There were about half a dozen of us at that dinner, all members of the group, but already it was apparent that a large majority tended vaguely toward the kind of liberal socialism which would some day become a fertile pasture for the extreme left. My position was that happiness or unhappiness is an ultra-individual matter having nothing to do with the structure of society, the standard of living or the political rights of the people. The thing to do was to increase the collective danger and insecurity by total systematic disorganization in order to enhance the possibilities of anguish which, according to psychoanalysis, condition the very principle of pleasure. If happiness was anyone’s concern it was that of religion! Rulers should limit themselves to exercising their power with the maximum of authority; and the people should either overthrow these rulers or submit to them. From this action and reaction can arise a spiritual form or structure—and not a rational, mechanical and bureaucratic organization. The latter will lead directly to depersonalization and to mediocrity. But also, I added, there is a utopian but tempting possibility—an anarchistic absolute king. Ludwig II of Bavaria was after all not so bad!
Polemics gave an increasingly sharp form to my ideas. (Never has it served to modify my ideas, but on the contrary to strengthen them.)
Let us examine, if you will, the case of Wagner. Consider the Parsifal myth impartially from the social-political point of view... I reflected for a moment and, as if overcoming my doubts, turned to the waiter who had quickly become corrupted by our intellectualism and never missed a word of our discussions.
“Waiter, please ...” I said, and he stepped forward respectfully, “on thinking it over I think I’d like a little more toast and sausage.”
He went immediately. I called after him,
“And another drop of wine!”
The case of the Parsifal myth, considered from the political and social point of view, did in fact require still further reinforcements . . .
Leaving the Italian restaurant I went back to the Students’ Residence to get some more money. What I had taken in the morning had been incomprehensibly spent. Getting money was simple. I went to the Residence office, I asked for the sum I wished, and I signed a receipt.
When I had finished my business at the Residence our group reconstituted itself at the table of a German beer-house where authentic brown beer could be had. With it, by way of accompaniment, we ate some hundred cooked crabs, the shelling and sucking of whose legs was most propitious to the continued development of the Parsifal theme.
Evening fell very fast, as if by miracle, and we were obliged to move to the Palace in order to drink our apéritif, which this time consisted of just two Martinis. These were my first dry Martinis, and I was to remain pretty faithful to them from then on. The soufflées potatoes disappeared dizzily from our table, but immediately a swift and willing hand brought new ones in their place.
The question soon arose as to where we should eat! For the idea of returning to the clean and sober refectory of the Students’ Residence did not occur to me for a moment. I have always adored habits, and when something has succeeded I am capable of adopting it for the whole rest of my life.
“Suppose we return to The Italians?”
Everyone acclaimed this suggestion; we telephoned to Los Italianos to reserve a small dining-room, and we patiently directed our footsteps toward this spot, with a growing famine devouring our entrails.
The dining-room was small but charming. There was a black piano with lighted pink candles on it, and a winestain on the wall, as visible as a decoration. What shall we eat? I should be lying if I were to tell you that I can remember. I know only that there was white wine and red wine in abundance, and that the conversation became so stormy, everyone shouted so loudly, that I ceased to take part in it. Sitting down to the piano I tried to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata with one finger. I even succeeded in inventing an accompaniment for my left hand, and they had to tear me from the piano by main force in order to take me along to the Rector’s Club at the Palace (which was one of the smartest places) to drink a little champagne. This “little” I knew was a good deal, for after all the hour was approaching at which I had already planned to get drunk. Once we were seated Bunuel, who was more or less our master of ceremonies, suggested,
“Let’s begin by drinking some whiskéy, and later on we’ll eat a few tidbits before going to bed—and then we’ll take some champagne.”
Everyone thought this idea excellent, and we set to work. All of us agreed that a revolution was necessary. This point was not arguable. But how was it to be made, who was to make it, and why did it have to be made? This was not so clear as it had seemed at first. Meanwhile, as the revolution was not going to break out this very night, and as it would serve no good purpose to become too much absorbed in this question, we ordered a round of iced mint to fill in between whiskeys, for after all we had to rest from time to time. At the end of the fourth whiskey everyone began to get impatient, and ask Bunuel anxiously, “What about that champagne?”
With all this it was getting to be two o’clock in the morning and our wolfish hunger made it a foregone conclusion that the champagne would have to be accompanied by something. I took a plate of hot spaghetti and the others a cold chicken. Toward the end of my spaghetti I began to regret my choice and to look more and more longingly at the cold chicken. I had been offered some several times, and as I had refused I did not want to go back on my decision. The talk now revolved about the theme imposed by the lyricism of the champagne which had been flowing for several minutes. This theme, as you have already guessed, was “love and friendship.” Love, I said, strangely resembled certain gastric sensations at the first signs of seasickness, producing an uneasiness and shudders so delicate that one is not sure whether one is in love or feels like vomiting.
“But I’m sure that if we went back to the subject of Parsifal it might still throw some light.”
Everyone uttered cries of protest. They wanted to hear no more of that!
“Well, then we will come back to it another day. But anyway, save me a chicken wing for later on, for just before we leave.”
It was five o’clock, and the last minute was approaching. It was a cruel thing to have to go to bed just when everything was beginning to go better. With a sense of bitterness we uncorked a fresh bottle of champagne. My friends’ eyes were moist with tears. The Negro orchestra was excellent and stirred the depths of our bowels with the spoon and fork of its syncopated rhythm which gave us no respite. The pianist played with a divine incontinence, and in the high lyrical moments, during his accompaniments composed of expectations, one could hear the sound of his panting rise above the noises; and the saxophone player, having blown out all the blood of his passion, collapsed with exhaustion never to rise again. It was our discovery of jazz, and I must say in all honesty that it made a certain impression upon me at the time. In the course of the night we sent up several sizable tips, discreetly folding the bills into an envelope, and this was so unusual that all the Negroes, at the order of the pianist who conducted them, got up in unison and bowed, machine-gunning us with the dazzling fire of all their teeth laughing at once. Bunuel proposed that we serve them a bottle of champagne, and because of this we ordered still another one so as to be able to clink glasses at a discreet distance with the musicians, for the Negroes would never have been allowed to approach our table. For us money did not count. We were really of a limitless magnificence and generosity with the money earned by our parents’ labors.
The fresh bottle of champagne inspired my friends to a vow which was to join all of us together in a solemn pact. We pledged ourselves on our “word of honor” that whatever happened to us in life, whatever might be our political convictions, and whatever might be the difficulties—even if we should find ourselves in the most distant countries and a long voyage should be required—we pledged ourselves, as I said, to meet in the same spot in exactly fifteen years; and if the hotel had been destroyed, then in the spot which it ha
d occupied. The possibility of being able to find again the exact spot where we were in case the hotel and its surroundings had by chance suffered an intense bombardment shortly before, or in case this should happen at the very time when, fifteen years later, we were about to appear at our pledged meeting, started a discussion that got endlessly complicated, and I lost all interest in it.
I began to let my glance stray over that elegant jewel-besprinkled flesh that surrounded us and that seemed to clutch at my heart. Was it really this, or a slight urge to vomit, as I had said a while ago to be cynical? With a dubious appetite I ate the chicken leg that someone had saved for me.
Another bottle of champagne proved indispensable to enable us to reach an agreement. There were six of us, and we divided into six parts the card on which the Rector’s Club and the table number were printed (I think I remember that the number was 8, because of a discussion on the symbolic significance of that number), and on each part we wrote the date and other data on one side, and on the other, the six signatures. I called attention to the symbolic significance—since we were talking precisely about symbols—of our signing a pact on a piece of paper that we had immediately before torn up several times. But no one would take this into consideration, and we signed on the six pieces as we had agreed. After which each one of us kept his piece.7
The pact having been religiously signed, a last bottle was absolutely required to enable us to celebrate the happy conclusion of our agreement with due ceremony.
At about the time when the meeting stipulated in our pact was to have taken place, civil war raged in Spain. Imagine the Palace Hotel of Madrid, where we had lived our golden youth, transformed into a blood transfusion hospital and bombed. What a fine subject for Hollywood could be made of the heroic Odyssey of those six friends—separated for so long, separated, too, or united, by irreducible hatreds or the unanimous fervor of their fanatical opinions—repressing for a moment their tumultuous passions, temporarily putting aside their disagreements, in a dramatic, lugubrious and ceremonious meal, as a noble tribute to the honor of a word! I do not know whether this chimerical meal took place or not. All I can tell you, and I whisper this into your ear, is that I was not present.
As all things in the world must have an end, so did our night at the Rector’s Club. But we found yet another bistrot which was open till dawn, frequented by carters and night-watchmen and the kind of people who take trains at impossible hours. There we gathered for a last round of anis del Mono. Dawn was already pecking, with the crowing of the first cocks, at the windows of the bistrot. Come on! Come on, let’s get some sleep! Enough for today. Tomorrow is another day.
Tomorrow I was going to begin my new Parsifal! My Parsifal of the morrow was as follows. Up at noon. From noon to two o’clock, five vermouths with olives. At two o’clock, a dry Martini with very fine slices of “Serrano” ham and anchovies, for I had to pass the time before the arrival of the group. I have no recollection of the lunch, except that at the end of it I had the whim of drinking several glasses of chartreuse, in memory of the end of certain Sunday dinners at my parents’ in Cadaques—which made me weep.
At five or six o’clock in the afternoon we found ourselves once more seated around a table, this time in a farm on the outskirts of Madrid. It was a small patio with a magnificent view overlooking the Sierra del Guadarrama, spotted with very black oak trees. We decided it was time to have a bite to eat. I had a large plate of cod with tomato sauce. Some carters at an adjoining table were eating it with their knives, and the idea of combining the taste of the metal directly with that of the cod struck me as extremely delicate and aristocratic.
After the cod I asked for a partridge, but there were none at this season. I wanted by all means to eat something succulent. The proprietress suggested either warmed-over rabbit with onions, or a squab. I said I did not want anything warmed-over, and decided on the squab. The proprietress, a little annoyed, called my attention to the fact that sometimes warmed-over things are the best. I hesitated for a moment, but persisted in ordering the squab. The trouble was that it was already so late that in not more than two hours we would have to eat dinner in earnest. We therefore decided that it was better to eat now, and later on, around midnight, we would just have something cold. So I said to the proprietress,
“All right, bring me the rabbit you speak so well about, too.”
How right she was! With the sensual intelligence that I possess in the sacred tabernacle of the palate I understood in a moment the mysteries and the secrets of the warmed-over dish. The sauce had attained a suggestion of elasticity peculiar to the warmed-over dish which made it adhere delicately to the inside of the mouth, seeming to distribute the taste uniformly and making one click one’s tongue. And believe me, that prosaic sound, which so much resembles the horror of hearing a cork pop, is the very sound of that thing so rarely understood—even more rarely understood when it is not accompanied by this sound—“satisfaction.” In short, that modest rabbit gave me a great deal of satisfaction.
We left, and at this moment I realized that we had come in two luxurious cars. No sooner had we returned to Madrid than our plan for a small cold supper at midnight vanished, and once more the spectre of food placed itself before us with its terrible and inevitable reality.
“Let’s begin by drinking something,” I suggested. “We are not in a hurry. After that we will see.”
This was necessary and reasonable, for the wine at the farm was poor, and I had eaten my rabbit to the sole accompaniment of water. I had three Martinis, and toward the end of the third I distinctly felt that my Parsifal was about to begin.
I had my plan. I got up, on the pretext of having to go to the toilet, and quietly left by another door. Breathing deeply the air of freedom, which was for me that of the entire sky, I was stirred by the joyful thrill of feeling myself suddenly alone once more. I had a fantastic plan for this night, and this plan I called my “Parsifal.” I took a taxi that brought me to the Students’ Residence, and had it wait. It would take me just an hour. My “Parsifal” required that I make myself very handsome. I took a long shower, gave myself a very close shave, glued down my hair as much as possible, putting paint-varnish on it again! I knew the serious inconveniences of this, and even that it would spoil my hair a little, but my Parsifal was worth this sacrifice, and more! I applied powdered lead around my eyes; this made me look particularly devastating in the “Argentine tango” manner. Rudolph Valentino seemed to me at that time to be the prototype of masculine beauty. I put on very pale cream-colored trousers, and an oxford-gray coat. As for the shirt, I had an idea that appeared to me to put the definitive touch of elegance to my outfit. The shirt was of écru silk, a silk fine as onion-skin and so transparent that on looking attentively one could see through it the rather well-defined black imperial eagle of the hair in the middle of my chest. But the outline was too clear. So I took off the shirt, which had been freshly ironed, and squeezed it between my two hands, folding and pressing it into a bunch between my closed fists. I put this bundle of wrinkled silk under my trunk and got on top of it so as to crush it even more. The crumpled effect that resulted was ravishing, especially when I put it on and fastened a stiff smooth collar of immaculate whiteness to it.
Having finished dressing I jumped into the taxi again, stopped to buy a gardenia which the florist pinned to my lapel, and then gave the driver the address of the Florida, a fashionable ball-room where I had never yet been, but which I knew was patronized by the most exclusive crowd in Madrid. I intended to have supper there all alone, and to choose with scrupulous care the necessary feminine material among the most beautiful, the most luxuriously dressed women, in order to carry out, come what may, that mad, irresistible thing, that thing almost without sensation and yet oppressive with pent-up eroticism, that maddening thing which since the day before I had named my Parsifal!
I had no idea where the Florida was, and each time the taxi slowed down, I thought I had arrived, and my anxiety grew so anguis
hing that it made me shut my eyes. I sang Parsifal at the top of my lungs. Good heavens, what a night it was going to be! I knew it. It was going to age me by ten years.
The effect of the three Martinis had totally vanished, and my brain was turning toward grave and severe thoughts. My wickedness was losing its edge with the alcohol, which I was already theoretically “against.” Alcohol confuses everything, gives free rein to the most pitiful subjectivism and sentimentalism. And afterwards one remembers nothing—and if one does, it is worse! Everything that one thinks while in a state of intoxication appears to one to have the touch of genius: and afterwards one is ashamed of it. Drunkenness equalizes, makes uniform, and depersonalizes. Only beings composed of nothingness and mediocrity are capable of elevating themselves a little with alcohol. The man of evil and of genius bears the alcohol of his old age already absorbed in his own brain.
I hesitated. Was I going to excute my Parsifal with or without alcohol? The pre-nocturnal sky of Madrid knows clouds of a fantastic and poisoned mineral blue that can be found only in the paintings of Patinir, and to the warmed-over rabbit that I had eaten at the farm was now added the venom of that delicately blue-tinged color of depilated armpits toward which I was going to direct my activity that evening, with very definite ideas on the subject in the back of my head. I took advantage of the little clearings which intoxication left for brief moments in my mind to organize the details that would enable me to execute this sublime and absolutely original erotic fantasy which made my heart beat like hammer blows every time I thought about it.
The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (Dover Fine Art, History of Art) Page 25