Mazurka for Two Dead Men

by Camilo José Cela

  “That depends, woman, that all depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “What would it depend upon? You’re like a half-wit!”

  Moncho Lazybones speaks with wistful nostalgia of his aunt Micaela.

  “I have golden memories of my childhood, of coffee lozenges, baked apples for dessert, of rose bushes laden down with red roses, of the times my aunt Micaela jerked me off … The poor thing was so affectionate and anxious to please, she used to jerk me off in order to kindle within my spirit the desire to live and curiosity about the world surrounding me.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense! She used to jerk you off because she liked fondling your privates, all women enjoy that!”

  Moncho’s cousins, Ádela and Georgina, dance tangos with Miss Ramona and Rosicler.

  “Shall I take off my blouse?”

  “Alright.”

  Aunt Salvadora, the Casandulfe Raimundo’s mother, is in Madrid, nothing is known about her for communications are cut off, maybe we could get news through the Red Cross. Uncle Cleto still plays his jazz band as usual and Aunt Jesusa and Aunt Emilita seem almost anesthetized, indeed maybe they are anesthetized.

  “What a dreadful din! Cleto spends the entire day thumping that drum just to give us headaches, we don’t know why he doesn’t enlist in the Orense Crusaders and leave us in peace.”

  Aunt Jesusa and Aunt Emilita receive a propaganda pamphlet: Galician woman: consider how apt, now as never before, are the words of Quevedo: Women are the means by which kingdoms are lost (Lord, how common!), where the power of your influence in the world is concentrated.

  “Can you make head or tail of this?”

  “Not really, anyway for my taste they might have said Ladies instead of Women, it would have been no trouble at all to do so. I think what they’re after is for us to knit sweaters, just you wait and see.”

  Uncle Cleto’s dog, Hornet, spends whole nights howling, apparently she scents death in the air. Inundated with such wary premonitions, Aunt Jesusa and Aunt Emilita tittle-tattle, pray more than ever, and piddle more copiously than ever before, truth to tell the whole place is destroyed with them piddling to beat the band until the whole house stinks like a public urinal.

  “It stinks of cat.”

  “Yes, of cats alright. What it smells of is piddling old women.”

  “Lord!”

  The dead varmints hanging from the sacristan’s vines bit by bit have tumbled to the ground, it’s not even funny.

  “Vying with one another?”

  “Of course.”

  Dolores, maid to the priest in San Miguel de Buciños, hid Alifonso Martínez, a telegraph attendant, and when they went after him he was nowhere to be found.

  “He didn’t pass by here?”

  “Not on my life, he didn’t!”

  Father Merexildo told Alifonso:

  “Stay put and ride out the storm, just don’t show your nose outside the door, this won’t last forever.”

  “Yes, Father, and thank you, sir; it’s Moucho Carroupo I’m frightened of, they say he’s roaming about here all done up in straps and military belts.”

  “Not to worry, he won’t come through the village, just you wait and see! He wouldn’t dare try anything on with me!”

  “May God be good!”

  Mariquiña is from the village of Toxediño, in the parish of Parada de Outeiro, in the jurisdiction of Vilar de Santos, in la Limia, but that was years back, at the time of the Moors. The crow belonging to the convict Manueliño Remeseiro Domínguez is called Moncho, like the cousin that died of whooping cough, and it’s a delight to watch it fly. Mariquiña is a pretty, penniless young cowgirl who every morning leads one cow, two sheep, and three goats out to pasture at the spot known as Cantariñas hill. Moncho the crow is learning to whistle, he already knows a few bars of the mazurka that Blind Gaudencio plays only when the mood takes him. Mariquiña’s mother is a widow and in that house they know only too well the true colors of destitution and calamity. Don Claudio Dopico Labuñeiro is a schoolmaster, they’re hard times these days for schoolmasters, and he’s having an affair with Doña Elvira, the landlady of the inn where he lodges, and it seems that he’s also bedding Castora, the servant girl. Up the mountain there’s a crag shaped like a confessional, with a little seat and grille where the Moorish queen sits while they brush her tresses and air the treasure; Christians could watch the scene from afar but if they approached, it all simply vanished into thin air. Doroteo, the corporal in the Civil Guard who wears a corset, has been confined to barracks for several weeks. Doroteo knows off by heart large chunks of The Sun Has Set in Flanders by Eduardo Marquina.16 One morning Mariquiña spied an ancient, noble-looking Moorish woman who called out to her by name.

  “Mariquiña.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Will you search my head for nits?”

  And Mariquiña, being very respectful, replied:

  “Certainly, ma’am.”

  The old woman, who was the Moorish queen from the Cantariñas hills herself, turned to the girl again:

  “Will you give me a porringer of milk?”

  And, just as before, Mariquiña replied:

  “Certainly, ma’am.”

  Without telling her what was in it, the old woman filled her kerchief and ordered her not to breathe a word to a soul nor even to take a peek at it until she reached home and was sitting in front of the hearth with the doors and windows barred. Don Claudio and Doña Elvira are on first name terms only in bed, they don’t even use first names when they’re all alone and playing backgammon. Mariquiña kept her promise to the Moorish queen and when she untied her kerchief she saw it was full of gold coins, there were at least a dozen and a half gold coins in it. Mariquiña’s mother was as pleased as Punch but, however much she questioned, she never discovered where the riches had come from. Adrián Estévez, the Shark, can outswim fishes and frogs, you wouldn’t believe how well he can swim and hold out under the water. The following day Mariquiña went up the mountain and the same thing happened again but, as she was picking the nits from the Moorish queen’s head, she started coughing for it was very cold.

  “Don’t splutter over me!” cried the old woman. “Turn the other way for I don’t want to be baptised in your spittle.”

  In Ferreiravella, the Shark’s village, they are all baptised and can spit at one another without a care in the world for over there they’ve all been Christians for donkey’s years, at least a century or more. Once again Mariquiña returned home with her kerchief full of coins and her mother’s enquiries met with a wall of silence, but one night she couldn’t help it and her tongue wagged and both her fortune and life were cut off, for the gold turned into the pebbles of the road and of her body and soul there was neither sight nor sound again. When the inhabitants of Toxediño turned out to search for her up the mountain a voice from beyond the grave was heard calling: “For her pains, Mariquiña the prattler is now inside my belly fried in butter and garlic!”

  “Poor Mariquiña! It was even worse than what befell Basilio Ribadelo, the muleteer from Sobrado do Bispo.”

  “Indeed, for although he wound up penniless at least he didn’t lose his life!”

  Rosicler’s Argentinian relations who called the phonograph a gramophone went off to Buenos Aires at the time when Don Jesús Manzanedo noted in his private obituary the death of Inocencio Solleiros Nande, number 37, 21 Oct. ’36, bank clerk, from Alto del Furriolo, absolution granted (that’s not true), they said they were going and off they went, to my mind they did right.

  “There’s going to be a real bloodbath here, nobody knows who will save their skin and who won’t, all hell will be let loose, we wouldn’t stay here for love nor money, when Spaniards are at daggers drawn with fellow Spaniards.”

  Alto del Furriolo lies between Ginzo de Limia and Celanova, folks were slithering about in blood and more than one body cracked a bone of the skeleton of his soul.

  “Is it true that the grass shot up v
ery fast?”

  “It is, apparently to wipe out the traces of so much grief.”

  All of a sudden Aunt Jesusa fell ill, seriously ill.

  “Did you call the doctor?”

  “We did.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Well, that the poor thing is well on in years, she’s worn out, there’s nothing in particular wrong with her apart from old age and bit by bit her ticker is grinding to a halt.”

  “For goodness sake!”

  When I went to visit her I found it all very mysterious. Hornet, the dog, couldn’t cope with so many omens of death and Uncle Cleto only played the jazz tune No me mates con tomate time after time, over a hundred, maybe five hundred times a day, after a while you don’t hear it any longer, it’s like the wind soughing in the oak trees. Aunt Emilita and Uncle Cleto squabble about the site that Aunt Jesusa’s body is to occupy in the graveyard, not that Aunt Jesusa is dead yet but she’s got one foot in the grave already.

  “The family graves are full up and we can’t afford to fork out at the moment, just hold your horses!”

  “No, but you wouldn’t have our parents’ remains cast into the river either.”

  “I wouldn’t do anything, but you tell me what is to be done.”

  Aunt Emilita is a firm believer in prebends beyond the grave and the respect due to virtues that have stood the test of time.

  “You should always bear in mind, Cleto, that both Jesusa and I are spinsters. It’s just as well you left Lourdes behind in Paris!”

  Uncle Cleto stared at Aunt Emilita as if to hypnotize her.

  “What a beast you are, sister dear, you’re just like a mule!”

  Aunt Emilita burst into tears and Uncle Cleto stalked out of the room whistling after letting out a fart, as he always did.

  “Let me know if there’s anything you want.”

  The news coming in from all over is not very reassuring, maybe when Egypt was afflicted with the plagues, consciences clouded over, too, and began stuttering and stumbling.

  “We nationalists have taken Badajoz.”

  “Why do you say we Nationalists?”

  “I don’t know. What would you have me say?”

  Kitty-cat is a Zamora man who breezed into Orense and set about giving orders to all and sundry, apparently he had leadership qualities.

  “Did he not have a bit of a squint?”

  “Maybe, but who would dare look him straight in the eye!”

  He got the name Kitty-cat because of his whiskers, he was called Bienvenido González Rosinos and was a chartered accountant. Kitty-cat was short of stature but very spruce and dapper, if there was nobody standing next to him he even looked tall. Don Brégimo couldn’t abide short men and classified them in two large but very precise groups: the ones whose asses hens can peck, and the ones who have to sing as they go about their business for fear someone might tread on them.

  “And neither sort is any good. Short men should be outlawed!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kitty-cat was the organiser, instigator, and top brass of the Daybreak Squadron, which adhered to a very strict ritual, just like Italians. Kitty-cat was pummeled to death in Sprat’s doorway. Gaudencio knows who did it but he won’t tell and since he’s blind he can get away with it.

  “My job is to play the accordion. How would I know what happened when I’m blind? Can’t you see I’m blind?”

  “Of course, I can, pardon me; play on!”

  Kitty-cat got just two punches: one on the throat and another on the chest, his attacker took it easy. Pura Garrote, Sprat, didn’t like the incident one iota.

  “Either folks calm down or I’ll close the front door for the night and turf you out on to the street for this is a respectable house and I won’t have folks kicking up a rumpus! Let that be an end to it!”

  They left Kitty-cat’s body a little farther down the street and sluiced down the stone slabs at the entrance to wash away the blood. Pura Garrote addressed the sorrowful clientele:

  “And now you’ll all sing dumb, do you follow me? You’d better simply forget this whole business as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Anunciación told Gaudencio:

  “May God forgive me but I’m delighted they killed Kitty-cat.”

  “Me too, Nuncie, me too.”

  “And what’s more, I know who did it.”

  “Wipe the name from your memory, don’t even let it cross your mind.”

  The memory of Kitty-cat did not last long however because events were tumbling over one another to squeeze into the memory.

  “Will you pour me a coffee, Nuncie?”

  “Yes, I’ll fetch you one now.”

  Miss Ramona ordered her horse to be saddled up and rode off towards the mountains. In Arenteiro she came across a couple of Civil Guards.

  “Good morning, Miss, where are you off to?”

  “What do you mean, where am I off to? I’m off to wherever takes my fancy! May I not ride out whenever I please?”

  “Indeed I meant no harm, Miss, you may go wherever you please, that’s for sure, but it’s just that everything is so messed up these days.”

  “And who messed things up then?”

  “I really couldn’t say, Miss. Maybe they just got all messed up of their own accord.”

  When Miss Ramona returned home, the Casandulfe Raimundo and Robín Lebozán were waiting for her. Raimundo smiled as he spoke.

  “I’ve been summoned by the civil administration.”

  “What for?”

  “I’ve no idea; Lieutenant Colonel Quiroga, the new governor, has summoned me.”

  “Are you going to turn up?”

  “That I can’t say, in fact that’s just what I wanted to ask you: what do you think?”

  “I don’t know what to say, we’ll have to think it over.”

  At times like that making the right choice is never easy. Raimundo was in favor of turning up but Robín wasn’t. Robín tried to put that idea out of his head.

  “Heading for Portugal would be a mistake because of the Civil Guards, as you know, but getting away from here would be easy enough: you could join Barja de Quiroga’s Galician Legionary Banners, I think war would be better than this.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Quiroga Maciá, civil governor of the province with responsibility for public order, summoned Raimundo to appoint him mayor of Piñor de Cea.

  “I’m greatly honored, Lieutenant Colonel, sir, but I had been thinking of enlisting in the Galician Banners, in fact I was about to leave for Corunna.”

  “Your conduct is praiseworthy indeed. Could you recommend a trustworthy person for this office?”

  “No, sir, I can’t think of anyone just at the moment.”

  The radio announces that the triumph of the insurgents is complete. There’s no government in Madrid now, the last crowd of blackguards, and frauds to betray us fled by plane to Toulouse. They have wholly ceded their powers to the Communists and their last achievement was the burning and destruction of the Prado museum.

  “Gracious, if things are really that bad there won’t be a sinner left to bless himself!”

  María Auxiliadora Porrás, the sweetheart or sort of sweetheart who left Adolfito Choqueiro—Georgina’s first husband—in the lurch spent a whole week in bed with Kitty-cat.

  “Were you not ashamed?”

  “Me? Why should I be? Bienvenido was a very manly sort, not overly tall but manly indeed, nothing can take away the good times, the stories that run about these parts are only idle gossip, folks are great begrudgers and say more than their prayers.”

  Aunt Emilita refuses to speak to Uncle Cleto.

  “I’m a genteel person and see no reason to break breath to an unprincipled swine, may God forgive me, but my principles won’t allow me do so! Poor Jesusa, she deserved a more respectful end!”

  With Aunt Jesusa still present in body, accompanied by his jazz instruments, Uncle Cleto was delivering speeches: Citizen
s of Galicia, the new dawn of salvation and Spanish independence has broken!

  “I never knew that your Uncle Cleto was so patriotic.”

  “No, he wasn’t. It just depended on how the mood took him.”

  On our return journey from the cemetery, with Miss Ramona and me in front, Uncle Cleto said to Aunt Emilita:

  “I’d like to talk to you, Emilita, and ask your forgiveness for any offense I may have caused you. Will you forgive me?”

  “Of course I forgive you, Cleto, my dear! Did our Lord not forgive the very Jews that crucified Him?”

  “Thank you, Emilita, and now just listen to me. There is no need to overdo it, do you get me?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that makes no difference, but there’s no need to lay it on with a trowel, within families it’s better to admit defeat than to keep on fighting. Now will you admit defeat and give up?”

  First Aunt Emilita blushed then she blanched and fell to the ground in a fainting fit, giving herself an almighty crack on the ribs in the process. While my cousin Ramona and I attended to her, Uncle Cleto went up home and started playing his jazz band: after he had, as usual, drily and savagely broken prolonged wind.

  The Casandulfe Raimundo enlisted in the Galician Banners, national fervor was running high in Corunna: a boy J. T., a suckling kid and five cans of squid in their ink, the Civil Governor Don Francisco Pérez Carballo shot; Mrs. T., mother of the aforementioned and admirer of the glorious Spanish army, a salami, a frying sausage, and a dozen chorizos, the Commander of the Assault Troops, Don Manuel Quesada, shot; J. T. Esq., husband of the aforesaid lady and father of the aforementioned lad, four hens, six dozen eggs and four slabs of salt cod, the Captain of the Assault Troops, Don Gonzálo Tejero shot; I. A., a packet of quince jelly, the mayor of Corunna, Don Alfredo Suárez Ferrín, shot; a peace-loving lady, five bottles of Rioja wine (red) and five cans of olive oil, the Admiral, Don Antonio Azarola Grosillón shot; A. S., three rabbits and three chickens, General Don Rogelio Caridad Pita shot; a patriot, a box of Astorga cookies, General Don Enrique Salcedo Molinuevo shot. The Casandulfe Raimundo is downcast.

  “There’ll be a lot of crimes committed here, they’re happening at this very minute, and a lot of idiotic goings-on, but the worst of it will be the step backwards for everybody, for the whole country. Poor Spain! The worst about these outbreaks is the triumph of vulgarity, there are times when mankind even takes pride in its vulgarity, strutting, proud as peacocks, those are the worst of times, the most dramatic and bloodiest of times as well, mediocrities show no forgiveness and disguise God in their own image and likeness, dressing up as clowns and yes-men, we may be set back a hundred years but you have to hold your tongue, there’s no use trying to swim against the tide, nobody can fight against an undertow. Let it be as God designs!”