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 PRAISE FOR ¡MUY POP!:
“When the dynamic duo of Latino Studies (and that means Latin
American Studies and U.S.-based Latino shenanigans) gets together
to have a chat, we stand up and listen. And we listen intently. In the
last two decades Stavans and Aldama have published definitive
works reimagining Columbus, Cantinflas, Octavio Paz, Lotería, ‘Gabo’
García Márquez, José Vasconcelos, and Mexican Jews (Stavans) and
reexamining Arturo Islas, Chicana/o Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnicity,
Latino comics, Cognitive Theory, and world fiction (Aldama). In this
new work, ¡Muy Pop!, the two engage in delicious intercourse,
sharing their provocative views, readings, and insights drawn from
decades of work in the archives and beyond. Note I said ‘intercourse’
not conversation, and I did so meaningfully and salaciously in order
to underscore the radical fecundity of ¡Muy Pop! and the Latino text-
laced progeny it's sure to produce.”
—William Anthony Nericcio, Director, Master of Arts in Liberal
Arts and Sciences, San Diego State University, and author of
Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the “Mexican” in
America

“To open its pages is not just to witness a conversation between two
of the most active and luminous specialists in Latino pop culture, it is
to participate in this conversation. With ¡Muy Pop! you will learn
something fresh and idiosyncratic about Latino pop culture as it spills
on either side of the proverbial Tortilla Curtain: from comic strips and
ranchera flicks to superheroes and anti-heroes as well as the
influence of the Catholic Church and the role of kitsch in our
everyday lives. Stavans and Aldama sharply interpret and
wondrously create as they delight in all things Latino pop. ¡Muy Pop!
is that conversation with friends we long to have that just keeps
giving. ¡Muy Pop! is muy chido!”
—Gustavo Ortiz-Millán, Professor at National Autonomous
University of Mexico and author of La moralidad del aborto,
 co-editor of Filosofía, historia y política: Ensayos filosóficos de
Carlos Pereyra, and editor of Mente, lenguaje y realidad

“An extraordinarily stimulating exchange between two of the most

noted academics of Latin(o) Americana, ¡Muy Pop! offers a masterly
primer on culture on both sides of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo.
Aldama's and Stavans' animated dialogue hits on topics as varied as
Latinos in sports, ranchera movies, Catholicism, comic strips,
marijuana, ethnic Barbies, kitsch, telenovelas, and so much more.
They dish out precious insight into how Latino culture's massive
presence influences all facets of our everyday lives—Latin/o
American or otherwise. In their very distinct ways, Aldama and
Stavans personify two seminal takes on the role of the public
intellectual, illustrating the pressing significance of the
interconnectedness of the Americas within our planetary
consciousness.”
—Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste, Professor at Georgia State
University and co-editor recently of Redrawing the Nation
¡Muy Pop!
Conversations on Latino Popular Culture

Ilan Stavans & Frederick L. Aldama

The University of Michigan Press

Ann Arbor
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2013
All rights reserved

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in

any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S.
Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written
permission from the publisher.

Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press

Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper

2016 2015 2014 2013 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stavans, Ilan.
¡Muy Pop! : conversations on Latino popular culture / Ilan Stavans & Frederick
L. Aldama.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-472-11893-9 (cloth : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-0-472-03551-9
(pbk. : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-0-472-02944-0 (e-book)
1. American literature—Hispanic American authors—History and criticism. 2.
Hispanic American arts. 3. Hispanic Americans and mass media. 4. Hispanic
Americans— Intellectual life. 5. Popular culture—United States. 6. Hispanic
Americans—Social life and customs. 7. Stavans, Ilan—Interviews. 8. Aldama,
Frederick Luis, 1969—Interviews. I. Aldama, Frederick Luis, 1969– II. Title.
PS153.H56S74 2013
810.9'868—dc23
2013015597
Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession.

The first tear says:

how nice to see children running on the grass.
The second tear says:
how nice to be moved,
together with all mankind,
by children running on the grass.

It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.

—Milan Kundera,
Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí
(1984)
Contents

Prologue: The Chatter Box

[1] On Hero-worship

[2] Cartooned!!!

[3] The Allure of lo cursi

Epilogue: Sense and Porquería

Index

Illustrations
Prologue: à e Chatter Box

FREDERICK LUIS ALDAMA: These three laissez-faire conversations, plus

the prologue and an epilogue, are an exercise in improvisation.
The purpose is to ponder as we meander through the elusive
terrain of popular culture. Let us start with the category: Latino,
instead of Hispanic, serves as identifier in the subtitle of the book.
Will this cause an uproar?
ILAN STAVANS: Uproar? Nah…At this point, people are exhausted of
the name wars, don't you think? What to call ourselves? Who
cares! Frankly, finding a solution is less interesting to me than
acknowledging that years, decades, centuries have been wasted in
finding the impossible word that best suits us. Impossible because
words are transient, inaccurate…light as smoke.
FA: I like the idea of an impossible word.
IS: Ludwig Wittgenstein persuasively argued that the confines of our
world are also the confines of our language. That which can't be
said does not exist…
FA: Or perhaps, that which can't be said can be thought and
eventually said—as per Chomsky, meaning that our language
faculty works primarily to give shape to thought and secondarily as
a communication device. Either way we shake it, the use of our
language faculty sets in motion all variety of mental faculties
associated with goal setting and action: our dialogue made public.
IS: The act of naming plays a stunning role in the Genesis. In the
first couple of chapters, Adam is established as the centripetal
force of the universe. His use of language suggests arbitrariness.
He names the tree tree without having a singular reason for it. And
in doing the naming, he appropriates the objects, placing them at
his service, so to speak. Human language as a tool of control.
FA: Along those lines, already in the nineteenth century, there was a
big debate—a quarrel, really—over how to name everything south
 of the Rio Grande. You've written about this game in The Hispanic
Condition (1995) and elsewhere. Some people argued that you
can't call it Hispanic America, that is, Hispanoamérica. There is a
huge territory called Brazil that did not fit what the name was
supposed to enclose. Unfortunately for the advocates of Hispanic
America, Brazilians do not speak Spanish, but a variant of Latin
called Portuguese.
IS: A variant that is one of the Romance languages.
FA: Let me go on…Many islands in the Caribbean were colonized by
the French, British, and Dutch, and no Spanish is spoken there
either. So some said, calling ourselves Hispanic America excludes
too much land and too many peoples. We should choose some
other name.
IS: A semantic conundrum.
FA: But the naming of this part of the whole continent was not just a
semantic discussion among linguists, historians, and scholars of
one sort or another. In fact, from the beginning it was a deeply
political discussion.
IS: Semantics, as I see it, is a branch of political science.
FA: The nineteenth century, particularly in its second half, saw the
continuing expansion of the United States (it annexed Texas in
1845 and then up to half of Mexican territory in 1848) and of
France, Britain, Belgium, and Holland, which were fighting among
each other in the dividing up of the world-pie: Africa, Middle East,
and, of course, Latin America. This is also the time when, in 1823,
President Monroe proclaimed—urbi et orbi—the Western
Hemisphere no longer a place suitable for European colonization.
Yet a few years later, this became the policy of “America for the
Americans,” a strategy whereby Latin America became America's
backyard.
IS: Do you mean North America swallowed South America whole?
FA: In a sense, yes. This is why the discussion about how to name
ourselves south of the U.S./Mexico border became as ferocious as
the political consequences of the eventual choice.
IS: Are you a proponent of Hispanic?
FA: Hispanic dangerously evokes Spain, a European country.
IS: I knew you wouldn't endorse it.
FA: Indeed, at one point many preferred Ibero-America
(Iberoamérica, in Spanish) since it made direct reference to the
peninsula as a whole, which included Spain and Portugal. It
seemed more capacious, therefore, to include the main concern,
the huge territory of Brazil. Yet there was still the problem of the
Caribbean islands where French was spoken, in particular Haiti,
Guadeloupe, and Martinique. So some thought, with respect to
Hispanic America, Ibero-America to be an improvement—yet it still
did not include Francophone America.
IS: As we say in Yiddish: oy gevalt!
FA: Of course, French, Spanish, and Portuguese are of Latin origin.
So the name Latin America allowed for the exclusion of the
Americans north of the Rio Grande—Río Bravo, as it's called in
Mexico—as well as all the Europeans, while embracing the French,
Portuguese, and Spanish languages. It appeared then to be an
additional ideological barrier to European and U.S. expansionism.
Now, even though the term Latin America is more capacious, it still
does not take into account a minority of people in Latin America
and the Caribbean who speak Dutch (in the islands comprising the
Dutch Caribbean), French, or English.
IS: Again, the name game bores me, Fede. I've played it for some
years: it's fruitless. I leave it up to you to choose! As for me, you
can call me a Spic.
FA: I know, but that doesn't free us from the urgency of finding a
suitable term for the subtitle. Well, taking into account the very
specific historical and other reasons I've expounded on, and the
limitations of Hispano or Ibero, I believe it's preferable to go the
Latino route, although, as mentioned, it's still a flawed designation.
IS: Fiiiiineee! I'm ready to move on…Actually, before we do: I need
to caution you. I rather like the word Hispanic, in spite of the
reservations you listed. And I enjoy going back and forth between
Hispanic and Latino, procrastinating in my choice. Or rather,
making a no-choice. In fact, the more I think of your argument,
the less sustainable it seems to me. For what we're after in this
volume doesn't pertain to Latinos (that is, people of Hispanic
 descent in the United States) alone but Latin America as a whole,
and even the entire Hispanic civilization, which, obviously, includes
Spain. Much of our discussion will address popular manifestations
of culture in Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, and the Iberian Peninsula,
even though the liminal space north of the Rio Grande is our base,
our springboard, our Aleph.
FA: As long as it's clear for the reader, which you've now done, I
don't see a challenge. That said, perhaps we might consider the
term Latin/o America as our umbrella designator. Or is this too
orthographically clunky?
IS: It makes me cringe…It isn't a term but a slogan. Actually, it is
crucial for the audience to recognize how unclear the whole
typography in use nowadays is. The name game is a trap!
FA: Also, I want to say something about its counterpart: the name
United States. It assumes a political and military operation (war of
independence and unification), and it names a geographical
location (the new nation). But, as you implied, it swallows a whole
continent in its designation, since the new nation became the
United States of America. Its citizens are called Americans, as if
Mexicans or Brazilians or Cubans are other than Americans. There
are 193 United Nations member states, and with the sole exception
of the United States, not one of them bears the name of a
continent nor do their people refer to themselves by the name of a
continent. Only the citizens of the United States do it: we call
ourselves Americans and not United Statians, for example, as we
are called in Spanish: estadounidenses. Or else, U.S. Americans, as
Germans like to refer to us.
IS: Europeans do the same thing, especially after the year 2000,
although they leave out of their continental appellation places like
Turkey, Albania, and Cyprus. In the end, names about geographical
locations—and, thus, gerunds—have a double edge: they
circumscribe by means of exclusion. That is, they create a
semantic space from which the not-named is expelled. This is the
nature of language, though: to name is to appropriate. And that
which is left out of the sphere of appropriation is disavowed.
FA: These semantic discussions keep coming back.
IS: Believe me, they are syllogistic…
FA: Perhaps we can find satisfaction in the words of Oscar “Zeta”
Acosta, an author you studied in your early, inspiring book Bandido
(1996, rev. 2005). At the end of the Autobiography of a Brown
Buffalo (1972), as Acosta is lying naked looking at himself in the
mirror in his hotel room in El Paso, after pawning his clarinet and
camera for $15, he declares himself neither to be a Chicano, a
Mexican, nor an American, but a “brown buffalo lonely and afraid
in a world I never made.”
IS: Are you suggesting that we describe ourselves as buffaloes? Or,
better even, as cockroaches, the other animal metaphor Acosta
used in his second autobiography, The Revolt of the Cockroach
People (1973)? I actually like the approach. Yes, in the eyes of the
American mainstream we are cockroaches, although I would
choose another animal, not out of preference but because it
invokes the attitude we've mastered: the dog.
FA: Why?
IS: We're been domesticated. Needless to say, I'm not talking of the
hunting dog. The experience of Latinos in the United States is one
of servitude. Acosta is an emblematic figure of the Chicano
Movement precisely because he refused to adapt, to become an
indentured species. Let's move away from the animal metaphors
and return to him. What appeals to me the most in the sentence
you quote from The Autobiography of the Brown Buffalo is not
“lonely and afraid,” for those adjectives describe Acosta to the dot.
I'm more attracted to “a world I never made.” Of course, all of us
live in a world that is not ours, yet we try to mold it, to have a
place in it. Acosta was overwhelmed by a feeling of alienation. He
felt estranged, disconnected not only from “America,” as he called
the country (to the chagrin of friends and acquaintances), but from
Mexico and, especially, from Chicanos. Today that feeling of
alienation is less pronounced, perhaps because Latinos—yes, I'm
endorsing your choice of terms!—are the largest, fastest-growing
minority. What does it mean to be the largest minority? That you
are not at the helm already, you are certainly scheduled to set the
tone and tune of things, for better or worse.
FA: Why for better or worse?
IS: Is it not Peter Parker who is told by his uncle, as Parker is
reckoning with the identity Spiderman early on in the Hollywood
saga, that “with power comes responsibility”? To be at the helm
ain't no bag of chips! Apologies if I return to images of insects,
albeit an anthropomorphized one in this case.
FA: Spidey, and today Marvel has the Afro-Latino Miles Morales
shooting webs, brings to mind another word in our subtitle:
culture. It's pertinent to talk about it before continuing. Culture
from the anthropological point of view is always the set of all
products of human activity at a given moment and place. The
institutions of marriage and burial are as much culture as baking of
cookies, writing of novels and comics, as well as making of films.
In the most rigorous and at the same time capacious
characterizations, there are always three main ingredients in
culture: (1) material culture: cars, houses, computers, and so on,
that is, everything made by humans and existing as objects; (2)
intellectual culture: mathematical equations, novels, comics,
operas, paintings, scientific discoveries, and so on, that is,
everything made by humans existing as products of reasoning, the
emotions and the imagination; and (3) interpretation of culture—
essays, philosophical treatises, and so on—that is, all
hermeneutical efforts to assign meaning to material and
intellectual culture and to assess their value or importance to
humankind.
IS: I've always liked the sound of the word culture, although, in all
honesty, I've never been able to happily define what it means, at
least not to my own satisfaction. It's like the word real. Is there
something that isn't real? Even a dream is real insofar as it belongs
to this world. Once again we're in a syllogistic—and, why not,
solipsistic—conundrum, the dialectical tension between a definition
and its counterpart. Of all the zillion things that surround us, what
isn't culture? If you agree that nothing isn't, then the definition of
culture should be “the study of everything.”
FA: Your approach is self-negating, Ilan. Yes, culture is everything.
But what have we gained in describing it thus? I prefer to
 understand culture as the unity of material, intellectual, and
interpretive activities. And I suggest that we use that approach in
our conversations.
IS: I'm far more interested in our title: ¡Muy Pop! And, consequently,
in the portion of the subtitle that pertains to popular culture. For
what intrigues me are the degrees of separation, if there are any,
between highbrow and popular culture. What constitutes highbrow,
sophisticated, elite culture? You will answer that the multiple layers
of culture, as you described them, belong to the upper echelon of
society: in our case, the bourgeoisie. And that culture which
belongs to the working class is lumpen, proletarian, popular.
FA: I'm not sure I would distinguish them that way.
IS: I'm glad because in a pluralistic, democratic society like the
United States, where the aesthetics of the middle class reigns, the
border between highbrow and popular is foggy. Is John Updike
highbrow and Stephen King lowbrow? Perhaps, but each of them
engaged in crossovers. Diana Krall and Elvis Costello, husband and
wife? They appeal to a majority, although small educated elites
might also embrace them. Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994)?
It makes the lowbrow mainstream. Woody Allen's The Purple Rose
of Cairo (1985)? It makes the mainstream lowbrow. In the
Hispanic world, the separation between these two spheres might
be more emphatic. Cantinflas is lumpen, as is Pedro Infante.
Roberto Bolaño is the equivalent of Tarantino: he makes B-
literature chic. Shopping at Wal-Mart? Owning a velvet poster of
Jesus Christ? Wearing a soccer T-shirt of Atlante? These are all
features of a proletarian self.
FA: You've devoted a generous amount of your intellectual energy to
analyzing kitsch in the English-speaking world and lo cursi in Latino
civilization.
IS: Lo cursi is one of the most interesting phenomena, from my
perspective. It's the manufacturing of a cheap aesthetic for mass
consumption. Yet that aesthetic often has an empowering quality,
as in the case of Cantinflas and Tin Tan.
FA: I suggest we leave this discussion for the first of our
conversations. And let us promise that much of our own definitions
 of Latino culture and highbrow vs. working-class art shall be
reevaluated, even put upside down, as the chapters of this volume
unfold.
IS: Yes, it is time we circumscribe the parameters of these dialogues.
FA: You're feisty!
IS: Yes, but only on the page. In real life, I'm far more pleasant.
FA: I wouldn't know it, since I've never met you. Anyway, that is an
important starting point. The reader should know that you and I
have never met in person. In other words, this entire project is
done a distancia, removed from each other.
IS: I still consider you a friend. In fact, I promise to send you an e-
card this Valentine Day. Do people still meet tête-à-tête to become
amigos? A waste of time these days, it seems to me. Through
Facebook, one can have hundreds of friends without much effort. I
am being sarcastic, of course. I do not even have an active
Facebook.
FA: I am still old-fashioned to some extent, and I find a warm abrazo
and a chat around a warm cup of tea cannot be replaced by phone
or e-mail or Facebook. Yet it's a proven fact that friendship may
develop and deepen by virtual exchanges. You and I are living
proof of this. Alright: this is what we've set ourselves to
accomplish.
IS: You make it sound daunting…
FA: We are about to debate—often in a fiery fashion!—the material
and intellectual realities of Latino culture, as well as their
interpretations. We will try to discover affinities and connections
between the different components of Latino culture through the
prism of our own sensibilities. In my opinion, intellectual culture
doesn't exist and develop without the support of material culture.
Intellectual culture finds its foundations and building blocks in
material culture, but at the same time that intellectual culture
develops, it furthers the development of material culture. Indeed,
there is a constant interaction and mutual feeding between
material and intellectual culture. In a healthy society, this feeding
is part of what we call progress.
IS: Frankly, I'm not sure progress is a feature of culture. Science and
technology, no doubt. But not music, literature, or the arts. For
instance, is Dante's The Divine Comedy (circa 1308–21) better
than Dostoevsky's The Idiot (1869)? Is Bach's Brandenburg
Concertos (1721) better than Aaron Copland's Fanfare for a
Common Man (1942)? Of course, technology plays a crucial role in
popular culture. Comic strips are more fancifully produced in the
early twenty-first century than they were in the middle of the
twentieth. TV is also more developed. The use of digital cameras
makes moviemaking less stilted, more harmonious. Content might
not change, but the streaming of it surely does.
FA: But then there is interpretation. For instance, we have science
and the philosophy of science, art and aesthetics, moral and ethics,
where philosophy of science, aesthetics, and ethics are all
interpretations of their respective subjects.
IS: Your central point—that interpretation pushes culture forward—is
unquestionably true. Entertainment needs a reaction, a response
to appraise how accurately it represents the topic it set out to
describe. And that, as far as I am concerned, is what this book is
about: a critic's eye. Eye and I, if I might put it, somewhat
playfully. The proliferation of online reviews of items on
amazon.com, for instance, makes it clear that nowadays everyone
is a critic. A democratization of opinion has taken place before our
eyes. Nevertheless, the critic, understood as a person whose
lifelong quest to understand a certain cultural manifestation
enables that individual to reach a refined, distilled sense of taste
based on knowledge and experience, is more important than ever.
That is because opinions might come easily but interpretation
requires not only information but insight. That insight gives way to
a unique epiphany: the critic's opinion matters because it is
injected with authority.
FA: Authority is a contested word, no?
IS: It might be contested. Still, authority, at least in the humanities,
comes from two sources: intuition and experience.
FA: Anyway, it's crucial to explain, as I have already insinuated in my
disquisition on Facebook, that our three sustained conversations
 are taking place in the form of e-mail exchanges. As in all
conversaciones de sobremesa, a number of topics keep on
recurring, such as heroism and kitsch. The first, “On Hero-
worship,” delves into the psychological, social, and religious factors
defining the way Latinos look at heroism through the prism of
gender. In this conversation we explore the role of sports and talk
about ranchera movies, as well as about the Mariachi in Latino
folklore. We also discuss Oscar Lewis's The Children of Sánchez
(1961) and the influence of the Catholic Church on daily life. The
second conversation, “Cartooned!!!,” is about the centrality of
comic strips, what they say, and how they say it. It ponders the
idea that popular culture is ephemeral rather than everlasting. It
continues the discussion on heroism by inserting the theme of
superheroes. It also discusses the effect of hallucinogens like
marijuana and peyotl in popular culture. And it reflects on ethnic
Barbies. The third conversation, “The Allure of lo cursi,” delves into
the mechanics of kitsch. This conversation addresses the impact of
telenovelas. It analyses the place of pornography in the Latino
imagination. And it talks about cuisine as an expression of human
emotions. An epilogue to the three conversations meditates on
what the senses experience through a particular cultural lens. Plus,
to root our dialogues, a series of images, some well known, others
less familiar, are gathered in a middle gallery.
IS: I like it: the sections are well defined. And I like our postmodern
approach, that is, the art of talking about the art of talking about…
FA: Might we say post-postmodern, given that our goal is to work
against and toward some kind of referent?
IS: The image in the mirror, or else, the mirror in the image, as in
Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas (1656).
FA: Either way, it's hard not to notice how you have been engaged by
a number of different intellectuals, scholars, and journalists
(Verónica Albin, Mordecai Dasche, Jorge Gracia, Iván Jaksic,
Donald Yates, et al.) in book-long conversations such as the
present one.
IS: I just love the format…
FA: You're famous as a conversador.
IS: A fine conversation is like playing jazz on the saxophone! The
tradition of improvisation is long and inviting. One is tempted to go
on different sideways. But the need to harmonize, to suit into a
coherent set, to fit one's rhythms with the rest of the instruments,
is equally important. Thus, there is tension between following a set
path to reach an end and looking for alternative ways to get there.
That tension makes my juices flow! The reader should know the
time frame we gave our endeavor: the conversation started in
January 2011 and ended sixteen months later, in June 2012, with
minor updates in the early months of 2013.
FA: This time-frame was set in order for our engagement to have
finality.
IS: Have you said something about the autobiographical?
FA: Sorry, I forgot: the reflective and historical shall be juxtaposed
with the personal. That is, our own stories should be fair game in
these conversations.
IS: In the end, we are always what we talk about, what we study,
are we not? A couple of cartoonish scholars whose Ping-Pong
game becomes a chatter box.
FA:…a box where we hear our own echo—and occasionally get a
knock by the ball itself.
IS: Who knows if anyone will be interested in what we say? Still, the
inherent fatuity of the endeavor shouldn't stop us from embarking
on it. What we hope to achieve, as far as I am concerned, is less
important than what the actual journey together will offer: the
possibility of meditating on a topic that is in desperate need of
context.
FA: Much thought has to be given to the vitality of Latino popular
culture, its past, its present, and its likely future. And I say Latino
and not Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and so on, because Latinos
are an amalgam of nationalities. That amalgam adds a certain
thickness to our topic, without making it ponderous. Our subject is
vast.
IS: Ready, set, go…En sus marcas, listos, fuera.
[1]
On Hero-worship

FREDERICK LUIS ALDAMA: An appropriate place to start this first

conversation might be on the nature of hero-worshiping in Latino
culture. You've written eloquently, and influentially, on Mario
Moreno, the arch-famous comedian known as Cantinflas. I know
he is one of your idols.
ILAN STAVANS: Are an idol and a hero the same thing? Well, an idol,
in ancient times, represented a deity, whereas a hero was a person
of distinguished courage. Strictly speaking, Cantinflas is neither
one nor the other. Still, he is unquestionably my idol as well as my
hero.
FA: One of your books is titled after an essay you composed on him
and originally published in the journal Transition (1995). The
centennial of Cantinflas's birth took place in August 2011.
IS: All Hispanic comedians are Cantinflas's children, just as all
Spanish-language writers are Cervantes's heirs. His anarchic humor
presents a picture of the peladito, the urban, unemployed,
downtrodden street-wise who is capable of surviving in spite of the
harsh circumstances he encounters. Cantinflas refuses to work. His
rebellion is against the rapid industrialization Mexico is undergoing.
Too much is going on in his eyes. He doesn't have the training to
be employed in a factory job. At best, he can shine shoes on a
street corner, maybe sell tacos. He refuses to fit into any social
canon, especially when it comes to fashion. (Is he the first to wear
his pants down?) But what I am most at awe about is his
language: his syntax is a mess. That, indeed, is his sharpest
weapon in his anarchic war against the system. There is a terrific
scene at the end of the movie Allí está el detalle (1940) where
 Cantinflas is on trial for having stolen someone's wallet. He refuses
to have a lawyer represent him. As he defends himself, his syntax
begins to confuse everyone in the court. That confusion is his
redemption: he is set free after the judge himself can't put a
standard sentence together.
FA: Is he a people's hero? I mean, do people see his actions as
models?
IS: I do not think anyone wants to be like Cantinflas. However,
everyone laughs with him. And therein lies his revolutionary
dimension: in the face of adversity, even apocalypse, he makes the
audience laugh. Nothing more Mexican than that: if you can't beat
them, laugh at them. Jokes are one of Mexico's most effective
weapons to battle adversity. It is often said that after an
earthquake or a hurricane, jokes arrive way before the police
makes an appearance.
FA: Cantinflas is well liked throughout the Spanish-speaking world.
This speaks to his universality.
IS: Humor, as you know, is difficult—impossible?—to translate. Try
adapting a joke from one language to another; you'll kill it on the
spot. The fact that Cantinflas's movies are enjoyed in Santiago,
Bogotá, Buenos Aires, and Madrid does speak to his universality.
He is not Charlie Chaplin (who, by the way, made his career in
silent films) because you do need knowledge of the Spanish
language to appreciate him. So Cantinflas's appeal is limited to the
Hispanic world, where it is deep and transformative.
FA: I wonder if this stripping down that happens in the translation
process doesn't tell us something about the distinction between a
culturally located humor and a universal capacity for laughter.
Cantinflas films rest heavily on bringing together the incongruous
beliefs specific to Latinos of the Americas. An audience outside
Mexico, for instance, might not pick up on the incongruities of folk
belief because they are not familiar with the common doxa of the
locale. Yet, folks the world over share similar responses to
incongruous movements, and the misreading of minds to comic
effect is a worldwide phenomenon. Is the way we worship
 Cantinflas a symptom of how Latinos approach the hero? Is there a
type of hero-worship that is unique to us?
IS: In his lectures On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in
History (1841), Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle
discussed heroes from the perspective of masculinity. A hero for
him is a great soul, free, outward, and courageous, capable of
understanding the meaning of things. In Victorian times, Carlyle
believed hero-worship was a transcendent endeavor, a way to
simultaneously envy and celebrate greatness, to dream of being a
valiant man by applauding those who represent that quality. Ralph
Waldo Emerson, a transcendentalist, proposed a similar model in
Representative Men (1850). The Hispanic world, needless to say, is
dramatically different. Not only now but in the past as well. Our
model of the hero, resulting from a the clash between East and
West and between North and South, has changed over time. At the
outset of modernity, it was connected to the various Indian
rebellions against the European colonists. Perhaps the Argentine
Gaucho modeled in José Hernández's El Gaucho Martín Fierro
(1872) should be used as an example. And prior to it, Domingo
Faustino Sarmiento's Facundo (1845), since Hernández wrote his
poem in response to Sarmiento's denigration of the Gaucho. What
I mean is that our heroes are outlaws, foragidos.
FA: What do we cherish in them?
IS: Their rebellious spirit. Octavio Paz once suggested, in Alternating
Current (1967), three categories of rebellion: the revoltoso (the
mutineer), the rebelde (the rebel), and the revolucionario (the
revolutionary). These instances display a degree of nuance: the
first is a supporter of anarchy, eager and ready to subvert authority
at all cost. The second is an individualized antagonist. And the
third works with others and has an ideological plan. We embrace
the second and third as admiring options, but even the first one
offers an attractive option. That these models are mostly—almost
exclusively—masculine says much about our cult of machismo.
FA: I want to talk more about machismo. But first I want to continue
with heroes that are also comedians. You have written about
Mexican comedian Germán Valdéz in his famous role as Tin Tan.
IS: Ah, yes: another hero of mine. Tin Tan is a Chicano Cantinflas. Or
maybe Cantinflas is a Mexican Tin Tan. I love the way Tin Tan
pokes fun at the immigration issue, how his humor is bi-national,
Mexican and American. Someday I would like to produce a book-
long essay (full of pictures) on him. In 2005, he became the
subject of a documentary called Ni muy muy, ni tan tan:
Simplemente Tin Tan, which in Mexican Spanish is a game of
words that roughly translates as “neither this nor that.”
FA: My crystal ball says: you will and soon. In a conversation with
historian Iván Jaksic, called What Is ‘la hispanidad’? (2011), you
talk about Tin Tan ridiculing The Beatles.
IS: In a great scene, he changes the lyrics of “I Want to Hold Your
Hand” into sheer, crystalline Spanglish. In my view, Tin Tan is the
real thing when it comes to Spanglish. I am currently writing a
history of the Spanish language. Both Cantinflas and Tin Tan play a
role in it.
FA: What do Cantinflas and Tin Tan have in common?
IS: They are revoltosos. Their ideological base is anarchic. That is,
they don't offer a particular plan to counteract the ills of society.
Instead, they simply criticize those ills. Their criticism is offered by
means of humor. Through laughter, they poke fun at the clash
between the haves and have-nots, between gringos and Mexicans,
between knowledge and ignorance. I would go even further: in
apocalyptic times, they use comedy as a panacea. Their
magnetism is found in the freedom they invoke. Almost nothing is
sacred for them. Well, that isn't true. Neither of them targets
religion, specifically the Catholic Church. Still, they are admiringly
brave.
FA: Might we also consider the way they relish in the relajo as an
expression avant la lettre of a transborder pícaro sensibility?
IS: They are pícaros, that is, rogues, rascals…
FA: Carlos Monsiváis called out Tin Tan as a “sujeto transfronterizo”…
How might we also think of their upturning convention as
performative pachuco figures?
IS: Cantinflas isn't a border-crosser, certainly not in the way Tin Tan
plays for the pachucada, the Mexican-American population in
 California. Like W. E. B. DuBois, he is a promoter of a double-
consciousness, an identity that exists in the interface between two
languages (Spanish and English) and cultures (Mexico and the
United States).
FA: One primary source of hero-worship in our popular culture is
soccer. It doesn't traffic in humor but in athletic competency.
IS: El fútbol…The role soccer players (Pelé, Maradona, Kaká, Forlán,
Messi, “Chicharito”) have is that of idols. But what kind of idolatry
is being presented here? Their private lives are often kept in
private. What the fans celebrate is their team spirit—that is, if they
have such a thing, which sometimes, when they play for the
national team, is turned into patriotism—but especially their bodies
and the gymnastics they engage in during a game. That is what
interests me: the athlete's male body.
FA: At first blush, the sculpted athlete's body can be beautiful—even
enter the realm of the sublime. Some, like Jets' quarterback Mark
Sanchez, exploit this magnificently. Of course, there is the physical
training involved in the making of the athlete's body. This is an
amazing feat. Even more amazing are the myriad ways in which
the athlete's body shapes those movements and actions that
constitute the game, that are beautiful in themselves individually
and that make the game globally an aesthetic experience. Soccer
players are heroes because they are both athletes and artists.
When you watch a football match you are both admiring the work
well done and the artistry in which it is done.
IS: In Hispanic culture, the female athlete's body lags far behind.
Instead of women athletes, we celebrate women models. That is
because people do not equate women's muscles with beauty.
FA: Yet there is great beauty in the body of an accomplished female
gymnast. Women participate and excel in many activities that
require strong muscles and physical beauty. I am thinking, for
instance, of the physical training ballet dancers have to undergo to
be proficient in their profession. Nobody would deny that their
muscles are those of an athlete, yet they are lean and strong and
beautiful.
IS: Perhaps this applies to women divers. In any case, Hispanic
civilization is still awkward when it comes to female athletics. A
handful of women athletes are celebrated, but they are easily
eclipsed by their male counterparts. What we cherish in women is
their beauty, their delicacy, and—unfortunately—their quiet
demeanor. Take women's soccer. No league in the Spanish-
speaking world commands attention. In fact, I'm not sure there are
even professional leagues, although there must be by now. The
United States isn't altogether different, I'm afraid. Women's soccer
here is big every four years, as the World Cup takes place,
otherwise the sport is dormant, not to say ignored. In Spanish-
speaking movies—I'm talking here of the type that is set in ranchos
—the same phenomenon occurs: men distil valor whereas women
represent beauty.
FA: Let us then talk about movie stars, another—and essential—form
of hero-worship, albeit a more democratic one, don't you think?
IS: At least males and females are equally adored…I will start with
Mexican matinee idols like Vicente Fernández. He is always
photographed with his sombrero and mustache. The look is a
legacy of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, where the hero was
always a rural male, valiant and independent, whose personal
pride—he was humilde and honrado—turned him into an admirable
type. Since then, the countryside has lost its allure. For instance, I
recently translated Juan Rulfo's stories in El llano en llamas (1953),
which I titled The Plain in Flames (2012). None of the characters
there falls into this kind of heroics. They are not only poor but they
have been pushed to make untenable moral decisions. Plus, they
do not see the countryside as desirable. It seems to me that
Rulfo's aesthetics are a refutation of the Vicente Fernández model.
FA: I agree with you entirely, Ilan. In fact the rural appears in
Mexican films of the last decade or so mostly as the site or location
of gun-fights between law officers and drug smugglers (the films
generically known as narcopelículas). And the rural areas of
yesteryear packed with Mexican cowboys (charros) wearing big
hats have shrunk to a town and a bar (a cantina) with a Mariachi
(solo or band) singing boleros (romantic songs) or narcocorridos
 (songs about drug traffickers).
Ilan, for the time being please hold your comments on the role
of drugs in Latino culture for our third conversation. I do want us
to say something now about the Mariachi as a type, since it holds a
central role in Latino popular culture.
IS: It's true. Mariachis are descendants of the medieval troubadour.
They use their instruments (accordion, guitar, trumpet, etc.) to sing
the misadventures of the heart. They do so in bands. The majority
of them are men, although recently there have been some women
mariachis. Their custom is intriguing: they look like bullfighters,
their pants and jacket tight; but they wear a large sombrero, which
they take off when the lyrics deal with romantic love.
FA: In Mexico City, there are places, such as the Plaza Garibaldi,
surrounded by bars and restaurants, where many mariachi bands
hang out waiting to be hired and taken to the place where they are
to sing one or several songs, usually as part of an attempt to
seduce or court a woman or to celebrate somebody's birthday.
Perhaps, too, we see just a sprinkle of irony—or would this be
parodic pastiche?—in that these balladeers in tight pants
increasingly share space at night with the city's queer romancers.
IS: There is much to say about ranchera movies. In Mexico today,
these movies are still shown on TV on a daily basis, although to
the best of my knowledge they are not being made any longer.
Perhaps the ranchera movie has been replaced by its narco
counterpart.
FA: Yes, the ranchera movies are no longer made. Yet at the peak of
their production, you would still find some strange and strangely
appealing iterations of the genre, such as Abismos de pasión (or
Cumbres borrascosas, as it was sometimes titled—Luis Buñuel's
1954 adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights; this film
resets the Brontë story in Catholic Mexico, with Heathcliff played
by Jorge Mistral and Cathy renamed Catalina. In a different vein,
there was director Emilio “El Indio” Fernández's film La Perla, an
adaptation of Steinbeck's eponymous short novel, The Pearl
(1947). It starred the famous actors Pedro Armendáriz and María
Elena Marqués and, like the Buñuel film, was a blockbuster.
IS: I love The Pearl (also 1947). In fact, I find “El Indio” Fernández's
film more accomplished than Steinbeck's novella. How about Allá
en el Rancho Grande?
FA: Yes. I am glad you mention this picture, for it is both a classic
and an oddity. Fernando de Fuentes directed it in 1936, and the
cinematographer was Eisenstein's Mexican disciple Gabriel
Figueroa. The film's plot is not only highly artificial but so too is the
particular way it is developed. On the one hand, the film fits nicely
within the traditional genre of realism. It all takes place within a
real time and place: real horses, real hacienda, and supposedly
real events. The two close childhood friends, José Francisco (Tito
Guízar) and Felipe (René Cardona) hail from different social classes
(hacendado and employee) and happen to fall in love with the
same woman. As friends since childhood their mutual affection has
transcended class differences and barriers, but their love for the
same women turns them into rivals and ultimately total
antagonists.
However, Figueroa's cinematography infuses a heavy dose of
artificiality into the plot and its realistic genre. Figueroa seeks to
embellish the town, the hacienda, the landscape…everything. And
then, as it later became the rule in ranchera films, the flow of
events is constantly interrupted by songs adoringly caressed by
Figueroa's camera. Indeed, Tito Guízar, already a famous singer,
became even more famous following the enormous success both of
his song “Allá en el Rancho Grande” and of the film of the same
name that launched the fad of the singing charro in Mexican
pictures. (He was so appreciated and entrenched in Mexican
culture that his songs were frequently heard on the radio as late as
the sixties.)
Normally, the film would be a melodrama. But its
embellishment of reality and constant use of songs turn it into a
comedy. It holds a significant place in Mexican film history. It's a
classic. It established the aesthetic standards and the formal
devices for all ranchera films that came afterwards. From 1936 on,
up to the end of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, we see the
same artificiality, embellishment, and interruption of story line by a
 singing charro bursting into song.
I wonder, fleetingly, if we should genuflect, along with Mexican
film scholars, before the masterful Figueroa.
IS: I genuflect in adoration: Gabriel Figueroa, in my eyes, is a
Renaissance painter with a camera. His black-and-white landscapes
are splendid.
FA: Figueroa was Eisenstein's disciple, and for this we get mastery of
cinematic craft as well as a continued forging of the highly
aestheticized image of the indio.
IS: Yes, we owe it to Figueroa for beautifying the indigenous
population. In a country with an inferiority complex, where the
word indio is used in derogatory ways, this is no small feat. From
the time of the conquest up until the age of independence, it was
the indio who served as the social, economic, and religious
foundation. But secession from Spain early in the nineteenth
century and the arrival of a mestizo mentality turned the indio into
a relic. The country didn't quite force Indians into reservations but
it did ostracize them.
FA: Recall Sergei Eisenstein's ¡Que Viva Mexico! (1931), where the
Mexican peasant is represented more for the sake of the
photography than for the sake of a recognizable toiling and living
presence. Perhaps we should restrain somewhat our reverence of
Figueroa—and likewise “El Indio” Fernández, who shared this same
inclination. That said, we have and do worship such figures—and
hunger for more…
IS: The audience's hunger for the new genre seemed to know no
limits.
FA: This drive to satisfy the hunger of audiences led not only to
numerous replicas of Allá en el Rancho Grande but to the remaking
of the film. Fernando de Fuentes himself remade it in 1949 with
Jorge Negrete. As you know well he was a leading actor at the
height of his fame as the prototypical singing charro. Most of
Negrete's pictures used the by then mandatory device of finding
any excuse for the actor to sing. Also, many took place in fake
rural settings, where people did their traveling on horseback and
mules at a time when in fact the most common means of
 transportation were cars and buses. Plots were simple and
repetitive: a protagonist (the good guy), an antagonist (the bad
guy), and the girl as love-interest to both. These basic ingredients
may be (and were) shuffled in different ways, but a necessary
element was always the songs. In fact, many of the films of the
Golden Age are simply elaborations of musical themes. Whenever a
song (about, say, two fellows and a girl) became popular with an
already established audience, the decision to build a film around it
became almost automatic.
IS: The same thing could be said of Pedro Infante, who was a friend
of Jorge Negrete and with whom he co-starred in two films: Los
tres alegres compadres (The Three Merry Pals, 1952) and Dos
tipos de cuidado (Two Dangerous Fellows, 1953).
FA: You mention Infante and Dos tipos—a film made the same year
Negrete's untimely death cut short a rather charmed life. He had
been married for about a year to María Félix, the most famous
Mexican actress of the time who was dubbed by journalists “the
most beautiful woman in the world.” (Celebrities and millionaires
showered her with jewels; Diego Rivera, desperately in love with
her, painted her portrait.) That year it seemed that Hollywood's
doors were starting to open for Jorge Negrete, who owed his
popularity more to his singing than to his acting, which was in fact
quite limited. In contrast, Pedro Infante was a much more gifted
actor who excelled in comedy and in melodrama. He was younger
and more athletic looking than Negrete. Contrary to Negrete, who
did most of his films in rural settings, Infante did his pictures
mostly in urban environments, mainly Mexico City.
Infante's films were more sophisticated, and he shared star
billings with actors of all ages, from children to old men and
women. He could do comedies and real tearjerkers. He could play
the role of a millionaire and that of a humble carpenter. He did a
large range of roles, from calm to violent, meek to courageous,
charming to repulsive, but in all of them he would eventually turn
out to be a hero and the clean guy mothers would like their
daughters to marry. Perhaps his varied gifts and his talent as an
actor are best displayed in the trilogy: Nosotros los pobres (We,
 the Poor Ones, 1947), Ustedes los ricos (You, the Rich Ones,
1948), and Pepe el Toro (Pepe the Bull, 1953).
Audiences loved his singing; when he sang a funny song he
actually had people bursting at their sides with laughter. He died in
1957 in a plane crash—his mourning drew the largest crowds in
Mexico City ever recorded. Jorge Negrete and Pedro Infante
remain the most popular entertainers we have ever had in Mexico.
Today people of all ages continue to watch their films on DVD,
especially those of Pedro Infante.
IS: María Félix, the only actress in Mexico who had an honorific name
—La Doña—was well known to all Mexicans and to Latin American
and European audiences. She made films in Europe (Spain, France,
Italy), but never in Hollywood.
FA: Yes, her real success was in Mexico. Whether playing a
prostitute, a gold digger, a wealthy dame, and so on, she would
always play her part as a stone-cold, hard-driven, ambitious
woman. It seems she was biographically very much like her roles,
looking for wealthy, power-wielding partners. Her last husband was
a French banker, a millionaire. Together with Dolores del Río
—“Princess of Mexico” as she was known—they were the most
famous actresses in Mexico. This said, Dolores del Río played much
more varied and capacious roles.
IS: Both had European features.
FA: In a country where class is linked not only to wealth but to a
European look (a non-indio look), both María Félix and Dolores del
Río were either ready-made or made-to-order for the blockbusters.
Not to mention, of course, others with a European look like Lupe
Veles (María Guadalupe Vélez de Villalobos) aka “Mexican Spitfire”
and Rita Hayworth (Margarita Carmen Dolores Cansino); Hayworth
even plucked her brows to reconfigure herself at the request of the
Columbia Pictures mogul Harry Cohn.
IS: I wholeheartedly admire Luis Buñuel. I genuflect toward him, as I
do toward Figueroa. He never did a ranchera movie. But a
stunning film by him analyzing the role of machismo in society—a
narrative still current more than sixty years after its trumpeted
debut at the Cannes Film Festival—is Los olvidados (1950), known
 in English as The Young and the Damned. It is the best depiction I
know of street life in Distrito Federal in the mid-twentieth century.
Furthermore, the movie should be seen alongside Cantinflas's Allí
está el detalle. Brazilian films like Pixote (1981) and City of God
(2002) owe much to Buñuel. He was interested in casticismo, class
struggle, and religion. Taken together, Viridiana (1961), Simón del
desierto (Simon of the Desert, 1965), La vía lactea (The Milky Way,
1969), and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) are an
admirable study of Hispanic extremes. But Los olvidados is a
genuine study of how cult personalities define social relations. The
protagonist, El Jaibo, played by Roberto Cobo, whom I knew
personally, is a bully who controls the life of a gang of orphan
children. He instills fear in them by forcing himself on their will.
One could argue, of course, that such interaction takes place
everywhere. It might be said that among destitute people such a
person has a stronger appeal. But there's something authentically
Mexican about El Jaibo, a yo no sé qué that mesmerizes me every
time I see the film. He is the opposite of Cantinflas and Tin Tan: un
cabrón, a tyrant.
FA: Along those lines, we should add to this genealogy Gerardo Tort's
more recent film adaptation of the play De la calle (On the Street,
2001), a film I often teach in conjunction with Los olvidados.
IS: De la calle is a stunning film. In fact, all the ones you've listed
reflect on the psychological dynamic of street life, where
spontaneity enables the characters to construct hierarchies based
on authority. Hero-worship depends on that: the interface of
authority, admiration, and fear.
FA: Certainly our hero-worshiping culture begins in childhood. Briefly,
let's now turn our discussion to children's songs.
IS: When I was growing up, I listened attentively to Cri-Cri, aka El
grillito cantor. Today I find him unfathomable. But he left a deep
impression on me when I was little, a fact that—in all honesty—
scares me. For Cri-Cri did nothing in his songs but reduce human
behavior to predictable stereotypes.
FA: Composer and songwriter Francisco Gabilondo Soler—that was
his real name!—has mysteriously captured my attention, too. We
 had a boxed set of his records in California. I was mesmerized by
the colorful cover art—an ant carrying an umbrella—and by the
songs. He wrote his songs for children, and they are generally
about children. Perhaps they were deeply appealing for us because
they sound like flash fiction stories sung along with catchy tunes.
Cri-Cri used all kinds of music styles, his songs following the
rhythm of mambo, cha-cha-cha, or any other generic music out
there. He was as inventive in music as he was in the subject
matter of his stories. I recall well his popular song “El chorrito” that
was about a water fountain, the variations of its trickle and
imaginative characters like ants carrying umbrellas. The themes of
Cri-Cri's songs are funny and pedagogical, and they usually
describe events that concern the everyday life of children, like the
nature and contents of dreams.
Everything that one way or another is related to children's
experiences and emotions found musical expression and story-form
in Cri-Cri's compositions. Parents like ours loved these songs and
bought the records because they thought they were edifying. And
we as children liked them because the stories were amusing,
imaginative, and playful.
Oddly, my sense is that parents today in Mexico do not buy
songs by Cri-Cri. Parents in Mexico and the United States don't
seem to pay attention to any musical compositions for children.
Perhaps parents are no longer interested in listening to music for
children and selecting the compositions they could consider
worthy. It's as if the education of children's musical brains ceased
to matter.
IS: You might be right. Children's music is still in its infancy among
us. Or better, it is stuck in the nineteenth century.
FA: Yes, there appears to be a sense that music is not important in
the total education of the child's senses; that is, it doesn't
participate in the growing of their aesthetic capacities and feelings.
Let me turn the conversation to other heroes close to home. Your
father acted in Chespirito.
IS: He did, albeit he had a very small role. The impact of Chespirito's
humor in Hispanic civilization is still in need of interpretation. His
 characters—El chavo del Ocho, El chapulín colorado, El doctor
Chapatín (all starting with ch)—are beloved throughout Latin
America. What kind of comedy does Chespirito present? One based
on easy gags. Yet those gags say much about who our heroes are.
El chapulín colorado might be a klutz. He isn't masculine the way
Pedro Infante is. That, precisely, is its contribution: he is an anti-
hero. He helps people not by force but by clumsiness. Still, he
helps people. And he does it because he projects a childish
innocence.
FA: How does all this hero-worship manifest itself in real life?
IS: Ever read The Children of Sánchez by Oscar Lewis? The fact that
Sánchez, the father, is the center of gravity in the family in this
insightful anthropological study might serve as a stepping-stone to
reflect on this psychological behavior. The chemistry of hero-
worship in Hispanic society is found in our Mediterranean DNA. But
we've given it its own twist, as Lewis shows.
FA: Lewis made extremely valuable contributions to sociology in a
relatively short time. It's too bad he died young and surrounded by
controversy.
IS: Five decades after its original publication, the dust has finally
settled and it is possible to appreciate the vigor, depth, and stylistic
qualities of The Children of Sánchez. Much hoopla took place
around the book, describing it as a misconstrued depiction of
family life in Mexico in the mid–twentieth century. Critics accused
Oscar Lewis of endorsing a “culture of poverty” in the so-called
Third World, a term he himself had coined. In their opinion, this
was a condescending view of the have-nots that only explained
why they could not quite escape the dim circumstances that
surrounded them.
But Lewis, in my opinion, was wrongly attacked, in part
because his book was read in the sixties as a window into the
developing world, and the relationship between the developed and
the so-called Third World was then entering a period of intense
crisis. Also, The Children of Sánchez became controversial because
there was a declared war on poverty in the United States, led by
the Johnson Administration, that fought against the country's
 extremely high number of poor people with almost one out of
every five Americans living a under the poverty line. That domestic
war had some positive results, including the Economic Opportunity
Act of 1964, which, although hotly contested, brought along,
among other things, programs that are still around today such as
Head Start and Job. “The culture of poverty” is used but in the
wrong way. The full name of the report by sociologist and U.S.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was “The Negro Family: A Case
for National Action,” and it suggested that a significant reason for
poverty among blacks was the absentee father.
FA: Lewis's research interests were primarily outside the United
States, no?
IS: Yes, he worked primarily in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, but had
worked on India and conducted fieldwork on the Blackfoot Indians
of Canada and on Texas farmers. Even though there was a growing
Latino population in California, Texas, and throughout the
Southwest, as well as in the Northeast and in Florida, and while he
did occasionally focus on the Bracero program, which brought
temporary agricultural workers north of the Rio Grande between
1942 and 1955, mainly to replace the native male labor that had
been sent to the front during the war, he concentrated on the
Spanish-speaking countries that are in the vicinity of the United
States. His vision of the “culture of poverty” is articulated in the
introduction to Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture
of Poverty, which was published in 1959, a couple of years before
The Children of Sánchez. Lewis writes there that “Poverty becomes
a dynamic factor which affects participation in the larger national
culture and creates a subculture of its own.” He is convinced that
it's possible to speak of the culture of the poor “for it has its own
modalities and distinctive social and psychological consequences
for its members.” It seemed to Lewis that the culture of poverty
cut across regional, rural-urban, and even national boundaries.
“For example, I am impressed by the remarkable similarities in
family structure, the nature of kinship ties, the quality of husband-
wife and parent-child relations, time orientation, spending patterns,
value systems, and the sense of community found in lower-class
 settlements in London, in Mexico City slums and Mexican villages,
and among lower class Negroes in the United States.”
And he adds: “I want to draw attention to the fact that poverty
in modern times is not only in a state of economic deprivation, of
disorganization, or of the absence of something. It is also
something positive in the sense that it has a structure, a rationale
and defense mechanisms without which the poor could hardly
carry on.” I do not believe Lewis overemphasized the point. In the
United States, a country made in part by immigrants, poverty is
perceived as a temporary stage, a state one is able to overcome
through hard work. But in the developing world, there is a sense of
doom, of lack of agency in regard to poverty. For instance, social
mobility in Mexico is almost non-existent: the chances for a low-
income person to move up to the middle class are bigger today
than when Lewis was a visitor, but they remain tough, not to say
improbable. The idea of an American Dream is just not present in
Mexico: pobre pero contento is one of the famous sayings by
Cantinflas, the most popular comedian in Mexican history ever,
poor but happy.
FA: Lack of social mobility has been endemic in Mexico, where half
the population is poor. This has fed and will continue to feed social
unrest. Quite recently the electricity workers trade union
established a new, independent, political party, together with
organized workers from many quarters and a large base of non-
organized people. Resistance and rebellion are starting to emerge.
Much discussion will be needed. Oscar Lewis would have had a
privileged place to voice his concerns, his analyses, and his
proposals.
IS: Controversy, needless to say, is an essential feature of
democracy: without debate there is no consensus; not to react to
social injustice is to be dormant, to give up one's civic
responsibilities.
Lewis himself attracted the controversy in his choice of topic.
His focus in The Children of Sánchez centered on the vecindades,
slums in downtown Mexico City where he said the poor live with
limited provisions, many of them having come from rural areas to
 find work in the capital as the nation was undergoing a rapid
process of labor centralization. This inclination toward the
dispossessed came to him naturally. He had been born into an
immigrant Yiddish-speaking family (his real last name was
Lefkowitz) and grew up on a farm in Upstate New York. His Jewish
background predisposed him toward a life of social justice. He was
a low-income student who went to the City College of New York,
where he majored in history, and then moved not too far, to
Columbia University, where he did his doctorate in anthropology.
He taught at Brooklyn College, among other places, and was one
of the founders of the anthropology department at the University
of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
His understanding of anthropology is directly linked to his
experience as a Jew and an immigrant child, and here again his
legacy is polemical. He held the conviction that “anthropologists
have a new function in the modern world: to serve as students and
reporters of the great mass of peasants and urban dwellers of the
underdeveloped countries who constitute almost eighty percent of
the world's population.” What happens to the people of these
countries, Lewis insisted, “will affect, directly and indirectly, our
own lives. Yet we know surprisingly little about them. While we
have a great deal of information on the geography, history,
economics, politics, and even the customs of many of these
countries, we know little about the psychology of the people,
particularly the lower classes, their problems, how they think and
feel, what they worry about, argue over, anticipate, or enjoy.”
FA: This perception of social reality is still relevant. What mission did
he set for his discipline?
IS: In his view, anthropologists should perceive themselves as
scientists fully committed to objectively analyzing destitute
populations. How they study those populations and what he means
by objectively analyzing is where Lewis's contribution becomes
decisive. He wasn't one to arrive at a place to gather amounts of
demographic and sociological data, most of it dealing with
behavioral patterns. Instead, he focused on a particular subject—a
chosen town, a family, a handful of individuals—and interviewed
 them profusely over an extended period of time. In the case of The
Children of Sánchez, his research on Mexico and on Mexican
families started in 1943, but he concentrated on the Sánchez
family from 1956 on. It is one of the five families that are part of
Five Families. He then concentrated on the Sánchezes until The
Children of Sánchez was released, after which he continued his
meetings with several of the members. That effort resulted in
another book, A Death in the Sánchez Family (1969). In short, the
span of time that Lewis spent on Mexico and on the Sánchezes
was more than a quarter of a century.
FA: The role of “subaltern subjects” in the humanities has been a
topic of discussion of late in the academy?
IS: Yes, and I ask: What gives a journalist or a scholar the right to
usurp the voice of someone else? What is compromised in such
situations, its opponents believe, is objectivity itself. But Lewis was
ahead of his time. He understood the traps of such types of
research but did not think, and rightly so, that such hindrance
reduced the overall value of the effort. He makes it clear when he
states in the book that “my personality influenced the final
outcome of this study.” He made the interviewees volunteer
information they would not otherwise have offered. And he
chopped, edited, reorganized, and overall manipulated the material
he had collected. “While I used a directive approach in the
interviews,” he continued, “I encouraged free association, and I
was a good listener. I attempted to cover systematically a wide
range of subjects: their earliest memories, their dreams, their
hopes, fears, joys and sufferings; their jobs; their relationship with
friends, relatives, employers; their sex life; their concept of justice,
religion, and politics; their knowledge of geography and history; in
short, their total view of the world.”
It strikes me that the real protagonist of The Children of
Sánchez, albeit a silent, implicit one, is the tape recorder. Lewis
would have never been able to accomplish the anthropological task
had he not had access to this technological device that
transformed the way modernity approaches the human voice. The
tape recorder is indeed a miraculous instrument. It stores speech,
 allowing the person recording it to do something with it we are all
incapable of in life: to return to a sentence, to examine it, to codify
it. Lewis accumulated hundreds of hours of interviews with Jesús,
the Sánchez patriarch, which constitute the prologue and epilogue
of the book, and his four children, Manuel, Roberto, Consuelo, and
Marta, making the core narrative, each child showing up three
successive times in an order dependent on their age. Once the
interviews Lewis did were transcribed, he gave free rein to his
writing aptitudes, shaping the material so as to create semblance
of plotline coherence. The tape recorder was the mechanism that
allowed him to travel from his field of work to the field of his
imagination.
FA: What did he seek to accomplish with this methodology? Do you
believe it was solid enough to give a faithful account of social
reality?
IS: While Lewis was generally interested in the overall effects of
poverty, his ultimate goal, at least as it concerns the Sánchez
family, was really psychological, or I should say mythical. What the
anthropologist was after was not only how Jesús Sánchez relates
to his wives and children, and how each of them relates to the
others, but, from a more Platonic perspective, how the Mexican
people behave, what is the country's archetypal pattern toward
authority, sex, food, happiness, illness, and death. In other words,
Lewis looked at the particulars of a given family in order to
understand the universals. As it happens, shortly before The
Children of Sánchez appeared, Mexico as a whole had undergone a
period of soul-searching, of “national psychologizing,” an effort that
embraced the theories of C. G. Jung, Freud's disciple, to
apprehend the set of symbols that apparently lay buried in
everyone's collective unconscious. Among the studies published
before Lewis that subscribed to that position were Samuel Ramos's
Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico (1938) and Octavio Paz's The
Labyrinth of Solitude (1950).
FA: What might have driven Lewis's research program?
IS: My own impression is that Lewis's kind of anthropology—and
maybe the controversy he attracted also?—derives from his
Jewishness. The Jewish approach to culture, at least the diasporic
Jewish approach, is defined by a double-consciousness, one that
juxtaposes an outsider and insider's angle. And that is what he
sought to accomplish as a social scientist: to simultaneously look at
the culture of poverty in Mexico as an American academic who
visited the vecindad to record conversations with the Sánchez
family, and to become not only an acquaintance but a close friend
and confidant of its members. Judging from the content of the
book, his subjects were able to tell him things they did not tell
each other and maybe not even themselves. To what extent did
Lewis's presence in the family alter its dynamic? Did he himself
become, hidden or otherwise, a Sánchez relative, albeit an
honorary one?
Another hidden facet that shouldn't go unnoticed is the way
translation is embedded in the book. Lewis was not only perfectly
fluent in Spanish but he understood Mexican slang. Not only did he
transcribe his interviews, he translated them into English in order
to make the narrative accessible to his target audience. Who was
that audience? Notice that Five Families was released by a trade
New York publisher, Basic Books, and The Children of Sánchez by
another, Random House, meaning that Lewis did not aim for an
academic audience, e.g., in this case he did not seek the
imprimatur of a university press, but sought a wide public beyond
the campus walls that was interested in social issues, from
economics to armed struggles. That his book came to that specific
public in English and not Spanish arguably made its content more
widely known and perhaps even more palatable in certain
intellectual circles.
All these aspects matter because Lewis's composite picture of
family life at a moment when Mexico is a model developing nation
on the fast track to industrialization is not only vivid but
astonishingly moving. Since it's finally possible to see the book's
brightness in full, the book is something else: a Balzac-like novel,
although Lewis probably would not have approved such a portrait.
Balzac-like because while offering a domestic vista he delivers an
epic canvas about upheaval, social and psychological, while
 completely disappearing behind his subjects, thus forbidding the
reader a glimpse of his own opinions, which are offered only in the
twenty-page introduction and never again; and a novelist because
Lewis displays an extraordinary talent for creating literary
characters—young and old, male and female, strong and weak in
their personality yet never limited in their narrative scope and
commanding in their storytelling disposition. It might be said that
those creations are based on real people and that, as a result, they
are not fictional. But is not that what fiction is always about,
making the real not unreal but extra real? Are not all fictional
characters based on actual people?
And so, the question must be asked: should The Children of
Sánchez be read as a novel? Should it be seen as an accurate
description of daily affairs in Hispanic society? Either way, in the
sense of what a larger-than-life father figure does in our society, its
devastating impact is unavoidable.
FA: The father as priest. By the way, ever seen those holograms of
Jesus blinking or the Virgen de Guadalupe in a talisman hanging
below the mirror in a taxi?
IS: I love them! I have a friend who hung one in his living room
years ago in order to oppose evil spirits, which he thought were
after him. With the hologram he feels protected from them. An
essential ingredient of popular religion is superstition.
FA: Yes, it is a strange phenomenon. It is superstition and it is a
great deal more. Take the case of the McCourt family and its
surroundings as depicted in Angela's Ashes (1996), a book I
heartily enjoyed while moved by the most opposite feelings of
attraction and horror. Well, in this memoir Catholicism is materially
a series of unwaveringly identical rites, such as prayer, communion,
repentance for sins committed, fear of hell, belief in immortal life
of the soul after death. At the same time, Catholicism is the Church
and its staff, that whole hierarchy that despises its flock (working
people barely surviving in a state of extreme poverty) and is
always colluding with the authorities, the CEOs, the business
owners, the ruling class as a whole. It's the Church dictating to the
poor codes of behavior, manners, and customs with the aim of
 leading them all to the passive acceptance of a subordinate role in
society—in our so-called Valley of Tears. As Frank McCourt writes in
this first volume of his memoirs, he manages to make a better life
for himself and for his mother and siblings only after he breaks
with the Church. That is, after he ceases to believe in the Church's
rituals and dictates. It's a radical transformation for him. And I
believe this has come about in the last few decades for millions of
people around the world and in the United States. The Catholic
Church no longer rules people's lives the way it used to.
IS: It does not, I agree. But I do not have the same negative
approach to religion that Frank McCourt presents in Angela's
Ashes. Beyond the institution of the Church itself, belief is crucial in
daily life. It certainly is in my life. And I am not a religious person.
FA: Altogether I feel we can safely say that the Catholic Church has
lost much ground among the Latino population, but that doesn't
mean that the Church is giving up the struggle to regain its old
prestige. Pope Benedict XVI rushed the beatification process of his
predecessor John Paul II because the Church needed a hero to
divert attention from the abuse scandal in Ireland and other
European countries.
IS: I couldn't stand Pope Benedict XVI. Something about his rigidity,
his pompous, doctrinaire approach, his Nazi past. I predicted his
abdication in a brief essay included in my Spanish-language
personal anthology Lengua Fresca (2012). Therefore, it was a thrill
to see him followed by Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos
Aires, thereafter named Pope Francis.
FA: And, it was an acknowledged fact even by the Vatican that John
Paul II always gave his support to the Mexican priest Marcial Maciel
Degollado, a founder of Los Legionarios de Cristo (The
Legionnaires of Christ)—the most influential and richest Roman
Catholic congregation since the beginning of the Cold War—even
though he knew Maciel was a drug addict, raped (and continued
raping) boys most of his adult life, and committed other crimes. So
a lackluster pope engulfed in scandals sought help from a
preceding lackluster pope who hid his sexual abuse crimes
committed by his subordinate Maciel.
IS: Perhaps with Pope Francis comes a change in the typical profile.
Not only is he the first non-European to be named the head of the
Roman Catholic Church in thirteen centuries; he is also a Jesuit, a
denomination known for its passion to education as well as for
being ostracized by the Vatican.
FA: Ilan, I'm all about celebrating Latinos where we have not been
allowed before, but perhaps we might tread cautiously here, too;
that is to say, perhaps it is a tad early in the day for us to rejoice—
or to criticize—the election of Bergoglio as the new Pope. In
Argentina, other countries in Latin America, and Europe many have
already published compromising investigative journalistic articles
that are beginning to bring to light possible ties with the military
dictatorship of Videla y compañía. If these prove to be verified
beyond a shadow of a doubt, they may taint his biography
irreparably. We shall see.
IS: In Latin America, the Jesuits have been prime motors of
educational change. Perhaps that is why they have a troubled
history, having been expelled in 1767. Pope Francis is a welcome
antidote to Pope Benedict: personable, down-to-earth, allergic (to
the degree that is possible in such circles) to protocol, and
empathetic to the poor. Oy, what a relief it is to have a Latin
American pope! The irony, of course, is that, again, he's Argentine,
a country known for its pedantry.
FA: I'm a bit more tentative when it comes to religious orders, Jesuit
or otherwise. Yes, the Jesuit order's pedagogical zeal has been
vital since its founding in 1534 by the Basque Ignatius of Loyola.
And without a doubt today they own and run many universities in
many countries. As you know, they run the well-known private
college in Mexico City, Universidad Iberoamericana. However, while
they have been important safeguards of education, there's still a
nagging sense that they are more about the promotion of
obscurantism than objective learning. This is perhaps not entirely
surprising. Loyola's Rules for Thinking with the Church favor
whatever the Catholic Church hierarchy considers to be the truth
over and above empirical proof. His Rule 13 comes readily to mind,
declaring that the Church has “defined anything to be black which
 to our eyes appears to be white, we ought in like manner to
pronounce it to be black.” Wherever lines are drawn in this
discussion, what we do know is that the church has lost much
ground with today's Latino population.
IS: We shall see if this is an effective means for the Catholic Church
to regain lost ground.
FA: In what sense is belief crucial for you?
IS: Reason alone is insufficient as an instrument to carry us along.
Spinoza talks of two spheres: reason and faith. Of course, he is the
ultimate rationalist, reducing the laws of the universe to his more
geometrico. In the Ethics, he presents an astonishing
nomenclature of human emotions: how many emotions there are,
how they relate to one another, and to what extent is reason
capable of controlling our emotional life. Yet Spinoza concedes
that, while reason has the upper hand, there are aspects of our
emotional life impossible to handle, a including despair. Despair is
a response to the unknown, e.g., the accidental nature of the
universe. Despair and the unknown—religion is an answer to them.
And the least polished (read “Spinozean,” unprocessed, animistic,
childish) reason is, the more room there is to believe in magic.
Magic is a feature of childhood but when reason is not distilled, it
is carried on to adulthood. A stereotype of the uneducated,
countryside folk makes an emphasis on their belief in magic. To me
that stereotype is not as constrained. Many of us so-called
educated people are superstitious.
FA: Give me an example.
IS: Every time I am in an airplane that is about to take off or land, I
recite to myself—in my mind—the Hebrew prayer Shema. As I
suggest in With All Thine Heart (2010), I do not attend synagogue
in a systematic way. This doesn't mean I am a nonbeliever. Or else,
Sigmund Freud had talismans in his doctor's office that were not
quite decorations. Joseph Conrad used certain types of pens to
write his stories. Isabel Allende always starts a new novel on the
exact same date she began The House of the Spirits (1982). Why
do we engage in these kinds of behavior? Because deep inside we
fear that reason is not enough. Because the child in us is still
 around. Because there is a spiritual aspect of life we cannot
altogether ignore. In other words, we might claim to have left an
atavistic mind-set behind but remnants of it are still with us.
FA: You are not an unbeliever, you said.
IS: No, I'm not. I'm enthralled by religious manifestations. I love
jumping in a taxi in which the driver has an icon of the Virgen de
Guadalupe hanging under the front mirror. It does not generate
dismissal in me but respect. I do not think the Virgin will protect
him. But it doesn't matter what I think; what matters is what he
believes.
FA: Could one say that the icon is keeping the driver from
understanding the world as it is?
IS: No. Truth is, none of us understand the world as it is. Not even
scientists. That is because scientists reduce it to a series of causes
and effects. But there is more to the human experience than the
scientific method. Don't get me wrong: the scientific method is the
foundation of progress. Yet using it to discredit a spiritual
appreciation of reality is being a reductionist. I agree with
Christopher Hitchens: God is not great! And neither is He all
knowing! (I write He with capital H out of respect for the
unknown.) But neither is science. Tell me, do you come from a
religious home?
FA: No, not really. My father is an atheist. Only in the few years
before she died, did my mother's otherwise indeterminate and
diffuse Catholicism peek from beneath the covers. Before she died
she asked for a priest. At first I felt chilled and deeply
uncomfortable. Then I resigned myself to the same manner of
thinking you express above: what matters is what she believes.
My paternal grandmother was Catholic but never went to Mass
and kept her beliefs very much to herself. My maternal
grandmother was more inclined to showing her religiosity—behind
closed doors—and to buying Virgin Mary statuettes, Jesus velvet-
posters, and other external symbols of Catholicism. I grew up very
much like my brother, mostly unaware of the impact of religion on
other people's lives and indifferent to their religious beliefs and
cravings. We never gave them much thought and they never
 invaded our lives. We were spontaneously irreligious, agnostic,
atheists. The Catholic Church did not inflict visible marks on our
feelings and behavior, and its symbols were for us just forms of
popular art, like the legend and the omnipresent representations of
the Virgen de Guadalupe. I don't have velvet Jesus posters up on
the walls in my house, but I do have plenty of those beautifully
baroque Russian Virgin Mary icons.
IS: The Church does inflict those marks on Hispanic civilization. By
marks we mean wounds, injuries, scars. Yet calling them that way
is being nearsighted. What is our civilization without Catholicism?
The question is absurd. It's as if we asked: what is the world
without the color blue? Or without sugar? Hispanic popular culture
is, even if only tangentially, a by-product of the encounter between
Iberian and indigenous cultures in the early sixteenth century. Our
sense of guilt, our conception of the self, our understanding of
time, our cuisine, our sexuality, our dreams, all spring from there.
Don't you think?
FA: Absolutely. Just thinking of literature, admittedly a small domain
within the vast cultural universe you have in mind, would force
anyone to acknowledge the huge impact Catholicism has had in
Western civilization, particularly in its Latino American variant. We
find this impact in the common use of certain words and tropes,
and in many specifically religious allusions. Indeed, our whole
literary tradition would be incomprehensible without
acknowledging the essential legacy of the varied and
heterogeneous authors who penned the Bible; of those who did
the fundamental doctrinal work in the early centuries of our era,
such as the Neoplatonists Plotinus, Porphyry, and Saint Augustine;
of the medieval thinkers who gave us the lexical and conceptual
treasure-trove of scholasticism, among them its epitome Saint
Thomas, and of the mysticism—so influential in our literature—of
Meister Eckhart, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Jesus, and John of
the Cross, to name a few. (By the way, both Teresa of Jesus and
John of the Cross had Jewish ancestors and their literary work is
still widely read today. Reading them remains a true pleasure.)
Another random document with
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 A leány: Jaj Istenem! Hát az semmi! Csakhogy ezelőtt Appel
Mela is utálta a mértant, most pedig csupa egyesekre felel és
egyebet se tanul. Az úgy van – – nálunk mindenkinek megvan a
maga – – kedves tantárgya – – –
Az igazgató (egyre mosolyog és merőn néz rá, szinte fogva tartja
a tekintetével): Hát magácskának, persze az irodalom!
A leány (elfogódva): Igen, de – – nem úgy! –
Az igazgató (felkacag): Hogy?
A leány: Nem tudom – –
Az igazgató (a két ujjával egyszerre átfogja a leány karját és
erősen tartja): Nos, nos! Meg kell magyarázni!
A leány (nem mer mozdulni, nagyon zavartan): Csak úgy, hogy
én nem sütöm ki a hajam magyar órára, sem a legszebb bluzt nem
veszem fel.
Az igazgató: Melanie fölveszi?
A leány: Föl, a mértanhoz. És titokban olyan hideg vasba
csavarja a haját, mert sütni tilos az internátusban, a szőke leányok
azt majd mind csinálják.
Az igazgató (egyre erősen fogja a karját): Csak a szőkék? Ez baj!
Tehát a maga haja sütetlen marad?
A leány (érezni kezdi, hogy a karja átmelegszik): Oh, az magától
is borzas! (Mint egy megbűvölt madárka, zavartan, sebesen
csicsereg): Én nem igen göndörítem. Csak egyszer soppal csináltam
meg, az önképzőköri ülésre, mikor szavaltam. Akkor Tóth Margit
nagyon lebírált, de az igazgató úr megsajnált és azt mondta, hogy a
bírálat hibás és megdicsért engem. Pedig igazán nem tudok
szavalni, csak beugrattak. Gyönge a hangom.
Az igazgató: No, ahhoz nem is kell kiabálni. Maga a szívhez tud
szólni. Gyönyörű beszédhangja van, halk, behízelgő, ezer
modulációt, az egész kedélyvilágát kifejezi. Milyen szép az, mondja
csak a »Velszi bárdok«-ból: »Ah, lágyan kél…«
A leány (valami különös zsibbadtsággal dől a szék karjára,
elfogódva, lágyan, szinte remegőn): »Haj, lágyan kél az esti szél
Milfjord öböl felé, szüzek siralma, özvegyek panasza…«
Az igazgató (piros homlokkal): Nos? (A másik kezével a diván
háta felől a leány derekához ér, a leány hátrahanyatlik kissé): Nos?
Maga kis boszorkány. Kedves kicsi boszorkány! (Arcával a haját
érinti.)
A leány (magában): Ez nagy dolog, tudom. Ilyen még egyikkel
sem történt! Talán nem is mondom el egy leánynak sem. Fel kellene
ugorni, de nem lehet! Aztán még van idő! Hisz ez még nem baj,
ennyi még nem baj! – –
(Kívülről zaj hallatszik és a növendékifjú hangja, aki a külső
szobába bevezet valakit): Tessék, tessék! A nagyságos úr odabent
van!
Az igazgató (még egyszer görcsösen megszorítja a leány karját,
aztán elengedi. Halkan, fojtott indulattal): Várjon meg itt, csak várjon,
majd visszajövök! (Ki akar menni az első szobába, az új vendég elé).
(Késő. Egy termetes, kövérarcú asszonyság tágít be az ajtón.
Bámész arcot csinál. A szeme ki van sírva, a hangja vontatott,
éneklő.)
A termetes asszony: Nagyságos igazgató úr! A fiam dolgában
jöttem, annak a rossz fiúnak. Szegény özvegy asszony…
Az igazgató (erőt vesz magán, elrejti kedvetlenségét, sápadtan
és stereotip mosollyal nyujt kezet a vendégnek. Azalatt a kis leány
feláll, hirtelen elsimítja a haját, gyűrött ruhaujját és vörösen, ziháló
lélekzettel kifelé indul. Az igazgató hellyel kinálja az újonjöttet, aztán
pár lépést tesz a kis leány után. Szárazon és jó hangosan): Tehát az
ügye rendben van, nemde, kisasszony? Az írásait holnap átküldöm a
directrice-nek, a legjobb ajánlatot írom rá. Isten önnel! Üdvözlöm a
bácsit, Pali bácsit!
 A csonka Diana (az átsuhanó leányhoz): Szaladj, siess, siess!
(Int a nyilakkal.)
A napos tanulóifjú (miközben kaput nyit, ránéz a lihegő, arcából
kikelt leányra és a bajuszkája alatt fiatalos maliciával gúnyosan
mosolyog).
 A veszedelem.

A lakás külső csengettyüje röviden, alig érintve zizzent, aztán

megint előkelő, komoly csönd támadt a szőnyeges lépcsőházban. Az
ajtó előtt két fiatal, sietségtől pirosas leány mosolygott egymásra és
amíg várakoztak, a lihegésük párája fényes ködként surrant el a
villanylámpa íve előtt.
Az egyik fekete volt, nyulánk, szabályos arcú, vékonyszájú, a
mozgása szögletesen bájos, olyan sajátságosan tiszta és különös
szépség; mint egy fiú, egy gyönyörű római puer. A másik szőke és
kicsiny, fitos, csufondáros képű, asszonymód kerek csípőkkel,
gömbölyű, parasztosan kemény, apró kézzel. A ravasz csöpp
szájában tejfehér riskásafogak villogtak és a hangja gyöngén
csilingelt, amikor látszólag szorongva megszólalt.
– Te Klára! De nem fognak engem kidobni innét?
– Csacsi! – hangzott a válasz röviden és komolyan. – Szeretném,
ha nem affektálnál.
A barna leány később mégis hozzátette:
 – Te a társnőm vagy és velem jösz a nagynénémhez, ő pedig jól
tudja, hogy az internátusból csak párosával engedik ki az embert, ha
a kedves rokonai nem jönnek érte.
– Klára! – okvetetlenkedett a másik – nézd, talán ne is kérnénk
most szinházjegyet. Olyan furcsa az…
– No hallod! Hát ez mi? Nem te örültél legjobban a szinháznak.
Azt mondtad, hogy ma valami különösnek és érdekesnek kell
történni veled.
– Igen, olyan furcsát érzek egész nap. Valami nagyon merész és
bolond dolgot szeretnék csinálni, valahogy tojástáncot járni az
olyasmik fölött, amik »nem szokás«-ok és »nem szabad«-ok, de
azért szép és diszkrét, előkelő táncot. Csak közelébe jutni a
veszedelmesnek, de nem érinteni…
– Őrült filozopter – mennyit beszél! Látszik, hogy sohase voltál a
tüzoltó-utcai hullaházban és nem láttad a nagy húsosfazekakat,
amikben összegubbaszkodott vénasszonyokat főz egy csúf, ripacsos
szolga. A pince tele van a szapulás gőzével és az ember lába
megcsúszik a kiloccsant agyvelőkben.
– Jaj, te, csodálom, hogy még ember vagy!
– Még csak leszek! No, hát kérünk a nénitől szinházjegyet! Ne
búsulj, a művésznőknek ingyen jár az és úgyis a házitanítót meg a
frizért boldogítja vele. Aztán elmegyünk ketten, kísérő nélkül a
szinházba, már ez magában is elég különös. És visszajövet gyalog
megyünk, éjszaka lesz, senki sem fogja tudni, hogy mifélék vagyunk,
bejárunk sok utcát… Az igazgatónőnek jelentettem, hogy a rokonok
fognak gardirozni.
– Talán ma látunk valamit abból, hogy milyen ez a város éjszaka.
Jaj, úgy szeretnék valahová bemenni, de úgy, hogy minket ne
vegyen észre senki, ne szóljanak hozzánk és mi csak nézzünk.
– Fiam, azt nem lehetne megcsinálni; hidd el, besározódnék az
ember egy kicsit. És te finnyás vagy. Aztán meg én se tudom, hogy
mikép kezdenénk hozzá az ilyesmihez.
 – Hát csak menjünk a szinházba. De Terézia néninek mondd
meg, hogy…
– Hogyisne mondanám! Hogy a kollégám szerelmes belé, mert
látta a »Kék tiará«-ban játszani és most eljött, hogy piros
pongyolában is kezet csókoljon neki. Akkor bizonyosan kidobna
mind a kettőnket. Biztosítlak, hogy a néni egy kicsit sem modern és
émelyeg a gyomra minden sapphói megnyilatkozástól.
– Jaaj, Klára! – szörnyűködött a kicsi.
– Nohát! Hanem ezek tán alusznak mind!
Most ő nyomta meg a csengőt, keményen, tartósan és az
egészen úgy szólt a keze alatt, mint ahogy általában a csengők
szoktak. Újra halk tereferébe kezdtek.
– Talán nincs is itthon! – mondta a szőke.
– Hát az bizony baj volna… Akkor fuccs a szinház. Mert azt el is
felejtettem mondani, hogy nekem csak nyolcvan krajcár pénzem
van.
– Nekem annyi sincs. Akkor visszamegyünk az internátusba,
legalább nem lesz semmi bajunk. Hátha megtudnák és kidobnának.
– Örökké attól a kidobástól szepegsz. Akkor is megélnénk…
Járnánk a menzába enni és órákat adnánk.
– Tudom is én, talán nem is mernénk úgy élni… Nem hallasz
semmit?
– Az ördögbe, a házvezetőnő akkor is itthon van. Újra
csengetünk!
– Házvezetőnőt is tartanak?
– Kell. A néni ura, a szegény báró, csak nem dajkálhatja a négy
kicsit.
– Hány cseléd van azonkívül?
 – Az inassal három. Egy kicsit lomposan megy náluk minden és
az lop, aki akar. Te is lopj fényképet majd, azt úgyis ingyen csinálják
Terézia néninek. Majd lopok neked a »Kék tiará«-ból.
– Mennyi fizetése van őméltóságának?
– A szinháznál nyolcezer, de az majd mind ruhára kell. De
valamije van az urának is még; az adósságból kilátszik a berentei
földek egy csücske. Különben a bárónak most valami nagyon
elegáns, lustálkodó hivatala is van a Sport-Clubnál.
– Milyen ember?
– Én még csak vagy kétszer láttam, akkor sem igen kegyeskedett
észrevenni. Tudod, ő olyan furcsa félmágnás, maga se tudja, hogy
kikhez tartozik, szinészek, urak és zsokék közt forgolódik és
mondják, szereti a szép asszonyokat. Különben ő soha sincs itthon
ilyenkor.
– Már jönnek!
Csodálatosan kopogó, ritmustalan lépések közeledtek; a neszük
olyan volt, mint a félrevert harang szava.
– Mondom, a házvezetőnő, a sánta Liza – suttogta Klára és előre
lépett be a kitáruló ajtón.
– Terézia néni itthon van?
– Jé – sivított a madárarcú, sánta leány az előszobában. Klára
kisasszony! Tessenek begyünni! Csak magam vagyok, a
méltóságának most esti próbája is van a »Mária« miatt, aztán játszik
is ma, csak tizenegykor jön haza. Talán összetalálkoznak valahol a
báró úrral és együtt… Tetszett hallani? Az Ináncsyné szerepét is ő
kapta most… Könnyű neki!
A másik leány, a szőke, még a lépcsőházban volt és
elszontyolodva szólalt meg:
– Akkor hát ne menjünk be mégse!
 Klára bizalmaskodva ölelgette meg a bicegő vén leányt.
– Lizike – mondta – ez itt a barátnőm, Lizike. Irénnek hívnák, de
ő úgy affektálja, hogy Csire és azt úgy kell írni, hogy Chyre. Most
bemegyünk és a maga vendégei leszünk.
– Pompás lesz. Még félhét sincs… Főzök teát, van
fácánmaradék meg befőtt, jó?
– Nagyon jó – mondta Klára és elgondolkozott. Aztán hirtelen
megcsókolta a kis csúnya Lizát.
– Vagy tudja mit, aranyos Lizike: most váltsa be a szavát, amit
már régen megigért. Most előszedi és megmutogatja nekünk a
ruhákat, mind a szinházi ruhákat.
– Jó, – mondta kicsit habozva a másik – hanem vigyázni kell.
Tessenek! A téli felsőt hagyják az én szobámban.
Csire már akkor elsurrant előlük és bent, a kicsi japáni szalont
nézegette apró, műértő nefelejts-szemével. A rizspapir valódi, a
porcellánok is, egy nagy kerek bronztálca gyönyörűen van metszve,
de a lakkos gyöngyházas holmi haszontalanság.
– Csire, jöjj… Siess!
Lábujjhegyen mentek át a félsötétes hálószobán, meg a másikon,
ahol négy pompás gyerek szuszogott édesen a kicsi ágyakban és
meleg, gyönge emberpárák szálltak fel a szappanosvízben
megfürösztött egészséges, csöpp testükről. Az ebédlőtől avult keleti
szőnyegfüggöny zárta el a ruhatár ajtaját.
***
És előkerültek sorba, mind.
A nagy szárnyas tükör elé, kicsi törökdivánra telepedtek és a fal
mellett sorba állított széles, lapos szekrényekben motozott Liza.
Először egy halovány gyöngyszínű köntöst húzott elő. Csodálatosan
puha szövet volt, bő, gyűrött kinézésű és lógó, nyitott ujjaival, mintha
félbehagyottan szabadult volna el a szabóasztaltól. A két lány
közömbösen dicsérgette.
– Micsoda? Tessék csak felpróbálni! – nevetett Liza és gyors,
ügyes mozdulattal széttárva, a Csire vállára kapcsolta a ruhát. Akkor
a halványan árnyalt redőket sugár-alakba összeszedte, előre húzva
fölcsípte kissé és a leány kezébe adta. Lizán meglátszott, hogy
szinházi öltöztető volt a jobb időkben, diadalmasan mutatott a
tükörbe.
Csire, az apró szőke teremtés felkiáltott örömében. Bájos
terpsychore-modell lebegett előtte, pompás, telt formái előnyösen
megnyujtva kissé az ívbe futó vonalak hullámaiban, karcsú bokája
körül ezer selyem-fodor, mint egy nagy, világos mákvirág gyűrött,
duzzadó kelyhe, – arányos, kicsi keble alatt raffináltan naív empire
szalagcsokor.
– Istenem, istenem! Én mindig azt hittem, hogy köpcös vagyok!
– Lehet, hogy az, füzőben – hagyta helyben Liza és újra a
szekrénybe nyúlt. – De ez már Klára kisasszonynak való.
Most sötétvörös lovaglóruha volt a kezében a »Szegény ifjú
történeté«-ből és Klárának le kellett vetni a ruháit, hogy magára
kapcsolja.
Valamikor vidéki szinésznő korában viselhette ezt még a báróné,
mikor ő is olyan karcsú és egyenes volt, mint most az unokahuga.
Hanem a szabása kitünő! A leány kissé hosszú nyakát magasan
befödte és gyönyörüen simult domború mellcsontjaihoz, izmos
vállához, a színe pedig élénk reflexet vetített a halványbarna
arcbőrre. A rövid uszályt valami született, kissé merev előkelőséggel
csapta félre és a tükör elé állt. A szeme csillogott, keskeny száját
még jobban összeszorította és szótlanul bámult. Aztán hirtelen
szétnyitotta a kapcsokat és lehúzta a ruhát magáról.
– Mi haszna? – mondta halkan, keserűen.
– Te még viselhetsz ilyet! – szólt Csire. – Majd ha módos orvos
leszel, egész rendszeresen csinálhatod a lovaglást.
 – Egyik oláh faluból a másikba, a húszkrajcáros receptekért ott a
hazámban, ahol a javasasszonyok bölcsebbek lesznek nálam.
– Városba is kerülhetsz. Meg hátha elvesz valami nagy úr!…
– Ejh!…
Most megint Csire következett. Fehér és bő ruhát kapott,
kislányosan rövidet és merev, nehéz posztóból valót, mintha
konfirmációra készülne. Az ujjai hegyét imára kulcsolva az ajkához
kellett emelni és belemosolyogni a tükörbe. A szövet feszesen simult
hozzá, majd szétpattantak a kapcsok s az egyszerű és ártatlan
növendékruha minden rejtett formát, viruló asszonyi idomot a
tombolásig érvényesített.
– Istenem! – kiáltott fel Klára – mennyire illik ez neked, az
ártatlanság fitos paródiája te! Ravasz kis majom, – csengő barack,
mosolygó alma, rejtőzködő mókás cinizmus, fehér sátánkisasszony.
– »Zárda kedves otthonom!« – dalolta Csire kacagva és apró
tánclépésekkel röppent el a tükör elől. Aztán hirtelen elszomorodott
ő is.
– Látod, te beszélsz! Gondold csak el, mi lesz én belőlem.
Valamelyik alamuszi vidéki fészekbe kerülök, ahol háztartástant és
vegytant fogok tanítni. Ott a társaságbeli lányoknak begyesen kell
ülni, mint aki nyársat nyelt; az alispánné uzsonnát ad és minden öt
lányra jut egy-egy nyájas törvényszéki jegyző vagy efféle, azt
minden leány ellenőrzi és elirigyeli az embertől és ha az ember
irigységből meghódítja magának, meg fogja bánni, mert nem volt
érdemes. A mamák pedig körbeülnek, az orrukat előretartják, de a
szemükkel oldalt banzsalítnak, mint a libák, vagy mintha a
céhmester pálcája intését várnák, hogy le kell-e ülni, vagy felállni;
engem pedig valamennyi meg fog szólni és kiátkozni, mert ülök és
állok és járok, ahogy jólesik, szeretem a többinél különb férfiakat, a
ruhaszekrényem rendetlen és nem tudok főzni. Utoljára meg fogok
ijedni és olyan leszek, mint ők.
– Az, hogy te utoljára mindig megijedsz. Ha eszed volna, már
régen átmentél volna szinésznőnek.
 – Tudod, a gyámom!…
– Óh… mit ad neked a gyámod?
Liza most bő, hattyúprémes bundákat szedett elő. Pompázó
színű szinpadi utánzatok voltak, amiket olyan hercegnői
hanyagsággal tudott ledobni magáról a nagy művésznő Fedorá-ban
vagy Gauthier Margithban, pedig az igazi hercegnők sohasem
vennének magukra hasonlókat. De milyen hálás takarói, milyen
eszményi árulói ezek a mozdulatoknak. A két leány le se akarta vetni
őket, ha egyszer magára öltötte.
– Nem kell nekünk még hazamenni? – kérdezte Csire.
– Hisz bejelentettem, hogy szinházba megyünk. Légy nyugodt.
– Itt vannak még csak szépek – kiáltott Lizi és új szekrényt
nyitott. – Ő méltósága e héten vette őket egy királyi hercegnő
ruhatárából.
– Hogy-hogy?
– No, hát nem vesz mindent újonnan, azt nem lehet, nagyon sok
kell. Ő egy ezerforintos ruhát megvesz kétszázötvenért, ha előbb
egy udvari bálon viselték. Arra külön alkuszok vannak.
És próbálták a királyi hercegnő ócska ruháit e két lázas,
életrevágyó, kiváncsi és csodálkozó diákleány. Szinte elfulladtak a
gyönyörüségben, amint egyre nyilvánvalóbb, teljesebb, ismerősebb
lett előttük a saját szépségük, amivel olyan keveset foglalkozhattak
eddig. Csak ez a titka hát? Ezért olyan istenien lengék, raffináltan
hatásosak, gyönyörüen harmónikusak a nagy szinésznők, nagy
kokottok és előkelő dámák. Most jöjjenek és nézzék meg őket! És
rejtett, névtelen keserűség szorongatta a torkukat, amint sietve
dobálták egymásra a brokátot, csipkét, selymet. A jó Liza pedig
belemelegedett a régi művészetébe: egy mozdulattal igazított a
hajviseleten, tragikusan feltornyozta, kacéran bodrozta, vagy
komolyan, szendén lesimította. Kezébe mintha visszatért volna a
régi lendület, az alkotás régi láza – boldog volt.
 Most egyszerre lettek készen mind a ketten és együtt álltak a
tükör elé. Csirén halványkék pongyola volt megint és látni lehetett,
hogy e bő és lenge színes leplek alatt virul ki legszebben sajátságos
alakjának minden rejtelme. A ruha nagyon könnyű kékselyem volt,
telepazarolva pompás, elefántcsontszínű csipkével, a hajába pedig
kék szalagot csavart, görögös abroncsként átfogva a homloka körül.
Klára a Stuart Mária zöld bársonyköntösét viselte, hátul felcsapott
fehér nyakfodorral, csillogó aranydíszítéssel és sötét hajában hamis
gyémántokból fűzött rezgő diadémmal. Kezet fogtak és önfeledten
bámulták önmagukat…
És akkor valahol zörrent egy ajtó, valaki bejött, akinek kulcsa van
a lakáshoz, valakinek a léptei bizonytalanul közeledtek a sötét
gyermekszobán át, az ebédlőben felcsavarták a villanyt.
– A báró! – suttogta Liza elhülve és rémülten meredtek az ajtóra
mind a hárman.
Aztán kinyílt, és egy jónövésű, kellemes arcú, negyven év körüli
úriember mosolyogva nézett végig rajtuk.
***
Mit volt mit tenni!? A furcsa öltözetben félig szégyenkezve, félig
jókedvüen léptek előre és Klára kezet nyujtott.
– Aá! Maga az, kisleány, a feleségem unokahúga, úgye?
– Igen… és ez a társam, Irén. Én nem tudom, hogyan
mentegessük magunkat, de…
– Fölösleges, – mondta a báró komolyan, amíg szinte mókás
hódoló tisztelettel köszöntötte Csirét. – Fölösleges! Igazán,
csodálatosan szépek mind a ketten.
– Nagyon szégyeljük magunkat, báró úr, – csilingelte a szöszke,
kékszalagos leány, – de hát ez megtörtént. Lizi nem tehet semmiről.
Mi erőltettük.
– Nem, a báró úr nem fog elárulni minket, – mondta Klára
meggyőződéssel és előkelő szépsége tudatában kiegyenesítve
gyönyörű alakját, a szék karjához támaszkodott.
– Elárulni! Még csak az kellene, Klárika. Jellemtelenség volna!
Aztán ezekre az ócska ruhákra csak különös megtisztelés, hogy
maguk beléjük öltöznek. Én pedig bocsánatot kérek, hogy
megzavartam.
A példásan udvarias idegen ember diszkrét, természetes hangján
beszélt, de a pillantása valami finom, elégedett gourmandériával
nyugodott a két egymástól annyira előnyösen különböző női alak
jellegzetes vonalain.
– Hanem mi most már sietünk is innét, nehogy meglepjen a néni.
– Sőt! – mondta a báró jókedvű szivélyességgel. – Meg fogják
várni a nénit, aztán ő a kocsiján majd beküldi magukat abba a
leánykasba, vagy mi a neve.
– De igazán sietni kell nekünk.
– Szó sincs róla. Most kilenc óra és egyedül úgy se mehetnek…
foglaljanak csak szépen helyet.
– Hát jó, de felvesszük a rendes ruhát.
– Majd ráérnek, maradjanak így még! – kiáltott önkéntelen
élénkséggel a férfi, aztán hirtelen hozzátette:
– Nem maradok itthon sokáig, de egy teát megihatnánk együtt.
Féltízkor úgyis el kell mennem, akkor aztán nem zavarom többé.
Leültek egy kis pipereasztal köré, a háziúr megigazította a vörös
lámpaernyőt, Liza pedig a tea után nézett.
Egyedül maradtak és amíg a székükben hátradőltek, mindegyik
ugyanazzal a gondolattal foglalkozott. A szituáció különlegessége
izgatta őket kissé, bár a férfi természetes udvariassága, szinte
rokoni szivélyessége élét vette a dolognak. De mégis együtt voltak,
rejtett szobába elzárkózva, furcsa, szinpadi öltözetben, ők, a két naív
és csak elméletben kitanult intézeti leány és egy csaknem idegen,
csinos és előkelő férfi. Csirének eszébe jutott, hogy a kiséretlen
szinházbamenés ehhez képest kismiska.
A háziúr kezdett szóhoz, amíg felszolgálták a teát és a hideg
sültet. Abban a leereszkedően tiszteletteljes, hűs és közömbös
hangnemben kezdte, amellyel az ő osztályában meg szokták
különböztetni a polgári nőket a rangjukbeliektől és a társaságon kívül
levőktől, akikkel bizalmaskodni lehet. Idővel – ki tudja miért – egyre
jobban megoldódott köztük e feszes és alakoskodó társalgás.
– Tehát maguk doktorok lesznek? – kérdezte. – Maga is, kis
Csitri, vagy hogy mondja?
– Én tanár leszek!
– Pfü, tanár! Pápaszemmel és ikes igékkel. Hihetetlen!
– Ha közben valaki feleségül venne, nem ragaszkodnám az ikes
igékhez – felelt merészen Csire, miközben Liza épp kiment a
tálcával.
– Nagyszerű – nevetett a férfi. – Nem is hiszi, mennyire stílszerű
ez a felelet az egész megjelenéséhez, még ehhez a ruhához is!
– Ugyan!
– Egészben tökéletesen stílszerű maga most. Mint egy bájos és
együgyü gyermekmese, amelynek rejtett és célzatos értelme van a
nagyok számára. Vallja be, hogy öntudatosan kereste ki magának
ezt a ruhát.
– Felpróbáltunk bizony vagy huszat – vallotta be Csire
elpirosodva.
– Azt hiszem, mindkettőjüknek ez illik legjobban, amit viselnek.
Klára sokkalta királynőbb, mint a szegény királynő lehetett és az
ember irigykedve gondol a szerencsés lordra… És olyan sötét
hajban mennyire erős a csehüvegek ragyogása. Különös…
– Mi a különös? – kérdezte Klára.
 – Arra gondoltam, hogy azok az asszonyok, akik hivatásszerűen
viselnek gyémántot és csipkét, többnyire fáradtak, egyhangúak és
érdektelenek benne. Miért?
– Mert nekik az megszokott, és már nem szerez örömet –
bölcselkedett naívul Csire.
Ilyen együgyü beszédek folytak, amíg Liza egy sültet és
süteményt tett az asztalra. Akkor a bárónak eszébe jutott valami.
– Nézze kérem, – fordult a házvezetőnőhez egyszerű
természetességgel – ehhez később valami hideg innivaló is jó lenne.
A jégszekrényben még lesz néhány Heydsick Monopol, hozhatna
nekünk egyet!
A leány habozni látszott egy percig, aztán engedelmeskedett és
kevés vártatva elpukkant a közelükben egy felnyitott pezsgősüveg
dugója. Az egész pedig olyan könnyedén és kevés szóval történt,
hogy a két vendég nem ért rá ellenkezni. Halkan kocintottak és
belekóstoltak a pohárba. Liza megint nem volt sehol.
Az erősen befűtött, kellemes szobában, a jól vacsorált és szépen
öltözött emberek közt, intim, vörösfényű lámpa körül pedig lassan,
egyre villódzóbb, játszi sugarakban remegni kezdtek az esti órák
finom ingerei. A férfi behunyta félig a szemét és csinos, halovány
arcát oldalt fordítva, a Csire szőke haját, gömbölyü karját nézte.
– Most meséljenek valamit az intézetről. Mit csinálnak ottbenn
ilyenkor?
– Hány óra most?
– Azonnal!… Féltíz!… Hát én már úgyis elkéstem. Tehát mit
csinál ilyenkor az a nagy kas leány? Talán már szépeket álmodnak?
– Kilenckor csengetnek lefekvésre, de sohasem alszunk
tizenegynél előbb. Némelyik mamlasz még éjszaka is tanul,
legtöbben trécselünk a vízvezetéknél, a hajunkkal bajlódunk,
sokszor zongorázik valamelyik és táncra kelünk a mosdóasztal körül.
Vagy kinézünk az ablakon a Stefánia-útra.
 – Mit néznek a Stefánia-úton?
Csire elhallgatott és Klára finom, kaján mosollyal nézett rá. Aztán
elfogulatlanul beszélt helyette.
– Éjszakai asszonyokat nézünk, hogy mennyit fázlódnak ott kinn
szegények és a férfiak milyen durván ellökdösik őket.
A háziúr leplezetlenül elcsodálkozott.
– Lássa, kicsi orvosnövendék, – szólt szinte mohón – ez nagyon
érdekes dolog. Én még sohasem beszéltem erről magukforma,
hivatásbeli nőkkel és sokszor gondoltam rá: hogy’ vélekedhetik egy
felvilágosodott és mégis tiszta asszonyszemély a bűnről.
– Nagy b-vel írja ezt a bűnt? Ha nem volna rájuk szükség, nem
ácsorognának ott szegények. Mi testvéri vonzalommal szánjuk őket.
Csirének különben egyéb gondolatai is támadnak ilyenkor.
– De Klára! – szégyenkezett Csire.
– Például a multkor ledobott a Stefánia-útra egy gombostűt –
folytatta a másik merészen.
– Klára!…
A báró kacagva nézte a szőke leány zavarát és egyre sürgette.
– Csak mondja, Klárika. Miért dobta le a gombostűt?
– Azt mondta, hogy akinek a fejére esik, persze férfinak, ahhoz ő
lekiált, hogy jöjjön fel és vigye el őt és szeresse őt…
– Az nem is úgy volt, Klára – nevetett félig sértődötten a másik. –
Először is csak tréfáltam veletek, másodszor – hát igen – az ember
néha egészen elsavanyodik odabenn. Folyton csak könyvek és
lányok, irigy csukák, az utoljára is nem természetes. Huszonkét
esztendős korában egy lánynak sem szabadna tanulni.
– Igazsága van – hagyta helyben a férfi. – Szavamra mondom,
sohasem ismertem még ilyen okos és kedves leányokat. És milyen
szépek!
 Újra töltött és kocintottak.
Egy percre szinte megdöbbenve konstatálták magukban, hogy a
pezsgőztetés nem tartozik éppen a vendéglátás köteles
udvariasságaihoz. De ebben a különös idegzett hangulatban a
megtévesztett itéletük hamar megbékült vele. Most már csak a
nyelvük hegyével szopogatták az italt, de a tudatuk köré valami
finom, kissé ingó, rózsaszínű fátyol szövődött – oktalan, könnyű
örömből és a biztonságuk hitében jóleső izgalomból.
És kocintottak újra meg újra.
– A mi barátságunk még nagyon rövid, – mondotta csillogó
szemmel a férfi – de az igazi rokonszenvnek nem is kellenek évek.
Ha valamikor szükségük lesz egy őszinte jó barátra, igérjék meg,
hogy eszükbe jutok és hozzám fordulnak. Igérik? Adjanak rá kezet!
Odaadták mind a ketten és a férfi sima, hizelkedő ajkát
hosszasan rányomta mind a kettőre, miközben erős és forró
lélegzetet fújt rájuk. Aztán a kezébe vette a fehér és a barna kacsót.
– Érdekesek! – mondta tünődve. – Az egyik kemény, gömbölyű,
erősfogású kis magyarmenyecskekéz, – az embernek a kakastejjel,
varjúvajjal kalácssütés jut róla az eszébe – a másik barna, hosszú
ujjú, lazán ízelt és finom. A körmük egyformán rózsaszínű, csakhogy
nagyon csunyán vagdalják. És itt… tintás. Jeé!…
Ijedten kapták el mind a ketten, pedig csak az egyik volt tintás.
A férfi megint nevetett, aztán hirtelen megcsendítette a poharát.
– Kedves kicsi barátnőim, Klára és Csire, most a barátságunkra
iszom. Hátha mégegyszer összesodródunk az életben, úgy mint
most.
Két ragyogó leányszempár tüze biztatóan villant bele az övébe.
– Az egészségetekre iszom – súgta hirtelen, majdnem bájosan
kérkedő merészséggel.
Ez a pohár a második üvegből volt már.
 – Téged hogy hívnak, báró? – kérdezte Csire, önmagát erőltetve
a hazardjátékra, miközben csodálkozva evickélt a józanság és a
mámor határán.
– Józsi vagyok.
– Szervusz Józsi, Jóska!
Halkan, egy cseppet sem közönségesen, félig csúfondáros
engedékenységgel, de mégis úgy mondták: te, Józsi.
És ebben a válságos percben, mikor a jelenet még mindig finom
és espritvel teljes beállítása, a véletlen játékos szellemessége még
nem jutott el a köznapi duhajkodás határához, még egészen
idejekorán és alkalomszerűleg, mint deus ex machina – szólalt meg
az előszoba csengője.
– A feleségem! – szólt a báró megdöbbenve és hirtelen felállt.
Csak egy pillanatig tartott a zavar. Egy pillanat alatt átlátta a
helyzet furcsaságát, félreérthető vagy érthetetlen voltát, végignézett
az asztalkán, az üres üvegeken, széthányt ruhákon és a leányok
szinpadi öltözetén. El is mosolyodott, rémült, könyörgő arcuk láttára.
– Semmi baj – mondta. – Én megyek elébe, maguk zárják be
belülről kulccsal a ruhatárt, a villanyt le, ott az az ajtó a Liza
szobájába visz, majd nála átöltözhetnek. Adieu!
Menet még visszamosolygott, félig gúnyosan, félig
szégyenkezve, bocsánatkérően vagy hálásan…
***
Kinn csípős téli levegő áradt az arcukba, amikor a hóhányók apró
kupacait kerülgetve siettek a villamos állomása felé. Csire szólalt
meg, nagyon sokára.
– Furcsa! Azt mondta, hogy be fogjuk várni a nénit. És mégis el
kellett szökni előle. Miért?
 – Megint magyarázatot akarsz olyasmire, amit magad sokkal
jobban meg tudsz magyarázni – felelt a másik csaknem
rosszkedvűen. – Különben, azt hiszem, meg lehetsz az estéddel
elégedve. Tojástáncot jártál a szokatlan és illetlen dolgok fölött.
– De vajjon érintettük-e a veszedelmest – töprengett Csire és
elgondolkozva bámult a villamoskocsi fehér lámpájára.
 Új tipusok.

Hatan voltak már itthon, – az egyetemre járó leányok rögtönözött

kis kollégiumának a növendékei. Kimenő napjuk volt s ilyenkor a
nagyváros legkülönbözőbb társaságaiban töltötték a decemberi
estét, – hogy diszkrét pletykákkal, futtában elkapdosott
benyomásokkal, irodalmi hírekkel, vagy kulisszatitkokkal
megterhelve kerüljenek össze megint. És míg itt a megkésett
vacsorához hivó csengetyűszóra várnak, – megbeszélik,
feldolgozzák a lelkükben, kiszinesítik a fantáziájukban azt a sokrétű,
zavaros képét egy nyüzsgő, konglomerát életnek, – nézvén azt a
vidékről felszármazottak naiv megbotránkozásával, az elzárt élet
kiváncsiságával, vagy eszes és finom asszonyi lelkek biztos
itéletével, de mindig úgy, hogy egy kicsikét föléje képzelték magukat
mindezeknek, pedig csak, – egyelőre: kívül estek rajtuk.
A tintafoltos nappaliban, amelyik egyuttal tanulószoba és a fizikai
kisérletek helye is volt, – poros lexikonok, törött fülű lombikok és egy
ócska sálakba göngyölt, kedélyes, öreg csontváz társaságában, –
sokszor támadtak furcsa, mély és mégis harmóniátlan ötletek s
szintúgy mély és harmóniátlan életről és a cigarettfüstös,
parfümillatos légbe röppenve, – mintha küzködve lebegnének,