And yet, though we had read and heard that these riches would eventually fill even poor men's pockets, the reverse seemed to be true. Inflation drove prices up, while workers' wages—and army officers' fixed wages as well—remained stagnant. The Spanish-American War, in which my own father had died, had left the countryside impoverished. And now this "prosperous" peace somehow did the same.
Talk of economic policy rarely invaded the first-class parlor cars. But the proof of changing times hung just outside the train windows, providing glimpses for those who chose to see. The houses looked emptier, the horse-drawn wagons fewer and farther between. Some train stations looked abandoned. Others were curiously crowded, with people who seemed only to stand and stare; never departing, never arriving.
In the small towns where we performed, the "perfumed hours" lost their easygoing charm. An evening stroll with a young lady, whatever her station in life, often led to overeager conversations about the prospects for life in some other corner in Spain. I was asked frequently whether I intended to marry, and if so, where I would settle, and whether things were better off there? Kisses were offered with greater urgency; addresses were pressed into my hand more forcefully. Where my fellow musicians and I had once represented a romantic dalliance—a moment beyond time and reason—we now seemed to represent some greater reality: the chance to escape into a better situation.
"I know this country better than anyone else alive," Al-Cerraz had said. But what did he know, if what he had nearly always seen were people in their weekend best, depleting their stores and their cellars? I felt like we were seeing not real places, but stage sets, constructed to last just until the train moved on, billows of locomotive steam curling the paper facades of pretend buildings, the blue boxboard sky propped overhead, everything ready to crash as soon as pulled out of view.
"Keep moving," Al-Cerraz had advised, and we did. But as we left each village, we seemed barely to outpace the groping hands we left behind.
Our train rides between performances began to seem interminable, especially as we stopped playing some of the smaller venues, traveling farther between towns and cities that would pay us. On top of that, there were more delays, particularly in the south, where debris littered the track and uniformed men patrolled the stations, looking for signs of revolutionary activity.
Three men were one too many for a compartment as narrow as ours, even after the beds were folded away. I tired of Gauthier's ceaseless smoking. Al-Cerraz was irritated by my morning routine of Bach, followed by an hour of scales. He could have gone to the dining car, but I think he liked to talk over my practicing, assuring himself a captive audience for his ritualistic morning laments, which were usually about the state of his mind, his heart, and his gastric system.
"You've heard of creative juices," he said one day as I bowed a minor scale. "Mine are overproductive. With insufficient outlet, they are dissolving my organs from the inside out. It's all from lack of artistic opportunity." Anyone who lived with our pianist could see the cause of his periodic discomforts: rich foods, sausage, cigars, espresso, wine. Our compartment smelled like a delicatessen, with an entire leg of air-cured serrano ham hanging from the ceiling, stale loaves of bread tucked into the folded bed platform, liquor bottles and empty anchovy jars accumulating in the washbasin.
Afternoons, I read musical biographies in German, French, and English, to continue advancing my language skills. Gauthier buried himself in our business, organizing the receipts and records he would forward to Biber. Al-Cerraz stretched out on his bunk to compose, he said, though I suspected he was composing only obsequious letters to his patron. Eventually, the heaviness of Gauthier's and Al-Cerraz's sighs drove me out of the compartment and into the passageway, where I would stand alone, eyes fixed on the passing landscape of terraced hills and crumbling barns.
"Trouble finding your compartment?" conductors asked in train after train; or, "Dining car open for another few minutes, if you hurry." Then they'd leave me to watch as the cars glided through these tranquil scenes, disturbing only the clouds of black birds that alighted, startled, from yellow fields. As we made our way south, gray slate roofs gave way to red; dark, water-stained walls to white. The sun shone, but from behind the glass, I could not feel it. We passed a grove of olive trees, and I remembered how the bark had felt against my fingertips, the cold ground against my back, the branches dividing blue sky overhead as Percival, doing the hard physical work that my own infirmity prevented me from doing, called down to me from his precarious perch, "More here? Feliu, pay attention—cut here?"
Some days it felt as if the world beyond the train windows were more real than the one within, that the acts of eating and talking and sleeping and playing in constant motion placed us outside of normalcy, saved us from reality—which made us doubly saved, since to live in neutral Spain during the War to End All Wars was in itself a form of salvation. But if we were saved, then why did the real world, even in its impoverished state, seem so much more enchanting than our private refuge?
Constant travel had made it more difficult to correspond with Enrique, but the occasional letter reached me. My brother was still living a bachelor soldier's life, and he was beginning to feel not only underpaid but unappreciated—unable to settle down with any real comfort, respect, or purpose; unable to attract a wife or start a family. He'd come back to El Ferrol from a two-year tour in Morocco without much to show for it. His friend Paquito had suffered a near-fatal stomach wound during his own African tour, but this close brush with death had yielded considerable rewards. Paquito had been promoted to the rank of major and had earned renown as a fearless man of extraordinary good luck. Enrique's friend was determined to go to Morocco again, and to return with either "la caja o la faja"—the coffin or the general's sash.
A general's sash didn't seem to be in my brother's future regardless of where he was posted. To cheer him up, I did my best to describe the itinerant musician's life for him, exaggerating both our adventures and discomforts and poking fun at my musical partners and their quirks.
It was a few months before Enrique's response reached me: You are right when you blame AlCezzar [his spelling] for not seeing the Poverty and Ruin around him.
Had I done such a thing?
You told me he only goes to the Parlorcar with the large picture windows at night and I can imagine why. Have you noticed when you ride in a Traincar during the day you can see out? But after sunset when it is brighter inside the car than outside the window becomes a Mirror? He prefers his own image to that of the world. That is how our current leaders are. They are just as self-centered as your Pianist.
It embarrassed me to read such unkind things written about Justo, whom my brother had never met. But it was my brother's uncharacteristic bitterness that concerned me more. Perhaps he only needed someone to dislike or blame, as an outlet for his undeserved disappointment and frustration. And so I tolerated the barbs in one letter after another about this "piggish AlCezzar," and even "this enemy Moor," to which I felt duty bound to respond that Al-Cerraz's ethnic identity relied upon a distant ancestral connection, perhaps a wishful fabrication at that.
Now you write to say that he is not a Moor. That makes him a Liar. It does not surprise me at all.
I wrote again, explaining that Al-Cerraz was more complex than I must have portrayed, and perhaps nobler as well—that his greatest passion was truly music, not himself. That he could be childish, but he could also show maturity. That he could be frivolous, but that he was faithful to his fellow musicians.
I was relieved when Enrique dropped the personal attacks in favor of larger topics. He wrote back:
You were surprised at the criticism I levied on the Government but make no mistake. Our Military while esteeming Authority Loyalty and Respect does not necessarily side with those currently in power. It is not a contradiction to say that we career soldiers are both the greatest standard-bearers of Tradition and also the only force for real change. What that change will be I cannot say.
When you and I were both enanitos together it impressed me that you knew your Destiny. That day you saw the cello played you said that was your instrument and we laughed at the seriousness in your little man's voice. But what I didn't tell you that day or any other was that I wished I had my own Star to follow, the way you had yours.
Some of us can be great and some of us can only recognize greatness. Some day a more worthy leader will rise up from our ranks and hopefully I will recognize him, perhaps I have already, just as you recognized your own passion.
Siempre,
Enrique
That letter awaited me in Córdoba, where we spent a long weekend, along with a second from Enrique, announcing that he had been promoted, at long last. Encouraged, he had decided to accept Paquito's advice to seek another posting in Morocco, under his friend's leadership.
Don't worry for me. Paquito and I will look after each other.
Also waiting in Córdoba were a telegram and a package from Thomas Brenan. Al-Cerraz's patron telegraphed every three months or so, requesting updates. Until now, Brenan had seemed perversely pleased by obstacles and delays, as if such inconveniences foretold an even more brilliant result. But the continuing European war was taking its toll on even the optimism of the rich. For the first time, Brenan warned Al-Cerraz that he couldn't afford more advances without some evidence of progress. "Prove to me," he wrote, "that in four years you have accomplished something."
On the train later that afternoon, Al-Cerraz filled the stale air of our compartment with cigar smoke. His listlessness matched the stark, dry scenery around us as our train labored through a scrubby mountain pass, rocks bouncing from the rail bed. Addressing no one in particular, he said, "It's ironic, really, that our own countrymen don't respect us enough to support our art. And the man who does hasn't visited Spain for twenty years. He doesn't have to, does he? He has learned everything from Spanish literature. He wants his name immortalized as a patron of Spanish music. Your English is better than mine, Feliu. Read this."
He leaned forward and handed me a manuscript that he'd extracted from Brenan's package. The title page read, "Libretto for Don Quixote."
"Your patron paid someone to write the libretto?"
"He wrote the libretto. Tell me how bad it is."
I scanned for several minutes without getting past the first character's recitation, a long-winded, rhythmically unvarying solo that read like something from a children's book. "It does seem to rhyme."
He thrust out a hand to take back the manuscript. "It rhymes. Vale. No problems there."
Ignoring him, I flipped toward the middle and tried to read again.
Al-Cerraz grabbed for it more insistently. "It doesn't matter what he's written. It's been done already, a hundred times."
"A thousand times," I corrected him distractedly, still reading. "But maybe if you took more time away from touring—more than just the odd week off now and again. You'd have time and quiet and a good piano—"
At that moment, the train shuddered. Gauthier fell toward Al-Cerraz's lap, then regained his balance. We all looked at each other, surprised for a moment, but nothing more seemed to happen, and the train banked smoothly into a curve. Just as reassured smiles began to spread, a second jolt hit. Metal screeched against metal as the train braked to a halt. Gauthier lost his balance again and hit his head with a dull thud. But that didn't stop him from being the first to run outside.
Five minutes later, he was back. "That first bump might have been some sort of failed explosive."
Al-Cerraz said, "An exaggeration, don't you think? I'd wager it was debris."
"If so, debris artfully placed," Gauthier replied.
Outside in the hallway, two men were arguing. We opened our door to find the conductor interrogating a man who didn't have a ticket. The porter was suggesting they put him off the train immediately. The conductor wanted to confine him and turn him over to authorities at the next station. The man himself seemed confused; he continued to pat his pockets and search for words of explanation in broken Spanish.
I was considering intervening—it didn't seem right to leave a man out here in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but rocks and bushes, not even a gnarled tree for shade—when Al-Cerraz stepped in front of me to flag down a passing serving girl carrying a tray of sandwiches.
"We 'll have some of those," he said.
"I can't," the girl replied. "They're someone else's. But I can't find the door."
"What's the number?" Gauthier asked.
She cocked her chin downward, indicating a ticket in the front pocket of her apron. "It isn't a number, just a name. But I can't make it out."
Gauthier reached toward the apron. "I will try to read it for you," he said, his French accent noticeably thicker.
She wrinkled her nose. "No, thank you. Are you movie stars?"
"Movie stars? What a treasure you are," Al-Cerraz replied.
"I recognize you from your picture on a flyer at one of the stations."
"How clever. And what is your name?" He was interrupted by a knock at the door. I opened it to find another serving girl, stockier than the first, but fair. She stepped over the threshold, attempted a quick smile, and then said to her friend in a low voice, "Felipa—you still haven't found it?"
The girl shook her head.
"So—it's Felipa," Al-Cerraz said. "It gives a person nearly magical powers, to know another person's true name, all the more so when it is hidden. I had my own name changed when I was scarcely twelve—"
"You changed your name?" Felipa interrupted. "That's terribly glamorous. Dolores—they are movie stars!"
"I don't believe it for a minute," Dolores said, glancing around the compartment at the empty tins and bottles and the scraps of food.
Felipa, still holding the tray high, began to whine, "It comes out of our own pay if we can't deliver it."
"Someone will buy it," Gauthier said.
"Not this much. Not if it goes stale." Her lips turned down as she shaped the last word.
"Well let's just eat it then—all of us," Al-Cerraz said. "Don't worry, we'll pay for it. But only if you stay."
"I've got to set this down," Felipa said, arms starting to tremble under the weight of the tray.
Al-Cerraz ran a finger along the front of her apron, tickling her waist as he tucked some money into her pocket. "Do you promise...?"
I'd watched Al-Cerraz flirt countless times but there was a manic, dogged quality to this flirtation that was all the more inappropriate given how many immediate problems begged our attention: the upsetting letter from Brenan; the train's sudden, mysterious halt. I looked to Gauthier, thinking he would help me put an end to this impromptu party, but he was playing his customary role, following Al-Cerraz's lead.
"I will be the gentleman," Gauthier said to Felipa. But instead of taking her tray, he lifted only one sandwich. With pinkie finger extended, he took a bite from the middle, then tossed the rest out of the half-open train window.
Dolores spoke up: "I haven't eaten all day! If you're just going to waste them..."
"You'll get these girls fired," I said.
Al-Cerraz replied, "If they're fired, they'll live with us, in here. This compartment could use a woman's touch. They can stay with us for a few weeks at least."
"He's joking," I said. "We get off in just a few hours." But Felipa gave me a sour look, as if she were angry with me for spoiling the fun. Then the train started to move again and she lost her footing, landing in Al-Cerraz's lap. Her face registered surprise, uncertainty and, finally, resignation.
"If I'm too heavy, you'll have to tell me," she said, shifting into a more comfortable position on his knee.
"Heavy! I should think not," he replied, and he settled his arm lightly around her waist, crooking one thick finger under her sash to loosen it.
Dolores leaned in closer to Gauthier. She said tenderly, "Do you realize your head is bleeding?"
The train moved only a few hundred yards before
it stopped again. The corridor clattered with the sounds of many footsteps. The porter knocked at every door, calling out in an efficient, unworried voice, "Everyone out! Off the train!"
Felipa and Dolores exchanged glances. Al-Cerraz sighed, then gathered an armful of sandwiches and a small blanket from a pocket above one of the folded-up bunks.
Small clusters of passengers milled around the sandy wasteland just beyond the tracks. The foreign man who had been arguing with the conductor and porter had been reunited with his wife and two children; he kept a protective arm around the younger child's shoulders, glaring at the train staff anytime they drew near.
Al-Cerraz spread the blanket over a steep and scrubby slope and anchored it with his rump, his back to the train. He gestured for Felipa and Dolores to sit, then called to an elegantly dressed lady picking her way across the rocky terrain with the help of a closed parasol. The serving girls exchanged nervous glances as the lady approached, unwilling to fraternize with well-heeled passengers so openly, where everyone could see.
"Please, stay," Al-Cerraz lamented without rising, his arms outstretched, as Felipa and Dolores mumbled farewells. "Oh, come now, look at the view! Everyone together, looking out over the valley. And look, our new arrival has had the forethought to bring a parasol. This is like that beautiful painting—what is it called, Gauthier? A Sunday...?"
"Un dimanche après-midi..." Gauthier said, still standing.
"At some island..."
"à l'Île de la Grande Jatte."
"That's it."
The lady had reached the blanket in time to hear the last of this exchange. "Weren't they gazing at water in that painting?" she said. "We have no water here. How do you do?"
Al-Cerraz smiled. "We have a blue horizon, though, if you look far enough and squint." He patted the blanket. "Come, sit down. Make yourself at home." He did not notice the departure of Dolores, who had made her way along the tracks to the back of the train, or Felipa, who was backing away slowly, confused by the mention of an island when there was no island in view, a painting she 'd never heard about or seen. He was entertaining this new guest, swept along by the tide of good fortune that had brought her to his shores.
The Spanish Bow Page 25