Macaronic language

            So many conversations held in my life I remember, some even in their most minimal details, since I am a good conversationalist, I talk the essential and listen always when what’s being said is interesting, that I must say I did enrich myself listening too, which it doesn’t stop being difficult, although some of us have taken advantage of it without effort. From books I read, the ones I have read, and listening, I learned to speak about important matters and also about the essential, in these times of the eclosion of a new social order in the world, that will be governed by the working class.

            It seems a lie there is no agreement among the inhabitants of a country to eradicate misery and poverty, but that’s so. Many of the chosen by urns are pedantic, of the class of pedantics, which is almost the worst one can be, because they promote and enact minimum salary laws, cruel, mean and hurtful.

            We all know that since Industrial Revolution and the appearance of the big factories they built massively working class quarters were to have working class gents enslaved and where the lack of incomes, the lack of services, the bad construction of the houses, the noises, the ugliness of the set, the deteroration, the abandon, the decadence, make the existence, the day by day, suffocating.

            So like it seems a lie the inhabitants of a country don’t come to an agreement, it would seem it too in the event by which the leaders of the International Communist had not agreed a long time ago already, long ago before the fall of the wall that divided Europe in two blocks, to encourage the masses against fascism and accomplice bourgeoisie. Actually, the agreement was back up by the leaders and they spoke to me on a microfilm I watched on my TV when I was staying at a hotel in Ramsgate, Kent, England, none the less, but Leonid Brézhnev, Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro and Kim Il Sun. Leonid Brézhnev apppeared alone on the screen later and I knew I had been chosen to lead the world’s revolution. How it was going to start?, anyone would ask. I knew at once, because the voice said it would be when I meet up my friends Alfonso Romero, Pablo Cabo and Jorge Olivas.

            Five years before I saw the International Communist’s microfilm I had a casual encounter, that later I knew it wasn’t, with a citizen from the USA who wanted to know at one in the night how to go to El Escorial. Nobody understood his pitious Spanish and macaronic language but only El Escorial and everyone desisted because it was quite difficult to tell him the way to the highway. His car was an old Mercedes Benz, of the ones that the gears are changed from the steering wheel. He dressed very elegant and wore a plant in his hat. He was trying to explain himself and I understood what he was saying in his peculiar language. I knew how to get to the highway and he would arrive in El Escorial at 47 kilometres distance from there. I went with him in his car to the beginning of the highway. I didn’t care and said to him I could accompany him to El Escorial if he had a bed for me at his place. He said to me: ‘By all means’. So we arrived to the highway. He wanted to know why I carried a newspaper with me at that time of night. I am interested in what happens in Spain and in the world. Better so, he said, we shall be able to speak about interesting matters. So during the journey we had a conversation with plenty of references to international political affairs.

            I was attentive to be able to understand his macaronic language and sometimes gestures, which was not difficult, for he chose words in a Spanish low level, but in impeccable English and in French, and also some words in Italian and in Portuguese. With a few words we understood each other. Not telling him I wanted to lead revolution I held a revolutionary point of view anyway and my opinions could be well considered subversive. But, nevertheless he kept listening and he said to me I was right in everything. I didn’t expect what happened. He not only said to me ‘I am with you’, but said at once: ‘I am one of the richest men in the USA, but I am not capitalist’. I kept silence. ‘Capitalist life is something I cannot understand’, he added. Not approve either, I said laughing in view of what he had told me already. ‘Well’, he continued: ‘I can’t say I am not living in the USA, but I can’t say it makes me happy either’. I listened. ‘I am of Yemenite origin and Yemen is the poorest country in the world nowadays’. I had let him speak and had listened understanding everything he was saying. We remained silent for a while. I had seen how he contained himself the tears in his eyes from falling down.

            Although I have told it already in another short story I will repeat it here because it has much substance. Standing at his place in El Escorial and after having asked his permission I lay in the bed of what supposedly was a living room, I incorporated because I was impressed by a big sword hanging on the wall at the bed’s head. I asked him at once: What about this sword? It looks very important, I said. He came nearer and I left him do to take the sword in his hands. After this, while he was holding it I came nearer to observe it closely. Then he told me he belonged to a family of a dinasty that reigned in Yemen in ancient times. He said later that Yemen’s people choose their king not among the members of a family but the most beloved by the people. It was then he tilted the sword towards me and asked me in a Spanish surprisingly sounding better than that he had used before: ‘Would you do what you could for the Yemenite people?’ I brought my lips to the sword, kissed it and said: I swear. He hugged me.

I would not forget either to tell that the day after next I invited him to Fernando Cotoner’s apartment, to whom I didn’t expect since he had told me he would be out from Madrid that day, but he was there. When the bell rang Fernando asked me: Who can it be? When they saw each other Fernando wanted to know who was my Yemenite friend, but I told him nothing. It was a big shock for him. I didn’t care. In short, my friend, citizen of the USA of Yemenite origin disappeared confused and I didn’t see him anymore, because although we had conspired to take out Yemenites from misery and poverty, I only had his company’s card and it didn’t seem to me correct at that time to track a telephone number in Spain calling by telephone to I don’t remember which city in the USA. I had caught up his message deeply enough to have it in mind since then.

His macaronic language was a big impulse for me to study other languages. Another well known personage, Elmyr de Hory, forger master of Impressionists of Hungarian origin and his macaronic language was a big impulse for me too. I must say also that I knew later my encounter with him had not been casual either. My friend Pilar had given me the book about Ferdinand Legros written by Roger Peyrefitte and I knew I might have listened to, although in a really difficult language, very great events of which Elmyr had been main protagonist, but the book was later than the encounter. I like to listen to adventurers, anyway. When I was introduced to Elmyr the people I was with were talking about a party Elmyr would give at Centro Colón. Elmyr himself asked me if I would like to go to the party and he gave me details about a big lounge, many people and he expected not quite a bustle. I told him it sounded to me a fuss and he began to tell me names. When he had already mentioned six or eight I heard the name of Lucía Bosé, a very well known and admired Italian actress resident in Spain and I told him she was the only one interesting I would like to know, all others could go to eat and drink and presume stupidly somewhere else. Elmyr laughed openly and said Lucía Bosé would visit him in two days time for tea at his apartment. He depended many times daily on private visits and telephone calls, but there won’t be more than four or five people. Would I like to go and to be introduced to Lucía Bosé? Well, I suppose Lucía Bosé has assured herself she will have a fine private tea. What then?, he asked. I prefer to share a private tea the day Lucía Bosé visits you, I said. I will get tired very soon at the big party, you are clever, Elmyr said to me. He too was curious about my newspaper. I told him it was a daily vice. He said to me his apartment’s number at Centro Colón and expected me two days later. It had been only once before, with my Yemenite friend, that macaronic language had arisen, but he did not know how to choose words well, so it was not easy to understand him. The case of Elmyr de Hory was different, for he had a lower level of domain of languages, at least a lower level for making himself be understood.

I went to Centro Colón the day and time we had appointed. When I was asked I said I went to Elmyr’s. Elmyr opened the door. In the apartment there were two men in their sixties sitting on armchairs in the living room, both too elegant, clothes too expensive, smelling of a lot of money. In a quick glance before I was introduced to them I saw the manners of the two were snobbish. How could it not be so? Elmyr made the introductions: Duarte Coelho de Portugal (this stood up and waited), (I don’t remember his name) prince Thurn und Taxis (this stood up too), Leopoldo Barge.

I hadn’t made the movement for stretching hands with them and sat down on a sofa. Just in the moment when Elmyr said my name Duarte had a kind of attack on hearing it, for reasons I am delighted to tell, and sat down nervously not being capable of deviating his glance from me with a fearful look. Duarte knew who I was. I had killed his brother in Portugal when I was only ten years old. The German prince with name after which taxis are called taxis had remained blocked between the TV set and I. Elmyr offered me a refreshment and asked me if I wanted anything. I asked him at what time Lucía Bosé was coming. It is not sure she will come, Elmyr said. I told him I wanted to watch television. He turned on the TV and searched for a football match and found it just the moment they sang a goal. Do you want to lay aside or what?, I said to the German prince. What’s the matter?, asked Elmyr. Don’t you see? He’s planted there like a stupid. I couldn’t see the goal. Even a waiter has sung it up in the corridor. Do you think you are interesting or what?, I asked the prince again, because he seemed incapable of moving. He tried to reason and decided finally to sit down at last. So important is it?, asked me Elmyr. Come on, I said, nobody would miss a Murcia versus Albacete!

The easiest way to put it it is to say that the casual encounters have now a profound significance in world’s actual situation, because Yemenite people, being the poorest country on earth, will certainly have their big brothers and sisters to help them to defeat Yemen’s enemies, and I did my best when I had to face on the highway a whole Saudi Arabian royal members cars retinue forty years ago. I can imagine the newspapers headlines in Saudi Arabia next day: Kamikaze escapes after throwing off of the highway all our cars retinue.

Regarding Portugal the significance lies on the fact that my aunt and I pushed a man Coelho de Portugal, I don’t know if Duarte’s older brother, down a precipice to his death, and Portuguese people know what the Coelho de Portugal have meant for their history and how many people they and others have left behind in misery, in poverty and begging.

I was fully concentrated in our struggle during the macaronic language sessions, anyway. So imagine now what it tells me and what I can tell.