Youth and Egolatry Part 16

"What is your name?" he shouted, shaking me vigorously.

I could not answer because of my fright.

"What is his name?" the priest demanded of the other boys.

"His name is Antonio Garcia," replied my brother Ricardo, coolly.

"Where does he live?"

"In the Calle de Curia, Number 14."

There was no such place, of course.

"I shall see your father at once," shouted the priest, and he rushed out of the cathedral like a bull.

My brother and I then made our escape through the cloister.

This red-faced priest, fat and ferocious, rus.h.i.+ng out of the dark to choke a nine-year-old boy, has always been to me a symbol of the Catholic religion.

This experience of my boyhood partly explains my anti-clericalism. I recall Don Tirso with an undying hate, and were he still alive--I have no idea whether he is or not--I should not hesitate to climb up to the roof of his house some dark night, and shout down his chimney in a cavernous voice: "Don Tirso! You are a d.a.m.ned villain!"

A VISIONARY ROWDY

I was something of a rowdy as a boy and rather quarrelsome. The first day I went to school in Pamplona, I came out disputing with another boy of my own age, and we fought in the street until we were separated by a cobbler and the blows of a leather strap, to which he added kicks.

Later, I foolishly quarrelled and fought whenever the other boys set me on. In our stone-throwing escapades on the outskirts of the town, I was always the aggressor, and quite indefatigable.

When I began to study medicine, I found that my aggressiveness had departed completely. One day after quarrelling with another student in the cloisters of San Carlos, I challenged him to fight. When we got out on the street, it struck me as foolish to goad him to hit me in the eye or else to land on my nose with his fist, and I slipped off and went home. I lost my morale as a bully then and there. Although I was a fighter from infancy, I was also something of a dreamer, and the two strains scarcely make a harmonious blend.

Before I was grown, I saw Gisbert's Death of the Comuneros reproduced as a chromo. For a long, long while, I always seemed to see that picture hanging in all its variety of colour on the wall before me at night. For months and months after my vigil with the body of the man who had been garroted outside of Pamplona, I never entered a dark room but that his image rose up before me in all its gruesome details. I also pa.s.sed through a period of disagreeable dreams. Some time would elapse after I awoke before I was able to tell where I was, and I was frightened by it.

SARASATE

It was my opinion then, and still is, that a fiesta at Pamplona is among the most vapid things in the world.

There was a mixture of incomprehension and culture in Pamplona, that was truly ridiculous. The people would devote several days to going to bull fights, and then turn about, when evening came, and welcome Sarasate with Greek fire.

A rude and fanatical populace forgot its orgy of blood to acclaim a violinist. And what a violinist! He was one of the most effeminate and grotesque individuals in the world. I can see him yet, strutting along with his long hair, his ample rear, and his shoes with their little quarter-heels, which gave him the appearance of a fat cook dressed up in men's clothes for Carnival.

When Sarasate died he left a number of trinkets which had been presented to him during his artistic career--mostly match-boxes, cigarette cases, and the like--which the Town Council of Pamplona has a.s.sembled and now exhibits in gla.s.s cases, but which, in the public interest, should be promptly disposed of at auction.

ROBINSON CRUSOE AND THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND

During my life in Pamplona, my brother Ricardo imparted his enthusiasm for two stories to me. These were _Robinson Crusoe_ and Jules Verne's _The Mysterious Island_, or rather, I should say they were _The Mysterious Island_ and _Robinson Crusoe_, because we preferred Jules Verne's tale greatly to Defoe's.

We would dream about desert islands, about manufacturing electric batteries in the fas.h.i.+on of the engineer Cyrus Harding, and as we were not very certain of finding any "Granite House" during the course of our adventures, Ricardo would paint and paint at plans and elevations of houses which we hoped to construct in its place in those far-off, savage lands.

He also made pictures of s.h.i.+ps which we took care should be rigged properly.

There were two variations of this dream of adventure--one involving a snow-house, with appropriate episodes such as nocturnal attacks by bears, wolves, and the like, and then we planned a sea voyage.

I rebelled a long time at the notion that my life must be like that of everybody else, but I had no recourse in the end but to capitulate.

IX

AS A STUDENT

I was never more than commonplace as a student, inclining rather to be bad than good. I had no great liking for study, and, to tell the truth, I never entertained any clear idea of what I was studying.

For example, I never knew what the word preterite meant until years after completing my course, although I had repeated over and over again that the preterite, or past perfect, was thus, while the imperfect was thus, without having any conception that the word preterite meant past--that it was a past that was entirely past in the former case, and a past that was past to a less degree in the latter.

To complete two years of Latin grammar, two of French, and one of German without having any conception of what preterite meant, demonstrated one of two things: either my stupidity was very great, or the system of instruction deplorable. Naturally, I incline toward the second alternative.

While preparing to take my degree in medicine, when I was studying chemical a.n.a.lysis, I heard a student, who was already a practising physician, state that zinc was an element which contained a great deal of hydrogen. When the professor attempted to extricate him from his difficulty, it became apparent that the future doctor had no idea of what an element was. My cla.s.smate, who doubtless entertained as little liking for chemistry as I did for grammar, had not been able throughout his entire course to grasp the definition of an element, as I had never been able to comprehend what a preterite might be.

For my part--and I believe that all of us have had the same experience--I have never been successful in mastering those subjects which have not interested me.

Doubtless, also, my mental development has been slow.

As for memory, I have always possessed very little. And liking for study, none whatever. Sacred history, or any other history, Latin, French, rhetoric and natural history have interested me not at all. The only subjects for which I cared somewhat, were geometry and physics.

My college course left me with two or three ideas in my head, whereupon I applied myself to making ready for my professional career, as one swallows a bitter dose.

In my novel, _The Tree of Knowledge_, I have drawn a picture of myself, in which the psychological features remain unchanged, although I have altered the hero's environment, as well as his family relations, together with a number of details.

Besides the defects with which I have endowed my hero in this book, I was cursed with an instinctive slothfulness and sluggishness which were not to be denied.

People would tell me: "Now is the time for you to study; later on, you will have leisure to enjoy yourself; and after that will come the time to make money."

But I needed all three times in which to do nothing--and I could have used another three hundred.