(I too have always refused to sign petitions, albeit for other reasons. The only reason to sign is to assuage the conscience of the signatory—a debatable position, I know; but should something happen to me, should I suddenly disappear or be thrown into jail, please don’t bother signing anything in my behalf.)
Another important figure in our Ultraist group was Rafael Alberti, who came from Puerto de Santa María, near Cádiz. We all thought of him first as a painter; many of his drawings, embellished with gold leaf, hang on the walls of my room.
“Did you know Alberti’s a great poet?” Dámaso Alonso, the president of the Spanish Language Institute, said to me suddenly one day while we were having a drink together.
When he saw my surprise, he handed me a copy of a poem that I still know by heart:
La noche ajusticiada
en el patibulo de un árbol
alegrías arodilladas
le besan y ungen las sandalias.…†
At this time, the Ultraist poets were constantly seeking the synthesizing adjective or the startling phrase, like “la noche ajusticiada”—night on trial—or night’s sandals. Published in the journal Horizonte, this poem marked Alberti’s debut as a serious writer. I loved it, and our friendship grew stronger. During our years at the Residencia we were rarely apart, and we continued to see each other in Madrid during the early stages of the Civil War. Later, he was decorated by Stalin during a trip to Moscow, then lived in Argentina and Italy during the Franco years. Subsequently, he returned to Spain, where he lives still.
Pepin Bello was our third musketeer. Born in Huesca in Aragón, Bello was neither a painter nor a poet, but a gentle and wholly unpredictable medical student who managed never to pass a single exam. His outstanding characteristic was his delight in announcing bad news. I can still hear him shouting in 1936, “Franco’s on his way! He’s crossing the Manzanares!” His brother Manolo was later executed by the Republicans, and Bello himself spent the final years of the war hiding in an embassy.
Another member of the group was the poet Hinojosa, who came from a rich family of landed gentry in the Málaga region. As bold and avant-garde in his poems as he was conservative in his political behavior, he belonged to the far-right party of Lamanie de Clairac. When we knew each other at the Residencia, he had already published two or three collections of poetry; later he too was executed by the Republicans.
Federico García Lorca arrived at the Residencia from Granada two years after I did. Recommended by his sociology professor, Don Fernando de los Ríos, he’d already published a prose work entitled Impresiones y paisajes, where he described the trips he’d taken with Don Fernando and other students from Andalusia. Federico was brilliant and charming, with a visible desire for sartorial elegance—his ties were always in impeccable taste. With his dark, shining eyes, he had a magnetism that few could resist. Two years older than I, and the son of a rich landowner, he’d come to Madrid to study philosophy, but he soon abandoned his studies and became an im-passioned student of literature. It wasn’t long before he knew everyone who counted, and his room at the Residencia became a popular meeting place for Madrid intellectuals.
We liked each other instantly. Although we seemed to have little in common—I was a redneck from Aragón, and he an elegant Andalusian—we spent most of our time together. (Perhaps our mutual attraction was at least in part due to our differences.) We used to sit on the grass in the evenings behind the Residencia (at that time, there were vast open spaces reaching to the horizon), and he would read me his poems. He read slowly and beautifully, and through him I began to discover a wholly new world.
I remember someone once telling me that a man named Martín Dominguez, a big man from the Basque country, was spreading the rumor that Lorca was a homosexual, a charge I found impossible to believe. One day, we were sitting side by side at the president’s table in the Residencia dining room, along with Unamuno, Eugenio d’Ors, and Don Alberto, our director.
“Let’s get out of here,” I suddenly said to Federico, after the first course. “I’ve got something I must ask you.”
We went to a nearby tavern, and there I told him that I’d decided to challenge Dominguez to a fight.
“Whatever for?” Lorca asked.
I hesitated a moment, unsure how to put it.
“Is it true you’re a maricón?” I finally blurted out.
“You and I are finished!” he declared, shocked and hurt, as he stood up and walked away.
By evening, we were the best of friends again. There was absolutely nothing effeminate or affected about Federico, and he had no tolerance for off-color jokes, particularly about homosexuals. I remember when Aragon came to Madrid several years later to give a lecture at the Residencia, and asked the director: “You wouldn’t happen to know an interesting public urinal, would you?” His sole intent was to shock—which he succeeded in doing—but this was precisely the kind of display Federico despised.
Through Lorca, I discovered poetry, particularly Spanish poetry, which he knew intimately, and Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend, where I found my first references to Saint Simeon of the Desert. Federico didn’t believe in God, but nourished profound artistic feelings for religion. I still have a photograph of us on a brightly painted motorcycle, taken in 1924 at the Verbena de San Antonio, the great annual fair in Madrid. While we were both blind drunk, Federico improvised a poem on the back of the picture at three in the morning:
La primera verbena que Dios envía
Es la de San Antonio de la Florida
Luis: en el encanto de la madrugada
Canta mi amistad siempre florecida
la luna grande luce y rueda
por las altas nubes tranquilas
mi corazón luce y rueda
en la noche verde y amarilla
Luis mi amistad apasionada
hace una trenza con la brisa
El niño toca el piantilo
triste, si una sonrisa
bajo los arcos de papel
estrecho tu mano amigo. ‡
Later, in 1929, he wrote another short poem I love, and which has never been published:
Cielo azul
Campo amarillo
Monte azul
Campo amarillo
Por la llanura desierta
Va caminando un olivo
Un solo
Olivo.§
Salvador Dali arrived at the Residencia three years after I did. The son of an attorney from Figueras, in Catalonia, he had set his sights on the Academy of Fine Arts; we used to call him the “Czechoslovakian painter,” although for the life of me I can’t remember why. I do remember, however, passing his room one morning when the door was open and, glancing inside, seeing him putting the finishing touches on a superb portrait.
“The painter from Czechoslovakia’s done an incredible painting,” I rushed to tell Lorca.
The word spread, and soon a group of people had converged on Dali’s room to view the finished product, whereupon he was instantly adopted into the group. Along with Federico, he became my closest friend. We were inseparable; Lorca nurtured quite a grand passion for Dali, but our Czechoslovakian painter remained unmoved.
He was a shy young man with long hair and a loud, deep voice. Indifferent to protocol and to life’s little exigencies, he wore enormous hats, huge ties, a long jacket that hung to his knees, and puttees. Many people saw his strange appearance as an act of “vestimentary” provocation, and he had to put up with a fair bit of public insult, but he dressed that way only because he liked to. He also wrote poems, which were actually published; and as early as 1926 or ’27 he had an exhibition of his paintings in Madrid, along with several other modern painters like Peinado and Viñes.
I remember when he went to take the entrance exam for the Fine Arts Academy and had to confront a board of examiners for his orals. The questioning had already begun when Dali suddenly leapt to his feet, shouting, “No one here has the right to sit in judgment upon me! I’m lea
ving!”—which he promptly proceeded to do. His father had to come in from Catalonia to try to fix things up with the director of the academy, but all his efforts were in vain. Dali was told not to return.
It’s impossible to describe the daily circumstances of our student years—the meetings, the conversations, the work and the walks, the drinking bouts, the brothels, the long evenings at the Residencia. Totally enamored of jazz, I took up the banjo, bought a record player, and laid in a stock of American records. We all spent hours listening to them and drinking homemade rum. (Alcohol was strictly taboo on the premises. Even wine was forbidden, under the pretext that it might stain the white tablecloths.) Sometimes we put on plays; even now, I think I could recite Zorrilla’s Don Juan Tenorio by heart. I was also responsible for inventing the ritual we called “las mojadures de primavera,” or “the watering rites of spring,” which consisted quite simply of pouring a bucket of water over the head of the first person to come along. Shades of this ritual worked themselves into the scene in That Obscure Object of Desire where Carole Bouquet is drenched by Fernando Rey on a railroad station platform!
There was another ritual, too, a more serious one, known as chulería. It’s a typically Spanish behavior, a blend of aggression, virile insolence, and self-assurance. Although quick to repent, I was often guilty of it during my years at the Residencia. For instance, there was a dancer at the Palace del Hielo whom I called La Rubia. I adored her elegance and style and used to go to that dance hall just to watch her move. One day Dali and Pepin Bello were so fed up by my constant eulogizing that they decided to come along and see for themselves. When we got there, La Rubia was dancing with a sober, mustachioed, bespectacled gentleman I immediately dubbed the Doctor. Dali was disappointed. Why had I dragged him out? he complained. La Rubia had no grace, no charm whatsoever.
“That’s only because she has a horrendous partner,” I retorted.
Having had a good bit to drink, I got to my feet and marched over to their table.
“My friends and I have come to see this girl dance,” I announced. “You make her look ridiculous. Do me a favor and go dance with somebody else!”
Then I turned on my heel and started back to our table, expecting a bottle to be broken over my head at any moment (such customs were rather widespread at the time), but nothing happened. The Doctor sat there openmouthed, then rose to his feet and rushed away.
Back at my table, I was horrified and thoroughly embarrassed by what I’d done, so I got up again and went over to La Rubia like a penitent approaching a priest.
“Please forgive me,” I begged. “What I just said was inexcusable. My dancing is even worse than his!”
Which was true; but despite my apologies, I never did get up enough courage to dance with her.
Another example of chulería manifested itself during the summer, once the natives had gone off on vacation and the hordes of American professors descended on the Residencia, accompanied by their often beautiful wives, to brush up their Spanish. The college arranged all sorts of lectures and excursions for them; notices like “Tomorrow—Trip to Toledo with Americo Castro” were forever appearing on the bulletin board in the hall.
One day, a notice announcing “Tomorrow—Trip to the Prado with Luis Buñuel” appeared. Much to my surprise, a large contingent had signed up, which provided me with my first direct experience of American Innocence. I kept up a steady stream of perfectly serious commentary as I led them through the rooms of the Prado—Goya, I told them, was a toreador who’d been involved in a secret and finally fatal liaison with the Duchess of Alba; Berruguete’s Auto-da-fé was a superb painting because it had a hundred and fifty characters in it, and, as everyone knows (I added ingenuously), the value of a painting depends to a certain extent on the number of people in it. The Americans listened attentively. A few protests were lodged with the director, but those I remember best were the ones who actually took notes.
It was during this period that I ventured into hypnotism. For some inexplicable reason, I was able to put people to sleep quite effortlessly. One in particular was an accountant at the Residencia, whose name was Lizcano. All I had to do was order him to stare at my finger and he’d go immediately into a trance. Sometimes I ran into trouble when it came to waking him up, so I began to study the subject more seriously. I read a number of books and tried a variety of methods, but my most extraordinary success was Rafaela.
There were two exceptionally beautiful girls, Lola Madrid and Teresita, at the Casa de Leonor, a brothel on the Calle de la Reina. Teresita had a tough but tender-hearted Basque lover called Pepe. One evening, while I was having a drink at the Café Fornos (the medical students’ hangout at the corner of Peligros and Alcalá), someone burst in shouting about a battle at the Casa. It seemed that Pepe, who never batted an eye when Teresita disappeared to service a customer, had discovered that she’d just bestowed her favors for free. Since this was a privilege reserved only for him, he’d rushed in and beaten her up.
When we got there, we found Teresita sobbing hysterically. Concerned, I stared into her eyes, spoke to her softly, took her hands, and told her to relax. Immediately she fell into a trance. The only voice she could hear was mine; she talked only to me. I uttered some soothing words and was just bringing her out of it when someone cried that Rafaela, Lola Madrid’s sister, had suddenly fallen sound asleep on the kitchen floor!
Rafaela was a truly astonishing case. One day she had a cataleptic fit just as I was walking down the street past the brothel. (As unlikely as it may sound, it’s true; I was so surprised myself that I went to great pains to verify it.) Afterwards, she and I did some experimenting. I even managed to cure her of a bladder obstruction just by passing my hands slowly across her stomach.
Our most dramatic experiment, however, took place at the Café Fornos. The medical students knew Rafaela, and they were not unreasonably suspicious of my claims; so to avoid any trickery on their part, I gave them no hint of what was coming. I simply sat down at their table—the café was only a step away from the brothel—and concentrated on Rafaela. Silently, I ordered her to rise and join me. Ten minutes later, eyes blank and totally unaware of what she was doing, she walked into the café. Silently, I ordered her to sit down next to me, which she did. Then I talked to her, soothed her, and woke her up. (Eight months after this experiment, Rafaela died. Her death puzzled and unsettled me, and I stopped playing hypnotist.)
On the other hand, I did a fair bit of table magic, despite the fact that its supernatural aspects held no interest for me. I’ve seen many a table rise and stay suspended in midair, the victim of some mysterious magnetic force that seemed to come from the people grouped around it. And I’ve seen tables give precise replies to questions, as long as one of the people, however unconsciously, could receive them.
Sometimes, too, I ventured into prophecy. The Assassin’s Game was one of my favorites. Imagine a room with a dozen people in it. You choose what seems to be a particularly receptive female (it only takes a couple of simple tests to determine which one). Then ask the others to choose an assassin and a victim from among themselves, and to hide the hypothetical weapon in this imaginary crime somewhere in the room. While these procedures were under way, I would leave; then I would return, allow myself to be blindfolded, and take the woman’s hand. Slowly, holding her hand, we’d walk around the room, and with alarming frequency I could identify the criminal, the victim, and the hiding place, guided only by the involuntary and almost imperceptible pressure of the innocent female hand in mine.
Sometimes I’d give the game a more amusing twist. While I was out of the room, everyone had to choose a special object—a piece of furniture, a painting or book, a bibelot—and touch it. They were told not to choose just anything; it had to be an object that had some meaning for them, some kind of affinity. When I came back in, I’d try to guess who had chosen what, an exercise in concentration, intuition, and perhaps a little telepathy. (In New York during the war, I used to try this with a grou
p of expatriate surrealists—André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy—and I never made a mistake.)
In this vein, I have one last memory to expiate: I was having a drink with Claude Jaeger at the Select in Paris one evening and became so outrageously rowdy that all the customers left. Only one woman remained behind. Not exactly sober, I made my way to her table, sat down, and started talking, announcing to her that she was Russian, that she’d been born in Moscow … and after a string of other details, we both simply stared at each other openmouthed—we’d never seen each other before!
Movies have a hypnotic power, too. Just watch people leaving a movie theatre; they’re usually silent, their heads droop, they have that absentminded look on their faces, unlike audiences at plays, bullfights, and sports events, where they show much more energy and animation. This kind of cinematographic hypnosis is no doubt due to the darkness of the theatre and to the rapidly changing scenes, lights, and camera movements, which weaken the spectator’s critical intelligence and exercise over him a kind of fascination. Sometimes, watching a movie is a bit like being raped.