by Pablo Neruda
Sometimes he would ramble on for hours, working his hooded Indian eyes and telling me all about his Jewish background. At other times, forgetting the previous conversations, he swore to me that he was General Rommel’s father, but this confidence must be kept very secret, as its disclosure could have grave international consequences. His extraordinarily persuasive tone and his serene way of delineating the minutest and most incredible details made him a marvelous charlatan whose charm can never be forgotten by anyone who knew him.
David Alfaro Siqueiros was in jail then. Someone had sent him on an armed raid of Trotsky’s home. I met him in prison, and outside as well, because we used to go out with Commandant Pérez Rulfo, the warden, to have a drink somewhere where we wouldn’t be noticed too much. We would return late at night and I would bid David goodbye with an embrace, and he would stay there behind bars.
On one of those trips back from the streets to the prison with Siqueiros, I met his brother, Jesús Siqueiros, a most unusual man. “Crafty,” in the good sense of the word, comes closest to describing him. He glided alongside the walls without making a sound or any perceptible movement. Suddenly you noticed him right behind or beside you. He seldom spoke, and when he did speak, it was barely above a whisper. Which did not prevent him from hauling around, just as quietly, forty or fifty pistols in a small bag. It was just my luck to open the bag once, absentmindedly, and discover with a shock the arsenal of black, pearl, and silver handles.
It all meant nothing, because Jesús Siqueiros was as peace-loving as his brother, David, was tempestuous. Jesús was also a gifted artist and actor, a mime. Without moving his body or his hands, without letting out the slightest sound, acting only with his face, whose lines he changed at will, turning it into a series of masks, he gave vivid impressions of terror, anguish, joy, tenderness. He bore that pale, ghostly face through the labyrinth of his life, emerging, from time to time, with all those pistols that he never used.
Those volcanic painters kept the public in line. Sometimes they got into tremendous debates. During one of these, having run out of arguments, Diego Rivera and Siqueiros drew huge pistols and fired almost as one man, not at each other, but at the wings of the plaster-of-Paris angels on the theater’s ceiling. When the heavy plaster wings started falling on the heads of the people in the audience, the theater emptied out and the discussion ended with a powerful smell of gunpowder in a deserted hall.
Rufino Tamayo was not living in Mexico at this time. Complex and passionate, as Mexican as the fruit or the woven goods in the markets, his paintings came to us from New York.
No parallel can be drawn between the painting of Diego Rivera and that of David Alfaro Siqueiros. Diego has a classicist’s feeling for line; with that infinitely undulating line, a kind of historian’s calligraphy, he gradually tied together Mexico’s history and brought out in high relief its events, traditions, and tragedies. Siqueiros is the explosion of a volcanic temperament that combines an amazing technique and painstaking research.
During clandestine sorties from jail and conversations on every topic, Siqueiros and I planned his final deliverance. On a visa I personally affixed to his passport, he traveled to Chile with his wife, Angélica Arenales. The people of Mexico had built a school in the Chilean city of Chillán, which had been destroyed by earthquakes, and in that “Mexico School” Siqueiros painted one of his extraordinary murals. The government of Chile repaid me for that service to our nation’s culture by suspending me from my consular duties for two months.
NAPOLEON UBICO
I decided to visit Guatemala and set out by car. We passed through the isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico’s golden region, with its women dressed like butterflies and a scent of honey and sugar in the air. Next we went into the great forest of Chiapas. We would stop the car at night, intimidated by the noises, the jungle’s telegraph messages. Here, there, and everywhere, thousands of cicadas transmitted a deafening sound. Enigmatic Mexico spread its green shadows over ancient structures, remote paintings, jewels and monuments, colossal heads, stone animals. All this lay about in the forest, the untold riches of fabulous Mexico. Across the border, on the highest ridges of Central America, the narrow Guatemalan road dazzled me with its lianas and mammoth vegetation; and later with its placid lakes, high up in the mountains, like eyes forgotten by wasteful gods; and finally with its pine forests and broad primordial rivers where manatees peered out of the water like human beings.
I stayed for a week with Miguel Angel Asturias, who had not yet become known for his successful novels. We realized we were born brothers and spent almost every day together. In the evening we would plan visits to faraway places on mountains shrouded in mist or to United Fruit’s tropical ports.
Guatemalans did not have the right of free speech, and no one talked politics. The walls had ears and could turn you in. Sometimes we would stop the car on a high plateau and make sure nobody was lurking behind some tree, and we would discuss the situation avidly. The despot’s name was Ubico and he had been running the country for a good many years. He was a corpulent man, with cold, cruel eyes. His word was law, and nothing in Guatemala was done without his explicit approval. I met one of his secretaries, now my friend, a revolutionary. For arguing back about something, some petty detail, he had been bound on the spot to a column in the presidential office and whipped mercilessly by Ubico himself.
The young poets asked me to give a poetry reading. They sent Ubico a telegram requesting permission. All my friends and many young students filled the auditorium. I was happy to read my poems, they seemed to open a tiny crack in the window of a vast prison. The chief of police sat conspicuously in the front row. Later I found out that four machine guns had been trained on me and the audience, ready to burst into action if the chief of police interrupted the reading by leaving his seat in a huff.
But nothing of the kind happened, the man stayed and listened to my poems to the end.
Later someone wanted to introduce me to the dictator, a man with a Napoleon complex. He liked to wear a lock of hair on his forehead, and had his photograph taken a number of times in Bonaparte’s famous pose. I was told that it was dangerous to turn down the offer, but I preferred not to shake his hand and went back to Mexico as fast as I could.
ANTHOLOGY OF PISTOLS
Mexico in those days was more gun-toting than gunfighter. There was a cult of the revolver, a fetishism of the .45. Colts were whipped out at the drop of a pin. Parliamentary candidates and newspapers would start their “depistolization” campaigns, but would quickly realize that it was easier to pull a Mexican’s tooth then wrest his beloved gun from him.
Once, a group of poets entertained me with an outing in a flower-laden boat. Fifteen or twenty bards met at Lake Xochimilco and took me on this ride, hemmed in by water and blossoms, over canals and through a maze of everglades used for flowery rides since the time of the Aztecs. Every inch of the boat is decorated with flowers, overflowing with marvelous patterns and colors. The hands of the Mexicans, like the hands of the Chinese, are incapable of creating anything ugly, whether they work in stone, silver, clay, or carnations.
Well, during the ride, after a good many tequilas, one of the poets insisted that, as a special honor of a different kind, I should fire into the sky his beautiful pistol, whose grip was decorated with silver and gold designs. The colleague nearest to him whipped out his own pistol and, carried away with enthusiasm, slapped aside the first man’s weapon and invited me to do the shooting with his. Each of the other rhapsodists unsheathed his pistol on the instant, and a free-for-all ensued: they all raised their guns over my head, each insisting I choose his instead of one of the others. As the precarious panoply of pistols being waved in front of my nose or passed under my arms became more and more dangerous, it occurred to me to take a huge, typical sombrero and gather all the firearms into it, asking the battalion of poets for their guns in the name of poetry and peace. Everyone obeyed and I was able to confiscate the weapons and keep them safe in my house
for several days. I am the only poet, I believe, in whose honor an anthology of pistols has been put together.
WHY NERUDA
The salt of the earth had gathered in Mexico: exiled writers of every nationality had rallied to the camp of Mexican freedom, while the war dragged on in Europe, with victory upon victory going to Hitler’s forces, which already occupied France and Italy. Among those present were Anna Seghers and the Czech humorist Egon Erwin Kisch, who has since died. Kisch left some fascinating books and I greatly admired his wonderful talent, his child-like curiosity, and his dexterity at legerdemain. No sooner had he entered my house than he would pull an egg out of his ear or swallow, one by one, as many as seven coins, which this very fine, impoverished exile could well use for himself. We had known each other in Spain, and when he showed incessant curiosity about my reason for using the name Neruda, which I was not born with, I kidded him: “Great Kisch, you may have uncovered the secret of Colonel Redl”—the famous Austrian spy case of 1914—“but you will never clear up the mystery of my name.”
And so it was. He died in Prague, having been accorded every honor his liberated country could give him, but this professional interloper was never able to find out why Neruda called himself Neruda. The answer was so simple and so lacking in glamour that I was careful not to give the secret away. When I was fourteen, my father was always at me about my literary endeavors. He didn’t like the idea of having a son who was a poet. To cover up the publication of my first poems, I looked for a last name that would throw him completely off the scent. I took the Czech name from a magazine, without knowing it was the name of a great writer loved by a whole nation, the author of elegant ballads and narrative poems, whose monument stood in Prague’s Mala Strana quarter. Many years later, the first thing I did when I got to Czechoslovakia was to place a flower at the foot of the bearded statue.
THE EVE OF PEARL HARBOR
Wenceslao Roces, from Salamanca, and Constancia de la Mora, a Republican as well as a relative of the Duke of Maura, and the author of the book In Place of Splendor, which was a bestseller in North America, and the poets León Felipe, Juan Rejano, Moreno Villa, Herrera Petere, and the painters Miguel Prieto and Rodríguez Luna used to come to my house. They were all Spaniards. Vittorio Vidali, the famed Commandant Carlos of the Fifth Regiment, and Mario Montagnana, Italian exiles, full of memories, amazing stories, and possessed of a culture always in flux. Jacques Soustelle and Gilbert Medioni were also there. They were Gaullist leaders, representatives of Free France. Mexico also swarmed with voluntary or forced exiles from Central America: Guatemalans, Salvadorians, Hondurans. All this gave it an international flavor, and sometimes my home, an old villa in the San Angel neighborhood, pulsated as if it were the heart of the world.
In connection with Soustelle, who was then a left-wing socialist and who years later, as political leader of the attempted rebel coup in Algiers, would cause President de Gaulle so much trouble, something happened to me that I must tell about. We were far into the year 1941. The Nazis had laid siege to Leningrad and were penetrating farther into Soviet territory. The foxy Japanese military leaders, committed to the Berlin–Rome–Tokyo axis, were in a spot: Germany might win the war, and they would be deprived of their share of the spoils. Various rumors were circulating around the globe. Zero hour, when the mighty Japanese forces would be unleashed in the East, loomed closer. Meanwhile, in Washington, a Japanese peace mission was curtsying and bowing to the United States government. There wasn’t the slightest room for doubt that the Japanese would launch a surprise attack, for blitzkrieg was the bloody order of the day.
To make my story clear, I must mention that an old Nipponese steamship line linked Japan to Chile. I traveled on those ships more than once and I knew them very well. They called at our ports and their captains spent their time buying scrap iron and taking photographs. They touched shore at points along the coastline of Chile, Peru, and Ecuador, going as far as the Mexican port of Manzanillo, where they pointed their bows toward Yokohama, across the Pacific.
Well, one day, while I was still Consul General of Chile in Mexico, I received a visit from seven Japanese who were in a rush to obtain a Chilean visa. They had come from San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other ports on the North American west coast. A certain uneasiness was written across their faces. They were dressed well and their papers were in order; they could have been engineers or business executives.
I asked them, of course, why they wanted to take the very first plane to Chile, having just arrived in Mexico. They replied that they intended to catch a Japanese ship in Tocopilla, a nitrate-shipping port in northern Chile. I countered that there was no need to travel to Chile, at the other end of the continent, for this, because that same Japanese line called at Manzanillo, which they could reach even on foot, if they wished, with time to spare.
They exchanged embarrassed glances and smiles, and talked among themselves in their own language. They consulted the secretary of the Japanese Embassy, who was with them. He decided to be open with me and said, “Look, colleague, this ship happens to have changed its itinerary and won’t be coming to Manzanillo any more. And, therefore, these distinguished specialists must catch it at the Chilean port.”
A confused vision flashed across my mind: this was something very important. I asked for their passports, photographs, for data about their work in the United States, etc., and told them to return the next day. They objected. They had to have the visas immediately and would be willing to pay any price. I was playing for time. I explained that I did not have the authority to issue visas on the spot, we would discuss it the next day.
I was left to myself.
Little by little, the puzzle unraveled in my mind. Why the hasty flight from North America and the pressing need for the visas? And why was the Japanese ship changing its route for the first time in thirty years? What could it mean?
Then it dawned on me. Of course, this was an important, well-informed group, Japanese spies beating a hasty retreat from the United States because something critical was about to happen. And that could be nothing but Japan’s entry into the war. The Japanese in my story were in on the secret.
The conclusion I had reached left me in an extremely nervous state. What could I do? I did not know the English or the North American representatives of the Allied nations in Mexico. I was in direct contact only with those officially accredited as General de Gaulle’s delegates, who had access to the Mexican government. I got in touch with them at once and explained the situation. We had at hand the names of the Japanese and vital information about them. Should the French decide to take steps, the Japanese would be trapped. I presented my arguments eagerly at first, and then impatiently, before the indifferent Gaullists. “Young diplomats,” I told them, “here is your chance to cover yourselves with glory. Find out the secret of these Japanese spies. As for me, I won’t give them the visa. But you have to make a quick decision.”
This fast and loose game lasted two days longer. Soustelle took no interest in the matter. They would do nothing, and I, a Chilean consul, could take it no further. Since I refused to grant them a visa, the Japanese immediately obtained diplomatic passports, went to the Chilean Embassy, and made it in time to take the ship in Tocopilla. One week later, the world would wake up to the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
MYSELF AS MALACOLOGIST
Years ago a newspaper in Chile printed a story about my good friend the celebrated Professor Julian Huxley, who arrived in Santiago and asked for me at the airport. “Neruda the poet?” the newsmen questioned him.
“No. I don’t know any poet by the name of Neruda. I want to speak to Neruda the malacologist.”
That Greek word means “specialist in mollusks.”
I was delighted by this story, which was intended to nettle me. It could not possibly be true, because Huxley and I had known each other for years and he is a sharp fellow, much more quick-witted and genuine than his well-known brother, Aldous.
In Mexi
co I roamed the beaches, dived into the clear, temperate waters, and collected magnificent seashells. Later, in Cuba and elsewhere, I swapped and bought, received as gifts and filched (there’s no such thing as an honest collector), gradually swelling my sea treasure until it filled room after room in my house.
I owned the rarest specimens from the China Sea and the Philippines, from Japan and the Baltic; Antarctic conches and Polymitas from Cuba; painter shells dressed in red and saffron, blue and purple like Caribbean dancers. One of the few specimens I did not have, I admit, was a land snail from Brazil’s Mato Grosso. I saw one once but couldn’t buy it, and I was not able to travel into the jungle to get one. It was all green, as beautiful as a new emerald.
I became such an avid collector that I visited the most remote seas. Friends also began to hunt for conches, to become snail-crazed.
When I had gathered together fifteen thousand shells, they filled every last shelf and began to spill from tables and chairs. Books on conchology or malacology—call it what you will—overflowed my library. So one day I took my whole collection and carried it to the university in huge crates, making my first donation to my alma mater. It was a famous collection by then. Like any good South American institution, my university received it with praises and panegyrics, and buried it away in a basement. No one has seen it since.