CHAPTER XX PHILOSOPHERS WITHOUT REALIZING THE FACT

THE next evening, Quentin, whose nebulous and Anglomaniacal fever had already quieted down, went to sup at the Café del Recreo.

María Lucena, with her mother and a chorus girl friend were waiting for him.

“Well, you’re pretty late,” said María Lucena as she saw him enter the café.

Quentin shrugged his shoulders, sat down and called the waiter.

María Lucena was the daughter of a farm operator near Cordova. She had little voice, but a great deal of grace in her singing and dancing; a strong pair of hips that oscillated with a quivering motion as she walked, a pale, vague-looking face; and a pair of black, shining eyes. María Lucena married a prompter, who after three or four months of wedded life, considered it natural and logical that he should live on his wife; but she broke up the combination by throwing him out of the house.

The girl who accompanied María Lucena in the café was a chorus girl of the type that soon stand out from their sisters and begin to take small parts. She was a small woman, with very lively black eyes, a thin nose, a mouth with a mocking smile that lifted the commissures[212] of her lips upward, and black hair adorned with two red carnations.

The old woman with them was María’s mother; fat, wrinkled, and covered with moles, with a lively but suspicious look in her eyes.

Quentin began to eat supper with the women. His melancholy fit of blues of the day before had left him, but he looked sad for dignity’s sake, and because it was consistent with his character.

María Lucena, who had noticed Quentin’s abstraction, glanced at him from time to time attentively.

“Well, let’s be going,” said María.

The two girls and the old woman arose, as it was time for the entertainment to begin, and Quentin was left alone, distracted by his efforts to convince himself as well as others, that he was very sad.

Then Springer, the Swiss, came in and sat by Quentin’s side.

“What’s the matter?” he said, taking his friend’s funereal look seriously.

“I feel sad today. Yesterday I saw a girl I used to like. The granddaughter of a marquis. She who married Juan de Dios.”

“What then? What happened to you?”

“She looks badly. She won’t last long.”

“The poor little thing!”

In a lugubrious voice Quentin told all about his love affair, heaping on insignificant details, and wearying excuses.

Springer listened to him with a smile. His fine, spiritual countenance changed expression sympathetically with everything his friend said. Then he himself spoke confusedly. Yes, he too had had a romantic love[213] affair, ... a very romantic one, ... with a young lady; but he was only a poor Swiss plebeian.

Any one who heard them would have said that Quentin’s affair had lasted years, and the Swiss’s only days. It was exactly the opposite. Quentin’s fidelity lasted just about two or three months, at the end of which time he began his affair with María Lucena. On the other hand, the Swiss had been faithful for years and years to an impossible love.

As they chatted, Don Gil Sabadía, the arch?ologist, appeared in the café. After shaking hands with the Swiss and with Quentin, he sat down at their table.

“It’s a long time since I have seen you,” he said to Quentin. “How about it—are we gaining ground?”

“Psh! If I could get out....”

“Don’t pay any attention to him today,” said Springer. “He’s full of spleen.”

“Why, what’s the matter?” asked the arch?ologist.

“Women.”

“The females in this city are very attractive, comrade; they are good to look at.”

“They seem insignificant to me,” said Quentin.

“Man alive, don’t say that,” exclaimed the Swiss.

“Pale-faced, rings under their eyes, weak, badly nourished....”

“Will you deny their wit, too?” asked Springer.

“Yes,” answered Quentin. “They make a lot of gestures, and have a fantastic manner of speech that is overloaded with imagery. It’s a sort of negro talk. I always notice that when María Lucena tells something, she compares everything, whether material or not, with something material: ‘it’s better than bread,’ or ‘it has [214]less taste than a squash’ ... everything must be materialized; if not, I don’t believe she would understand it.... She is like a child ... like an impertinent child.”

“What a portrait!” exclaimed the Swiss, laughing.

“Then she makes divisions and subdivisions of everything; every object has twenty names. There is a little bottle of cherry brandy in the house—of that cherry brandy that I hold as something sacred; well, sometimes María calls it ‘the parrot,’ sometimes ‘the greenfinch,’ and sometimes, ‘the green bird.’... And that isn’t all. The other day, pointing to the bottle, she called to her mother from her bed: ‘Mother, bring me that what’s-its-name.’... So you see, for that class of people, language is not language—it is nothing.”

“Doesn’t that indicate inventive genius?” asked the Swiss.

“But what do I want of inventive genius, Springer?” exclaimed Quentin loudly. “Why, a woman doesn’t need inventive genius! All she needs is to be pretty and submissive, and nothing else....”

“You are tremendous,” said the Swiss. “So that for you, a woman’s intelligence is of no account?”

“But that isn’t intelligence! That is to intelligence what the movement of those men who go hopping about nodding to one and talking to another, is to real activity. The former is not intelligence nor is the latter activity. The thing is to have a nucleus of big, strong ideas that direct your life.... As the English have.”

“I have an antipathy for the English,” said the Swiss. “As for Andalusia, I believe that if this country had more culture, it would constitute one of the most comprehensive and enthusiastic of peoples. Other Spaniards are constantly bargaining with their appreciation and[215] admiration; the national vice of Spain is envy. Not so with the Andalusians. They are ready to admire anything.”

“It’s a racial weakness,” exclaimed Quentin. “They are all liars.”

“You, who are an Andalusian, must not say that.”

“I? Never. I am a Northerner. From London, Windsor.... Why did I ever come here?”

María Lucena, her little friend, and her mother came in. The Swiss and Don Gil bowed to them.

“You must defend the Andalusians,” said Springer to the actress; “for Quentin is turning them inside out.”

“What’s he here for, then?” inquired María bitterly.

“That’s just what I was saying,” added Quentin. “What did I come to this city for?”

“I know what all this sadness comes from,” said María Lucena in Quentin’s ear.

“Do you? Well, I’m glad.”

“You saw your cousin yesterday; the one with a face that looks as if she had a sour stomach. They say that she can’t yet console herself for her former sweetheart’s leaving her. That’s why she is so sad.”

Quentin shrugged his shoulders.

“Has she had the baby yet, or is it just dropsy?”

Again Quentin did not deign to answer. She indignantly turned her head away.

“So, because you saw her changed into a worm, you came in so sad and downhearted yesterday, eh?”

“Possibly,” said Quentin coldly.

“If you had seen me in the same condition, you would have felt it less.”

“What intelligence![216]”

“Well, son, it’s time we quit,” replied the actress angrily. “If you think nothing of me, I feel the same way toward you.”

Quentin shrugged his shoulders. The others, seeing the prelude to a tempest, were silent.

María Lucena’s voice grew shrill and disagreeable.

“Do you know what her stepmother, the Countess, said? Well, she said: ‘For all her prudishness, that hussy has married Juan de Dios for his money!’”

“What that female said is not important.”

“All women are just females to you....”

“And it’s true.”

“Well, if you say that about me....”

“Come, come, this is no place for a scene, and don’t shout so.”

“Are you going to strike me? Tell me, are you going to strike me?”

“No; I shall prudently withdraw first,” answered Quentin, rising and getting ready to go.

At this moment Cornejo, the poet, entered the café accompanied by a tall, thin gentleman with an aquiline nose, and a very black and very long beard cut in Moorish fashion. The two came up to the table and sat down.

The poet and the other gentleman had just left the last performance, and were discussing it. Cornejo thought that the musical comedy they had just seen was not altogether bad, the tall man with the black beard insisted that as far as he was concerned it had been superbly wearisome. This gloomy fellow then asserted that for him, life held little promise, and that of all disagreeable and irritating lives, the most irritating and disagreeable was that in a provincial capital; and of all[217] the lives in provincial capitals, the worst was that of Cordova.

In absolute contradiction to Leibnitz and his disciple, Doctor Pangloss, the man with the black beard would have asserted, with veritable conviction, that he lived the worst life in the worst town, in the worst possible of worlds.

“You are right,” said Quentin, with the honest intention of molesting his hearers. “There is nothing so antipathetic as these provincial capitals.”

Don Gil, the arch?ologist, made a gesture of one who does not wish to heed what he hears, and turning to Springer, said:

“You are like me, are you not? A partisan of the antique.”

“In many ways, yes,” replied the Swiss.

“Theirs was a much better life. How wise were our ancestors! Everything classified, everything in order. In the Calle de la Zapatería were the boot-makers; in the Calle de Librerías, the book-sellers; in the Calle de la Plata, the silversmiths. Each line of business had its street; lawyers, bankers, advocates.... Today, everything is reversed. A tremendous medley! There are scarcely any boot-makers in the Calle de la Zapatería, nor are there any book-sellers in the Calle de Librerías. These ?diles change the name of everything.... The Calle de Mucho Trigo, where there used to be warehouses for wheat, today specializes in making taffy. How absurd, Se?or! How absurd! And they call that progress! Nowadays men are endeavouring to wipe out the memory of a whole civilization, of a whole history.”

“What good does that memory do you?” asked the man with the black beard.[218]

“What good does it do me!” cried Don Gil in astonishment.

“Yes, what good does it do you?”

“Merely to show us that we are decadent. Not comparing the Cordova of today with that of the Arabian epoch, but comparing it with that of the eighteenth century, one sees an enormous difference. There were hundreds of looms here then, and factories where they made paper, and buttons, and swords, and leather, and guitars. Today ... nothing. Factories, shops, even mansions have been closed.”

“That may be true; but, Don Gil, why do you want to know these calamities?”

“Why do I want to know them, Escobedo?” cried Don Gil, who was stupefied by the questions of the man with the black beard.

“Yes; I cannot see what good that knowledge does. If Cordova disappears, why, another city will appear. It’s all the same!” Escobedo continued—“Would that we could wipe out history, and with it all the memories that sadden and wither the lives of men and multitudes! One generation should accept from the preceding one that which is useful, that is,—mere knowledge; for example: sugar is refined in this manner, ... potatoes are fried thusly.... Forget the rest. Why should we need them to say: ‘this love you feel, this pain you suffer, this heroic deed you have witnessed, is nothing new at all; five or six thousand other men, exactly like you, felt it, suffered it, and witnessed it.’ What do we gain by that? Will you tell me?”

The arch?ologist shrugged his shoulders.

“I believe you are right,” said Quentin.

“History, like everything else we have to learn, ages[219] us,” Escobedo proceeded. “Knowledge is the enemy of felicity. This state of peace, of tranquillity, which the Greeks called with relation to the organism, euphoria, and with relation to the soul, ataraxia, cannot be attained in any other way than by ignorance. Thus at the beginning of life, at the age of twenty, when one sees the world superficially and falsely, things appear brilliant and worth coveting. The theatre is relatively fine, the music agreeable, the play amusing; but the evil instinct of learning will make one some day peer from the wings and commence to make discoveries and become disillusioned. One sees that the actresses are ugly....”

“Thanks!” interrupted María Lucena, dryly.

“He doesn’t mean you,” Springer assured her.

“And that besides being ugly, they are sad, and daubed with paint,” continued Escobedo, heedless of the interruption. “The comedians are stupid, dull, coarse; the scenery, seen near to, is badly painted. One sees that all is shabby, rickety.... Women seem angels at first, then one thinks them demons, and little by little one begins to understand that they are females, like mares, and cows.... A little worse, perhaps, on account of the human element in them.”

“That’s true,” agreed Quentin.

“You are very indecent,” said María Lucena, rising with an expression of contempt and anger upon her lips. “Adiós! We’re going.”

The three women left the café.

“And the worst of it is,” continued Escobedo, “that they deceive us miserably. They speak to us of the efficacy of strength; they tell us that we must struggle with will and tenacity, in order to attain triumph; and[220] then we find that there are no struggles, nor triumphs, nor anything; that Fate shuffles our destinies, and that the essence of felicity is in our own natures.”

“You see everything very black,” said the Swiss, smiling.

“I think he sees it all as it is,” replied Quentin.

“Then one would find out,” said Escobedo, “that some of the exalted, beautiful things are not as sublime as the poets say they are—love, for instance; and that other humbler and more modest things, which ought to be profoundly real, are not so at all.

“Friendship! There is no such thing as friendship except when two friends sacrifice themselves for each other. Sincerity! That, too, is impossible. I do not believe that one can be sincere even in solitude. Great and small, illustrious and humble, every individual who gazes into a mirror will always see in the glass the reflection of a pretender.”

“I’m with you,” said Quentin.

“I believe,” declared the Swiss, “that you only look upon the dark side of things.”

“I force myself to see both sides,” responded Escobedo—“the bright as well as the dark. I believe that in every deed, in every man, there is both light and darkness; also that there is almost always one side that is serious and tragic, and another that is mocking and grotesque.”

“And what good does that do you?” asked Don Gil.

“A whole lot. From a funereal and lachrymose individual, I am metamorphosing myself into a jolly misanthrope. By the time I reach old age, I expect to be as jolly as a pair of castanets.”

“Greek philosophy!” said Don Gil contemptuously.[221]

“Se?or Sabadía,” replied Escobedo, “you have the right to bother us all with your talk about the signs on the streets of Cordova, and about the customs of our respectable ancestors. Kindly grant us permission to comment upon life in our own fashion.”

“Risum teneatis,” said Don Gil.

“Do you see?” continued Escobedo—“That’s another thing that bothers me. Why does Don Gil have to thrust at us a quotation so common that even the waiters in the café know it?”

The arch?ologist, not deigning to notice this remark, commenced to recite an ancient Cordovese romance that went:
Jueves, era jueves,
día de mercado,
y en Santa Marina
tocaban rebato.

(Thursday, it was Thursday, Market Day, and in the Church of Santa Marina they rang the call to arms.)

Escobedo went on philosophising; a waiter in the café began to pile the chairs upon the tables; another put out the gas, and the customers went out into the street.