THE SOLITARY AND OTHER SKETCHES

BY AZORIN

Translated From the Spanish by Katie Lush

THE SOLITARY

HE lived opposite our house; and was a neat, silent man, always accompanied by two dogs; his chief pleasure lay in planting a great many trees. . . . Every day, at a fixed time, he sat in the casino garden, rather melancholy, rather tired; after a while he began to play on a little whistle. And then a strange thing happened: all the birds in the garden-bushes joined gaily in, twittering and singing; he walked about scattering crumbs for them which he had brought in his pockets. He knew them all: the birds, the two quiet greyhounds, and the trees were his only friends; he called the birds by name as they fluttered about on the fine sand; lovingly he chid this one for not having come the previous day, and greeted that other one who came to-day for the first time. And when they had all eaten he got up and moved slowly away, followed by his two great, silent dogs.

He had done much good in the town; but men are inconstant and unkind. And one day, disgusted and embittered by their ingratitude, he went away to the country. Now he never set foot in the town and never held any communion with men; he led a solitary life among the leafy arbours he had planted and cared for. And in case this might be too fragile a dwelling for him, he had a small house built on a mountain top, and waited there for death.

And you will say: "This man hated life with all the strength that was in him." No, no; this man had not lost hope. Every day papers were sent him from the town, I remember. And these daily news sheets were a glimmer of light, they formed a weak knot of love which even those men who most hate men, conserve and to which they owe their persistence on the earth.

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“IT IS LATE”

Often, when I came home—an hour, or half an hour, after
the others had all finished supper—I was scolded because “It was
Late.” In country towns there are too many hours, interminable
stretches of time when one does not know what to do, and never-
theless, it is always late.

Why is it late? For what is it late? To what high emprise
demanding this rigorous account of every minute are we vowed?
What secret destiny weighs on us making us tell the instants one
by one in these static, grey, country towns? I don't know; but
I tell you that this idea of its always being late is the idea at the
base of my life; don't smile at this. And if I look back I see that
to it I owe this incomprehensible anxiety, this eagerness for some-
thing I have never known, this feverishness, this restlessness, this
awful, teasing preoccupation with the interminable succession of
things through the ages.

I must just say this, though I have not come off badly in this
matter: do you know what it is to ill-treat a child? When your
violence has first brought tears to a child's eyes, you have ac-
quainted his spirit with anger, and sadness, and envy, and revenge,
and hypocrisy. And these tears for ever blot out the smiling vision
that he had of life, and gradually, inexorably dissolve that secret,
ineffable communion of spirit that should exist between those
who have brought us into the world and us who come lovingly to
continue their personalities and their ideas.

THE ROAD TO COLLEGE

With the yellowing of the vine-tendrils and the approach of
the grey autumn twilight, my melancholy increased, for I knew
that the time had come for me to go to college. The first time
I made this journey I was eight years old. We drove from
Monóvar to Yecla, down into the valleys, up on to the hills; we
carried our viaticum with us: a tortilla, some fried cutlets, and
sausages.

And as this day of mourning drew near, I saw my linen sorted
and ironed; sheets, pillowsslips, towels, table-napkins. . . . And
then, the day before I was to start, a box with a rough leather

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101

cover was brought down from the attic and my mother packed
my clothes in it, very carefully. I must mention the table silver
too; I sometimes now look meditatively at the sideboard and see
there the set of well-worn table silver that served me for eight
years; I see it always with an uprush of true affection.

From Monóvar to Yecla is a six or eight hours' journey: we
started as dawn was breaking; we arrived early in the afternoon.
The carriage bumped over sunken stones; we stopped occasionally
under an olive-tree to eat some lunch. And I have a very pleasant
recollection of how, from a high, stony recess about half way along
our road, we could faintly see, over there on the far edge of the dark
pastureland, the white points of the buildings and the huge cupola
of the *Iglesia Nueva* shining in the sunlight.

Then trouble past words descended on me; I felt as if I had
been suddenly torn from the delights of paradise and thrust into
the darkness of a gloomy cave. I remember how once I tried
to run away; the old servant who used to take me still laughs
as he tells me the tale. I jumped from the carriage and ran across
country; he caught me and said between his roars of laughter:
"No, no, Antoñito, we have to go to Yecla!"

But indeed we *did* have to go to Yecla: the carriage drove on,
and once again I entered the city of dreadful night, once again I
saw myself irremediably one link in an endless chain, pacing the
wide cloisters, or seated, silent and unstirring, on a bench in the
hall of studies.

FATHER CARLOS

The first scholastic priest I saw when I entered college was
Father Carlos Lasalde, the learned archaeologist. I have very
pleasant, very kindly recollections of Father Lasalde. He was old
and thin, he had a fine head, and speaking, intelligent eyes; he used
to pace silently up and down the wide cloisters, taking very short
steps; his gestures and manners were incommunicably gentle. There
was something in his glance, in the inflexions of his voice—after-
wards, much later, when I came to study him, I saw this clearly—
a tinge of melancholy that hushed even the noisiest of children,
surprised and submissive at his side. It would appear that Destiny
took particular pleasure in confronting me, on the threshold of
life, with saddened, resigned, submissive men. . . .

102

When Father Carlos Lasalde saw me in the Rector's parlour, he took my hand and drew me to him; then he laid his hand on my head, and I don't know what he said, but I can see him now bend smiling over me looking at me with clear, melancholy eyes. I looked at him later, from a distance, with secret veneration, as he went noiselessly through the big halls, in his hemp-soled shoes, his head bowed over a book.

But Father Lasalde did not stay long at the college. When he went, there remained only the Egyptian statues, rigid, symmetrical, hieratic, which he had found in his excavations of the Cerro de los Santos. Perhaps his homesick soul found some distraction in reconstructing those bygone ages, and recognized in those sad, stone priests and philosophers, his brothers down the ages in irony and hope.

## YECLA

"Yecla"—some novelist has said—"is a depressing town." It is indeed; my mind was formed in this town. It has wide streets lined by sordid houses or dilapidated old ruins; part of the town lies on the skirt of a barren mountain; part spreads out over a small green field which only serves to make more wearisome the great, grey, olive-inlaid stretch of flat seed-land.

The town possesses ten or twelve churches; their bells ring at all hours; labourers go by in their brown capes; devout women come and go. And every little while a sad-faced man runs through the streets, ringing a little bell announcing the death of one of our neighbours.

In Holy Week this inheritance of melancholy attains its consummation; long lines of men in hooded gowns of black, maroon, or yellow, walk in procession, carrying bleeding Christs and dolorous Virgins; bugles wail hoarsely in the distance; bells toll; in the arms over the flags in the semi-darkness of the nave, and devout women sigh, weep, and kiss the nail-pierced feet.

This melancholy, enduring through the centuries in a poor town where winters are cruel, food scarce, the houses roofless, has formed, as it were, an age-old deposit, an impenetrable atmosphere of pain, resignation, mute, intolerable renunciation of the quivering nerves of life.

## AZORIN

103

### GOOD MANNERS

"Señor Azorín: do you think your attitude is academic?"

I think nothing about it; but I uncross my legs, sit still, and look at the priest who is teaching us.

Then he explains to me how young men ought to sit, and how they ought to stand. I have already acquired a few ideas on the subject; I have in my desk a little book entitled: Manual of Etiquette; four or six copies of this work have passed through my hands. What did I do with them? I don't know.

But I do distinctly remember some of the information the book contained; I found it among my papers some years later and looked through it again.

"When should you fold your arms?" the author asked; and he answered his question on the next line: "I should fold my arms in every act of religion, whether in church or elsewhere and in literary exercises when my teacher tells me to do so."

I must confess that I have never had any opportunity to fold my arms in any literary exercise I have ever tried. What are the exercises to which the author refers? What are the exercises that one does with one's arms folded? These questions I asked myself then; afterwards, with the lapse of time, I seem to myself to have performed several literary exercises, but I never remember to have carried out this author's recommendation.

Nor have I carried it out in respect of putting the hands in the trouser pockets; that was a fearful crime in the opinion of the writer of the Manual.

"To keep one's hands in one's trouser pockets, especially when sitting," he said, "is undignified, and something worse." And having uttered this anathema, he added indulgently:

"To put them in the pockets of one's coat is quite another matter. . . ."

I treasure this book as a precious relic of my childhood.

### MY TASTE IN BOOKS

A moment ago the master left the room; there is nothing in life comparable to these brief, delicious breathing-spaces that we boys enjoy when the abominable man who keeps us quiet and motionless

104

on our benches, leaves us. To the violent posture of submission, to the carefully moderated gestures, succeed freedom of movement, mad leaping, expansive faces. To lethal inaction succeeds life, full and impulsive. And this life, here among ourselves, in this sun-lit classroom, in this moment of the master's absence, expresses itself in jumping on benches, banging desks, running like mad things from one part of the room to another.

All the same I do not run, nor shout, nor bang; I have an obsession. My obsession is to see what the little book in my pocket has to tell me. I cannot remember who gave me the book, nor when I began to read it; but I do know that this book interested me profoundly because it was about witches, enchantments, mysterious magic arts. Did it have a yellow cover? Yes, yes, indeed it had; this detail has not slipped from my brain.

And it is a fact that I open this little book and begin to read it in the deafening hurly-burly of excited boys; I have never experienced a delight so profound, so genuine, so intense, as I experienced reading this book. . . . And suddenly, in my absorption, I feel a hand fall brutally on the book; I raise my eyes to find that the uproar has subsided, and the master has wrested my treasure from me.

I shall not speak of my anguish, nor attempt to exaggerate the profound impression—an impression that stays with him through life—made on a child's mind by such sudden transitions from pleasure to pain.

## THE AWAKENERS

When I stayed all night at my uncle Antonio's, as I did occasionally, if it were the eve of a fiesta, I used to hear in the early morning—those long, winter dawns—the song of the Awakeners, that is of the peasants who formed the Confraternity of the Rosary, and who are so called by the vulgar. I do not know who composed the work of a musician who was a little mad. . . .

I used to hear it as I lay hunched up in bed between the scratchy linen sheets with their little roughnesses; I used to sleep in the sala; over the mantel was a large canvas of Christ among rough soldiers; the bed was a large one, wooden, painted green and

## AZORIN

105

yellow; I remember that the water jug, which used to stand in the corner, was always empty.

At first one became aware of a distant murmur, like the humming of a swarm of flies, accompanied by the tinkling of a bell; then the voices became more distinctly audible; and at last, quite close, under the balcony, the choir burst into full voice, supplicating, mournful, tremulous:

> "Do not leave us, Mary Mother!
> Look down on us with mercy mild. . . "

they sang with rapt fervour. And I listened, stirred to the core of my being by the torturing music; music of barbaric sadness, the work of a mystic who was a little mad.

I heard it there, under my window for a moment, then, slowly, it faded into the distance till it was no more than a thin, scarcely perceptible lament.

A little later the hammers began to ring on the anvils in the smithy next door; they were putting an edge on the ploughs the country people had brought in with them on the Saturday. And a little later still, a vague, indefinite pallor began to show in the open section of the window.

## "AZORIN IS QUEER"

When the mistress of the house says to me: "Leave your hat," I am acutely miserable. Where do I leave it? How do I leave it? I am sitting rigid on the extreme edge of an arm-chair; I hold my stick between my legs and my hat is on my knee. How am I to leave it? And where? On the walls I see paintings of flowers done by the daughter of the house; the ceiling is adorned with blue clouds among which a few swallows are flying. I wriggle a little on my chair and reply to a remark the lady has made: "It has indeed been very hot this year." Then, during a pause, I examine the furniture. And now a fearful thought disturbs me: this clamorous new furniture symmetrically placed—or, what is even worse, placed with studied lack of symmetry—this furniture picked up in bazaars and novelty shops, I should certainly not wish to have to give an opinion on it. What could I find to say

106 THE SOLITARY AND OTHER SKETCHES

about these appalling double chairs with their inverted backs,
painted to resemble white mother-of-pearl, and which no elegant
house can be without? What am I to think of the vases on the
mantelpiece, and the little china figures? The man of the house
breaks the silence, asking my opinion of the recent crisis; I clutch
at his words as a drowning man at a straw, hoping to be rescued
from the internal conflict that is dragging me under; but I find I
have no opinion about the recent crisis.

Another long silence follows. While it endures, I stroke the
head of my stick. In the end the lady makes some frivolous re-
mark, and I answer with another monosyllable.

Why should I make these visits? No, no, these sensations of
my boyhood are too present with me. I have never had any inclina-
tion to pay visits; I can think of nothing in these rooms where swa-
lows are painted on the ceiling, and can find nothing to say to these
people in reply to their remarks. And that is why, when some-
one tells them that I am very clever—a thing I do not believe—
they assent discreetly; and shake their heads and add: "Yes, yes;
but Azorín is queer."

THE THREE CASKETS

If I were asked to resume the sensations of my childhood in
these dark, dingy towns, I should not be very ready with an
answer. I should simply write down the following phrases:

"How late it is!"

"What can we do?"

"Now he'll be going to die!"

Perhaps these three phrases seem strange to the reader; but
they are not really strange at all; they resume briefly the psychology
of the Spanish race; they indicate resignation, sadness, submission,
the paralysing idea of death. I have no wish to build up any
vague philosophy; I dislike theories and generalizations, for I
know that circumstances unknown to me may possibly change the
course of events; or that a profounder mind than mine might infer
from the particulars that I assemble, laws and corollaries very
different from those I infer. I have no wish to construct any
nebulous philosophy: let each one of us, rather, see in events his
own ideas. But I do personally believe that our racial melancholy

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is a product—as Baltasar Gracián has suggested—of our parched
land; and that the idea of death is an immediate, inevitable
corollary of melancholy. And this idea, the idea of death, reigns
over every Spanish country town with absolute, despotic sway.
As a child, I often heard someone say that a neighbour or a friend
was sick; immediately the person speaking or the person spoken to,
after an instant's hesitation, would add:

"Now he'll be going to die!"

And this is one of the three apophthegms, one of the three
mysterious, unbreakable caskets in which the mentality of our
race is locked.

LINES

BY SCOFIELD THAYER

Rarely her fingers troubled
The quality of my dream,
Rarely her anguish troubled
The anger of my theme;

Rarely the muted folly
Of thought split wide astray
Troubled the melancholy
Of my deep-sunken day;

Rarely I heard the calling
Of dreams that broke the night,
Rarely the thunder crawling
Riven with foreign light;

Rarely I listed musing
And emptied my heart a while,
Rarely the night confusing
With a forgotten smile.