momentarily, as if touched by emotion, but soon recovered his natural elegant and undersized bearing, and began to declaim with a bard’s verve.
The lives we lead are the rivers
that flow out into the sea
,
which is the dying …
“The joke was nearing its end,” thought some of them. And they applauded Jorge Manrique’s verses, laughing with a complicity that met with no response. On the contrary, Benito Mallo gave them a withering look and they shrank back in their seats until he reached the end of the poem.
“And now,” he said, a Neronian menace to his voice, “now a composition that took a lot of work. A whole afternoon, at least, for as you see the first quatrain resists like an uncut diamond.”
Violante has asked a sonnet of me
,
I never have been in such a dilemma …
There was no laughter left. Not even for Lope de Vega. Only the odd murmur, which he dissolved with an icy stare. At the end, they applauded him, not any old how, but in the regimental manner of formal concerts.
“And finally,a poem I dedicate to youth. In particular to my granddaughter, Marisa, who is, after all, the reason we are here today. What would we not give to be young again? There are times when we chide them for being rebellious, but this is only natural at their age, the romantic spirit. Thinking of you, the young ones, I imagined a character who embodied freedom and came up with this pirate song.”
Ten cannons on either side
with a tail wind at full speed
a brigantine does not cleave
the waves of the sea but flies …
There was an ovation with
vivas
for Don Benito, poet. He no longer cared if the tone was burlesque. He toasted the future. He downed a glass of brandy in one. He said, “And now enjoy yourselves!” And he disappeared, a solitary figure, into the house not to be seen for the whole of the rest of the day.
In the evening, Marisa, still embarrassed, asked for an explanation, but realized that he had gone into a daze. He had got drunk on his own. The bottle of herb liqueur stood empty on the table, a hint of golden viscosity in the glass and his voice.
“You see, girl? Power!”
When the Republic was created, he turned Republican. This only lasted a few months. Soon, his hero became the smuggler, banker and conspirator Juan March, known at the timeas “The Last Pirate in the Mediterranean”. With a glint in his eye, he told the story of what seemed to him one of the most brilliant expressions of wit in modern times. Like him, Don Juan read and wrote badly, but was a prodigy at doing sums. Primo de Rivera was amazed by this ability. At a meeting with his ministers, he addressed March and said, “So, Don Juan, what’s seven times seven times seven times seven plus seven?” March replied in an instant, without time to think, “Two thousand four hundred and eight, my general.” The dictator turned to the Finance Minister and said, “Listen and learn, distinguished minister!”
In 1933, Benito Mallo had sent seafood to Juan March in jail, which he would later escape from in the company of the prison governor. They had the same motto on their coat of arms: “
Diners o dinars
.” Money or food. They believed that everything could be bought using these weapons.
The dogs bit now at her wrists, with savage affection, as if reproaching her. Marisa greeted the Portuguese gardener with magical delight.
“Hey, Alírio! How are you?”
Wrapped in the mist of burnt leaves, the gardener raised his arm in a slow, vegetal gesture. He returned to feeding the wood’s censer, lost in a world of his own. She knew the rumours, Fronteira’s secret radio waves. Which said that Alírio was the son of her grandfather’s old employer, from the time he had set off as a young man to earn a living, and that Benito Mallo had not stopped until he had placed one of the employer’s descendants in his service, less out of gratitude than ina twisted revenge on history. According to Fronteira’s unwritten laws, there was
The lives we lead are the rivers
that flow out into the sea
,
which is the dying …
“The joke was nearing its end,” thought some of them. And they applauded Jorge Manrique’s verses, laughing with a complicity that met with no response. On the contrary, Benito Mallo gave them a withering look and they shrank back in their seats until he reached the end of the poem.
“And now,” he said, a Neronian menace to his voice, “now a composition that took a lot of work. A whole afternoon, at least, for as you see the first quatrain resists like an uncut diamond.”
Violante has asked a sonnet of me
,
I never have been in such a dilemma …
There was no laughter left. Not even for Lope de Vega. Only the odd murmur, which he dissolved with an icy stare. At the end, they applauded him, not any old how, but in the regimental manner of formal concerts.
“And finally,a poem I dedicate to youth. In particular to my granddaughter, Marisa, who is, after all, the reason we are here today. What would we not give to be young again? There are times when we chide them for being rebellious, but this is only natural at their age, the romantic spirit. Thinking of you, the young ones, I imagined a character who embodied freedom and came up with this pirate song.”
Ten cannons on either side
with a tail wind at full speed
a brigantine does not cleave
the waves of the sea but flies …
There was an ovation with
vivas
for Don Benito, poet. He no longer cared if the tone was burlesque. He toasted the future. He downed a glass of brandy in one. He said, “And now enjoy yourselves!” And he disappeared, a solitary figure, into the house not to be seen for the whole of the rest of the day.
In the evening, Marisa, still embarrassed, asked for an explanation, but realized that he had gone into a daze. He had got drunk on his own. The bottle of herb liqueur stood empty on the table, a hint of golden viscosity in the glass and his voice.
“You see, girl? Power!”
When the Republic was created, he turned Republican. This only lasted a few months. Soon, his hero became the smuggler, banker and conspirator Juan March, known at the timeas “The Last Pirate in the Mediterranean”. With a glint in his eye, he told the story of what seemed to him one of the most brilliant expressions of wit in modern times. Like him, Don Juan read and wrote badly, but was a prodigy at doing sums. Primo de Rivera was amazed by this ability. At a meeting with his ministers, he addressed March and said, “So, Don Juan, what’s seven times seven times seven times seven plus seven?” March replied in an instant, without time to think, “Two thousand four hundred and eight, my general.” The dictator turned to the Finance Minister and said, “Listen and learn, distinguished minister!”
In 1933, Benito Mallo had sent seafood to Juan March in jail, which he would later escape from in the company of the prison governor. They had the same motto on their coat of arms: “
Diners o dinars
.” Money or food. They believed that everything could be bought using these weapons.
The dogs bit now at her wrists, with savage affection, as if reproaching her. Marisa greeted the Portuguese gardener with magical delight.
“Hey, Alírio! How are you?”
Wrapped in the mist of burnt leaves, the gardener raised his arm in a slow, vegetal gesture. He returned to feeding the wood’s censer, lost in a world of his own. She knew the rumours, Fronteira’s secret radio waves. Which said that Alírio was the son of her grandfather’s old employer, from the time he had set off as a young man to earn a living, and that Benito Mallo had not stopped until he had placed one of the employer’s descendants in his service, less out of gratitude than ina twisted revenge on history. According to Fronteira’s unwritten laws, there was
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