Just before midnight Onofre beat his head with his fist and shouted ‘I had almost forgotten; my beast of a father did not sign the book either. Quick, gentlemen, to the Rectory, before the clock strikes twelve and the day becomes extinct!’ So the Blue Division prisoner and the two abstract painters, and the real one, all trooped up to the Rectory, very intoxicatedly, and insisted on signing the register as little Onofre’s joint godfathers. The priest had to let them, to avoid a scandal.
And guess what? In April they’re all going to the Seville Fair at the invitation of Sita’s new novio, who’s a Chilean millionaire called Don Jacinto; I have met him. Don Jacinto is also lending Onofre and Marujita five million pesetas to start a much more luxurious Palma dance-house than ‘The Blue Parrot’. He says ‘That will teach Don Isidoro not to insult poor beautiful dancing-girls who are positively saints!’ It’s going to be called ‘Los Cinco Padrinos’, which means ‘The Five Godfathers’, because Don Jacinto has added his name to the list too, for solidarity.
All the same, I can’t say I trust him, somehow, and Marujita doesn’t either; but we hope for the best.
Lots of love,
Margaret
The White Horse or ‘The Great Southern Ghost Story’
THERE HAD ALWAYS been a Colonel Flack at Sophie, Georgia, even while it was still called Sophiaville, and a Doc Halloran, too; not to mention a Lawyer Pritchard. For generations it was a vexed question ‘who got there the fustest’, the Flacks or the Hallorans, and many a hasty word was spoken on account of it, until at last the Lawyer Pritchard who flourished under President Polk summoned his Colonel Flack and his Doc Halloran to the County Court House. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘all the relevant documents are right here in that safe; and if this tomfool argument crops up again, I’ll publish a certificated extract of them in every paper south of the Line, which won’t do neither of you-all a heap of good.’
The Flacks came from the county of Somerset in England, and owned a regular coat of arms, with the motto Nec Flacci Mortem, meaning: ‘I don’t care a straw for death.’ And they certainly did not.
We Doc Hallorans – for I’m the present holder of the title – originate in Co. Meath, Ireland. We’re charged with the protection of the said Flacks in the matter of setting their broken bones, plugging their bullet holes with medicated cotton, scaring away their green rats and pink elephants (especially after Thanksgiving), and also seeing that they get born in good shape. We take the task pretty seriously, because the Flacks, when they’re not in liquor, are the best folks for a hundred miles around; and our debt to them, to quote Lawyer Pritchard, is inassessable and unrepudiatable.
The Flacks suffered as heavily as any Georgian family in the Civil War; lost nearly every male of the younger generation in this battle or that, and Colonel Randolph Flack was fuming and pining because he had to stay home and mind the plantation, instead of riding out with General Lee. The principal tie was his lady: she’d been widowed in the first skirmish of the war, he’d married her a year later, and now she was expectant. The Colonel couldn’t very well leave his lady in the big mansion, all alone except for the slaves; there were plenty of deserters and bad men around at the time. So he continued to pine and fume, and my great-grandfather had to bear the brunt of his tantrums.
General Sherman took Atlanta early in September, and began moving across Georgia on his notorious march to the sea; destroying, as he went, everything that could be destroyed. The Colonel took it into his head that Sherman was the Beast of Revelations, and that the South’s only hope lay in putting that Beast out of the way. Moreover, he was going to do it himself, in gentlemanly fashion. He would ride up to the General, salute him with a sweep of his beaver hat, and ask point blank: ‘Sir, are you man enough to shoot it out?’
My great-grandfather did his best to dissuade him from his project. ‘May I venture to doubt, Colonel Flack,’ he said, ‘whether you’d be permitted to approach within parleying distance of General Sherman? He’s reckoned to have a bodyguard of Maine hunters about him who’ll drill you clean at a thousand paces.’
‘Those goddam Yankees can’t shoot!’ shouted the Colonel, who was certainly in liquor at the time.
‘They can’t miss!’ answered my great-grandfather.
‘We’ll see about that,’ said the Colonel. ‘Nec Flacci Mortem!’
‘And what of your lady?’ asked my great-grandfather.
‘Why, she’s a Southerner, Doc; she’ll understand.’
‘And what of your child?’
‘That’s your business, Doc,’ says the Colonel. ‘But I’ll be along at the birth, never you fear, to see fair play.’
Nothing could stop the obstinate fellow. He sent for his case of duelling pistols; he sent for his white horse; he made his coloured valet stuff the saddlebags with bourbon, corn bread, bacon and a couple of clean shirts. Then off he trotted, clippety-clop, up the dirt-road, over the brow of the hill, then down through the sweet-potato patch, splash across the creek and away into the pine wood…
What took place at the encounter, nobody ever learned: whether the Maine hunters drilled him clean, or whether General Sherman was even quicker on the draw than he… But Colonel Flack didn’t come riding home that week, nor that month neither, though Sherman’s sixty thousand were now well on their way to Savannah. Sophie, I am glad to report, lay a good twenty miles off the track of destruction and escaped without losing so much as a hog.
The day before Twelfth Night, the Colonel’s lady was brought to bed, and this being her first child, my great-grandfather felt a certain anxiety; he arrived early with his black bag, and had twenty-four hours to wait – from midnight to midnight. But as the clock struck at last, a noise of hooves was heard approaching at a gallop from the pine woods and then splashing across the ford through the creek, which was mighty deep at that season, and up through the sweet-potato patch, and down over the brow of the hill to the mansion. My great-grandfather was working like a demon now to save the child, and the sweat streaked his face. However, he stole a glance out of the window and recognized both horse and rider; so he cried to the lady: ‘Courage, ma’am, all’s well! Your husband’s home!’ And with that they made a concerted effort and another male Flack was brought into the world; which saved the family name from extinction, for all the rest had been killed. But he didn’t dare tell her until many months later that the breast of the Colonel’s shirt was stained with red, and that his face shone white as clay in the moonlight.
Now, this posthumous child happened to be the Colonel’s seventh; and a tradition arose at Sophie that whenever a seventh Flack came to be born (it could be counted on to be a boy) the Colonel’s ghost would attend the accouchement. If it hadn’t appeared on such occasions, or if no Doc Halloran had been in attendance on the lady, Sophie would have reckoned it mighty queer.
Well, this is where I enter the story. The Flacks, as usual, had been breeding fast, but the current expenditure of life was well above the average; three boys gone in the First World War, and two in the Second; and several other deaths from miscellaneous causes had reduced the line to the widow and two daughters of the late Colonel Randolph Flack, killed with the Marines on Iwo Jima. But a posthumous child was expected around Twelfth Night, to make the seventh.
Lawyer Pritchard waited below, trampling up and down the parlour, like a bear in a cage, muttering to himself and anticipating the worst. I had been upstairs for twenty-four hours, but with plenty to occupy my hands and mind; though it looked to be a losing battle.
Finally the clock struck midnight, and the moment of crisis came. I heard the sound of hooves galloping out from the wood, plunging down into the creek, then through, and up, and over, and along the dirt-road. ‘Fine,’ I thought, as they clattered to a stop. But then came sounds of a scuffle, and when I dared steal a glance through the window, I saw my own black gelding in the driveway, and on that black gelding sat Colonel Flack, dressed exactly as my father had described him to me – beaver hat, pistol case, blood
stain and all – but I have never in my life seen a more dejected face! What is more, it was the face of the Colonel Flack whom I knew, Randolph Flack, of the Marines!
It all seemed so wrong and so out of key with tradition that I heard myself hollering madly at him: ‘Hi there, Colonel, you turned hoss-thief? That’s my beast! Where’s your own?’ And as true as I’m standing here, he hollers back: ‘It’s the Commander-in-Chief, Doc! He’s grabbed mine and told me to shift for myself.’
Another mounted figure moved into the light of the french window, and you will excuse me for not describing him, for though I have seen Death often in the course of my professional activities, and wearing many disguises, that is not a subject on which I care to dwell in company. I’ll say no more than this: he was riding the Colonel’s white horse.
‘Call yourself a Flack?’ I hollered again. ‘So you’re a coward after all, is that it? Forgotten the family motto, eh? You, who never before let yourself be pushed around by the Top Brass? Nec Flacci Mortem indeed! My word, I’m downright ashamed of you, Randy Flack! And no Doc Halloran ever said that before to a man of your name.’
It worked. I saved the mother and I saved the boy. Then, when I could look up again, I watched the Colonel trotting away out of sight, mounted on his own horse; and the duelling pistol smoked in his hand.
Epics Are Out of Fashion
PETRONIUS DID HIS best. He wasn’t a bad fellow at heart, though he had the foulest mind in Rome and drank like a camel. And he was such an expert in the art of modern living that the Emperor never dared buy a vase or a statue, or even sample an unfamiliar vintage, without his advice.
One evening Petronius dropped in to dinner at the Palace and was handed a really repulsive-looking sauce, of which herb-benjamin and garlic seemed to be the chief ingredients. Since the waiter actually expected him to pour it over a beautifully grilled sole, Petronius made Nero blush to the roots of his hair by asking in his silkiest tones: ‘My dear Caesar, can this be exactly what you meant?’ Nero’s eager, anxious glances, you see, made it quite obvious that he had invented the sauce himself; and if Petronius had been weak enough to approve, every noble table in Rome would soon have stunk with the stuff. Our hearts went out to him in gratitude.
My brother-in-law Lucan notoriously lacked Petronius’s poise, and yet was far too pleased with himself. I had always regretted my sister’s marriage: Lucan, the son of rich Spanish provincials, never ceased to be an outsider, although his uncle Seneca, Nero’s tutor, had now risen to the rank of Consul and become the leading writer and dramatist of his day. Seneca doted on young Lucan, an infant prodigy who could talk Greek fluently at the age of four, knew the Iliad by heart at eight; and before he turned eleven had written an historical commentary on Xenophon’s Anabasis and translated Ibycus into Ovidian elegiacs.
He was now twenty-five, two years older than Nero, who had taken him as his literary model. Lucan repaid this kindness with a wonderful speech of flattery at the Neronia festival. But when that same night Petronius visited our house – Lucan was staying with us at the time – on the pretext of congratulating him, I guessed that there was something else in the wind. So I dismissed the slaves, and out it came.
‘Yes, Lucan, a most polished speech; and I am too discreet to inquire how sincerely you meant it. But… well… a rumour is about that you’re working on an important historical poem.’
‘Correct, friend Petronius,’ Lucan answered complacently.
‘For the love of Bacchus, you aren’t after all writing your Conquests of Alexander, are you?’
‘No, I scrapped that, except for a few fine passages.’
‘Wise man. You might have inspired our Imperial patron to emulate the Macedonian by marching into Parthia. Despite his innate military genius, and so on, and so forth, I cannot be sure that the army would have proved quite equal to the task. Those Parthian archers, you know…’ He let his voice trail off.
‘No, since you ask, the subject is the Civil Wars.’
Petronius threw up his hands. ‘That’s what I heard, and it alarmed me more than I can say, my dear boy! It’s a desperately tricky subject, even after a hundred years. At least two-thirds of the surviving aristocratic families fought on the losing side. You may please the Emperor – I repeat may and underline it – but you’ll be sure to tread on a multitude of corns. How long is the poem?’
‘An epic in twelve books. Nine are already written…’
‘An epic, my very good sir?’
‘An epic.’
‘But epics are ridiculously out of fashion!’
‘Mine won’t be. I make my warriors use modem weapons; I rule out any absurd personal intervention of the gods; and I enliven the narrative with gruesome anecdotes, breath-taking metaphors, and every rhetorical trope in the bag. Like me to read a few lines?’
‘If you insist.’
While Lucan is away fetching the scroll, Petronius plucks me by the sleeve. ‘Argentarius, you must stop this nonsense somehow – anyhow! The Emperor has just coyly asked me: “What about those Battle of Actium verses I showed you the other night? Were you too drunk to take them in?” “No, Caesar,” I assured him, “your remarkable hexameters sobered me up in a flash.” “So you agree that I’m a better poet than Lucan?” To which I replied: “Heavens above, there’s no comparison!” He must have taken this all right, because his next remark was: “Good, because those lines form part of my great modern epic.”’
Re-enter Lucan. Petronius breaks off the sentence dramatically and reaches for the scroll. Lucan watches him read. After an uncomfortable quarter of an hour Petronius lays the scroll down and pronounces: ‘This will take a lot of polishing, Lucan. I don’t say it’s not good, but it must be far, far better before it can go to the copyists. Put it away in a drawer for another few years. In my opinion (which you cannot afford to despise) the modern epic is a form that only retired statesmen or young Emperors should attempt.’
Lucan turns white. ‘What do you mean?’ he asks.
‘I have nothing to add to my statement,’ replies Petronius, and waves his hand in farewell. Petronius was so drunk, by the way, that he almost seemed sober.
Lucan tried to cut Petronius in the Sacred Way early next morning; but found himself forcibly steered into the back-room of a wine shop. ‘Listen, imbecile,’ Petronius said, ‘nobody denies that you’re the greatest poet in the world, with one exception; but that exception has got wind of your project, and he’ll be very cross indeed if you presume to compete with him. For the love of Vulcan, light the furnace with that damned papyrus! Write a rhymed cookery-book instead – I’ll be delighted to help you – or some more of your amatory epigrams about negresses with lascivious limbs and hair like the fleece of Zeus’s black Laphystian ram; or what about a Pindaresque eulogy of the Emperor’s skill as a charioteer? Anything in the world – but not an epic about the Civil Wars!’
‘Nobody has a right to curb my Pegasus.’
‘Those were Bellerophon’s famous last words,’ Petronius reminded him. ‘The Thunderer then sent a gadfly which stung Pegasus under the tail, and Bellerophon fell a long way, and very hard.’
Lucan flared up. ‘Who are you to talk about caution? You satirize Nero as Trimalchio in your satiric novel, don’t you? Nobody could mistake the portrait: his flat jokes, his rambling nonsensical talk, his grossly vulgar taste, his heart-breaking self-pity. Oh, that squint-eyed, lecherous, illiterate, muddle-pated, megalomaniac, morbid, top-heavy mountain of flesh!’
Petronius rose. ‘Really, Spaniard, I think this must be good-bye! There are certain things that cannot be decently said in any company.’
‘But which I have nevertheless said, and will say again!’
It proved to be their last meeting. A month later Lucan invited a few friends to a private banquet where, after dessert, he declaimed the first two or three hundred lines of his epic. It started by describing the Civil Wars as the greatest disgrace Rome ever suffered, but none the less amply worth while, since they gua
ranteed Nero’s eventual succession. Then it promised Nero that on his demise he’d go straight up to the stars, like the divine Augustus, and become even more of a god than he already was – with the choice, though, of deciding whether to become Jove and wield the Olympian sceptre, or Apollo and try out the celestial Sun-chariot.
This was all very well so far; but then came the pay-off. You must understand that Petronius had got away with the Trimalchio satire because he was an artist: careful not to pick on any actual blunder or vulgarity of Nero’s that had gone the rounds, but burlesquing the sort of behaviour which (under our breaths of course) we called a Neronianism. Nero would never have recognized the nouveau-riche Trimalchio as himself; and, obviously, nobody would have dared enlighten him. But Lucan wasn’t an artist. He soon let his mock-heroic eulogy degenerate into ham-handed caricature: he begged Nero when deified not to deprive Rome of his full radiance by planting himself in the Arctic regions of Heaven or in the tropical South, whence his fortunate beams would reach us only squintingly; and he was, please, not to lean too heavily on any particular part of the aether for fear his divine weight would tilt the heavenly axis off centre and throw the whole universe out of gear. And the idiot emphasized each point with a ghastly grimace – which caused such general embarrassment that the banquet broke up in confusion.