B0040702LQ EBOK (37 page)

As I write these lines, I am fighting in Indochina. For some
time now, I've been drinking less and I'm even thinking
vaguely of sorting out my life. I feel trapped in the military organisation to which I belong, yet I haven't the courage to
desert. For the first time since the events of that night, I feel
I'm progressing towards a certain serenity which allows me to
ask myself certain questions without going mad. At first, I
used to scream those questions aloud, and was carted off to
hospital. Then I decided to take refuge in silence; but in spite
of everything, I believe that my secret, however hard I try to
conceal it, is obvious; although I must say that for some years
now people have been fairly tolerant of my `eccentricities'.
I'm considered unsociable, that's all.

I've sometimes tried to recreate my plays from memory,
and I put my failure down to the fact that my memory
never was very good, except for remembering things whose
loss brought me suffering: so the results have not been
encouraging. I've only managed to write some vague approximations, a few crude, meaningless scenes. (As for thinking up
new plays, I have never even contemplated it.) Some time ago,
a Spaniard was attached to my company; when I asked about
books of mine published in M ... , he said he had never heard
of them, nor, of course, of me. Incidentally, he was killed in the
latest outbreak of fighting; a grenade shattered his skull. He's
buried a few yards from where I'm sitting.

I'm writing this resting on a box of ammunition, by candlelight, during a lull. in the fighting. My thoughts turn to Spain.
I have no idea what's happening there. Drink, misfortune,
prison, war and escape, these have been the building blocks of
the barrier dividing me from my country, ever since I crossed
the Pyrenees on that morning in March, amidst a climate of
terror. No, I have no idea what has happened there since my
departure, and I don't know what's happening now. If I think
about it, I imagine that everything will be just as I knew it,
except that I'm not there; everything is probably still as it was,
but without me, and if I went back it would all be familiar.

Everything still the same, but without me! Or not? I mean,
is someone perhaps taking my place, does he have the same
friends as me, is he writing my plays? I ask that because, a
while ago, I happened to hear that a young dramatist had
written an anti-war play. Who is this young writer? What's his name? What's the title of his work? Mine was The Squadron of the Dead, but, as I mentioned earlier, I've been unable to
reconstruct it. Anyway, is there someone doing in my place
what I did, I mean (I'm finding it hard to put this into words)
doing what I would have done? (In fact, I was right when I
said `what I did'. Often I can still hear the applause ringing in
my ears.) If so, perhaps I am surplus to requirements there, just
as I am here, caught up in a colonialist war which I detest; and
yet...

And yet it would be nice to think I'm missed, that my
absence is felt, that since I was mysteriously removed from
that world, my absence has left a gap, at least in the affections
of my friends. I think of Dr. H., for example. Is he still alive?
Has he been given his Chair at the university in that town?
And if that is the case, would he recognise me if I turned up
now, but what do I mean when I say `now'?

Am I truly missed in that world? Does anyone grieve for
my absence? Do they say I `mysteriously disappeared'? Will
they have searched for my body? Will my obituary have
appeared? Or was I never really there? Even for the friends I
used to meet in the cafe? Are some of them feeling the same
anguish as I do now (again it feels odd to say `now'), exiled in
other places? I pose all these questions with a serenity which,
as I stated, I have only recently achieved. In any case, ever since
the events that led to my stay in the psychiatric hospital, I've
learned to be very careful about what I say to other people.

Well, my plan is to go back, if I get out of this alive. I can
hear shots; maybe we're in for a hot time tonight. I'll land, if
possible, somewhere near that quiet little university town, and
I'll drive without looking to left or right straight to the tavern,
because I know that for me there is no other way in, and that
if I went anywhere else (the capital city where I enjoyed
my modest successes, my home), it would be like a horrible
wall bearing down on me, a wall composed of everything
that is alien, strange and unknown. As I say, I'll go into the
little tavern. Senor P. will be dead, and I'll be really pleased to
hear that, and I'll drink to decay and to dear, gloomy old
Heraclitus! And they will have renovated the place, and the girl won't be young any more, she'll be a plump matron, who
doesn't remember me at all; and, naturally, I won't try to jog
her memory. Afterwards, I'll go back to the hotel (where I'm
sure I have a room booked), to rest after my conversation with
the young people and the slight effort my lecture represented
(I should have planned it mentally on the train; I feel it was
dull and repetitive because I didn't do that).

I hope that when I get to the station, early in the morning,
my friend Dr H. will be there, waiting to see me off. And I'll
go back, after this strange exile, to my life, my plays and all that
is familiar.

© Alfonso Sastre

Translated by Annella McDermott

Alfonso Sastre (Madrid, 1926) is a politically committed
playwright, who continued to live and write in Spain during
the Franco period, when many other intellectuals from the
left chose exile. His Escuadra hacia la muerte (1953) is an antiwar play, set during `the next war' and was first performed by
a University theatre group which Sastre himself had helped
set up. The play was subsequently banned, and, in fact,
although the texts were published, Sastre's plays were rarely
performed in Franco's Spain. Sastre has also written critical
articles and essays, and a book of short stories, Las noches
lugubres (1973), from which this story is taken.

Author's note

Someone had to write about Cervantes' wife's chickens and
one of the avant-garde movements (surrealism) has provided
me, normally so hostile to all such movements, with the way
to do it.

Cervantes deserves recognition at least in the small things,
since, as regards the large things, he was ignored during
his lifetime and received recognition only after his death,
when acclaim came from abroad and from foreign critics and
philosophers.

An all too frequent occurrence in Spain.

I have always been troubled by Dona Catalina de Salazar's
insistence on including her chickens in the marriage contract
and I have taken it as clear evidence of the kind of ignominy to which any man of imagination in Spain has always
been exposed, at least amongst certain sections of the socalled middle classes: for there was already a middle class in
sixteenth-century Spain.

I have referred to surrealism as part of the avant-garde, but
the truth is that it has been in existence from Apuleius' The
Golden Ass to Dostoevski's `The Crocodile'. The only
addition made by the modern school is a slightly lyrical
dimension created by an out-of-focus way of looking at real
objects or by their deliberate distortion.

This lyrical dimension is absent from `Cervantes' Chickens'
for the simple reason that the incident is, by its nature, too
sordid to require any distortion. Or perhaps the reason lies in
my feelings of resentment, as a Cervantes enthusiast, which do not permit me to offer any poetic relief to the stupidity of that
poor woman, Dona Catalina de Salazar.

The fact is that the chickens in the margin of the marriage
contract have been crowing now for more than three centuries, crying out for a chronicler, as I said to Americo Castro
when he mentioned to me how little had been written about
Cervantes' private life.The only noteworthy, insightful comment that has been made, or which I recall, is that one of the
dukes to whom Cervantes dedicated his finest work did not
even bother to thank him, although the duke's assured place
in history is due entirely to that dedication. Without it, he
would long ago have been forgotten.

In Spain, more than in any other country, glory is the sun
of the dead. That sun shines very rarely during the lifetimes
of heroes, poets or saints, be they Hernan Cortes, Pizarro,
Miguel Servet, Gracian or Cervantes. The envy of their contemporaries usually clouds the atmosphere.

Sometimes it becomes almost suffocating.

Especially the atmosphere breathed by Don Miguel de
Cervantes Saavedra, who, after all his failures and disasters, was
able to give us, in Don Quixote, a sublime self-caricature as
the thwarted (but undefeated) gentleman.

He taught us too that not all those who play the fool in the
name of God - humanitarian idealists - necessarily go to hell.
Cervantes' heaven is vast, it surrounds the entire planet and is
peopled by angels who repeat Don Quixote's words in every
language in the world.

As a reward for his desire for symmetry - which exists in
the moral world as it does in the physical world - Cervantes
(who sought his Dulcinea in vain) was given, begging her
pardon, the most stupid wife in all of La Mancha.

At first, what was happening to Cervantes' wife, Dona
Catalina, seemed merely rather strange, then it became
alarming and, ultimately, bizarre and incredible.

But it was true and can be confirmed by documents of the
period.

For Dona Catalina de Salazar was turning into a chicken.
Putting it bluntly like that may seem a little shocking,
especially when one considers the chicken's rather libidinous
reputation. The natural habits of chickens tend to be judged
unfairly. I mean that Dona Catalina was a chaste and, above
all, a faithful wife. I should have used the expression `poultry
bird' and avoided the word `chicken' altogether, or used `hen'
instead, since that word has some attenuating grace. How to
say these things, however, is the least of the problem.

With all these provisos and with all due respect, the fact is
that Dona Catalina de Salazar was turning into a chicken, and
if Cervantine scholars have not as yet come up with an
explanation, one day they will with the help of the documents
I have been able to gather together to the astonishment of
laymen and to the satisfaction of scholars. The truth before all
else.

Cervantes never spoke of this transformation, which began
on the very day he read the marriage contract, where his
brother-in-law, the cleric, had set down the bride's possessions, including five wool mattresses, six straw mattresses, a
few reams of writing paper and two pigs that came and went
in the yard.

On the day of the wedding, when the guests had all left, one
person remained sitting in the corner of the room: an uncle of
Dona Catalina called Don Alonso de Quesada y Quesada,
whose family name suggests that his parents were first cousins,
which may go a little way to explaining some of his eccentricities. He was a tall, thin, robust man with a noble, slightly
crazed expression and he was dressed half as a military
gentleman and half as a courtier.

Impressed by the man's decorative presence and by his silence, Cervantes had initially regarded him with great
respect.

But something unexpected happened. When they were
about to sign the marriage contract, the bride paused with
quill in mid-air when she heard her imposing uncle say the
first and last words he would utter that day:

`Count the chickens and note them down too.'

Cervantes was confused for a moment when he saw the old
serving woman approach the gentleman and whisper in his
ear the number of fowl in the yard. Cervantes was deeply
impressed by the secrecy surrounding the act. Don Alonso
went over to the desk and, in the margin of the marriage
contract, alongside the list of items in the dowry and the
trousseau, he wrote: twenty-nine chickens. Half-recovered
from his perplexity, Cervantes raised his eyebrows a little and,
pointing to the contract, said: