Miguel De Unamuno*

The Likeness

Everyone either avoided all contact with Celestino the Fool or else treated him, at most, as a plaything with which to amuse themselves, and for those reasons the poor fellow tended to avoid other people and to go for solitary walks in the empty countryside, immersed in his surroundings, innocently observing nature’s pageant. Celestino the Fool lived very much inside the world as if inside a womb, interweaving reality with fresh, child-like dreams, which were quite as real to him as reality, in a kind of permanent state of childhood, as attached to that living kaleidoscope as the foetus is to the placenta, and, like the foetus, utterly unaware of his own existence. His soul simply absorbed everything; everything was merely a part of his consciousness. He would walk through the empty poplar groves by the river, chuckling at the ducks splashing about in the water, at the brief flights of birds and the spiralling flutterings of pairs of butterflies. One of his favourite tricks was to turn a beetle over onto its back on the ground and watch its legs waggling in the air.

The only thing that troubled him was the presence of the enemy – mankind. Whenever a grown man approached him, Celestino would eye him warily and smile at him with a smile that meant: ‘Don’t hurt me, I’m harmless.’ And if that man came closer, Celestino would immediately look away from those indifferent, loveless eyes, wishing he could shrink to the size of an ant. If an acquaintance greeted him with a ‘Hi there, Celestino’, he would meekly bow his head, expecting the inevitable clip round the ear. And if he caught sight of some boys in the distance, he would immediately quicken his step, for he had an absolute horror of boys and with good reason. They were the worst of the worst.

One morning, though, Celestino encountered another solitary walker, and when they passed, and Celestino proffered his usual wary smile, he saw in the other fellow’s face a reflection of his own smile, a look of recognition. And, when he turned round, he saw that the other fellow had turned round too, and they again smiled at each other, at the likeness. All that day, Celestino felt happier than usual, his soul full of an unaccustomed warmth, a warmth created by the mere fact that the world had reflected his own simple self back at him in the form of a human face.

The following morning, they met again just as a noisy sparrow alighted, chattering, in a nearby willow tree. Celestino pointed this out to the other man and said, laughing:

‘Look at that bird! It’s a sparrow!’

‘Yes, you’re right, it’s a sparrow,’ said the other, laughing out loud.

Excited, they both laughed long and hard, first at the bird, which joined in with its chirruping, and then simply because they were laughing. And so it was that those two simpletons became friends, in the open air and beneath God’s sky.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Pepe.’

‘I’m Celestino.’

‘Celestino … Celestino …’ cried Pepe, again bursting out laughing. ‘Celestino the Fool … Celestino the Fool …’

‘And you’re Pepe the Fool,’ retorted Celestino rather huffily.

‘That’s right, Pepe the Fool and Celestino the Fool!’

And the two fools roared with laughter at their own foolishness, gulping down great mouthfuls of air as they did so, and their laughter was lost in the wood, becoming one with the countryside’s many other voices.

From that first hilarious encounter onwards, they would meet each day to go for a walk together, to exchange impressions, pointing out to each other whatever God set before them, living inside the world, lending each other warmth and encouragement like twins sharing the same womb.

‘It’s hot today.’

‘Yes, you’re right, it is hot today.’

‘It’s usually hot at this time of year.’

‘That’s true, it is usually hot at this time of year … and in winter, it’s cold.’

And so they went on, feeling how very alike they were and enjoying their constant discoveries of things that we think we have already discovered because we’ve crystallized them into abstract concepts and placed them in logical pigeonholes. For them there was always something new under the sun, every impression was new, and the world was a thing in a state of perpetual creation and devoid of even a hint of deceit. Pepe nearly exploded with joy when he first saw a beetle with its legs in the air! Indeed, so excited was he that he picked up a pebble to express his excitement by squashing the poor creature, but Celestino stopped him, saying:

‘No, no, it’s not a bad beetle …’

Pepe’s simplicity was not like that of his new friend, congenital and unchanging, but, rather, extraneous and progressive, owing to a softening of the brain tissue. Celestino realized this, although without quite knowing that he did; he vaguely grasped what it was that set them apart despite their similarities, and out of that unconscious realization, buried in the dark depths of his virgin soul, sprang a feeling of love for poor Pepe, a love that was, at once, that of a brother, a father and a mother. When his friend occasionally fell asleep on the river bank, Celestino would sit beside him, shooing away the flies and the bumblebees, throwing stones into the pools to silence the frogs, making sure that the ants didn’t run across his sleeping friend’s face, and keeping a look-out for any approaching men. And, if he ever caught sight of any boys, his heart would start to race and he would move closer to his friend and stuff his own pockets with stones, just in case. When a smile flickered over the sleeper’s face, Celestino would smile too, imagining the world in which his friend lay immersed.

In the streets, the boys would run after them shouting:

One fool plus another fool

Make two fools twice over!

When, one day, a young scamp actually hit Pepe, a hitherto dormant instinct awoke in Celestino and he ran after the boy, raining down on him slaps and smacks. Simultaneously angered and elated by the fool’s unexpected rebellion, the gang of hoodlums then set upon the pair, and, while shielding his friend, Celestino heroically fended them off with kicks and shoves until the constable arrived, putting the gang of boys to flight. And yet it was Celestino who was given a telling-off … so, the constable, too, was just like other men!

As Pepe’s imbecile condition progressed, his senses became so dulled that all he could do was repeat drowsily whatever his friend showed him, as if he were the interpreter of the passing cosmorama of the world.

Then, one day, Pepe did not appear, and Celestino searched for him everywhere, eyeing with loathing any gangs of boys and smiling even more broadly at any men he encountered. Eventually, he learned that Pepe had died, just like a little bird, and, although Celestino didn’t quite understand what death meant, he felt something like a spiritual hunger. Picking up a stone and putting it in his pocket, he went to the church where he used to be taken to attend mass; there he kneeled down before one of the Christ figures, then sat back on his heels and, after quickly crossing himself several times, he repeated over and over:

‘Who killed him? Tell me who killed him …’

And, with his gaze still fixed on the Christ figure, he remembered hearing in a sermon once that the crucified Christ used to bring the dead back to life. He cried out:

‘Bring him back! Bring him back!’

When he left the church, a gang of boys surrounded him: one of them tugged at his jacket, another knocked off his hat, another boy spat at him and they all kept chanting: ‘Where’s the other fool? Where’s the other fool?’ Celestino withdrew into himself, and his courage – the child of his love for Pepe – vanished completely. Murmuring ‘Wretches, devils, swine, you’re the ones who killed him … you swine’, he dropped the stone he’d been carrying and hurried off to the safety of his own house.

When he resumed his solitary walks in the woods by the river, the waves of new impressions – which he received like spiritual blood from the placenta of the open countryside – clustered around the vague, shadowy image of his sleeping friend’s smiling face and took on new life. Thus he humanized nature, anthropomorphizing it in his own fashion, simply and unconsciously; he poured into those new impressions, like the very substance of life itself, all the paternal–maternal tenderness that had sprung up in him through his contact with Pepe, his fellow fool, and, without fully understanding quite what was happening, he caught a vague glimpse of God smiling down from heaven with a smile made in the likeness of a human smile.