Iberia

by James A. Michener

  Dr. Morondo interrupted me. ‘You want to know why Spanish composers haven’t done the same?’

  ‘It seems to me they’ve abused the great material Pedrell handed them. They’ve utilized it on a lower level than was necessary.’

  To this criticism Dr. Morondo preferred to make no comment, but some weeks later in Barcelona a more critical Spanish musician commented on the problems I had raised in Avila: ‘When you demand that Falla and Albéniz take Spanish themes and build from them what Brahms and Dvořák built from theirs, you’re out of your mind. Germany and Austria of that day had orchestras and opera companies and string ensembles that needed the music these men were writing. Spain did not. One small orchestra here, another there, a visiting opera company from Milan, and an audience who wanted to hear only Carmen and La Bohème. The Spanish audience still doesn’t want a symphony or an opera featuring a large ensemble and a complicated structure. It wants a short, individualized work and that’s what the Spanish composer learned to supply. Zarzuela, not opera. Because symphonies and operas are not within our pattern. Besides, the material that Pedrell resurrected for these men was ideally suited to individual types of presentation. In criticizing Falla and Albéniz for not having produced in the grand manner, you are criticizing not the composers but the Spanish people, and you are betraying your own lack of understanding.’

  ‘But do you agree,’ I asked this Barcelona expert, ‘that the themes themselves, those soaring, passionate Spanish groups of statements we find in Granados and Falla … They’re better than what Brahms and Dvořák had to work with, aren’t they?’

  ‘Much better. But if you ask me next, “Then why didn’t Spanish composers build better with those building blocks?” I’ll have to repeat that your question makes no sense. It just doesn’t relate to the facts in Spain.’

  Back with Dr. Morondo, I changed the subject. ‘The main reason I wanted to see you was to ask whether I’m correct in judging Victoria to be Spain’s foremost composer?’

  A look of joy suffused Morondo’s agile face, and after nodding his dark head back and forth he said, ‘There was the great one.’

  ‘I’d hoped you’d have something of his on the concert yesterday.’

  ‘A little too profound for opening a bullfight.’

  I told him of my embarrassing experience in thinking for so many years that Victoria was an Italian, and he laughed. ‘Many people still do. It’s Italy’s revenge for our stealing Colón.’ I then explained how Victoria’s ‘Ave Maria’ had come to mean so much to me, and Morondo began to hum the opening notes of this composition, those marvelous sequences broken in rhythm and emphasis. He conducted as he sang and I joined him in this haunting masterpiece, but when we came to the ‘Ora pro nobis’ with its majestic theme and timeless devotion he threw up his hands, halted his unseen choir and cried, ‘What dramatic use of words and music. Victoria could do what none of us have been able to do since.’ He then asked me if I knew Victoria’s Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae (The Offices of Holy Week, 1585), and when I said no he promised to bring me a score to study, and this he did and to my pleasure I discovered that the nine Responsories for Tenebrae which I liked so much were part of this noble work. The Officium has not yet been recorded in its entirety, so I have not heard it, but from the fragments I have been able to acquire here and there I judge Morondo to have been correct in calling it Victoria’s masterpiece.

  Before I left America, Andre Kostelanetz had advised me, when in Pamplona, to visit the Pablo de Sarasate museum containing mementos of the violinist who began in Pamplona and startled the world with his virtuoso playing, and as I looked at the old programs with their florid fruit-flower embellishments, I recalled a dictum I had read years before: ‘Spanish music has always been designed for the individual.’ If this is true then some of the flamboyant compositions of Sarasate are closer to the essential spirit of Spain than the symphonic work of Turina, which I like. In praising Turina, I am perhaps being obstinate; but even though Spaniards insist that the symphony is not suited to their cast of mind, I prefer the reasoned symphony of Turina to the brilliant incidental pieces of Albéniz and Granados; in fact, I have begun to suspect that Pedrell was the evil genius of Spanish music. Had he not come along to draw his followers into the bypaths of antique themes, wonderful as they are, might not Spanish music have matured into major forms as did the music of Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia?

  About the Pamplona cathedral I had no hesitation. It is the ugliest beautiful church in existence, and to study it carefully over repeated hours is an experience in art that proves invaluable to people like dress designers and poets. The beauty is provided by the cloisters, which cannot be equaled in northern Spain for graciousness and intricate Gothic poetry; critics have praised them in terms which I do not find excessive. The interior, with six fine arches running down each side of the nave, with spacious aisle and lovely chapels, is also a handsome creation, and when the especially strong transept is added, with soaring stone arches where it crosses the nave, one has a noble place of worship, not particularly spiritual, perhaps, but clean and hard as befits the north. I have always liked the beautifully carved tombs of King Carlos III of Navarra and his Queen Leonora as they stand exposed before the altar, for in them one sees carving of a high order, and they lend both royalty and somberness to the soaring interior.

  It is the façade which provides the ugliness. Originally it seems to have been a perfectly good Gothic work suited to the cloister and the spacious interior, but at the end of the eighteenth century the architct Ventura Rodriguez, who had acquired a national reputation as the man who could be trusted to improve old churches, which he had done in other parts of Spain, was invited to try his luck on Pamplona. He proceeded to tear down the existing Gothic façade and to erect in its place a Greco-Roman horror that makes the once-gracious building look like the courthouse of Deaf Smith County, Texas. It is so bad it must be seen to be believed. I had very much hoped Robert Vavra would choose to photograph it for this book, but he said, ‘It’s so ugly that no film can do it justice.’

  The tall Gothic towers have become blunt and squat, one a rigid duplicate of the other. Each is composed of many disparate elements that add up to miserable failure. Eight rather good Corinthian columns fail to convey any sense of loftiness because they are capped by a pediment totally lacking in inspiration. The main feature is a pair of horrible plaster angels in exaggerated poses between two senseless urns. Over the main door leading to the nave an Assumption of the Virgin of no discernible style whatever was added in 1956, while on the right tower a sundial has been placed, which because of the orientation of the church can tell time for only a few hours in the late afternoon. Finally, as if the twentieth century sought to help the eighteenth in the job of destroying a beautiful building, atop the whole is a huge and glaring neon cross.

  Quintana, friend of Ernest Hemingway; Vanderford, the poor man’s Hemingway; and the Conde de la Corte, famous bull breeder.

  I think a protracted study of the Pamplona cathedral should be obligatory for anyone who plans to revise the work of others who have gone before him. A composer who plans to update Victoria’s ‘Ave Maria’ should see what happened when Rodríguez updated a Gothic cathedral. A film director about to improve on Molière should remind himself of the disaster that sometimes overtakes such ventures. If a whole work falls out of style, as can well happen, the fall will be mitigated by a certain inherent grace, whereas if one refurbishes a Gothic cathedral with a Greco-Roman façade a couple of plaster angels and a neon cross, only confusion can result. I was reminded of something Ernest Hemingway said of motion pictures that had been made from his works: ‘I attend each one with a trusted friend and a quart of gin and I haven’t been able to last through any of them yet.’

  There could be no locale more appropriate for recalling Hemingway than Pamplona during San Fermín and no year more suitable than this, for that morning in formal ceremony at the town hall the alcalde had conferred on Hem
ingway posthumously the distinction of the honorary red scarf of San Fermín, and the crowd had nostalgically approved; so in the evening I invited to the Caballo Blanco (White Horse), perched on the city walls, four devotees of Hemingway who had known him in the final years. I promised them mixed salad, a copious menestra and conversation, and I was gratified when they appeared: Juanito Quintana, who had served as prototype for Montoya in The Sun Also Rises; Kenneth Vanderford, that strange Ph.D. from Indiana whom I had met in the plaza; John Fulton, whom Hemingway had befriended in the last years; and Robert Vavra, to whom Hemingway had been especially kind.

  When we took our seats in the handsome tavern—recently assembled on this spot, using stones and floor plans borrowed from various Renaissance ruins that were about to be torn down in other parts of Pamplona—the two women who ran the place brought bowls of mixed salad heavy with onion, olive oil and sharp vinegar, and we remarked how fortunate the timing of San Fermín was: it arrived just as the crisp lettuce, the red tomatoes and the strong onions ripen, so that all during feria one can eat this astringent dish. Tonight there would also be my favorite of northern Spain, menestra. In hot olive oil cloves of garlic are browned; vegetables of all kinds, including especially artichokes, are added until a soup is formed, then shellfish previously cooked, plus a boiled chicken. The whole is put in the oven until properly blended, then served with onion bread and grated cheese.

  When the menestra was finished and the flan was being served, cold and shimmering and golden, the conversation began, and I would like to report exactly what was said, retaining the contradictions and false starts as they occurred that night.

  Michener: I’ve been reading Hotchner’s book on Hemingway and I’ve asked you here to help on one point. Hotchner claims that in that last year when we saw Hemingway, he’d already begun to fall apart inside and was contemplating suicide. Did you catch any glimpse of that?

  Quintana: I was close to him at that time. He never gave a hint that he might commit suicide.

  Vavra: I certainly saw nothing. What impressed me was his willingness to help Fulton. At the Miramar Hotel in Málaga he took me aside and said, ‘Fulton has guts and I know you kids are having it tough in this ambiente. I’d like to help.’ Well, a lot of people said that in those days but nothing ever happened. And like all the rest, Hemingway left without doing anything. But about a week later, when I thought he had forgotten his promise, he very quietly slipped me a hundred-dollar traveler’s check. For weeks we didn’t cash it. Just sat looking at it.

  Michener: You notice anything strange about him, John?

  Fulton: One important thing. I’d read about his love for Maera, who was one of the great old bullfighters, a real man, and I simply couldn’t comprehend his sudden affection for Ordóñez and Dominguín, they simply weren’t in Maera’s class as rugged men.

  Vavra: At Málaga I heard Hemingway say, ‘Poor boys, Ordóñez and Dominguín. They’re really having it tough. Fight in the north one day, have to fly all the way to the south that night, then fight again next day.’

  Fulton: Maera used to make such trips by car. And old cars, at that. And arrive shaken up and without sleep. And go out and fight Miuras. I never understood Hemingway’s sudden debasement of his critical values.

  Michener: Did he know much about bullfighting?

  Vanderford: He knew a great deal. But the Spaniards love to put him down. They ridicule his knowledge of the bulls.

  Vavra: But they ridiculed him only after his article criticizing Manolete, the article in which he put Manolete down for the very things that Spanish writers had been criticizing for years.

  Vanderford: Yes, especially then, but I don’t believe Spanish bullfight critics have ever taken Hemingway very seriously, or any Anglo-Saxon expert on the bulls. To show you how Spaniards reacted to Hemingway’s remarks on Manolete, K-Hito, one of the best critics, wrote an indignant article which he concluded by stating that in the future, of the two Hemingways, I was to be known as ‘Hemingway el Bueno,’ meaning that the real one was a bum.

  Vavra: Strange that he was so Madrid-oriented. Andalucía, the cradle of bullfighting, never much interested him, nor did Mexico.

  Quintana: I met Ernesto when he first came to Spain. He stayed in my father’s hotel. Hotel Quintana, on the square where the Bar Brasil now is. And he knew almost nothing about the bulls. Couldn’t speak any Spanish either. I was a great admirer of Maera and I introduced Hemingway to him. I was amazed at how quickly this man could learn. He had a fantastic identification with the drama of the ring and caught on immediately. By the time he left Spain he knew bullfighting as well as any of us.

  Michener: How did he treat you?

  Quintana: Always a marvelous friend. Once he said, ‘Juanito, you’re never to worry about money. You’ve been my constant friend and I’m going to take care of you.’

  Michener: Did he?

  Quintana: No.

  Michener: The Hotchner book says he kept you on his payroll. Sent you money regularly from the States.

  Quintana: That book has done me much harm. If you want the facts, as a friend I can trust, here they are. Ernesto paid me faithfully every peseta he ever owed me, but only what he owed. Never sent me a penny from America. Only for services I performed in Spain. As a guide, that is. Since his death, people who were connected with him send me letters all the time asking for copies of this paper or that, so I get the photocopies made and send them to the States, but no one ever sends me expenses for the work. Nor even thank-you letters for my time and money.

  Michener: The book says Hemingway was fed up with you. For having failed to get tickets for the bullfights in Pamplona.

  Quintana: Señor Hotchner wasn’t even with Hemingway when this was supposed to have happened. He hadn’t asked me to get any tickets. In those days tickets were easy to come by. You could buy your own. I remember when I first met Hotchner. Little town called Aranda de Duero. Hemingway treated him with indifference. Certainly the great friendship Hotchner speaks of wasn’t visible to me … or to any of the rest of us.

  Michener: I take it you didn’t like the book.

  Quintana: Much was truthful and very sweet in its picture of Ernesto. But the bad things about me … I remember the day I introduced Hemingway to Ordóñez, here in Pamplona. It’s not good to be made fun of.

  Vanderford: You keep asking questions, Michener. What did you think about Hemingway?

  Michener: One of the things I’m proudest of in my life is that when I was in the trenches in Korea, Life magazine sent me the galleys of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. Wanted me to make a statement to sort of back them up in their venture of publishing the whole thing in one issue. So there I sat, absolutely cold turkey, knowing nothing about the book and remembering the debacle of Across the River and into the Trees, and how the critics had slaughtered him, and I was praying that this one would be good so that he could regain his reputation. So I read it by lantern light with the Chinese popping at us from across the valley, and a great lump came in my throat, and when I finished I wrote something about feeling good when the daddy of us all won back the heavyweight crown. I was the first to read it. And stick my neck out. It was used in full-page ads across the country. One of the best things I ever did.

  Vavra: Did he ever say anything about it?

  Michener: I met him only once. For about twenty minutes. I was working in New York, and Leonard Lyons, who was a close friend of Hemingway’s, called at lunchtime and said, ‘Papa’s in town. He’s having lunch at Toots Shor’s. You want to meet him?’ I did, very much, but couldn’t get away. About four in the afternoon I was walking down Fifty-first Street to my hotel, and as I passed Shor’s I thought, Hemingway may still be in there. So I went inside. Lyons was gone but Hemingway was in a corner surrounded by men I didn’t know. Only one I knew was Toots Shor. After a while I introduced myself and Hemingway was embarrassed and I was embarrassed. He knew what I’d written about The Old Man, but we were both embarrassed. So he did al
l the talking, and I remembered two things he said. That the time came when a man didn’t want to be known locally as a distinguished Philadelphia novelist but wanted to put his work up against the best in the world. He had put his up against Pío Baroja and Flaubert, and any man who was satisfied to be idolized locally was a crapper. He also said he couldn’t stand what the movies had done to his things.

  Quintana: When he saw The Sun Also Rises he was very angry, and I asked, ‘Where are you going?’ and he said, ‘To have a fistfight with Darryl Zanuck.’ He asked me what I thought of the picture, and I said, ‘Terrible. They made me short, with a ruddy face and very large cheeks. And they used a Mexican actor to play me … a Spaniard!’ Ernesto laughed.

  Fulton: He was always concerned with how he looked. You might even say he was vain. Arjona, the photographer from Sevilla, took a shot of him on a cold blustery day. Came out very bad. Reluctantly Hemingway signed a copy for me, ‘To John Fulton, with best wishes from his paisano, Ernest Hemingway.’

  Vavra: But when I pushed my copy of the same picture under his nose, he groaned, ‘I’ll be damned if I’ll sign that one again,’ so he drew a cartoonist’s balloon out from his mouth and inside wrote the word ‘Mierda,’ and that’s all he would do.

  Fulton: Tell about the bullfight articles you’d written?

  Vavra: I showed him some criticisms I’d written for a magazine in the States, and he read them carefully, put them down and said, ‘It’s easy for a critic to make wisecracks. It’s easy to be clever. But its goddamned hard to be truthful. Now you sit down and write half a dozen more and I’ll go over them with you. And we’ll cut out the cheap cracks. Because a real critic is after the truth which the writer or the matador doesn’t see for himself. Cheap cracks are the concern of vaudeville.’

  Michener: In these last years what was he like as a man?

  Vanderford: Class all the way. And with me he was a gentleman, too. He must have been irritated that I looked so much like him. Baseball cap and everything. But I’d had my beard long before I tangled with Hemingway. Anyway, he could have raised hell about me but he didn’t. I remember when someone showed him one of his novels I had autographed: ‘All that glitters is not gold nor is every man with a white beard named … Ernest Hemingway.’ He looked at it, laughed and told reporters, ‘I don’t care what the sonofabitch signs so long as it isn’t my checks or my contracts.’ He showed class.