Authors: Andromeda Romano-Lax
"I shouldn't intrude—" I stammered.
"Nonsense. I'm happy to see you're alive! I've talked one of Pau's ears off already," he said, using the Catalan version of the artist's name.
Politely but coolly, I inquired where Al-Cerraz was staying, for the longer term. "Here and there," he said. "An extra bed, a floor—I'm not choosy." I noticed only then how his jacket and shirt hung from his frame, and the crude woven belt hitching up his loose pants. He 'd lost easily fifteen kilos since I'd seen him at the Málaga bullring.
"Have you asked for help at the embassy?"
"The embassy? Bother them when other people are still behind the lines, hiding from the bombs, with nothing to eat?"
He might not have meant it as a criticism, but I felt its sting all the same, and then the heat of my own anger spreading: Who was Al-Cerraz to judge anyone who sought the embassy's help, when he was in league with the fascists? He was more than a Nationalist sympathizer—he was a prominent artist collaborating at the topmost levels with Franco himself.
Picasso had walked to a corner table loaded with paint-smeared newspapers. Much as I refused to turn a blind eye to Al-Cerraz's activities, I wasn't trying to expose him, either. I whispered, "I heard Queipo de Llano on the radio, saying you were president of some organization—"
"The Spanish Culture Institute," Al-Cerraz boomed. "Yes, that." He smiled. "For one week, until I met the Caudillo himself. There's a story. Pau—you'll want to hear this one." Al-Cerraz glanced meaningfully across the room, then winked at me. "Pau is the new director of the Prado. He understands about these honorary positions."
"Director del Museo
—my other hat," Picasso said, balancing atop his head an old-fashioned bowler he'd pulled from a costume box. Watching him clown around, I thought what a sham it was that the dying Republic was propping itself up by sweet-talking apolitical, apathetic exiles into such high-profile roles. I had no inkling then of the important work Picasso would undertake in that role, spiriting the museum's priceless artworks out of Madrid to Geneva for safekeeping.
"And here's one for you, Justo," Picasso said, presenting him with a
tricornio,
the patent-leather uniform hat of the ultraconservative Civil Guard.
Al-Cerraz laughed and waved it away. "Not for me—
no, gracias.
I am finished with all that." So Picasso knew something of Al-Cerraz's Nationalist associations. Yet he'd still allowed the pianist to sleep on his couch. I didn't know what to think.
"But the story—please, let me tell it," Al-Cerraz said, opening the bottle he'd brought—a Beaujolais cru, finer than the one I'd chosen—and winking as he filled the glasses.
Al-Cerraz had met Franco in September 1936, just after Al-Cerraz was named honorary president of the cultural institute, and before Franco had risen above his fellow generals to be declared chief of state.
The pianist had prepared a short, original piano work for the occasion. General Franco was late to arrive, and a young man in suit and tie introduced himself as the associate director of cultural services. Was the piano's tuning to the maestro's satisfaction? It was fine, Al-Cerraz told him. Anything else he could bring? Something to help the pianist loosen up?
"Just quiet," Al-Cerraz said. He had always been superstitious and finicky about being alone before a performance.
The associate director smiled obsequiously and put a finger to his lips. Yet as soon as Al-Cerraz launched into the prelude, he piped up again. Was that a
malagueño
rhythm?
"Something like that," Al-Cerraz said.
"Or maybe more of a Cuban
guajira,
was it not?" He clapped out the three-quarter rhythm.
Al-Cerraz started over from the beginning.
"Just to let you know," the associate director interrupted, "The
Jefe
is hoping for real Spanish music.
Muy puro.
"
"What is pure? Does that mean nothing gypsy?"
"Oh, no, the
Jefe
loves gypsy flamenco."
"Flamenco?" Franco had a reputation for being rather fussy and prim.
"Well," the associate director winked, "the tourists love flamenco. So he likes flamenco. Currency, you understand."
"It 's a little early in the war effort to be thinking about tourism, isn't it?"
"Are you kidding? Tourism, marketing—it's essential. They're already naming a new sherry after one of the generals. Hats, tires, just about everything. And wait—look at this."
The young official retrieved a folder and extracted a stack of brochures that still smelled of wet ink. "Visit the Routes of War!" proclaimed the cover, over a montage of scenic routes along the northern occupied coast. Route 3 to Madrid, the map boasted, would be "open to traffic by 1 July 1938."
"Open by 1938," Al-Cerraz joked. "He'd better get going. What's he doing wasting time listening to a pianist?"
The associate director's smile faded. But as soon as Al-Cerraz resumed his warm-up, he was back at the pianist's shoulder. "That bit had a Basque flavor. You know that General Mola has had quite a time with the Basques, don't you? No, not the whole passage, just those few measures. Play them again. Yes, that's what I'm hearing."
"You're quite the musicologist," Al-Cerraz commented drily.
An hour later, Franco finally arrived, flanked by two officers. Introductions were bypassed. The general sat down without removing his sunglasses, and Al-Cerraz began to play.
The pianist settled his wide hands into the opening chords, lifted them dramatically, then placed them back in his lap. His left foot continued to tap out the time. His hands stayed in his lap for a tense minute.
Finally Franco stood up and turned to the officer on his left. "What is the story with this pianist?"
"He's famous. And eager to compose for us."
Franco turned to Al-Cerraz. "Is this what you have composed for us?"
"Hold on, another part is coming. A good part." Al-Cerraz played an isolated measure—one that hadn't been criticized by the associate director—and then lifted his hands away from the keyboard again.
"This man is mocking us," said the officer to Franco's right.
Franco pulled off his sunglasses. "What is this man's name?"
Al-Cerraz stopped tapping his foot and looked at the general. "Sir, I was under the impression you requested me directly. I've already been named president of the Institute."
"Get me this man's name," Franco seethed. "Not just his name—his file. I want to know who recommended him."
It was clear from the sweat pouring off the associate director's face that the file wasn't necessary.
Al-Cerraz folded his arms across his chest. "If you don't know my name, you should. I was famous before you were born. I expect to be famous long after you have passed away."
Franco, who was busy conferring with his fellow officers, didn't acknowledge the comment.
"Really," Al-Cerraz continued, "if you look at the average duration of a prime minister or a president—even a dictator or a monarch—it's not a long span. If you count the number of governments we've had since 1898—"
Franco cut him off. "Someone recommended this buffoon, and I want to know who it is. Immediately."
The associate director did an exaggerated double-take at Al-Cerraz's face and erupted in a high-pitched, hysterical giggle. "I recognize this man! He's the piano tuner. Who put him up to this? What a terrible prank they've played on us!" He began to tug at Al-Cerraz's jacket sleeves, trying to pull him away from the piano bench.
The officers on either side of Franco exchanged shrugs. Franco pushed the sunglasses back onto his face, exasperated. He 'd spent most of his life in military academies and remote barracks, where he'd grown accustomed to tomfoolery.
"I'll get to the bottom of this," the associate director shouted, pushing Al-Cerraz out the stage door. And then, louder than necessary, "Get going! And if you see Maestro Justo Al-Cerraz out there, tell him we 're still waiting and he's shamefully late!"
"Can you imagine?" Al-Cerraz laughed a final time, refilling his glass. "Me, a piano tuner? It's only a little more improbable than me as a fascist composer—what a lark that was."
Picasso applauded the story. Neither man seemed to notice my silence.
"And yet," Al-Cerraz added, growing suddenly serious. "Franco did me a great favor. Once I realized that some of my 'piano miniatures' might offend him, I recognized also that they had more value than I'd presumed. Isn't it true that all valuable art offends someone? I've had it backward all these years, thinking Spain needs large-scale compositions. Maybe it takes a demagogue to show us that even humble works have their subversive power."
He glanced at me again, plainly waiting for me to respond, but I was still too aggravated to speak.
"Your Franco story reminds me of something," Picasso said. From a pile by the wall, he retrieved a series of cartoonlike etchings—some simplistic, some grotesque—of a figure seated on an old horse, underneath the type of smiling sun a three-year-old might draw. It was Franco, abstracted into a strange Don Quixote—like character, wearing striped armor and brandishing a sword. His head was distorted, somehow phallic, pornographic, even though in one panel he wore a lady's lace mantilla as well as a crown. Picasso read us the poem he had written to accompany the etchings, a rambling, nonsensical piece of whimsy that failed to impress, full of nets of anchovies and shrouds stuffed with sausages and "the skyrocket of lilies." But the cartoon images stayed with me.
A panel of a bull attacking Franco-Quixote reminded Al-Cerraz of the last time we 'd seen each other, and he launched into recounting the untimely demise of Doña de Larrocha's prize bull. But Picasso didn't seem to be listening. He set down his wineglass, picked up the pad he had left lying next to his chair, and began to sketch. I thought he might be hinting that it was time to leave him to his work, but Al-Cerraz wasn't one to leave a story unfinished or a glass undrained. And as he continued I saw that Picasso was sketching with increasing fervor. He wasn't irritated at all—only inspired. As he finished each sketch, he ripped it off the pad, laid it aside, and started on another. I saw the image of a bull, angry at first, haughty, then pained. The
picador
's horse, wounded by the retired general, with a gaping hole in its side. A woman—I suppose it was Doña de Larrocha herself—with her face tilted toward the sky, screaming in distress.
And all the while he sketched, Al-Cerraz continued to regale him, with anecdotes from his long and lively career and his opinions on art, music and life. By the time Picasso set aside his sketchbook, Al-Cerraz was just finishing a story about meeting Monet at Giverny in 1923, when the old man was still painting his beloved water lilies.
"All those variations! That light! Well, it's exactly what I try to do with the piano—one keyboard, one viewpoint perhaps, but an infinity of colors." He scratched his beard and adopted a confessional tone. "Pau, I'm no fan of modern art, I have to admit that—just as I expressed it to Monet. I told him, 'I'd hate to be thought of as a reactionary.'"
Picasso looked up. "What did he say?"
"He turned to me and said, 'It isn't about styles. To observe the world honestly will always be revolutionary.'"
An hour later, Al-Cerraz accompanied me out the door and down the street, a battered carpetbag-style valise hanging from his thick fist.
I marveled at how easily he had interacted with the painter, despite their brief acquaintance, whereas I could find little to say to my partner of twenty-three years—or little that wouldn't end in recriminations. And he, apparently, had just as little to say to me.
Finally I muttered, "So you've made a new friend."
Al-Cerraz cocked his head. "I'm really just getting to know him. He's complicated. There was some tricky business the second day I was there, when his mistress came by and started fighting with his wife."
"And...?"
Al-Cerraz smiled ruefully, recalling the scene. "Pau up on a ladder, bamboo paintbrush in hand—the mistress with her big black camera, trying to get pictures of the genius at work—the wife dancing between them both, pulling her hair out, telling Picasso he'd better choose."
He laughed once, then grew serious. "I've broken a heart or two, but I've never set one woman against another. And while they were fighting with each other and pleading with him, sobbing all the while, he just kept humming and painting." He sighed. "Maybe I'm not hard-nosed enough to be a great artist. Not like you and Picasso."
"Me?"
"Able to forget people. Able to focus on the work."
We 'd stopped at a corner and waited to cross. Was he baiting me? "You certainly were chummy with him today, though."
He pretended to study the traffic, shoulders slumping. "You know I talk when I'm nervous."
"Nervous?"
"Embarrassed."
"By Picasso?"
Al-Cerraz hesitated. "By you. By the way you had come there to influence him—to tell him what to paint."
I was taken aback: Al-Cerraz had the nerve to judge
me?
"Not
what
to paint," I said.
"Come now. You know they don't want one of his fractured ladies or blue guitars. They want a political poster, ready-made—but they want to call it art."
He waited, and when I kept walking, he added, "It wasn't too different from what that lackey of Franco's did to me—telling me what to put in and what to leave out. An artist can't take directions that way."
I felt my jaw tightening. "I suppose it depends on what's at stake."
By then we were nearly to my apartment. When Al-Cerraz asked if he might stay the night, I said the heating was broken. And then, encouraged by that small departure from the truth, I told him that workmen had taken over the place and I wasn't sure I'd be able to sleep there myself. He 'd better amble onward toward some other acquaintances, of which I was sure he had many.
Guernica was bombed that week. I walked to the embassy in a daze, clutching my address book and some letters I had already written. But the embassy was in chaos, with a line stretching out the door and reporters standing in the stairwells. Aub had no time to meet. I was hoping to get more details from him about the bombing. Some news reports said the Nationalists had bombed the little northern Basque town. Others said it was the Nazi Condor Legion, testing out a new strategy of warfare, with the Spanish fascists' eager consent: a relentless air attack on civilians, conducted in the middle of a market day, for maximum effect.