Azorín*

The Reverse Side of the Tapestry

Where will the poet Félix Vargas begin his story? Félix needs to write a story; he’s lying on his bed having just returned from a long morning walk; from his supine position, he can see the overcast sky, a pale ash grey. If he sits up a little, he can make out the sea on the far horizon: more grey, a vast sheet the colour of tarnished silver. Félix Vargas isn’t thinking about anything; well, he does occasionally think about something, but everything seems distant, remote, as if in a dream. He is actively trying not to think, and gradually images begin to surface in his brain. Now he can see a small room in Paris, a young man dressed in black: himself. What is Félix Vargas doing there? Where has he been? Where will he go? The poet doesn’t know. But is that man the same Félix Vargas who is lying here now, on a bed in the little house in the Errondo-Aundi district of San Sebastián? Can he be both one and many? And when he sheds his fleshly shell, what will become of him? What will happen to his mind, his unique, pure, pristine mind? On this grey day of leaden skies, surrounded as he is by intensely dark green scenery, Félix Vargas feels simultaneously immersed and dispersed in all that matter. Where has he come from, the Félix Vargas living in that small hotel room in Paris? What will happen to him the next moment, the next day, the next month? Will his fate be different from that of this real, authentic Félix Vargas currently imagining the future of that other Félix Vargas? Suddenly, in the small room in Paris, a mysterious, enigmatic character appears beside the poet – the poet Félix Vargas is imagining and who has not yet noticed this new arrival. Equally suddenly, this unreal character places one hand on Félix’s shoulder and says with a smile: ‘At this very moment, a clown in Albacete in Spain, a long, long way from here, has decided to go to work in the circus next Sunday; his fever has gone and he can return to his chosen profession. His reappearance next Sunday will cost you your life.’ The imaginary Félix Vargas shudders. Does he shudder or does he smile incredulously? Yes, perhaps he smiles, but then he pauses to think. His life depends on that clown in Albacete going to work; if the clown goes to work on Sunday, he, Félix, will die. How strange. How odd. No, not odd at all. Does anyone know what fate has in store for them? Do we know what is being woven for us – as Saavedra Fajardo put it – ‘on eternity’s looms’? If only we could see the reverse side of the tapestry, the tapestry of things, our tapestry! And here, in San Sebastián, in the little white house with green shutters high up on a hill in Errondo-Aundi, the real Félix Vargas, the one imagining the other Félix’s fate, really does shudder. The sky is grey and the silence profound. An illustrated magazine lies open on the table, and, were the poet to sit up, he would see again, for the hundredth time, two photographs: one shows a collision between a racing car and a heavy truck on the Alcázar de San Juan–Albacete road; the other shows a pretty young woman, and the caption below reads: ‘La Mancheguita – The Girl from La Mancha – fresh from her triumph in Paris.’ Over the last two days, in the café, in the house, in the street, Félix Vargas has seen those same two photographs over and over, both in that magazine and in others too. In Paris, in that small hotel room, the mysterious character has placed one hand on the imaginary Félix’s shoulder, has spoken and disappeared. And far off in southern Spain, in Albacete, we suddenly see a car repair shop. Everything is still a little vague, blurred and confused; the poet, the real one doing the imagining, doesn’t yet know what order these new images should be in. Yes, a car repair shop. And a man needing one of the headlights on his truck fixed. Will that work? Will that be a way of reaching a conclusion? Yes, yes, onwards: the owner of the truck needs a headlight mending; he’s about to go on a journey; he’s about to leave Albacete to drive to Alcázar de San Juan … And meanwhile, what is happening in that small hotel room in Paris? What is the poet doing? The character that Félix Vargas has dreamed up is definitely a poet, that much is certain; he will thus be surrounded by an air of delicacy and refinement, in marked contrast to the terrible fate awaiting him. The real Félix Vargas half sits up in bed; he scrutinizes the grey sky, then the sea, then the whole city; for a moment he notices how the sea – which serves as a backdrop – can be seen through the ironwork on the bell tower of the Church of the Good Shepherd. He’s not thinking anything now; he’s left the story for another day. He tries to imagine other things, but his mind – his subconscious – continues to work away; the poet knows how fruitful idleness can be; his best work, his most beautiful verses, his most original stories all depend on such periods of idleness; if Félix didn’t have such moments, he wouldn’t be able to write, he would never have any ideas; were he in a perpetual state of agitation and busyness, his mind would be utterly sterile.

Into his head comes the image of a young mechanic who works in the repair shop; the owner of the truck and the young man agree that the headlight will be repaired in the next few days. Meanwhile, the poet in Paris has left the big city. All of this – Félix’s life and what happens in the repair shop in Albacete – should happen simultaneously. Slowly, painstakingly, a tapestry is taking shape on eternity’s looms: the tapestry of Félix Vargas’s life. We don’t know what figures or designs will appear there; if we were to look at it from behind, we would be able to make out something, but we can’t do that. Sometimes in life, it seems that a presentiment, a brilliant flash of intuition, allows us a glimpse of the reverse side of the tapestry; the door to the mystery opens just a crack and, if we peer through that crack, we can vaguely see what is being woven in the workshop; but such visions are the exception; we walk through the world, past all kinds of things, with no inkling of how those things might decide, or already are deciding, our future, our life.

Félix Vargas again scrutinizes the sky; the sky of Vitoria, of Álava, is also grey like this, Álava being a transitional land between the bare, flat landscape of Castile and the lush, romantic Basque Country. During the days before the headlight is mended, the imagined character, the other poet, could go to Vitoria; yes, before arriving in Madrid, the fictitious poet stops in Vitoria. In Albacete, the young man charged with repairing the headlight forgets to do it, and the owner of the truck has to call in at the workshop again. On the very day he does so, the imaginary Félix leaves Vitoria and travels to Burgos; as the poet enters his hotel room in Burgos, the repair man is promising the owner of the truck that he’ll have the headlight repaired and ready for next Monday; in order to do this – it shouldn’t take long – he’ll have to work on Sunday. There are three stories going on at this point, at least for anyone with the necessary sorcerer’s eyes to see them. On the one hand, the real poet, lying on his bed, is contemplating the sky and thinking about his literary creation; on the other, the two fictitious characters, the other Félix and the workman in Albacete, are each going about their business synchronically, like the mechanism of a watch; and finally, in the realms of eternity, the finest, slenderest and most ethereal of hands are silently weaving a tapestry. The tapestry the real Félix is currently imagining? No, not just that one. The real one too, the tapestry of the poet imagining a fictitious tapestry and not giving a thought to his own.

On Sunday morning, Mr Brown the clown – the clown who is part of the circus performing in Albacete – wakes up free of fever; he rises from his bed and calls out to his landlady, Doña María. At the very moment Mr Brown is telling Doña María that he intends returning to work that evening, the poet arrives by car in Madrid. His fate has been decided: because Mr Brown is going to work that evening, the poet is going to die. The mechanic will not finish mending the headlight, instead he’ll leave the workshop early to go to the circus and see that very popular clown, Mr Brown. However, the owner of the truck must, without fail, set off that same night. The truck, laden with large casks of wine, will leave Albacete in the dark, heading for Alcázar de San Juan. The poet Félix Vargas, the fictitious one, has already arrived in Madrid; when the truck is leaving Albacete, he is in a café with his friends. One of them suggests they drive to Albacete together, and, moments later, they race off in a magnificent car, while the truck sets off with only one working headlight …

The poet pauses; yes, this string of images is just what he needs; now all the settings and circumstances are there, perfectly aligned so that disaster can strike. A stream of light, the light from the car’s powerful headlights, speeds down the road in the darkness. Suddenly, the driver sees a single headlight up ahead, that of the truck; the car is driving on the right; the driver imagines that the one headlight on the truck is also on the right-hand side of the vehicle. Then, suddenly, there is a terrible, formidable crash. A pile of tangled metal, shards of glass, blood, faint groans, a death rattle.

The poet, the real one, turns his thoughts to other things. The story is basically there, the details will come later. Let’s give the imagination a rest and do something else. Félix Vargas walks down from Errondo-Aundi into San Sebastián, in search of his friend Pedro Magán; they’re supposed to be going for a drive in Pedro’s brand-new car. The poet strolls along, feeling rather pleased with himself. The morning has definitely not been wasted; in leisurely fashion, almost unconsciously, he’s polishing the imagined story; he adds a detail here, makes a change there. He has reached the town. He walks past a café. He stops for a moment on the Paseo de los Fueros, and there looks back at his little white house with the green shutters. But who is in that café?

‘Félix! Félix!’

Who’s calling him? Who do you think? La Mancheguita, Nati Durán herself; there she is with her warm smile, her green eyes, her cool, moist, red lips.

‘Nati! What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve just got back from Paris.’

‘What a delightful coincidence!’

‘Come in and sit down.’

‘I can’t. I’m meeting a friend.’

‘What do you mean, you can’t? Oh, you, always so immersed in your thoughts! Come on. Don’t you love me any more?’

‘Of course I love you. And how pretty you’re looking, Nati!’

‘As I always do, you mean.’

(In eternity, the slender, delicate, mysterious hands are weaving Félix Vargas’s tapestry. And they are weaving now with great excitement! Since the angels are the friends of poets, one can understand the excitement of those angelic weavers.)

‘Come on, Félix, come and have lunch with me. We haven’t seen each other for ages …’

‘You’re right, Nati, but I certainly hadn’t forgotten you.’

‘Why don’t we have lunch together today? I’m leaving tonight …’

‘Tonight?’

‘Yes, I’m off to Buenos Aires.’

‘Buenos Aires? Well, in that case, yes, let’s have lunch together. Who knows when we’ll meet again!’

‘That’s my poet! I’ll draw up a menu. Can you wait?’

‘What better menu can there be than seeing you, Nati! I’ve often thought of you in the last few days.’

‘Really? Tell me about it …’

Two hours later, news of Pedro Magán’s death reaches San Sebastián; the car he was driving plunged off a precipice and was smashed to smithereens.

(In eternity, the angelic weavers – such slender, delicate hands! – smiled sweetly as they wove those last few threads into the poet’s tapestry.)