Youth and Egolatry Part 22

"I never stated anything of the kind."

"What is that?"

"No, sir."

"But aren't you Pio Baroja?"

"I am not, sir."

Dicenta turned on his heel and marched back to his seat.

Sometime later, Dicenta and I became friends, although we were never very intimate, because he felt that I did not appreciate him at his full worth. And it was the truth.

THE POSTHUMOUS ENMITY OF SAWA

I met Alejandro Sawa one evening at the Cafe Fornos, where I had gone with a friend.

As a matter of fact, I had never read anything which he had written, but his appearance impressed me. Once I followed him in the street with the intention of speaking to him, but my courage failed at the last moment.

A number of months later, I met him one summer afternoon on the Recoletos, when he was in the company of a Frenchman named Cornuty.

Cornuty and Sawa were conversing and reciting verses; they took me to a wine-shop in the Plaza de Herradores, where they drank a number of gla.s.ses, which I paid for, whereupon Sawa asked me to lend him three pesetas. I did not have them, and told him so.

"Do you live far from here?" asked Alejandro, in his lofty style.

"No, near by."

"Very well then, you can go home and bring me the money."

He issued this command with such an air of authority that I went home and brought him the money. He came to the door of the wine-shop, took it from me, and then said:

"You may go now."

This was the way in which insignificant bourgeois admirers were treated in the school of Baudelaire and Verlaine.

Later again, when I brought out _Sombre Lives_, I sometimes saw Sawa in the small hours of the morning, his long locks flowing, and followed by his dog. He always gripped my hand with such force that it did me some hurt, and then he would say to me, in a tragic tone:

"Be proud! You have written _Sombre Lives_."

I took it as a joke.

One day Alejandro wrote me to come to his house. He was living on the Cuesta de Santo Domingo. I betook myself there, and he made me a proposition which was obviously preposterous. He handed me five or six articles, written by him, which had already been published, together with some notes, saying that if I would add certain material, we should then be able to make up a book of "Parisian Impressions," which could appear under the names of us both.

I read the articles and did not care for them. When I went to return them, he asked me:

"What have you done?"

"Nothing. I think it would be difficult for us to collaborate; there is no possible bond of unity in what we write."

"How is that?"

"You are one of these eloquent writers, and I am not."

This remark gave great offence.

Another reason for Alejandro's enmity was an opinion expressed by my brother, Ricardo.

Ricardo wished to paint the portrait of Manuel Sawa in oils, as Manuel had marked personality at that time, when he still wore a beard.

"But here am I," said Alejandro. "Am I not a more interesting subject to be painted?"

"No, no, not at all," we all shouted together--this took place in the Cafe de Lisboa--"Manuel has more character."

Alejandro said nothing, but, a few moments later, he rose, looked at himself in the gla.s.s, arranged his flowing locks, and then, glaring at us from top to toe, while he p.r.o.nounced the letter with the utmost distinctness, he said simply:

"M...." and walked out of the cafe.

Some time pa.s.sed before Alejandro heard that I had put him into one of my novels and he conceived a certain dislike for me, in spite of which we saw each other now and then, always conversing affectionately.

One day he sent for me to come and see him. He was living in the Calle del Conde Duque. He was in bed, already blind. His spirit was as high as before, while his interest in literary matters remained the same. His brother, Miguel, who was present, happened to say during the conversation that the hat I wore, which I had purchased in Paris a few days previously, had a flatter brim than was usual. Alejandro asked to examine it, and busied himself feeling of the brim.

"This is a hat," he exclaimed enthusiastically, "that a man can wear with long hair." Some months subsequent to his death a book of his, _Light Among the Shadows_, was published, in which Alejandro spoke ill of me, although he had a good word for _Sombre Lives_.

He called me a country-man, said that my bones were misshapen, and then stated that glory does not go hand in hand with tuberculosis. Poor Alejandro! He was sound at heart, an eloquent child of the Mediterranean, born to orate in the lands of the sun, but he took it into his head that it was his duty to make himself over into the likeness of one of the putrid products of the North.

SEMI-HATRED ON THE PART OF SILVERIO LANZA

A mutual friend, Antonio Gil Campos, introduced me to Silverio Lanza.

Silverio Lanza was a man of great originality, endowed with an enormous fund of thwarted ambition and pride, which was only natural, as he was a notably fine writer who had not yet met with success, nor even with the recognition which other younger writers enjoyed.

The first time that I saw Lanza, I remember how his eyes sparkled when I told him that I liked his books. n.o.body ever paid any attention to him in those days.

Silverio Lanza was a singular character. At times he seemed benevolent, and then again there were times when he would appear malignant in the extreme.

His ideas upon the subject of literature were positively absurd. When I sent him _Sombre Lives_, he wrote me an unending letter in which he attempted to convince me that I ought to append a lesson or moral, to every tale. If I did not wish to write them, he offered to do it himself.

Silverio thought that literature was not to be composed like history, according to Quintilian's definition, _ad narrandum_, but _ad probandum_.

When I gave him _The House of Aizgorri_, he was outraged by the optimistic conclusion of the book, and advised me to change it.

According to his theory, if the son of the Aizgorri family came to a bad end, the daughter ought to come to a bad end also.

Being of a somewhat fantastical turn of mind, Silverio Lanza was full of political projects that were extraordinary.