Prevod
TO THE SPANISH POET DON TOMÁS RODRÍGUEZ RUBÍ, AUTHOR OF A PLAY BEARING THE SAME TITLE AS THIS TRADITION I How Mariquita Martínez Refused to Be Called Mariquita the Bald Sometime around 1734, a merry young woman named Mariquita Martínez used to stroll through these streets of Lima—a pearl of a girl, with all due respect to you, dear lady reader. I fancy I can see her now, not because I ever knew her—devil take it! (for when she was eating wheaten bread, your humble servant was no more than a project in the mind of the Eternal Father)—but from the portrait of her charms and allure left by a balladeer of that century, who, to judge by his verses, must have been an amorous fellow, quite beside himself over that delectable little bundle of charms. Marujita was one of those Lima girls with more grace in her walk than a consecrated bishop could bestow, the sort of whom a poet said:
In Lima the light seems brighter, for when God made the sun to shine upon the world, he lovingly set two upon each Lima woman’s face. Moonlit nights were the time to see Mariquita strolling up and down the Bridge in a dazzling white cotton gown, a white tulle shawl, tiny shoes of size four and a half, enough coquetry to raise the dead, and a head covered in jasmine. The moonbeams lent the young woman’s beauty something almost magical; and the men, who are forever losing our heads over such fantasies of flesh and blood, fired volleys of compliments at her. Unwilling to keep anything that belonged to someone else, she returned them with the ready wit that made the charm and quickness of Lima’s women proverbial.
Mariquita was one of those who say: I am no Salve Regina, all sighing and weeping. A merry life, and keep doing your sums until the pencil breaks or the slate wears out!
In colonial days, one could scarcely make one’s way across the Bridge on moonlit nights. It was everyone’s meeting place. Both pavements were occupied by fashionable young men who, while finding relief from the dog-day heat in the little breeze off the river, feasted their eyes on the women of Lima as they came out to breathe the cool air, sweetening it with the delicate scent of the jasmine that filled their hair.
The fashion was not to be forever displaying costly jewels, but flowers; and no fashion could have been cheaper for fathers and husbands, who for half a silver real could meet their obligations and still have enough left to deliver a soul from purgatory. Flowers had the further advantage of satisfying anyone curious about a woman’s marital status, since unmarried women generally wore them on the left side of the head and married women on the right.
Every summer afternoon, boys went through the streets of Lima crying, “The jasmine seller!” Young women would come to their barred windows and buy a pair of banana leaves bearing a handful of jasmine, Arabian jasmine, sweet acacia, frangipani, orange blossom, cherimoya flowers, and others no less fragrant. The Lima women of those days sought their adornments in nature, not in art.
The Lima woman of old used neither toothache elixirs nor tooth powders, yet her teeth were remarkably even and clean. No one yet knew that a California of gold could be hidden in the hollow of a tooth, or that ivory could be fashioned into jaws with nothing to envy in those God had given us. Do you know to whom the Lima woman owed the whiteness of her teeth? The root seller. Like the jasmine seller, he was another enterprising street vendor, selling certain soft, juicy roots that the young women amused themselves by chewing and rubbing over their teeth.
It sounds like a joke, but enterprise is declining. There are no jasmine sellers or root sellers anymore, and a pity it is; for if there were, down would come a municipal tax to break their backs, in these times when even dogs must pay a fee for exercising their right to bark. And, with your leave, the seller of sulphur-tipped tapers has vanished too, along with the seller of cigar ends, the anticucho vendor, and other enterprising souls.
But enough of digressions; let us return to Mariquita. The Lima girl in question knew nothing of hairdressers or chignons, save for a stray curl set flying on grand occasions; nothing of hot irons or curling papers; nor did she ever use hair oil, balsams, glycerine, or pomades. God’s own water, and there was an end of it—and their tresses were the best of the best.
Nowadays, though, young ladies say water rots the roots of the hair, and I am in no mood to pick a quarrel with them by arguing otherwise. Drunkards, too, say they prefer liquor because water breeds frogs and vermin.
Mariquita’s devilry lay in her mane of hair. Her pride was to display two magnificent braids which, as Zorrilla said in depicting Eve’s beauty, measured her full height as she stood.
One of those moonlit nights, Mariquita was walking along the Bridge, casting a glance at one man, wielding a smile at another, aiming a quip at a third, when suddenly a man seized her by the waist, drew a sharp razor, and—snip! snap!—in less than a twinkling sliced off one of her braids.
Screams and confusion. Mariquita went into hysterics, people took to their heels, doors were slammed shut, and word reached the palace that corsairs had slipped quietly in through the river mouth and taken the city by surprise.
In short, the girl was left shorn, and rather than give anyone a chance to call her Mariquita the Bald, she mended her ways, entered a house of pious women, and was never heard of again.
II How the Braid of Her Hair Brought Peru an Artistic Glory The fellow who had shorn Mariquita in a fit of temper was a young man of twenty-six, the son of a Spaniard and an Indian woman. His name was Baltasar Gavilán. His father had left him a little money, but the lad, his head turned by the aforementioned female, took to spending until he saw the bottom of his purse, which certainly could not last forever like the five coins of Juan Espera-en-Dios, otherwise known as the Wandering Jew.
Baltasar’s godfather was the guardian of San Francisco, a friar of considerable standing and consequence, who, though very fond of his godson, delivered a three-hour sermon when he learned what had brought the young man into trouble. During the first few days, the criminal magistrate demanded that the offender be handed over; but whether Mariquita reflected that even hanging her enemy would not restore her lost braid, or, more likely, his reverence’s influence proved sufficient to twist the nose of justice, the fact remains that the authorities did not press the matter of extradition.
To divert himself during his enforced monastic life, Baltasar began carving a piece of wood, making from it figures of the Virgin, the infant Jesus, the Three Wise Men, and, in short, all the furnishings of the Nativity scene. Though the figures were small, the whole was splendid, and visitors to the guardian spread the word that it was an artistic marvel. Encouraged by their praise, Gavilán devoted himself to making life-size images, not only in wood but also in Huamanga stone, some of which still stand in various churches in Lima.
Our artist’s most acclaimed work was an Our Lady of Sorrows, which we do not know whether San Francisco still possesses. The viceroy, the Marquis of Villagarcía, hearing of the sculptor’s talent, wished to judge for himself, and one morning appeared at the cell that had been turned into a workshop. His Excellency declared that the courtiers had fallen short in their praises and chatted familiarly with the artist. Encouraged by the viceroy’s kindness, the latter told him that he was weary of confinement, that three years of convent life had more than atoned for his offence, and that he longed for the wide world of freedom. The marquis scratched the tip of his ear and replied that society required amends: since the scandal had been committed on the Bridge, the Bridge must display a work of such merit that people would forget the man’s offence in admiration of the artist’s genius. With that, His Excellency turned on his heel and made for the door.
Five months later, in 1738, Lima celebrated with solemn pomp and splendid festivities the placing of an equestrian statue of Philip V atop the arch of the Bridge.
The account of these festivities that we have read lavishes praise upon the artist. Unfortunately for his fame, his work did not outlive him: in the great earthquake of 1746, part of the arch collapsed, bringing the statue to the ground.
And here we wish to record a curious coincidence. Almost at the same time as the monarch’s image fell from its pedestal, news reached Lima of Philip V’s death from a sudden apoplectic stroke—which is, one might say, an earthquake within the body.
III How a Sculpture Brought Death to the Sculptor Until shortly after 1824, the Augustinian fathers used to bring out their celebrated Holy Thursday procession, which ended after midnight amid no small commotion, a clamour of old women, and young girls slipping away. More than twenty floats made up the procession, and on the first rode a perfect image of Death, with his scythe and all his other trappings, a superb work by the artist Baltasar Gavilán.
On the day Gavilán put the finishing touches to the skeleton, the friars and many prominent men of the country came to his workshop, and the excellence of the work won their enthusiastic, unanimous approval. The artist had achieved another triumph.
Ever since the days when he had lived in sanctuary at San Francisco, Baltasar had devoted himself passionately to the worship of Bacchus, and it is said that he carved his finest images while thoroughly drunk.
Not long ago I read a splendid article on Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred de Musset entitled Alcoholism in Literature. Baltasar could furnish the subject for another piece, which we might call Alcoholism in the Fine Arts.
Alcohol reinvigorated our artist’s mind and body; it was his nymph Egeria, so to speak. Ideas and strength, feeling and truth—Baltasar found them all at the bottom of a glass.
To celebrate the successful completion of the work the Augustinians had commissioned, Baltasar went with his friends to the bowling house and got royally drunk. Clinging to the walls, he managed to return to his workshop at ten that night, took up flint, steel, and a sulphur taper, lit a tallow candle, and threw himself fully dressed upon his bed.
At midnight he awoke. The dying light cast a strange reflection upon the skeleton standing at the foot of the bed. Death’s scythe seemed raised above Baltasar.
Terrified, and with his wits dulled by alcohol, he failed to recognize the work of his own hands. He gave dreadful screams, and the neighbours who came running understood from his incoherent words the hallucination that had seized him.
The great Peruvian sculptor died mad on the very day he finished the skeleton, whose artistic merit is still spoken of with great admiration by those who attended the Holy Thursday procession in the early years of Independence.
