Iberia (101 page)

 

‘This is how he looked,’ Dr. Bonet said, handing me a
photograph taken in front of the cathedral one Corpus Christi
day. Gaudí was a small man, a Catalan to be sure, with white hair
and beard, ill at ease in a dark store-made suit and staring intently
into space while those around him attended to the formation of
the parade in which he would march, carrying a long wax taper.
The thing that no one could miss was the way he leaned forward
from his ankles, as if there was work to be done or a quest to be
followed. He never married; he left no coherent account of his
artistic philosophy; only rarely was he able to finish the great
works he began; and he must have been a difficult man to deal
with. But one glance at his iron gate and you know that he was a
poet.

 

In view of what I shall later be saying about another Catalan,
Ramón Llull, I should like to leave Gaudí, who moved me deeply,
as described by Dr. Bonet: ‘He felt the entire Mediterranean to
be at his disposal. Here he used the palm trees of Egypt and the
pillars of Karnak. Byzantium was very much on his mind. And
the caves of Crete and the temples of Greece. He had deep affinity
for the Etruscans, their hard colors and sure touch. Rome was
there, the great builders, the men who were not afraid to throw
aqueducts across valleys. He looked out to the Mediterranean
and was in no way provincial.’

 

I said, when speaking of Córdoba, that I would not bore the
reader with a recital of my disappointments in trying to find a
good performance of flamenco, but what happened when I carried
my quest to a village near Barcelona could not be termed boring.
When friends heard that I was still trying to find authentic
flamenco they proposed a dance hall at the waterfront end of Las
Ramblas, but when I looked at the program I saw that the music
was to be provided by a band called something like Les Greer and
his Dixie Wildcats and the dancer was The Flame of Cádiz, and
I felt that I could forgo that one; but about this time I met one of
Spain’s best-publicized playboys, and he said, ‘Michener, this
country would be humiliated if a serious student like yourself
came here and found no decent flamenco, so I’ve arranged for
the best flamenco party in recent times, and you’re to be guest of
honor.’

 

I was driven to a finca in the country, an exquisite place
overlooking the sea and decorated with animal skins from African
safaris. Four professional bartenders served drinks and the
audience was glittering: three motion-picture stars of world
reputation, several writers whose books were widely known, four
Spanish noblemen including a couple of condes, a famous
bullfighter retired to honor and a score of similar luminaries. We
had convened at midnight and the singing was to last till dawn.
All but a few lights were turned off, and before the music began
we could hear the whispering of the Mediterranean. This was not
one of the legendary gypsy caves of Andalucía, but it was the next
best thing, and my host said, without smiling, ‘If you don’t like
this flamenco you don’t recognize duende when you see it.’

 

I should have been warned when I saw the principal singer.
Instead of a man trained over many years in the intricacies of the
art, a square-built woman of forty appeared, with a voice like a
bullfrog, or worse. She was apparently a great favorite of the
crowd, for when she gave her deep, throaty ‘Adiós, amigos,’ one
of the condes called something and she yelled back, ‘Soy más
macho que todos aquí, y tengo un par de cojones así de grande!’
which a friend translated as ‘I’m more manly than anyone here
and I’ve got the biggest testicles.’

 

Well, flamenco types are sometimes rather tough and I assumed
that this was merely her manner of speaking, and that when the
music began she would sing properly, but the appearance of her
guitarist gave no assurance of this; he was a kind of comedian,
with a rubber face, who could play tricky little passages which
went well with her kind of singing, such as it was. I groaned, and
then the principal girl dancers came out, tall, willowy, beautiful
gypsy girls, thought, and the evening started. I didn’t recognize
the first song, but the others did. It was more like a rock-and-roll
flamenco than what I had hoped for, but with the savage grunting
of the singer and the simplified dancing of the two girls it was
acceptable.

 

It was on about the fifth number that I finally realized that
something was more seriously wrong about this evening than the
beat of the guitar. I was sitting on a Mongolian-style hassock
covered with the skin of a lion which the owner of the finca had
shot, when the prettier of the girls came to stand before me and
dance a sevillana, for which normally she would have had a
partner. After a few steps, which I recognized as something less
than top flamenco, she began a slow motion of her shoulders,
which I had not seen before in this dance. She continued thus for
some minutes and then began to undress, taking off one piece of
clothing after another until she stood about a yardstick from me
wearing only a burlesque G-string, which she proceeded to throw
away while the female singer uttered her guttural nonsense and
the guitarist played a music hall number. After some moments
of dancing for me, as guest of honor, the young lady asked me to
join her, but I did not feel equal to the task, not knowing either
the steps of the flamenco or those she was improvising, but one
of the condes obliged and the pair did a brief fandango of sorts,
after which she picked up her bits of clothing, chucked me under
the chin with her G-string and repaired to a corner, where she
slowly dressed in view of everyone.

 

In this style the flamenco continued till dawn. There were
breaks, during which casually arranged couples drifted off to
nearby rooms, and occasionally one of the guests would take over
the singing or even the guitar playing; once or twice there were
moments of quiet beauty as the second of the strippers sang folk
songs in an appealing voice, once while standing naked by a
window. I remember that there was almost a fight, too. A Catalan
asked a man from Madrid how he liked Barcelona, and the
Madrileño said condescendingly, ‘Este pueblo no es mi pueblo,’
which in Spanish carries a lilting condescension because of its
repetition of words: ‘This town ain’t my town.’‘What’s the matter
with this town?’ the Catalan demanded. ‘It just ain’t my town,’
the Madrileño said, but neither was drunk enough to fight.

 

At eight in the morning, when a cab came to drive me back to
Las Ramblas, my host finally dropped his pose of seriousness and
said, ‘Well, you won’t see another flamenco like this one in a
hurry.’ I laughed, and he said, ‘The singer’s the one who’s famous.
We all love her.’

 

On the way back to town I thought of the contradictory
reputation Spain has in this matter of sex. The country is
advertised abroad as the home of passionate women who click
their heels with impatience, but the press, the Church and political
leaders always speak of Spain in puritanical terms. The highest
moral ideals are preached, yet most men who can afford it
maintain mistresses with the tacit approval of the Church, which
knows how far to go in these matters. The major cities boast of
the absence of prostitutes, yet when a foreign male checks into a
hotel alone he is barely in his room before his phone rings and a
soft voice says, ‘Ello, Señor Brooks of New York. This is
Encarnación. Señor Keller asked me to call you.’ And on all levels
of society there is a circumspect, rather well-behaved circuit of
sexual freedom whose operation I had witnessed this night. From
what I have seen of Spain in action, it seems to me that they handle
the moral problem about as well as any country I’ve visited…if
one can dull his ears to the moral preachments, which at times
grow downright tedious.

 

Under normal circumstances the high point of my stay in
Barcelona would have been the Sagrada Familia, but because of
the agitated political situation the thing I remember most was the
aftermath of a chance meeting that had occurred some months
before in a remote valley northeast of León where the road from
Potes to Riaño crosses the mountain range known as Picos de
Europa. There at a well beside the road I had met a Catalan
university student whom I shall call Pau Lluis Freg. We had talked
politics for some minutes, and after I had answered a chain of his
questions, he said, ‘When you get to Barcelona, look me up. I
have friends who would enjoy talking with you.’ I lost his address,
but one night in the city, as I was about to deliver a speech to an
assembly of students, he appeared suddenly out of a doorway and
with conspiratorial manner said, ‘I shall call on you at your hotel.’

 

Through him I was introduced to student life in Barcelona at
a time when it was under serious stress, and I must make clear,
because people who have never lived under a dictatorship are
sometimes confused as to what happens in a country like Spain
as compared to Russia, that I shall here report only a fragment of
what students told me. We conducted a series of the most frank
and open discussions I have ever held with university people; they
were no more afraid to speak openly and in open places than I
would have been in Pennsylvania, and if in what follows critical
points are left untouched, it was only because I didn’t raise them
or have forgotten what I was told. The muffled hesitancy that I
had known in other countries I did not encounter in Spain; yet
the Spanish students were afraid in other ways and had good cause
to be, for many of their associates were already in jail. If this is a
contradiction, it is merely what I experienced.

 

‘The turmoil in our university is much worse than the
newspapers have dared admit,’ Pau Lluis told me as we walked
through the small streets off Las Ramblas. He was an earnest
young man of twenty, dressed like a conservative English
businessman but with the eyeglasses of a student. ‘There have
been six riots that I know about and my division is closed down
altogether. I don’t know what I shall do for an education.’

 

‘What are you doing now?’

 

‘We protest. We meet near the university, but you
understand…we’re locked out. There are no classes.’

 

‘What happened?’

 

‘Riots. We reached the end of our patience. Really, our
endurance was used up. So there were riots. I think the
administration was with us and could have handled the problem,
but the police saw a chance to get even with us and gave us severe
beatings. Real trouble in the streets. So it was the government
that closed the doors. The police, you might say.’

 

I was vague as to what had caused the riots, for newspaper
accounts had been meager, it being one of those cases in which I
learned more from the
New York Times
than from the Spanish
papers, which were under severe censorship. ‘What are the riots
about? Politics?’

 

Pau Lluis looked at me in astonishment. ‘No! We’re not radicals
or anything like that. We had to strike because we were being
treated with contempt. Let me tell you why I finally struck. I had
four professors, and three of them were swine. True swine. They
came to class about two times in five, and when they did come
they stood at the podium and insulted us. Once I asked a question
about a difficult passage, and the professor shouted, “I am the
professor and I explain when I think it’s necessary. Sit down.” To
show his displeasure he didn’t come back to class for three weeks.’

 

‘Who taught the class?’

 

‘Nobody. If a professor becomes angry, there’s nothing the
students can do.’

 

‘Then how do you learn?’

 

‘You don’t. Time of the examination comes and you’re not
prepared. So you flunk, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’

 

I found this difficult to believe, so Pau Lluis introduced me to
an English boy who was studying at the university and he
confirmed the story. ‘In English universities we were sometimes
treated with infuriating condescension, but here we’re treated as
pigs. The government fears us…hates us, really. In Spain the
educated man is held in contempt.’

 

This was a direct contradiction to what I had been told by Dr.
Fernández-Cruz, who had emphasized the regard in which doctors
were held because they were educated, and I asked about this.
Pau Lluis said, ‘Both points are correct. The Spanish countryside
loves the medical man because he can do something and despises
the scholar because he can do nothing but read. Don’t forget that
Don Quixote was held to be a fool principally because he read
books. The idea still exists.’ At another time he said in frustration,
‘Of all the major countries, Spain has the greatest need for
intelligence, and we distrust our universities, which are the only
agencies that can provide it. Most of those people out there, even
in Barcelona, honestly believe that if the students said their prayers
and listened to the police, they wouldn’t need the university.’

 

I asked whether the riots in Barcelona, which had been
prolonged and violent, had anything to do with Catalan
nationalism, and Pau Lluis laughed. ‘Everywhere I went in the
north, on that trip when I met you, people asked the same
question. In the last four years I haven’t once heard Catalan
separatism mentioned seriously. We used to talk about it in lower
school…the poets…the bad days of betrayal. But now what
sensible man would believe that Cataluña could exist as a separate
state? That’s what you go to university for. To learn some sense.’

 

‘Do you think of yourself as a Catalan? Or as a Spaniard?’

 

‘As a Catalan. An American who studied with us last year said,
“If I hadn’t known Texas, I wouldn’t have understood Cataluña.
They’re Texans first and Americans second. You’re even worse.”
He was right, I suppose. But as a Catalan I’m quite satisfied to be
part of Spain. It could be good for both of us. As a matter of fact,
Spain without Cataluña would be a miserable place.’