The Secret Life of Salvador Dali (24 page)

I must confess that the most catastrophic hazards kept occurring to enhance the theatrical character of my most trivial actions, contributing in a decisive way to the myth which already at the time of my adolescence began to surround the initial obscurity of my person with its mists of divine renown.

I was to begin my secondary studies, and for this I was sent to another religious school, that of the Marist Brothers. At this time I claimed to have made sensational discoveries in the field of mathematics which would enable me to make money. My method was simple. It was this: I would buy five-
centimo
pieces with ten-
centimo
pieces—for each five that I was offered I would give ten in exchange! All the money that I could obtain from my parents I would immediately spend in this way, taking a frenzied delight in the game which was incomprehensible to everyone and inevitably ruinous. One day when my father made me a present of a
duro
(five
pesetas),
I rushed out to change it into ten-
centimo
pieces, which made several marvelous piles! As soon as I got to school I triumphantly announced that on this very day I would open my market to buy five-
centimo
pieces on my usual conditions.

So at the first recreation period I took up my post behind a little table, and with great delight I arranged the coins in several piles. All my schoolmates gathered round me, eager to realize the promised exchange. To the consternation of everyone I actually gave back ten
centimos
for every five I was offered! My money spent, I pretended to go over my accounts in a secret little book which I put back preciously in my pocket, securing it with several safety pins. After which I exclaimed, rubbing my hands with satisfaction, “Again I’ve made a profit!” I then got up from my counter table and strode off, not without having first cast a contemptuous glance around at my schoolmates, with an expression which poorly concealed my joy, as if to say, “Once more I’ve put one over on you! What idiots!”

This money-buying game began to fascinate me in an obsessing way, and from then on I canalized all my activity toward obtaining as much money as possible from my parents on the most varied pretexts—for buying books or paint; or else, by displaying such exemplary and unusual conduct that it warranted my asking for some monetary reward. My financial needs grew, for in order to consolidate my prestige it was necessary for me to exchange more and more considerable sums: it was the only sure way of amplifying the sensational astonishment which steadily spread around me at each new exchange.

One day I arrived at school, out of breath, barely holding back my joy—I was bringing fifteen
pesetas
which I had finally got together after a thousand tortures and sacrifices of sweetness toward my parents! I was going to be able to exchange fifteen
pesetas
all at once. I went about this with the utmost ceremony and deliberation, interrupting my exchanges
from time to time to consult my account book. I succeeded in making my pleasure last several hours, and my success exceeded all my ambitions. My schoolmates repeated from mouth to mouth, “You know how much money Dali has just exchanged? Fifteen
pesetas! . . .”
“Not really!” Everyone was amazed, and they kept exclaiming, “He is really mad!”

For as long as I could remember I had savored that phrase with delight. In the evenings after school I would go strolling about the town all by myself; it was then that I thought up what I would do the next day to astonish my schoolmates. But I also took advantage of these strolls to indulge in my “aggressions,” for I usually came upon suitable victims, which this “sport” required, and whom I chose among children smaller than myself. My first aggression was perpetrated on a boy of thirteen. I had been watching him for some time stupidly eating a large piece of bread with some chocolate—a mouthful of bread, a mouthful of chocolate. These alternate, almost mechanical gestures, appeared to me to reveal a profound lack of intelligence. Moreover he was ugly, and the chocolate he was eating, which was of atrocious quality, inspired me with an immense contempt for its consumer. I approached the boy furtively, pretending to be absorbed in the reading of a book by Prince Kropotkin
¹
which I always carried with me on my walks. My victim saw me coming, but he had no suspicions of me and continued to devour his bread and his chocolate while looking in another direction. I sized him up and planned what I was going to do, indulging at leisure in the great luxury of premeditation as I approached him. After having closely observed his horrible, idiotic, uncouth manner of eating, and especially of swallowing, I slapped him hard right in the face, making his bread and chocolate fly into the air. After which I dashed off in frenzied flight as fast as my legs would carry me. It took the lad a long time to realize what had happened to him, and when he understood it and tried to run after me I was already so far away that he immediately abandoned his angry impulse to dash after me. I saw him stoop down and pick up his piece of bread and his chocolate.

My unpunished success immediately caused such acts of aggression to assume the endemic character of a real vice which I could no longer forego. I would be on the look-out for every propitious occasion to commit similar acts, and I grew more and more reckless. Soon I noticed that the sympathetic or antipathetic character of my victims no longer played an essential role, and that my pleasure arose solely from the anguish inherent in the execution and the vicissitudes of the assault itself.

On one occasion I chose as my victim a violin student whom I knew very slightly and toward whom I had rather a feeling of admiration because of his artistic vocation. He was very tall, much bigger than I,
but so thin, so pale and sickly that his look of frailness made me regard him as unlikely to react violently to what I would do. I had been following him for several minutes, but no favorable occasion arose: he was still in the midst of several groups of students, busily chatting. Presently he left one of these groups, put his violin on the ground, and kneeled down to tie a shoelace that had come undone. His posture at this moment could not have been more propitious. Without hesitating, I went up to him and gave him a terrific kick on the buttocks. After which I jumped with both feet upon his violin, crushing it into a hundred pieces and immediately after dashed away like a rabbit. But this time my victim, recovering quickly from my attack, ran after me and did not give up the chase. His legs were so long, and he ran so well that I immediately felt I was lost. Then, judging all resistance useless, and seized with an insurmountable fit of cowardice, I stopped short, got down on my knees, and begged him tremblingly to forgive me. I immediately thought of offering him money, and with my eyes full of tears volunteered to give him twenty-five
pesetas
if he did not touch me, if he did not hurt me. But the boy violinist’s lust for vengeance was so aroused that I understood my pleas were in vain and that no amount of wailing could stop him. Then I concealed my head between my arms to protect myself from the blows I was about to receive. With a savage kick in my chest he knocked me over, punched me several times, seized a lock of my long hair, and pulled and twisted it at the same time, tearing out several handfuls. I uttered piercing and hysterical shrieks of pain and my terror was so theatrically manifest in the quivering of my whole body, by which I made it seem that I was about to succumb to a kind of attack, that the boy violinist, suddenly startled, stopped beating me and fled in turn.

A compact group of students had just gathered round us; the professor of literature who happened to be nearby asserted his authority to intervene, and breaking his way through the crowd he asked for an explanation of what had occurred. Then an astonishing lie was suddenly born in my head, and I said to him all in one breath,

“I have just crushed his violin to give a final irrefutable proof of the superiority of painting over music!”

My explanation was greeted with mingled murmurs and laughter. The professor, indignant though his curiosity was aroused, said,

“How did you do this?”

“With my shoes,” I answered, after a moment’s pause.

Everyone laughed, this time, creating a great hubbub. The professor restored silence, came over to me, put one hand on my shoulder and said in an almost paternal tone of reproach,

“That doesn’t prove anything. It makes no sense!”

Looking him straight in the eye, with an assurance that verged on solemnity, and hammering out each syllable with the utmost dignity of which I was capable, I answered,

“I know very well that it makes no sense for most of my schoolmates
and even for most of my professors; on the other hand I can assure you that my shoes
²
[and I pointed to them with my finger] have quite a different view of the matter!”

A stifling silence fell around us after I had finished uttering my last words. All my schoolmates expected a dressing down and a severe punishment for my stupefying insolence. On the contrary the literature professor became suddenly meditative and made, to the surprise and disappointment of everyone, an impatient and categorical gesture with his arm indicating that he considered the incident closed, at least for the moment.

From that day on there began to grow around my personality an aureole of “audacity,” which the events I am now about to describe were only to consolidate and raise to the status of a legendary category. None of my companions had ever dared to answer a professor with the assurance which I had shown, and all were agreed in recognizing that the vigor of my tone had left the professor breathless. This sudden energy which flashed like a streak of lightning through the haze of my habitual timidity brought me a certain prestige, which happily counterbalanced the mingled contempt and stupefaction which my monetary exchanges and other continual eccentricities had eventually attached to my reputation.

I began now to be a subject of intriguing controversy: Is he mad? Is he not mad? Is he half-mad? Does he show the beginnings of an extraordinary but abnormal personality? The last opinion was shared by several professors—those of drawing, handwriting and psychology. The mathematics professor, on the other hand, maintained that my intelligence was much below the average. One thing at any rate was more and more certain: everything abnormal or phenomenal that occurred was automatically attributed to me; and as I became more “alone” and more “unique,” I became by that very fact each day more “visible”—the more occult I made myself the more I was noticed. For that matter I began to exhibit my solitude, to take pride in it as though it were my mistress whom I was cynically parading, loaded with all the aggressive jewels of my continual homage.

One day a skull from a “mounted skeleton” which was used in the natural history class disappeared. I was immediately suspected, and they came to search my desk which, since it was locked, was forced open.
Already at that time skeletons filled me with a horrible uneasiness, and for nothing in the world would I have touched one. How little they knew me! The next day the enigma was solved: it was simply the professor himself
who had needed the skull and who had unmounted it to take it home with him.

One morning, after I had been absent from the institute several days because of my habitual anginas, I went back to resume my studies. When I arrived I noticed an excited crowd of students gathered in a circle, all shouting at the top of their lungs. Suddenly I saw a flame dart up from the centre of their excited group, followed by a whirl of black smoke. This is what had happened: at this time there was developing an important separatist movement connected with certain contemporary political events which had just been announced in the newspapers of the day before, and the students had done nothing less than to burn a Spanish flag!

Just as I was heading toward the group to try to find out what was happening I was surprised to see everyone suddenly scatter, and for a moment I thought my hurried arrival might have caused this. Before I knew, I was left standing alone with the remnants of the burned and smoking flag at my feet; the runaways looked at me from a distance with an expression both of terror and admiration which puzzled me. Yet the reason for the sudden dispersal was perfectly obvious, for it was motivated simply by the arrival of a group of soldiers who happened to be passing by the scene of the incident and to have witnessed what had occurred, and who now were already beginning to investigate the anti-patriotic sacrilege which had just been perpetrated. I declared repeatedly that my presence here was purely accidental, but no one paid the slightest attention to my protests of innocence; on the contrary, the picture that everyone had already formed of me required that I become the principal hero of this demonstration in which I had not even participated. The story immediately went round that the moment the soldiers appeared on the scene everyone had run away except myself, who in remaining glued to the spot had given a proof and example of revolutionary stoicism and admirable presence of mind. I had to appear before the judges, but fortunately I was not yet old enough to be held responsible for acts of a political nature; I was acquitted without being brought to trial. Nevertheless the event made a deep impression on public opinion, which was beginning to have to take notice of my person.