Mazurka for Two Dead Men

by Camilo José Cela

  Plastered Pepiño grew up left to his own devices and abandoned by the hand of God and, in due course, married like everyone else and produced two daughters, both of them feeble-minded, who died before the year was out. His wife (I can’t remember her name for the life of me, it’s on the tip of my tongue but it won’t come to me) ran away with a travelling salesman, a native of Astorga, and she’s still with him. When Plastered Pepiño’s wife ran off and he recovered his freedom, a look of happiness lit up his face.

  “To hell with it, life’s great on your own!”

  One black day Plastered Pepiño was caught messing about with little Simon the Lamb, a six-year-old deaf-mute, that he had almost strangled, so he was sent first to prison and later to the nut-house; after they caught him they whacked him and rained kicks and blows upon him, not that they meant him any real harm, of course, more as a way of passing the time. When his wife found out …, just a moment, her name was Concepción Estivelle Gresande, they used to call her Concha the Clam, she said she wanted nothing to do with it, that as far as she was concerned he could drop dead or shrivel up and die, for all she cared.

  “I have nothing against him, I swear, he doesn’t matter a damn to me, but if he dropped dead tomorrow, believe me, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.”

  After she ran off with the fellow from Astorga, Concha the Clam blossomed. What a difference!

  “A change does a woman good!”

  “Come on now! What about men?!”

  Matías the Joker has things well sorted out and has no thought of remarrying.

  “If I had children I would have to look out for them, but since I don’t have any … Puriña was very good, although she was always delicate and telling tales of woe; the worst about women is not that they fall sick, they’re always sick, and that’s a fact, but the worst is when they tell you all about their illnesses and there’s not a soul—not even the Blessed Lord himself—could put up with that sort of thing.”

  Matías the Joker is fond of dancing, playing cards, and conjuring tricks, he also plays snooker and dominoes, tells funny stories and drinks glasses of sweet anisette and he’s fond of coconut cookies and coffee-flavored lozenges. Matías’ two younger brothers live with him: Scorpion, who’s a deaf-mute but smart enough and Shrill who’s sickly in health and a touch simple-minded. Benito Scorpion goes with prostitutes once a month, but at least he works and earns his crust; Salustio Shrill hardly budges from the house and sits about sighing. Puriña was very beautiful, a languid beauty, not like her younger sister Loliña, Lionheart’s wife, who was a wild, fierce beauty; hereabouts there are many women who are good-looking in either of these ways. Loliña was crushed up against the wall by an ox. Julián Wideawake was also known as Jules. The wife of Jules Marvís Ventela, or Fernández, the Chantada watchmaker, Pilar Moure Pernas, bleaches her hair, since she’s on the plump side it’s more noticeable and she wears a corset, she has to dust herself with talcum powder so that it doesn’t stick to her skin which is always a bit clammy, of course, the corset has little holes in it. Pilar’s first husband was very jealous and would neither let her bleach her hair nor don a corset.

  “Definitely not, a decent woman should be herself, you start off by dyeing your hair and using a corset and you never know where it will lead to.”

  “But my sister Milagros uses one!”

  “That’s her husband’s affair! I don’t give a damn what your sister Milagros does, it’s what you do that’s my concern.”

  When Urbano Dapena, Pilar Moure’s first husband, died of a blockage of the bowel, and passed on vomiting up blobs of his own faeces, his newly widowed wife breathed a sigh of relief; some demises bring great peace to families. Urbanito was at his father’s deathbed, the poor little mite hid behind the curtains to get a better view and asked his mother:

  “Mama, why was Papa shitting through his mouth?”

  As soon as the law would allow, Pilar Moure married Wideawake.

  “May I kiss your breasts, Pilar?”

  “Do whatever you wish, my king, you know that I’m all yours, all that’s left to do is to sort out the papers, but my breasts and my whole body belong to you.”

  “Good grief!”

  Pilar dyed her hair blonde and purchased the corset even before the second marriage took place, there are some matters, some very intimate things, in which the legislator cannot get involved. Little Urbanito went up to heaven just about the time when his second stepbrother arrived—his mother and her new husband didn’t waste any time. Urbanito died of anemia, his shoulderblade collapsed when he was very small and it did him no good at all when they fed him on rosemary blossom with corn bread and lice nurtured by his own mother.

  “What wouldn’t a mother do for her child!”

  “Indeed!”

  Pilar Moure gave birth easily and with no great effort.

  “There’s no call to create a scene, that’s what we women are for, after all, bringing children into the world. It’s no big deal.”

  Saintly Fernández was not a saint but a pious man. My relation the Saintly Fernández was born in Moire in the parish of Santa María de Carballeda, near Piñor, on the Feast of the Apostle in 1808, shortly after Carlos IV had renounced the Spanish crown. The Espasa encyclopedia claims he was born in Cea, in the province of León, but that’s not true and the entry devoted to Don Modesto Fernández y González, the fellow that signed himself Camilo de Cela, makes him a native of Carballeda de Avia, which isn’t right either; Carballeda de Avia is over by Ribadavia and miles away from here. Saintly Fernández was the son of my great-grandparents, Don Benito, a physician, and Doña María Benita, gentlewoman, who married on May 26, 1794, the year of the execution of Louis XVI of France. The Espasa encyclopedia is also mistaken when it calls him Brother Juan Santiago; he was Brother Juan Jacobo, which is more or less the same only different, his father named him thus in honor of Rousseau. My great-grandfather was a compiler of the encyclopedia and there were eight or ten letters from d’Alembert and three or four from Diderot lying about his house until my aunts Jesusa and Emilita burned them at the outbreak of the civil war because Father Santisteban, S.J., a real saint, told them they were both ungodly heretics and advised them to burn the letters the better to salve their consciences.

  “The Evil Enemy resorts to umpteen wiles to incite us to sin and lead us astray from the path of righteousness.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “What’s more, as far as I can see, those letters were written in French. Rid yourselves of the occasion of sin!”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Father Santisteban, S.J., took a pinch of snuff, sneezed three times (Bless you! Bless you! Bless you!), blew his nose loudly, savored the last sip of his cascarilla tea, folded his cassock with a knowing gesture, and adopted a solemn, senatorial and judicious air:

  “Cast them into the flames!”

  “Which flames, Father?”

  “Any flames at all!”

  “Yes, Father.”

  The distinguished Dominican friar from Santander, the Rev. Father Daniel Avellanosa, preacher and member of the Geographical Society, predicted that number 25,888 would, as indeed proved the case, be the winning number in the Christmas Lottery. When the Casandulfe Raimundo got rid of his dose of crabs, Miss Ramona sighed with relief.

  “I thought you didn’t love me, Raimundo, I thought you were no longer interested in me. You’ve been putting me through torment!”

  “You silly goose. I had a lot of problems and worries, that’s all.”

  “But couldn’t you tell me?”

  “No, they’re not women’s matters, you wouldn’t even understand.”

  “Is it something to do with politics?”

  “Look, let’s drop this! All that matters is that we’re together again.”

  Ádega knows the history of the Guxinde family inside out, some folks call them the Moranes, which is nearly the same thing.

  “Your relation the Saintly Fernández was the brother
of your great-grandmother Rose. Your relation the Saintly Fernández was martyred by the infidels in Damascus, they cast him down from the top of the bell tower and he took several hours to die. Your relation the Saintly Fernández died proclaiming the Catholic faith, the infidels told him: Forswear your faith, you Christian dog! and he replied: Not on your life! Mine is the true faith! Your relation the Saintly Fernández was always ready for the fray. Before he went off and was martyred, your relation the Saintly Fernández had several children, some say he had eleven, each time he came back to Spain he would leave some woman with child. So as to be able to recognize his children when needs be, he used to brand them just below the left nipple with a little iron signet ring he had. I remember one of them well, the youngest, Fortunato Ramón María Rey, whom your relation the Saintly Fernández dumped in the Santiago foundling home with as many pesetas as there are days in the year for someone to rear him. When his father was called on high, Fortunato was brought to Orense by a certain Señor Pedro from the Peares mountains, he took him off to a hamlet called Moura or Lourada, I can’t remember which it was. The child left Santiago as Fortunato Ramón María Rey but he grew up with the name Ramón Iglesias, which lost him the inheritance of a million reales which his father the Saintly Fernández left to be handed over when he came of age; your relatives were always very slapdash when it came to inheritances, well, some more than others, of course.

  Uncle Cleto is scrupulously clean and squeamish, all day long he is wiping his hands with alcohol until his knuckles are in raw flesh.

  “What trouble is it to maintain a few basic standards?”

  “Indeed you’re right.”

  Uncle Cleto always wears gloves, he even plays his jazz band with gloves on, he dusts the insides with antiseptic powder so they don’t cling to his chafed knuckles.

  “We live in the midst of a miasma so we have to defend ourselves against the infections preying upon us: cholera, leprosy, tetanus, gangrene, glanders, need I go on?”

  Uncle Cleto empties his bowels in the open air facing into the wind (when he wants to spit he faces the other way) and wipes his ass with the tenderest leaves from the heart of a freshly cut lettuce.

  “The precautions we take are but a drop in the ocean.”

  “Maybe.”

  Aunt Jesusa and Aunt Emilita recite the entire Rosary, the fifteen mysteries, until finally they bore themselves to sleep. Aunt Jesusa and Aunt Emilita bore themselves to tears, they’re also half-dazed, mulling over how badly Uncle Cleto treats them is the only thing that livens them up a bit; well, what of it, to heck with him! He’ll cook his own goose in the end!

  Aunt Jesusa and Aunt Emilita speak in a reedy, Holy-Joe tone of voice, you’d think they were about to preach a hellfire sermon.

  “Many’s the account our poor brother will have to render to His Maker when the Day of Judgement comes!”

  “Indeed, each and every one of us, without exception, will find ourselves at such a juncture.”

  “That’s why it behooves us to prepare for death, Camilo, don’t be too cocky! Just remember Fleta, who died all of a sudden without even a chance to confess!”

  “Don’t you worry your head about me, Auntie! I’m mindful of these matters.”

  The aunts never met Plastered Pepiño, they heard tell of him alright but they never met him. There are folks that go through life drawing attention to themselves, although they don’t mean to, and others who pass unnoticed however hard they try. Concha the Clam grew prettier and livelier by the day, young women usually grow very lascivious in widowhood. In her wisdom, Mother Nature generally glosses over grief with fun and frolics so as to allow us get on with life. Concha the Clam plays the castanets like a gypsy.

  “Where did you pick that up?”

  “At home, it took a little patience; but playing the castanets is just like drawing breath, eventually you do it without even thinking.”

  Concha the Clam performs music-hall songs with great gusto in her fine singing voice. Concha the Clam was made for living, whereas Plastered Pepiño was made for dying, some things just never work out. Concha the Clam has a haughty, brazen look about her, maybe she’s the daughter of some count or general, blood from a family which has long since been eating square meals will out. Concha the Clam sleeps stretched out, another sign of confidence.

  “Have you noticed her silken hair and that swing of her hips as she walks? With a little training, Concha the Clam would have gone far, she could have run a guesthouse, been a hairdresser, opened a haberdashery or something like that, but Concha the Clam can neither read nor write so she’s stuck where she is.”

  “Have a bit of patience, girl!”

  “That’s just it: patience and health to keep on struggling.”

  Once upon a time when Concha the Clam was in faraway places (Valladolid, Bilbao, Saragossa) she was a painter’s model, she gave it up because she had the bitter cold to contend with while not even escaping the clutches of poverty, and it’s not worth baring your tits for that.

  “Anyway it’d make your blood boil the way they look at you as though you were a block of wood.”

  Aunt Jesusa had a sweetheart who was a pharmacist—well, he hadn’t yet finished his degree, he still had two subjects left to do—Ricardo Vázquez Vilariño, who was killed in the war, he enlisted in the Galician Banners and was killed on New Year’s Day 1938 in Teruel, at the same time as his commander, Barja de Quiroga. Aunt Emilita had a sweetheart, too; Celso Varelo Fernández, a building supervisor, who left her in the lurch to run off with an actress, but Aunt Emilita forgave him.

  “She was a minx, a proper minx she was, in the clutches of a woman like that men are defenseless, Celso wasn’t a bad soul at all, but that bitch bewitched him with her wiles and she nothing but old mutton dressed as lamb! Poor Celso!”

  That’s not true: Aunt Jesusa and Aunt Emilita never had sweethearts, both of them were left on the shelf at an early age. Robín Lebozán stood in front of the mirror and said with great composure:

  “I’ll always hold they had sweethearts, I’m a charitable sort and always will be, but Aunt Jesusa and Aunt Emilita were old enough to be the mothers of the student pharmacist and the building supervisor. I don’t care if folks get it wrong, I merely wish to follow the dictates of my conscience.”

  Celestino Sprig or, rather, Father Celestino, the priest from San Miguel de Taboadela, has his little tiffs with Marica Rubeiras from los Tunos, a handsome young married woman from the village of Mingarabeiza, whose husband has borne the lot of a cuckold with precious little dignity. Father Celestino is to be seen with Marica in the belfry, it’s not a comfortable spot but quiet it certainly is.

  “And airy, too?”

  “Airy, too.”

  Santos Cófora, Piggy, sixty-two years of age and at least two hundred and fifty pounds in weight, claimed that his wife, Marica Rubeiras, who had not yet reached the age of twenty, was true to her marriage vows.

  “What utter nonsense!”

  “Look, I don’t know what to say to you, but to claim she isn’t playing around!”

  Piggy didn’t want to raise a rumpus, nor did he want Marica to leave him, of course, but he had so much rage pent up inside him that he didn’t know which way to turn in order to take his revenge.

  “That damned priest will pay for this! As sure as there’s a God up in heaven, that priest will pay for this!”

  The relations in Piñor were swept clean away by the broom of time which never wearies of gathering souls. My uncle Claudio Montenegro, a relative of the Virgin Mary, died an old man just after the war; he was an odd sort who never got flustered, raised his voice nor batted an eyelid at anything, not even at eclipses or the sight of the aurora borealis, during the war years the aurora borealis was seen. When he heard that Piggy had gone off to Orense to catch a dose of crab lice to take his revenge upon Father Sprig, he found it perfectly natural.

  “Apparently this is a great year for crabs, the belfries are just crawling with crab lice,
God help us!”

  My grandmother Teresa had two sisters, Manuela and Pepa, and a brother, Manuel. Teresa Fernández, Pinoxa, who lived with her blind father, was the daughter of Manuela and Claudio Otero, the String, he and his brother Manuel, a cutter, were Pepa’s sons. Uncle Claudio was the father of two unfortunate blind girls and Uncle Manolo was pissed as a coot most of the time; when he died it was discovered that he had nearly two hundred brand-new shirts still in their wrappers, his son Manolito, who owned a store in Montevideo, used to send them to him. Manuela Fernández was Manuel’s daughter and she was always very fond of us for my grandmother had absolved her of some debt or other. Families are like rivers, never flagging and flowing on and on. Grandmother Teresa was the niece of the Saintly Fernández. Fortunato Ramón María Rey—later known as Ramón Iglesias—the illegitimate son of the Saintly Fernández, married Nicolasa Pérez and had seven children with her: Antonio, who married Josefa Barrera in Cuba, their son José Ramón lives in New York; Hortensia who married Julio Fuentes in Cuba, their children Delia, Maruja, and Francisco live in New York; Mercedes who first married Idelfonso Fernández and later José Uceda: by the first marriage she had a son, Julio, who now lives in Vigo and is married to Dolores Ramos (he has two children: Alfonso, married to Concepción—I can’t remember her surname—who lives in Barcelona and Mercedes, married to Maximino Lago, who lives in Vigo) and by the second marriage she had another five children: Maruja, married to Justo Núñez and living in Orense (she has two sons: Justo and Jorge, who live in Madrid), Antonio, married to Aurora del Río, lives in Orense (he has two sons: José Luis, married to María Luisa González, and Roberto, married to Elisa Camba), Matilde, married to Román Alonso (she has two sons: Carlos, married to Pilar Jiménez and Álvaro, a bachelor), José, a bachelor, who lives in Madrid and Ramón, married to Nieves Pereira, who lives in Corunna. The fourth grandson of the Saintly Fernández is César, married to Sara Carballo, both dead now, he had a son called César, who is the only one to bear the surname Rey, all the others are called Iglesias: César is married to Benigna. I can’t remember her surname either, and he has two daughters: Lourdes and Raquel. Next comes Orentino, married to Luisa Novoa, he has two daughters: Carmen, married to Adolfo Chamorro, and Pilar, married to Francisco Sueiro. Then there’s María, José Dorribo’s widow, with five children: Angelines, married to José Rodriguez: Rafael, married to Aurora Pérez: Eulalia, who is single: Luisa, married to Serrafín Ferreiro and Sara, married to Arturo Casares. And finally there’s Herminia, the baby of the family and Cándido Valcárcel’s widow, with four children: Antonio, married to Dolores do Campo, and María del Pilar, Matilde, and Antonio, all unmarried. Families are like the sea: they go on forever and have neither beginning nor end.