The Salzburg Tales (11 page)

But what ails Don Juan? His digestion is perfect! The feast of beaux and actresses that he attended last night, the last of a long series worthy of the bards of antiquity, and even of recent ones like Rabelais, was not likely to upset him, such a green gallant (although now at the age when ladies of pleasure said, “How young you are, Don Juan!”). No, the fat goose-liver and stuffed olives, the crabs, the eels, the river salmon, the seasonings, pheasants, peacocks, ducks with truffles, and cocks in white wine, the creams, profiterolles, pears, and sugar confections, the pastries, tropical fruits and wines are scarcely likely to upset Don Juan's stomach. A delicate, Juan, besides, a scrupulous eater, a grammarian of the oesophagus, one who gives a just and nice attention to the mother of organs, but no more; one who bathes but not drowns his wit, one whose refined sensuality is energetic, not muscle-bound, like a saltimbanque, not a strong-man: at the feast which has been his life he has tasted with one eye, smacked his lips and thrown away all but the taste. Then it is not indigestion, Don Juan (that's amply proved), which dims your eye instantly, like the nictitating membrane closing the eagle's eye! Nor age! At forty-four, Don Juan is a fledgling! The Queen-Mother herself in Madrid last year, ambitious, spoiled and vicious, courted you, and when you rejected her, instead of royal vengeance, she—discretion is valour—but that flower-girl selling bouquets at your door when you came from the theatre was very like, so like her to whom you owe allegiance, valorous Spaniard, that in doubt, you rendered the flower-girl homage for every province in Spain.

Then, not age draws a film over the royal purple heavens where the heraldic sun rides in splendour. Is the weather changing, that minor glissandos and dervish-dancing on the strings issue diabolically from every crevice as you pass by? What ice freezes in your breast, poor hero: what unhorsed harbinger of evil goes whining down the western shades of the arena? What are you dreaming of, Don Juan? The men envy you; the ladies, red and black like lollipops inside their coloured mantillas, paid for, to attract you, by their husbands' ventures in the Levant and the Americas, and their lace smuggled over the Pyrenees, the ladies let their fans move slower as you move past with your blue-black curls rolling over your yellow ruff.

Are you asleep still, Cavalier? Yet you awoke bright and early this morning; refreshed, like a copper cup shining by a public fountain, you were, in the lap of your newest mistress. Who was that mistress, that last of a thousand and more? Can you remember now? No, you are without that grey hair, memory. Was she Olga with hair like silver reefs, from the northern fjords, Anna with snowshoe eyes from beneath the Aurora Borealis, Lina the Russian dancer, sly, silly, light-fingered and full of vain dreams, Nadya with rich bosom and heart imprisoned lightly in Balkan embroidery, Eisa the mannered English beauty with ropes of pearls and shares in the Turkey Company, Rosemara the Scottish heiress, fair, hysterical and handy with the dirk, Connemara the elf-locked, slovenly, blueeyed, bluehaired, hopping like a bog-fire, handy with the fist, Lucilla convent-bred in France, dreaming of a dowry and Easter lilies, Freda, flannel-faced from a cloth house in Cologne, Faustina with stiletto tied in ribbons yellow and rose, Isabella of Portugal hobbling in a French negligee, or Margarita the Andalusian beauty, savage and faced like a falcon? Which one was it, or which she among the nameless, that triumphed so over your manhood? No, it was not that! No woman born of woman has mated Don Juan yet.

Or was it that at nightfall, yesterday, Don Juan with Sganarelle wandered lustily singing among the couples that starred the hillside,
into the cemetery on the outskirts of the town, and there, laughing over the trick that was played on Elvira the night before, heard an owl hoot in the darkness with a singular hoot? Above sifted the Stardust granted only to the Heaven of Spain: below grated the souldust of the dead of Spain. Thrice the owl hooted, and the errant knights became pensive. And looking at the dust, looking at the owl-haunted yew and looking above the horizon of their plumed hats, they saw the stone bust of the late Corregidor. “Your friend, I think,” said mocking Sganarelle, always the one, Sganarelle, to say the wrong thing at
the
wrong time. “True! Your servant,” said Don Juan, carelessly, making to pass on. “He has a fresh look, even now, the old steer,” said the satellite. “He has a doughty front of bone,” said the hidalgo. “He looks preoccupied,” continued Sganarelle: “perhaps he knows summat standing there and ruminating: perhaps at last an idea has crossed his bean, some news of revolution in the Americas, some new quotation for silver bullion, or some last courier from tomorrow's bulls.” “Ask him to come,” said the Don politely, yawning: “tell him I've given displays before all the horned heads of Europe.” “Have a care, Don Juan,” said the coward Sganarelle, who although his buttocks are like full moons, will have a shade, when he dies, thinner than that cast by a man of glass at midday in midsummer. “Go, ask him if he will preside at the Corrida tomorrow,” says Don Juan energetically, “and see me affront the daringest bulls of Spain!.” “No, that were a dismal sight!” said the attendant shrinking. “Go, do as I tell you, eunuch,” said the hero. The knight made a low obeisance and murmured the fatal message. Then he came running, skipping over the tombstones, nettles and cockscombs. “He nodded, he nodded!” he cried abjectly, “he says he will come!” “Worthy old man, respectable tombstone, not deviating from the courtly manners of old Spain,” said Don Juan, “I will expect you tomorrow at the festival.” (There was an ironic reference there to the Commander's having bought his dignities from infamous Olivarès.) “I will come,” said the Commander of Stone, in a noticeably hollow tone.

Have we got it now, at longwinded last? Is that what is in the mind of Don Juan as he looks over the arena at Seville, where he expects to win many a battle and inflict many a gaping wound on many a polished hide? No, that is not it all! There is nothing in the mind of Don Juan, and that is what alarms him, no project, no delight; that is why he looks so pensive and interesting. There is fate in it, somehow, and the hero knows it. He thinks of Elvira with irritation. Need she haunt him like this? She is not dead yet, although she looks pale as a stone.

As Don Juan reaches the entrance to the arena, a flushed boy pulls his stirrup; “Don Juan,” says the messenger, “your steward, Florian, sent me to say that your ship has just arrived in Cadiz. He has this moment received advices.” “My ship?” says the hero with his thoughts elsewhere. (Donna Elvira was wrinkled and drawn, as these coldly passionate ladies always are at forty. He knew, too, at what balcony to expect Anna with her Ottavio, both grown sedate, religious and plump: he has done well in business, Ottavio.) “Your ship, in which you have a partnership,” says the boy. “I have no ship, nor interest in a ship. Did he say what cargo?” “I believe he said silver bullion from Peru, a freight long overdue, your Excellence!” says the boy respectfully. “Impossible!” says Juan, and then turns pale. “What is it, Cavalier?” asks Sganarelle, riding closer. “Ask not,” says Don Juan with a stern expression: “it is some trick, no doubt, played by some presumptuous friend who knows too much of my business,” and he looks sidelong at the follower. The boy messenger looking up at Don Juan, in all his splendour, says piously, “God save your honourable Grace, in this coming combat!” “Much good will it do his Grace, when the Devil shortly calls for him,” says Sir Sganarelle aloud then, and bends down to find out the boy's business. Then with wicked shining eye he rides to join his master, and approaching him, says, “Is this not my ship of silver, of which the Commander's ghost owns half? Do you think the Commander coming at your invitation today, will demand half of the cargo from me?” He laughs low, with the hideous malice of a sycophant risen in the world unexpectedly by the help of Satan.

Don Juan makes no reply but rides through the gate. Coming close behind him, Sganarelle impertinently under cover of their cloaks lays hold of Don Juan's bridle, “Say, your Grace, is it not my ship of silver that you sold me years ago, your ship of silver bullion coming from Peru, an enterprise you went shares in with the regretted Corregidor, God rest his soul? It was when signing the papers, you doubtless remember, that you made the acquaintance of Donna Anna, a charming maid then, of fifteen, and modest as a rabbit? That ship was lost ten years ago, at the time the Commander met with his accident, and never sighted or reported again; but it was said to be drowned in the Southern Ocean of darkness, and the bones and ingots strewn indiscriminately on the beaches of the Devil, or far down on the Afric coast, or in the ice-caves of the sea-serpent. You remember? That share in the cargo you sold me one drunken night in a fit of shocking raillery, for a thousand and three ducats, one for every soul you lost in Spain, and you said, ‘Their white-paper souls into the bargain! The commander,' you said, ‘has doubtless stolen the whole cargo to buy himself a passport into Hades! ‘You had the thousand and three ducats, Don Juan, and laughed at my grumbling the next day when you saw my creditors at my heels: when my wife the next month, too poor for her good looks, left me and ran off with a renegade monk, from whom you prised her, gallant Don, took her and abandoned her, so that now she runs the gutters of I don't know what God-forsaken Spanish village, or slaves in some Church institution for women! Is that my ship, the ship of lost souls, bartered over the gaming tables, one furious summer night?”

The trumpet blows. The people are cleared from the sanded arena. The Corregidor has taken his place in the official balcony and the Archbishop and the Inquisitors, the Cardinal, and the priests, have taken their places behind the Corregidor. Now the gates open and the Alguazils advance towards the Commander's box: they are dressed in black and gold, with black plumes, outriders of death; then comes a splendid train, the patrons of the gentlemen matadors,
grandees of Spain, or noble and rich hidalgos, in splendid equipages, followed by servants and runners in fancy costumes; Don Juan puts on his own show, without a patron, and rides among them. Then come the professional picadors mounted on hacks supplied by a cat's-meat contractor at so much the dozen; the chulos, or cloakcarriers in red silk, braid and pink stockings; and the professional matadors, the killers, in their gorgeous costumes of red velvet and
suk
and gold, fitting tightly to the leg, bosom, biceps and every proudly swelling and lusty member, the matadors, dark-thatched, with eyes like agates, tall as the miséricorde, and with as serpentine a grace. Their cloaks glow along the stockade below the official balcony.

Don Juan has shaken free his bridle and trots magnificently round the square, bowing at each step, to the ladies' fans, and to the Corregidor. The Corregidor's son, mad with jealousy, turns his back, and the actress shrieks with laughter like a South American parrot. Sir Sganarelle with a pretence of respect draws closer. “Is it not my cargo, your Grace?” “If it be but the same!” “It
is
the same!” “How do you know?” “The boy there says there will be litigation, for the other partner is dead!” “What is that?” “And the crew were picked up in a strange land and speak an unknown tongue. Only the master mariner remains, a greyheaded man who speaks only when he is spoken to, and swears he has been over the rim of the world.” “You have no paper,” says Don Juan firmly. “Yes, I have indeed. One you gave me written in wine, that fatal night, one in which the ducats, and the thousand and three souls are set forth, and signed by your hand. One which I had attested the very next day. The cargo is mine, Don Juan, whether from Peru, the ends of the earth, or profound, watery hell. If you don't deliver it up, I shall denounce you to the Inquisition, the Corregidor's son gladly aiding, for satanic works: for what have you to do (I'd like to know myself ), selling souls?” “Then it's yours, son of a dog,” said Don Juan: “but you'll burn that paper, and I'll treat you to a bastinado when you get home, so that you'll see a little more reason.” “Treat your Corregidor of Stone, my partner,
to a bastinado,” says the servant, “if he'll let you do it: but I haven't the phlegm of my partner. I thank your Grace, nevertheless, for your Grace's good graces,” and he turned his horse's head.

“Where are you going?” “Home,” said Sganarelle, “and away to Cadiz with my paper. I'll Don Juan it now, and strike fire from every stone and every lady-heart in the Peninsula. The hungry mobs will come routing at my heels with roars and imprecations: I'll throw them a handful of coppers. I'll scatter mud on the friars and get down and pray at every roadside chapel—where I see a pretty country girl bending down. If the Virgin appears, I'll carry her off; if the Devil, I'll show him the devil's own clean pair of heels. I'll write plays to out-Vega Vega, and out-Calderon Calderon, and I'll sing a serenade to make cuckoo a cuckold. I'll play the beau and have the bells ring out masses for me: I'll cheat the tailors, and employ the smugglers. Spain's going to the dogs they say, and I'll be the gayest of dogs. No more waiting by garden walls in hail, rain and snow, no more bastinadoes, and bulldogs, and no more maids in hallways, but the lady's chamber for me and the lord's slipper. I've had a good apprenticeship, so many thanks, old Don Juan, and good-day: a good Lepanto with the bulls, Don Juan!”

Don Juan looks coldly at the knight. “I kept you for a jester, fellow,” he says, “but your jokes arc unsalted: you've lost your talent for cooking an apothegm in salt and oil. Go and collect your shadowy ducats, and play ducks and drakes with them on the asphalt lake: I'll find a better Sganarelle.” “You'll find no other Sganarelle,” says the knight: “without me, Don Juan, although you are vain and don't know it, you are nothing. Stay, a man has to forge himself a coat of mail and knit himself a vestment in this world: perhaps it is a title that masquerades for him in alien eyes, or renown; perhaps it is a son that stamps his image in the world until the last generation of men; perhaps it is a wife who takes on his colouring and features and accent, and in whose eyes he has only to look to see himself incarnated; and if it is none of these, it is a servant, a base, jesting, faithful servant, whom he despises, and whom he makes his other
self! That am I, lonely Don Juan! Without me, your lifework, your only lifework, hero of the insubstantial, gossamer moment, you are nothing! Adieu, shade of a Cavalier; give my regards to the Commander.” And the impudent Sganarelle, with a laugh which comes from a soul of evil and a hide of brass, ringing like a bell, gallops incontinently out of the Plaza, clinking his brasses, leaving the hero alone with his poor gentlemen and his train of runners. Don Juan looks up at the garnished balconies.