IN THIS and the next chapter I shall introduce two young men: two because as soon as he was furloughed from the struggle for existence, León began to take after his father—with the difference that the innumerable Azael Burlandos were patchy, cheap bamboozlements flung together with a minimum of care and designed, like cars and wash machines, to fall apart after a certain time, while each León Fuertes was a finely crafted figure built to last; young men because despite their age (fourteen-eighteen) we cannot call them adolescents, what with the unappealing connotations of pustulant self-doubt which drip from that poor term. It would be fun to split my screen and bring them on together like the famous pair of scalpeled Siamese twins conceived by Dumas père, and played by Fairbanks fils: two chaps identical in physiognomy yet, since they live in different worlds, different in manner, gesture, attitude, etc. But one of the problems of a verbal-linear confection like history is that it can present only one thing at a time, so I shall show the artist first and then the athlete, trusting my examiners to remember that they co-existed.
Quite soon after he took León as a pupil, Dr. Grillo found a music master for him. This was Sofonias de Bisagra, who is remembered now for his long reign as queen mother of Tinieblan faggotdom and for his numerous successful efforts to scandalize the country. Two years before his death, for example, having won a large sum in the lottery, he staged his funeral, partly to hear Fauré’s Requiem properly sung and partly to settle scores. He rehearsed a choir and the Orquesta Nacional in Fauré’s work, supposedly for a concert, and meanwhile secretly arranged for von Karajan (whom he knew from his conservatory days) to bring Fischer-Dieskau and Victoria de los Angeles to Tinieblas on an appointed day. He then gave out that he had cancer and published a will leaving bequests to the Tinieblan Church and all his nephews. He summoned Padre Benjamin Lechuzo, who was notorious for dining out on the secrets of the confessional, and whispered up four hours of fabrications and exaggerations implicating all his many enemies in a miasma of sodomic vice. Then his confederate, the painter Orlando Lagarto, announced that he had given up the ghost. The three famous musicians were even then on their way to Tinieblas, well paid, of course, though no one knew it, but according to Lagarto, moved in their grief to pay a last farewell to a beloved colleague. The archbishop was quick to authorize use of the cathedral for a requiem mass. Bisagra passed the most ecstatic night of his life lying in a richly-chased, well-perforated coffin while half the town and a consistory of clerics moped about murmuring unfelt encomiums. The next morning he heard the cherished requiem performed as he had always felt it should be, to the smell of incense and the splash of crocodile tears, and at the final note sprang from his coffin to applaud.
But when Dr. Grillo sent León to him, Bisagra was a shy young man recently returned from European studies. He had a Swiss cellist wife with whom he played duets. He had a symphony-in-progress, the first movement of which had drawn encouraging harumphs from his conservatory teachers. He had a decent salary as Director of the Escuela Nacional de Musica, a house, and a good name. He had, in short, some prospect of a reasonable life. Then finkish fate surprised him with a wunderkind.
From the first post-siesta hour when León sat down before Bisagra’s termite-nibbled Baldwin, his talent gorged Bisagra’s house. It pressed against the mold-stained walls and bulged the rusty floor-to-ceiling screens and swelled into the crucifix-hung sala where Bisagra’s widowed mother, all swaddled up in shawls despite the heat, worked at her needlepoint, and throbbed into the bedroom where Bisagra’s wife sat fanning herself with her book, wilting like an edelweiss remorselessly transplanted to our tropics. León’s talent raised a framed daguerreotype of Monseñor Jesús Llorente (in whose cabinet Bisagra’s grandfather had served) off the mantel and kept it suspended in midair for several minutes. It started the pendulum of a long-unwound grandfather clock (the bulk of Frau Bisagra’s dowry) swinging like a metronome, and caused a miniature reproduction of Bernini’s statue of Santa Teresa de Avila to flutter its eyelids coquettishly. It set the floor tiles rippling rhythmically and made the roof beams bend and squeak. At once Bisagra craved to share this energy—for talent is, quite simply, the orderly expression of personal energy—to have it about him as much as possible, and generous León accommodated him. León allowed Bisagra to teach him piano and harmonics and, chiefly, to train his voice, all without pay; to give him classes in the history of music at hours of León’s convenience; to neglect his wife, his job, even his symphony in León’s favor; to covet León’s company to the point of self-debasement; to dine him out, to buy him clothes, to give him a phonograph and shower him with discs; to take him to parties in the homes of the ruling class; to cluck over him like a brood poulet among the artists and intellectuals who met at the Café Bahia; to flit and flutter in his presence; to fawn on him in public and to plead in private for forgiveness for imaginary wrongs; to install him in the center of the universe; in other words to love—at first platonically, then to the suffocation of his manhood. And at the same time, León took pains to lavish demands upon Bisagra, to treat Bisagra harshly on occasion, to make him now and then the butt of jokes, and to withhold all but the merest signal of appreciation, so that Bisagra might enjoy the sense of sacrifice which the activity of love requires.
Not many months went by before it was sniggered round that Bisagra had become young León’s bride. This scandalmongering42 which is normal in Tinieblas, which is, in fact, our chief art form (since the inventive minds here are too lazy to proceed from gossip into literature), waxed prolific after Bisagra’s wife ran off with a Dutch sailor. One version held that as Bisagra had taken a husband, he wasn’t much of one to her. An alternate line went that León had seduced her (a) with Bisagra’s blessing or (b) despite his pleas, excited her to prodigies of appetite, and then abandoned her in such a state of heat that she snatched up the first hardy fellow who came by. Inevitably a synthesis was produced in which León studded for both, was forced to state his preference, and gave the palm to Sofonias—at which poor Hilde fled in shame. These tales, instant best sellers, never went out of circulation. Twenty-five years later, León’s political opponents had no trouble moving new editions of them, though it appears they did no damage to his career. All versions agree, after all, that whoever were connected, León was penetrator, and in this country (and in the rest of Latin America too, for that matter) a macho is a macho so long as he penetrates, who, what, or how remaining, generally, inconsequential.
In actuality, however, the sexual relationship between León Fuertes and Sofonias de Bisagra was limited to fantasy on Bisagra’s part, fantasy which fueled a lot of solo fiddling but which only began to be acted out after León left Tinieblas in 1936, and then, of course, with surrogates. As for Hilde, neighbors do recall her heartless screechings, her less than philharmonic scoldings of Bisagra for “consorting with that incubus,” her tears of jealousy, which argue that she oozed for León too, but while I am unable to prove he never tossed her a hump in compassion, or suaged her passion in some other fashion, I tend to doubt it, there being metal more attractive strewn all about our happy little land, then as now. Certainly gossip, like its refined kid sister, literature, must tell the truth if it’s to last beyond the blush of publication, and as I’ve said, the tales survived a quarter of a century, far longer than those of your ordinary, talk-show-blabbing scribbler, but literary truth comes riddled. León had the Bisagras, all right, along with heaven knows how many others, but he had them metaphorically, without undoing a single literal fly button.
The first attribute of León, artist’s magnetism was his exceptional good looks. I have mentioned his broad forehead and firm jaw, his wide-set eyes which, like his mother’s, were particularly brilliant. Besides this his skin was clear, his body well formed. By fifteen he had his full height, a little under five feet, nine inches, which is average in Tinieblas. He shared these basic physical characteristics with all the other Leóns, but as artist he wore them with the pampered nonchalance of an aristocrat. On close inspection, nonetheless, his face revealed the hardness of the gutter fighter, the fellow who would rather use his feet43 than his hands. This León was chary of his smiles. When he released one, it was cold enough to be alarming in one so young, dripping with catnip for any masochists in the vicinity. In 1936 Lagarto painted him as Perseus, posing him as in Cellini’s statue and using for Medusa’s the head of Doña Rosa Aguijón de Alacrán, who had banned both him and León from her home. León seems altogether proper in the role of destroyer.
There was, besides, his voice, which was tenor, its range a little greater than the average, its tone clear, its pitch perfect. His voice possessed great sweetness and great power, hence the argument as to whether his tenor was “lyric” or “robust.” Bisagra claims for it both qualities and is convinced that had León continued to train seriously, he would have been the tenor of his age. An adoring discoverer and master is not, of course, the model of impartial judgment, but this opinion is borne out at least in part by León’s posthumous career, during which he has excelled in many of the most demanding operatic roles, proving himself equally at home in the passion of Canio’s lament in Pagliacci and the tranquil charm of the dungeon duct in the last act of Aida. In any case, his was the most remarkable vocal talent ever produced in our continent, one that seemed sure to place him soon in the first rank of the world’s singers, and there is no gift so universally charming as the gift of song.
In complement León devised a personality evocative of Rimbaud and Rasputin. This León took the position that he was unique and wonderful, and made the world accept him on those terms. Of afternoons he might be spotted lounging at the Café Bahia, his jacket caped over his shoulders, his cream silk shirt unbuttoned to the navel, his gaze flung languidly out at the sun-gulesed sky, sipping a glass of chicha (which doting Bisagra would ensure was always fresh and full) while men twice or more his age aimed their remarks at him and allowed him to determine by a smile or sneer if they were clever or banal. Of evenings he frequented the houses of the ruling class, with Bisagra fetching him drinks, serving him from the buffet, accompanying him at the piano when he let himself be honey’d into song. Here he provoked the most amazing reactions. People who were appalled to see Bisagra, a cultured man of thirty, one of their class, nose-led by this mongrel puppy, found themselves kowtowing too or paying León the unconscious respect of behaving like savages. Doña Beatrix Anguila de Sancudo, daughter of a Knight of the Holy Sepulcher, sister of one President of the Republic and wife of another, one of the most strait-laced women in the hemisphere, suffered León’s bawdy comments with meek little smirks, while Don Plineo Hormiga, who had been to Cambridge and, styling himself a kind of tropical Lord Balfour,44 cultivated un-Latin casualness and an immense aplomb, took a machete to the strings of his piano to forestall a musicale, planned by his wife, at which León was to be the star attraction. Later on, León might show up at one of the very nightclubs where before he’d peddled smokes, accompanied by half a dozen dissolute young bucks (Don Plineo’s son Nacho, for example) and two or three of the journeyman guitar strummers who used to hang about cantinas in pre-jukebox days. While his entourage commandeered the best table and prepared to receive the assault of waiters and whores, León would mount the stage, dispatch performers to their dressing rooms, push the microphone aside, and bring up his musicians. Then he would sing rancheros and boleros till the dawn.
On such nights the word that Fuertes was singing at this club or that would flash through all the center of the city. Cantinas and other clubs would empty out, patrons flinging down their cash, bartenders balling their aprons into dusty comers, owners scooping out their tills and locking up, all scurrying cross the street or round the block to hear the music. Cabbies would drop their passengers and park and push inside. Men sound asleep would wake and grab their shirts and trousers. One night the driver of a tram abandoned his contraption before the Happy Time and rushed inside, and when two guardias came in to arrest him for obstructing traffic, León’s singing so enthralled them that they forgot the charge and stayed to listen. Another night the commanding general of the Tinieblan Salvation Army, an immensely dignified Barbadian Negro named Disraeli Brathwaite, who from time to time would tour the night spots in full uniform, taking collection and preaching against Demon Rum, found himself in the Gay Paree when León started singing, and such was the effect on him that he emptied out his pockets on the bar and bought a round of drinks for all the house.
Those who knew León only in his avatar of artist maintained that he was human only when he sang. Then his cruelty45 and conceit dissolved in music, and a great warmth spread from him, bathing every hearer in well-being. He seemed to grow while he was singing, in age as well as size, so that people who might have been his grandparents took confidence as though from a paternal blessing People laughed and wept at once, hearing pain’s gaiety and joy’s lament, and León would chide them gently between songs for taking it so to heart. Then he would laugh and toss his head and shout, “You think that was good? Listen to this!”
Every nightclub and theater owner in the country and many from abroad offered him engagements at the sum he liked, but he never gave formal concerts or accepted money, and he took care to make his visits in rotation so that no club was favored more than any other. He battened on applause and often sang with greatest joy and power after he’d been on stage for hours. People who heard him felt as though they were plugged into an inexhaustible dynamo, and certainly he poured out his art with boundless generosity, as though repaying some great debt. But when a session ended he shrank alarmingly, appeared wan and decrepit, drained unto death, his face twisted and hateful,46 and once Nacho heard him snarl under his breath, “I hope that satisfies the donkeys!” It is perhaps correct that León, artist, achieved humanity and full life only while performing.
This León accorded himself all an artist’s rights and obligations. He had an artist’s humility, which was never displayed toward anyone around him but was reserved for great composers and performers. Even while he formed a personal style, he strove to make his voice a faithful instrument for transmitting each composer’s personal vision, and he listened to Caruso’s records with the respect a coyote shows for places where a wolf has raised his leg. He had an artist’s warmth and generosity, the solicitude of a lover or a parent for people he was entertaining while he was entertaining them. But he had as well an artist’s arrogance, a glazed irreverence for wealth, for title, for social position, even for the common humanity of a fellow being; for everything, in fact, save first-rate talent. Once when a hostess delayed serving dinner because the President of the Republic was expected, León informed her and everyone in hearing that he was a citizen of the Republic of Music and would wait only for Mozart; then be sent Bisagra out to the kitchen for a plate of food. And in 1935, at the party Doña Blanca Cisterna de Marmol gave for the Czech tenor Soyka, who though past his prime and bothered by our climate had sung that night with reasonable credit at the Teatro Municipal, León dragged Bisagra to the piano and repeated with improvement every number on poor Soyka’s program. Then, in encore, he challenged Soyka to recommend him for the Conservatoire de Paris, and the Czech, dumbfounded by such talent and such gall, smiling, disarmed, at once raped and seduced, agreed.
This, then, was the figure León Fuertes fashioned to bear his musical talent. Many believed it to be the only or the principal León. It was, in fact, only one member of a strolling company, others of whom we shall encounter as we go along.