Mazurka for Two Dead Men

by Camilo José Cela

  “Do you remember Don Jenaro and Don Antonio, those two fellows from Valencia who hung about with Manuel Blanco Romasanta?”

  “No, sir, I can’t say I do.”

  They “greengaged” Leoncio Coutelo—the Allariz republican who taught a crow to whistle the Marseillaise—in order to make an example of him. Blind Eulalio, too—that’s Leoncio’s brother—for being such a groper and so lacking in respect. Etelvino is at the recruiting office with Tanis the Demon as batman to Lieutenant Colonel Soto Rodriguez.

  “The main thing is to ride out the storm and we’ll see what happens then.”

  Policarpo la Bagañeira, who’s no good for anything else but a good hand with animals, looks after Tanis the Demon’s dogs. He also takes Caruso the horse out to stretch his legs now that the war has whisked Etelvino away.

  The list of lads wholly exempted from military service is as follows: Ramón Requeixo Casbolado (Moncho Lazybones)—right leg amputated; José Pousada Coires (Plastered Pepiño)—severe cerebral disorder; Gaudencio Beira Bouzoso—blind; Julián Moisteirón Valmigallo (Hopalong from Marañis)—lame; Roque Borrén Pontellas—mentally deficient; Mamerto Paixón Verducedo—paraplegic resulting from fracture of the spinal vertebrae; Marcos Albite Muradás—both legs amputated; Benito Marvís Ventela, or Fernández (Benito Scorpion)—deaf-mute; Salustio Marvís Ventela or Fernández (Shrill)—mentally deficient; Luis Bocelo Cepamondín (Luis the Coot)—castrated and blind, those are the ones that spring to mind for the time being, though there may be one or two others besides. Robín Lebozán Castro de Cela was declared fit for auxiliary service but was not called up.

  “All the better for him, don’t you think?”

  It’s like God’s punishment upon us, more than likely we have offended God with our sins, the country hereabouts was the seventh heaven and now, with all this savage, grievous, blind bedlam, they’re turning it into a state of limbo.

  “You mean the depths of hell?”

  “Maybe. You’re on the right track, the truth of the matter is that it can lead only to the destruction of the flesh.”

  Ricardo Vázquez Vilariño, Aunt Jesusa’s sweetheart—this is just guesswork—got a bullet in his heart (that’s just a manner of speaking), how many deaths will there be now if you take Nationalists and Reds together? Eleuterio the Britches, Tanis Gamuzo’s father-in-law, is a shit not even worthy of being spoken to.

  “Eleuterio.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Go to hell!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Eleuterio has the wind up and he has it coming to him from the prostitutes in Sprat’s place, you see they simply won’t let him.

  “Let’s see you spit in the face of your son-in-law, you bastard!”

  Portuguese Marta cannot stand the sight of Eleuterio, she loathes his guts.

  “It’s easy enough to spit in the face of a blind man, isn’t it? Why don’t you square up to a man that could defend himself? Are you afraid of getting a sock on the jaw or what?”

  In spite of what Miss Ramona had said, Robín Lebozán spent the night with her.

  “I promise not to bother you, Mona, but every passing day I get more scared of being alone.”

  “For my part, I find this house too big for a woman on her own.”

  Miss Ramona may be just a touch thinner.

  “That’s the law of the land, Robín, and some wretch or other—you know who I mean—is trying to go against it but you cannot go about wantonly killing in these mountains, hereabouts he who kills will surely die, it may take some time, but die he will, mark my words! There are still men about here who will see to it that the law is upheld. In our families, Robin, both law and custom are respected, but even if all the men were to die then there’s still Loliña Moscoso and Ádega Beira to avenge their dead, and both of them are decent, courageous women. And if they, too, were to die, then there’s me, I swear, may God forgive me, I’m not just saying that to impress you.”

  Rosa Roucón, Tanis the Demon’s wife, is fond of anisette, but there are worse things in this life.

  “They say that a body I don’t want to name made blood puddings with blood from one of God’s children, and we’re God’s children all of us, but he is cooking his own goose, may the food stick in his gullet and choke him to death, Amen, Lord. That person I don’t want to name takes a measure of blood from one of God’s creatures, so I was told by somebody who saw it, laughing hollowly as he does so, two quarts of milk, four heaped tablespoons of flour, a few spoonfuls of sugar, salt, cinnamon, and three beaten eggs, smears the pan with pork lard, and fries the batter in thin rounds and serves it sprinkled with orchid blossom honey, may God strike him dead!”

  Catuxa Bainte can’t swim, somehow or other she manages to stay afloat when she bathes in her birthday suit, shrieking with laughter, in Lucio Mouro’s millpond.

  “The leeches will go up your arse and somewhere else, too, you wretch!”

  “No they won’t. I’m keeping my buttocks clenched.”

  “Well, you might.”

  Lucio Mouro the miller, that wildflower of romerías, was found dead on the road to Casmoniño on the morning of the Feast of St. Martín. He had a gunshot wound in his back, another in the head, apparently that’s their way, and a sprig of gorse flower on the peak of his cap. Catuxa Bainte buried him without any to-do.

  “Was he anything to you?”

  “Yes, he owned the water.”

  There is blood spilled on every square inch of this mountain, sometimes it serves to nourish a flower, and tears spilled too, but folks don’t notice them for they are just like the morning dew. Earthworms scent below the ground, moles too, and the glowworms have already doused their lamps until next year, it’s going to be a very bleak Christmas this year.

  “When will next year come?”

  “I don’t know, in due course, as usual, I dare say.”

  Lucio Mouro had already been healed of the supurating boil which he had on his foot. Catuxa Bainte cured him by anointing it with ashes then saying the customary words: boil, spoil, skid off, skiddoo, the Holy Bishop has just passed through and the ash from the hearth is after you. It was a terrible pity they killed Lucio Mouro, just when the boil on his foot had healed up. Moncho Lazybones has his doubts about the sense folks have.

  “Let them say what they like but, with such a commotion going on, we may end up worse off than we were before. Folks are very proud and that’s doing the country no good, but I’ll hold my tongue for I don’t want to land myself in a jam.”

  “You’re right; the minute you slip up at all they find fault with everything and haul you up on a charge, all this summonsing bothers me, but there’s nothing to be done but put up with it.”

  Moncho Lazybones has a touch of the nostalgic poet, the elegiac bard, within him.

  “What a hoot my cousin Georgina is! When her husband went and hanged himself and the judge ordered the removal of the corpse, Carmelo Méndez slipped his hand up—no, not up to the judge, why the very thought!—up the widow. Do you remember Carmelo Méndez, the great hand he was at snooker and the smoke rings he used to blow when he smoked cigars? Well, he was killed in the siege of Oviedo, I only heard the other day, he was shot right in the temple.”

  Last summer there were frogs in the Miangueiro spring, nobody knows where they could have come from, it’s an odd thing for there to be frogs in the springs of graveyards, mosquitoes certainly, mosquitoes are all over the place. Don Brégimo, that’s Miss Ramona’s father, God rest his soul! used to play foxtrots and charlestons sitting up on the graveyard wall, what blatant disrespect! Don Brégimo was a past master on the banjo.

  “Folks seem to want the dead to be bored stiff, but what I say is: why should they be bored stiff? Have they not enough on their plates with being dead already? The dead fall into two types: the ones that are bored stiff and the ones that have a whale of a time, and you shouldn’t mix them up, isn’t that so?”

  “Yes, sir, why wouldn’t it be so?”
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br />   Don Brégimo was a great one for philosophising and other conversational delights.

  “When life dies, death is born and begins to live, it’s like a game of correlativa, in Orense there was a land registrar who was a great correlativa player, he died of a blocked bowel, he went for at least a month without shitting, the life of death lasts until the last maggots die of hunger and old age, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, sir, of course it’s right. It’s as plain as day.”

  Don Brégimo expressly ordered in his will that a single Mass should be said—not sung—for him, and that a whole twenty pesos be splurged on fireworks for the night he was laid out. Folks had a whale of a time while he slept the first moments of his eternal rest with four wax tapers around him.

  “What a lovely corpse he makes in his uniform!”

  “Yes, indeed, all corpses should be laid out in uniform.”

  “I’m not so sure, I think that could lead to confusion, they also look great dressed in a monk’s habit, in mufti even, in Galician costume they look ridiculous, anyhow it’s forbidden, well, chances are it’s forbidden now, there are corpses which look good no matter how they are laid out, just as there are corpses which are a calamity, that look like a heap of shit, not to put too fine a point on it.”

  “Soutollo, control yourself!”

  Florián Soutollo Dureixas was a Civil Guard at the Barco de Valdeorras post, he was a skilled piper and highly knowledgeable about the plague, consumptives, lepers, the dead and the dying, apparitions, he was also well versed in healing powers and magic and he could reproduce the strangest sounds with his mouth: a dove cooing, a cat mewing, an ass braying, a lady farting, a sheep bleating, etc. Florián Soutollo was killed on the Teruel front, it was foreseen and yet not foreseen, a bullet struck him between the eyes and he died immediately, maybe his soul was damned for he didn’t even have the time to make an act of contrition, he had half a packet of cigarettes left and the priest polished them off, a little Palatine priest who had developed a taste for smoking the cigarettes of the dead. Policarpo la Bagañeira is always over at Miss Ramona’s house these days. He takes Caruso the horse out to stretch his legs and also runs errands for her.

  “Are you going to Orense?”

  “If you send me there.”

  “No, 1 don’t want to send you there especially, but if you should be going for one reason or another, let me know, and maybe I’ll ask you to do something for me.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Father Mariano Vilobal, the priest famed for farting, fell from the belfry and struck himself a blow to the nape of the neck, there are bitter times in history: the Punic Wars, the 1918 flu epidemic, the Riffian campaign, there are times of grief that seem singled out by the hand of death, while he was hurtling through the air Father Mariano let off the last fart of his life.

  “There’s one for the Protestants! Death to Luther!”

  The last living moments of someone who knows he is about to die stretch out like a rubber band and allow for many more memories than you’d credit.

  “But what if the dying person doesn’t realize they’re dying?”

  “Then it’s just the same as ever. Time doesn’t play tricks.”

  Once, in Sprat’s brothel, Nuncie Sabadelle went to bed with the dead man Bienvenido González Rosinos, Kitty-cat, and when they had finished she asked him a very bitchy question.

  “Did you come?”

  “Did you not notice?”

  “Sorry, my mind must have been elsewhere.”

  Kitty-cat was a haughty half-gypsy and didn’t go down well with the girls in Sprat’s brothel, when he was found dead not one of them shed a tear. Citizens of Galicia, the new day of unity and Spanish grandeur has dawned!

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing, I was just remembering Uncle Cleto playing his jazz band.”

  When the Casandulfe Raimundo’s leave was up, they sent him to the Huesca front. With great care Miss Ramona got all his clothes ready.

  “Are you going to put in a request to be made provisional subaltern?”

  “No, why should I? If your number’s up, you’re a goner, whether you’re an officer or a private. At the front they say that every bullet bears a name, if there’s one with yours on it, it’ll get you even though you hide beneath the very rocks.”

  “Indeed that’s true.”

  Don Jesús Manzanedo died with his flesh rotting and, what’s even worse, stinking to high heaven: he was also scared stiff of what lay ahead for him in the next world.

  “He had it coming to him, murderous wretch that he was.”

  “Well, that’s another matter.”

  Facundo Seara Riba, a sergeant in the Service Corps, has a heart of gold, and when it comes to doing a body a good turn, he’d give you the shirt off his back.

  “What do you think of the Moors?”

  “Bastards, if you ask me! Just imagine that Vali, Monforte, Abd Alá el-Azziz ben Meruán, the wizard, scratching his leprous sores in the midst of all those starving, flea-ridden creatures and him stoning them with gold coins to the point of crippling them. Well, I’ll say no more, for it’s best to hold your tongue.”

  The Casandulfe Raimundo was hit by a bullet on the Feast of St. Andrew, his luck was in in that it struck him on the leg and not on the front of the femur, there weren’t many shots fired that day, very few indeed, but all it takes is one bullet with your name on it to shoot from the barrel of a gun fired by the bastard on the other side, if it hits you on the head, you’ve had it, danger lurks for the unsuspecting and since there had been nothing doing that day, the Casandulfe Raimundo had grown cocky and they hit him, well, all the others had grown cocky, too, but he was the one they hit that day.

  “Might he have been killed?”

  “Of course he might have, if they’d just struck him a bit higher up.”

  Blind Gaudencio only plays his mazurka on special occasions, here at the front there’s less bitterness and good luck can always open doors. Don Clemente Fat-of-the-land, well, Don Clemente Bariz Carballo, from the store, could not bear the horns of adultery that Doña Rita, his wife, adorned him with—she was having an affair with her spiritual director, that’s Father Rosendo the priest—so he put a gun in his mouth and shot himself, and to think that it was still peacetime and he went and did himself in.

  “Is it true what they say about his brains sticking to the lamp?”

  “So it seems.”

  The Casandulfe Raimundo did the rounds of two or three field hospitals, they were small and ill-equipped, with nothing but bandages and tincture of iodine, until finally he was sent off to Mirando de Ebro, where the bullet was extracted from his leg, it was chock-full of Italians there, then they sent him on to Logroño, to the School of Skills and Trades, he was treated well and made several friends there, the sheets were spattered with blood stains but that hardly mattered, there’s no need to be too fussy.

  “Where are you from?”

  “From Eliorriaga, just outside Vitoria, my father is in the Post and Telegraphs.”

  They lopped a leg off Moncho Lazybones in the land of the Moors, truth to tell, it’s the same story the whole world over.

  “What do you make of the Moors?”

  “What can I say? They didn’t treat me particularly well but, on the other hand, they seem no worse than the Christians.”

  Moncho Lazybones was always very level-headed, somewhat fanciful but level-headed all the same.

  “Where did you leave your leg of flesh and bone, you wretch?”

  “In Melilla, you know that as well as I do, haven’t I told you umpteen times, but what matters for me is coming back, here abouts things are starting to turn very sour, yet the ones going about scattering death in this area are not Moors.”

  The Casandulfe Raimundo was in ward 5a, there were twenty-four beds in it and an oil heater that burned night and day, just as well, too, for in Logroño it’s bitterly cold in winter. Under the charge of Sister Catalina, a re
doubtable, enterprising woman from the Rioja area, two nuns and two nurses, all four of them very young, tended the wounded in ward 5a.

  “When I order the Rosary to be said, the Rosary is to be said, is that clear?”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  Adrián Estévez Cortobe, the Shark, the diver who wanted to steal the bells of Antioch from the Antela lagoon, was killed on the Madrid front, his body was riddled with machine-gun fire.

  “Was it just a stroke of bad luck?”

  “What can I say?! What do you think?”

  Mamerto Paixón did not go off to the war but invented a flying machine and smashed himself to smithereens in no time at all.

  “To my mind, it was a fault in the transmission. I’m just dying to get better to have another bash at it.”

  Within a few days the Casandulfe Raimundo unexpectedly found himself in the company of his cousin Camilo, the gunner.

  “What’s up with you?”

  “Well, they got me, as you can see.”

  “Where?”

  “In the chest.”

  “For goodness sake!”

  With the sum of ten pesetas, Doña María Auxiliadora Mourence, Porrás’ widow, headed a subscription to buy arms abroad.

  “If all us Spaniards donate ten pesetas, each and every one, it’ll amount to a tidy sum.”

  Basilisa the half-wit, from la Tonaleira, is “war mother” to poor little Pascual Antemil Cachizo, a corporal in the Zamora 8th Infantry Regiment, she writes to him every week and sends him chocolate and tobacco, Corporal Antemil was killed but, since Basilisa the half-wit has no idea, she continues to send him chocolate and tobacco, the odd week she sends him a chorizo, too, which somebody or other surely enjoys for nothing is allowed go to waste here. The Casandulfe Raimundo and his cousin are the only ones in ward 5a to have their own toothbrushes.