I'd left a cello behind in San Ramón—it would be firewood by now; and another behind in Mérida. I still had my bow, but I didn't feel lucky at all.
CHAPTER 22
Later, the Nationalist forces would bomb the Barcelona harbor, making it difficult for boats to come ferry away escaping citizens. Later, refugees by the thousands would be forced to cross the Pyrenees on foot. But I left early, and my April 1937 passage was easy—a swift and uneventful boat ride from Barcelona to Marseilles.
I continued to Paris by train and walked into the Spanish Republican embassy, to ask what I could do. Within a day they had set me up in a modest apartment on the rue des Grands-Augustins and advanced me a small loan. My label, Reixos, had offices in Belgium and owed me some royalties, though future profits would shrivel, with the Spanish market in chaos and economies across Europe struggling. Nationalist authorities had frozen my bank accounts in Salamanca and Mérida.
A day later, a woman in a head scarf appeared at my door with a cello.
"You will forgive the crack at the bottom," she said, her eyes downcast. "It was my brother's. I'm afraid we stored it in a closet after he passed away."
I replied, "I'm sure I can rent or purchase one somewhere." But in truth I wasn't sure I could afford anything more than bread, cheese, and a second set of clothes.
"The winters are dry. We should have kept it in a more humid place. But it's a good cello, I've been assured."
"Really, I can't—"
"The embassy told me you would need it."
An hour later, I reported to the embassy to complain. I had asked how I might help, and so far they had only helped me, twice. On the fifth such visit, a man with slicked-back hair and round, black-rimmed eyeglasses exited his office, spotted me in the waiting area, threw his arms around me and kissed both my cheeks. He introduced himself as Max Aub, the embassy's cultural delegate; he'd recognized me immediately from the photograph on my recordings. "Of course we have work for you." His eyes shone with emotion. "Do you mean to say you've been in Paris all this time without an assignment? I do hope you've been keeping your fingers nimble..."
"Nimble enough."
"The apartment isn't too chilly?"
I thought of the tea left at the bottom of a cup that froze into a light brown lozenge within hours, and the way my hands cramped from the cold even though I had cut the fingers from my only pair of gloves in order to practice. "It's fine," I said.
Over lunch, Aub explained that he and the Catalan architect Josép Lluís Sert had been frantic with preparations for the Spanish Pavilion at the upcoming World's Fair, to open soon at the base of the Eiffel Tower. That was the only reason he hadn't paid me a personal visit after hearing I had arrived safely from Marseilles. "Our budget is nothing compared to the other countries, yet we're in more need of publicity than anyone. The planners set Germany and the Soviet Union opposite each other. On purpose, of course. The Soviet Union has a three-story tower with menacing steel sculptures of giant workers. Germany's building is even bigger, with an eagle sneering down from the cornice."
"And ours?"
"Well," he paused. "Low, flat, simple. Directly under the German building's shadow."
A waiter delivered our cutlets. Aub raised his eyebrows at the thin yellow sauce, poked at the meat with the tines of his fork, tasted it finally, and nodded with satisfaction. "Not as good as the old days, but certainly better than what they're eating in Bilbao."
"What's that?"
"Cats, mostly."
He didn't notice when, after several bites, I pushed away my plate.
Aub and Sert couldn't get half the building materials they needed. "I can't push for money when militias in Barcelona and Madrid don't have proper guns." Aub shrugged. "But what we'll put inside the pavilion should count for something."
The fair's theme was technology, and its purpose was entertainment. But nearly everything displayed in the Spanish Pavilion, from photomurals to films by Buñuel, would focus instead on the horrors of war in Republican Spain. It was the only way to get a message out to a world that had showed little concern so far.
Aub said that he and Sert had visited Picasso, knowing that the painter still considered himself fiercely Spanish, although he had lived in Paris for thirty years by now. They had asked him to paint a new mural in time for the opening of the fair in May, but he'd been hesitant about accepting a commission for an overtly political work. "His heart is with us," said Aub, "no doubt about that. He promised to keep thinking about it. And we know that he has ordered an immense canvas, fitting the proportions of the pavilion. So even at the last minute, he may come around."
Picasso's studio was on the same street as the apartment the embassy had found for me. Like the proximity of the German and Soviet Union pavilions, it seemed a convenient coincidence, especially when Aub remarked, "We hoped you'd pay him a visit."
How could I tell him how strange I found it, that anyone believed me to be persuasive? I had never proved myself able to convince anyone of anything through words alone. In fact, my words often seemed to raise a wall between myself and others. Only by playing music had I ever been able to break down that barrier.
"I don't know him," I said, in lieu of explaining.
"Probably better that way. It means you won't have crossed him in the past. Anyway, I'm sure he knows of you." He moved a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. "The cello? It suffices?"
"Very kind. I forgot to ask for the woman's address, to send a note."
Aub shook his head and waved the concern away. "You want to write letters, I have a list a kilometer long. You were invited to perform at the White House once, were you not?"
"Correct. For President Hoover—"
But his mind was racing ahead of my answer. "Let's see: Roosevelt first, members of Congress, philanthropists—anyone who believes in this myth of nonintervention, who might be convinced by a reasonable letter or two or ten thousand to consider facts. In England, it would be ... well, come to my office next week and we will review the names together."
I begged Aub for something more to do, something more than the letters—perhaps a benefit concert abroad?—but I'd already learned from my efforts back in Spain that the idea was a tough sell. A London backer was willing to sponsor a typical concert, but not a pricey and controversial fund-raiser mentioning the Spanish Republican cause. Subtracting my travel expenses, the proceeds would be minimal. I could raise just as much by playing in the streets of Paris, with a hat overturned to catch the coins.
Aub checked his watch distractedly. "At the pavilion they're having trouble engineering the flow of liquid mercury through a modern sculpture we 'll have there, a sort of fountain." He rose, kissed me on both cheeks again, and said, "Without Picasso, the Spanish Pavilion doesn't have a chance." He hastened to add, "It has little chance without you, as well, of course—but we've always known where you stand. Visit me as soon as you have any news."
And so it was that I walked down rue des Grands-Augustins one morning shortly thereafter, with a sense of import, and trepidation. The feeling in my heart—as if I carried some essential portfolio or secret message—was not matched by the emptiness in my hands. Halfway to Picasso's address, I stopped to purchase an inexpensive bottle of Beaujolais. The wine meant I wouldn't have any money for dinner, but my appetite had waned in recent weeks.
The artist opened his door and simply stood there, hands on his hips and a lumpy brown cardigan tied over his sailor-stripe shirt. A few white strands of hair stood up on his otherwise bare, tanned pate, as if he 'd just rolled out of bed. I could hear another voice inside, a clatter of dishes, and a record player. I introduced myself. He prolonged the silence a moment more, then said, "Well, I can't turn away news from home, can I? Come in, come in," and took the bottle from my hands.
The studio was large, echoing, and only a little warmer than my apartment. Tilted against the wall was the canvas, three and a half meters tall and nearly eight meters long. A ladder l
eaned against one end. The canvas itself was perfectly blank, but everywhere around the room the painter had tacked studies, sketches, drawings, postcards, pictures ripped from magazines; and underneath various tables there were empty bottles, stacked framed pictures, masks, hats, volcanic glass, enormous round sponges, jars of colored pencils and tins stuffed with paintbrushes, some of them lashed to long sticks. To one side there was a sagging couch and standing mirror; to another, mismatched chairs, splattered with paint. It was such a clutter that my eyes could rest only by settling upon the canvas, but to stare at the blankness there seemed like an invasion of privacy, like staring at someone not yet dressed, or prying into someone's undecided mind.
He knew why I'd come.
I shared what I knew of the Nationalists' latest advances, and especially what I'd seen from loyal Barcelona, where Picasso's elderly mother still lived. All the while we talked, I heard the dishes clattering and cupboards closing from a room off to the side. I knew Picasso had a wife, Marie-Thérèse—or was it Dora Maar?—and assumed it was she, or perhaps some more recent substitute.
"I think that Señor Aub would sleep better if he knew..." I started to say. Suddenly I stopped, my eyes tracking to the kitchen doorway. There, where I expected to see some fashionable young waif or heartsick housewife, stood a familiar large figure, fists extended, fingers crooked around the stems of three glasses and the neck of a bottle different from the one I'd brought.
"So it is you!" Al-Cerraz exclaimed. "I figured it was just another Catalan official." He nodded at the bottle. "I came to toast the man who lent me his couch for three nights. Thank heaven you brought a bottle, too—this deserves more than one toast."
"I shouldn't intrude—" I stammered.
"Nonsense. I'm happy to see you're alive! I've talked one of Pau's ears off already," he said, using the Catalan version of the artist's name.
Politely but coolly, I inquired where Al-Cerraz was staying, for the longer term. "Here and there," he said. "An extra bed, a floor—I'm not choosy." I noticed only then how his jacket and shirt hung from his frame, and the crude woven belt hitching up his loose pants. He 'd lost easily fifteen kilos since I'd seen him at the Málaga bullring.
"Have you asked for help at the embassy?"
"The embassy? Bother them when other people are still behind the lines, hiding from the bombs, with nothing to eat?"
He might not have meant it as a criticism, but I felt its sting all the same, and then the heat of my own anger spreading: Who was Al-Cerraz to judge anyone who sought the embassy's help, when he was in league with the fascists? He was more than a Nationalist sympathizer—he was a prominent artist collaborating at the topmost levels with Franco himself.
Picasso had walked to a corner table loaded with paint-smeared newspapers. Much as I refused to turn a blind eye to Al-Cerraz's activities, I wasn't trying to expose him, either. I whispered, "I heard Queipo de Llano on the radio, saying you were president of some organization—"
"The Spanish Culture Institute," Al-Cerraz boomed. "Yes, that." He smiled. "For one week, until I met the Caudillo himself. There's a story. Pau—you'll want to hear this one." Al-Cerraz glanced meaningfully across the room, then winked at me. "Pau is the new director of the Prado. He understands about these honorary positions."
"Director del Museo—my other hat," Picasso said, balancing atop his head an old-fashioned bowler he'd pulled from a costume box. Watching him clown around, I thought what a sham it was that the dying Republic was propping itself up by sweet-talking apolitical, apathetic exiles into such high-profile roles. I had no inkling then of the important work Picasso would undertake in that role, spiriting the museum's priceless artworks out of Madrid to Geneva for safekeeping.
"And here's one for you, Justo," Picasso said, presenting him with a tricornio, the patent-leather uniform hat of the ultraconservative Civil Guard.
Al-Cerraz laughed and waved it away. "Not for me—no, gracias. I am finished with all that." So Picasso knew something of Al-Cerraz's Nationalist associations. Yet he'd still allowed the pianist to sleep on his couch. I didn't know what to think.
"But the story—please, let me tell it," Al-Cerraz said, opening the bottle he'd brought—a Beaujolais cru, finer than the one I'd chosen—and winking as he filled the glasses.
Al-Cerraz had met Franco in September 1936, just after Al-Cerraz was named honorary president of the cultural institute, and before Franco had risen above his fellow generals to be declared chief of state.
The pianist had prepared a short, original piano work for the occasion. General Franco was late to arrive, and a young man in suit and tie introduced himself as the associate director of cultural services. Was the piano's tuning to the maestro's satisfaction? It was fine, Al-Cerraz told him. Anything else he could bring? Something to help the pianist loosen up?
"Just quiet," Al-Cerraz said. He had always been superstitious and finicky about being alone before a performance.
The associate director smiled obsequiously and put a finger to his lips. Yet as soon as Al-Cerraz launched into the prelude, he piped up again. Was that a malagueño rhythm?
"Something like that," Al-Cerraz said.
"Or maybe more of a Cuban guajira, was it not?" He clapped out the three-quarter rhythm.
Al-Cerraz started over from the beginning.
"Just to let you know," the associate director interrupted, "The Jefe is hoping for real Spanish music. Muy puro."
"What is pure? Does that mean nothing gypsy?"
"Oh, no, the Jefe loves gypsy flamenco."
"Flamenco?" Franco had a reputation for being rather fussy and prim.
"Well," the associate director winked, "the tourists love flamenco. So he likes flamenco. Currency, you understand."
"It 's a little early in the war effort to be thinking about tourism, isn't it?"
"Are you kidding? Tourism, marketing—it's essential. They're already naming a new sherry after one of the generals. Hats, tires, just about everything. And wait—look at this."
The young official retrieved a folder and extracted a stack of brochures that still smelled of wet ink. "Visit the Routes of War!" proclaimed the cover, over a montage of scenic routes along the northern occupied coast. Route 3 to Madrid, the map boasted, would be "open to traffic by 1 July 1938."
"Open by 1938," Al-Cerraz joked. "He'd better get going. What's he doing wasting time listening to a pianist?"
The associate director's smile faded. But as soon as Al-Cerraz resumed his warm-up, he was back at the pianist's shoulder. "That bit had a Basque flavor. You know that General Mola has had quite a time with the Basques, don't you? No, not the whole passage, just those few measures. Play them again. Yes, that's what I'm hearing."
"You're quite the musicologist," Al-Cerraz commented drily.
An hour later, Franco finally arrived, flanked by two officers. Introductions were bypassed. The general sat down without removing his sunglasses, and Al-Cerraz began to play.
The pianist settled his wide hands into the opening chords, lifted them dramatically, then placed them back in his lap. His left foot continued to tap out the time. His hands stayed in his lap for a tense minute.
Finally Franco stood up and turned to the officer on his left. "What is the story with this pianist?"
"He's famous. And eager to compose for us."
Franco turned to Al-Cerraz. "Is this what you have composed for us?"
"Hold on, another part is coming. A good part." Al-Cerraz played an isolated measure—one that hadn't been criticized by the associate director—and then lifted his hands away from the keyboard again.
"This man is mocking us," said the officer to Franco's right.
Franco pulled off his sunglasses. "What is this man's name?"
Al-Cerraz stopped tapping his foot and looked at the general. "Sir, I was under the impression you requested me directly. I've already been named president of the Institute."
"Get me this man's name," Franco seethed. "Not just his n
ame—his file. I want to know who recommended him."
It was clear from the sweat pouring off the associate director's face that the file wasn't necessary.
Al-Cerraz folded his arms across his chest. "If you don't know my name, you should. I was famous before you were born. I expect to be famous long after you have passed away."
Franco, who was busy conferring with his fellow officers, didn't acknowledge the comment.
"Really," Al-Cerraz continued, "if you look at the average duration of a prime minister or a president—even a dictator or a monarch—it's not a long span. If you count the number of governments we've had since 1898—"
Franco cut him off. "Someone recommended this buffoon, and I want to know who it is. Immediately."
The associate director did an exaggerated double-take at Al-Cerraz's face and erupted in a high-pitched, hysterical giggle. "I recognize this man! He's the piano tuner. Who put him up to this? What a terrible prank they've played on us!" He began to tug at Al-Cerraz's jacket sleeves, trying to pull him away from the piano bench.
The officers on either side of Franco exchanged shrugs. Franco pushed the sunglasses back onto his face, exasperated. He 'd spent most of his life in military academies and remote barracks, where he'd grown accustomed to tomfoolery.
"I'll get to the bottom of this," the associate director shouted, pushing Al-Cerraz out the stage door. And then, louder than necessary, "Get going! And if you see Maestro Justo Al-Cerraz out there, tell him we 're still waiting and he's shamefully late!"
"Can you imagine?" Al-Cerraz laughed a final time, refilling his glass. "Me, a piano tuner? It's only a little more improbable than me as a fascist composer—what a lark that was."
Picasso applauded the story. Neither man seemed to notice my silence.
"And yet," Al-Cerraz added, growing suddenly serious. "Franco did me a great favor. Once I realized that some of my 'piano miniatures' might offend him, I recognized also that they had more value than I'd presumed. Isn't it true that all valuable art offends someone? I've had it backward all these years, thinking Spain needs large-scale compositions. Maybe it takes a demagogue to show us that even humble works have their subversive power."
The Spanish Bow Page 43