes up to the main road, on the Santiago omnibus there are always two or three priests nibbling hazelnuts and dried figs, they’re a rough-looking bunch, unshaven and always chuckling mysteriously like conspirators, before the war priests who traveled by omnibus used to gobble chorizos and belch and let out thundering farts amid loud guffaws. Father Mariano Vilobal was the priest best-known for his ability to break wind either upwards or downwards, in the whole province there was no one could hold a candle to him. Father Mariano died just after the outbreak of war, he went up to the belfry to see to the bells, lost his footing and cracked the back of his neck off the tombstones in the atrium. When he was downing hearty meals, Father Mariano could belch and fart for a full six hours or more.

  “Here’s one for the heathens!”

  “Will you stop it, Father Mariano, or you’ll give yourself a hernia!”

  “A hernia? Me? What sort of a sissy do you take me for? Here’s another for the Protestants, right bastards that they are! Death to Luther!”

  The best chorizos in the world (well, that’s just a turn of phrase, maybe there are others just as good) are the ones Ádega makes.

  “My old man had a good color because he used to eat whole chorizos at one go, he would snip the string off the end and devour them whole. Poor Cidrán. God rest his soul! how he loved my chorizos! At times he would tell me: they go straight down to my privates, Ádega, and isn’t that all the better for you, my girl? The dead man that killed my old man never ate such good chorizos, the dead man that killed my old man was a starveling of an outsider.

  Ádega makes chorizo with great care and skill, the main thing is to use a local pig reared as they do hereabouts, on maize and a thick swill of cabbage, potatoes, maize flour, stale bread, broad beans, and anything else you care to throw in; the pig also needs to be out of doors and get a bit of exercise up the mountain, rooting about in the soil for worms and bugs. It should be slaughtered with a soft iron blade, not steel, following time-honored custom, that is to say for the hell of it, with venomous delight and treachery, for nobody’s to blame. The best filling is made from finely chopped loin, shoulder, and rib meat—taking care with the bone—plenty of paprika as well as all the chili pepper it will take, salt, crushed garlic, and just a touch of water but not too much; then you knead it carefully and let it stand for a whole day. The following morning you taste the filling raw and then fry it in the pan to get the flavor of it and add anything else it requires, it always needs a touch of something. On the third day you knead it again and on the fourth you fill it into the skins then, depending on the size you require, tie them up with a length of string. Then they are smoked for two or three weeks in the smokehouse until they are firm, stiffness and hardness are signs of a good cure, and then they’re ready to eat: oak timber gives the best, most wholesome smoke. The ones you want to eat first are hung and then, after a good cleaning, are packed in lard.

  “My old man was as strong as an ox for he used to down whole chorizos, he would cut off the string, sometimes he didn’t even bother, toss back his head and swallow whole chorizos at one go. Time was when he could hold his breath and swallow five whole chorizos without them ever going down the wrong way.”

  It rains upon the waters of the streams beyond the plots of cultivated land of Catucha and Sualvariza while the ghost of a child who has just died flits through the air, cherubs to heaven! Children don’t even know when they’re dying, they die peacefully, old folks are the worst, what with the rumpus they raise and the expenses they incur, what with doctors, herbalists, priests, top quality coffins, mourning weeds, Masses to be said, if it’s time for the will to be read now and then the rows break out … Marujita Bodelón, the Ponferrada woman who had an affair with Celso Varelo the building supervisor, Aunt Emilita’s former sweetheart, isn’t an actress though she
looks like one, she also looks like a jeweller’s sweetheart. Marujita dyes her hair blonde and uses eye shadow.

  “Does she paint her lips in a Cupid’s bow?”

  “No, why?”

  “Does she smoke in front of men?”

  “She doesn’t do that either.”

  Marujita is a fine-looking woman with a strong, masterful stride that shows her breeding. Marujita is on the buxom side, but men generally like big-breasted women, and she has long legs and a pert little ass, but what isn’t nice about her is her voice, she squawks like a magpie. Marujita does smoke in front of men and she does paint her lips in a Cupid’s bow. Michel, king of the lipsticks. Celso Varela spent sums of money he couldn’t afford buying her trifles: a vermouth here, a box of chocolates there, a handbag, earrings, more and more, until he wound up stone broke and in debt to boot. Marujita responded with her favors and trimmed his nails and washed his hair, too.

  “Bet you have a better time with me than with that frump?”

  Ricardo Vázquez Vilariño, Aunt Jesusa’s sweetheart, was killed just when he was on the point of becoming a pharmacist, he had only two subjects left to do.

  “They might have killed somebody else, mightn’t they? I was very unlucky there.”

  “I don’t know what to say to you, ma’am, seems to me your sweetheart was even more unlucky.”

  “Indeed you’re right.”

  Gorecho Tundas wanders the fringes of the other world with a fishing rod on his shoulder.

  “Where are you off to, Gorecho?”

  “To Bethlehem in Judaea, to fish for the Christ child.”

  “Holy God! What utter claptrap!”

  “Well, you’ll soon see when day breaks.”

  It drizzles at daybreak, it drizzles down on Gorecho Tundas, sitting on a rock in the river, busy fishing trout, he looks more dead than alive.

  “Are you dead Gorecho?”

  “I am. I’ve been dead for over six hours now and nobody takes a blind bit of notice. They carried the Christ child off to Egypt on the back of a donkey for his own land didn’t suit him.”

  Folks think that us Guxindes and Moranes are the same but we’re not, folks get confused about this business of relationships, we are all descended from Adam and Eve (but not Ponferrada women, Aunt Emilita says, Ponferrada women are descended from the apes, thank you very much), not all Guxindes are Moranes but all us Moranes are Guxindes, it’s as clear as mud but there you are. There are fewer Moranes than Guxindes, there could be more of us but there aren’t. Us Moranes are the Portomouriscos, the Marvises, the Celas, and the Faramiñáses, the others are relations but not Moranes, it doesn’t make a hair of difference and we’re all hale and hearty. In the Great Beyond—my grandparents’ coffin factory—there worked an Italian, nobody knows how he came to be here, he’s dead now, and my cousins gummed up his ass with sealing wax then stitched it up with string and tied him to a tree near the village of Carballediña, beyond the Oseira monastery. I forget his name but what I do remember is the rage that came over him when they set him free, true enough there was no reason for him to put up with such annoying pranks. Poor Aunt Lourdes’ skeleton cannot be gathered together until the Day of Judgement for she was thrown into a common grave in Paris. Uncle Cleto plays the jazz band by ear, he does so very well indeed, and every February 11, which is his late wife’s Feast day, he blasts hell out of the world playing all his instruments at once: the drum, the bass drum, the kettledrums, the tambourine, the triangle, and the cymbals, maybe there are other instruments too: in memory of Don Jesús Manzanedo, that educated but wicked man who went about killing people, not even his children request music.

  “Do you think that Crazy Goat would dare mess about with a ram?”

  “Go on! What harm is there in it? Better than going to bed with Fabián Minguela! Anyway, if she can swallow her pride, a woman can put up with a lot, indeed she can cope with anything.”

  The ninth sign of the bastard is avarice. Fabián Minguela is poor but he might be a rich man now the way he hoards his loot.

  “What did he do with his earnings?”

  “Nobody knows, maybe he didn’t earn as much as they say.”

  Speaking of music, Don Brégimo Faramiñás Jocín was a good friend of Don Faustino Santalices Pérez, from Bande, he greatly admired his knowledge and his skill at singing ballads and playing the hurdy-gurdy.

  “Now there’s a distinguished art—not like that crummy banjo! If only I could play the instrument as well as my friend Faustino, I’d chuck the banjo out the window!”

  What Don Brégimo most liked to hear was the ballad of Don Gaiferos.

  “I don’t know what the Middle Ages were like, thronging with beggardly monks, mangy noblemen, consumptive troubadors, and thieving pilgrims, all toing and froing and unconfessed, that was donkeys’ years back, but chances are it was better than the Modern Age, in spite of the radio, airplanes, and other inventions; the ballad of Don Sancho is very lovely too.”

  Doña Pura Garrote, Sprat, wraps herself in an embroidered silk shawl when storms break, the moment the first lightning flashes and the thunder starts to rumble, Sprat runs for her shawl, fear affects each of us in our own way, she crouches upon her bed—preferably a wooden bedstead to an iron one—covers up her head and her whole body and grits her teeth in the darkness, lying as still as a corpse, with her eyes closed as she tells the Litany of Our Lady in a whisper until the danger is over. She, who is always so careful of what belongs to her, could be robbed at such a moment and wouldn’t even notice. Sprat’s shawl is famous, when Doña Pura was young she had at least twenty studio photographs taken in the nude with only the shawl on: with one breast peeking out and a vase of flowers, with both breasts bared before a canvas painted with the Egyptian pyramids, stretched out upon a couch with her legs crossed, with her buttocks reflected in a mirror, with her smooth, statuesque back bared and the Eiffel Tower in the background, etc., she had them taken in the Méndez Studios, in Lamas de Carvajal Street and paid Méndez, the owner of the studio, in kind. Terrible how time flies! Sprat’s shawl is cream-colored with a long fringe and at least three hundred chinamen, each with a little ivory face, embroidered in all the colors of the rainbow. Father Silverio, the canon, says they’re celluloid but that’s not true, they’re ivory: some strolling about, others doing balancing acts, and others shading themselves from the sun with parasols and so on.

  “How much is Sprat’s shawl worth?”

  “I don’t know. I’d say a pretty penny: why, it might even be the finest silk shawl in the whole province of Orense.”

  Pepiño Pousada Coires came down with meningitis and never fully got over it, he didn’t die, true enough, but it left him a bit touched in the upper story as well as with the stagger of a drunk man, they call him Plastered Pepiño because he looks plastered. Plastered Pepiño works in the Repose Coffin Factory, he’s an electrician’s assistant and he’s also good at packing: they say that Plastered Pepiño is a bit of a pansy, well, that he’s a queer, what he likes best is groping small boys, he would never leave Simon the Lamb in peace no matter where he went, it’s not hard to take liberties with deaf-mutes, but no good will come of it. Plastered Pepiño had the bright idea of getting married and his wife, Concha the Clam, ran off on him in the end, the most natural and sensible thing to do. Plastered Pepiño left jail because he agreed to be castrated, full credit to science. Plastered Pepiño didn’t improve with the operation: doctors, lawyers, and judges say sterilize, which has a more refined and subtle ring to it, and what’s more, his bones and his head ached.

  “Do your bones ache, Pepiño?”

  “Yes, sir, a little.”

  “What about your head?”

  “Yes, sir, my head too.”

  “Well, all you can do is lump it!”

  “I see, sir.”

  They gave Plastered Pepiño hormones to see if it would improve him but it didn’t, maybe they only gave them to him to experiment.

  “Wasn’t he
afraid?”

  “Of course, he was terrified. The only way to get over his fear was to go up to a little boy and stroke his ass. When the Civil Guard caught him, he said to the sergeant at the police station: Little Simon showed me his willy for me to touch, I didn’t want to touch it.”

  The braying of the oxcart as it rumbles along the track rings in your ears so you hear it even when it isn’t there; the axle of the oxcart always evokes a response: if there’s no other cart then the echo replies, if the echo is asleep then God replies with his fiddles. Benicia has nipples like chestnuts, hard and the very same color, Benicia is the niece of Gaudencio Beira, the blind accordion-player in Sprat’s brothel.

  “Gaudencia, I’ll give you a peseta if you play a mazurka.”

  “Depends which one.”

  Benicia can neither read nor write, nor does she need to. Benicia is cheerful and breathes life into things wherever she goes.

  “Shall we arm wrestle? If you win, I’ll let you suck my tits, but if you lose you have to let me pull your willy until you cry quits! Alright?”

  “No.”

  Benicia is a delectable gadget, designed not only to take but to yield delight. As soon as she saves up a little money, Benicia buys a present for somebody or other: a coffeepot, a box of cigars, a belt—men need a lot of tender loving care.

  “Shall we dance a tango?”

  “No: I’m tired, get in here beside me for a while.”