Mazurka for Two Dead Men

by Camilo José Cela

  “Some death notices are delightful, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, dear, some death notices are delightful.”

  “Well, God rest his soul!”

  “Yes, indeed, the greatest test of the existence of God would be for Don Jesús to manage to rest in peace.”

  Marujita Bodelón saw sense and married a Moor called Driss ben Gauzzafat from Franco’s bodyguard.

  “He’s very good to me and a real Christian in bed, only that my Driss has a prick like the one on St. Facundo’s ass and when it unsheathes, you’d think the world was about to drop out of it.”

  “Marujita!”

  “Pardon me, but it just sort of slipped out on me.”

  It’s going to be an uphill struggle for things to return to normal, folks have acquired the taste for doing nothing and roaming about, a country cannot rise from its knees like this and soon we’ll all be feeling the pinch, that’s if the English or the Germans don’t cross the border on us.

  Abd Alá el-Azziz ben Meruán, the Portuguese, was a Moor too, although he’s been dead for several centuries now, there were always Moors hereabouts, some hoarding gold and precious stones while others went about spreading lice and scratching their leprous sores, there’s many a Spaniard nowadays descended from the leprous Mohammedans, you can tell them a mile off. Don Clemente Bariz, Doña Rita’s husband who went and did himself in, was known as Fat-of-the-land for he had plenty of dough and ill will and had been plentifully cuckolded into the bargain, he had plenty of everything, indeed, Doña Rita wanted Father Rosendo Vilar, the priest that she was having an affair with and with whom she wound up blessing her union, to administer extreme unction in articulo mortis to Don Clemente.

  “I can’t, my dear, the sacraments may not be administered when the danger of death is not due to illness—it’s not allowed.”

  “But what danger are you talking about if he’s as dead as a doornail already?”

  “For pity’s sake, you’re right!”

  Then Doña Rita laid the table with a clean white cloth, a tray with little balls of cotton wool—she had to make them out of a sanitary towel for she was out of cotton wool—another with hunks of bread, wedges of lemon, holy water, etc. and Father Rosendo said a prayer:

  “Bendicat te omnipotens Deus …”

  “Amen.”

  Georgina and Adela are cousins of Moncho Requeixo Casbolado, Georgina popped off her first husband, Adolfito Penouta Augalevada, Buffoon, or maybe he hanged himself, opinions differ, by dosing him with a potion brewed from buttercups and she tamed the other fellow, Carmelo Méndez—later to be killed in the siege of Oviedo—by purging him weekly with olivillas. Adela munches magic herbs and wanders through life in a trance, Moncho is eternally grateful to his Aunt Micaela, the mother of his cousins, because she used to jerk him off when he was a lad. Some things are never forgotten.

  “Nowadays families are scattered far and wide and everyone goes their own way.”

  It was a shame the Shark was killed before he could steal the bells of Antioch, it’ll be no easy matter to find another diver as good as the Shark.

  “Do you remember that night when you both went to Sprat’s place to take the chill off your bones?”

  “Of course I do! And why wouldn’t I remember it? Some things are never forgotten.”

  Poor Aguirre died vomiting blood and Isidro Gómez Méndez, I mean Isidro Suárez Méndez, robbed his body, as he used to rob all the bodies of the dead without exception, afterwards Isidro was killed on the Burriana front while he was bathing. I don’t know why I sometimes recall the hospital and war scenes, well, truth to tell I recall everything.

  “Is that a good thing do you think?”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  Miss Ramona also goes to visit Wild Boar, a sort of patriarch who doesn’t always consent to be seen, Wild Boar has a mermaid tattooed just above his shoulder blade, he only shows it off on his Saint’s Day which is May 11, for the saints Antimo, Evelio, Máximo, Basso, Fabio, Sisinio, Diocletio, Florencio, Anastasio, Gangulfo, Mamerto, Mayolo, Iluminado, and Francisco de Jerónimo, May 11 is Camilo the gunner’s birthday, Wild Boar has a distinguished gait and a shock of curly hair.

  “Look here, Mona, life is hard on each and every one of us, life rejects death just as death strangles life, death always wins out in the end since it’s in less of a hurry and more brazen.”

  “Yes, Uncle Evelio.”

  “Yes, indeed it does! Listen, Mona, the war is over and many’s the wretch was stranded up the mountain or left lying in a ditch with his belly or brains spewing out, but nearly all of us men in the family are still in our proper place, not having had to learn another language or other ways. This business of forcing change upon folks is a bad job and grievous for the soul.”

  “Yes, Uncle Evelio.”

  “Indeed it is! Look, Mona, I don’t think much of the Italians, the Greeks, or the Turks, I prefer the English, the Dutch, and the Norwegians, they’re not so much fun but more trustworthy and they don’t holler quite so much.”

  “Yes, Uncle Evelio.”

  “Indeed I do! Would you like a drink?”

  “Yes, Uncle Evelio.”

  “Can’t you say anything but ‘Yes, Uncle Evelio’?”

  Wild Boar poured two glasses of rum.

  “This is good stuff, a drop of rum never did anyone any harm. Sailors take it so as to hold their own against the sea, and it’s good for women, too. Do you know Don Ángel Alegría, the orthopedics fellow?”

  “No, I don’t. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason really, just out of curiosity.”

  The seven Alontra sisters are riding out the storm, one way or another, events tend to shake up men with greater fury than women, it’s not a hard and fast rule but comes close enough to do, the worst that can befall a man is not knowing how death will catch him out, I don’t mean the death of the soul and eternal salvation or eternal fire, I mean the death of the flesh and his way of snuffing the candle, the Moors wouldn’t allow as much as a finger to be amputated because they have to pass through the gates of paradise whole in limb and body, a buried corpse eaten up by maggots is not the same as a body submerged in the sea and gobbled by sardines, or torn asunder and devoured by dogs, or incinerated and scattered as food for the sparrows, the bodies of men will always be devoured eventually, women are not beset by these scares, the seven Alontra girls are still alive and kicking, hale and hardy, handsome and hearty, into the bargain.

  “And what about Dolores, did she get over her appendicitis?”

  “Now you’re talking! She’s blooming like a rose, she’s a delight to behold.”

  Robín Lebozán and the Casandulfe Raimundo linger over enjoyable, long-winded philosophizing, Miss Ramona invites them to tea, the most talkative one is Robín for Raimundo is rather tired, he’s been feeling under the weather for several days:

  “You can live or you can make a pretence of living, Raimundo, since I’m not overly robust, since I’m rather sickly in fact, I go through life making a pretense, the truth of the matter is that in comparison with you, for instance, I’ve seen very little of life. I would like to have lived life more to the full but I have to accept my lot, have patience! I don’t think that anything at a remove from us either lives or exists, you know what I mean, the axis of the whole world is here within our very own hearts and Mona’s house, what’s faraway might not even exist: a Peruvian Indian blowing on a bamboo flute, an eskimo flaying seals, a Chinaman puffing opium—can you imagine it?—a black playing the saxophone, a Moor charming snakes, a Neapolitan eating spaghetti, the world is very cramped and life very short, Moncho Lazybones went around the entire globe, true enough, Moncho Lazybones had love affairs in Guayaquil, but the rest of you never left these mountains except to go to war, well, not all but most of you, and I didn’t even get that far, nor can anybody be sure that this business of seeing so much of the world does you any good at all, but what does do you good is a young lass, sitting on a low
stool before a blazing fire, playing the lute, those are the old ways, the ones that were lost in the upheaval, now everything will be so much the worse, one era dies and another is born, Raimundo, the rye shoots up and withers away each year but the oak tree outlives man, there’s no need drown in shit, Raimundo, you know what I mean, better to blow your brains out first.”

  The Casandulfe Raimundo looks downcast.

  “You mention the upheaval, Robín, true enough, there are things that will never be the same again, we will never see things set to rights however long we live, old ways swept aside by the upheaval … I don’t know, do I seem very uprooted to you? Maybe the mistake I made was not dying young, well, younger than I am, that is … I beg both of you to forgive me, will you pour me a brandy, Mona?”

  “I will, Raimundo, shall I play the piano?”

  It rains upon the waters of the River Arnego, which flows past, turning mill wheels and scaring folks with goiter and folks who have caught a chill cast by the evil eye of the toad and the venomous salamander, it also lashes the dying too, while Catuxa Bainte, the half-wit from Martiña, whistles stark naked up Esbarrado hill, with her tits dripping wet, her hair trailing like a bough of weeping willow and a fledgling sparrow in her clenched fist.

  “You’ll catch your death, Catuxa.”

  “Not me, sir, the cold slips off me like water off a duck’s back.”

  It seems like yesterday that the gale that sowed the seeds of grief in the memory swept over here.

  “What shall we do with the dead?”

  “The same three things as always, my dear, the same three things as we’ve always done: wash their faces then bury them, say an Our Father, and avenge them, for death cannot be doled out scot free.”

  “True enough.”

  It rains down upon the waters of the River Bermún, the stream that shrieks like a drowning child, it rains down upon the waters of the five rivers: the Viñao trickling from the Valdo Verneiro plain, the Asneiros gushing forth from the Two Priests Crags, the Oseira refreshing the pelts of the Oseira monks, the Comezo hurtling northwards along the track of the Lame Vixen, and the Bural where the girls of Agrosantiño launder their kerchieves, it rains upon oaks and chestnuts, cherry trees and willows, upon men and women, upon gorse, bracken, and solemn ivy, upon the living and the dead, it rains upon the whole countryside.

  “That’s the only thing nobody has been able to tamper with.”

  “Thanks be to God.”

  At my uncle Claudio Montenegro’s funeral we were all gathered together and there were some tense moments when the civil governor appeared, luckily tempers cooled right away, my uncle Don Claudio Montenegro never let anyone get on his wick, he caught the unfortunate Wenceslas Caldraga in a wolf trap and kept him howling for three days without a bite to eat nor a drop to drink, not even bread and water, when he released him he was as meek as a lamb.

  “Did he come leaping out?”

  “Yes, sir, limping but leaping.”

  The dead man who killed Lionheart and Cidrán Segade to boot is not dead yet, but he has one foot in the grave already, between the Feasts of St. Marta and St. Luis three years ago he left at least twelve or fifteen people dead, maybe even more, and now he reeks of death, folks hurry out of his way when they see him coming.

  “Do you not get that whiff of the damned off him?”

  One morning as he was returning from Mass, Blind Gaudencio fainted right in the middle of the street, it was as if he had taken a fit of the vapors.

  “That’s the accordion player from Sprat’s place, maybe the poor fellow hasn’t had a bite to eat.”

  Down at the municipal stores they gave Gaudencio a cup of coffee and he soon came to.

  “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “No, sir, I saw that I was going to faint so I just sat down.”

  When he got back to Sprat’s place nobody was any the wiser for the girls were asleep. A guard with a hacking cough accompanied him.

  “Here we are.”

  “God bless you!”

  When he climbed into bed, Blind Gaudencio covered up his head and whole body so as to sweat it out.

  “That’ll do me good, I’m sure it was a draught that caught me just at a bad moment or when I was lying awkwardly.”

  That night Gaudencio played the accordion as if nothing had happened.

  “Gaudencio.”

  “Yes, Don Samuel?”

  “Play that lovely mazurka, you know the one I mean.”

  “Yes, sir, I do, but you’ll have to excuse me for it’s not appropriate this evening, indeed it is hardly ever appropriate.”

  Basilisa the half-wit is a prostitute in Tonaleira’s place in Corunna, they say that Basilisa the half-wit is the greatest slut of a tart in the whole wide world but that isn’t true, that’s something nobody can ever know, Basilisa the half-wit was sending chocolate and tobacco to the late Corporal Antimil until she grew fed up, Basilisa the half-wit never found out that Corporal Antimil had died, she thought he was fickle, like all men except for Javierito Pértega who is a pansy and good for running errands that are not too demanding, he’s also good for kicking in the ass.

  “Are you not ashamed to have your privates hanging down like that?”

  Don Lesmes Cabezón Ortigueira, medical practitioner, surgeon, and one of the chiefs of the Knights of Corunna, fell into the sea in the fishermen’s wharf, in the very spot where a whale was once seen, and he drowned, he may have been pushed, Dolores Alontra started laughing when she heard the news.

  “He was a dirty old man that gave the girls a hard time of it. It’s a good job he drowned.”

  The ghost of Benitoña Cardoeiros, the spent old woman savaged by the ripper Manueliño Blanco Romasanta, still wafts on the air in the Alvar meadow oak grove which is full of nightingales.

  “There are bullfinches and goldfinches, too.”

  “Yes, ma’am, as well as greenfinches, blackbirds, and dun-colored larks, there’s everything over in the Alvar meadow oak grove.”

  All Souls’ Day should be spent in peace and quiet, in the old days it was customary to go and play the bagpipes and eat cakes in the graveyard. The dead weigh heavy upon us and nobody should forget them.

  “One day will all the dead be numbered?”

  “Never ever. Some say that the dead breed more dead, that may be the case but I don’t think so.”

  On All Souls’ Day 1939 the Second World War had already begun, the Feast of St. Charles falls shortly after All Souls’ Day, and upon the Feast of St. Charles in the year 1939, summoned by Robín Lebozán, twenty-two men—all of them blood relatives—assembled in Miss Ramona’s house: the Casandulfe Raimundo, nobody ever uses his real surname because it carries the seeds of grief within it, but that is a tale that is long and painful in the telling, for some time the Casandulfe Raimundo has been rather despondent and reluctant to talk; the four quick-witted Gamuzos: that’s Tanis the Demon who can floor an ox with one hand—his wife fell down the stairs on him and broke her leg, chances are she had a drop too much anisette on board, Roquiño the Cleric of Comesaña with his colossal member that’s famous throughout the country, it’s a bit chafed at the moment but as fine-looking as ever, Matías the Joker, who hasn’t danced for months, and Julián Wideawake—pocket and wristwatches, alarm clocks, cuckoo clocks, both wall and free-standing—Celestino Sprig and Ceferino Ferret are not present since they are priests, Benito Scorpion and Shrill Salustio are exempted on account of their disabilities; the three Marvises from Briñidelo, Segundo, Evaristo, and Camilo, who are fearless by nature and ride the toughest of colts bareback with not a thing to grip on to, their father, that’s Roque—he was not present since he’s well on in years—stayed in Esperelo with his Portuguese woman; Don Camilo and Camilo the gunner, Don Camilo is suffering from earache, quite severe earache, but since he has a modicum of common sense, he says nothing; Don Balthasar and Don Eduardo, Don Camilo’s brothers, one is a lawyer and the other an engineer; Lucio Segade and his three eldest s
ons: Lucio, Perfecto, and Camilo, it was quite a job to restrain them for they wanted to mete out justice by their own hand and wouldn’t listen to anybody; Uncle Cleto, who won’t shake hands for fear of germs; Marcos Albite, who arrived lurching along the cart tracks in his little cart pushed by the half-wit from Martiñá, silent beneath his umbrella Marcos Albite looked like a soul sentenced by Our Lord to a spell in purgatory; Gaudencio Beira was not required to attend on account of his blindness; Policarpo la Bagañeira, carrying a trained mouse in his pocket, as a mark of respect he didn’t take it out; Moncho Lazybones the discoverer of the ombiel tree, the tree with leaves like snail flesh; the venerable, even-tempered Uncle Evelio and, of course, Robín Lebozán. Some came from far afield, all of them wearing hats, peaked caps or berets, some of them on familiar terms and others more distant in their manner, Don Camilo was turned out in a derby and an overcoat with a wolfskin collar, they were waited on by Miss Ramona, Ádega, her daughter Benicia, the half-wit from Martiñá and Moncho’s two cousins, Georgina and Adela. Miss Ramona’s servants scarcely count for they have one foot in the grave already. The men dined off a choice of bacon broth or pork pie, with nipple-shaped Galician cheeses, quince jelly, and peaches in syrup for dessert. When twelve o’clock struck Don Camilo made a sign and everyone sat down in silence and lit their cigars, Don Camilo had brought cigars for everyone, while the women poured coffee and aguardiente, and then headed for the kitchen, not one of them lingered to eavesdrop at the keyhole because men are the ones who order the lives of men and women know and respect these ways, some feuds women may mention only in bed, with just one man and, even then, not always.

  “Stand up! Our Father which art in Heaven …”

  “Our daily bread …”

  When they sat down again, well, not everybody for there weren’t seats for all of them, when almost all of them had sat down again, Don Camilo looked to Robín Lebozán:

  “Our relation Robín Lebozán Castro de Cela will fill us in, speaking only the truth with no attempt to conceal the facts.”