The Dedalus Book of Spanish Fantasy

by Margaret Jull Costa

  The boy, in obedience to this order, took an axe to the choirstalls and once he had obtained a large pile of firewood, which he gradually piled up by the presbytery steps, he seized the torch and set to work making a bonfire of those richlycarved fragments; amongst the scattered debris could be seen, here, part of a twisted column, there, the portrait of a holy abbot, the trunk of a woman or the monstrous head of a griffin.

  A few minutes later, the whole church was filled with sudden light, signalling to the officers that the festivities were about to begin.

  The captain, who was doing the honours with quite as much ceremony as he would have in his own home, addressed his guests:

  `Whenever you wish, the buffet is served.'

  His companions, affecting the utmost gravity, replied to his invitation with a comical bow and made their way to the main chapel, preceded by the hero of the feast, who, on reaching the stairs, paused for an instant and, gesturing towards the place where the tomb stood, said with the most refined elegance:

  `I have the pleasure of introducing the lady who occupies all my thoughts. I think you will agree that I have not exaggerated her beauty.'

  The officers turned their gaze towards the spot their friend was indicating, and an involuntary gasp of amazement arose from every man.

  In the depths of a burial arch faced with black marble, kneeling at a prie-dieu, with her hands joined and her face turned towards the altar, they saw indeed the image of a woman so beautiful that no sculptor could ever produce her rival, nor could desire itself have painted a fantasy of greater loveliness.

  `It's true, she's an angel,' murmured one.

  `What a pity she's made of marble,' added another.

  `Truly, though it is only an illusion, to be close to such a woman is reason enough not to close your eyes all night.'

  `And you don't know who she is?' some of those contemplating the statue asked the captain, who was smiling in pleasure at his triumph.

  `Recalling a little of the Latin I knew as a youth, I have managed finally to decipher the inscription on the tomb,' the latter replied, `and from what I gather, it is the tomb of a Castilian nobleman, a famous warrior who fought against the French in Italy with the Gran Capitan, Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba. His name I have forgotten, but his wife, whom you see here, is named Dona Elvira de Castaiieda, and by my faith, if the copy resembles the original she must have been the most beautiful woman of her century.'

  After this brief explanation, the guests, who had not lost sight of the principal object of the gathering, proceeded to uncork some of the bottles and, as they sat around the fire, the wine began to circulate.

  As the libations grew more frequent and the fumes from the sparkling champagne began to go to their heads, the excitement, noise and jubilation grew amongst the young men, some of whom began to throw the empty bottles at the granite monks standing before the pillars, while others sang drunken, indecent songs, and yet others guffawed or applauded or quarrelled amongst themselves, uttering oaths and blasphemies.

  The captain drank in silence, with an air of desperation, and his eyes never left the statue of Dona Elvira.

  Through the veil that inebriation had drawn over his eyes, he seemed to see the marble statue, in the red light from the bonfire, transformed into a real woman; he seemed to see her lips move as though in prayer, to see her breast stir as though she sighed, her hands clench, and finally her cheeks blush, as though she were shocked by that sacrilegious and offensive spectacle.

  The officers, noticing their companion's silence, shook him out of his trance and, giving him a goblet, they chorused:

  `Come on, propose a toast, you are the only one who has not done so all night!'

  The young man took the goblet and, standing up, he raised it on high and defiantly addressed the statue of the warrior kneeling by Dona Elvira:

  `I propose a toast to the Emperor and his feats of arms, which have enabled us to march to the heart of Castile, to court the wife of one of the victors of Cerignola, on his very tomb.'

  The soldiers greeted the toast with a round of applause and the captain staggered a few steps towards the grave.

  `No,' he said, still addressing the statue and wearing the stupid smile common to drunkards, `don't think I hold a grudge because I see you as a rival. On the contrary, I admire you as a long-suffering husband, an example of broadmindedness and tolerance, and I wish to be generous in turn. Since you were a soldier, you must surely have been a drinker ... Never let it be said that I let you die of thirst watching us empty twenty bottles ... Have a drink!'

  So saying, he lifted the goblet to his lips and, after wetting them with the liquor it contained, he threw the rest over the statue's face, roaring with laughter when he saw the wine spilling onto the tomb as it trickled down the stone beard of the motionless warrior.

  `Have a care, Captain!' cried one of his companions in a bantering tone. `Don't forget that these jokes with people of stone tend to be paid dear. Remember what happened to the hussars of the Fifth in the monastery at Poblet ... They say the warriors in the cloisters one night laid hold of their granite swords and set about the soldiers who were amusing themselves drawing-charcoal moustaches on them.'

  The young men greeted this sally with loud guffaws, but the captain, paying no heed to the laughter, doggedly pursued the notion:

  `Do you think I would have offered him wine if I hadn't thought he would at least swallow the drops that fell into his mouth? Certainly not! I don't believe, as you do, that these statues are pieces of marble, as lifeless now as the day they were wrested from the quarry. Unquestionably, the artist, who is almost a god, breathes some vitality into his work, not enough for it to move and walk, yet enough to instil a strange, incomprehensible form of life, not one I can explain, yet I feel it, especially when I have drunk a little.'

  `Magnificent!' said his companions. `Have some more to drink and carry on.'

  The officer drank and, fixing his gaze on Dona Elvira, he continued with growing exaltation:

  `Look at her! Look at her! Can't you see the changing reds in her delicate, transparent flesh? Doesn't it appear as though, below that smooth, bluish alabaster skin, there glides a rosecoloured fluid of light? What more life could you want? What more reality?'

  `A great deal more' said one of his listeners. `We would like her to be made of flesh and blood.'

  `Flesh and blood! Misery and decay!' said the captain. 'During an orgy, I have felt my lips and my head burning. I have felt the fire that runs through the veins like boiling lava from a volcano, whose misty vapours confuse and disorder the brain and make us see strange visions. Then, the kisses of those tangible women seared me like a red-hot iron, and I thrust them aside in distaste, in disgust, even in horror, for then, as now, I needed a touch of sea-breeze for my fevered brow, to drink ice and kiss snow ... snow tinged with faint light, snow coloured by a golden ray of sun ... A beautiful, cold, white woman, like this stone woman who seems to incite me with her fantastic beauty, who seems to stir with the flickering of the torchlight and provoke me by half-opening her lips and offering me a token of love ... Yes! A kiss ... only your kiss can quell the ardour that consumes me ..

  `Captain!' some of his companions exclaimed, seeing him advance towards the statue as though half-mad, with wandering gaze and stumbling gait. `What madness is this? Stop joking and leave the dead in peace!'

  The young man did not even hear his friends' words and, staggering, he managed to approach the tomb and draw near to the statue; but as he held out his arms, a cry of horror rang through the church. With blood gushing from his eyes, nose and mouth he had fallen flat on the floor at the base of the statue, his face disfigured.

  The soldiers, struck dumb with terror, dared not move a muscle to help him.

  At the very moment that their companion tried to place his fevered lips on those of Dona Elvira, they had seen the motionless warrior raise his hand and knock him down with one massive blow from his stone gauntlet.

 
Translated by Annella McDermott

  Gustavo Adolfo Becquer (Seville, 1836-Madrid, 1870) is Spain's best-known Romantic poet, author of the Rimas, poems on the themes of love, solitude and the nature of poetry, which were published after his death. Becquer also wrote prose, letters, essays and legends, of which this story is an example. (A translation by R. M. Fedorchek is available as Legends and Letters, Bucknell University Press, 1996).

  9

  A servant arrived at midday, in a state of profound anxiety, at the home of his master, a rich merchant, and recounted what had happened to him in the following words:

  `Master, this morning when I went to the market to buy cloth for a new garment, I met Death, and she asked after you. She also inquired if you were usually at home in the afternoons, as she intended shortly to pay you a visit. I wonder, Master, if it would not be better to leave everything and flee this house, so that she will not find us here if she chances to call.'

  The merchant thought hard.

  `Did she look you in the face, did you see her eyes?' he asked, without losing his habitual composure.

  `No, Master. Her face was covered with a linen cloth, rather an old one, as it happens.'

  `And did she also have a handkerchief over her mouth?'

  `Yes, Master. It was a cheap and rather dirty handkerchief, as it happens.'

  `Then there can be no doubt, it was she,' said the merchant and, after reflecting for a few moments, he added: `Listen, we are not going to do what you suggest; tomorrow you are to return to the cloth market and visit the same shops and if you should chance to meet her in the same or a similar place, try to greet her and get her to speak to you. And if she does speak and asks after me in the same or a similar manner, you are to tell her that I am always at home in the hour before nightfall and that it will be a pleasure to receive her and offer the hospitality appropriate to a great lady.'

  The servant did as he was bidden and, the following day at midday, he was back in the home of his master, in a state of uncontrollable agitation.

  `Master, again I met Death in the cloth market and I gave her your message, which she heard, so far as I was able to observe, with great satisfaction. She confessed that she is usually received with such reluctance that she can never visit any person more than once and, since your invitation is so unusual, she intends to respond to it as soon as the opportunity arises. And she hopes to repay your kindness by demonstrating that there is a great deal of myth in what people say about her. Would it not be better to flee from here and avoid this demonstration?'

  `You see?' said the merchant, with visible satisfaction. `We have frightened her off. I can assure you it will be a long time before she comes here, if indeed she ever comes at all. It is this lady's boast that she never makes the first move, that everyone - voluntarily or involuntarily - summons and solicits her. Moreover, what she enjoys above all are surprises and what she loathes above all are prearranged appointments. I am sure you know the ancient story of the encounter she had with a man who was endeavouring to flee from an appointment she had never made. Well, I have no hesitation in affirming that, because we have invited her, she will not come to this house, unless one of us loses his composure and surrenders to one of her cunning stratagems.'

  That afternoon, Death - in a sincerely friendly and relaxed mood - called at the merchant's home, aiming to take advantage of a few hours' leisure to show her appreciation of him and enjoy his company and conversation. But when the servant opened the door he could not suppress his fear at seeing her on the threshold, her face covered with an ancient linen cloth and her mouth protected by a dirty handkerchief, and believing that it was a plot between his master and the lady to destroy him, he rushed, incandescent with rage, to his master's office, where his master was resting, and, without even announcing the visitor, stabbed him to death and escaped by another door.

  Death, surprised by the silence that reigned in the house, and the negligence of the merchant, who had not even invited her in, made her own way to the merchant's office and, seeing his lifeless body lying in a pool of blood, she could not suppress a gesture of astonishment, soon replaced by a habitual sigh of resignation:

  `Oh, well, the usual story. Better luck next time.'

  10 and 10a

  A famous general of antiquity, known to all the armies of the civilised world for the systematic care with which he planned even the smallest military operation, was entrusted by his king with a very important campaign in which he must defeat and disarm his country's historical enemy and win a period of peace lasting at least several generations.

  The general asked the monarch for time to rearm his troops and, more especially, to plan the campaign down to the last detail, persuading him that the longer the time spent on developing a plan of operations, the shorter and less bloody would be the war. The king gave him a year, by the end of which time the army was perfectly prepared and equipped. Then the ruler sent for the general and asked him if he was prepared to begin the campaign. However, the general answered that he was not, for he had only had time to elaborate half of his plans, requesting therefore an extension of one year to complete them.

  At the end of that second year, the king sent once again for his general who, in response to his sovereign's enquiries, again apologised, assuring him that as there remained only a few more details to be resolved, he would be ready in just six months and could begin the campaign which, after such careful preparations, would be short-lived.

  When this third period was over, the king again summoned his general and urged him to begin the campaign immediately, for not only were the troops becoming demoralised, the soldiers' wages were beginning to exhaust the treasury. The general thus decided to begin the campaign, though there was one detail - just one - still to be resolved. In any case, it was a minor detail - the capture of a distant fortress, where an exhausted enemy would take refuge after being beaten on every occasion - and the general took the liberty of concealing from his officers the fact that he had not resolved it, hastening to open hostilities and confident that he would contrive a solution in the course of the short war.

  The campaign proceeded with such admirable conformity to the general's plans that, in the end, it proved even shorter than anticipated. In battle after battle his forces were victorious, and the enemy, subjugated by his implacable advance, were reduced to a few heterogeneous companies, deprived almost entirely of weapons and leaders, and fled to take refuge in that isolated fortress, a long way from the border. So rapid was their flight that the general had time only to pursue them, but none to stop and think about how to conquer that last redoubt.

  When his army set up camp before the fortress, the general summoned his captains and harangued them in the following manner:

  `Gentlemen, we are approaching the end of this war. You have obeyed my orders implicitly and followed my plans down to the last detail, and here you see the result: observe our enemies, reduced to a hundredth part of what they were, confined to a miserable fortress, unable to offer a dignified resistance to the force of our arms. Miserable wretches, all that awaits them is destruction. Go ahead, then, and consummate it. This is the reward for your fortitude, your valour and your skill in battle. Do not ask how it is to be achieved. I do not wish to know; that is your decision. I wish to avert my gaze from this bloody conclusion, and, moreover, I fear I underestimated the effort I would be forced to make and feel the need for a rest, a long rest. So tomorrow when I rise - and I shall rise late - I wish to see our flag flying from yonder tower. That is all, gentlemen. Good night to you. I do not believe it any part of my soldier's duty to wish you luck, for you have no need of it. Yet good luck all the same, gentlemen. And good night.'

  Such was the general's ascendancy over his men that none of his captains felt a need for his orders; his last word was accepted as such and they prepared without hesitation to place, at dawn, their country's flag on the tower in question.

  At this point, the fable divides into two versions which in the
end will become one; the most widely-known version records the words of the general when he emerged from his tent at noon the following day, refreshed by sleep. Seeing his country's flag fluttering from the tower against a bright blue sky, he exclaimed:

  `It could not have been otherwise.'

  The second version, more private and mysterious, also records the words of the general when he emerged from his tent at noon the following day, after a fitful night, to be confronted by the remnants of his defeated army lying at the foot of the walls, and the enemy flag fluttering from the tower against a bright blue sky.

  He murmured to himself.

  `It could not have been otherwise.'

  © Herederos de Juan Benet

  Translated by Annella McDermott

  After a week without sun, September had once more opened its sampler of colours and tints, and the weather, from on high, had made a selection for that fleeting season which is the prelude to autumn. The rains of the preceding week had managed to obliterate all traces of summer, closing down the refreshment stalls, carrying off the remains of picnics and emptying the beach and its surroundings - the promontory and the road left hanging in the pause of that sudden solitude, like a schoolyard after the bell has gone, abruptly deprived of the children's cries that give it its identity, the sea restored to its eternal progress to nowhere, the constant commotion with which it had attempted to stamp itself on the present now stilled.

  `This is one of the few privileges left to us.'

  They strolled along the entire length of the road, arm in arm, stopping at the places from which they had absented themselves during the summer invasion, like people taking an inventory of a property they had let out for the season. And though not a day passed without their celebrating the benefits of the calm that was restored to them every year at the end of September, in their heart of hearts there persisted an overwhelming sense of being locked away and abandoned, with the more or less simultaneous departure of the crowds that had caused so much inconvenience.