The Old Castilian
Since I have grown older I very seldom care to change the order of my way of living, which has now been settled a long time, and I base this repugnance upon the fact that I have never for a single day abandoned my Lares to break my system without being overtaken by a most sincere repentance as the presumption of my deluded hopes. Nevertheless a remnant of the old-fashioned courtesy adopted by our forefathers in their intercourse obliges me at times to accept certain invitations, which to refuse would be rudeness, or at least a ridiculous affectation of delicacy.
Some days ago I was walking through the streets in search of material for my articles. Buried in my thoughts, I surprised myself several times, laughing like a poor wretch at my own fancies, and mechanically moving my lips. A stumble or so reminded me now and again that to walk on the pavements of Madrid it is not the best of circumstances to be either poet or philosopher; more than one malicious smile, more than one look of wonder from the passers-by, made me reflect that soliloquies should not be made in public; and when turning corners not a few collisions with those who turned them as heedlessly as I made me recognise that the absent-minded are not among the number of elastic bodies, much less among glorious and impassable beings. Such being my frame of mind, imagine my sensations upon receiving a horrible smack which a huge hand attached (it seemed to me) to a brawny arm administered to one of my shoulders, which unfortunately bear not the slightest resemblance to those of Atlas!
Not wishing to make it understood that I would not recognise this energetic way of announcing on self, nor to rebuff the goodwill, which doubtless wished to show itself to be more than mediocre by leaving me crooked for the rest of the day, I was merely about to turn round to see who was so much my friend as to treat me so badly. But my Old Castilian is a man who, when he is joking, does not stop half-way. What? my reader will ask. He gave further proofs of his intimacy and affection? He clasped his hands tightly over my eyes from behind, crying out, “Who am I?” bubbling over with delight at the success of his pretty trick. “Who you are? A brute,” I was about to reply; but I suddenly remembered who it might be, and substituted the words, “I Braulio.” Upon hearing me he loosened his hands, held his sides for laughter, disturbing the whole street, and making us both very conspicuous.
“Good, good! How did you recognise me?”
“Who could it be but you?...”
“Well, so you’ve come from your dear Biscay?”
“No, Braulio, I have not come?”
“Always the same merry humour. What does it matter? I a way we have of talking in Spain.... Do you know it’s my birthday to-morrow?”
“I wish you many happy returns of the day.”
“Oh, no formalities between us; you know a plain fellow and an Old Castilian, and call a spade a spade; consequently I require no compliments from you, but consider yourself invited——”
“To what?”
“To dine with me.”
“Impossible.”
“You must.”
“I cannot,” I insist, trembling.
“You ca?”
“Very many thanks——”
“Thanks? Very well, my dear friend; as not the Duke of F., or Count P., of course——”
Who can resist an attack of this kind? Who cares to appear proud? “It is not that, but——”
“Well, if it’s not that,” he breaks in, “I shall expect you at two. We dine early at my house—Spanish style. I expect a lot of people; there will be the famous improvisor X.; T. will sing after dinner in his usual first-rate style; and in the evening J. will play and sing some trifles.”
This consoled me somewhat, and I had to give way. “Everybody,” said I to myself, “has an evil day sometimes. In this world, if one wishes to preserve friends, one must endure their civilities.”
“You wo fail, unless you want to quarrel with me?”
“I shall not fail,” I said in a lifeless voice and low spirits, like a fox vainly revolving in the trap in which it has allowed itself to be caught.
“Then good-bye till to-morrow,” and he gave me a parting slap.
I watched him go as the sower watches the decreasing cloud of his seed, and remained wondering how one should take such adverse and fatal friendships.
Two lock arrived. As I knew my friend Braulio, I did not think it advisable to make myself too fine for his party; that, I am sure, would have annoyed him; nevertheless I could not dispense with a light frock-coat and a white pocket-handkerchief as essential for such birthday festivities. Above all, I dressed myself as slowly as possible, like the wretched criminal confessing at the foot of the gallows, who would like to have committed a hundred more sins the which to confess in order to gain more time. I was invited at two, and I entered the state-parlour at half-past two.
I will not dwell on the ceremonious calls made before dinner-time by an infinite number of visitors, among which were not least all the officials of his department with their spouses and children, their cloaks, umbrellas, galoshes, and house-dogs; I will be silent as to the foolish compliments paid to the head of the family on his birthday, nor describe the monstrous circle which was formed in the parlour by the assembly of so many heterogeneous people, discoursing upon how the weather was about to change, and how the winter is generally colder than the summer. Let us come to the point: four lock struck, and we, the invited guests, found ourselves alone. Unluckily for me, Señor X., who was to have entertained us, being a connoisseur of this class of invitation, had had the good idea to fall sick that morning; the celebrated T. found himself opportunely compromised by another invitation, and the young lady who was to sing and play so well was hoarse to such a degree that she was appalled lest a single word should drop from her lips, while she had a rag round one of her fingers. Alas, for my beguiled expectations!
“I suppose all who are to dine are here,” exclaimed Don Braulio. “Let us go to table, my dear.”
“Wait a bit,” replied his wife in a loud whisper. “Such a lot of callers prevented my being in the kitchen, and....”
“But, look, it’s five lock....”
“Dinner will be ready in a moment....”
It was five lock when we sat down.
“Ladies and gentleman,” said our amphitryon, as we staggered into our respective chairs, “I insist upon your making yourselves quite at home; we do stand upon ceremony in my house. Oh, Figaro! I want you to be quite comfortable; you are a poet, and besides, these gentlemen who know how intimate we are will not be offended if I make an exception of you; take off your coat; it wo do to stain it.”
“Why should I stain it?” I replied, biting my lips.
“Oh, tha all right; I’ll lend you a loose jacket; sorry I have one for everybody.”
“I’d sooner not, thank you.”
“Nonsense! My jacket! Here it is; it will be a little large for you!”
“But, Braulio....”
“You must have it—bother etiquette!” and he thereupon pulled off my coat himself, velis nolis, and buried me in a great striped jacket, through which only my feet and head protruded, and the sleeves of which would probably not permit me to eat. I thanked him; he thought he was doing me a favour.
The days upon which my friend has no visitors he contents himself with a low table, little more than a cobble bench, because he and his wife, as he says, what should they want more? From this little table he carries his food, like water drawn up a well, to his mouth, where it arrives dripping after its long journey; for to imagine that these people keep a proper table and eat comfortably every day in the year is to expect too much. It is easy, therefore, to conceive that the installations of a large table for a dinner-party was an event in that house, so much so that a table at which scarcely eight people could have eaten comfortably had been considered capable of sitting the whole fourteen of us. We had to sit sideways with one shoulder towards the dinner, and the elbows of the guests entered on intimate relationship with each other in the most confiding fashion possible. They put me as in a place of honour between a child five years old, raised on some cushions, which I had to arrange every minute, as the natural restlessness of my youthful neighbour caused them to slip, and one of those men that occupy in this world the room of three, whose corpulency rose from the basis of the armchair (the only one) in which he was sitting as from the point of a needle. The table-napkins which we silently unfolded were new, for they were just as little commodities of daily use, and were pulled by these good gentlemen through a button-hole of their frock-coats to serve as intermediary bodies between the sauces and their broadcloth.
“You will have to do penance, gentlemen,” exclaimed our amphitryon as soon as he had sat down.
“What ridiculous affectation if untrue,” said I to myself; “and if it is true, what folly to invite on friends to do penance.” Unfortunately it was not long before I knew that there was in that expression more truth than my good Braulio imagined. Interminable and of poor taste were the compliments with which, upon passing and receiving each dish, we wearied one another. “Pray help yourself.” “Do me the favour.” “I could think of it.” “Pass it on to the lady.” “Ah, tha right.” “Pardon me.” “Thank you.”
“No ceremony, gentlemen,” exclaimed Braulio, and was the first to dip his spoon into his plate.
The soup was followed by an olla, an assortment of the most savoury impertinences of that most annoying but excellent dish; here was some meat, there some green stuff; here the dried beans,13 there the ham; the chicken to the right, the bacon in the middle, and the Estremaduran sausage to the left. Then came some larded veal, upon which may the curse of Heaven alight, and after this another dish, and another and another and another, half of which were brought over from an hotel, which will suffice to excuse our praising them, the other half made at home by their own maid and a Biscayan wench, a help hired for this festivity, and the mistress of the house, who on such occasions is supposed to have a hand in everything, and can consequently superintend nothing properly.
“You must be indulgent with this dish,” said the latter of some pigeons, “they are a little burnt.”
“But, my dear....”
“I only left them for a moment, and you know what servants are.”
“What a pity this turkey was not half an hour longer before the fire! It was put down too late. And do you think that stew is a little smoked?”
“What can you expect? A woman ca be everywhere at once.”
“Oh, thee excellent!” we all exclaimed, leaving the pieces on our plates—“delicious!”
“This fish is bad.”
“Well, they said in the office of the fresh fish delivery that it had only just arrived; the man there is so stupid!”
“Where does this wine come from?”
“Now there yoe wrong, for it’s....”
“Detestable.”
These short dialogues were accompanied by a number of furtive glances from the husband to acquaint his wife of some negligence, and both tried to give us to understand that they were quite at home in all those formulæ which in similar cases are reputed correct, and that all the blunders were the fault of the servants, who can never learn to wait. But these omissions were so numerous, and looks were of such little avail, that the husband had recourse to pinches and kicks, and his wife, who, until the present, had barely succeeded in rising superior to her spouse’s persecution, now became inflamed in the face, and had tears in her eyes.
“Dear madam, do not distress yourself about such trifles,” said her neighbour.
“Ah! I assure you I shall not do this kind of thing in the house again; you do know what it means; another time, Braulio, we’ll dine at the hotel, and then you’ll not have....”
“You, madam, shall do what I....”
“Braulio! Braulio!”
A terrible storm was about to burst; however, all the guests vied with each other in settling these disputes born of the desire to demonstrate the greatest refinement, and of which not the smallest components were Braulio’s mania, and the concluding remark which he again directed to the assembly with regard to the inutility of ceremony, by which he understood being properly served and knowing how to eat. Is there anything more ridiculous than those people who wish to pass for refined in the depths of the crassest ignorance of social usage, and who, to favour you, forcibly oblige you to eat and drink, and will not allow you to do what you like? And why are there people who only care to eat with a little more comfort on birthdays?
To add to all this, the child to my left violently knocked against a dish of ham and tomatoes a saucer of olives, of which one hit one of my eyes, and prevented me seeing clearly for the rest of the day; the stout gentleman to my right had taken the precaution to heap up on the cloth by the side of my bread the crumbs of his own and the bones of the birds which he had picked; and the guest opposite me, who piqued himself on his carving, had taken upon himself to make the autopsy of a capon, or cock, for nobody knew which, and whether by reason of the advanced age of the victim, or the lack of anatomical science of the executioner, the joints would not sever.
“This bird has no joints!” exclaimed the poor wretch, the drops of perspiration running down his face from his struggles, “for the carver is the labourer who digs that I may eat,” and then a wonderful occurrence took place. Upon one of the attacks the fork, as if in resentment, slipped on the animal, which, thus violently despatched, took a flight as in its happier days, and then quietly alighted on the tablecloth, as on a roost in the poultry yard.
The fright was general, and the alarm reached its climax when a sauce-boat, impelled by the bird’s wild career, upset, splashing my snow-white shirt. At this point the carver rose hastily, with a mind to chase the fugitive fowl, and as he precipitated himself upon it, a bottle to the right, which he knocked with his arm, abandoning its perpendicular position, poured out an abundant stream of Valdepeñas14 over the capon and the cloth. The wine ran; the uproar increased; salt was abundantly sprinkled on the top of the wine to save the cloth; to save the table a napkin was inserted below the cloth, and an eminence arose on the site of so many ruins. A terrified maid-servant, who was bidden bear away the capon, now reposing in its own gravy, tilted the dish as she lifted it over me, and an accursed shower of grease descended like the dew upon the meadows to leave lasting traces on my pearl-grey pantaloons. The anguish and confusion of the girl are beyond bounds; she withdraws, unsuccessful in her excuses, and, turning round, collides with the waiter, who is carrying a dozen clean plates and a salver for the dessert wines, and the whole machine comes to the ground with the most horrible clatter and commotion.
“By St. Peter!” roars our host, and a mortal pallor diffused itself over his features, while a fire broke out on his wif face. “But no matter; let us continue, friends,” said he, calming down.
Oh, honest homes where a modest olla and a single dish constitute the daily happiness of a family, shun the perturbation of a birthday dinner-party! The custom of eating well and being well served every day can alone avert similar discomfiture.
Are there any more disasters? Alas, there are for my miserable self! Doña Juana, the lady with the black and yellow teeth, holds out to me from her plate and with her own fork a dainty bit, which I am bound to accept and swallow; the child diverts himself by shooting cherry-stones at the eyes of the assembly; Don Leandro makes me taste the delicious orange, which I had refused, squeezed into his glass, which preserves the indelible traces of his greasy lips; my fat friend is smoking, and makes me the flue of his chimney; finally, oh last of miseries! the clamour and uproar increase, voices already hoarse demand couplets and stanzas, and Figaro is the only poet present.
“You must.” “I for you to say something,” they all shout. “Start him with the first line; let him compose a couplet for each of us.” “I’ll start him:
‘To Don Braulio on this day.’”
“Gentlemen, for Heave sake!”
“Ther no getting out of it.”
“I’ve never improvised in my life.”
“Do play the bashful.”
“I shall go.”
“Lock the door. He sha’n’t leave the room till he recites something.”
And so I repeat some verses at last, and vomit absurdities, which they praise, and the smoke, the hubbub, and the purgatory increases.
Thank Heavens, I succeed in escaping from this new pandemonium. At last I again breathe the pure air of the street; there are now no more lunatics, no more Old Castilians around me.
“Ye gods, I thank you!” I exclaimed, breathing freely like a stag who has just escaped a dozen dogs and can barely hear their distant barks. “Henceforward I do not pray for riches, office, or honours. But deliver me from those houses in which a dinner-party is an event, in which a decent table is only laid for visitors, in which they think they are doing you a good turn while they are doing you a bad one, in which they are over-polite, in which they recite verses, in which there are children, in which there are fat men, in which, finally, there reigns the brutal frankness of the Old Castilians! If I fall again by similar temptations, may I ever lack roast beef, may beefsteaks vanish from this world, may timbales of macaroni be annihilated, may there be no turkeys in Perigueux, nor pies in Perigord, may the wines of Bordeaux dry up, and everybody but myself drink the delicious foam of champagne!”
Mariano José de Larra (Figaro) (1809-1837).